"This Norstave commission," Renne continued, "is being discussed as a fresh start. A chance to place you where your strengths can be fully used."
Fresh start.
Iva counted both sentences at once.
The guild values all contributions. Fresh start.
Translation arrived with brutal clarity. No retroactive correction. No naming of the past architecture. Only forward motion, institutionally phrased. Come back inside. Work harder at a higher level. We will use you more elegantly this time.
"I understand the last years may have been professionally frustrating," she said. "That is part of why I came myself. There are moments when a career needs to be reoriented cleanly, and it is better for all involved to look toward what can still be built."
Not one word about what had been taken down to make room.
Iva's skin felt suddenly too tight. It would have been easier if the guild had sent an obvious brute. Easier if the offer had been insulting, or paltry, or corrupt enough that refusal could pass for self-respect without cost.
Instead Renne had brought her exactly what her training had always taught her to crave: difficult work, proper budget, institutional support, title.
The cost sat in the same place it always had. Merely dressed better.
"You came a long way to offer me improved appendix placement," Iva said.
The line was crueler than Renne deserved. Iva knew it while speaking and did not withdraw it.
To her credit, Renne received it without offense, only with a more careful kind of attention.
"No," she said. "I came a long way to offer you lead responsibility on one of the largest active restorations in the north. If you hear only the architecture around it, then I have not yet answered the actual wound."
That stopped Iva cold enough that the next breath hurt.
Renne's gaze stayed steady.
"I wasn't in the room three years ago," she said. "I can't alter what was done by pretending I can. I can tell you this offer is genuine. I can tell you the guild needs your skill. And I can tell you the commission record on Norstave would reflect your role more accurately than what has preceded it."
The adverb did more violence than the title had.
More accurately.
Not accurately.
Even now the institution negotiated in gradations of tolerable distortion.
Renne was not lying. That made the meeting almost unbearable.
Iva looked once more at the numbers, the title, the clean technical summary that described work she would once have crossed a continent to touch. Then she set the sheets back into alignment on the desk because order was the last refuge when one could not yet trust language.
"I will consider it," she said.
"That is all I ask for now." She slid a copy of the proposal across the desk. "I remain in Brineshell until the festival traffic clears. After that I return south. If you need clarifications on material support, staffing, or schedule, I can provide them."
Material support. Staffing. Schedule. Every category except the one that mattered most.
Iva took the copy because not taking it would have been childish.
Renne gathered the remaining papers back into the leather portfolio with the same efficient hands and stood.
"For what it's worth," she said, the phrase almost embarrassingly human after so much institutional diction, "the Brineshell wall is extraordinary. Whoever has been carrying the hand here is doing work the guild cannot afford to misread much longer."
Whoever.