Scarlett Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 1 of 14

Scarlett Emberheart set her entry form on the registration desk and waited for the big man behind it to tear it up. He had torn up two forms already that morning. She had watched him do it. Her name was written clean at the top of hers, in her own hand, and under sponsor she had left the line blank. She wore full plate. Her sword hung at her hip. Her father had made her earn the armor before he let her fight in it, and she meant to fight in it today. Brogan Ironquill read the form. He read it again. He looked at her helm, her lipstick, her red hair pulled back tight. "No sponsor. No entry. No exceptions." He pushed the form back across the wood. Scarlett did not move it. "The charter does not require a sponsor for a man," she said. "I read it." "Rule stands for women," Brogan said. "Find a knight. Get his seal. Come back before the horn." He set her form to the side of his stack, not in it, and reached for the next. Behind her, the line of fighters shifted and began to laugh. She walked out of the arena gates and down toward the training grounds because that was where old knights drank in the morning when they had nowhere else to be. She had tried this once before, last year, and gotten as far as the weapons check before they turned her out. She knew the names of the knights the crown favored. None of them would sign for her. She needed a knight the crown had forgotten. She found him under an awning behind the smithy, alone at a bench, eating bread. His mail was clean but old. A scar cut across his cheek. She had heard his name in her father's house, years back, spoken low. Aldric Thornhaven. A prince, once, until the man on the throne had made him nothing. She sat down across from him and laid the form flat on the bench. "I need a sponsor," she said. "They took your title. I'm asking you to sign anyway." Aldric looked at the form. He looked at her armor. He tore a piece off his bread and chewed it. "Why me." "Because the crown will hate it," she said. "And because no one else will." He set the bread down. He took the quill from her belt and pressed his seal into the wax she had brought. "Win," he said. "Every round. Win." She carried the form back to the desk before the horn. Brogan read the seal. His jaw worked once. He wrote her name into the book at number forty-three.