Chapter 16: The Chancellor's Offer

I left the lodging at a quarter to midnight, in a plain grey cloak, with my hood up.

The guardsman in the passage looked at me, and I said, "The chancellor sent for me."

He let me by.

I had meant to wake Alaric and tell him.

But he was asleep in the chair with his head against the wall.

It was the first real sleep he had had in a month, and I could not wake him.

The chancellor's study was at the back of the east wing, behind a door with no guard.

It was a small room full of paper.

He sat behind a desk with a single lamp, a lean, dry man in his sixties.

His wife poured me tea and went out.

"Sit, Your Grace."

I sat.

"You made a fool of Miss Crane tonight," he said.

"I made her give back my mother's emerald."

"The effect was the same." He folded his hands.

"I do not like Viscount Rook. I want you to know that before I say the rest."

"Say it."

"The king is afraid of him."

I had not expected that.

"The crown owes the Rook bank a great deal," said the chancellor.

"The army's winter pay is held in Rook's vaults. If the viscount calls in the loan, the soldiers do not eat."

"And so the viscount says the duke is a thief."

"And so the king would like to find the duke a little bit guilty, and be done."

"Then he has the wrong duke."

"I think so too," said the chancellor.

"But I have a proposal, and it is the only one I can make you."

He slid a paper across the desk.

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