The ash did not fall so much as accumulate, drifting sideways in thin grey ribbons that caught the merchant lights and turned them the colour of old bone. Rohan kept low behind the drainage cut, one hand pressed flat against the compacted grit beneath the maintenance platform, and waited for the drone cycle to complete its pass.
Three. Two. One.
The whine of the drone's rotors faded east, chasing a heat ghost thrown off by a vent stack Tavin had rigged two nights ago for exactly this purpose. It wouldn't last. Merchant tech was better than anything Veyrhold could scrounge together, and sooner or later the drone would notice the decoy wasn't breathing the way a person breathed.
Sooner or later wasn't now.
