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“They knew the law well enough to expect this.” Kesta looked up at him. “Someone expected the women they dropped to be claimed.”

No one tried to reassure her. There was too much evidence now for reassurance to be useful.

She picked up the stylus and added another term to the ledger: FULL DISCLOSURE OF ANY KNOWN BAND FUNCTION. NO USE OR MODIFICATION OF TRACKING FUNCTIONS WITHOUT MY AGREEMENT EXCEPT AFTER A CONFIRMED MEDICAL EMERGENCY.

Keth read over her shoulder, his mechanical eye adjusting with a soft click. “Dreven will object to confirmed.”

“I'm sure he'll tell me.”

“He will argue that a missing person cannot confirm her own emergency.”

Kesta glanced up. “Are you warning me as his second?”

The scarred corner of Keth's mouth moved. “I am warning you as someone who has listened to him argue for twenty-seven years.”

That earned a smile.

Her gaze drifted to the mechanical side of his face. “Your eye records too, doesn't it?”

Keth became very still. Kesta immediately wished she had approached the question more carefully, but before she could withdraw it, his organic eye shifted toward the infirmary door.

“It once recorded for the empire. During interrogation and patrol, I saw what they required me to see and preserved what they required me to preserve.”

The anger Kesta had been carrying toward the band changed shape again.

“And now?”

Keth looked back at her. “Now I choose where it looks.”

There was nothing she could say that would improve the statement, so Kesta did not insult him by trying. She simply nodded. Tavi, demonstrating unexpected tact, waited almost three full seconds before producing two blunt practice knives from somewhere inside his clothing.

“Fortunately, self-defense is less depressing.”

Sera closed her eyes.

“You were told not to encourage him,” she reminded Kesta.

“I’m beginning to understand that nobody needs to.”

The training yard occupied a strip of packed red earth between the forge and the eastern wall. By the time Kesta arrived with Tavi, at least a dozen residents had discovered urgent reasons to work nearby. Apparently watching the new human medic get knocked into the dirt qualified as entertainment.

Tavi handed her one of the blunt blades and showed her how Kharovians fought larger opponents. Kesta had learned restraint escapes and basic defensive techniques during her medical service, but Kharovian anatomy changed the rules. Horns made the head and shoulders dangerous at angles no human instructor would have considered, while a tail could shift balance, hook a wrist, or sweep an ankle with alarming speed.

Tavi demonstrated that last point by putting Kesta flat on her back. She stared up at the red sky while he stood over her wearing an expression of irritating satisfaction.

“You could have mentioned the tail.”

“I did mention the tail.”

“Before or after it hit me?”

His mouth widened. “Very shortly before.”

Kesta accepted his hand and climbed to her feet. The second attempt ended with her on one knee, but on the third she stopped trying to match his strength. When his tail moved toward her ankle, she stepped into the motion instead of retreating, caught his upper wrist, and drove her elbow into the nerve cluster Sera had once identified beneath his lower ribs.

Tavi folded with a startled wheeze. Kesta used his momentum to take him down and rested the blunt knife against his throat. Several people around the yard cheered.

Tavi stared up at her accusingly. “I taught you that.”