The Bastard's Measure

Exiled. Starving. Marked by the white hair of a house that threw him out. Twenty-one-year-old Lys Argent has one offer left: his labour, his body, and a practical willingness to be kept. The frontier smith who takes him is older, silent, and already running a forge short of hands. Thorne feeds him, works him, and rivets an iron collar shut at his throat. Bed. Board. Work. Then Lys invents a better arrangement. Clients grip the blade in one hand and the collared youth in the other. If the steel is true, the living measure says so before anyone leaves the shop. The forge grows rich on craft and on the boy who made himself part of the tools. What begins as survival becomes system. What begins as wage becomes claim. And when Lys forges a tournament blade measured to his own flesh — guard, pommel, and all — the lists learn how unconventional superior steel can look. A dark fantasy with an older smith, a collared exile and a royal warrant for the most improper blade in the realm. He offered the wage. The forge kept him.