He shook the idea from his mind and stalked into Colson’s. He did not regard a single person as he rounded the bar, went through the kitchen and out the back door, his eyes on the little brown house in the courtyard.
Patrick entered his mother’s kitchen, shucked off his coat, and let it drop to the floor. Tentatively, he pulled the blackened coin from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. The head of Lord Tanner on one side, a canary on the other.
For a long time, he simply stared at it, then he tossed it and let it fall into his palm. The canary glinted back at him.
He sighed deeply, shaking his head again. “I trust her,” he mumbled to himself, then replaced the coin in his breast pocket.
He reached the Scribbler’s cranny just as a piece of parchment from the top of the stack cri
