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Questions came before the vote. What had the drone transmitted? Could the band be removed? Could the empire activate other implants through Kesta? She answered only what she knew. Dreven answered only what he could guarantee. Tavi interrupted three times to correct both. Ash Camp chose to keep Kesta by thirty-one hands to nine. The nine were not shamed. Pela recorded their objections and assigned two of them to evacuation planning. At the tunnel mouth, Dreven said, “You would have left?”

“If they refused the risk.”

“I would have gone with you.”

“That would have been your choice.”

“Yes.”

The simple yes landed with unexpected intimacy.

That evening the council gathered in the ration hall. For the first time, Kesta was invited not as Dreven’s claimed human or Sera’s medical assistant, but as the person the imperial machine had come to retrieve. She placed the recovered crystal in the center of the table.

“The empire knows I am alive,” she said. “It may know Dreven and I produce whatever response it expected. But the drone’s location burst was damaged. We have a small window.”

Rath’s name entered the discussion immediately. Red Basin controlled the southern water route and could either shelter evacuees or sell their movement to the empire.

“We need him,” Keth said.

“We do not trust him,” Sera replied.

“Those conditions often coexist,” Kesta said.

Dreven’s gaze met hers across the table.

“What price will Rath demand?” he asked.

Kesta touched the claim band at her wrist. Everyone knew the likely answer. Outside, high above the ash clouds, a second point of light altered course.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Quarantine

The vote to keep Kesta lasted less than an hour. Its consequences began before dawn. Daren Pell had not lived to see dawn. Shortly after midnight, a condenser pressure line ruptured in the service passage, the break too clean to be ordinary failure. By the time Sera reached him, the gray-haired human survivor had bled out beneath a collapsed brace. Jessa, who had been first to reach him after the rupture, refused a private burial; his name went onto the public casualty slate while Keth sealed the passage as a suspected sabotage site.

Three families moved their sleeping pallets into the eastern tunnel, farther from the infirmary and farther from Kesta. Two hunters refused breakfast beside Dreven’s guard. Pela, who had recorded every objection without comment, arrived at the council chamber with a second slate containing eleven new demands: band removal, independent weapons storage, a quarantine protocol, and a written limit on Dreven’s authority during any future imperial contact. The final demand had been underscored twice. Kesta read the slate across the council table. “They are not wrong.” Dreven’s tail struck the stone once. “The drone was destroyed.”

“And scattered across half the southern yard.” Tavi held up a pair of scorched forceps. “With imperial conductive gel inside it. Gel that attached itself to Dreven’s scales and Kesta’s clothing.”

Sera had already isolated the debris behind two layers of salvaged plating. She stood beside Tavi with her arms crossed. “We do not know whether the residue is merely diagnostic or whether it carries active organisms.”

“Nanites?” Keth asked.

“Possibly.”

“Then quarantine them,” Jessa said.

Dreven’s gaze moved to her. Jessa did not look away. The younger scout had returned from Hallow Camp carrying grief and a new unwillingness to soften necessary words. Kesta tapped the slate. “How long?”

“Twelve hours without cellular change,” Sera said. “Longer if your band or his implants respond.”

Dreven objected to the location, the number of guards, and the fact that quarantine would place Kesta in a converted storage shelter whose only door opened toward the southern wall. Keth listened until Dreven finished and then assigned four guards, two from Dreven’s command and two chosen by the families who had voted against keeping Kesta.

It was the first time Ash Camp had formally limited Dreven’s authority in front of Kesta. He accepted the restriction with visible effort, which mattered more to her than effortless agreement would have.

The shelter measured six paces by eight. One vent near the ceiling admitted ash-filtered air. A diagnostic panel built from three incompatible systems occupied the far wall. Two narrow sleeping pallets had been pushed apart until they touched opposite sides. Kesta entered first. Dreven followed after surrendering his weapons to Keth.

The door sealed behind them. For several breaths neither spoke, and the silence made the two pallets look more deliberate than any explanation could have. Kesta finally glanced at them and said, “I assume no one intends subtlety.”