Pell Ashvorn split logs behind the tavern while the gold ring bounced against his chest. It was a signet, heavy, older than the town. It marked him as the last heir to a throne no one here believed he had a claim to. To them he was a woodcutter with a bent axe and mud on his boots. He had come to the capital to say otherwise. So far, no one had let him past a gate. He wiped his hands and went to the steward's office one last time. A clerk with ink-stained cuffs did not rise from his stool. Pell lifted the ring on its cord and set it on the counter. "This is the royal seal," Pell said. "I mean to claim what it stands for." The clerk barely glanced at it. "Any tinker can buy a stamped ring at market. Show me proof you're anything but a laborer, and I'll waste a lord's time. Not before." He waved toward the door. "Out." Pell walked into the yard with his jaw tight. The ring was real. His claim was real. But truth without proof was nothing here. He needed one soul in the capital to know his face and say so aloud. A commotion rose near the kennels. A groom cursed and tugged a rope. On the end of it stood an old wolfhound, tall, silver at the muzzle, its long coat brushed and fine. A royal dog, well-loved once, now gray and stubborn. The hound had planted its feet and would not move. Then it lifted its head. It stared straight at Pell. The old dog pulled free of the groom and crossed the yard. It did not bark or growl. It pressed its head against Pell's leg and leaned there, the way a dog leans on someone it has missed for years. Pell went still. His hand found the rough fur without thinking. Something in him remembered this animal, or the animal remembered him. "Off," the groom snapped, then stopped. The dog would not leave. It sat at Pell's boots and looked up as if it had come home. Men had gathered. A stablehand frowned. "That's the old royal hound. It won't go to strangers. Won't go to anyone. Bit two lords last spring." "It went to him," someone said. Pell felt the yard change around him. The clerk had come to the doorway. His face had lost its bored twist. He looked at the ring on the counter, then at the dog leaning on the woodcutter, and he did not tell Pell to get out. "The kennelmaster served the old house forty years," the clerk said slowly. "He'll want to see this dog choose a man. And the man it chose." Pell rested his hand on the hound's head. He had walked in a laborer. He would walk out as a claim worth answering. The steward's office would open its doors now. What waited behind them, he did not yet know.

The rider in court colors turned his horse and rode back toward the capital. Aldric watched him go, then pulled Pell inside. "He'll report a stranger at my door. We have little time." He set the clouded staff against the wall. "I will testify. But my word alone won't be enough. The court cast me out. Half of them will call me a bitter fool. If you stand before them with nothing but my mouth and a blind ring, they'll name you a liar and throw you out. Then the throne will send men to make sure you never come back." Pell sat heavily on a stool. He turned the worn ring in his fingers. "Then I need more than your word. Something the court can't argue with." Aldric was quiet. On a shelf sat a wilted moonpetal in a jar, its layered bloom still holding a faint inner light. He stared past it, thinking. "When your house fell, servants scattered. Some carried away what they could. Keepsakes. Proofs." He looked at Pell. "Did you come to the capital with anything but that axe and that ring?" Pell went still. He pulled his pack from the floor and dug beneath his spare shirt. His hand closed on cloth-wrapped weight. He unwound the rag. A silver cup came free, small enough for a child's hands. Delicate leaves and beaded borders ran around its bowl in polished silver. "My mother gave me this," Pell said. "She said I drank from it as a baby. I never knew why she guarded it so." Aldric took the cup and his hands shook. He turned it to the light and traced a line of engraving near the base. "A christening cup," he breathed. "Made for one child only, marked with the birth-year of the true heir. The court keeps a record of every royal christening. This can be matched to the roll." He looked up. "The ring is blind, boy. But this is not. This they cannot rub away or call a beggar's find." Pell's chest tightened. "Then we take it to the court." "Tomorrow, at the open hearing," Aldric said. "I read your face. This cup names your birth. Together they make a case no clerk can dismiss." His grip firmed. "But hear me. The moment we show it, the throne learns you carry proof. There will be no going back to the woods after that." Pell wrapped the cup and held it against his chest. Through the window he saw the road where the rider had vanished. He had come to the capital hoping a worn ring would be enough. It never was. But his mother had pressed a second proof into his hands and sent him out with it, years before he understood. "No going back," Pell said. "I never wanted the woods." He had a witness and a proof now. Tomorrow the court would hear both. And tomorrow the man on the throne would know the true heir was still alive.

Pell pushed the branches from the door and stepped into the red light. The court would sit at nightfall. But between the shelter and the city walls ran open road, and the throne's riders patrolled it. He needed a path they would not watch. He did not know one. Aldric came out behind him, leaning on his staff. "The road is death," the old man said. "They'll have men at the eastern gate. They'll have men on every cart track." "Then we don't take the road." Pell crouched and studied the ground. Two winters cutting timber had taught him this forest. He knew the deer trails, the dry creek beds, the low places where a man could move unseen. "There's a stream that runs under the wall. I hauled logs along it once. It comes out near the old tannery, inside the city." Aldric's eyes narrowed. "A woodcutter's back door." "The only kind I have." They went in silence, Pell first, breaking a path through fern and bramble. He tested each step before he trusted it with weight. When Aldric stumbled, Pell caught his arm and held him upright. The old man's breath rasped, but he did not complain. Half a mile on, Pell heard hooves. He dropped flat and pulled Aldric down beside a fallen trunk. Three riders passed on a track twenty feet away. Torchlight swung across the trees. Pell pressed his cheek to the dirt and did not breathe. A horse snorted. One rider reined in. "Something moved," the man said. Pell's hand closed on a stone. He waited. His heart struck against the ground. "A fox," another rider said. "Ride on. He wants us at the gate." The hooves faded east. Pell let out his breath. He had chosen right. The riders watched the gate and the road. They did not know the stream. They reached the water where it slid under the wall through a low stone arch, black and dripping. Pell had squeezed logs through that gap in daylight. In the dark it looked like a throat. He waded in first. The cold gripped his legs. He guided Aldric after him, one hand on the old man's shoulder, until they stood inside the city, dripping, in the shadow of the tannery. Pell wiped the mud from the signet ring on its cord. The court was close now. He could hear the bells calling the lords to their seats. "We're in," he said. "They never saw us." Aldric squeezed the water from his beard. "No. But they'll know soon." He looked toward the torches of the court hall. "The moment you speak your name in that room, every hunter in this city turns and comes for us. There's no stream to hide us then." Pell held the ring in his fist. He had found his way in. Now the only path left ran forward, into the court, into the open.

Pell wrung the water from his sleeves in the tannery's shadow. The court bells had already begun to ring. The kennelmaster had sent word: come before the summons closed, or the hearing would collapse and Pell's claim would die. But Pell carried no timepiece. He could not tell how many strokes remained, or whether the doors were already barred against him. "How long?" he asked Aldric. "How many bells before he gives up on me?" Aldric leaned on his staff and listened. His breath still rasped from the cold stream. "I don't know. The summons holds until the court is seated. Once the last lord sits, the kennelmaster must speak or lose the floor." He wiped his beard. "We could be early. We could be too late. There's no way to read it from here." Pell looked toward the torches of the court hall. Between it and the tannery ran open streets, and Aldric had warned that every hunter would turn the moment Pell's name was spoken. Waiting for a safe path meant risking the bells. Running meant risking the hunters. "Then we don't wait," Pell said. "We run now." Aldric caught his arm. "You'll be seen." "Better seen than late." Pell pulled the cord over his head and closed his fist around the ring. "If the doors shut, there is no second hearing. He said it himself." They went fast. Aldric could not keep pace, so Pell took his weight, one arm under the old man's shoulder, half carrying him. Water dripped from them both. A washerwoman stared. A boy pointed. Pell did not slow. The bells struck again, closer now, and Pell counted them against his own pounding heart. They reached the hall as the last stroke faded. The great doors were still open, but the doorward stepped forward with a spear crossed to bar them. "Court is seated," he said. "No more enter." Inside, Pell heard the kennelmaster's voice rise over the murmur of lords. He was speaking Pell's name. He was asking the court to bring the claimant forward. Then the room went quiet, and the kennelmaster's voice faltered, because no claimant came. Pell did not wait for the spear to lower. He shouted past it, into the hall. "I am here! Pell Ashvorn, of the true line!" He held the ring high so the torchlight caught the gold. The hall erupted. Lords turned in their seats. The kennelmaster's face broke into relief. The doorward hesitated, then stepped aside, because the whole court had heard the name. Pell walked in with Aldric on his arm. He had beaten the bells by a breath. But he had also done what Aldric feared. He had spoken his name aloud, before every hunter in the city. The hearing would go forward now. And so would the throne's answer.