Ostred Kane held rank fifty-one, four sponsor houses, plus a reputation for taking bouts against men who had fought the day before. He had never once been accused of anything, which is what a career built entirely inside the rules looks like from the outside.
The east arena filled again at the fifth hour, and it filled with a different crowd than the one that had come for a team exhibition. Eleven hundred of them had stood outside a Directorate office the previous evening, and they had not come to watch a scavenger lose.
Vell had exactly one function available to him when the sixth hour came around. Dismantle had returned overnight at a fraction of its normal rate, while everything else in the panel sat at zero for another three days.
"Say the honest version," Yenna said in the tunnel, with the clause folded in her coat pocket.
