The west pull came back wrong before sunset.
Leon was in the lower shelter lane with Toma and Pell when the first shout ran through the tier, not loud enough to count as panic, but sharp enough to cut through the Market's usual evening noise. Conversations stopped in pieces. A cook line went quiet. Someone above dropped a metal spoon and did not bother to pick it up.
Then the runners came into view.
Two Bone Runners were dragging a third between them, half carrying him by the arms while his boots scraped and caught on the boards. One of the men doing the dragging had blood all over both hands, not all his own. The third, the one being carried, had a torn side and a face gone gray under the grime. Another runner came behind them with a broken hook spear over one shoulder and a strip of salvage cloth tied tight around his upper arm where blood had soaked through and dried dark.
People moved out of the lane without being asked.
That told Leon more than the blood did.
Carrion Market made room for damage only when it mattered.
Pell was already on his feet. "That's west pull."
Toma pushed himself upright too fast, caught the support beside him, then steadied. "How do you know?"
"The hook line on the spear," Pell said. "And the gray salvage cloth. West teams mark the second knot with ash."
Leon was already moving.
Mara came in from the opposite lane at the same time, one hand still near the knife at her hip and her face set hard enough that it looked almost calm. She took in the scene once and asked, "Who?"
Pell pointed. "Bone Runners. West."
One of the dragging men shouted for a med line. Another voice answered from somewhere above. The wounded runner between them stumbled once and nearly folded in half. The man with the broken spear said something that Leon didn't catch, but the shape of it was enough. Not a report. A refusal to let himself fall before he finished speaking.
Then Orren appeared.
He came down the lane fast enough that people moved before he reached them. The easy rhythm Leon had seen in him before was gone. He looked sharper now, stripped down to function, the way some men did when the room stopped being social and started being expensive.
He took one look at the wounded team and then saw Leon standing there.
For one moment, his face gave nothing away.
Then he came straight over.
"You," Orren said.
It was not an accusation.
Not yet.
Leon stepped forward. "What happened?"
Orren's jaw tightened. "You saw the shape."
"Yes."
"Then come look at what it cost."
That landed harder than blame would have.
Behind Orren, the wounded runner with the torn side tried to speak and failed on blood. A medic from the upper lane dropped to one knee beside him and cut open the cloth binding with flat, efficient hands. The broken-spear runner shoved something into Orren's free hand before his own legs went out from under him.
A route marker.
Even from where he stood, Leon could see one of the burn lines had been cut across and altered again.
Mara stepped up on Leon's left. "We're going too."
Orren looked at Toma's leg, then at Mara, then at Pell.
Pell lifted one hand. "I know, I know. I look like a liability. It's one of my most exhausting qualities."
Orren ignored that and looked at Toma. "Can you move?"
Toma's answer came back at once. "Yes."
Mara glanced at him. "That wasn't the question."
Toma said, "It's the only answer I'm giving."
For half a second, Orren seemed ready to argue.
Then the wounded runner on the floor seized the front of his coat and managed to rasp out a handful of words through blood and pain.
"Smoke," he said. "Wrong line... above the ribs... drove us down..."
His grip failed.
The medic shoved him flat and barked for more cloth.
Leon's mind caught on the word immediately.
Smoke.
Not signal from the Market.
Not in that direction.
Not above the west pull line.
Someone had either survived long enough to call from the field or wanted to shape what came next.
Orren looked at the route marker in his hand, then back at Leon.
"You're coming," he said. "Now."
That was not a request.
Leon nodded once.
They moved fast after that.
Mara turned only long enough to grab her spear from the shelter slot. Toma took the shorter hook weapon from the wall instead of his longer spear, probably because he knew the leg would fail faster if he tried to handle a full-length weapon on broken terrain. Pell vanished into the lane for fifteen seconds and came back with a narrow pack, a wrapped strip of dried meat, and a coil of thin salvage line over one shoulder.
Leon looked at him. "What was that?"
"Preparation," Pell said. "You should try it sometime."
They left Carrion Market through the west outer approach with Orren and two other Bone Runners already in front of them, the lower lanes parting to let them pass. Behind them the Market kept moving, but not normally. Heads turned. Voices dropped. Runners shifted direction. The place was already adjusting around the damage.
That, Leon thought, was another kind of wound.
By the time they reached the last outer rib and the broken ground beyond the Market's watched approaches, the light had thinned and stretched low across the stone.
Then Pell stopped and pointed.
Far to the west, above a broken line of black shelves and pale rib fragments, a thin line of smoke rose into the air.
Not accidental.
Not from camp.
Not from any sane cooking fire.
Too narrow.
Too clean.
Leon stared at it.
Orren did too, and the look on his face hardened further.
"That," Pell said quietly, "should not be there."
"No," Orren replied. "It shouldn't."
Leon watched the smoke drift once in the falling light and felt the whole shape of the problem tighten.
The west pull had not just been hit.
Something out there was still arranging the field.