I smile. “Your Highness. Whenever you’re ready, I stand willing.”
Rhen smiles in return. “My brother is a fool indeed.”
CHAPTER 25
JAX
The forge is busier than ever now that the winter snows are well behind us and more travelers take to the road. Word has spread widely about the Royal Challenge, and travelers needing a blacksmith are full of gossip: what cities are already boasting champions, what prizes the Crown will offer, what competitions will be held. Callyn’s bakery is busy, too, and I see horses and carriages out in front of her shop more often than not. I heard hammers pounding a few days ago and went to look, and there were roofers replacing worn and rotted shingles on the roof of her barn. Business must be goingverywell. Cal used to bring me her leftover pastries every afternoon, but now days will pass before I’ll see her—and when I do, she’s always rushing back.
Like the change in the weather, something has shifted between her and me.
Lord Alek hasn’t returned. Lady Karyl hasn’t returned. Any silver I had is gone, paid to the tax collector or lost to ale, courtesy of my father. At first, I was glad for their absence. After watching Lord Alek put a blade into Tycho, I haven’t been eager to see him again.
But as the weeks have drawn on, I’ve begun to worry about how we’re going to pay the rest of what we owe.
I wonder if Cal is still mad at me. Our last argument haunts my waking thoughts.
I’d ask her if I could find a chance toseeher.
My days have found a new routine anyway. I wake early every morning, pull the bow and arrows from beneath my bed, and venture into the woods for a few hours before I attack the forge. I’ve never been weak on my crutches, but trekking out to retrieve my arrows every morning has given me a greater endurance I didn’t realize I was lacking. I have the balance and strength to stand and shoot without bracing against a tree now. Two dozen arrows have joined my first four, and I’ve acquired a heavy quiver, too, thanks to an early spring hunting party. They needed a wagon axle fixed and asked if I was willing to barter. A few weeks later, a fur trader noticed bruising along the inside of my wrist from where the bowstring snaps, and she offered a well-worn bracer. It covers my palm and stretches the length of my forearm, with brass buckles and a small sheath for a knife.
While I was shoeing her horse, the trader leaned against the work table and said, “Are you trying to qualify for the Royal Challenge?”
I laughed without any humor and didn’t look up from my work. “Sure,” I said caustically. “I think I’ve got a real shot.”
“My sister is hopeful, too,” she said. “You might see her there. Her name is Hanna. She has a green kit, with black stars on her quiver.”
I glanced up, confused, but then I realized she wasn’t teasing—and she heard my answer as truth instead of sarcasm.
It was the first time anyone looked at me as capable of anything other than swinging a hammer, and I think about that moment a lot— a lot more than I’d like to admit. After that, the idea of the Royal Challenge became wedged in my thoughts, and I can’t seem to shake it loose.
It’s a ridiculous idea anyway. It costs five silvers to enter. If I had five silvers, I’d hide them away for the tax collector.
I shoot every morning, I work the forge all day, and I collapse into bed at night. I try not to think about how we’ll pay the rest of what we owe.
But when it’s very dark, and very late, and very quiet, I allow myself to think of Lord Tycho, and how that fur trader wasn’t thefirstperson to see me as capable. I’ll remember his encouraging voice or the snow in his hair or the way he let me ride his horse. The way he sat with me beside the forge and spoke quietly about his life.
You fancy him, Cal said.
Maybe I did. Does it matter? I may as well fancy a star in the sky.
I don’t know if he ever made it back to the palace, but surely gossip about harm to the King’s Courier would’ve made it to Briarlock by now. It’s been almost two months since his blood was soaking into the dirt beside the forge. I’ve given up hope of ever seeing him again, which is fine. Better, actually, because the memory no longer stings like I once worried it would. Befriending a member of the nobility is an impossibility. He’s very likely forgotten all about Briarlock, about the blacksmith he once taught to shoot a bow.
Which is why I nearly put a hammer right through my hand when I see him riding up the lane.
He’s not alone today. Another man rides alongside, mounted on a large black gelding with four white socks. The man is older than Tycho, though not by too much, and seems taller too. He’s got curly dark hair that’s a bit windblown, along with a thin beard. He’s trimmed in armor that’s every bit as fine as Tycho’s, all rich leather and gleaming buckles, though the insignia over his heart is different: the crest of Syhl Shallow backed by a shield of gold.
Clouds above. I don’t know what it means, but this man is clearly someone important. I seize my crutches and stand before they reach the courtyard.
Tycho leaps down from his horse first. He looks every bit as windblown as his companion, with a few days of beard growth coating his jaw, but his eyes are bright and alert, no hint of the tense exhaustion that clung to him the last time he was here.
“Jax!” he says so brightly that it forces a smile onto my face. “Well met.”
“Well met,” I say, and I can feel warmth in my cheeks. “Lord Tycho.” I glance at the man swinging down from his horse more sedately. “My lord.”
“This is Jacob of Disi,” Tycho says. “Counsel to the King, Man-at-Arms to the Queen’s Army of Syhl—”
“Jake is fine,” the other man says. He’s got more of an accent, so he must originally be from Emberfall as well. He gives me an appraising glance that would make me bristle if it didn’t seem so unprejudiced. This is a man who sizes up everyone he meets, I can tell. He glances at Tycho and then back at me, and a light sparks in his eyes as if he’s solved a puzzle. “Well met.” He smiles. “Jax.”
