her father, apple in one hand, the other folded under his, watching the thimblerig game. The game everyone knew was a lie—the game you played, because though it was a lie for everyone else, for you it might be different. Because you might spot something others missed.
A hand took Marian’s elbow, and she gently raised her head enough to see a familiar face below the lowered rim of her hood.
“We must talk.” Alan’s expression was grave and urgent. But when Marian lifted her eyes, she saw that some of the flour he’d used to gray his hair still lingered at the top of his brow. How comical he’d looked—and how convincing. The flour seemed more real than the fear that now animated his features, lit his eyes, and tightened his fingers around her arm.
“Rob—” Alan stopped himself and shook her by the arm instead. “How can you be smiling? Wake up, man.”
Marian hadn’t known she was smiling, and when he said the word, the expression fell away. “I’m awake,” she said quietly. She stopped looking at the flour in his hair and watched his face instead.
“Take the archery contest,” Alan said softly, his gaze light and flitting this way and that, making certain no one was near enough to hear. “Forget me and Elena.”
“No.” Marian slipped one of her arrows from her quiver to inspect the fletching, nudging a filament of feather back into place with her thumb. “We proceed as planned.”
“Sard the plan!” Alan drew a breath and lowered his voice again. “Rob—my friend. Murder. They’ll hang you. This pardon—it’s for you, not for me.”
Marian did not like the shape of the fletching. The angle was off on one of the lines—she could see it, though no measuring device would be exact enough to tell her she was right. It would fly, and it would spin, but it would spin off balance. It’d be a difference akin to the width of a fly’s wing, but she could afford no mistakes. She replaced it in the quiver and drew out another.
Alan snatched the arrow from her hands, demanding her attention. “Murder.”
Marian resisted the urge to snatch the arrow back. If he hadn’t torqued the wooden shaft already, retrieving it would certainly do so. They were always going to hang me, Alan. The words were true. They felt true. She’d never spoken them, never dwelled too long on the definition of treason to men like Guy of Gisborne and the Sheriff of Nottingham. But she’d avoided those thoughts for a reason. Then, they might have frightened her into obedience.
And now?
Now Marian reached out to take the arrow back, but she grasped it gently with her fingertips and drew it slowly toward her so that Alan’s hand, white-knuckled with its grip, came with it. Marian lifted her head, then ran a fingertip along the edge of her hood. Alan’s gaze rose to follow the movement, and Marian was stunned to see that his eyes were wet with tears.
For me? For Robin? For his future? For all three?
She’d nudged the hood back enough so that a man, standing close to her, might see below the shadow it cast on her features. The veil of cloud over the sun thinned, and Alan’s fair eyelashes looked like gold as they rose, his pupils dilated, his features stricken as he looked for the first time at the face of Robin Hood.
“They were always going to hang me, Alan,” Marian whispered.
His fingers let go of the arrow, and Marian inspected the fletching as she’d done the other. This one was better balanced—this one would fly truest. She drew her hood back into place. She looked up from the arrow to see Alan, who had not moved, who was looking at her with naked and dawning horror, and fear, and anger.
Marian turned away. They were calling for the remaining archers to line up for the final round of the contest, and she slipped away in order to secure a spot near the end of the line.
This time the stretch that lay between her and the distant target held no fear for her. Her heart was as calm as if she were sewing by candlelight, or watching patterns formed by raindrops against a glazed window.
They pulled Alan into the line. He went, unresisting, and stood staring ahead, wit enough remaining to stop him watching Marian as if she were the only one standing there in the broad lawn of Nottingham town.