Dave spent the following day doing what he called "preparation" — which turned out to mean visiting every stall in the Drevhan market with a detailed list and a negotiating manner that was cheerful, persistent, and apparently very effective. Taric accompanied him, less because he had anything to contribute and more because Dave's ongoing commentary on the logic of Cosmulo was more useful than anything in the briefing document.

  "The Evolutionary Clergy controls the Vaccine," Dave explained while examining a row of travel rations. "Which means they control who officially activates their Path. Without the Vaccine, you can still develop — combat does it, integration with compatible biological material does it, certain catalysts — but you don't have the Clergy's sanction. And without sanction, you're classified as unstable."

  "What happens if you're classified as unstable?"

  "Officially, you're a public health risk." He picked up a wrapped parcel and sniffed it. "Unofficially, the Hunters come for you. The Clergy calls them Missionaries in the cities. Outside the cities, they're Hunters. Same people, different uniforms, different mandate."

  "That figure in the hall," Taric said. "During orientation. The one who stopped the man who tried to leave."

  Dave looked at him. "You noticed that."

  "I noticed it."

  Dave was quiet for a moment, setting the parcel down. "Missionário de Observa??o. An Observer. They attend every intake orientation. They're looking for high-value SG potential — the ones worth flagging. And they're looking for anything that might indicate dangerous instability. Someone who reacts strongly enough in orientation to suggest their cellular state is already in flux." He resumed walking. "The Clergy prefers to know about those ones before they reach the settlements."

  "What happens to them?"

  "If their IC percentage is already elevated — if they came in with something already active, or something triggered by the stress of arrival — the Observer flags them. And then they don't arrive in the settlement." He said this as a simple fact. "They go somewhere else. The Clergy calls it the Stabilization Ward. Nobody who goes in there talks about it afterward, which is information of its own kind."

  Taric thought about the man at the back of the hall. The shimmer in the air around him. The way he'd said I'm leaving with the voice of someone whose body had already left even as they spoke.

  "The man who collapsed," Taric said. "In the back row. He had — there was something around him. In the air."

  Dave stopped walking. "You saw that?"

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  "I saw something."

  Dave turned to face him with the expression of someone recalibrating. "That's IC bleed. When the cellular instability passes a certain threshold, it starts to become visible. The biology is generating energy it can't contain, and it leaks. It looks like heat shimmer." He studied Taric. "Most people can't see it. The ones who can are usually—" He stopped. "Usually developing their own pathway."

  Taric filed this alongside the other things he didn't know about himself yet.

  They continued through the market. Dave launched into an explanation of the Paths that was thorough, partly wrong in small ways he didn't know yet, and genuinely enthusiastic. Six official paths: the Assassin's toward stealth and precision; the Predator's toward strength and aggression; the Guardian's toward endurance and defense; the Emitter's toward conversion of internal energy into external force; the Cell Weaver's toward healing and biological manipulation; the Neuroarch's toward neural influence.

  "Those are the six recognized ones," Dave said. "The ones the Clergy has documented and has Vaccines for. There are rumors of others — paths that don't fit the official categories. The Clergy doesn't discuss those." His voice was carefully neutral in a way that suggested he had opinions about that neutrality.

  "Which Path do you have?" Taric asked.

  "I don't know yet." Dave said it without self-pity — as a simple fact. "My mother ran a medicinal herb shop. She died six months ago. I inherited the knowledge, and I've been using it to survive." He looked at the rations in his hand. "The assessment might tell me I have no significant Path potential, which the Clergy considers a dead end. Or it might tell me I'm an Emitter or a Neuroarch, which would put me on their list of people to monitor very closely." He shrugged. "Either way, I'd rather wait until I know more about what I'm waiting for."

  "And what about me? Would they assess me at the monthly event?"

  "Anyone can attend. They take your SG baseline and tell you your recommended Path. Then they offer you the Vaccine — if they think you're worth it — and explain what you'd owe them in return." Dave finally bought the rations and moved to the next stall. "My advice? Don't go to the assessment until you have a clearer sense of what you want from it. The Clergy is very good at making the thing they're offering sound like the only option."

  "Is it?"

  "It's the safest option," Dave said carefully. "Whether it's the only one is a different question."

  That evening, they reviewed the route to the high slopes over a map Dave had drawn himself — detailed, annotated, marked with notes like "monstrous activity reported — take eastern variant" and "Clergy patrol observed twice, Tuesdays, avoid if possible." It was the map of someone who had spent four months paying careful attention. His handwriting was small and precise, different from the casual ease of the rest of him — as though when he wrote things down, he became someone slightly more serious than the person he chose to be in conversation.

  "There," said Dave, pointing to a notation near the summit. "The silvar root site. Northern crevice face, sheltered bowl. The climb is harder than it looks on paper. The last section needs both hands."

  Taric looked at the map and felt, for the first time since waking in the arrival facility, something that might have been orientation.

  He didn't say this to Dave. But Dave, who was watching him instead of the map, seemed to understand it anyway.

  "Early start," Dave said. "The mountain is cold in the morning but that's better than the afternoon weather."

  He rolled up the map. Outside, the fire in the Drevhan square burned, and the settlement went about the quiet business of its evening, and somewhere in the briefing document's unread back pages were statistics about mortality rates that neither of them had looked at yet.

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