The fire on the far side of camp threw more light than heat, banked low under a blackened spit, and it hadn't gone out since Tavik said it wouldn't.
Ossa sat close to it anyway, knees drawn up, a folded cloth pressed loose against the thin line on her throat. The bleeding had stopped before they'd crossed the boundary rope. She kept touching the cloth like she didn't trust that yet.
"You don't have to hold it there," Tavik said, crouching beside her. "It's closed."
"I know it's closed." She didn't move her hand. "Doesn't mean my slits believe it."
Nyra crouched on her other side, closer than a stranger would, not as close as family. "How long before they settle?"
"An hour. Maybe two." Ossa's fingers finally came away from the cloth. Pale ridges along her jaw twitched once, a muscle memory of the clench that had kept her breathing steady with a blade at her throat. "They don't like being told to shut when something's actually trying to kill me. Makes them stubborn after."
"Earned," Vhar said.
HA!
Ossa's laugh came out short and unplanned. She pressed the cloth at her throat when the movement pulled the cut.
Other band members were already moving through the camp behind them, dragging the last of the scattered crate contents up from the dirt and into a covered lean-to, checking tent lines the fight had loosened, keeping their distance from Vhar without making a show of it. One woman passed close enough to touch Ossa's shoulder on her way by and said nothing at all.
Tavik straightened. "You didn't ask what was in the crate."
"You already told me you'd say when your people could eat first." Vhar looked past him at the lean-to, at hands sorting vials and membrane coils by feel and by smell more than by sight. "This looks like eating first."
"It's sorting first. Eating's after." Tavik tipped his head toward the covered stacks. "Come look, if you're not going to stand there being a wall."
Vhar went. Nyra followed a step behind, close enough to watch and be shown rather than just told.
An older Salvage-Kin man knelt over the recovered inventory, running a cracked vial past the slitted ridges along his throat before setting it aside in a different pile than the one beside it. He didn't look up. "That one's clean. Next one's not."
"How do you know from a smell alone?" Nyra asked.
"I taste spoiled compound before it spoils enough for a human nose." He held up the second vial, capped and sealed, with nothing visibly wrong. "The slits read it differently. Ossa is still learning the difference; most of us do for years."
Ossa had come to kneel beside him despite the cloth still creased in her hand, watching his check rather than doing her own. "Show her the false read. The one that fooled me last season."
He passed Nyra the vial. She copied his motion as closely as she could, held it by her jaw, and smelled only glass and cold liquid.
"You won't get it that way," the old man said, not unkindly. "It's not a nose trick. It's built in, and it takes apprenticeship to trust once it's there. Ossa's had four years under Tavik and still second-guesses herself on the borderline ones."
"Four years and I still got it wrong twice this spring," Ossa said.
"Twice in four years is why you're still apprenticed and not still guessing blind." Tavik's voice held no correction in it, just fact.
The spoiled vial went into a separate crate lined with cloth, sealed and marked before it moved anywhere near the good stock. "Contaminated goes out with the morning cart," the old man said, catching Nyra watching the separation. "One bad vial mixed into a clean lot costs the whole lot's worth. We don't guess on that. We check twice and move it once."
Vhar took a crate corner when the old man's knees started to protest the kneeling, lifting it clear so the sorting could continue without him having to shift his whole body around it. He kept the lift slow and even, weight that would have bowed another man's back carried like an empty box. He set it where he was told, went back for the next one without being asked, and didn't wait to be thanked for either.
By the time the last crate was sorted, the fire had built up enough for the spit to matter, and someone passed around bowls of something dense and dark that steamed harder than its size explained. Vhar took his without asking what was in it.
"Small portions, more of them," Nyra said, watching a second round already being ladled out to people who'd barely finished the first. "That's not manners."
"It's metabolism," Ossa said, mouth half full. "We run hot. Small meals mean we're not carrying a full stomach into a sprint if the ground calls for one." She nodded at a waterskin passed her way, drank, passed it on. "Clear-vein water. Keeps the strainer gland working right. You get thirsty enough out here without it that you learn fast."
The bowl was plain and filling, with a sharp spice Vhar did not recognize. He finished before most of the band reached a second serving. Nobody remarked on it.
Tavik waited until the meal had thinned into low talk before he crossed to the fire and sat down across from them, unhurried, and stayed there.
"You saved Ossa," he said. "I cannot pay for that with trade goods, and I will not pretend I can."
"That's not what we're here for," Nyra said.
"I know. Half my band still wants to repay you with goods, so I am saying this before anyone offers the wrong thing." Tavik glanced at Ossa, who was listening without looking at him. "A gift does not tell us who guards the camp when armed men return. We need to settle that first."
"You think it's getting worse," Vhar said.
"Five men did not walk into this camp by accident." Tavik's jaw tightened. "There is more here than the crate. I will show you the rest after we agree on what your permit lets you do and what my band can safely tell you tonight."
"You are still holding something back," Nyra said.
"The crate holds something worth more than two seasons of salvage. I am not naming it tonight." Tavik met her eyes. "Each person who learns its name is another mouth an attacker can pressure."
"That makes guarding the crate harder," Vhar said. "Tell us what a thief can carry, break, or poison."
Tavik shook his head. "Today you reached Ossa before they cut her. You did not need the crate's name for that."
"One crate drew five men today." Vhar did not look away. "If more come, tell me how many people, carts, or weapons I should expect."
"You want to know why five strangers walked onto our ground with filed stamps." Tavik's mouth went flat. "Bands keep out of each other's camps because every camp knows who will answer for a theft. These men had no band name and no one to answer for them."
Tavik rubbed his thumb against the edge of his cup. "They are coming back for the find, not because they want our camp. You protect the tents, the carts, and anyone working beside them. I tell you what I learn as soon as I can confirm it. I will not name the find tonight."
Nyra set the field token beside the fire. "This permit lets us defend your camp and the ground where your carts travel. We can face anyone who threatens either. It does not let us sell your salvage or bargain on the Academy's behalf."
"That is enough for tonight," Tavik said. "It gives my people somewhere to stand when the next crew comes."
"Do not take my word for it," Vhar said. "Watch what I do when the next crew arrives."
Tavik's shoulders lowered. He looked to Ossa. She nodded once. "We have an agreement for the next attack."
Nyra inclined her head. "We will keep every promise we named."
Tavik lifted his cup but did not drink. "There is one condition from my side. No one opens a crate because they think the answer inside belongs to them. Not you. Not the Academy. Not my own people. A container with a cracked seal stays where it is until Ossa, her teacher, or I say it can move."
"Agreed," Vhar said.
Nyra tapped the field token with one finger. "And if your band learns who hired the raiders, you tell us before you send anyone to follow them. We are not waking to an empty bedroll and a trail full of bodies."
"Agreed," Tavik said again.
Ossa looked from the token to Vhar. "What happens when they bring more than five?"
Vhar set his empty bowl beside his boot. "You wake the camp. You get the children and the stock behind cover. Tavik tells me where the attackers can reach. I put them down before they reach it."
The older Salvage-Kin man gave a single grunt from the lean-to. "That is a plan people can carry."
"Good," Tavik said. "Carry it until morning. We move the carts at first light."
The fire had burned down to steady coals. Ossa had gone quiet against Tavik's shoulder, more asleep than awake. Somewhere past the tents, someone tested rope knots by feel in the dark and hummed without words.
"There is more I need to show you," Tavik said, low enough that the words barely crossed the fire. "Not tonight. The trouble on this ground started before that crate arrived."