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Dreven stood at the foot of Tavi’s bed. “What message?”

“That Rath can reach inside the camp. Or that someone wants us to attack him before we learn who actually can.”

Tavi stirred beneath the blanket. His injured shoulder was bound tight against his chest. Kesta lowered her voice. “The saboteur knew which gauge would fail first. They knew Tavi would investigate. They knew the market would provide cover.” Sera looked toward the boy. “Then this was not only about water.”

“No.” Kesta sealed the sample. “It was about our response.”

Dreven’s face hardened. “Testing command.”

“Testing all of us.”

The red band warmed around Kesta’s wrist, not from desire this time but from the proximity pulse they still had not fully disabled. She looked at Dreven.

“What if the band is not merely observing me?” she asked.

“What if it is helping someone measure the camp around me?”

No one answered, and the condenser coughed again into the silence. Before Tavi woke, Kesta found Dreven alone beside the empty lower tank. Salt had already crusted over the spilled water, leaving a pale wound across the ground where the camp’s margin for survival had drained away.

“How many days did that hold?” she asked.

“Two at normal ration. Four at black.”

“And if the condenser fails?”

“Children and infirmary patients leave first. Then noncombatants. The rest hold the camp until the cisterns are empty.”

“Where do they go?”

“Red Basin if Rath accepts them. The northern caves if he does not.”

“You would stay.”

“Yes.”

“You say that as though dying with the walls is leadership.”

“I say it because someone must hold the route while the others leave.”

Kesta looked at his profile. “And because leaving Avarra once became the thing you cannot forgive.” His head turned sharply.

“Nethra named it,” Kesta said. “Keth named the shape.”

“They had no right.”

“Perhaps. But secrets become policy when everyone must live around them.”

For a long moment, only the dry condenser groaned between them.

“I ordered Avarra sealed,” Dreven said. “A plague had entered the lower city. I believed containment would save the upper districts.”

“Did it?”

“For nine days.”

“And the people below?”

“Died waiting for a release I delayed until it was useless.”