Page 7

Outside, the guard's shadow shifts again beneath the door, one more small, steady sound in a night that has already handed me more to deal with than I can handle, and I let my eyes drop back to the page in front of me, chasing sentences I am not entirely certain I am absorbing, grateful only that the quiet has stopped feeling like a standoff and started feeling, however cautiously, like a truce.

10

ROGG

The command center is cold enough this morning that my breath fogs faintly above the map spread across my table, and I trace the latest markers Throk has added overnight with a growing unease. The Iron Tusk patrols have shifted their pattern again, drawing tighter along the eastern ridge in a formation that speaks less of idle scouting and more of a chieftain testing exactly how thin he can stretch my watch before he decides the wall is worth pressing.

"Grol is not testing us for sport anymore," Throk says, tapping a blunt finger against the cluster of red marks nearest the old rail line. "Three patrols in four days, always along the same stretch. He is measuring our response time."

"Then we give him nothing worth measuring." I study the marks, weighing the cost of pulling warriors from the southern watch to reinforce the east against the risk of leaving that flank thin enough for Grol to notice and exploit instead. "Rotate the eastern watch twice as often, but keep the numbers the same. Let him see activity without seeing weakness in any one direction long enough to count on it."

Throk grunts his agreement and reaches for the charcoal to mark the new rotation, and we fall into the familiar, wordless rhythm of two men who have planned hundreds of defenses together, each of us anticipating the other's next question before it is fully formed. It is in the middle of this rhythm, the room quiet except for the scratch of charcoal against paper, that the door opens without the courtesy of a knock, and Vorka steps through with the unhurried confidence of a man who’s decided his grievance outweighs whatever business already occupies the room.

"Commander." He does not wait for acknowledgment before crossing to the table, his gaze sweeping over the map with a dismissiveness that makes clear he has not come to discuss patrol rotations. "A question, if you have a moment to spare from your planning."

"You have already taken it," I say, not looking up from the map. "Make use of it."

"The human woman." He says it the way he always does, human woman rather than her name, a small deliberate cruelty I have stopped correcting because correcting it only ever seems to sharpen his resolve to keep using it. "She eats our rations, sleeps in your dwelling. And now, from what I hear, she has been added to the hunting roster alongside warriors who have earned their place through blood and years of service. I find myself wondering whether sharing the commander's bed has become sufficient qualification for that honor, or whether there is some contribution I have simply failed to notice." Beside me, Throk's hand drifts toward the axe resting against his chair, a small, controlled movement that I catch out of the corner of my eye and stop with nothing more than a slight shake of my head. Vorka is baiting a reaction, and giving him one, whether from Throk or from me on my behalf, would only hand him exactly the story he wants to carry back to whichever corner of the camp still listens to his grievances.

"You are welcome to ask Zog how little wisdom you see in her presence," I say, setting down the charcoal with deliberate care. "Or the three warriors who survived their wounds because a human doctor knew how to close a belly gash your own remedies would have left festering. Or the entire camp, which ate better two nights ago on the strength of a single kill than it has eaten in the three weeks prior combined." I let the words hang a beat, watching him weigh whether he wants to press further into ground that has already proven this treacherous once before. "But since you have raised the roster specifically, I will save you the trouble of asking." I reach for the slate propped against the wall behind my table, the one that carries the names of every hunter assigned to bring in meat for the clan's stores, and I take up the charcoal again, adding a new line in clear, deliberate letters beneath the last name already recorded there. Audrey Riemer.

"She hunts," I say, meeting Vorka's stare directly. "Her kills feed this clan the same as any warrior's do. She has earned her place on that wall same as every name written above hers, and if you have a genuine objection to how she earned it, you are welcome to bring it before the full council rather than my private table, where I suspect it will find considerably less sympathy than you are hoping for." Vorka's jaw clenches, the muscle jumping beneath the old scar tissue along his cheek, but he does not immediately retreat, which tells me he's not finished whatever argument he walked in here intending to make.

"A human on the hunting roster is a human trusted with a rifle, with knowledge of our patrol routes, with access to every weakness in this camp's defenses." His voice drops, taking on the low, deliberate cadence of a man trying to sound reasonable rather than merely resentful. "She is a vulnerability, Rogg. Grol needs only to threaten her, or the boy, and he holds a blade against your throat without ever needing to lift one himself." The observation lands closer to a real concern than most of what Vorka usually brings to my table, and I do not dismiss it outright the way I might dismiss a lesser complaint, because a commander who ignores a genuine risk out of pride is a commander who does not deserve the seat he holds. But the conclusion he draws from it is exactly backward, and I tell him so.

"She is my mate," I say, "which means her rifle is worth ten of your grumblers standing idle on the eastern watch, and it means anyone foolish enough to threaten her will learn precisely how thoroughly this entire camp has come to depend on what she provides. Grol does not gain a weakness by threatening her. He gains an enemy with nothing left to lose and a rifle she has already proven she knows how to use to devastating effect." I hold his gaze, letting the weight of the correction settle before I deliver the rest of it. "See to the eastern watch, Vorka. Doubled rotations, starting this evening. I trust you can manage that assignment without further commentary on my mate's place in this clan." The dismissal lands exactly as hard as I intend it to, and I watch something flare behind Vorka's eyes before he masters it. It is clear he walked into this argument expecting to win ground and instead found himself handed an assignment like a warrior half his rank.

"As you command," he says, the words clipped and cold, and he turns on his heel and leaves without another word, the door falling shut behind him with more force than strictly necessary. Throk waits until the sound of Vorka's footsteps has faded down the corridor before he speaks, setting down the charcoal he has been idly turning between his fingers throughout the entire exchange.

"He will not let this go. You know that."

"I know it." I look down at the slate, at Audrey's name sitting plain and permanent beneath the others, and feel the familiar weight of command settle back over my shoulders, heavier today than it was this morning before Vorka walked through that door. "He has never let anything go in 15 years, and I do not expect a human woman on the hunting roster to be the exception that teaches him grace at last."

"Then what was that?" Throk nods toward the door Vorka just departed through, his expression carrying the particular blunt curiosity he reserves for moments when he suspects I am navigating something more complicated than simple clan politics. "You could have simply ordered him off the argument. Instead you handed him a lesson in exactly why he is wrong." I consider the question longer than it probably warrants, turning the charcoal over once in my own hand before I set it aside for good.

"Because the argument was never truly about meat, or rosters, or rations," I say. "It is about whether this clan survives by clinging to exactly the strength it has always known, or whether it survives by learning to recognize strength. Vorka would have this camp choose the first path even if it starves us slowly rather than risk the second. I intend to prove him wrong every single time he gives me the opportunity, roster entry by roster entry, until there is no argument left for him to make."

Throk studies me for several seconds, then nods once, the closest thing to full agreement he ever offers on a matter this large, and returns his attention to the map, to Grol's patrols and the doubled eastern watch and the hundred smaller decisions still waiting to be made before this day is finished. I let my gaze linger on the slate, on the name written there in charcoal that will not wash away as easily as Vorka clearly hopes it will, and think that whatever cost this clan extracts from me for the choice I have already made, I intend to spend every measure of authority I have earned defending it.

We spend the remainder of the morning bent over the map, adjusting the rotation Vorka will now be forced to enforce whether he approves of it or not, and by the time the sun has climbed high enough to burn some of the frost off the yard outside, Throk has moved on to the far more immediate problem of stretching what remains of our salted stores through another two weeks of hard cold. I let the rhythm of the work settle the last of my irritation at Vorka's interruption, and it is only once Throk has gathered his notes and left to see the new rotation posted that I allow myself a moment to simply stand at the window slit and look out over the yard below, searching, without quite admitting to myself that I am searching, for a glimpse of chestnut hair moving between the dwellings.

I do not find her. She is likely still asleep, or occupied with Leo, or already gone to check the snares she set at the tree line yesterday evening despite my preference that she wait for an escort before venturing that far from the wall. The thought needles at me such that I am still learning to accept it as simply the price of caring. I turn back to the map, to Grol's patrols and the doubled watch and the long list of a commander's obligations still waiting for my attention, and tell myself the needling feeling is nothing more than the ordinary vigilance any leader owes his clan. I am not entirely certain, standing here with Audrey's name still drying in charcoal on the slate behind me, that I believe my own explanation.

11

AUDREY

Hayden's hands are steady even when the rest of her looks like she hasn't slept properly in a week, and I focus on that steadiness instead of the pull of the needle through my forearm, watching the thread draw the edges of the gash closed with the same neat, economical stitches she has been perfecting since long before the Collapse taught the rest of us to make do with far less skill and far worse tools. The wild dog that caught me this morning had been more desperate than dangerous, half-starved and cornered near the tree line, but its teeth had still found enough purchase through my sleeve to leave a gash long enough to need more than the field dressing I carry in my pack.

"You're lucky it didn't get your tendon," Hayden says, not looking up from her work, her light brown hair escaping its pins like it does by midday no matter how carefully she starts the morning. "Another inch to the left and I'd be doing considerably more than stitching."

"I've had worse from smaller things." I keep my voice light, though the throb in my arm argues otherwise, and I watch her tie off the last stitch with the same brisk efficiency she brings to everything, before she reaches for a strip of clean cloth to bind the wound. "You didn't have to drop what you were doing to see to this yourself. I could have waited for whoever's on duty."

"I wanted to see to it myself." She glances up at me then, something more careful than clinical interest moving behind her tired eyes. "I was starting to think you weren't coming. When you left the settlement, I mean, before Leo got sick enough that there wasn't a choice left in it." She pauses, wrapping the bandage with quick, practiced turns. "Is it safe here for you? Really?"

I glance across the infirmary to where Borl, the clan's shaman, is bent over a stone mortar grinding herbs into a fine, pungent powder, his back to us but his presence a quiet, watchful weight in the room regardless. I lower my voice before I answer, some old habit of caution kicking in even here, inside walls I have started, cautiously, to think of as something other than hostile.

"It's complicated," I say. "I'm not his prisoner, but I'm not entirely free, either. There's a guard on the door most nights, and an escort whenever I hunt past the tree line, and half the camp still isn't sure whether Leo and I belong here or not."