"It’s merchandise," Brenwick repeated. His smile stayed exactly in place. "The exact category isn’t relevant to the transport, as long as delivery is completed in good condition."

"*Good condition* is a term that applies to living things."

"And to fresh fruit. And to cut flowers. And to several types of fabric. Hunter, I respectfully ask you not to speculate about the contents. Your job is to transport. Mine is to provide the contents and the payment. If at any point that makes you uncomfortable, you have every right to terminate the order."

*And there it is. The exit offer. He knows that if I refuse now, he’ll just put the paper back on the board tomorrow, and the next F-Rank Hunter will accept it without asking questions. I’m interchangeable. My refusal costs him nothing but a day. Which means I have no real negotiating power, and he knows it, and that’s why he’s willing to let me go.*

Nathan looked at him for a moment.

*Let’s think this through calmly.*

*If I refuse, the package still gets transported by someone else. Probably someone who won’t ask questions. Whatever’s inside is going to reach its destination regardless of what I do.*

*If I accept, the package reaches Greywall. And then whatever’s inside is in Greywall, where institutional presence is greater, where there are Guild Masters, where there are priests, where there are options that don’t exist at an inn along the road.*

*But if I accept, I also participate in the transport. And participating means that if this is what I suspect it is, I’m technically complicit in the eyes of any authority that decides to investigate.*

*Except the regulation says the carrier isn’t required to have contents disclosed. If the regulation legally protects me, I can accept and deliver the package knowing what’s inside and still not be doing anything technically illegal under guild law.*

*And if what’s inside is what I suspect, delivering the package to Greywall gives me the opportunity—during the journey and during the delivery—to make decisions that might not be strictly aligned with Mr. Brenwick’s wishes.*

"Alright," Nathan said after a few seconds. "I accept the order under guild conditions. No content disclosure required."

Brenwick smiled, this time with an additional component that could have been satisfaction or relief.

"Excellent. A prudent Hunter. Appreciated."

"Three technical questions," Nathan added.

"Go ahead."

"One. Does the box need to stay upright, or can it be transported horizontally?"

"Upright. No exceptions."

"Two. Is there a time limit for delivery?"

"Before nightfall today."

*Which makes any significant detour suspicious. Well thought out on his part.*

"Three. Who receives the package in Greywall, and where?"

"My main office, Five Anvils Street, number fourteen. My assistant, Larian, receives it. He has a specific identification mark that I’ll give you now so you can recognize it." Brenwick reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a small wax seal with an engraving Nathan half-recognized as a circle divided by a diagonal line. "If the person receiving it doesn’t show this seal, don’t deliver the package."

Nathan took the seal. Examined it. Put it away.

"Payment upon receipt of the package or upon delivery?"

"Half now, half upon delivery confirmation. Standard for orders of my level."

Brenwick counted out two and a half silver coins on the table. Nathan took them without counting.

"One final observation," Brenwick said just as Nathan stood up. "The box must not be opened during transport. Under any circumstances. The lock has a mechanism that, if forced, damages the merchandise irreparably. If the contents arrive damaged, the remaining payment is cancelled, and compensation is charged to the guild."

*Of course it has such a mechanism. Of course.*

*Legal and financial pressure designed to keep the Hunter from interfering, even if they discover what they’re carrying.*

"Understood," Nathan said, in the most professional tone he could manage.

"Safe travels, Hunter Voss."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Brenwick."

Nathan walked to the box, lifted the two reinforced handles with controlled effort, and tested the weight. Heavier than it looked. Probably forty kilos. Manageable on foot for three kilometers if he walked at a steady pace, but not fast. It would take him between forty and fifty minutes to reach Greywall with the load.

Enough time to think.

He left the inn with the box on his shoulder, adjusting the weight between his shoulder blades, and started walking south on the road leading back to the city.

The sun was already quite high.

---

A hundred meters from the inn, when Nathan could no longer be seen from the dining room windows, he stopped for a moment.

He lowered the box carefully to the roadside, leaning it against a tree.

And stared at it.

*Alright. Let’s think this through.*

*Point one. Brenwick is, almost certainly, a human trafficker. The box contains a living person—almost certainly sedated, almost certainly non-consenting to their presence in this box. The dimensions, the secrecy of the order, the deliberate omission from the guild paper, the regulation he cites from memory—all of it points in the same direction.*

*Point two. There’s a chance I’m wrong. The box could contain a statue. A shipment of delicate objects with an insulating inner layer. Something Soul Sense is misinterpreting. But Soul Sense detected a conscious entity. And Soul Sense, so far, hasn’t been wrong about anything.*

*Point three. The decision I make here, right now, isn’t the final decision. I have three kilometers. I have the time on the road. And at the end of the road, I have the option to deliver the package as agreed, or to take a detour to the guild, or to the Temple, or to someone with more rank who can act before the package reaches Brenwick’s office.*

*Point four. If I take any detour, Brenwick will eventually find out. And Brenwick has the resources to make an F-Rank Hunter’s life very complicated very quickly.*

*Point five. And yet, that shouldn’t matter. If there’s a person inside this box, there’s a person inside this box. The consequences of doing the right thing aren’t an excuse not to do it.*

Nathan stared at the box a moment longer.

*But also,* he added mentally, *I’m not a hero. I’m not a knight anointed by a god. I’m a guy who didn’t have a Seal two days ago and now has a Class I barely understand ten percent of. Any heroic decision I make here has to be calibrated against the reality of my current resources.*

*Which means: no direct confrontation. No public declaration. No going to burn down Brenwick’s main office. Nothing that requires an F-Rank Hunter to survive retaliation from a merchant with connections in a frontier city.*

*The right solution is to deliver the package to an authority higher than the original recipient, within the framework of guild legality, with a plausible story that covers me and puts the problem in the hands of people who actually have the resources to solve it.*

*Which, in this city, means one of three options.*

*Mira, at the guild. Useful but limited by internal regulations.*

*The Temple of the Three. Useful if I find a priest willing to talk, but costly because they charge in favors.*

*Berran. The vendor. He has no official authority, but he knows people who do, and he already owes me a conversation in which he gave me a lot of information he probably didn’t want to give me.*

Nathan stood thinking.

Then he lifted the box back onto his shoulder.

*I’m going to do the entire walk. And I’m going to make the decision when I’m five hundred meters from Brenwick’s office, not before. Until then, I’m a Hunter fulfilling a legal order, and I’m going to look exactly like that from any angle anyone might be watching me.*

*And if someone is following me to make sure I arrive, they’re going to see me walking in a straight line toward the correct destination for exactly as long as they expect me to walk.*

*Until the very last moment.*

He resumed walking down the road.

The box weighed on his shoulder.

And the person inside the box—wherever they were in their consciousness at that moment—didn’t even know that the Hunter hired to transport them had just decided, in silence, that the delivery wasn’t going to happen exactly the way their captor had planned.