Lena began yelling for people to get out, and sent one of the girls upstairs to warn the travelers. If they meant to burn the place, they wouldn’t stop there. I ran outside with a nasty feeling in the pit of me.

Sure enough, I heard a horse’s scream and saw another set of guards lighting the barn on fire. They put a torch to the hay, and the animals started to fret something awful. I ran at them, taking five knives in my hands and starting to throw. I hit two guards with the hilt of a knife tossed to the back of their necks, which dropped them to the ground. The third turned to face me, which were a stupid move on his part.

I jumped onto my hands and flipped to kick him square in the chest. He went down. I didn’t much care if they stayed down or not; I needed to get the horses free. The fire were spreading quick with so much hay, and they were kept in by ropes across their stalls.

With a knife in each hand I sawed the ropes loose one by one, letting the panicked horses run out. I had two left to do when one of the guards pushed me hard against a stall wall. I grabbed the wood of the wall and slammed my head back, connecting with his nose—including the nosepiece, which set my head to ringing—and stepped hard on his foot. He scooted back enough for me to cut another rope and grab the last one. The horse were rearing on his hind legs, and I did my best to forget I might well be trampled soon as I loosed him.

I ducked to miss a kicking hoof, sliced the rope, and curled off to the side. The horse bolted and the guard grabbed me by the throat, pulling me off the ground and ramming me against the wood. Black smoke were billowing and it swallowed the horse up whole. The whole barn were popping and cracking like a heaving giant.

“And you must be the famous Will Scarlet,” he said, spittle flying at my face. “Sheriff’s been dying to meet you.”

I sent the spit right back with a fair helping of my own. He cocked his arm back to throw a punch.

An arm shot out and hooked the guard’s, sending him off me. Robin stepped out of the smoke like a god and delivered a sound punch to the guard’s face. Without a breath he turned, grabbed my hand, and ran out.

The night were much, much colder than I remembered. Robin were holding my hand tight and I clutched at him like he were a handhold on a cliff and I were slipping off, like he were the difference between life and not.

When the smoke let us go Rob dragged hard on my arm, enough for me to yelp and twist back, which landed me fair square against his chest. His arms latched round me like iron bands, and for a stupid second I shut my eyes and squished my head to his shoulder. His face pressed to the side of mine, and hard breaths huffed out over my hair. “Thanks, Rob,” I whispered.

Guess it were the wrong thing to say. He pushed me back, pulling his heat away from me, and my shoulders hunched against the cold. He nodded.

“Christ’s bones, you saved the inn, Scar!”

I turned to see Lena fair flying at me, wrapping me up tight in her arms.

I looked over her shoulder. It were still standing, not even scorched. “Sorry about the stables.”

“Don’t, my girl,” she said soft. “You saved me and the horses.”

“Here,” Rob said, pressing a purse to her hand. “Money for the sheriff. When those guards come to, just pay them.”

Lena didn’t like charity, and her face showed all its wrinkles and age that weren’t there when she smiled. “Take a horse, Robin. I’ll tell them one ran off.”

We looked to the travelers huddled in the grass, watching the barn burn. She turned to call them all back into the inn, and Robin held me tight by the waist as he steered me to a horse that had wandered behind the inn.

“I can walk.”

“I’m well aware. But right now, I don’t want you to walk away,” he said.

That were fair enough. Right then, I didn’t have no clue what I wanted, so it worked fine. He mounted the horse and held an arm out, and I jumped on behind him, ringing my arms round his waist. I shivered, feeling like all the awful things in my head just left in one quick rush. He were like that. Rob could change anything in an instant.

He didn’t take me to Major Oak but to Thoresby Lake. “You’re covered in soot and smoke,” he told me. “And a fair helping of dirt. Were you sleeping in the tunnel, then?”

I nodded, jumping down off the horse. Rob came off as well and sat down on a rock facing away from the water.

“You ain’t gonna turn round, right?”

“Scar.”

I took that as a yes and skinned out of my clothes real quick. The difficult bit were the muslin I wrapped around my bits in front. Once I got it off, I dove into the water. It were ice cold and I scrubbed hard before my hands went thick with the cold. I liked the cold. It made Joanna and Gisbourne seem farther away, and that were good.

I scrubbed through my hair, and I remembered Joanna sitting up late with me, brushing out my hair. What a cabinet we could make together, she said. I thought she were gone madder than a marmot. You have rich mahogany and I have burnished gold; it would be a precious chest indeed. She braided our hair together to see the difference. Good English hair, she told me. None of my Saxon color.

I took her tie and banded our hair at the bottom, and I snuggled against her as we went to sleep. Those were the days when she started going out at night without me, making me feel littler for not knowing what were going on. Seemed to me then that Joanna and I were as distant and separate as our hair, and if I could only braid us together, we’d never part. I had fallen asleep thinking it were as easy as that.