The requisition order arrived with the first thaw, three weeks after Vire's report had presumably crossed whatever desk in the capital decided such things, and it took Marek exactly one reading to go pale.

"They've cut our grain allotment by a full third," he said, flat, dropping the paper onto the map table like it had personally offended him. "Cut the smithing coal entirely — we're expected to source our own now, apparently, from local trade, in a region with exactly one trading post and a garrison twice the size it needs to feed adequately. And they've reassigned two of our four scout companies to the southern line."

Vane read it himself, jaw tightening with each line. "This isn't austerity. This is a test."

*Or a punishment,* Eric said, quiet, private. *Vire's report came back modest. Maybe too modest, for a Chancellery that expected either a dramatic threat to contain or a dramatic asset to claim. This reads like someone deciding you're neither — just an inconvenience not worth the resources you've been getting.*

"Or," Marek said, grim, "someone wants to see how the Marshal with the mysterious battlefield spirit performs when he can't rely on full supply lines. A stress test, dressed up as budget policy."

Vane set the paper down carefully, the particular controlled stillness he wore whenever he was furious and refused to let it show. "Either way, the effect's the same. We do more with less, starting now. Marek, redraw the patrol rotations — I want the southern gap covered without stretching anyone past reasonable limits. Talwyn, quietly reach out to the trading post about coal, see what we can source before smithing grinds to a halt."

"And you?" Marek asked.

"I take the reduced scout coverage as an opportunity to see the new border myself. Personally." Vane's tone left no room for argument, though Eric felt the deliberate, careful evenness of it and recognized, immediately, the shape of a man choosing to make himself the solution to a problem rather than asking anyone else to absorb the cost.

*That's not necessary,* Eric said, the moment Marek had gone to see to the rotations. *You don't have to be the one covering every gap personally. That's exactly the old pattern, Vane. We talked about this.*

"It's not the old pattern. It's command." Vane's voice had gone flat in the particular way it did when he wanted a conversation to end before it properly started. "I have fewer scouts and a longer border. Someone has to cover the difference, and I'm the only one who can do it without risking a green recruit's life on unfamiliar ground."

*I'm not arguing the logic. I'm asking you to loop me in before you decide, instead of announcing it to Marek first and to me second.*

That landed harder than Eric intended, and he felt Vane's shoulders tense in a way that had nothing to do with the cold spring air. "I didn't realize command decisions required a formal briefing to my own bond."

*They don't require a briefing. They require you not to treat me like an afterthought when you're planning something that puts your body directly at risk.* Eric kept his tone level, though something sharper than usual was threading through it now. *That was the actual deal, Vane. Not just physical boundaries in combat. Being looped in before the plan, not informed of it after the fact like everyone else in this tent.*

Vane didn't answer immediately, jaw working, and Eric recognized the particular quality of the silence — not agreement, not quite defensiveness either, but the old instinct rising back to the surface despite four months of careful unlearning.

"I'll tell you next time," Vane said finally, which was not quite an apology and not quite a concession, and Eric let it go, for now, filing the exchange away as a small crack worth watching rather than a wound requiring immediate attention.

---

Talwyn returned from the trading post two days later with a mixed report and a face like a man who'd aged a year in the errand. "Coal's available, if barely, but the price has tripled since word spread the Chancellery cut our supply line. Someone's profiteering off the requisition order, or someone tipped the trading post off in advance that we'd be desperate enough to pay it." He set a small ledger on the table, tapping a column of figures with visible distaste. "I'd call it coincidence, if I still believed in those where this garrison's concerned."

"You don't," Vane said. It wasn't a question.

"No," Talwyn admitted. "I think whoever wants to see how you perform under pressure arranged for the pressure to be considerably worse than an ordinary austerity measure would produce. Petty, perhaps, compared to bonding-rite conspiracies and Institute specimens, but effective. Money is still money, Marshal, even out here."

*That fits the pattern,* Eric said, grim. *Vire's report gave them nothing dramatic to act on directly. So instead, they squeeze from angles that don't require an official justification — grain, coal, scout numbers. Death by a thousand budget cuts, engineered to look like ordinary Chancellery frugality.*

Vane relayed the thought aloud, and Talwyn's mouth thinned in unhappy agreement, setting the ledger down as though its figures had grown suddenly heavier in his hands. "If that's the game, Marshal, I'd recommend not giving them the satisfaction of visible strain. Whatever it costs to maintain the appearance of an unbothered garrison, it's worth paying."

"Understood." Vane's jaw was tight with the particular effort of a man calculating exactly how much more weight he intended to personally absorb rather than let the garrison feel it. "Keep working the coal problem. I'll handle the border coverage myself, starting with the southern gap Marek flagged this morning."

Talwyn gathered his ledger, pausing at the tent flap with the same careful hesitation he'd shown before delivering difficult news all season. "For what it's worth, Marshal — the men notice when you take the hardest postings on yourself rather than spreading the burden. Some of them find it inspiring. I confess I find it a little worrying, myself, given how thin you're already stretched even without cracked ribs or border patrols added to the tally."

"Noted," Vane said, in the particular tone that meant he had heard the concern and intended to ignore it entirely for now, and Talwyn, recognizing the futility of pressing further, simply nodded and let the tent flap fall shut behind him.

The border patrol went out three days later, a skeleton crew of six instead of the usual twelve, and Eric spent the ride with a low, persistent unease he couldn't entirely justify with data. The southern gap was quieter territory than the Abyssal basin proper, fewer rifts, less established Rift-Spawn activity — and yet something about the reduced numbers, the thinner supply packs, the visible fatigue already showing in men who should have had a full season's rest behind them, sat wrong in a way Eric's old clinical instincts recognized immediately.

They rode the border in wide, careful arcs, checking the boundary markers the southern rift activity had shifted over the winter, and Eric spent the daylight hours cataloguing the small signs of strain in a patrol running on two-thirds its usual strength — the way Dessa's voice had gone rougher than usual from covering double the usual watch calls, the way even the horses seemed to sense the thinner margin for error and startled more easily at shadows that wouldn't have troubled them a season ago.

"Rift traces here are old," Vane observed at the third marker, crouching to examine a patch of glass-sand that had crept further north than the maps recorded. "Nothing active. But the boundary's moved. Whoever redraws these maps in the capital hasn't been out here to see it."

*Add it to Talwyn's list of things to report,* Eric said. *Assuming anyone in the Chancellery still reads reports from this garrison as anything other than routine paperwork to file and forget.*

"They'll read it eventually. Usually right after something goes wrong that a timely report would have prevented." Vane's voice carried the particular weariness of a man who had watched this exact pattern play out more than once in eight years of command.

*This is how understaffed units start losing people,* he said, quiet, as they made camp the first night, well past the point Vane would normally have called a halt. *Not to a single dramatic disaster. To small accumulated exhaustion nobody flags until it's too late.*

"I'm aware," Vane said, shorter than usual, and Eric noted the particular stiffness in his shoulders as he unrolled his bedroll — not the ordinary ache of a long ride, something sharper.

*Your left side,* Eric said, sharpening his attention. *You've been favoring it since we broke for the midday water stop. What happened.*

"Nothing happened. Long ride on cold ground. Old bruise complaining."

*That's not what my instruments are telling me, and I don't have literal instruments, which means what I'm reading is coming directly from your own nervous system lying to both of us at once.* Eric let an edge of genuine concern sharpen his voice. *Show me.*

Vane hesitated — actually hesitated, which told Eric everything he needed to know before the shirt even came off — and when he finally pulled back the fabric, the bruising along his ribs was extensive, dark and spreading, clearly days old, clearly from an impact he'd never once mentioned.

*Vane.*

"It's fine. I took a fall off the ridge trail two days before the requisition order came in. Didn't think it was worth mentioning."

*Two days before.* Eric felt something cold and familiar settle through him — not quite anger, closer to the specific dread of a physician discovering a patient had been quietly deteriorating behind a wall of deliberate silence. *That's before the war council. Before you decided, without consulting me, to personally cover the entire southern border on reduced scout numbers. You've been riding four days with cracked ribs and said nothing.*

"They're not cracked. Just bruised."

*I'll be the judge of that, thank you, and given that I can feel the exact wrongness of your breathing every time you take a full breath, I'd wager at least one rib is cracked, possibly two.* Eric let the anger come through now, sharp and unmistakable, all the careful clinical calm burned away by something that felt, uncomfortably, like betrayal. *This is precisely the thing you promised me you'd stop doing. Not the injury — injuries happen, I've made my peace with that. The silence. Deciding on your own that your pain wasn't worth mentioning, the same way you decided, on your own, that covering this entire patrol personally wasn't worth discussing first.*

Vane's jaw was tight, some old defensive posture rising even as he visibly recognized the fairness of the accusation. "I didn't want you worrying on top of everything else the requisition cuts have already piled on us."

*That's not your decision to make unilaterally. We agreed — you agreed — that this isn't a solo operation anymore. That includes the parts where you're in pain and don't feel like admitting it.* Eric let the words land, deliberately, without softening them. *I'm not something you protect by hiding information from. I'm something you protect by trusting me with it, even when it's inconvenient, even when we're four days from camp with reduced numbers and a border neither of us fully trusts yet.*

The silence that followed was long, and colder than the spring night around them.

"You're right," Vane admitted finally, quiet, some of the old defensiveness draining out of him all at once. "I don't know why I still do it. Four months of choosing you, out loud, on purpose, and I still slip back into the same pattern the second something actually hurts."

*Old wounds don't heal on a schedule that's convenient for anyone.* Eric let his voice gentle, some of his own anger softening now that Vane had actually met the accusation honestly instead of deflecting it further. *I'm not asking you to be perfect at this. I'm asking you to keep choosing to try, the way you did in Ch.9, the way you did after the note we found tucked in Vire's quarters. Every time, not just the easy times.*

"Every time," Vane repeated, low, and reached for the small kit of bandages and salve Eric talked him through applying properly, wincing now that he'd stopped pretending the pain wasn't there. "I really did crack a rib, didn't I."

*At least one. We're binding it properly tonight, and you're not lifting anything heavier than a waterskin until it's healed enough to argue with me about it.*

"Bossy."

*Consistently. It's the one part of my old life I never lost.*

Vane lay back carefully, mindful now of the binding wrapped snug around his ribs, and stared up at the canvas ceiling with the particular unguarded quiet that had become, over the months, Eric's favorite version of him. "Can I ask you something."

*Always.*

"Does it ever get easier? Being honest about the small stuff. I managed the big things — Ch.9, telling Marek, standing in front of Vire without falling apart. But something as small as a cracked rib, and my first instinct is still to bury it."

*I think the big things are actually easier, in a strange way,* Eric said, considering the question with real care. *They only ask for honesty once, in a single dramatic moment, and then it's done. The small things ask for it constantly — every minor ache, every day you're tired, every time admitting weakness doesn't come with the adrenaline of a crisis to justify the vulnerability. That's harder to sustain. It's not a character flaw that you're still working on it. It's just a longer road than the big vow made it look.*

"That's oddly comforting."

*I have my moments.* Eric let warmth thread through the words, deliberate. *For what it's worth — you told me tonight. Later than I'd have liked, but you told me, and you let me help instead of gritting through it alone. That's the actual metric that matters. Not whether you get it right immediately every time. Whether you keep circling back to trying.*

Vane's hand found his chest, familiar now as breathing, and the quiet that settled between them afterward held none of the earlier tension — only the specific, hard-won ease of two people who had fought about something honestly and come out the other side of it still choosing each other.

---

They finished the patrol two days later, border secured, no fresh Rift-Spawn activity found beyond what the scouts had already mapped, and rode back into camp with Vane's ribs properly bound and his temper considerably more settled than it had been the night Eric confronted him about the bruising.

Marek took one look at the careful way Vane dismounted and raised an eyebrow. "Something I should know about, Marshal?"

"Fell off a ridge trail before we left. Cracked a rib. Should have mentioned it before riding out." Vane said it plainly, no evasion, and Eric felt something warm settle through him at the small, deliberate honesty of it — a man practicing, in real time, the exact thing he'd promised to get better at.

"Should have," Marek agreed, dry, "though I notice you're telling me now instead of letting me find out secondhand. Progress, I suppose."

*Progress,* Eric echoed, quiet, for Vane alone, and felt the small, private warmth of Vane's answering smile settle through the bond like sunlight finally breaking through a long grey season — imperfect, still learning, but genuinely, deliberately, trying.

Outside the returning column, the garrison carried on its diminished business under diminished supply, the requisition cuts already reshaping the shape of daily life across every tent and storeroom, and somewhere beyond the southern gap they'd just secured, the greater machinery of Chancellery politics and Institute interest ground on, indifferent to whether one Marshal and the presence in his chest had learned, this particular week, to trust each other a little more honestly than before.

Talwyn met them at the gate with news that took the small satisfaction of the ride's end and complicated it considerably. "A rider came through while you were out, Marshal. From the eastern garrison — Captain Freya Adler's company. She's requesting transfer to our command, effective as soon as her current posting releases her from her present duties."

"Adler." Vane frowned, dismounting stiffly, one hand pressed briefly to his bound ribs. "I know the name. Young officer, isn't she? Recently bonded?"

"Very recently, from what the letter implies. And struggling with it, if I'm reading between the lines correctly." Talwyn handed over the sealed request, his expression unreadable. "She specifically asked to serve under a commander with, and I quote, 'demonstrated experience managing an unconventional battlefield bond.' I suspect word of your own situation has traveled further than we'd like, Marshal, though perhaps not as far as the Institute's ears specifically."

*Another bonded soldier,* Eric said, something sharpening in him that felt uncomfortably close to recognition — the particular kinship of anyone who has watched another person struggle through the same impossible adjustment he once had to make himself, alone, with no one to tell him the fear would eventually loosen its grip. *If her bond is unstable, or if she and her spirit aren't communicating well, that's exactly the kind of vulnerability the Institute would want to study closely. We might not be the only experiment they're interested in confirming, and she may not know enough yet to protect herself the way we've learned to.*

"Approve the transfer," Vane said, already moving toward the command tent despite his ribs, the exhaustion of the four-day patrol visibly giving way to a new, sharper attentiveness he hadn't shown since the note from Vire's quarters. "I want to meet her myself, and I want to understand exactly what kind of bond she's carrying before anyone else outside this garrison gets the chance to."

Whatever quiet the returning patrol had earned itself dissolved almost immediately into the next problem, and Eric — despite the very real ache still radiating faintly through Vane's bound ribs — found himself already turning the new variable over with the same careful, thorough attention he'd once given every difficult case that crossed his table, wondering what shape Captain Freya Adler's struggle might take, and what, if anything, two people who had barely learned to manage their own bond might actually be able to teach her.