1. The Commission #3
Again with that certainty, as though he had already accepted the entire collaboration on her behalf.
She should have objected. Should have pushed back simply to restore proper professional balance.
Instead she found herself noticing the sample boards behind him, each strip brushed with a different mineral mix in patient gradients, and the stain of old amber oil sunk permanent into the grain of the worktable.
Twenty years of hand knowledge lived in this room. Perhaps more.
He followed her glance. "Do not use the second shelf on the east wall. Those jars are unstable."
"Why keep unstable jars on an open shelf?"
"To remind the apprentices not to mix chalk with wet shell ash."
"Educational through hazard. Bold."
This time the amusement was unmistakable, brief and low in his chest. "You may put your own dangerous things higher up."
The absurdity of it almost pulled a laugh from her, and she disliked that too. She did not arrive in places and settle in. She worked, invoiced, departed. People who made room for her in their workshops misunderstood the length of her stay.
From outside, Dema's voice cut across the walkway calling for labor counts at the south market. Mavrek glanced toward the opening.
"I must go to the outer wall before the tide turns," he said. "Do not set the northern section until I return. I will show you where the older oil sits in the stone."
Not a request. Not quite an order either. More dangerous than either, because it implied a future in which they were already working side by side closely enough for demonstration.
"I am capable of waiting half a day before ruining your wall," Iva said.
"Our wall," he corrected.
The words landed harder than they should have. Our. Ridiculous. He meant jurisdiction, responsibility, shared labor. She had known the man six minutes.
"We are not married to it," she said before she could stop herself.
One dark brow lifted. "Nay. Not yet."
Heat climbed so abruptly up her throat she could have blamed the reef climate if she had been a weaker liar to herself.
He left before she found an answer sharp enough to recover the ground. Just turned, ducked the lintel by habit rather than caution, and stepped back into the white glare of Brineshell with the unhurried stride of a man who did not doubt he would be obeyed.
Iva stared at the doorway for one useless beat, then sat down hard on the bench and looked again at the notes.
Maruk in the older layer. Lower first lift. Oil test before heat cloth.
Correct. Damn him.
Her hand moved almost of its own accord, revising the sequence in neat, tight script.
She redrew the arrows. Added an alternative branch for partial underbinding.
Marked the probable location of the old oil pocket where he said it would sit, because the longer she looked at the wall in memory the more likely it seemed that he had indeed identified the structure properly.
She did it fast, with irritation snapping through her like static.
She did not want to want the fix. She wanted the original plan to stand because it was hers. Instead she improved the page before he had fully crossed the walkway outside.
There. Accurate. Annoying.
The workshop had altered around her in his absence. Not physically. She could still see the central table, the scaffold poles, the sample strips, the shadowed reed screen at the back. Yet the room now possessed edges she had not mapped when she entered, because earlier it had only been a workspace.
Now it was also the place where a man had looked at her notes, seen the fault, and then looked at her as though fault and face belonged to one continuous surface worth close study.
Exit first.
The habit came back so quickly it made bile rise in her throat.
Main walkway door: wide, visible from three directions, poor choice if the path outside crowded during market hours.
Rear access: scaffolding opening directly onto the reef wall support track, narrower but faster.
Window slats on the west side, too small for much beyond air, but useful for sound.
Distance to Reedwalk lodging: three turns, one stair, less than four minutes if unobstructed, six if festival workers blocked the inner bridge.
She stood very still in the middle of the workshop while the old calculations assembled themselves around her bones.
She had not done this in three years. Not since the first weeks after the guild hearing, when every new town had felt one accusation away from becoming another place she could not remain.
Not since she had taught herself to take rooms with back stairs, to work near doors, to keep her papers wrapped and ready to move.
The habits had quieted with time. Or she had told herself they had.
Perhaps she had only gotten better at choosing places dim enough not to wake them.
Brineshell would not permit dimness. The reef ring threw light everywhere.
The wall demanded public labor. And now there was Mavrek, who had looked at her plan before he looked at her face, which should have made him safer.
Instead it made him worse. Because when he finally had looked at her, the attention had not changed.
Same patience. Same exactness. Same unblinking read.
He was right about the fixative. She had mapped the exits after.
Mavrek was the problem. And Brineshell, damn it, looked built to remember exactly the sort of thing she had spent three years trying not to leave behind.