The conditions improved.
The sewage ran properly for the first time in three years. The water table stabilized. The south market street looked the same as it always had, narrow, warm, loud with the specific acoustic texture of people who had learned to live close and loud, but underneath the surface the infrastructure that the district had been asking for through official channels for a decade had quietly been addressed.
The district attributed it to the Empress's blessing.
Butter knew where it came from.
She called the contact bug twice a week. Sometimes more. They talked about the district's needs and Jeriko solved problems with the ease of someone for whom solving problems was a matter of directing resources rather than producing them, and Butter filed away the ease of it in the part of her mind that noticed things and held them for later examination.
Utzy came back on a Thursday.
Butter heard her from two blocks away, the specific rhythm of Utzy's walk, which she had known since childhood, which sounded like someone who always knew exactly where they were going.
She was at the door before the knock.
"You could have just opened it," Utzy said.
"I wanted to see your face," Butter said.
They held each other in the doorway.
"You look tired," Butter said.
"Deployment is tired," Utzy said. She pulled back and looked at Butter with the assessment of someone who had been away and was recalibrating. "You look different."
"I'm the same."
"You're not." Utzy pushed past her into the apartment. "Tell me what happened."
They spent three days the way they always spent time together, moving through the south district with the ease of people who knew every corner of it, eating at the places they'd been eating at since they were children, sitting on rooftops in the evening with the district spread out below them and the sky doing its Dragon Hive things above.
Butter told her about the soldier and the scythe activating.
This particular night they went to Butters favorite outside Diner.
Utzy said "obviously."
Butter told her about the water and the four hours at the well.
Utzy said "you did that alone?"
Butter told her about the flowers and the contact bug and the boy from the convoy line.
Utzy went quiet.
"What's his name," she said.
"Jeriko," Butter said. "Jeriko Hammerian."
Utzy's quiet changed quality.
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"Tell me you haven't been calling that contact bug," she said.
"He fixed the sewage system," Butter said.
"Butter."
"And the water pump."
"Butter." Utzy turned to face her fully. "Listen to me. Pyraz Hammerian, Jeriko's father, is connected to Ebby's Island."
The name landed in Butter's chest like something cold.
"They kidnap women and children," Utzy said. "Experiments. Trafficking. The Hammerian class has been providing cover for the operation for years. I've seen the intelligence reports." She held Butter's eyes. "And the Hammerian men specifically, the history is not good. Dominating. Abusive. It's in the culture, built into the way they understand relationships. The women they choose don't get to leave."
Butter looked at the contact bug on the table between them.
"He seemed.." she started.
"I know how he seemed," Utzy said. "That's the point. That's how it starts." She put her hand over Butter's. "Promise me you'll stop seeing him. Promise me. You could go missing. You could end up on that island. Promise me."
Butter looked at her.
At the contact bug.
At Utzy's face, the face of someone who had been her sister since before either of them knew what that word meant in its fullest form.
"Okay," she said.
"Say it."
"I promise."
Utzy "Come let me teach you some Spanish."
Butter smiled because he loved learning Spanish.
She didn't call it for two weeks.
On the fifteenth day it called her.
She looked at it for three rings. Then she answered.
"What's wrong," Jeriko said. No preamble. "You went quiet."
Butter looked at the drawer she'd taken it from.
"Someone told me about your father," she said. "About Ebby's Island. About what your family is connected to."
Silence.
"And about Hammerian men," she said. "What they're known for."
More silence.
"Butter..."
"Is it true?" she said.
The silence that followed was the kind that answered the question without words.
She ended the call.
She put the bug back in the drawer.
Utzy was deployed the next morning.
No warning. No standard notice period. Orders arrived at dawn and Utzy was in uniform by the time Butter reached her door.
"This is fast," Butter said.
"It's fine," Utzy said. But her eyes were doing something her voice wasn't. "It's probably nothing."
"Utzy...."
"I'll be back in two weeks." She held Butter's face in both hands for a moment. "Stay away from him. Promise me again."
"I promise," Butter said.
Utzy left.
She was not sent to a deployment site.
She was sent to the Hammerian mansion.
Butter didn't know this yet. She spent the day in the south district doing the things she always did, the water check, the elderly residents on the eastern block, the children who gathered near the market in the afternoon because the market had warmth and sound and the specific comfort of activity. She did all of it with the low-frequency unease of someone waiting for something they can't name.
At the mansion, Utzy stood before Jeriko in a room that had been designed to make people understand the distance between themselves and the person sitting in the chair.
Jeriko looked at her. "Ms. Ortiz, I want to thank you for your service."
Utzy "Sir, why am I hear?"
Jeriko "You told her about bad things about my family," he said.
"I told her the truth," Utzy said.
"You are a soldier, your loyalty is to the government."
Utzy "I fight for the people of Shogun."
Jeriko "You came between me and my future wife, you have over stepped your authority, this is why women should not be in the military" he said. Still pleasant. Still the voice of someone who believed the outcome was already decided and was simply moving through the steps required to confirm it.
"She's not your wife," Utzy said. "She's not your anything. She's my friend and I told her what she needed to know to stay safe."
Jeriko looked at her for a moment anger brewing "Father are you hearing this?"
Pyraz "I am, she's a brave little soldier, talking back to the son of Pyraz Hammerian."
Jeriko clinched his fist.
"Young Lady, you must learn order!"
Utzy "I am old enough to be your mother."
Jeriko was speechless. He scoffed "Well....you....I am rich and you are poor."
He activated his Hammerian Blue Rhino armor.
The hammer materialized in his hand, Hammerian abi, dense and enormous and carrying the specific weight of a class of people who had built their identity around the concept of force. He looked at it briefly.
"You should not have come between us" he said.
Utzy looked at the hammer.
She didn't step back.
"She deserves better than you," she said.
The hammer came down with one hundred thousand pounds of pressure.
The room absorbed it.
The mansion continued its quiet.