The western gate opened for Vhar without a record officer standing beside it.
He left the Academy without an escort or a sponsor seal at the boundary stones. Nyra matched his stride through the gate with the sealed field token inside her coat. Neither of them looked back at the towers.
"You keep expecting someone to stop us," she said.
"Nobody has yet."
The Academy road narrowed within an hour, then gave out into a rutted track the maps called provincial. Cultivated basins gave way to scrub, then broken rock shelved at odd angles, and the wind kept shifting direction without ever settling on one.
Nyra checked the token's markings twice against the terrain. "This matches the frontier band. Wildblood Desolation territory starts past that ridge."
Twice they crossed dry stream cuts wide enough to have carried real water once. Neither one held so much as a puddle now. Nyra crouched at the second one and pressed two fingers into the cracked mud. It hadn't rained here in longer than either of them could guess.
Vhar studied the broken rock. "The dirt holds no convoy tracks or patrol wear."
"Nobody patrols contracted ground but the people working it."
The ridge gave onto a shallow basin ringed with staked boundary markers, weathered gray rope strung between them at knee height. Smoke rose from a low camp inside the boundary, thin and controlled.
Five armed men were already moving between the supply tents.
A young Salvage-Kin woman knelt in the open ground between two supply tents, wrists bound with cord, four armed men around her. A fifth knelt over an open crate, pulling out packed containers and holding each one up to the light before discarding it.
"Where is it?" the man over the crate asked for at least the second time.
The young woman's throat worked. Pale ridges along her jaw caught the light, the scent-slits pressed shut and held there, controlled rather than clenched.
"Ossa doesn't have it," said a voice from the camp's far side.
A man came around the supply tent at a dead run, digitigrade steps carrying him fast and low across the ground, and one of the armed figures turned to meet him with a raised blade rather than a word.
Vhar was already moving.
He crossed the boundary rope without touching it.
The nearest armed man saw him coming. He didn't raise his knife at Vhar. He put it against Ossa's throat instead.
"Stop there," the man said, "or she opens."
Vhar stopped, close enough now that the boundary rope still swayed behind him.
"That's an answer." He didn't move. "Now give me a better one."
The man's eyes narrowed, and around him the other three spread out with their weapons still raised. The fourth man, the one who had sprinted from behind the tent, stopped a few meters short with his hands open.
"Tavik Coldscent," Vhar said.
Tavik reached Ossa's tent and stopped short. "I don't know who you are. She is sixteen and still learning scent work. Leave her out of this."
"She is under my protection." Vhar kept his eyes on the blade at Ossa's throat. "The Academy sent me to inspect this camp, meet its band, and speak to its representative before either side signs a contract. Your knife changed the inspection."
"Stay where you are," the man said. "Take another step, and I cut her throat before you reach me." The knife pressed harder into her skin and drew blood.
Vhar counted four raised weapons and a fifth man still crouched over the crate. Someone had filed every stamp off their belts, boots, and metal fittings before they stepped onto contracted ground.
"The crate's what you came for."
"You're half right." The man's mouth curved into a sneer. "She keeps you still. Once I have the crate, I leave her behind."
"You don't need her."
"We need you patient long enough to finish. That's the only thing she's buying us right now."
His wrist shifted, the blade's angle tilting a fraction deeper toward Ossa's throat.
Vhar took one step.
WHOOSH!
He flickered into place directly in front of the man, caught his wrist, and wrenched it backward past the angle any joint was built to hold. The knife fell clear of Ossa's throat.
The other three came together, two blades and a short spear driving in from three directions at once.
WHOOSH!
Vhar was already between them. He caught the spear haft out of the air before its point crossed half the distance, reversed the shaft in his grip, and drove it through the chest of the man still holding the other end.
THWACK!
He turned inside the nearest blade's reach and drove his fist into the second man's skull.
BANG!
The skull caved and burst under the impact, blood and brain matter scattering across the dirt behind him. The body dropped where it stood.
The last blade cut through nothing but air where Vhar's ribs had been a heartbeat earlier. His palm crossed the remaining distance and drove through the man's sternum, past bone and into the cavity beneath it.
THUD!
Vhar withdrew his hand and shook it once, flinging the gore from his fingers before the body finished falling.
The wrist-broken raider had made it three meters toward open ground. Vhar closed the gap in two, gripped his neck, and snapped it.
It was over in three seconds, before Tavik reached them.
Other Salvage-Kin had gathered between the tents to watch, none of them crossing the boundary rope.
The fifth man abandoned the crate and ran for the tree line instead of reaching for a weapon. Vhar let him get four meters into the open before closing the distance.
"Who sent you."
The man's free hand moved for a second blade at his belt instead of answering.
Vhar caught his wrist and broke it, the same motion he'd used on the first man. He closed his other hand around the man's throat and crushed it.
Nyra was already crouched at Ossa's side, cutting the cord from her wrists with a short blade from her own coat.
"Breathe slow," Nyra told her, one hand steady on her shoulder. "It's done."
Ossa's hands shook once, then steadied. "They knew where the crate was. They knew what to search for. Which container did they want?"
Tavik crossed the last distance at a walk, no longer running, and knelt in front of Ossa without touching her until she reached for him first.
"I told them nothing," Ossa said.
"I know."
Vhar crouched over the nearest body and checked the belt, boots, and coat lining. The missing stamps had been cut away. No House color or cabinet seal survived on the man.
"They removed every stamp before they came," he said.
Nyra rose from Ossa's side and searched the second body's belt pouch. She found coins, a whetstone, and dried meat wrapped in cloth. The leather carried no band seal or contract stamp.
"That's not opportunist work," she said, closing her hand around the coins. "Someone paid these five to vanish clean if this went wrong."
"Whoever hired them expected them to get searched." Vhar turned the nearest man's collar out anyway, checking it a second time. "And planned around it before any of them set foot on this ground."
Tavik straightened, one hand still on Ossa's shoulder. "You came for the verification."
"I was supposed to meet your band and its representative." Vhar looked at the dead men, then at the red cord marks around Ossa's wrists. "Instead I found her on her knees with five hired knives."
"The Academy did not send you here for this."
Vhar didn't soften it. "No. It's what was here."
Tavik studied him for a long moment, then looked past him to the open crate. Half its contents were still scattered where the searching man had thrown them: sealed vials, a coil of pale membrane, a jar of something that caught the light wrong. Past the crate, Ossa's hands had finally stopped shaking.
"You didn't ask what was in the crate," he said.
"I did not need the crate to answer the first question," Vhar said. "The five men were willing to kill Ossa for it."
Nyra wiped the short blade clean and returned it to her coat. "Show us the ground your band works, the contents of that crate, and the help you are asking for."
"You'll get that," Tavik said, "but not standing over five dead men with unmarked coats."
"No," Vhar agreed. "Somewhere your people can actually eat first."
Tavik's jaw loosened. He looked at Ossa until she nodded, then faced Vhar again.
"There's a fire on the far side of camp," he said. "It hasn't gone out since this started."
Ossa rose with Nyra's hand beneath her elbow. Blood had dried in a thin brown line beneath her jaw. She saw the opened crate, the five bodies, and the spilled vials before she looked at Tavik.
"They did not take a single container," she said.
"No," Tavik answered. "You held them here until they had to run."
She swallowed hard, then bent to pick up one of the pale membrane coils herself. Nyra took the other end before the coil touched the dirt again. Around them, the camp moved because someone had to move it: one person dragged the unspoiled cases under cover, another poured sand over the blood beside the crate, and two more cut the raiders' belts apart in search of a mark the men had missed.
Nyra glanced at Vhar. He nodded. They followed Tavik and Ossa past the ruined crate and boundary rope into the camp. Mended tents stood along the track. Drying racks held pale strips of something that was not meat. Packed crates waited beside a clearing where no one had chosen how to move them.
Behind them, five bodies lay beside the open crate, and Ossa's blood still marked the dirt where the knife had touched her throat.