The hunters stopped outside the settlement’s marked boundary. Their leader called for the people authorized to speak, then held up a folded order whose seal was visible from the entrance.
Eli could see five people behind her and could not tell how many waited beyond the turn. Their equipment was suited to a search in narrow passages. Nobody had raised a weapon. That restraint mattered, and so did the fact that they had arrived with enough force to make refusing them consequential.
The envoy went forward with two settlement leaders. Sera joined them carrying no packet except the declaration under which the team had already fled. An independent observer stood near the boundary marker, having come by the public approach after the scout warning. The settlement did not have to invent its own witness out of someone too frightened to refuse.
The hunters’ leader named her command and stated the order’s purpose: detention of listed people, securing testimony and equipment relevant to dangerous interference with protected infrastructure, and investigation of an unauthorized junction disturbance. She demanded entry.
“Read the document,” the envoy said.
“I have explained it.”
“You have explained your account of it. We need the text.”
The leader passed a copy across the boundary without crossing herself. Sera and the envoy read it beside the observer. Eli remained several steps back, where his presence could not be mistaken for the settlement’s whole answer.
