By dusk, Dayakan had decided not to like them.
Vincent respected that.
Open dislike was cleaner than noble hospitality.
The camp had shifted all afternoon around the fact of his continued breathing. Hunters came and went. Snares were checked. Meat was cut and smoked. Children disappeared before dark as if taught by instinct to let adults keep the dangerous hours for themselves. No one asked Vincent to help. No one offered him rest either.
He sat near the Shaman's lean-to, watching the tribe do what tribes did best—turn survival into routine and routine into judgment.
Julia remained with the women near the second fire.
Not trapped.
Positioned.
That difference mattered more here than chains.
She had spent half the day grinding herbs, stripping hide, sorting cord, and answering questions she could not possibly win. The older women had not been openly cruel. They had simply made every task a test and every silence a reminder that she did not belong to this fire.
Serya had helped by making it worse.
Every correction from her came a little too quickly. Every glance lingered a little too long. Every question was shaped like a trap.
Julia had survived all of it with that same straight-backed stillness Vincent was beginning to recognize as her version of baring teeth.
That was why the evening broke when it did.
A clay bowl shattered.
Not loudly enough to startle the whole camp.
Loudly enough to make every nearby hand stop moving.
Vincent looked up at once.
Julia stood near the herb stones, breathing controlled but sharp, fragments of blackened clay around her boots. Across from her, Serya stood with her arms folded and contempt sitting openly in her face like she had grown tired of pretending patience was possible.
One of the older women clicked her tongue and muttered something in Dayakan speech.
Serya answered in common, clearly for Vincent and Julia to hear.
"If a hand shakes that much, it should not touch medicine."
Julia's chin lifted.
"It slipped."
"No," Serya said. "You slipped."
Julia's eyes hardened.
Good. Better fuel.
Around them, the women fell silent in the specific way people fell silent when they expected something entertaining and regrettable to happen soon.
Vincent didn't rise.
Not yet.
This was not his field unless it became necessary.
The Shaman, beside him, kept sorting dried leaves into two separate cloth piles as though broken bowls ranked beneath weather.
"You expected this," Vincent said.
"Yes."
"And you're letting it happen."
"Yes."
That tracked.
Useful tribe. Practical pressure. Social hierarchy through controlled sparks.
Across camp, Taliah had looked up from a hide map and made no move to intervene.
Also tracked.
Julia spoke first.
"If you have a point, make it directly."
Serya's mouth curved without warmth.
"I thought I had." She took one step closer. "You use that title every time you speak to him like it changes the ground under your feet."
Several nearby heads turned toward Julia.
There.
That had been the real problem.
A word from a world of walls, inheritance, and people who expected obedience from those born closer to dirt.
Julia did not look away.
"It is his title."
Serya laughed once.
Short.
Disbelieving.
"In this forest?"
"In any forest."
That landed harder than the bowl.
The older women did not hiss or scold. They watched.
Let the younger ones strike the truth against each other and see which edge held.
Serya stepped closer again. "Then your mouth is still living in a dead house."
Julia took one step forward to meet her.
"And yours is too eager to spit on things it doesn't understand."
Good, Vincent thought.
Bad.
Good because Julia was no longer absorbing pressure passively.
Bad because Serya had exactly the kind of temper that welcomed public challenge as permission.
Ragan, standing at the far side of camp with two younger hunters, looked up and exhaled through his nose.
He had seen this shape before.
Taliah rose.
Not to stop it.
To witness it properly.
Of course.
Serya's hand dropped to the knife at her belt.
Julia's did not.
She had no belt knife now. Dayakan had not been foolish enough to leave one on her after the river. But she did rise onto the balls of her feet slightly, weight balanced, shoulders square.
Vincent noticed at once.
She had learned where Serya's first cut would likely come from.
Good.
Someone in the women's circle said a short phrase in Dayakan speech. A few others shifted back, clearing a rough ring by the second fire.
There it was.
The Shaman finally looked up.
"Now," he said mildly, "it becomes useful."
Vincent looked at him. "To who?"
The old man's eyes settled on the growing ring around the women.
"That depends who loses with grace."
Julia and Serya stepped into the cleared space.
No one announced rules.
They didn't need to.
Everyone else already knew them.
Julia, however, did not.
That was the first disadvantage.
Taliah approached the ring and stopped at its edge.
She did not raise her voice.
Still, the entire camp heard her when she said, "No blades."
One of the older women tossed a short length of wrapped training wood into the ring.
Serya caught it one-handed.
A second was thrown to Julia.
She caught it too.
Good.
If she had fumbled, the night would have gone uglier faster.
Serya rolled her shoulder once, relaxed and ugly in her confidence.
"Yield when the ground says you should," she said.
Julia tested the weight of the wooden baton and replied, "If I need advice on the ground, I'll ask someone who stops kissing it after every argument."
A few hunters coughed laughter into their fists.
Serya's expression sharpened.
Vincent almost sighed.
Excellent line.
Terrible timing.
Taliah stepped back.
That meant begin.
Serya moved first.
Fast.
No warning flourish, no circling, no noble courtesy. She came straight in with a diagonal strike meant to test Julia's guard and pride at the same time.
Julia blocked.
The impact cracked wood against wood and drove Julia back half a step.
Good read.
Bad recoil.
Serya saw it too and pressed immediately.
Second strike, lower.
Third, high feint into body hit.
Julia caught the first two, nearly missed the third, and absorbed the body blow on her upper arm with a hard hiss.
Dayakan fighting, Vincent thought. Efficient. No wasted beauty.
Julia reset her stance and changed her grip.
Good.
Adapt.
Serya smiled without kindness and attacked again, this time with more rhythm, forcing Julia to block on the move rather than from planted feet.
Left.
High.
Shoulder.
Hip.
Throat line.
Julia gave ground, but not cleanly. Twice her feet crossed too close and Serya's baton clipped her ribs. Once the strike caught her thigh and nearly folded the leg.
Still she stayed up.
Still she watched.
That mattered.
Serya's style assumed superiority would carry the pace.
Julia's did not need superiority.
Only patience and one mistake.
Vincent saw the moment Julia saw it too.
Serya overcommitted on a right-side sweep, expecting retreat.
Julia stepped in instead.
Her baton jammed under Serya's arm rather than blocking the strike outright, trapped the movement for one heartbeat, then drove sharply into the side of Serya's ribs.
Real contact.
The camp reacted—not with cheers, but with a sharper inhale around the ring.
Serya's eyes flashed with shock first.
Then fury.
She broke the bind hard and came back twice as fast.
Now the contest stopped being clean.
Julia took a hit across the shoulder. Another across the back of her wrist. Her fingers nearly loosened on the baton but did not. She ducked a strike by instinct rather than planning and answered with a short jab to Serya's sternum that knocked breath from her for a single beat.
Ragan muttered something under his breath that sounded uncomfortably like approval.
Taliah remained still.
Good mother, Vincent thought. Cruel enough to let correction happen in public. Wise enough not to interfere too early.
Serya attacked again.
Julia was tiring.
That was becoming obvious now.
Not because she slowed dramatically, but because her recoveries lengthened by fractions. Her shoulders carried the work a little higher. Her left foot dragged just enough in the dirt to betray the strain.
Serya saw it.
Of course she did.
The next sequence was brutal.
One hard strike to collapse the guard.
Second to the thigh.
Third feint high—
then sudden pivot.
Instead of going for Julia's shoulder again, Serya swept low at her supporting leg.
Julia's balance vanished.
She hit the ground on one knee.
The ring tightened.
Serya raised the baton for what should have been the finishing strike.
Julia looked up.
Not panicked.
Annoyed.
She let the baton fall—
then shifted just enough at the last instant that Serya's blow struck dirt instead of skull.
And before Serya could recover, Julia drove her own baton straight into the inside of Serya's front ankle.
A dirty hit.
A smart one.
Serya's footing broke.
She stumbled forward—
and Julia rose under her, slamming a shoulder into Serya's chest and taking both of them to the ground in a tangle of dust, wood, and furious breathing.
No one moved for one impossible second.
Then Taliah said, "Enough."
The word hit like a thrown knife.
Everything stopped.
Serya froze on one elbow, hair half loose, dust across her cheek, one hand still braced to shove Julia off and continue badly.
Julia froze too, chest heaving, baton clenched so hard her knuckles had gone white.
Taliah stepped into the ring.
"Both of you are finished."
Serya's jaw tightened. "She—"
Taliah looked at her daughter once.
The rest of the sentence died.
Good.
That meant authority here was real, not decorative.
Julia released the baton first and sat back on her heels. Smart again. Yield the posture, not the dignity.
Serya stood next. Slower. Angrier.
One of the older women tossed Julia a cloth. Another handed Serya water without sympathy.
No one praised either of them.
This was not a performance for applause.
It was an answer to pressure.
Vincent filed the result carefully.
Julia had not won.
She had survived public testing and bloodied the one who meant to own the space.
In a camp like this, that mattered more than a clean victory.
Serya wiped dust from her jaw and looked at Julia with a different expression now.
Still hostile.
But no longer dismissive.
Good.
The first useful shift.
Taliah turned from the ring and walked straight toward Vincent and the Shaman as the camp resumed its motion around the disturbance.
"Now?" Vincent asked quietly.
The Shaman nodded once. "Now."
Taliah stopped before them, gaze passing over Vincent, the gauntlet, then briefly to Julia where one older woman was binding the bruise already rising on her wrist.
"She stood," Taliah said.
Vincent knew she did not mean only physically.
"Yes."
Taliah's attention returned to him.
"Can you?"
The question had two meanings.
Deliberately.
Vincent answered both anyway.
"Yes."
The Shaman made a small sound that might have been disapproval at how quickly he said it.
Taliah ignored him.
"We test again tomorrow," she said.
Serya, still close enough to hear, snapped her head up at once. "Mother."
Taliah continued over her.
"Not on a bowl. Not on a corpse."
There it was.
The next line.
The one Vincent had known was coming since the camp first revealed what it feared.
The Shaman rose more slowly this time, like a man standing up to stop something heavy from rolling downhill.
"No."
Taliah looked at him. "You said the thing worked."
"I said it fed."
"Same direction."
"No," the old man said. "Only the impatient think that."
Good.
Sharper split now.
Taliah folded her arms. "We have a boy whose wound keeps blackening at the edges. We cut rot away twice. It returns twice. If the gauntlet can draw taint from dead matter and corrupted beasts—"
"It nearly destabilized him from a bowl," the Shaman cut in. "And the bowl did not scream, bleed, or die in his hands."
That quieted more than Taliah.
Several nearby hunters lowered their eyes. So there really was a specific patient, not a hypothetical. Good to know. Worse to hear.
Taliah's voice stayed level. "Then we test under control."
The Shaman barked a humorless laugh.
"Control is a word people use when they want danger to feel polite."
Vincent listened without interrupting.
Julia, now at the edge of the ring again with one arm bruised and dirt still on her sleeve, looked from one speaker to the other and understood enough of the shape to stop caring about the ache in her own body.
Serya did too.
Of course she did.
Her face had gone hard in a different way now.
Not personal anger.
Fear with a target.
She pointed at Vincent's left hand.
"You want to put that thing on one of ours?"
Taliah's jaw shifted.
Not yes.
Not no.
The possibility.
Vincent answered first, because letting the tribe imagine silence as confidence would be stupid.
"I don't know what happens if it touches living taint," he said.
The Shaman nodded once as if rewarding the sentence for existing.
Taliah said, "Then tomorrow we begin finding out."
Julia took one step forward before she could stop herself. "On a child?"
The whole camp heard that.
Dangerous.
Necessary.
Taliah's eyes cut to her.
"On one of mine," she said.
More dangerous, actually.
Because now the decision was owned.
The Shaman exhaled through his nose. "I said no."
"And I said not yet," Taliah replied. "Tonight you watch him. Tomorrow we decide if your caution still costs less than my delay."
There.
That was leadership in a place like this.
No pretty moral pose. Just cost comparison under a dying tree line.
The Shaman went still in the way older men went still when anger had become too disciplined to need motion.
He looked at Vincent.
"As if the choice is yours too," the old man said quietly. "Would you put that hand on living flesh, not knowing whether it drinks sickness… or simply chooses a new home?"
The camp listened.
Good.
Let them.
Vincent looked at the gauntlet.
At the dark-blue scales fused to his arm.
At the gem pulsing faintly like a patient appetite.
Then at Julia, who stood bruised, filthy, and still alert enough to look more worried about where this answer might take him than about what Dayakan had just done to her.
Then at Taliah.
Then at the Shaman.
Finally he said, "If I do it, we do it with rules."
Interesting silence followed that.
Taliah's eyes narrowed. "You think you set terms here?"
"No," Vincent said. "I think if I become your tool, I should at least know what hand is holding the handle."
That almost made Ragan smile.
Almost.
The Shaman, however, looked grimly unsurprised.
Taliah studied Vincent for a long second.
Then she said, "Good."
"Then survive the night," she said. "Tomorrow you tell me your rules. And I tell you whether Dayakan has the patience to hear them."
She turned away.
Conversation over for her.
The camp released a breath it had been pretending not to hold.
Serya watched Julia once more before moving back toward the women's fire, no victory in her posture now, only thought sharpened by unresolved anger.
Julia crossed toward Vincent instead, stopped two paces short because camp etiquette still mattered, and said under her breath, "You shouldn't do it."
Vincent looked at the bruise rising on her wrist.
"You shouldn't have stayed standing either."
"That isn't the same."
"No," he said. "It isn't."
The Shaman bent to gather the herbs he had abandoned and said, without looking at either of them, "You are both becoming expensive."
Vincent almost smiled.
Around them, Dayakan returned to evening work. Fires were fed. Watches changed. Meat turned over smoke. Children vanished deeper into tents before full dark. Life resumed because life had to.
But the camp had changed shape around them again.
Julia was no longer merely the outsider servant.
Vincent was no longer merely the dangerous stranger with a cursed hand.
Now both of them had become part of tomorrow's argument.
And tomorrow's argument might put the gauntlet against living corruption for the first time.
The gem pulsed once.
Hungry.
Listening.
As if it, too, wanted to hear the rules before deciding whether to obey them.