“We lost more supplies than expected reaching you. We understand that.”
“No,” Marut says. “You understand that you lost supplies. You don’t understand what your arrival did to ours.”
Her eyes flash. “Then explain it.”
Marut looks at me. Of course he does, and the room turns with him.
For one breath, I’m back in the ration chamber staring at six tokens and five portions, except now the tray is the City and every person in this room thinks if they glare hard enough, another root will appear.
I take a shallow breath, then step to the table.
A slate lies there already, covered in columns. Food stores. Water reserves. Active hunters. Gatherer routes. Fever cases. Children. Nursing mothers. Injured. Zmaj. Humans. That’s the city-born. Now there are columns for newcomer humans, Zmaj, and Urr’ki.
The words blur for half a heartbeat. I blink once. Only once. Then I find the numbers that matter.
“Before your arrival, lower level rations were already reduced by one-eighth,” I say. Rosalind’s bandaged companion winces. The scarred man looks away. I continue before anyone can speak. “After your arrival, we absorbed the additional mouths.”
“Of the supplies brought in,” I continue, “three meat bundles were spoiled beyond safe use. One sled was lost before arrival. One pack line was recovered at half load. Water skins were mostly empty. Dried seeds remain usable, but not enough to offset the increase.”
Rosalind’s mouth tightens. She knew this. Maybe not all of it. Enough.
“The lower levels are carrying the sick,” I say. “The sick cannot hunt. The injured cannot gather. Children cannot be placed on upper routes. Zmaj require larger portions when healing. Nursing mothers need more than they are receiving.”
Dannel nods grimly. Ila watches me with eyes like old stone.
Rosalind says, quietly, “And what are they receiving?”
The answer sits in my throat like something sharp.
“Less.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one.”
The Cavern Zmaj warrior’s gaze cuts to me. His eyes are a deep bronze-gold, bright even in the dim chamber. I don’t know him, but for a moment I feel the weight of his attention the way I feel the City stone before it shifts: quiet, deep, impossible to ignore. Not cruel. Assessing.
I look away first. Not because I’m afraid, but because something in his eyes stirs something in me. A low heat in my stomach reminds my body it wants to live. Rosalind presses both hands to the table.
“We can send more hunters out.”
Marut shakes his head. “Your hunters do not know the routes.”
“They know Tajss.”
“They know that valley,” Ila says. “They don’t know the heat pockets around the City, the old sink corridors, the reflective flats, the stoneback nesting grounds, or which ruins shade predators at second heat.”
The scarred man mutters, “Then teach us.”
I almost laugh. It escapes as the smallest breath. Everyone looks at me again. Damn it. His eyes narrow.
“Something funny?” he asks.
“No.”
“Sounded like it.”
“It’s only that people always say teach us as if learning is free.”
