For a moment nobody spoke. Only Lilt shifted her broad wings against the gravel, the leather of her harness creaking once in the cold.
“You can give us the first,” Ashaun repeated flatly. “Meaning you won’t give us the second.”
“Meaning I won’t lie to you while we’re sharing a windbreak,” Kiv answered, keeping his voice level. He tapped the breast of his coat, where a small flat disk of stamped temple brass rode on a leather thong inside his wool lining. “I carry a handler’s way-token, same as every pack master in the order. Edris gave me my wolves when the frontier kennels were ordered to cull them after the border truce. I told him at the observatory that forcing the seed with the ring was wrong, and I meant it. Wait—hear me out, Ashaun.”
Ashaun’s right hand had tightened on her dagger hilt again. “I’m hearing a man say he’s still Edris’s hound.”
“I’m telling you I haven’t settled what Edris is doing yet,” Kiv said plainly. “He told me before I left the salt fork that the bounty hunters were an emergency containment measure, and that his own column is coming to shelter the creature from mercenary syndicates and border commanders. Maybe he’s wrong. Osha thinks he is. You know he is. But I’ve eaten the order’s bread for nineteen years, and I don’t break my word to a man behind his back any more than I’ll give you a false oath tonight to buy a warm…
