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“And if every camp has been marked?”

“Then we will learn that without offering you to the next machine.”

The old rhythm returned: danger, command, refusal. Kesta lowered her voice. “Ask me.” His nostrils flared. “This is not the moment.”

“It is always the moment when you decide my body is the emergency everyone else gets to manage.”

Sera stepped between them—not physically, but with a sentence. “The sample can be collected in six breaths.” Dreven’s jaw worked.

“Six,” he said.

Kesta took four. Before the search party formed, Kesta forced the infirmary into a kind of order it had never needed before. She drew three columns on the wall with charcoal: missing, injured, possibly compromised. Names accumulated beneath all three. Tavi argued to join the search despite the tremor in his left hand. Sera refused him without softness.

“You cannot hold a climbing line.”

“I can identify Hallow trail marks.”

“You can identify them from a map while your nerves recover.”

The boy’s shame entered the room before his anger did. Kesta recognized it. Empire medicine had taught patients that usefulness purchased dignity. Ash Camp had inherited the lesson even while hating its source.

“You are not being removed from the work,” Kesta said. “You are being assigned work your body can perform today.”

Tavi looked at Dreven as if expecting the warlord to overrule them. Dreven folded his arms. “The medic has command here.”

“Temporary command,” Lina corrected from the doorway.

“Recorded temporary command,” Pela added, appearing behind her with a slate tucked under one arm.

Tavi’s mouth twitched despite himself. “This camp is becoming unbearable.”

“Good,” Jessa said. “You are recovering.”

The moment of humor ended when Pela set the slate on Kesta’s table. It contained an access history from the archive press: seven maintenance entries made under Pela’s credentials during hours when witnesses placed her elsewhere. The forged entries touched condenser maps, Hallow trade routes, and the old medical registry. Pela did not defend herself first. She gave Lina the press key.

“Seal the archive,” she said. “Question me before anyone else.”

“You expect suspicion to make you look innocent?” Rath asked.

“I expect procedure to keep fear from choosing a convenient body.”

Lina accepted the key. “Pela is restricted from solitary access. Olin remains under observation. The dust-machines are still an active possibility. No one names a traitor until evidence survives challenge.” Rath’s gaze moved across the crowded infirmary. “That sounds civilized.”

“It is slower than execution,” Lina said. “That is often the point.”

Kesta studied Olin while the council spoke. He stood near the water ledger with his wrists unbound and two witnesses beside him. His guilt was visible, but guilt for what remained uncertain. He had admitted passing route fragments after imperial threats against his sister’s children. He denied touching Hallow files.

“Did the voice that contacted you use a name?” Kesta asked.

“No. It knew mine.”

“What did it promise?”

Olin’s face tightened. “That the children would be transferred somewhere with rain.” No one mocked him. On Kharon-Veil, rain was a story people used the way other worlds used heaven.

“Did you believe it?”

“I believed I wanted to.”