Chapter 48: Apparently Protection Had Opening Hours

Dove read the form again, slowly enough to make Garran wait. It said she had chosen to leave the Warren, which was impressive considering she had chosen dinner and an early night. Apparently, management had taken the liberty of improving her plans.

"I’m not signing that," she said. "If you want to throw me out, you’re going to have to put your own name on it."

Garran took the page away without answering. She barely slept afterward. Every set of footsteps sounded like somebody approaching her tarp, and the written order in her bag felt terribly thin for something that was supposed to keep her safe.

Morning brought four zipper pulls and Sprout’s cheerful announcement of Day Twenty-One. Selling three would pay twelve normal coins. Six new Favor Coins would unlock hand warmers priced at sixteen normal coins. She accepted with twelve normal and forty-one Favor, then asked it to keep the celebration inside its own head.

She washed with her daily pool water behind the latched tarp, her body seated while her mind fetched it. Her fingers no longer went stiff as quickly in the morning cold. Today she wanted that small gain more than prettier fur, though she still brushed the tail because being frightened did not mean she had to look like a dropped mop.

When Garran returned, two guards came with him. He held a fresh order bearing his signature, and this one said exactly what she had asked him to admit.

"You’re leaving," he said. "Your place here is suspended until you identify the source of your goods. Pack what you can carry."

For a moment she heard the hall continuing around them, bowls knocking against wood and somebody complaining about breakfast. The world should have stopped for a sentence like that. Instead, a man reached past another for salt.

Dove set Ash’s order beside Garran’s. "He told you I kept my shelter. You signed it."

"Ash isn’t here. I won’t risk the settlement because you enjoy keeping secrets."

"Then write that you overruled him. Don’t hide behind my signature because you’re too chickenshit to use yours."

The keeper heard her from his bench and came over. He read both pages, then asked Garran whether he understood what weather was coming. His voice carried far enough that the nearest workers put their food down.

"She stays until Ash comes back," the keeper said. "There are rooms full of supplies. Nobody needs her space badly enough to put a female outside."

Varek arrived with his coat half fastened, on his way to the south post. He stopped beside the keeper and read the new order. "This wasn’t what we agreed. Withdraw it."

Garran looked between them. "Will you join her? You can give up your posts and take responsibility for whatever she’s bringing in. Shall I write both names beneath hers?"

The keeper’s mouth shut. Varek glanced at the two guards, then toward the men waiting for their duty assignments. Dove watched him choose something and hated that she could not tell what it was.

"Don’t touch her," Varek told the guards. Then he left through the north work passage at a run, without explaining where he was going. The keeper remained beside the stall, hands hanging uselessly at his sides.

Dove had wanted someone to keep arguing. She understood people had lives to protect, and understanding did absolutely fuck all for the hurt.

She asked for Garran’s signed page, wrote that she had refused to leave, and made the keeper witness her note. Then she closed the tarp and packed. Her mind entered the space in short trips while her body stayed seated behind the latch. Two blankets, food, clothes, papers, personal supplies, and owned stock disappeared from the little home she had made.

She could not pull the fitted shelves out of the wall. The gate would have to stay. She folded the canvas cover and took that because Thorne had given it to her, and she refused to leave every good thing behind merely because it was attached to a bad morning.

The four zipper pulls went into their separate wrapping. She dressed in the issued wool shirt, lined trousers, heavy coat, scarf, gloves, and boots. Her thermal wrap waited in storage. Nothing about this required her to be clever enough to survive forever. She needed to get through the next hour.

The keeper walked beside her through the trading hall. "I’ll watch the things you can’t take," he said quietly.

"Write them down," Dove answered. She could not manage thank you yet. He had stayed, and she was leaving, and she needed a minute before being fair about that.

At the loading bay, the two guards stopped beneath the roof. The road lay just beyond the vehicle gate, white between piled snowbanks. A low concrete barrier ran along the outside, and a broken delivery sign hung above its narrow covered strip.

Garran pointed past the gate. "You can return when you’re prepared to cooperate."

"I was cooperating. You wanted obedience. Different product, unfortunately out of stock."

One guard stared at the ground. The other opened the small side door, and Dove crossed because she would not give Garran the chance to have her dragged. The keeper protested again, but the deputy ordered the door closed.

She turned at the sound of the bolt. She was outside the Warren’s own loading gate, not at another building and not waiting for an inspection. Garran had removed her shelter and shut himself safely inside it.

The covered strip beside the concrete barrier blocked part of the wind. Dove sat there, fetched her thermal wrap, and tucked it around her legs while keeping the gate in sight. A guard could see her from the upper slit. She made him repeat her demand for Varek and Thorne, then waited without pretending a demand was a promise.

Snow blew across the road in a hard white sheet. Behind the closed door, someone shouted her name, and this time the voice was furious enough to carry through the steel.