Scarlett Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 2 of 14

Scarlett left the registration desk with her number stitched to her sleeve and walked back toward the smithy to thank the man who had signed for her. Aldric Thornhaven was not at the bench. A boy pointed her past the awning, toward a shed behind the stables. She found Aldric inside, standing over a small table with a candle and a folded map. He looked up when her shadow crossed the door. "Shut it," he said. She shut the door. He did not offer her a seat. He rolled the map closed and set it aside. "You signed my form," she said. "I came to say thanks." "Thanks is nothing," Aldric said. "I need one more thing from you before you fight." He pulled a chain from under his shirt. A ring hung on it, gold, worn thin at the band. "This was my father's. King Cassian Thornhaven. Adim killed him." He set the ring on the table between them. "The story the crown tells is bandits on the north road. There were no bandits. Adim sent men in bandit cloaks. He paid them in silver from my father's own treasury. Two of them are dead now. One drinks in a village I know. I have his name in writing." Scarlett looked at the ring. She did not touch it. "Why tell me." "Because a sponsor's seal is not enough," Aldric said. "You fight tomorrow under my name. If you win, the crowd will ask whose knight you are. I need the answer already given." He put his hand flat on the table. "Swear to me. Not to the crown. To me, as the true heir. Say it plain, here, before you take the field." Scarlett thought of her father, who had taught her the armor was a debt she owed the man who gave it. She thought of Brogan Ironquill's jaw working when he saw the seal. If she swore, the crown would mark her. If she did not swear, Aldric would pull his name off her form and the marshals would strike her from the book by dusk. She knelt on the shed floor in her plate. She put her hand on the ring. "I swear to you, Aldric Thornhaven, as the true heir of your father. My sword answers to your name." Aldric did not smile. He lifted the ring and put it back under his shirt. "Good," he said. "Now win." She stood and walked out into the yard. Two of the king's men stood at the smithy corner, watching the shed door. They had not been there when she went in. One of them wrote something on a slip of paper and tucked it into his belt. Scarlett kept walking. Her name was in a book now, and in a second book she could not see.