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“I know.”

“Do not confuse an effective bargain with a safe man.”

“I don’t.” Kesta glanced toward the curtain. “And Dreven?”

Sera’s mouth twisted. “He may have more trouble distinguishing a bargain from a threat.”

Pellan opened his eyes before sunset and asked whether the beast had been killed. Kesta told him no because frightened animals were not automatically guilty, and he solemnly accused her of sounding like the council. The laugh that escaped Sera finally loosened the knot in Kesta’s chest.

Dreven waited alone in the corridor when Kesta came out. His gaze stopped at a dried streak of blood on her cheek. “You did not take the surgical kit from Rath,” she said.

“No.”

“You could have.”

“Yes.” His answer carried no false modesty; two Red Basin guards would not have stopped him for long.

“Why didn’t you?”

Dreven looked toward Pellan’s room before answering. “Because you had already made a bargain. If I broke it because I disliked the price, Rath would learn that your word had force only when I approved it.”

The answer settled somewhere deeper than Kesta expected. “You hated it.”

“Profoundly.”

“You considered throwing him out of the gate.”

A faint edge of humor touched his eyes. “Several times.”

Kesta leaned against the wall, exhaustion leaving her little patience for pretending the distinction did not matter. “You standing back did not make you passive. It meant you accepted responsibility for what happened next without deciding for me whether the risk was worth taking.”

“That distinction is easier to understand than to live.”

“Most useful ones are.”

Dreven lifted one hand toward her face and stopped. Kesta knew he wanted to wipe away the blood, and when she nodded his thumb brushed her cheek with startling gentleness. Heat moved through her, immediate and unwanted only in the sense that she had no time for it.

She caught his wrist lightly. “This isn’t gratitude.”

His silver eyes held hers. “I know.”

“And it isn’t Rath.”

“I should hope not.”

That nearly made her laugh. She released him before a corridor outside a child’s recovery room became a place for decisions they had not finished making. “I owe Rath ten minutes.”

“Sera is your witness,” Dreven said. “I will not stand three paces away looking as though I intend to remove his remaining horn.”

“You do intend to remove it.”

“Very much.”

Rath waited in the open square at sunset, with Sera on a stone bench between them sharpening a surgical blade so methodically that her neutrality was questionable. He asked why Kesta had not simply told Dreven to take the kit. She told him because her word would become meaningless if every bargain could be overturned by the strongest male in the room.

Rath’s amusement faded. “I wanted to see what kind of cage tempts you.”

Cold moved along Kesta’s spine. “And?”