Chapter 16: Unproven

Seren Valcrest saw the miner at the yard gate while she was still pacing the leather. He stood with a short stave across his shoulders, in a patched coat, hands wrapped in grey linen. On the twenty-second the linen had stopped at his wrists. Now it ran to the elbow, and the left sleeve was buttoned over it wrong. There were four black stitches in his left brow, put in by a hand that had meant well and owned no proper needle. He looked past her at the floor. The roll gave an entrant until sundown to present for the preliminary, or his place went to the next name. She had expected him at the last bell, if at all. He had come at the fifth. The Hall's plan of the training court put four hundred and six ward cells under the mat, and she had paced the open leather…