Page 110

"No."

The Council had provided everything inside the Citadel. Clothes came after fittings, equipment came after approval, and food came from the kitchens. If I needed a book, Janus brought it or had it delivered to my room. I understood currency because lessons had included supply costs, trade routes and the price of Rift materials. None of that explained how to stand in a shop and decide whether I wanted something or how much it cost.

Corian pulled out the chair beside him. "Sit down."

"I'm not going to faint."

"I know. Sit anyway."

I sat down. My legs had started to feel unreliable, and I didn't want them to notice.

Corian smoothed the crease I had made in the letter. "We'll go into the city and open an account in your name. The bank will issue a coin crystal linked only to that account and your magical signature. The Treasury will transfer the pay once you approve it."

"There are quieter banking houses near the north square," Halver added. "We can go before the market opens."

Alex shifted to the edge of the sofa. "And after that, you buy something completely unnecessary with your first pay. It's a rule."

"It is not," Corian said.

"It should be."

I looked between them. "All of you are coming?"

"I'm coming," Corian said. "You can choose whether anyone else does."

Alex pressed one hand to his chest as if wounded. Nykos waited without trying to hide the fact that crowded city streets were not his favorite way to spend a morning, while Halver returned to the bread and left the decision where Corian had put it.

Corian had explained the bank without taking the letter from me. Even now, with panic still lingering, the choice stayed mine.

"I want you all to come," I said. "But if the city is awful, I'm blaming Alex."

"That is fair," Nykos said.

Alex pointed at him. "You haven't even seen what I was planning."

"That's why I agreed so quickly."

Halver brought the pot to the table, ending the discussion before Alex could defend an unnamed plan that almost certainly involved food. We ate thick vegetable stew with bread that had survived the cold cupboard better than any bread had a right to. Nobody offered a toast or made a speech about our first deployment together. Alex complained about losing his dry socks during the evacuation. Nykos said abandoning them had saved valuable space. Halver asked how three pairs of socks had occupied an entire field pouch, and Corian looked across the table toward me when I laughed into my bowl.

That was all the ceremony we needed.

Ashter picked that moment to earn some of his own. He slid off the rug while Nykos reached across the table for more bread, and by the time Nykos's hand closed on one, one of the brass route-marking pins beside his plate had gone missing. A thin thread of black smoke carried it low across the floor away from the kitchen, never rising higher than the table legs.

I said nothing. Whatever he dragged back to his den under my bed would join the rest of the hoard soon enough, and Nykos kept enough spare pins in his kit that he wouldn't miss one until morning.

After the plates had been cleared, Corian placed a thin copy of the completed Water Rift report beside my pay letter. My thumbprint marked the standard record attached to the back, while the route map had been reproduced in black and blue across the center pages.

I read the section about the trap first.

The six steps remained. So did the failure to clear the perimeter and Corian's instruction to assess the entire field before moving. Nothing had been softened to spare me.

My mistake was in the report.

It wasn't the only thing beside my name.

"Do we return route cards with the rest of the field equipment?" I asked.

Corian glanced toward the stairs. "Usually."