Wren Tallow signed the tournament roster with a false name and watched the ink dry before anyone could stop him. He wrote Wren of the North Reach. He was the third son of a king, and no one at Mistral Peak knew his face this far from the capital. That was the point. He had trained sixteen years in the practice yard, and every bout he ever won had been given to him. He rented a pine cabin on the ridge above the tournament grounds, half-buried in snow, the chimney leaking thin smoke. Inside, his armor sat on the table in a riveted tin box he had carried up the mountain himself. He counted the coins in the box twice. Enough for the entry fee, a week of oats for the horse, and nothing else. If he lost the first round, he would ride home in disgrace under his real name, and his father would know he had run. He walked down to the lists at dawn. The bracket was posted on a driftwood windbreak lashed with rope, the parchment nailed at the corners. He found his name in the third column. His first opponent was a man called Bryn Halloran. Wren asked the marshal who that was. The marshal laughed. Halloran had unhorsed six men at the summer meet in the lowlands. He fought without a shield. Wren went back up to the cabin and vomited into the snow behind the woodpile. A silver fox watched him from the treeline, ears sharp, unafraid. He wiped his mouth and stared at the animal until it turned and slipped into the pines. Then he pulled on his armor, mounted, and rode down to the field. He lasted four seconds. Halloran's lance took him square in the chest on the first pass. Wren felt the saddle leave him before he understood he had been hit. He hit the frozen ground on his shoulder and slid. The crowd made a sound like a single held breath, then laughter. His helmet had turned around on his head. He crawled to his knees blind and heard a boy shout that the northerner fought like a bride. He walked his horse off the field himself. No squire came. In the staging tent he pulled off the helmet and sat on an overturned bucket with his hands shaking. A stranger sat down beside him, an older man with a broken nose and a seal-fur collar. The man said he had watched Wren mount up. He said Wren gripped the lance like a torch at a wedding. He said he trained fighters for coin, and for the right price he could teach Wren to survive a second round. Wren opened the tin box. He counted the coins again. He had enough to pay the man, or enough to feed the horse. Not both. He handed over the money.

Wren climbed back to the cabin with the trainer's promise still in his ears and the empty tin box under his arm. He set the box on the table and pushed open the shutters. The horse in the lean-to watched him with flat, hungry eyes. He had two days until his next match and no coin left for oats. He was learning to strike from the ground when a boy came up the path with a folded note. The note was from the tournament marshal. It said an official wished to speak with Wren of the North Reach about his roster papers. The boy waited for a coin. Wren had none. He gave the boy a strip of dried meat from his pack and sent him back down. He found the official under a copper arch at the edge of the field, where fighters passed through before each match. Fur streamers hung from the metal and moved in the wind. The official held a ledger open against his forearm. He said no house in the North Reach had sent word of a son at the tournament. He said the entry required a sworn witness or a seal. He said Wren had until sundown to produce one, or the marshal would strike his name and refund nothing. Wren walked the market row for an hour trying to think. He could not send to his father. He could not name any lord who would swear to a lie. He stopped at a farrier's stall to ask the price of oats and heard a short woman arguing with the farrier over the cost of a shoe. She was half his height, tusked, and her apron was patched with three different leathers. The farrier called her by name when he gave in. Willa Ashgrove. Wren waited until she stepped away with her horseshoe and asked if she knew the North Reach. She looked him up and down. She said she had shod horses for a trader who ran the passes there for eleven years. She said she knew the names of four holdings and the color of the ice on the river in spring. Then she asked why a man would need to know what she knew. Wren told her the truth. He said he had signed a false name and an official meant to throw him out before he could fight again. He said he could not pay her now. He offered his father's signet, which he had kept sewn inside his belt, as surety against coin he would owe her if he won a purse. She held the ring up to the light and bit it. She said the metal was real. She said she did not care whose face was stamped on it. She walked with him back to the copper arch and told the official she had known the boy's mother in the North Reach and had watched him grow. She spoke four holdings by name. The official wrote it in his ledger and closed the book. Wren walked her back to the farrier's stall. She handed him the signet and said she would keep the debt in her head, not on paper. Then she said the trainer with the broken nose had sold three fighters to the same official last winter for a cut of their forfeits. She told Wren to sleep with his tin box under his head. She walked off before he could answer.