Chapter 32 Maelle's One Condition

Four guild teams watched a vessel evolve on Aldren Street, and by Thursday a company lawyer had written to the depot about it.

Verrick Applied Systems is the firm whose name sits on the paper Maelle's work was taken for, with three authors on the cover and none of them her.

Their letter runs two pages, arrives addressed to The Unmasked rather than any person, and raises the subject of consultancy in the manner a hand might raise a throat.

'Nobody there wants consultancy... they want to know whether she stood behind that yard demonstration,' Ossian compared both pages at the office table, 'shit, the answer is on my arms.'

Being right in public is the most dangerous thing a discredited person can do, given that a correction costs a company money where a funeral bills it nothing at all.

Nobody at that table said the word corpse out loud, and every one of them had arrived at it independently.

"I have had four years of letters," Maelle put hers face down on the table, "and the tone changes about a month before something happens to your workshop."

Paloma took the letter, the previous four, plus the original review board filing, then said she wanted a fortnight and no questions from anybody.

Nobody at that table asked what a lawyer does with a fortnight, and Ossian has learned to leave the middle of her work alone.

What Ossian put on the table that evening is the only thing he genuinely owns, and he did it clumsily.

A bodily mask is what the system calls the thing that goes into a person rather than into equipment, and he has never given one to anybody.

Calista carries the Mantis, at a running cost of four hundred a month in aftercare plus a nerve in her left hand that stopped reporting temperature.

'One face, into her, and she stops being the only person here who cannot survive a room I walk into,' Ossian sat across from her with the case open, 'ask her properly.'

Two months ago he owned one face with no idea a second existed, whereas this week he hands them across a table.

'A man with a drawer full of faces offering one to a woman he met a month ago... hell, listen to that sentence,' Ossian pushed the case across, 'she gets to say no.'

Maelle looked at the open case for a long time and then closed it with one finger.

"No," she said it without any softness attached, "and I want you to hear the reason rather than assume the polite version."

Fear plays no part in her reason, nor does Calista's hand, though she has read every aftercare report on it twice.

A bodily mask makes her a hunter, this city already holds a great many hunters, plus not one of them has built anything which outlasted the person carrying it.

"I make things," she said it looking at the hammer leaning against her chair, "and a woman who becomes a weapon stops being the person who designs them."

'She turned down power to keep a workshop... every word of that was meant,' Ossian shut the case and put it on the floor, 'do not argue with her.'

The hammer against her chair she made at nineteen, in a college forge, out of a billet she bought with money meant for a term's rent.

Nothing about the tool is remarkable, at four kilograms of plain steel, with a haft rebound ten times and a face worn round from striking one angle.

She has carried it through two workshops, one review board hearing, four years of scavenging, and every job since Ossian met her.

What she wants is that one opportunity spent on the hammer rather than on her body, a request the system holds no existing wording for.

Masked Relic is the term the panel produced, after eleven seconds where nothing at all appeared on the screen.

[A face may be given to a thing instead of to a person]

[Your pack has begun asking for teeth of its own, and a court that arms itself is a court that will one day disagree with you]

'It warned me... in the same breath it agreed to it,' Ossian read the wording out to her twice, 'hell, it is not wrong either.'

Nobody in that office argued with her, and Calista was the first person to say out loud that the answer was correct.

'The woman with the mask agreed with the woman refusing one... hell, that told me more than either of them meant to,' Ossian looked between them, 'ask Calista about that some other night.'

Paloma wrote the contract over two evenings and it runs to nine clauses, which is eight more than anybody expected.

Maelle owns the hammer outright, before, during, and after any binding, with no claim of any kind resting with the guild.

Every design she produces from a Masked Relic belongs to her by name, registered on the day it is drawn, and licensed to The Unmasked rather than owned by it.

If the company folds, dissolves, or gets bought by anybody, her designs walk out with her and the guild keeps not one page.

"The last contract I signed had three names on the paper by the time it was published," she read clause six aloud, "and this one has mine on every line of it."

'She has never owned her own work, not once in her life... and she read that clause four times,' Ossian watched her go down the page, 'that is what she came here for.'

Bastien witnessed it, given that a contract of that kind wants a signature from somebody standing to gain nothing, and no man in this city qualifies better than a porter.

One argument ran through all four drafts, over whether a guild can license a design it has never owned.

Paloma won that argument by reading the porter clause aloud, the same one that took nine thousand six hundred credits off Ivory Banner.

The binding happened at the depot on a Tuesday evening, on the loading bay floor, with the shutter down and four people watching.

Furnace Salamander came out of Dreadweight without leaving it, a sentence Maelle wrote down twice and has not explained since.

Heat came off the left gauntlet in a single ordered wave, went into the hammer head, then stopped there.

Steel took it the way the shell chip went into the plating, closing over the thing rather than absorbing it.

The hammer changed colour along one edge and put on three hundred grams, which she measured before anybody had spoken.

Every person on that loading bay had expected a noise, a light, or something a witness could describe to a stranger afterward.

What they got instead was three hundred extra grams and no ceremony whatsoever, which Bastien called the most honest thing he had seen all year.

Then it stopped, went cold, and refused to do one further thing in front of anybody.

[The relic has accepted a face and will not open its eyes for a college billet]

[Feed it something you would rather keep]

'It wants paying... in something she would rather keep than hand over,' Ossian read the line to the room, 'damn it, of course it does.'

Waking a Masked Relic costs material, with the wording drawing no distinction whatsoever between market value and any other kind.

Maelle read that panel wording off his repetition, wrote it into her book, then sat looking at the hammer for four minutes without speaking.

Four minutes is a long time to watch somebody decide something, and nobody in that bay filled the silence for her.

Nothing in her workshop carries a resale value, that being what four years of blacklisting does to a person's inventory.

A drawer of failed prototypes, a bench her father built, one framed corporate award from the year before the review board sat.

'She has three things left in the world and the system wants one... and it knows which,' Ossian watched her look at the shelf, 'do not name it for her.'

Everything in her workshop is worth something else entirely, and the system has just asked her which of those she intends to give up.