Page 132

“Usefulness. You do not fear comfort. You fear becoming necessary enough that leaving feels like murder.”

She disliked him more for being partly right. “You know almost nothing about me.”

“I know the empire sent you into a camp with failing medical equipment, and I know Dreven believes he found you by accident.” Rath’s gaze dropped to her wrist. “Your band was transmitting before he ever claimed you.”

Sera’s blade stopped moving. Kesta’s pulse jumped. “How do you know?”

“Red Basin buys information Ash Camp considers immoral.”

“From orbit?”

“From people who can hear orbit.”

“Show me the receiver.”

“Come to Red Basin.”

“Bring it here.”

Rath laughed softly. “Information has prices too.”

Kesta thought of Pellan bleeding beneath her hands, the surgical case, clean water and everything Rath offered that she genuinely wanted. “No.”

His smile disappeared. “Then you choose ignorance.”

“I choose not to pay for knowledge with myself.”

Sera announced that the ten minutes were over. Rath studied Kesta for another heartbeat before his gaze shifted toward the upper wall, where Dreven was conspicuously absent. “At least now I know your price is higher than medicine,” he said. “I still do not know his.”

Kesta found Dreven on the wall after dark, watching Red Basin’s caravan cross the ash plain. “You kept the bargain,” she said.

“It was yours.”

“You wanted to stop it.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He was quiet long enough that she turned toward him. Red moonlight caught along one horn and silvered the scales at his temple. “Because your choice must have teeth, Kesta, or it is only permission.”

Something inside her went very still. “Who taught you that?”

His gaze shifted to her. “You did.”

Kesta looked away before he saw how deeply the answer landed. Rath’s wagons were dark shapes now, almost lost beyond the eastern gate, yet his challenge remained close enough to feel like another person on the wall. “If he challenged your claim tomorrow, could you stop him without fighting him?”

Dreven’s stillness changed. “Legally?”

“That is usually what people mean when they ask whether something can be stopped without blood.”

“The emergency claim remains challengeable until your status changes. Ash Camp can refuse a petition, but Rath can still make one.”

Kesta remembered Pela’s ledger and the clause Dreven had hated explaining. “Voluntary mating would make it effectively unchallengeable.”

“No.” The answer came so quickly that she faced him.

“That was not a yes-or-no question.”