Shadows of Sherwood Read Free

said. “That’s big trouble right there.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    Knives in the Nighttime
    Robyn raced home to Loxley Manor with her heart pounding and her skin sweat-slick. Before tonight, she had never been truly scared while visiting the 410 Compound or venturing around the Castle District alone. But those men—the sheer number of them and the quiet threat they exuded—frightened her. The danger of being caught sneaking around seemed real now.
    Robyn had always been the sort of girl who enjoyed breaking the rules. She was almost never where she was supposed to be. One slim, quick person could go just about anywhere unnoticed, even in the daylight. Robyn especially liked climbing walls—simply to see what was behind them—and the Castle District was full of excellent walls. Not to mention gates and hedges and fences. She may have also leaped the occasional moat.
    She would have preferred having a friend to join her from time to time, but she found it hard to interest the other girls in even the most harmless sorts of mischief. It stoodto reason, since Robyn always, always got into a little bit of trouble when she didn’t follow the rules.
    Her mother chided her for her impatience.
    Her father described her as restless, but he usually smiled with secret pride over it.
    Her teachers all thought she was trouble, but her grades were decent and more often than not she did her homework, though she didn’t always show up for class.
    At night, she loved exploring the woods behind her house, or visiting the 410. She was never the least bit tired at bedtime. The manor house was quite large, with more than a dozen rooms, but as it happened her parents’ bedroom was right across the hall. And right next to the closet that housed the alarm system controls. Robyn would tiptoe in and flip the second-floor switch off. Hearing nothing but Dad’s soft snores, Robyn would return to her room, close the door, and dash to the half-open window. The night breeze always welcomed her.
    The sheer two-story drop never worried her a bit. Scaling down the rough white stones was easy enough. Her feet and fingers naturally found the correct toeholds in the mortar. A thirty-second descent. She’d done it many times and had never been caught. But never before had Robyn’s restless, reckless nature actually saved her life.

    It would soon become known as the Night of Shadows.
    As the Hightower Clock struck midnight in the center of Notting Square, as Robyn raced home seeking the safety ofLoxley Manor, a great evil spread through the streets of Nott City. This evil came in the form of dark-dressed men carrying the sort of sharp knives that are perfect for slicing throats.
    The leader of the dark-dressed men was, in fact, not a man at all. An elegant, birdlike woman sat calmly in the passenger side of the first truck in the convoy, studying the small screen resting in her palm. She wouldn’t dirty her own hands tonight, of course, but a precision operation like this one required firsthand oversight.
    The fourteen trucks steamed through the Castle District, where all the members of Parliament lived, each headed to one of the fourteen addresses on the list they had been given. The task was to take out everyone in those houses, a total of thirty-nine people, including spouses and children. Governor Crown had been clear about that. Tonight was not a night for the squeamish, and the guys in the trucks were not afraid of a little mess.
    They parked their trucks and approached on foot, snaking toward Loxley Manor—among others—like tentacles through the pitch-black night.
    Few saw them coming. Many would die.
    But not Robyn. Because on the night in question, Robyn herself was a shadow.

    It took a total of eighteen minutes. At eighteen past midnight, the fourteenth and final truck reported to the leader with a single number, representing the total they had captured or killed.
    The leader frowned as she scrolled