Page 73 of The Swindler’s Daughter

“No!” The scream was torn from my mouth.

His head snapped in my direction. “What’s the matter, little maiden? Are the consequences of thievery too much for you to stomach?” He sneered at me, running the flat side of his blade against Rowan’s throat. “Perhaps you should have thought that over before you defied the law!” His face was almost purple and spit flew from his mouth.

He turned his fury back to Rowan, his grip tightening on the knife hilt.

I strained and screamed, desperate to do something—anything—to save Rowan’s life.

Then a shout louder than mine rang through the air just before John’s staff swung with so much force that it knocked both Reeve and the constable off of Rowan.

The constable holding me tried to push me aside to join the fray, but I grabbed on to him and soon found that I had help. Tyson tackled the man at the knees and together we brought him to the ground.

I looked to Rowan and saw that both he and Reeve had climbed to their knees, but Rowan was quicker to his feet as Reeve struggled to stand on his injured leg. Rowan pulled his bow from his shoulder and swung it at Reeve’s leg, hitting the injury and making him crumple to his hands and knees again.

By the time Reeve looked up, both Rowan and I had an arrow trained on him. “Stay down!” Rowan warned, his arrow pointed between the man’s eyes.

John was standing over one constable with a foot on the man’s stomach and his staff poised against his throat. Looking behind me, I saw that the other constable was in a similar predicament, with Oliver and Tyson each standing on a wrist as they pointed their swords at him. Each of the lawmen’s swords lay useless on the ground.

I was stunned. Had we really managed to turn the tables in such a dramatic fashion? I stared at the situation, breath panting, but it remained the same. We had come out conquerors. After going over the events in my head, I realized that Reeve’s demented shouting must have covered the sound of John’s approach. And John’s sheer size and skill with a staff had made the surprise attack effective indeed.

I couldn’t believe our luck.

“You’ll hang, all of you!” Reeve shouted.

“Where do you go from here, boys?” the constable under Oliver’s and Tyson’s boots asked. “You’re volunteering for an execution if you keep on this way. And you’ll never get away with it.”

“We need rope,” John said, ignoring our captives.

Saints and angels, we had captives.

17

Muffled shouts and the occasional thump continued to echo from the other side of the door. The five of us stood in the upstairs corridor, staring at the large slab of wood, silent and lost. We’d tied the magistrate and his two constables hand and foot before lashing them each to heavy pieces of furniture.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, my wide eyes still fixed on the decorative carvings in the wood. “Rowan, what are we going to do? This is bad. This is very bad!” I turned to him, hoping he would have answers at the ready. “We can’t just keep them in there forever. They aren’t our hostages.”

“No. They’re criminals,” he said, staring at the door.

Why was he just staring at the door? “I don’t think that’s how most people will see it! We look like the criminals.” We needed to think. We needed to plan. Maybe then this humming of nervous energy inside me would have somewhere to go.

“They attacked us!” Rowan shouted.

“Yes, and who’s going to believe they weren’t justified?” I threw a hand in the direction of the village. “There is no higher law in the area that we can go to to report their crime. And even if there were, they wouldn’t believe us!”

“I know! I know. I just have to think.” He turned away from me.

“What happens when they start making so much noise that they can be heard?” I asked as my frantic questions became too many. “What happens when the butler or the housekeeper come to investigate? We are trespassing and we have the magistrate locked up in a sitting room!”

“Maybe we should leave,” Tyson suggested, his eyes shifting from side to side as he rubbed the palms of his hands on his trousers.

“And go where?” I demanded. “Back to the woods? Are we going to live out our days in Murrwood Forest in the hopes that no one finds us?”

“There has to be a solution,” Rowan said as he paced back and forth.

“What?” I demanded, feeling my tenuous grasp on my emotions slipping. “What is the solution?”

“I DON’T KNOW!” Rowan roared.

I fell silent, noticing for the first time the complete lack of confidence in his face and his stance. Instead there was uncertainty, fear, and panic. My anger dimmed. He was flailing just as much as I was, and I was making things worse by yelling at him for a situation he had no more control over than I did.