"If this conversation continues, then it continues with one condition. Any plan that risks Veyrhold’s medical supply is dead before it starts. I do not care how clever it is. If children lose fever draughts because you wanted to sneak into a cargo hold, I will personally drag you back from orbit and make you regret surviving."
Rohan nodded.
"That is fair."
"I am not finished. Any plan that involves injuring Veyrhold workers, using patients as cover, stealing from the ash-house, or hiding in medical exchange cargo is also dead."
"I was not considering those."
"I am glad. I needed to say it anyway."
Bryan nodded.
"She is right."
Rohan looked back at the map.
"Then we start with proper channels."
"Yes," Bryan said. "We start there. And while the merchants attempt to cheat you, we watch how they move."
The final week before Tradefall became a different kind of training.
Rohan still hunted once, partly to keep his edge and partly because Maerin said anxiety made him irritating indoors. The Great System rewarded him with modest death essence from two hollow hares and one ashmoth cluster, enough to push his Rank 35 progress forward but not enough to matter before the ship arrived.
Most of his time went elsewhere.
Bryan drilled him on trade language.
Not the Veyrhold version of trade language, full of practical insults and survival categories, but the polished vocabulary merchants preferred.
"Do not say you want a ticket," Bryan told him. "Say you are seeking single-passenger outbound berth consideration."
Rohan stared. "That is a lot of syllables for ticket."
"Merchants use syllables as walls. Learn to climb."
"Single-passenger outbound berth consideration," Rohan repeated. "I hate it."
"Good. Say it again."
"Single-passenger outbound berth consideration."
"Do not sound like you want to stab the phrase."
"I do want to stab the phrase."
"That is why you sound like it."
Liora taught him how to read merchant guards.
She had watched them during the last Tradefall from the wall and once from the flats as part of a junior hauling crew. Merchant guards, she explained, were not like Veyrhold watch. They were less familiar with ash danger, but better equipped, more confident in formation around machines, and dangerously used to being obeyed.
"They will look relaxed," she said during an evening walk along the inner wall. "Do not mistake that for weakness. Their armour filters the ash better than ours. Their weapons may not look heavy, but they fire heat or compressed force. Some carry shock batons. If they laugh at you, it is not because they are harmless. It is because they believe the entire planet is beneath them."
Rohan looked down at the settlement below. Trade preparations had filled the streets with movement even after dusk.
"You sound like you hate them."
"I do hate them."
The directness surprised him.
Liora looked embarrassed for half a second, then pushed through it.
"When I was thirteen, a merchant woman gave me a blue ribbon. Real blue, not dye-stained grey. I had never seen anything so bright. She tied it around my wrist and told me I was a brave little ash girl. I treasured it for three days. Then I heard her laughing with another merchant about how easy it was to make ’wreck-born children’ adore scraps."
Her mouth tightened.
"I burned it in a cooking flame. Then I cried because I had still wanted to keep it."
Rohan felt a quiet anger rise.
"That was cruel."
"It was ordinary," she said. "That is what made it worse."
He looked at her.
The violet dusk softened her face, but not the hurt in it. Months ago, Liora had been the injured woman trapped under a cart, sharp-eyed and desperate. Now she was his friend, perhaps something more complicated than that, standing beside him with old humiliation in her voice because a merchant had made kindness feel dirty.
"I will remember that," he said.
"Do not get into a fight because of it."
"I said remember, not avenge."
"I know your face. Sometimes those are close."
He tried to argue.
Could not.
She looked away, then said, "If you do leave, I want you to see what is beyond them. Not just escape this place and vanish into another cage. I want you to reach somewhere that proves the universe is bigger than the people who profit from our smallness."
The words struck him deeply.
"I want that too," he said.
"I know. That is why I am trying not to be angry that you might leave."
He swallowed.
"Are you?"
"Yes," she admitted. "Not because you want to go. I would go too, if I had your chance. I am angry because I may have to watch another person I care about walk toward the sky and not know if anything good waits there."
Rohan had no joke ready.
He did not want one.
"I do not know what waits either."
"That is not comforting."
"No. But it is honest."
Liora breathed in slowly.
"Then promise me something honest again."
"Like Pell’s promise?"
"Yes."
He turned to face her fully.
She held his gaze, but it clearly cost effort.
"If you find a way aboard, legal or otherwise, do not disappear without telling me. I know there may be danger. I know secrecy may matter. But do not let my last memory of you be discovering after the shuttle lifts that you decided goodbye was inconvenient."
Rohan’s chest tightened.
"I promise."
"Rohan."
"I mean it," he said. "If I leave, I will tell you if there is any possible way to do it without putting you in danger."
Her eyes shone faintly.
"That condition is doing a lot of work."
"It has to. I will not let the merchants hurt you because of me."
She nodded, but she did not look satisfied.
Neither was he.
The day before Tradefall, the sky changed.
It began at dawn with a thin silver line appearing high above the eastern horizon.
Not a skyglass pulse.
Too steady.
Too deliberate.