Cole found the body before he found Rustline.
It lay just off the road, where the land dipped enough to pretend it was offering cover. The man had been placed there, not dumped. On his back. Hands folded wrong at the chest, fingers stiff like they'd tried to hold on to something that no longer counted as theirs.
Middle-aged. Gray threaded through beard and hair. The same man from the river.
Cole stopped the mule and dismounted without hurry.
Dusty reached the body first. Sniffed. Stilled. Sat.
The man's eyes were open.
Not staring.
Empty.
No blood. No violence worth naming. Just the look of someone whose argument with the world had ended without resolution.
Cole crouched and checked the throat, the chest, the wrists. No marks. No sign of struggle. No House-brand burns. No Dealer cutwork.
Clean.
Too clean.
The hide was gone.
That fact landed heavier than the body.
Cole scanned the ground. Tracks moved away from the place—one set lighter, careful, angled east. No drag marks. No second body.
The woman had walked away.
Alive.
That narrowed things.
Cole closed the man's eyes with two fingers. Not ceremony. Just maintenance. Then he stood and looked toward Rustline's distant shape, half-hidden by heat shimmer and bad air.
Something had changed.
Not in the land.
In the math.
He remounted and rode on.
Rustline came up slow, the way cities always did now. No walls worth trusting. No banners. Just layered wreckage and people who had decided this was where motion paused long enough to matter.
Smoke drifted. Not cooking smoke. Industrial. Burning fuel someone shouldn't have had access to.
Cole moved through the outskirts without drawing attention. The hide's absence made his pack lighter, but the weight stayed with him anyway.
He found her near the old rail spur.
Not hiding.
Not waiting.
Standing.
The woman wore a long coat now, heavier than before. Dark fabric, stitched with care. Cole knew what he was seeing before he reached her.
A strip of hide ran along the inside seam.
Bear hide.
Mutated.
Scarred.
Worked into the coat like reinforcement, not decoration.
She turned as he approached. Didn't reach for her rifle. Didn't flinch. Her eyes were steady in a way they hadn't been at the river.
She saw him.
"Ranger," she said.
Cole stopped ten paces out.
"Where's the man," he asked.
She didn't pretend not to know.
"Dead," she said. "Yesterday morning."
"How."
She shrugged. "Cold. Shock. Something else. He laid down and didn't get back up."
Cole watched her face. No guilt. No pride. Just fact.
"And the hide," he said.
She touched the seam of her coat once, unconscious.
"It worked," she said.
Cole's jaw tightened.
"How."
She considered that. Thought mattered now. He could see it.
"The storm came," she said. "Same one that hit you, I think. Wrong time. Wrong place. We were caught out in it."
"You lived," Cole said.
"Yes."
"He didn't."
"No."
Silence stretched.
"You used it," Cole said.
She nodded. "He didn't want to. Said it was too much. Said it felt wrong. Like cheating."
"And you," Cole said.
"I wanted to live."
That was pure truth, stripped of apology.
Cole studied her. She stood straighter than before. Less weight in her shoulders. More certainty in her spine.
"What did it cost," he asked.
Her mouth tightened.
"Not what it cost him," she said. "What it cost me."
"And that was."
She hesitated.
"I don't sleep the same," she said. "The cold doesn't feel like cold anymore. It feels… selective."
Cole felt the Ace shift against his ribs.
"You played," he said.
She didn't deny it.
"Not like you," she said. "Not formally. But the House noticed. The storm followed the hide. The hide followed me. And when I chose to keep it—really keep it—it counted."
Cole exhaled.
"You used the hide as value," he said.
"Yes."
"And the man."
She looked past him, toward the city.
"He was part of the exchange," she said. "He just didn't know it."
Cole's gaze hardened.
"That's not how trades work."
She met his eyes, unblinking.
"That's how they end."
The House did not interrupt.
That was confirmation enough.
Cole stepped closer. Ten to five paces.
"You knew it was worth more than food," he said.
"I knew it was worth more than we were paying," she corrected. "I didn't know how much."
"And now."
She smiled, small and sharp. "Now I know it was enough to survive a storm meant to kill."
The logic was brutal. Unsentimental. Exact.
"What are you now," Cole asked.
She thought about that longer than he expected.
"Registered," she said finally. "Not named. Not ranked. But seen."
"By the House."
"Yes."
"And by others," she added. "That matters more."
Cole followed her gaze.
Across the spur, under a half-collapsed signal tower, a table stood. Not active. Not glowing. But real.
"You're going to play again," Cole said.
She didn't answer right away.
"I don't know," she said. "But I could."
"That's how it starts," Cole said.
She nodded. "That's what I figured."
Silence again.
The city breathed around them—voices, metal, deals happening that pretended they weren't wagers.
Cole looked at the strip of hide sewn into her coat.
"You know it'll keep costing you," he said.
"I know," she replied. "Everything worth having does."
That was the danger of Rand's clarity: no room for innocence.
Cole turned slightly, angling away from the table, from her.
"The man," he said. "He didn't deserve that."
"No," she agreed. "But he benefited from the trade longer than he would have without it."
Cole's voice dropped.
"You're justifying."
She didn't flinch.
"I'm accounting."
That word again.
Cole felt the pull of Rustline sharpen, like the city approved of what it was hearing.
"You should leave," he said.
"Why."
"Because the House won't stop at noticing you," he said. "And because the hide doesn't belong to you. It never did."
She touched the seam again.
"It belonged to the bear," she said. "Then it belonged to you. Then it belonged to the storm. Now it belongs to me."
Cole stepped closer, until Dusty rose and stood between them without instruction.
The woman looked down at the dog.
"He's still wrong," she said softly.
"Careful," Cole said.
She looked back up. "I don't mean broken. I mean impossible. The House watches him like it watches loaded dice."
Cole didn't deny it.
"Where did the rest of the hide go," he asked.
Her eyes flicked east.
"I sold pieces," she said. "Not to everyone. Just to people who needed them more than they could afford."
"And what did you take," Cole asked.
She hesitated.
"Information," she said. "Protection. A promise."
Cole closed his eyes for a count of one.
The House stayed silent.
That was worse than judgment.
"You've turned it into currency," Cole said.
"Yes."
"That will end badly."
She nodded. "Probably."
"Soon."
"Maybe."
Cole opened his eyes.
"You don't understand what you're carrying," he said.
"I understand exactly," she replied. "It's leverage. Against weather. Against hunger. Against men who pretend the world owes them survival."
Cole's voice hardened.
"And against you."
She met that without blinking.
"If that's the cost," she said, "then it's a fair one."
There it was.
The difference between them.
Cole believed survival was an obligation earned through clarity and restraint.
She believed survival justified its own methods.
Rand would have split them cleanly along that fault line.
The House loved fault lines.
Cole stepped back.
"Your man is dead," he said. "The hide is gone in pieces. The storm followed it. And the House noticed your choice."
"Yes."
"That's the end of our exchange," Cole said.
She studied him.
"No," she said. "It's the middle."
He turned to leave.
Behind him, she spoke once more.
"You wished for it," she said.
Cole stopped.
Not turned.
Just stopped.
"In the storm," she continued. "You wished you still had the hide. The House heard that. I felt it. Like a pull."
Cole's hand tightened on the reins.
"You don't know what you're saying," he said.
"I know enough," she replied. "The hide answers to want now. Not ownership."
Cole mounted.
Dusty leapt up behind him.
He looked back at her once.
"If you keep playing," he said, "you'll lose something you don't know how to name yet."
She smiled. "So will you."
Cole rode on.
Behind him, Rustline's tables waited.
Ahead of him, the road narrowed.
And somewhere between wish and consequence, the House smiled without expression, satisfied that value—once recognized—never truly changed hands.