Chapter 176: Effectively stranded
Chapter 176: Effectively stranded
Maerin’s hand moved toward the knife at her belt, but she did not draw it.
Rohan barely noticed.
"No," he muttered.
The word came out low.
He turned away from the table and paced three steps before stopping because the room was too small and his body hurt too much.
"No, that’s..."
He dragged a hand over his face, then winced when the bandage tugged at his burned palm.
Of course there was no ship.
Of course there was no easy way off.
He had known that the moment Maerin said crashed. Maybe even before that. The settlement itself had told him the truth. If Veyrhold possessed a working vessel capable of leaving this planet, no one would still be here scraping ash from corners and fighting ember-mouthed monsters outside the walls.
They would have left.
Anyone would have left.
This was not an isolated village choosing to remain in a harsh homeland. This was a cage built from accident, distance, and exploitation.
Rohan laughed once, without humour.
Maerin watched him carefully.
"You understand quickly."
"Because it’s obvious," he said, voice tightening. "There’s no ship. There can’t be. If there was, you wouldn’t be here. None of you would be here."
"Some would remain."
"Would they?"
Her silence answered better than words.
Rohan pressed his hands against the edge of the table and bowed his head.
A bitter heat rose in his chest, and for one reckless second he wanted to activate Molten Assimilation just to feel something answer him. The ash in the building was controlled, cleaned, domesticated. He could sense it faintly in the floor basin outside, in jars along the wall, in the residue clinging to his clothes despite the washing.
He forced the impulse down.
Getting angry in a room full of ash after being specifically warned not to use ash-working would be deeply stupid.
Still, the frustration remained.
He had escaped the fog valley. Crossed the slab field. Found human tracks. Reached walls. Received a quest promising local knowledge.
And the knowledge was this:
He was on a death world with one human settlement and no escape route.
"Great," Rohan said softly. "That’s just fantastic."
Maerin’s expression remained stern, but something in her eyes shifted.
Not pity.
Rohan would have hated pity.
Recognition, maybe.
The look of someone who had seen this realisation before.
"There is a way off-world," she said.
Rohan went still.
He lifted his head slowly.
Maerin did not look away.
"What?"
"There is a way. Not ours. Not easy. But it exists."
Hope returned so abruptly that he distrusted it.
"What way?"
"A merchant ship enters this system every two years."
Rohan stared.
The words took a moment to settle.
A merchant ship.
Every two years.
That was not good news exactly, but it was not nothing. Not nothing was suddenly valuable.
"When?" he asked.
"Seven months from now."
Seven months.
Rohan almost smiled.
Then he saw Maerin’s face.
The hope cooled.
"What’s the catch?"
"The merchants."
Rohan sat back down slowly.
Maerin’s mouth twisted with faint contempt.
"They come from the civilised lanes. They bring medicine, machine parts, seed cultures, water filters, cloth, metals we cannot refine here, and a thousand small things Veyrhold cannot make. In exchange, they take what Cael Athis offers."
"Resources."
"Yes."
"What kind?"
"Ashglass. Storm-silver. Skarn cores. Furnace salts. Deep blackstone. Some plants that grow near the hot vents. Things rare enough elsewhere that merchants will cross bad space to buy them."
"At fair prices?"
Maerin gave him a flat look.
Rohan nodded.
"Right. Stupid question."
"They pay what they choose," she said. "They sell what we need at prices we cannot refuse. They call it partnership."
"And passage off-world?"
"Exorbitant."
The translation effect chose that word cleanly.
Exorbitant.
Rohan leaned back, anger sharpening again.
"How much?"
"For one person? More than most families earn in ten years."
His jaw tightened.
"And they make it difficult beyond the price."
Maerin’s eyes narrowed slightly.
"You guessed that too."
"It’s what I would do if I were greedy and wanted to keep the settlement producing resources."
There was a silence.
Then Maerin said, "Yes."
The single word contained centuries of resentment.
Rohan looked toward the shelves of old records, the map, the jars of ash, the salvaged ship metal preserved like a relic.
"They don’t want people leaving."
"No."
"Because if everyone leaves, nobody farms the resources."
"Yes."
"And if nobody farms the resources, they lose access to goods they’re buying below market."
Maerin’s expression went very still.
"That is exactly it."
Rohan felt his hands curl into fists on the table.
Something about the situation made him angrier than the monsters had.
The skarn were awful, but they were honest in their awfulness. They hunted because they were predators. The ash storms killed because they were storms. The planet was hostile because it was hostile.
But merchants landing every two years, smiling, selling necessities to trapped people at inflated prices while buying their labour cheap and making escape nearly impossible?
That was not nature.
That was a business model.
And somehow, that made it worse.
"They pretend to be friendly," Maerin said. "They bring sweets for children. Bright cloth. Cheap toys. They drink in our hall and praise our endurance. They call us brave. Then they count our desperation and name their price."
Rohan’s voice came out cold.
"Parasites."
Maerin studied him.
"Most outsiders tell us we should be grateful."
"Most outsiders sound like idiots."
That did earn the faintest change in her expression.
Not a smile.
Close enough to one that Rohan noticed.
"The merchants would disagree."
"I’m sure they would charge me for the privilege."
This time, Maerin actually huffed.
The sound was brief and dry, but human.
It made the room feel slightly less like an interrogation chamber.
Rohan looked at the map again.
"Seven months," he said.
"Yes."
"And if someone can pay?"
"They may buy passage to the inner lanes."
"May."
"The captain chooses who boards."
"Even after payment?"
"Especially after payment."
Rohan closed his eyes for a moment.
Of course.
Of course there was a second gate after the first. A price, then permission. Money, then politics. It would have been too simple otherwise.