Captain Crowe came across the market square at seven on Friday morning, alive, the lantern swinging, and I nearly dropped a tray of buns on the cobbles.
I hadn't slept. I had baked in the dark at three still cold to the marrow from the night before, so stiff-fingered I scorched two loaves and cut my thumb on the third.
Why had Mott let him walk out of that house?
"Two pennies," I said, because the loaf was two pennies and I had nothing else I could say.
"You look dreadful." Bastian paid, and turned the loaf over to see my rook's foot pressed into the crust. "I slept with a chair under the latch. Your reeve keeps a very large cat."
At the next stall Old Hazel was tying lavender into bundles with blue thread. She didn't look up. The smell came across the boards, sharp and dry, over the hot-fat smell of my buns.
"That note," I said. "The one that sent you to my bin. You never told me what it said."
"Block capitals." He said it flat, like a man reading a bill. "ASK THE BAKER WHAT'S IN HER FLOUR."
"Anyone could write that."
"Anyone did." His eyes went over my face. "Who'd want me to ask, Miss Rook?"
"Someone who's never tasted my bread," I said, and went back to my tray, where the second row of buns sat under their own cloth, a little darker in the crust than the rest.
"Pip. Nothing from the second row. Not a crumb."
Mott came at nine, as he came every Friday, hat tipped, the keys at his belt, his hand already out for the loaf he'd eat the heel of and give the rest to his cat.
"Lass! The usual."
"Better than the usual." I held out a bun, still warm, a pat of butter melting in the split. "On the house. Martinmas is coming, Reeve. I'd rather talk lease over a good breakfast than a sour face."
He laughed and took it. He is a man who has never refused anything free.
The captain was three paces off, examining a cheese he did not want. I had put him there with a look.
"Heard you had rats," I said.
Mott bit down. Chewed. Swallowed. "Rats?"
"Hazel says you bought henbane for them. Last Monday week."
His jaw worked. I watched him decide to say nothing, and I watched the decision fail, the way a loaf fails when the oven's too cool.
"I have no rats," Mott said. His face went blank with surprise. "Never had a rat in that house. The cat sees to it."
Behind me, someone screamed.
A sow had gone through the cheese stall in a spray of whey and crates, and two drovers were rolling over the cobbles after it, then after each other. A knife flashed in the sun. The captain looked once at Mott, once at me, and went, lantern clanking at the end of its chain.
Forty paces. I counted them. Nobody else was close enough to hear.
I took a step nearer to Mott. "Who barred the inn door?"
His mouth clamped. His whole red face strained at it, a man holding a door shut against a gale. Then his chin dropped.
"I did. A bench leg. Davey watched the lane."
"Who put henbane in the flask?"
"I did." He was chewing again, I think from habit, and each mouthful loosened him. "Twice. The second, I put in your flour bin with my parish key. I've a key to every door in Ashgrove, lass."
"Why?"
"Twenty silver crowns." He said it with something close to pride; the old greed in him wouldn't let a sum go unspoken. "Half in advance. A letter, under a Lantern seal. Enough to lay him flat, it said, and send him looking in your bin."
"Who signed it?"
"Nobody signed it." Mott swallowed, and his face did something odd, a long slow loosening, like dough relaxing after the knead. "It was just the seal. And money."
Then he stopped.
He looked at the bun in his hand, half eaten, the butter gone to a shine on his thumb. He looked at me. The hour was nearly up, and I felt it go, the way you feel an oven door open behind you.
"Well," said Mott softly. "Well, well."
"Reeve," I said.
"Your mother's girl." He wiped his mouth. The smile came back, and it was worse than the shouting would have been. "This morning I couldn't stop talking. That's no lantern's work. Nothing green. Only a bun."
"You're mistaken."
"I'm never mistaken about money." He dropped his voice, friendly as a man asking after my health. "The lease goes to Davey. You'll sign it over today. And you'll be gone from Ashgrove before they read the orders on Sunday, at the evening bell, lass. Or I tell the captain what you are. And he'll believe me, because I'm the reeve, and you'll have nothing to say that I haven't already said."
"You told me everything. He'll hear that too."
"From you? A baker who baked me a confession?" He put the last of the bun in his mouth and chewed it, slowly. "Try it."
Bastian came back with whey on his coat and a drover's blood on his knuckle.
"Reeve gone?"
"He said something to me," I said. My throat felt tight as a new crust. "He barred your door. He put the flask in my bin with his parish key. Twenty crowns, under a Lantern seal, no name."
Bastian went very still. The flame in his lantern stood straight and yellow.
"And he simply told you?"
I opened my mouth. Every true answer I had ended at the gallows.
"He's a man who likes to boast," I said.
He did not look convinced. "Then I'll ask him myself."
He crossed the square toward the reeve, who was standing beside the ruined cheese stall with his hat on the back of his head, and clapped his hand on the captain's shoulder as easily as if they were old friends. Bastian's back was to me. Mott's face wasn't. He found me over the captain's shoulder, and smiled, and mouthed it slow, so I'd miss none of it.
Sunday they read the name, lass. I'll make sure he knows whose it should be.