Marina Dre's Arc

Chapter 13 of 14

Marina had the buyer's name and his royal seal. None of it mattered if the sale stood. The ledger called it lawful trade under the old king's mark. To free Mia, she had to prove the paper was broken. She carried two things now: Mia's birth record and a forged copy of the sale. The forgery was bait. The birth record was truth. She needed someone who could read a royal seal and find its flaw. She took Mia and rode to the Royal Village, a cluster of steep red roofs and crowned crests above timber walls. She found the retired court scribe in a cramped study packed with ink pots and rolled charts. Aldric Penworth was an old man with round glasses and a white beard, bent over a page when they entered. He did not look up. "I signed my last document years ago," he said. "Whatever you want sealed, take it elsewhere." "I don't want it sealed," Marina said. "I want it broken." She laid the forged sale on his desk, then Mia's birth record beside it. "My daughter was sold under this. Tell me it's lawful." Penworth's eyes sharpened behind the glasses. He pulled a lamp close. For a long moment he studied the trident seal, then the names. His finger stopped on the sale. "This names a seller with authority over the girl," he said. "A guardian's right." He tapped the birth record. "But this names you. Mother. Living. No guardianship was ever transferred." He looked at Marina. "The sale claims a right its signer never held." Mia stepped closer. "So it's fake?" "The seal is real," Penworth said. "The claim under it is false." He rose and crossed to a shelf, pulling down a stiff registry card marked with an ornate gold crest. "This is the original seal registry. Every lawful mark must match a registered holder and a registered right. A seal pressed over a false claim voids the trade. The crown's own law forbids it." He set the card beside the ledger name. The crests matched. The authority did not. Marina's chest tightened. "You'll say so? In writing?" Penworth dipped his pen. His hand did not shake. "I spent forty years protecting seals from men who misused them." He wrote slowly, then pressed his own witness mark below. "This states the sale is void. No court on the isle can honor it now." Marina folded the statement against the birth record. The legal wall was gone. The sale was dead paper. But Penworth set down his pen and watched her. "The buyer will know within a day that his purchase is worthless," he said. "A man who paid for a child does not walk away. He comes to collect what the law denied him." Mia reached for her mother's hand. Marina gripped it. The paper was broken. Now the buyer had nothing left to lose.