Thorin Ironshield's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

Thorin carried the shackles back to the courthouse and set them on the bench beside the sketchbook. The wet iron stained the wood. He had just begun to plan his next move when a runner came up the steps, breathing hard, holding out a folded slip of paper. The seal on it was a fox. Kellan again. But this time the weight of it felt different in Thorin's hand — heavier, and quieter, the way a trap feels right before it closes. He broke the seal. A heavy ring fell out into his palm, carved stone wrapped in moss, Kellan's crest pressed deep into its face. Proof, the note said. The three names on the shackles were alive. Kellan would return them, whole and breathing. The terms were simple. Thorin would dissolve the guild, hand over its banner, and walk away. Sentinels for a surrender. Lives for the thing he had spent every waking hour trying to rebuild. Thorin set the ring beside the shackles. He stared at it a long time. The runner shifted, waiting. On the bench, the note also named a place — a chest of strange weapons left at an old marker beyond the tree line, where Kellan had made his camp. That was where the trade would happen, if Thorin agreed. He thought of the wings the note described above the camp, gold and impossible, a banner Kellan had raised in place of the guild's. A throne built from what Thorin had lost. He picked up the ring and pressed it into the runner's hand. "Take it back to him," Thorin said. "Tell him no." The runner's mouth opened, then closed. He went. Thorin stood alone with the wet shackles and the three scratched names. He had answered. He had also just chosen the fight that would come next, and he knew, standing there in the quiet courthouse, that the cost of that answer would arrive before nightfall.