Before his implication can register inside, Lord Jamis pulls out a cloak, stained black in old blood, yet still undeniably recognizable. “And this was found with the blade.”
“Cohen” comes out on an exhale before I realize his name has passed my lips. No. No. Not him. I cross my arms over my waist. I understand what the high lord’s doing with this trail of evidence, but I won’t believe Cohen’s guilty of Papa’s murder. Impossible. Cohen loved Papa.
“Someone must’ve stolen the knife,” I tell him. “Finding the weapon or a coat doesn’t mean you’ve found the murderer.”
“These belong to Cohen Mackay, and Saul’s blood is on both items. This coat was ripped off Mackay, and this dagger”—?his long fingers wrap around the handle—?“was pulled from your father’s back.”
I flinch. “But . . . Cohen’s gone.” I hate how shaken I sound. I take a breath and start again. “He couldn’t have done it. Someone must want it to look like Cohen killed my father.”
“Perhaps.” Lord Jamis’s gaze softens into a look I don’t see often—?pity. “However, Cohen was seen in the same town as Saul on the night of the murder.”
“A coincidence,” I argue. The boy I knew isn’t a murderer. He was a small-town boy who had shown unusual skill with hunting. When my father asked the king regent to find someone worthy to be trained, Cohen managed to earn the high honor of becoming apprentice to the king’s bounty hunter. He loved his family so much that he worked tirelessly on their farm spring and summer and then trained with my father every winter. Everything he did was to give his parents and siblings a better life. That’s not the kind of person who murders his mentor.
“There are two witnesses.” Lord Jamis pauses. He sits so still, it doesn’t even look as though the man is breathing. The weight of his silence is crushing. “Two men who say they saw Cohen murder your father.”
Truthful heat crawls through my belly. Breaks me apart.
For the first time in my life, I loathe my body’s strange ability. I cannot believe . . . don’t want to believe what he’s saying. Not Cohen. Not my Cohen.
“There has to be an explanation.” The words trip out of my mouth. “He couldn’t have . . . he’d never . . . my father was like a second father to Cohen.” I choke out the last word. No matter how badly I need the high lord’s claim to be false, I don’t have a good explanation for Cohen’s whereabouts, the evidence, or the truth in Lord Jamis’s words. Such damning truth.
Lord Jamis frowns. “I’d hoped this would be a relief to know.”
A relief? I stare at the blood-red stitching on the chair, sorting through the destruction and shock and fury crashing around inside me. “D-did he admit his guilt?”
Lord Jamis places the dagger beside the book and flattens his palms to the desk. He doesn’t need to say anything; his stolid expression says it all. They haven’t caught Cohen yet. When it comes to tracking, hunting, hiding, no guard has ever matched my father’s skill. No one other than Cohen.
No one other than me.
I take in Lord Jamis’s pressed suit and carefully combed hair. To be the right-hand man to the king, he’d have to be educated. Clever. He’d already know the best person who has a chance of catching Cohen is right in front of him. “You want me to track him,” I say, shock weighting my words.
“Yes.”
I lift my chin, staring at Lord Jamis but seeing nothing. “Why would I do that for you?”
“Your poaching evidence is enough to warrant a hanging, and Captain Omar demands justice be served. It would be a tragedy to see someone of your skill discarded, so I’ve proposed a trade to the captain, one that will satisfy payment for your crime.”
I glance down at the filth on my hands and then back to the high lord.
The angry swoosh of my pulse echoes in my ears. “You want to trade my life for Cohen’s?”
He smiles with a hint of pride, displaying a row of large teeth. “Precisely.”
Chapter
4
LORD JAMIS’S ACCUSATIONS TUMBLE THROUGH ME, turning me inside out with doubt and grief and horror. I sit silently as Lord Jamis crosses the room and opens the door to let in three guards. The captain, the same young brute who restrained me earlier and is thick with muscle and built like a bull, and a scrappy fellow whose pinched features remind me of a fox.