Sir Roland Brightshield's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Sir Roland Brightshield had lost the child three nights ago, and he had not slept since. He climbed the rope ladder to the fourth bough before dawn, sword strapped tight, hands steady only because he had drilled them steady an hour before. Somewhere in the treehouse district, tangled across a hundred trunks and a thousand walkways, a stolen heir was hidden. He had sworn to guard the boy. He had failed once already. He would not fail twice. He worked the district the only way he knew: door by door, branch by branch. By midday he had cleared six platforms and learned nothing. The rope bridges swayed under his boots. Merchants shut their shutters when they saw his tabard. He was running out of hours, and he knew it. If the kidnappers moved the boy past the outer canopy, he would never find him. He stopped on a narrow landing and pressed his palm flat against the bark to keep his hand from shaking. A boy stepped out of the shadow of a doorway. He was small, dark-haired, dressed in a red coat too fine for this part of the district. He said his name was Lucien Blackwell. He said he had seen the knight climbing since sunrise and he knew what Roland was looking for. In his hands he turned a brass prayer wheel, the cylinder clicking softly on its stand. He said the men who took the heir had traded the wheel to his uncle two nights ago for silence and a rope. He said the wheel came from the great tree fortress at the district's heart, the one crowned with watchful platforms and ringed with iron spikes. He said the child was inside it. Roland knelt so their eyes were level. He asked the boy why he was telling a stranger. Lucien said his uncle would sell the next child too, and he did not want to grow up in a house that did that. Roland took the prayer wheel. The brass was warm. He believed him. He stood, faced the massive silhouette of the fortress rising above the canopy, and understood the shape of the next problem. He had a location now. He also had a keep full of armed men, a single sword, and a boy at his side he had not asked for and could not send home.