Page 9 of Dead Drop

They go inside. The council room—cleared storage space on the second floor, one long table, solar strips overhead. A water stain on the east wall shaped like a coastline nobody remembers, the plaster bubbled and soft beneath it. The solar strips hum at a frequency just below hearing—you feel it in your teeth more than your ears. The council sits on one side: Dov, Hael the med chief, Yara from supply, and Garron, who handles external relations. That's a polite title for the woman who tracks every armed group in a fifty-mile radius and sleeps about as well as I do.

I stand at the back wall. Petra beside me—I brought her to watch the things I'll miss because I'm watching Brother Lief. Neither of us sits. Sitting is participation.

Observation is what Dov wants from me. He didn't say that. He didn't have to.

Brother Lief settles into his chair like it was built for him. He opens the satchel. Draws out a folded document—heavy paper, the Ordained's seal in wax at the bottom.

The wax is gold. It catches the overhead light and holds it. The paper is cream. Everything about this production is designed to make you feel like you're being offered a gift rather than a transaction.

"We come with a proposal that will strengthen the existing partnership between the Ordained of the Gilded Path and the settlement of New Reach."

Partnership. The word does something to my chest.

The existing partnership involves New Reach providing voluntary offerings—women, always women—in exchange for the Ordained's protection guarantee. That means they don't raid us, and they discourage other factions from raiding us, as long as the offerings keep coming. It's extortion dressed in liturgy. Brother Lief calls it partnership the way someone might call a leash a necklace.

"The proposal includes three components." He lays the document on the table with the care of someone handling something sacred. "First, an expanded offering schedule. Quarterly rather than biannual. Six women per cycle rather than three."

The room goes cold. Hael's hand stops moving on her notepad. Yara's face doesn't change, which means it's worse than what she expected.

"Second, access to New Reach's eastern supply routes for Ordained-approved convoys."

Ordained-approved convoys means their wagon trains move through our territory under our protection—our gate, our fighters, our routes, sanitized for their use. The routes they want are the ones that lead to the Cages. We become the road the women travel on.

"Third, two female combatants—designated by name, trained in wasteland operations—for direct presentation during the next mating season."

The room holds very still.

Dov clears his throat. "We have a volunteer. A fighter—Senna, third-year, trained, willing." He says it the way you offer something to buy time. One name down. The gesture of cooperation.

"One," Brother Lief says. He doesn't look up from the document.

"For the second, we'd need time. A volunteer process?—"

"That won't be necessary."

He sets down the document. His eyes lift and move across the room—the unhurried sweep of someone who has done this before, who reads bodies the way I read territory markers. Hael. Yara. Garron. Measuring, discarding.

His gaze reaches me.

An attendant leans close to him. A murmur—too low to catch. Brother Lief's eyes don't stop. They move on before the murmur finishes.

Too old. I know that's what it was. I know because of how short it was—shorter than any other assessment in the room. He looked at me and found me wanting before he finished looking.

My pulse stays even. I let it.

His eyes find Petra.

They stop.

Three seconds. Petra is two feet to my left, her face neutral, her arms at her sides. Twenty years old. Sharp-boned and fast, the best thing I've built in four years of building fighters. Brother Lief looks at her the way he looked at the document—reading a line item and confirming it matches what he already wrote down.

"This one," he says.

My heart does something it hasn't done in four years. One hard lurch against my sternum that I stand very still to contain.

"Her name," Dov says carefully. Stalling. Both of us knowing it won't matter.

"Petra." Brother Lief says it without looking up, already making a note on the document. "She'll do."