"Who is responsible for this unlicensed operation?"
Ren lifted his left hand from the mud.
"Currently? Gravity."
"Elara said your jokes become worse when you’re hurt," Nia said from where she sat against an overturned cart.
"I said no such thing," Elara replied. "I thought it very loudly."
The horned woman did not smile.
Dawn had begun as a grey line beyond the orchards, turning the flooded rows to strips of dull metal. She stood in the wreckage as if the storm, the dead matriarch, and eight shivering survivors had arranged themselves for inspection.
Tall. Powerful. Deep-brown skin. Black horns swept close to her skull before curving upward, framing a tight dark braid. Her silver-grey eyes moved once across Ren’s burned wrist, Nia’s hanging shoulder, Elara’s blistered fingers, the broken wall, and the carts forming their crooked rescue corridor.
Then she crossed the road. She stopped first at Holl, pressed two fingers above his swollen ankle, and told Jessa not to let him stand. She checked the child beneath Ren’s jacket, counted the orchard workers without moving her lips, and only then knelt beside him.
"Do not manifest that Cuff."
"Wasn’t planning to."
"You were looking at it."
"It’s attached to me."
Her gaze settled on his face. "Name."
"Ren Saki."
"Maelis Corven. Provincial field assessor. I am reviewing unexplained creature migration around Mossdeep." She checked the pulse in his left wrist, then the movement in his fingers. "You have Artifact backlash, blood loss, and enough tremor to drop a cup. Your scout has one usable arm. Your steward has burned both hands."
"Elara," Elara said.
Maelis inclined her head once. "Elara. Who held field command?"
The three of them looked at one another.
"That is not an answer," Maelis said.
Ren let his head fall back against the cart wheel. "It changed depending on who knew what."
"Then you had specialists. You did not have command." She pointed without looking. "No marked casualty point. No perimeter after the kill. No reserve evacuation route. No medical check before redeployment. You used a damaged Artifact after its temporary repair began failing."
"And an injured courier as bait," Nia added cheerfully.
Maelis looked at her. "Yes."
"I volunteered."
"Injured people do not become uninjured because they are enthusiastic."
Nia’s ears tipped forward. "I like her."
Elara did not appear to share the feeling.
Ren pushed himself upright with his left arm. The road tilted, reconsidered, and returned beneath him.
"You’re right," he said.
That earned the first change in Maelis’s expression. Not surprise exactly. A narrowing of attention.
"The command was improvised. The fallback route was terrible. I should not have used the Cuff the last time." His right arm shook against his chest. "But if we waited for a licensed team, those people died."
"I did not say you should have waited."
"You arrived asking who was responsible before asking who survived."
"Because the survivors were standing in front of me." Her voice stayed level. "The next group will not be saved by your good intentions if you teach yourself that success makes every choice correct."
The words struck cleanly because they were not wrong.
Ren held her gaze. Up close, Maelis had the stillness of a closed gate. Not cold. Built to stop something. Her armor was maintained rather than polished, every strap placed for use, and the forearm braced beside his head was thick with trained strength. He noticed. Judging by the brief drop of her eyes to the way he had forced himself upright, so did she. Neither of them was foolish enough to call that relevant.
"Several bad decisions worked," he said. "Because several people made them work."
"Both statements can be true."
A laugh escaped Nia before she winced and grabbed her shoulder. "You two are going to be exhausting."
Elara folded the wet request ledger against her chest. "We have not agreed to keep her."
Maelis rose. "You could not afford me."
"Comforting," Elara said.
Maelis moved to the dead matriarch and crouched beside its split throat. She used a narrow field knife to lift a crust of blue-green resin from the rootlike whiskers.
"This is not surface contamination."
Nia’s teasing vanished. "Heartmoss."
"Dense growth. Lower ecology." Maelis rubbed the resin between gloved fingers, then held it beneath her nose without touching it to her skin. "The certified Mossdeep surveys list those chambers as sealed."
Elara looked toward the southern hills, barely visible through rain haze. "Then how did a breeding pack reach an orchard road?"
Something knocked beneath the overturned cart.
Maelis’s head snapped around.
"Everyone still."
The second knock lifted one wheel from the mud.
Jessa pulled her son behind her. Elara began moving the survivors toward the drainage bank.
Maelis’s voice sharpened. "Elara, count them and keep them behind the ditch. Nia, stay seated."
Nia looked offended. "I can whistle from here."
"Once. On my signal." Maelis drew a weighted restraint mesh from her field pack. "Ren, no Artifact. Tell me what it follows."
"Vibration and heartmoss scent."
"Useful. Get me scent."
Ren looked at the matriarch’s resin-caked whiskers, then at the cart. His right hand was useless. He hooked one whisker with the toe of his boot, dragged it loose, and kicked it under the axle.
Maelis shifted left without asking why.
"Now," she said.
Nia gave one sharp whistle.
The juvenile exploded from beneath the cart, six hooked legs tearing through the mud. It lunged for the whisker instead of the nearest person.
Maelis threw.
The mesh opened in the air. Four iron weights struck around the creature, and she drove a boot onto the rear line before it could roll free.
"Left wheel," Ren warned.
The loosened cart lurched toward her.
Maelis caught the rim with one hand, redirected it past her hip, and hauled the restraint line with the other. The juvenile twisted, exposing the softer seam beneath its moss armor.
"Pull the front line toward me," she ordered.
Ren obeyed. He wrapped the rope around his left forearm and leaned back. Pain flashed through his ribs, but the line tightened. Maelis dropped a capture fork across the creature’s shoulders and pinned it into the mud.
The brambleback screamed once, then lay heaving beneath the net.
Maelis looked at Ren over the trapped creature.
"Good."
He breathed out. "I do occasionally follow excellent instructions."
"I will record the occasion."
Nia laughed so hard she had to hold her shoulder again. Elara’s mouth became a very thin line.
Maelis secured the net with three stakes, then stood.
"Forty-eight hours," she said. "Incident report. Injury record. Equipment list. Named field leader. Safety plan. Legal sponsor. Continue active field work without those, and I recommend closure."
Ren nodded. "Then we have forty-eight hours."
Maelis crouched again. A hard oval shape showed beneath the resin along the juvenile’s flank. She cut carefully around it and peeled the growth back.
A stamped transport seal had been embedded against the creature’s armor.
Elara stared. "What is that?"
Maelis’s silver-grey eyes went colder.
"A broker’s freight seal."
Someone had transported the brambleback.