Owen had two seconds, maybe three, to act before sixth-order resonance bloomed.

Gorvax’s notes had not covered sixth-order. Gorvax’s notes had not even mentioned it as a concept — the highest order Gorvax had described in the materials was fourth, and even fourth had been described as a rare extreme. Sixth was outside Owen’s preparation entirely.

Which meant he could not break the rhythm by reading it.

Which meant he had to break it before it formed.

He charged.

Not at Wenrik. At the staff.

Twelve hundred units of CE went into the gauntlet — most of his remaining clean reserve, a deeply costly commitment. The black-violet refined Desolate energy that had been folded into the weapon’s structure flared up in a tight, hungry pulse. Not channeled through his core this time. Just channeled out through the gauntlet itself, the way the gauntlet was designed for.

He did not strike Wenrik. He did not try to land a finishing blow. He swung the gauntleted left fist at the staff itself, at the top half of it, at the place where the silver threads were beginning to thicken into the sixth-order pattern.

The gauntlet hit the staff.

The Desolate energy — anti-resonant, hollow, hungry — met the silver CE that had been gathering for the sixth-order bloom.

The two cosmic energies did not coexist.

There was a sound like a bell cracking.

The silver threads tore apart. The staff itself fractured — not snapped, not broken, but fractured, a long jagged line splitting up its black wood from where the gauntlet had struck. The CE that had been gathering at the tip discharged in a wild, formless burst that knocked both Owen and Wenrik backward.

Owen rolled. Came up. Lost three more meters of ground but stayed on his feet. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Wenrik did not roll. He hit a rock with his shoulder and stayed against it, one hand pressed to his chest. He was breathing harder now. The fractured staff hung loose in his grip. Without the staff’s structure to channel through, his rhythm-magic was crippled.

He could still fight. But not the way he had been fighting.

Owen straightened. His left arm was numb to the elbow from the gauntlet’s discharge. His clean CE reserve was below a thousand units. His core ached so deeply he could feel it pulsing in his teeth.

But Wenrik’s staff was broken.

Wenrik’s eyes met his. The Cantor’s calm composure was gone. What was left in his face was something more complicated. It was not fear. Cantors did not fear. It was something closer to recalculation — a being who had been given a problem he had not predicted and was now trying to solve it in real time.

"False Fist," Wenrik said. Quietly. "I am going to offer you something."

"No."

"You have not heard the offer."

"I don’t need to. The answer is no."

"You will want to hear it."

Owen did not move closer. He did not move farther. He let his breathing settle. He let the last of the discharge ringing fade out of his arm.

"Speak fast," he said.

Wenrik straightened slowly against the rock. His broken staff lowered to his side.

"I withdraw from the hunt," he said.

Owen waited.

"I declare you uncapturable for the remainder of Month Two," Wenrik continued. "I file the withdrawal with the Tribunal under cause of weapon failure and tactical incompatibility. The hunt ends. The credits I have accumulated against your account are returned. You receive bonus credits for surviving an Ordained engagement, as is standard."

"In exchange for what."

"In exchange for one piece of information."

"Which is."

"The location of the Sower."

Owen’s jaw set.

"No."

"False Fist. Listen to me carefully. The Tribunal does not yet know he is alive. Only I know. If I do not file the withdrawal with the location, the hunt continues, and I will eventually find him, and at that point the Tribunal will know, and the consequences will be worse for everyone than they need to be. If I file the withdrawal and the location is included, the Sower’s continued survival becomes a matter of formal record under my professional discretion as a Cantor. He becomes a hunt I have declined to complete. The Tribunal will not pursue. They have other matters."

"You’d do that. You’d just leave him."

"I would. The Sower’s survival is a small matter to me. He is no threat to my Choir. The crime he committed is one I have read about in archives and find more interesting than offensive." Wenrik’s eyes held his. "What I want is the location, on record, so I can claim the procedural credit for finding it. I want the credit, not the kill."

Owen looked at him for a long moment.

"Why are you telling me this."

"Because you broke my staff, False Fist. Because you closed inside a four-beat phrase. Because you did something with desolate energy that I have never seen before. You are an interesting prey, and the universe has very few interesting prey in it. I do not want to file you as a kill or as an escape. I want to file you as a curiosity I have set down. To do that cleanly, I need a procedural offering."

Owen breathed out.

His hands were shaking very slightly. He noticed and did not stop them.

"I’ll think about it," he said.

"You have until tomorrow morning."

"Fine."

"I will be at the canyon’s mouth at first sunrise. Bring the location, or do not. Either way, this is the final exchange between us in this hunt."

Wenrik bowed his head, very slightly. The same small, formal motion that had irritated Owen the day before. Today he could not summon irritation. He had nothing to spare for it.

The Cantor turned and walked into the canyon. Within thirty seconds, he was gone.

---

Owen made it back to the cave by midafternoon.

Jorik was sitting outside on a rock, the broken arm finally out of its sling, flexing it slowly in the sun. He looked up as Owen came over the ridge. His scarred face did not change, but something in his posture eased.

"You are alive," Jorik said.

"I am alive."

"He is not."

"He is. He withdrew."

Jorik went very still.

"Withdrew."

"Sort of. He wants something in exchange."

Jorik stood. Walked to him. Put his good hand on Owen’s shoulder for a moment, a brief, hard grip that said more than words did. Then he turned without speaking and walked into the cave to tell Yalira.

Owen stood in the sun a moment longer.

He looked at the dust on his boots. He looked at the sky. He thought about Tessa, in the iolite recess Jorik had carved.

Then he followed Jorik in.

The decision about Wenrik’s offer would have to be made by morning. He had a long night to think about it.