Jordan Mitchell pinned the trial entry slip to the town board and heard the laughter start before they turned around. The reigning champion stood by the well with a crowd of farmers and smiths, holding Jordan's slip up like a joke everyone was in on. He read the entry aloud: Jordan Mitchell, age nineteen, weapon of choice, one lizard. The crowd laughed harder. Jordan's palms went damp against the small wooden box in their coat pocket. Every year, RedWoodGlen named one protector through the trial of champions, and every year the winner ate at the long table while the rest hauled water and buried their dead. Jordan had trained two years for this. But no entrant could step onto the trial field without three townsfolk sponsors, and right now not one hand was raised. Jordan walked to the well and opened the box on the stone rim. The lizard inside blinked once, climbed onto Jordan's wrist, and stayed still. Jordan pointed at a copper coin on the champion's belt. The lizard shot forward, snatched the coin in its jaw, and returned to Jordan's palm before the champion's hand reached his hip. The crowd went quiet. Jordan set the coin on the well stone and said the creature could take an eye just as fast, and it would do it on command. An old woman with flour on her sleeves raised her hand. A blacksmith raised his. A boy holding a bucket raised his. Three sponsors. The champion stopped smiling. He told Jordan the field opened at dawn in six days, and if Jordan showed up with a lizard, he would kill it first and Jordan second. Jordan closed the box and walked home, sponsored and marked and more thing too.

Jordan walked home with the wooden box against their ribs and the champion's threat still ringing in their ears. Five days left, and every open field in RedWoodGlen belonged to someone who had laughed at the well. The champion had eyes on the pastures and the mill yard. Jordan needed a hidden place to drill the lizard on the last commands, or dawn would find them both dead before the trial even started. They stopped at the edge of their own yard and looked past it, into the cold line of trees where no one grazed and no one hunted. The old root cellar behind the family plot had a stone floor, a low ceiling, and a door that shut. It would do. Jordan cleared the cellar by lantern that night. They swept the floor, set stones at measured paces, and marked a target board with charcoal. They opened the box on a barrel and let the lizard climb out. Its tail curled once around their thumb before it settled. Jordan pointed at the charcoal eye on the board. The lizard shot across the stones, struck the mark, and returned. They ran it again from the far corner, then in the dark with the lantern shuttered. The lizard hit the mark every time. Near dawn Jordan latched the cellar door, pocketed the key, and walked back to the house with a training ground no one else knew about. The threat was still real. But now Jordan had four days to sharpen a weapon in a room the champion could not watch, and the drills could begin in earnest tomorrow night.

The next night Jordan carried the box down to the cellar and set it on the barrel. The lizard climbed out and hit the charcoal mark three times without a miss. Jordan watched it return to their hand and felt the problem sit heavy in their chest. A painted eye on a board was not a man with a sword. The champion stood a head taller than Jordan and swung a blade that could split a post. If the lizard froze at the sight of a real fighter, or struck the wrong place, the trial would end in one stroke. Jordan needed to know now, in the cellar, before dawn found out for them. Jordan stripped off their coat and hung it on a peg at their own height. They tied a scrap of red cloth where a throat would be, then pulled the coat onto their own shoulders and stood against the far wall. They pointed at the red scrap and gave the strike command. The lizard did not move. It stared at the shape of a person and flicked its tail once. Jordan waited. The lizard climbed onto the barrel and stopped there. Jordan lowered their hand. They tried it a second time from a crouch, and a third with the lantern shuttered. Each time the lizard refused the living target. It would hit wood. It would not hit a person, even a person it knew. Jordan sat on the stone floor and let the lizard walk onto their knee. The drills were sound. The weapon was not. A creature that would not strike a man could not win the trial, and there were four days left to change that or to change the plan. Jordan latched the box, blew out the lantern, and climbed the steps knowing the fight they had prepared for was not the fight they would have to make.

Jordan slept badly and woke before dawn with the answer half formed. The lizard would not strike a person because it did not read a person as prey. It read painted wood as a task. Jordan had trained the task and starved out the hunt. Three days remained. Jordan carried the box down to the cellar, set it on the stone floor, and did not light the lantern. They opened the lid a crack and let the lizard smell the dark. Then they closed the lid again and left it shut for the whole morning. No food. No handling. No praise. When Jordan came back at noon they brought a live mouse in a jar. Jordan tipped the mouse into the cellar and lifted the lid. The lizard came out slow, tongue working. It saw the mouse and froze the way it had frozen at the coat on the peg. Jordan's chest went tight. Then the lizard moved. It crossed the stone in one line and struck the mouse behind the skull and the mouse stopped. The lizard ate. Jordan sat down against the wall and watched it feed and understood what had changed. The creature had been full and safe for weeks. Hunger had made it a hunter again. Jordan fed it nothing that night. In the morning they hung the coat on the peg once more and tied the red scrap at the throat and gave the strike command. The lizard hit the red scrap and clung there with its jaws locked. Jordan pried it off and put it back in the box and latched the lid. The weapon worked. Two days remained until dawn at the trial field, and the champion had promised to kill them both on sight.

The weapon worked, but Jordan still had no idea how the champion fought. Two days left, and every swing of that sword was a mystery. Jordan had watched the champion once, from the back of a crowd, and remembered only the size of him and the way people stepped aside. That was not enough. Walking into the trial field blind meant three strikes and a funeral. Jordan latched the box with the lizard inside, climbed out of the cellar, and went into town to find someone who had bled under the champion's blade and lived. The blacksmith remembered. He had sponsored Jordan and he owed nothing more, but he set down his hammer when Jordan asked. He said the champion led with the left foot and always cut high on the first pass to make you lift your guard. He said the second cut came low and fast at the front knee. He said the champion never threw a third strike from the same side. He had learned this with a scar that ran from his hip to his ribs. Jordan asked him to show it slow with a stick. The blacksmith did. They worked in the yard behind the forge until the sun dropped. High cut, low cut, switch. High cut, low cut, switch. Jordan learned the rhythm and learned the half beat between the low cut and the switch, when the champion's weight sat wrong and his off side opened. That was the window. That was where the lizard had to hit. Jordan walked home in the dark with the box under one arm and the pattern in their hands, and for the first time since registering they believed the trial could be won. Four day remained.