The Company camp did not sleep.
It only changed its breathing.
In the outer lane, the air tasted of rope fiber, trampled dirt, and smoke kept low on purpose. The ground was hard from wheels turning the same tracks again and again, packed until it felt like the earth had been hammered flat and told to stay that way.
Eryk sat with his back to a cart wheel and his blanket under him like a thin lie. He kept his hands where they could be seen. He kept his eyes down until he needed them up.
Around him, other bodies did the same.
Men with ribs you could count through their shirts. A woman with a scarf wrapped over her hair and a knife resting across her thigh, not hidden and not offered. Two boys younger than Eryk huddled together, pressed shoulder to shoulder like the world might hesitate if it had to split them apart.
Outer ring.
The place for what you had not decided to trust.
A guard walked the rope line, boots slow, spear held like a casual thought. His head turned in steady arcs, not searching, just confirming.
He passed Eryk without looking at him.
That was worse than being looked at. Being looked at meant you had been seen. Being ignored meant you had been filed away as background, until someone decided you were not.
Behind the rope, the inner lanes ran like veins. Movement never stopped, only shifted. A rim being hammered back into round. Canvas being stitched. A man calling out numbers to another man who wrote them down and made them true.
Lists.
Decisions.
Faces turned into marks.
Eryk swallowed and kept his breathing quiet.
A shadow fell across him.
He looked up.
Garr stood there, missing tooth showing in the way his mouth sat even when he did not mean to bare it. He held a small chunk of bread in one hand like it had offended him.
"Eat," Garr said.
Eryk stared at the bread a heartbeat too long.
Garr's eyes narrowed.
"Now," Garr added. "Or it goes back to Harl and he complains about generosity until dawn."
Eryk took it with both hands.
The bread was stale. It still felt like a gift.
He ate slowly. Fast eating was its own kind of begging, even if you never made a sound.
Garr watched him chew, then glanced along the rope line.
"You keep your head down," Garr said. "Good."
Eryk swallowed.
"Is that advice," he asked, and the words came out flatter than he intended.
Garr's mouth twitched.
"It is survival," he said. "Advice costs coin."
Then he turned and walked away, leaving the weight of the bread in Eryk's stomach and the weight of the exchange in his mind.
A low laugh drifted from somewhere near the carts.
Harl.
Eryk did not have to see him to hear it. Harl's laugh had the same edge as his scar, like it had been pulled tight once and never fully loosened.
"Hells," Harl called softly, "did you just mother him."
"Shut up," Garr answered, and the word had no bite in it, which meant it carried something else.
Harl's laughter came again, smaller.
Eryk finished the bread. He wiped his fingers on his trousers and hated himself for how careful he was being. He hated himself more for knowing the care was correct.
A cough sounded two carts down. A voice hissed at it to stop. The cough came again anyway, stubborn as a bruise.
The mercenary band moved through the outer lane like they had learned the shape of it in one day and were already refusing to fight it. They did not own the space. They did not pretend they did. They just stood where they would not block the road.
Fenn was near the second cart, as always, palm resting on metal as if he could feel the future heating up.
Sella was somewhere to the right, closer to trees than tents, close enough that shadows swallowed her whenever she decided they should.
The captain and Brann were gone into the inner lanes.
That absence sat on the band like a hand on the back of your neck.
No one said it.
A boot scuffed close by.
Eryk lifted his eyes just enough.
A boy was easing along the line of carts, too quiet to be clumsy and too clumsy to be safe. He looked older than the two huddled boys, but his cheeks were hollow in a way that made age slippery. His gaze flicked from bundle to bundle, skimming for anything loose enough to lift.
His eyes found Eryk's pack.
His hand started to move.
Eryk's fingers tightened on his blanket, and he felt the urge to lunge, to grab, to make noise. Noise drew eyes. Eyes made decisions. He forced himself still, every muscle locked around the same rule.
The boy's fingertips touched the strap.
A spear butt tapped the ground once, close enough to be heard without being loud.
The guard on the rope line did not even turn his head. He only said, "Walk."
The boy froze.
For a breath, his hand hovered on the strap like he could not believe it had been caught.
"Walk," the guard repeated, and this time there was the smallest edge in it, the sound of a door closing.
The boy's hand slid away. He backed off, fast and careful, and melted into the clusters of bodies as if he had never been there.
Eryk let his breath out through his nose, slow enough that it did not show.
That had been protection.
It had not been kindness.
A small thing inside him loosened anyway. Relief was not something you asked permission to feel.
Fenn drifted over and sat on his haunches near Eryk's cart wheel. He did not sit close. He sat where he could rise without stepping over anyone, where he could leave without apology.
"You look like you're waiting for the ground to bite you," Fenn said.
Eryk kept his voice low.
"It can."
Fenn made a sound through his nose.
"It can," he agreed. Then, like it had been his idea all along, he pulled a strip of waxed cord from his pocket and held it out.
Eryk hesitated.
Fenn rolled his eyes.
"For your wrap," he said. "Tie it across the end. Keeps it from fraying. Keeps it quiet."
Eryk took it.
The cord was smooth and smelled faintly of resin.
"Why," Eryk asked, and hated the question as soon as it left him.
Fenn's gaze went past him to the rope line, to the guards, to the spaces where people became problems.
"Because you keep pace," Fenn said. "Because you did not open your mouth on the bridge. Because if your ankle goes, we all lose time."
He looked back at Eryk and shrugged.
"Pick whichever you like," he added. "I like being right."
Eryk nodded once, because a nod cost less than words.
He tied the cord across the end of the wrap, fingers quick, not showy. When he finished, it looked the same, only better. It would not flick loose and rub him raw. It would not whisper against cloth with every step.
Fenn watched and gave a short, satisfied exhale.
"See," he said. "You learn."
Eryk looked down at his hands.
"I know knots," he said.
Fenn's smile was small and did not last.
"Knowing is different here," he replied. "Here, knowing keeps you from being counted wrong."
Then he stood and drifted back to his axle like the conversation had never happened.
Eryk sat with the cord's scent on his fingers.
He did not let himself feel grateful.
Gratitude was a hook. It caught, and then it pulled.
He could still feel it anyway, sitting under his ribs like something warm that did not belong in a place like this.
The rope creaked again.
A figure moved along the boundary, not a guard.
A man with a board and a stylus, shoulders hunched. He stopped at each cluster of bodies in the outer ring and looked them over the way you looked over sacks of grain, checking for rot.
His stylus scratched.
He moved on.
When he reached the woman with the scarf, the one with the knife across her thigh, he paused longer. His eyes went to the blade. Then to her scarf. Then to her hands.
The stylus scratched again, slower.
The woman did not move. She did not lift her knife. She only stared at the dirt ahead of her and kept breathing.
Two guards stepped in from the rope line as if they had been waiting for the sound of that scratch.
One of them pointed down the lane.
"Over," he said.
The woman did not argue. She gathered her scarf tighter and stood. When she passed the board-man, his eyes did not follow her face. He watched her knife.
The guards walked her away, not rough, not gentle, just certain.
Eryk understood, and the understanding sat cold in his stomach.
The mark had done that.
That was what it meant. It was not a note. It was a lever.
The board-man reached Eryk.
He paused.
Eryk kept his face blank.
The man's eyes flicked to Eryk's ankle. Flicked to the pack. Flicked to the mercenary carts behind him.
His stylus scratched.
Eryk did not move.
Moving made you visible, and visible meant decided.
The board-man walked on.
Eryk let his breath out slowly only when the man was far enough away that it did not matter.
Night deepened.
Some men tried to sleep. Some could not. Some pretended, because pretending meant fewer questions.
Farther down the lane, a whisper of prayer began under someone's breath. A guard told them to stop. The whisper stopped.
Ten minutes later it started again, quieter.
No one corrected it the second time.
It might have been mercy.
It might have been simple exhaustion.
A hand touched the cart wheel above Eryk's shoulder.
Harl's voice came low, close enough that it was meant for him.
"You got bread," Harl said.
Eryk did not turn his head.
"Yes."
Harl made a soft sound, like he approved of the word count.
"Garr is getting soft," he murmured. "Do not tell him. He will deny it until we all die."
Eryk almost smiled.
Almost.
Harl crouched just out of Eryk's direct view. He did not block Eryk's line to the rope. He did not take Eryk's space. It was a kind of respect dressed up as laziness.
"It is uglier here," Harl said. "Different ugly than Blackstone. Blackstone was a box. This is a mouth."
Eryk kept his voice quiet.
"And we are," he started.
"Teeth," Harl finished. The humor did not reach his eyes. "If we do our job. If we do not, we are what gets chewed."
Eryk swallowed.
"Why stay," he asked.
Harl's scarred mouth pulled a fraction.
"Because the road has rules," he said. "Because rules let you plan. Planning lets you live longer than a season."
He leaned closer, lowering his voice another notch.
"And because a camp like this attracts work," he added. "Work attracts coin. Coin attracts trouble. Trouble attracts stories. Stories keep you remembered."
Eryk felt cold under his ribs.
"Remembered by who."
Harl's laugh returned, thin.
"Anyone," he said. "Which is why you keep your head down."
He stood again with a grunt, older than he looked in the firelight.
"If you sleep," Harl said, "sleep light. If you do not, at least pretend. Predators like eyes."
Then he walked away, and his humor returned to him two steps later like armor being buckled on.
"Try not to die," he called over his shoulder. "I do not want to clean your bowl."
Eryk sat and pretended his hands were steady.
From deeper in the camp, a shout rose and was cut off fast.
Then quiet.
Then the sound of a fist on canvas.
Then quiet again.
Control, the Company's kind.
A rope opening between lanes shifted, just enough to let a group through.
Two guards escorted a man into the outer lane.
Thin.
Limping.
Eryk's eyes locked on him before he could stop them.
The forearm wrap was still there. The cloth had bled through and dried black in places. The man's face was turned down, but Eryk saw the cracked lips and the tight line of his jaw.
And at his throat, the fish charm.
The wooden fish swung once with his limp, tapped his collarbone, swung again.
His fingers kept finding it, squeezing, letting go, finding it again like he was trying to hold himself together by holding something else.
Eryk's throat went tight.
The guards spoke to the board-man with the stylus. The board-man wrote without looking up.
Then one guard grabbed the man by the shoulder and shoved him down into the dirt.
"Sit," the guard said.
The man sat.
He did not argue.
His hands stayed open in his lap like he was trying to prove he had nothing worth taking.
The guards left.
Eryk stared at the fish charm until his eyes burned.
The man did not look up.
Eryk tasted the same stupid word in his mouth.
Let him.
This time it came with another thought, sharper and uglier.
You already did.
He pressed his tongue against his teeth until the word stopped shaking.
He did not move.
Because moving made you visible.
Because visible meant decided.
The fish charm swung once more, then went still as the man's hand closed around it.
Eryk forced his gaze away.
He hated himself for the relief that came with it.
Footsteps approached.
The captain returned through the rope opening with Brann at her side.
The captain's shoulders looked heavier than they had in the morning. Her eyes were the same.
Brann's face was calm, but his mouth was set the way it had been at the bridge, when he had wanted to bleed instead of bend.
The band's attention tightened without words.
Fenn drifted closer.
Garr straightened from where he had been sitting.
Sella appeared at the edge of firelight like she had been there the whole time.
The captain stopped by the lead cart and swept her gaze over the outer lane once, quick and sharp, like counting risks by instinct.
Her gaze brushed Eryk.
It did not linger.
Then she looked at Harl.
"Up," she said.
Harl lifted both hands.
"I am awake," he replied.
"More awake," the captain said.
Harl sighed and pushed himself to his feet like it was an insult to his bones.
Brann stepped up onto a cart wheel hub so he could be seen without shouting.
"We move before dawn," he said.
A low murmur went through the band.
Brann lifted one hand, stilling it.
"Company job," he continued. "Escort, three days. River road and then inland. We get paid at the far end."
Harl muttered, "If the far end exists."
Brann ignored him.
"Rules," Brann said. "We do not drink in the lanes. We do not fight in the lanes. We do not touch what is not ours, even if it is begging to be touched."
His eyes swept the outer ring.
"And if you are not ours," Brann added, voice hardening a fraction, "you stay out of our way."
The words were aimed outward, but Eryk felt them land on his skin anyway.
The captain stepped down and walked to Eryk's cart wheel.
Eryk rose before she could tell him to.
His ankle flared. He kept his face still.
The captain looked at his wrap.
At the new cord tied across it.
Her eyes went to Fenn and back.
"You took help," she said.
Eryk did not know how to answer.
"It was offered," he said.
The captain studied him for a beat longer.
"Good," she said.
Then she leaned in a fraction, voice low enough that only he would hear.
"This camp will eat you if you make yourself easy," she said. "Our band will drop you if you make yourself costly. Find the line between."
Eryk swallowed.
"How."
The captain's expression did not soften.
"You watch," she said. "You learn. You make yourself useful before you are asked."
She straightened.
"And you stop staring at other people's hunger like it belongs to you," she added, plain as a fact. "It will pull you into mistakes."
Heat climbed Eryk's neck.
He looked down.
"Yes," he said.
The captain turned away, and Eryk realized that had been mercy.
Mercy with rules.
Brann called again.
"Sleep in turns," he said. "Fenn, first watch. Garr, second. Harl, stop complaining and keep the pot tied."
Harl opened his mouth.
Brann looked at him.
Harl closed it again.
A ripple of amusement moved through the band, brief and human, then gone.
Eryk watched it and felt something in his chest loosen. Not safety. Not belonging. Just the smallest easing, like a strap adjusted one notch so it stopped cutting.
He sat back down.
The fish-charm man sat a few carts away, still staring at the dirt.
Eryk kept his eyes on his own hands.
He did not sleep.
He did not speak.
He waited for dawn.
Because dawn meant movement.
And movement meant you had not been decided yet.