Chapter 81 — The Hand You Sell

No sexual content is included.

Content Warning: Injury treatment, socioeconomic inequality, threats of violence, corpse recovery, discrimination, grief, and dangerous subterranean environments.

The common sleeping shelf did not walk away during the night, which Brakka considered enough of an improvement to forgive its other qualities. Water dripped somewhere behind the wall at irregular intervals, a family two recesses over argued until well past the final lamp dimming, and one of the support ribs groaned whenever a large body crossed the platform above them, but the floor stayed beneath Khern until morning and nobody appeared to claim him with a cord while he slept. Veyrun woke first and spent several minutes turning the strip of dark blue cloth around his wrist until he found the position he liked, pretending not to notice Khern watching him from beneath one half-open eye. When Brakka finally sat up beside Split-Tooth, she discovered that her shoulder binding had adhered to the healing tissue underneath, muttered something vicious enough to make Veyrun stop admiring himself, and decided Harn's suggestion about a healer had become less optional.

The healer occupied two rooms beside a public heat seam rather than anything Khern would have called a clinic. Bundles of boiled cloth hung from cords overhead, shallow trays held tools made from bone, shell and a little precious metal, and a Cairnid assistant spent most of their visit turning flat stones over the heat with three smaller hands while using the others to grind something pungent into paste. The healer herself was an elderly Ossiari named Seran, whose right forearm had mineralized almost completely from wrist to elbow into dull overlapping plates; she used the hard edge of one growth to cut bindings whenever the blade in her other hand was busy. A faint pearled line ran from beneath one eye toward her jaw whenever she concentrated, the visible sign of a Calling that had apparently never developed farther than Stirring, yet it let her sense tension through flesh well enough that people crossed three districts to have her set bones.

Seran examined Brakka before asking how much money they possessed, a sequence Khern appreciated until she explained that the answer determined which treatment she bothered recommending. Brakka sat on a low stool while Seran soaked the shoulder binding loose, working slowly whenever dried blood resisted and ignoring every glare she received for doing so. “Cut was ugly, closure uglier, but whoever tied this kept the tissue from folding inward,” she said, pressing two fingers around the healed edge until Brakka's jaw tightened. “You'll keep the shoulder. You're also trying to hold the missing weight with muscles that don't have anything to hold anymore, so stop lifting that side every time you walk.”

Brakka frowned. “I'm not.”

“You are.”

“I'd notice.”

Seran pressed a thumb beneath Brakka's shoulder blade, and Brakka's remaining arm jerked involuntarily. “Your body noticed first.”

Veyrun's smile was immediate enough that Brakka promised to demonstrate the strength of her remaining fist on his face, though Seran told her to save the demonstration until after she had been paid. She replaced the old binding with a narrower wrap that left more of the shoulder mobile, then showed Brakka how to reroute the carrying strap across her ribs so the weight of her pouches rested on her right hip instead of dragging diagonally against the amputation. The adjustment looked insignificant until Brakka stood, took two steps, stopped, and looked down at herself with irritation that had nothing to do with pain. For the first time since losing the arm, her clothing no longer appeared to be waiting for a limb that was not there.

“You could've told me that before charging me,” Brakka said.

“I could've charged you before telling you.”

“How much?”

“Three Deran.”

Brakka stared at her.

Seran stared back.

“Two.”

“Three.”

“I have one arm.”

“Which means I used half the cloth and twice the thinking.”

Khern expected another argument, but Brakka considered the healer's face, glanced at the new strap arrangement, and put three marks into her hand. Seran accepted them without triumph and immediately dropped one into the Cairnid assistant's palm, which somehow annoyed Brakka more than if she had kept everything herself.

Veyrun became less amused when Seran pointed at him next. His damaged throat had healed from the rupture at White Road, but the scar tissue beneath the skin remained hard and uneven enough that his voice came only when he forced it through a narrow range. Seran made him swallow water while she rested the mineralized edge of her forearm against the side of his neck, then had him produce the lowest sound he could manage without pain. The rasp that emerged barely counted as a note, yet the pearled line beneath her eye brightened faintly as she listened through the contact rather than the air.

“Part tore and healed pulled,” she said. “You keep forcing through the narrow side because that's where sound still comes.”

Veyrun pointed toward his mouth as if asking what alternative she imagined.

“Use less.”

His expression became deeply unimpressed.

“You want the voice you had?”

The humor left him.

Seran saw the answer and continued without softening it. “I don't know if you get it. Anyone promising you that is selling hope at a better margin than I do medicine. I can loosen some scar, teach you where sound still passes, maybe make speaking hurt less, but the old voice isn't sitting underneath waiting for me to uncover it.”

Veyrun looked toward the floor. His fingers shifted once against his leg before becoming still, and Khern almost reached for him before remembering how much of the last few months had consisted of people touching one another because they did not know what else to do. Seran waited instead, letting the silence remain his until Veyrun finally raised two fingers and pointed toward her, asking the price. “Four now, or six owed after treatment,” she said. “Debt costs because I prefer being paid before my patients decide a functioning throat was inevitable.”

Veyrun looked at the marks Brakka still held and shook his head.

Khern knew the gesture before Brakka answered it. “We're doing it.”

Veyrun shook his head again and pointed toward the remaining money, then toward Split-Tooth's feed pouch and the sleeping shelf beyond the room.

“We can earn more.”

His eyes moved to Khern.

“That isn't me volunteering your throat.”

Veyrun pointed at Brakka's shoulder.

“She already paid.”

Then at Khern's damaged hand.

Khern glanced down.

Seran followed the movement. “What's wrong with that?”

“Long story.”

“Does the story bleed?”

“Sometimes.”

“Then it costs at least two.”

Brakka laughed hard enough to regret it when the movement pulled at her shoulder.

In the end Veyrun paid four marks, though he handed them over one at a time with such theatrical suffering that Seran increased the price of every future visit by one insult. She gave him a set of breathing and resonance exercises rather than medicine, instructing him to work around the scar instead of repeatedly attacking it, then stopped him before he could test whether one lesson had somehow repaired everything. “You lost something,” she said when frustration tightened his face. “Learning what remains isn't admitting you deserved to lose it.”

Veyrun stared at her for several breaths. Khern could not tell whether he liked the sentence, hated it, or hated that it had reached him at all, but he tucked the written breathing pattern into the same pouch where he kept Lina's smooth button rather than throwing it away. When they left the healer's rooms, he walked several turns in silence before tugging the blue cloth around his wrist tighter, as if one useless thing he had chosen could counterbalance everything else his body had decided without permission.

Their fourteen Deran marks had felt substantial for less than a day. Between settling water debt, food, Brakka's treatment, Veyrun's throat and another sleeping measure, what remained would keep them comfortable only if none of them ate very much, Split-Tooth stopped requiring food entirely, and the Ivory Deep agreed not to charge them for anything unexpected. Khern had already learned enough to know the last condition was impossible, so they returned to the Board before the next water pulse with the unpleasant awareness that earning fourteen marks had not solved poverty; it had only taught them what being slightly less poor felt like.

Senn noticed them before they reached his table, which was the first unmistakable evidence that yesterday's work had changed something. He was speaking with a Morrowkin woman carrying a bundle of hooked spears, yet one of his smaller hands reached beneath the table and pulled out a folded scrap without interrupting the conversation. By the time Khern stopped in front of him, the posting was already waiting beside the slate.

Brakka looked at it. “You were expecting us?”

“I expected somebody willing to fit.”

“That sounded worse than you meant it.”

Senn's eyes moved toward Khern. “He understands.”

“I don't.”

“Excellent.”

The posting offered nine Deran marks for recovery from a route called Suture Nine, with another five if the missing person returned alive. No employer name appeared on the front, only a rough house symbol and the instruction that proof of identity was required if a body had to be brought back. Khern read the payment again before asking why a retrieval worth fourteen marks had been kept beneath Senn's table instead of pinned where every Board-hand could see it.

“Because the route is narrow enough that half the people here can't enter, wet enough that Pelagri hate it, and yesterday one Kharuun took the job, looked inside, then returned the posting without telling anyone what he saw.”

Brakka's eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“He said nine wasn't enough.”

“So they raised it?”

“No.”

“Then why are you offering it to us?”

“Because you don't know what he saw.”

Khern stared at Senn.

The keeper scratched another line into his slate. “Now you're learning why middlemen survive.”

Veyrun leaned over the posting and tapped the missing person's description: Velori, male, narrow build, amber hands, scar across upper back, answers to Kes. Beneath it someone had added that he worked as a route measurer for a merchant household and had failed to return after inspecting an old passage used to move dried producer stock between two lower markets. Brakka asked whether the employer actually paid, and Senn answered that they had cheated one recovery hand six years ago, paid three others correctly afterward, and currently owed him nothing. That was apparently as close to a guarantee as the Board provided.

“Death permitted?” Khern asked.

Senn looked up. “For what?”

“The job.”

“Anything tries to kill you, ask its keeper.”

“I mean people.”

“Don't kill the employer. Usually bad for payment.”

Brakka took the posting before Khern could continue.

Senn's smaller hand caught the other end.

“Payment on return. Identity proof accepted if body impossible to move. Don't bring me a random Velori hand and tell me it's Kes.”

Brakka stared at him. “That happened?”

“More than once.”

Veyrun looked impressed.

Suture Nine lay beyond the districts controlled most reliably by Varak's channels, and Khern noticed the change less through architecture than through neglect. Water still moved, but gutters overflowed where nobody had been paid to clear them; support cords had been replaced with whatever material happened to survive, and house marks overlapped one another so densely that entire sections of wall looked scratched raw. The people changed as well. Weapons became more visible, fewer children traveled without adults, and twice Khern saw arguments end when one participant realized the other carried a Calling mark they had not noticed initially.

Danger did not merely receive respect here. It substituted for paperwork.

They passed a Velori woman whose skin was almost uniformly dark until someone bumped her shoulder without apology. Amber light spread beneath both palms before she said a word, thin branching shapes revealing themselves under the skin like heated cracks through stone; the man who had hit her immediately found enough room to apologize. Farther ahead, a Cairnid laborer barely older than Pell carried nothing more threatening than a coil of rope, yet every time someone moved too quickly near him his four lower hands touched the walls together and the surrounding stone produced a faint answering tick. Neither appeared powerful enough to deserve a title, and neither needed one. In Ivory, early awakening was common enough that strangers learned to assume the dangerous part of someone might simply not have happened yet.

Brakka watched the Velori disappear into the crowd. “Would be useful if everyone glowed before starting trouble.”

Khern glanced at her. “You don't.”

“I look like trouble.”

Veyrun pointed toward himself.

Brakka considered him. “You look expensive.”

He straightened immediately.

Khern sighed. “Do not encourage him.”

Veyrun adjusted the blue strip around his wrist so it showed more clearly.

Suture Nine began behind an abandoned storage shelf where three old route markers contradicted the directions Senn had given them. The oldest carving pointed left, a newer plate indicated right, and someone had scratched BOTH WRONG WHEN WET beneath them in lettering large enough that Khern trusted it immediately. Split-Tooth chose the center gap, where a collapsed membrane had opened a passage barely wide enough for Brakka to enter sideways, and the others followed with Veyrun complaining silently every time the stone caught his shoulders.

The route descended sharply after the first turn. Water ran in thin streams through channels cut by use rather than tools, and pale folds of producer tissue grew wherever moisture lingered long enough to feed them. Old carrying frames had left repeated grooves along the walls, but several ended abruptly where the route had shifted, forcing workers to drag loads by hand through newer gaps. Khern resisted opening his Expression while ordinary observation remained enough, though the desire sat beneath his damaged palm like an itch.

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They found Kes's measuring cord first. It had been tied around a projection at waist height, the little weighted end hanging above the water instead of resting inside it. Brakka crouched beside the knot without touching it, while Split-Tooth inspected the surrounding floor and Veyrun looked farther down the passage.

“Deliberate,” Brakka said.

Khern nodded. “He wanted to find this again.”

“Or wanted someone else to.”

The cord disappeared into a crack ahead.

Khern followed it with his eyes until darkness swallowed the line. “Why leave his tool?”

“Maybe he couldn't carry it.”

Veyrun pointed toward the wall beside them.

A smear of amber marked the ivory.

Not pigment.

Velori blood.

Brakka's face changed.

They moved more carefully after that. Split-Tooth led only when his intact prong agreed with his feet, and whenever the damaged one reacted Brakka stopped long enough to determine whether it had caught pressure through the wall rather than from the route ahead. Khern began understanding their new rhythm: the Skitter sensed badly, Brakka interpreted cautiously, and neither treated uncertainty as failure. It was slower than the way they had once moved through danger, yet somehow more deliberate.

The blood appeared again twenty body lengths farther down, this time beside a shallow gouge in the wall. Veyrun crouched and touched two fingers near it without touching the stain, then pointed toward a corresponding mark opposite. Something had struck from one side and forced Kes across the route.

“No drag,” Khern said.

Brakka looked ahead. “So he walked after.”

The passage widened enough for Veyrun to stand without turning his shoulders, which should have made Khern feel better. Instead, Split-Tooth stopped so abruptly that Brakka nearly walked into him, his intact prong angled toward the ceiling while the broken one shivered toward the water beneath their feet. Nothing moved above them.

Veyrun looked at Khern.

Khern shook his head. “Not yet.”

Veyrun patted him approvingly.

“I hate that.”

The route bent around a thick ivory column and opened onto a small chamber where somebody had died recently enough that the blood remained wet.

It was not Kes.

The body belonged to an Orunai, much larger than any of them, folded against one wall with the sensory crown behind the head broken along one side. A hooked blade lay several body lengths away, while dark blood spread through the shallow water around the corpse and disappeared beneath the pale producer growth. Khern stopped before entering, because the dead Orunai wore no merchant cord, route token or anything else connecting him to their job.

Brakka looked toward the passage behind them. “Senn said the other Kharuun came back.”

“Yes.”

“He didn't mention this.”

“He might not have reached this far.”

Veyrun pointed toward the blood.

Fresh.

Khern nodded.

Something had happened after the first mercenary returned.

Split-Tooth refused to enter the chamber.

Brakka did not force him.

Khern crouched near the threshold and studied the corpse without using his Expression. One hand had closed around a piece of torn amber cloth, and the Orunai's knuckles were damaged enough to suggest he had struck something repeatedly before dying. The broken sensory crown bothered Khern more. Orunai relied on those structures to read motion around them; whatever killed him had either reached the crown deliberately or been close enough that he could not prevent the damage.

“Kes,” Khern said quietly.

Brakka looked at him.

“The cloth.”

“Could be.”

Veyrun pointed toward a side opening almost hidden behind the corpse.

There were more amber smears inside.

Brakka drew her knife.

They found Kes alive.

He had wedged himself inside a natural seam too narrow for the Orunai corpse outside to follow, one leg stretched awkwardly in front of him and both amber-stained hands pressed against his abdomen. At first Khern mistook the faint golden glow beneath his fingers for some kind of lamp until he realized it came from Kes himself, branching softly beneath translucent skin along the palms and wrists. Every few breaths the light faded, then returned when his hands tightened around the wound.

The Velori opened his eyes when Brakka approached.

“Board?”

“Unfortunately.”

Kes laughed once and immediately regretted it. “Which bastard took it?”

“Khern.”

“Never heard of you.”

“Good.”

“You kill him?”

Khern glanced toward the corpse outside. “No.”

Kes's expression sharpened. “Then something else did.”

Brakka knelt where he could see her without moving. “What happened?”

Kes looked toward the opening. “Route toll.”

“Official?”

He smiled weakly. “Do I look official?”

The Orunai had apparently been collecting payment from people using Suture Nine despite holding no recognized route claim. Kes had refused because his merchant household already paid passage through another group, and the argument escalated until the Orunai decided one injured route measurer would be cheaper than allowing everyone to hear that somebody had ignored him. Kes's early Calling had saved him from the first strike: when frightened, the heat beneath his palms could briefly seal small ruptures in soft tissue. Unfortunately, the ability worked better on producer growth than on himself, and every attempt to keep his wound closed exhausted him further.

“So you killed him?” Khern asked.

Kes's laugh was even weaker. “Wish I looked that good.”

Something had entered the chamber after Kes hid.

He had heard the Orunai shouting, then striking something, then the crown breaking, followed by enough movement that the whole passage vibrated. Afterward there had been silence. Kes had stayed hidden because whatever killed the toll collector had not left through the route he could see.

Brakka looked toward Split-Tooth.

The Skitter was still outside the chamber.

His broken prong continued trembling toward the water.

“Something beneath us,” she said.

Kes's eyes closed briefly. “Wonderful.”

“We can move you?”

“You can try.”

Brakka inspected the wound without touching it. “Walk?”

“One leg.”

“Veyrun.”

He moved immediately.

Kes looked at the tall Kharuun approaching and then at his throat. “You the quiet one?”

Veyrun nodded.

“Lucky.”

Veyrun smiled without humor.

Khern saw the answer forming in his hands and intercepted it before their dying client learned how expressive the quiet one actually was.

They had just pulled Kes upright when the water moved against the direction of the slope.

Not much.

A shallow ripple traveled from the chamber entrance toward the rear wall, crossed their feet and vanished beneath Kes's hiding seam.

Split-Tooth screamed.

Brakka released Kes long enough to seize the Skitter's harness as he backed violently away. His intact prong swung without finding direction, while the broken one pressed almost flat toward the floor.

“Out,” Brakka said.

Nobody argued.

Veyrun put Kes's arm over his shoulder and lifted enough of the Velori's weight that the injured leg barely touched the ground. Khern moved toward the chamber entrance first, stepping around the Orunai's corpse and watching the water rather than the walls.

Another ripple.

Closer.

The dead body shifted.

Not because it moved.

Because the floor beneath it did.

A seam opened under the Orunai's back.

Khern saw pale structures moving below.

Not teeth.

Hands would have been easier.

Long jointed pieces unfolded inside the crack, probing the corpse with delicate hooked ends before withdrawing. The shallow water poured into the opening for a heartbeat, then rose back when the seam closed.

The whole thing lasted less than two breaths.

Brakka had already understood enough. “Route cleaner.”

Kes looked toward her. “That's a cleaner?”

“I don't know.”

“Comforting.”

“It killed the Orunai.”

“Less comforting.”

They moved.

The floor opened twice behind them, each time beneath the heaviest vibration. Once it caught the Orunai corpse and pulled half of it through before the shoulders lodged against the seam. The second opening appeared beneath Veyrun just after he shifted Kes higher.

Khern saw the floor flex.

“Left!”

Veyrun jumped without questioning him.

The seam split where his foot had been.

Kes nearly fell, but Brakka caught the back of his clothing with her remaining hand while Veyrun regained balance. Something pale struck upward from beneath the water and closed around empty air before disappearing.

The route sealed again.

For several breaths nobody moved.

Then Kes looked at Khern. “You've done this before?”

“No.”

“You yelled very confidently.”

“I was scared.”

“Keep doing that.”

They retreated faster after that, though not blindly. Brakka began throwing small pieces of loose mineral ahead whenever Split-Tooth reacted, discovering that the thing beneath the route responded more strongly to repeated weight than isolated impacts. Veyrun adjusted his steps so Kes's dragging foot never struck the same rhythm twice, while Khern watched the water for ripples moving against the current. The creature did not chase them in any way Khern recognized. It simply occupied sections of the route and opened wherever pressure told it something heavy had remained long enough to become worth taking.

Halfway back, Kes whispered, “It wasn't there before.”

Khern looked toward him. “How long have you used Suture Nine?”

“Years.”

“Maybe it moved in.”

“Nothing moves into Suture without somebody arguing ownership.”

Even Brakka laughed at that.

Kes smiled, then winced as the gold beneath his hands flickered.

The old measuring cord finally appeared ahead, and with it the first reliable route marker. Khern felt relief hard enough to become careless for exactly one step.

Split-Tooth's broken prong snapped downward.

Brakka shouted.

The floor opened beneath Khern.

Veyrun caught the back of his clothing before Khern understood he had fallen. One leg disappeared to the knee, then the thigh, cold water and pale jointed structures closing around him without finding purchase through the layered rags. His damaged hand struck the wall by instinct.

The Expression opened.

For one terrible instant the thing beneath him became visible through continuity rather than sight.

It was not one creature waiting beneath Suture Nine.

The route itself contained an old relationship with something moving through the porous ivory below, a broad living system that had fed for generations on whatever remained still too long above it. Repairs, heavier traffic and repeated carrying frames had changed the vibration pattern over years until the old feeding behavior became less frequent. Recently something had changed again—not awakened, not arrived, merely returned because the route had become quiet enough for old patterns to matter.

Khern saw hundreds of marks.

Animals taken.

Waste taken.

Bodies taken.

Once, long ago, people had deliberately fed it.

Then the continuity struck too wide.

His vision whitened.

Veyrun pulled.

Brakka grabbed Veyrun's belt.

Split-Tooth drove backward against his harness.

Khern came free hard enough that all four collapsed against the wall, with Kes somehow still hanging over Veyrun's shoulder and swearing at everyone equally.

The seam closed.

Khern lay there breathing.

Veyrun slapped his face.

“Don't.”

Another slap.

“I'm awake.”

Veyrun raised his hand again.

“I said I'm awake.”

Brakka looked down at him. “What did you see?”

Khern swallowed until the taste of metal left his mouth. “It isn't new.”

Kes laughed weakly from the floor. “Wonderful. Ancient murder hole.”

“No. People knew about it.”

“That better?”

“No.”

Khern looked toward the route beneath them. “I think they used to feed it.”

Nobody laughed after that.

They reached the settlement without losing anyone else. Senn was not at the Board when they returned, but the room changed enough at the sight of Veyrun carrying a bleeding Velori that one of the keepers working his table immediately cleared space. Kes's merchant household sent two people after hearing his name, both of whom inspected him before asking what happened, which made Kes tell them loudly that he had survived specifically to complain about their priorities.

Senn arrived midway through the argument, looked at Kes, looked at Khern's wet clothing, then toward Brakka. “Alive.”

Brakka placed the posting on the table. “Unfortunately.”

Kes raised one amber hand. “I heard that.”

“Fourteen.”

Senn looked toward the merchant representative.

The woman hesitated.

Every Board-hand within listening distance noticed.

Senn did not threaten her.

He did not need to.

“Fourteen,” he repeated.

She counted the marks.

Khern understood then what reputation did from the other direction. The merchant was not afraid of them. She was afraid of being seen refusing payment in a room full of people whose livelihoods depended on believing payment happened.

The marks changed hands.

Senn took his small cut from the employer rather than from them, then asked what had made the previous Kharuun return the posting.

“We don't know,” Khern said.

“You went farther?”

“Yes.”

“Anything I should remove the job for?”

Brakka looked at him. “The job is done.”

“I mean the route.”

Khern told him.

Not everything.

Enough.

A pressure-feeding organism beneath Suture Nine. Old behavior. Dangerous when weight repeated. Route history suggested people once knew. The Orunai toll collector dead inside. Something about recent traffic or lack of it had allowed an old pattern to return.

Senn listened without writing until Khern finished.

Then he looked toward one wall of the Board.

“Thought so.”

Khern stared. “You thought there was a creature under it?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Senn pointed toward a battered plank nailed above the doorway, almost hidden beneath newer postings and years of smoke. Ten small marks had been carved along its edge, none matching any house symbol Khern recognized.

“This Board is older than the current route.”

Brakka looked at the marks. “So?”

“Old keepers used to tell people not to sleep in Suture Nine.”

“Why?”

Senn shrugged. “Story said the ground ate lazy mercenaries.”

Khern stared at him.

“You didn't think that was worth mentioning?”

“I thought it was a story.”

“The story tried to eat my leg.”

“Then now it's information.”

Khern opened his mouth.

Stopped.

Bell-Tally Nine would have hated this place.

Or loved it.

Probably both.

Senn studied them for another moment before reaching beneath his table again. This time he pulled out two folded postings.

Not one.

A mercenary sitting nearby noticed.

So did Khern.

Senn tapped the first. “Caravan wants narrow-route guards. Employer pays well and lies about distance.”

Then the second. “Somebody's losing livestock near North Hooks. Pays badly but feeder people talk, and they heard what your handler found at West Feed.”

Brakka took the second before Khern could reach either.

Veyrun pointed toward the first.

Khern looked between them. “We don't have to take another today.”

Both stared at him.

“We have fourteen marks.”

Brakka lifted her remaining hand. “Seven after healer.”

Veyrun pointed at his throat, then held up four.

“Yes, I know.”

He pointed at the blue cloth.

“That was your fault.”

Veyrun smiled.

Khern looked down at the marks in Brakka's palm.

The first payment had felt like freedom.

The second already felt like time.

Water.

Food.

Medicine.

A floor.

Enough left over, perhaps, for something useless.

Around them the Board carried on, full of people selling whatever parts of themselves could still earn marks. One mercenary complained that a dead employer technically still owed him. A young Kharuun at the lowest postings tried to convince a keeper he had hunted before. Someone laughed at a Closure price and demanded double if death remained permitted.

Nobody announced that Khern's group had advanced.

Nobody gave them a title.

Nobody moved them to a better rank.

Senn simply kept two jobs beneath his table because he thought they might return.

Khern looked toward Veyrun, whose new blue cloth had survived the route soaked but intact, then toward Brakka's newly adjusted shoulder straps and Split-Tooth's little money pouch hanging uselessly from his harness. They had entered Ivory owning almost nothing except what the dead had left them, and now people were beginning to pay for what they themselves could do.

That should have felt good.

Mostly, it did.

Khern picked up the second posting.

He was beginning to understand why that frightened him.