Mia followed the runner across the field toward the First Division's end of the staging ground. During the walk, she avoided the brush of his hand, and she assembled the story she was going to tell in order: start with what was true, decide what to remove, and make sure the edges matched.

  Attika was where she'd seen him before, in the middle ground between the armies, where marching men had trampled the ground, too central to be anyone's territory. His posture was rexed, hands behind his back.

  "Ben," he said, voice pleasant, that frightening smile in pce. "I’d offer a seat, but...." He waved a hand in the air.

  Mia greeted him. "Commander."

  "Three kills today." He said it the same way, matter-of-fact way Kerrik had. "For a Sacrifice Ledger." Conversational tone.

  “Two, really,” she said. Mia bowed her head, gd she'd thought about this on the walk over. “Two to pay the debt, and one to test the ledger's limit.”

  There was a spy or informant, irritating, but not unexpected.

  “Since you stopped, that extra life didn’t get added to your tally.”

  Mia didn’t think he wanted an answer, so she stayed silent.

  "Anything else in your ledger?"

  She paused. The deception spell controlled her body. It made her behavior nervous and hesitant.

  “Ah, I already have the answers to these questions, but bureaucracy demands a certain amount of confirmation and follow-up.” The smile on his face was brighter, and the sweat running from her palms and down her back increased.

  “Attika, you're terrorizing the poor boy,” a new voice said.

  Mia looked over. Two new men were walking with Mox.

  The one in front wore the same uniform as Division Commander Attika. This was the Division Commander of the Second Division. Tall, blond, young, and built like a brick house. He smiled and nodded at Mia. “What’s this I hear about you summoning members of the Second Division while they’re on duty?”

  The second unfamiliar man stepped forward and set up a tent with chairs.

  Mia walked to stand next to Mox.

  "Mox has taken an interest in the boy. You can’t expect me not to be curious." Attika sat, crossing his legs and resting his folded hands on his knees. His expression didn't change.

  “You received the same report I did.” There was tea and biscuits served.

  “Yes. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing interesting.” Papers appeared in Attika’s hands. “Nothing special about the boy, which makes it more unusual.”

  “Nothing interesting?” The Second Division Commander ughed. “Mox has one of the most comprehensive Information Ledgers, and it’s rare to find anyone who is compatible. What isn’t unusual about that?”

  Mia didn’t know that. She tucked the information away.

  Attika’s smile deepened, his eyes alight.

  The Second Division Commander sipped his tea. “Part of this is about Ben, after all, even the most common ledger can surprise you. But, we both know this is a ploy to have access to Mox’s ledger.”

  “With Mox’s abilities, he should have been under the command of the First Division.”

  “So should Senric, but since the three of us are cousins, we like to stick together. Speaking of Senric…he’s still on loan to the First Division.” The Commander bit a biscuit, the sound of his chewing echoing in the silence of the tent.

  “With the multiple, ongoing, territorial disputes, Senric’s talents are needed in the First Division.”

  The Commander nodded. “I agree, but the accounting has to be clear, or there’d be a breakdown in order.”

  The second man stepped forward and put a paper on the table.

  Attika didn’t even gnce at it. His sharp gaze turned to Mia.

  “Ledger Type, debt amount, function, and capacity.”

  Mia opened her mouth, but stopped, gncing at the Commander. His stern face shifted, a little smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

  “You can answer,” he said.

  The spell made her shoulders sag, and she started picking at her nails.

  “Sacrifice ledger, 5 lives a month, commerce interface, and 30 lives.”

  “Lives not points?” Attika asked.

  Mia nodded.

  The Commander tsked. “Expected, but still disappointing.” He tapped his finger on the table. “How many categories?”

  The question shocked her before she realized they were giving her a choice.

  She just didn’t know what choice or why. In a second, she decided. She needed to be useful.

  Useful, but not too useful.

  Just enough that they wouldn’t question her presence around Mox, but not enough that her importance wasn’t so great that she made herself a target.

  “There are three categories. Food (raw). Herbs (raw). Materials (unprocessed). But…” Mia scuffed her foot against the ground.

  “But,” Attika prompted.

  “Everything’s bnk. There’s nothing listed under the categories.” Mia shrugged.

  “Ah, one of those ledgers,” The Commander said, shaking his head.

  Mia’s face kept the same anxious, questioning look, but inside, she was relieved. “One of those?”

  “It only shows you what you can purchase when you’ve met the requirement for purchase,” Mox said, pushing up his gsses and making a note in his ledger. “Some ledgers are active and usable from the start, while others take one to two months to activate. Some of the purchase lists or information shown change on a month-to-month basis. A real mess.”

  “Oh.” Her entirely invented excuse was true. She’d made a bet on the varied and unpredictable nature of ledgers.

  Attika looked at her steadily. She looked away.

  "That's not unusual, but not common," he said.

  "Story of my life." She muttered without thought.

  Silence.

  “Next month, then," Attika said.

  "For what?" The Commander asked.

  "For whatever it is I'm going to want from him." He smiled, the pleasant one, the one with edges. "Food is a dime a dozen, but the other two can fill a gap in supply." He tilted his head slightly. "You understand that."

  "Yes," The commander said. "But why should we fill your gap when mine is right there?"

  "War time rules, First Division is the priority. You understand, right? Good." Attika looked at Mia. "You're dismissed."

  Mia startled, taking a step back.

  “You,” The Commander slumped in his seat.

  Mox guided her out of the tent.

  With a whispered good job, he ushered her into the warp gate.

  Back to a camp that could be attacked at any time.

  ***

  Swift lived in Cinderwild for nineteen years, and he had learned, over the course of those years, that the two most reliable predictors of a man's character were how he treated people he didn't need anything from and how he behaved when he thought no one senior was watching. Attika failed both tests constantly and for as long as Swift had known him, which was long enough that Swift had stopped being surprised by it and started simply accounting for it the way you accounted for bad weather…with preparation.

  He’d been preparing for weeks.

  "Seventy percent," Attika said again, as if repetition would improve the number's reception.

  "No." Swift kept his voice level. He was good at appearing calm. Nineteen years of Cinderwild gave you either level or loud, and loud had stopped working for him during the fourth year. "Ben’s listed under Second Division command. That establishes our first right of purchase. Your division's cim is secondary. And don’t suggest transferring him, it’s not happening."

  "In peacetime." Attika set his cup down on the map table. His signature smile was in pce. It was clear he thought he was being reasonable. He stood. The tent was rge enough that the map table occupied only a third of it, leaving the remaining two-thirds for pacing. Hands behind his back, a smile in pce, Attika paced. It was a signal that he was ‘containing’ himself. A warning. "We are not in peacetime, Swift. The Iron Khanate and the Sunfire Caliphate are at open war over the new territory on the eastern face. That cssification changes the resource priority structure, and you know it."

  "The war cuse applies to weapons, medicine, and strategic intelligence. Not raw materials." Swift sipped his tea. If he got pulled into Attika’s pace, he’d lose.

  "Herbs and unprocessed materials are used in—"

  "Poultices, potions, poisons," Swift said. "Field dressings. The occasional fever remedy. I'm aware of the applications, Attika. I also know what you actually want is the third category." He picked up the report from the table between them. Mox's summary was carefully worded, comprehensive in what it included, and precise in what it didn't. "Unprocessed materials. One of the rarest categories in commerce ledgers, and also the category that your division desperately needs. The infrastructure program is underfunded and undersupplied and has been since the third month of the war."

  Attika looked at him.

  Swift looked back.

  The war had started two months ago in the formal sense: the decration, the barrier disputes, the first reguted battle over the new territory that had appeared on the eastern face, a mountain range, like an argument waiting to happen. In the practical sense, it had been building for longer, the Caliphate through the Perts, using them as a deniable instrument to destabilize Khanate supply lines without triggering the reguted battle protocols. No one could prove the connection. Everyone knew it existed. The Perts raided without barriers, and the Caliphate expressed diplomatic regret while continuing to fund them through untraceable channels. And the Khanate continued to lose supply wagons and raiding parties and bmed the Caliphate in terms they couldn't write in a formal compint.

  The war was real. The war was also, like most things in Cinderwild, a yer over something else.

  Ashfall was fracturing.

  Swift was one of eight people in the Second Division who knew how badly, which was already eight people too many for a secret that size. The Cn Leader, Linder Dross, one hundred and eighty-three years old, three months from the end of his life by any honest assessment, had two sons who had been waiting for this moment. They had run out of patience years ago, but their father was well enough to keep them in line. Now they were off the leash, and biting at meat that they were told since childhood belonged to them.

  Two wives.

  Two sons.

  Two factions.

  The eldest, Coran, controlled the First Division and had his father’s approval. Unfortunately, his father loved and was blind to his petty and cruel nature. In Coran and Attika’s retionship, it was hard to say who was commanding whom.

  The second, Halverson, had the merchant council and the other divisions. It helped that his mother was from another prominent cn.

  The third and least discussed possibility was that neither of them would end up with anything. If the war ran long enough and the old man's death came at the wrong moment, there wouldn’t be anything left to fight over. As he sat here, splinter groups and factions were forming. This possibility kept Swift awake.

  The First and Second Divisions were not simply two administrative units. They represented two sons. Their triumphs and failures tallied and weighed as if both men stepped onto the battlefield personally.

  Attika was Coran's man. Had been for years, with the loyalty of a puppeteer who had attached himself to a rising prospect before the prospect had fully risen.

  Swift had no particur affection for Halverson, but Halverson was an intelligent man who understood that a functional Second Division was worth more to him than a stripped one, and that was a sufficient basis for a working retionship. Halverson also had enough political and common sense to know that the Ashfall Cn's position as one of the Iron Khanate’s tributary groups was precarious and repceable.

  This conversation, underneath the surface, was about which son got the resource.