Three hunters stood beneath Blackforge's half-raised shutter before Vell finished cleaning blood from the basin. The man on the left kept his damaged hand wrapped beneath a shirt, while the woman beside him held her chest as though both hands could keep her core from splitting further.
Their third companion had brought a folded Association notice from a guild clerk. His expression belonged to the belt's usual bargain: a man wanting a favor badly enough to call it a right.
"You repaired Hallen's daughter," the notice carrier said, pushing the paper across the worktable, "so you can repair us too. Everyone heard Mara walked down the stairs under her own power."
Vell left the notice where it landed, because touching someone else's proof never improved its value. Hallen had signed a confession, then paid thirty-eight thousand credits for Mara's repair without buying control over the method.
