Serial · ongoing
The Black Sheath
The Black Sheath is a secondary-world fantasy about debt, in every sense. Ren Calder is a Kindling-ranked apprentice in an Order that keeps its ledgers straight: seats, stipends, ley shards, punishment. His master, Aldric Vane, is dying of wounds dealt by a man beyond Ren's reach. The cure is in the Godfall Reach, which opens once a decade and closes on everyone still inside. Ren enters with a broken sword, an iron shard that has gone silent, and a promise he will not set down. Around him: a one-armed swordsman with a debt of his own, a Wildkin heir who will not be commanded, a village girl holding a seal she should never have touched. The story moves from trials to feuds to open war, always asking what loyalty costs when the powerful treat a secret as a gift. For readers of martial arts fantasy, mystery, and slow-burn bonds. I wrote this for anyone who has ever kept a promise past the point where it was reasonable.
Chapter 1: The Long Peace
The Long Peace The Orders tell it as a story with a beginning, because a beginning is the only part of it anyone can stand to hold. The worl…
Chapter 2: One Step Between
One Step Between Somewhere in the middle of those ten thousand good years, a boy is born. He is flesh — the ordinary kind, the kind that spl…
Chapter 3: Nobody Will Play With Me
Nobody Will Play With Me The thing under his ribs goes quiet in the night, and Ren Calder lies on his back in the dark of the dormitory at Y…
Chapter 4: The Founder's Name
He came down out of the morning. Not through the gate and not by the hall steps — down out of the open sky, one boot and then the other, wit…
Chapter 5: The Shard Goes Quiet
Sometime in the last hour of the night, the thing under Ren Calder's ribs stops. He is asleep when it goes, and awake a minute later, all at…
Chapter 6: Tailings
The door opens at the third bell. It is shut every other hour of the day. It is a plain door in a plain wall, and by the time it moves there…
Chapter 7: One Blow
The satchel is by the door before the sun is. Bandages rolled flat the night before. A jar of the green poultice with the lid waxed down. A…
Chapter 8: Nothing Left to Bury
The road down off the yews runs with water the whole way. The satchel is on his shoulder. In the breast of his coat, flat against his ribs,…
Chapter 9: Not Half a Chance
Ren goes in. Bran shuts the door after him with his heel. The low house is one room with a curtain across the back half of it, and there are…
Chapter 10: The Line Across the Palm
Dain Corrow puts the village behind him before there is any light in the sky. Two men follow him out. Both are old enough to have known his…
Chapter 11: The Man in the Stone
They go back for the bags before the sun is an hour up, and neither of them says a word about having stood on that road and agreed, out loud…
Chapter 12: The Standing Star
The man lifted one finger. That was all it took. He didn't stand to do it, and he didn't say a word about what he was doing. He put the fing…
Chapter 13: Every Last Shard
Every Last Shard He sat with his back against the bed until the lamp burned out. Then he sat a while longer, in the dark, with the bag stand…
Chapter 14: Anybody Want to See It
No One Left Who Plays He had forgotten what light did to a person. The door stuck, then gave, and the afternoon came through it and hit him…
Chapter 15: Fair Trade
Fair Trade Fenn Marrow's hand stayed on his belt, which meant the other thing was still coming. It came. Every kindled man on the mountain l…
Chapter 16: A Thousand Rough Apiece
The path down from Yewfell was cut into the mountain in switchbacks, and Coldwell Vale had put five men on it, at the place where the rock s…
Chapter 17: Another One at the Door
Another One at the Door The fire had burned down to the good part, all coals and no smoke, and Ren Calder sat on the floor of the wayhouse w…
Chapter 18: Much Obliged
Ren came down off the ridge in the early light, from the Order's house up on the crest to his own place on the shelf of ground above the fer…
Chapter 19: Word Travels
He stayed out on the practice floor while they went down, because sound climbed out of Fernhollow the way smoke climbed out of it, and he ha…