"You are certain," she said.
Not disbelief. A final procedural check.
"Yes."
Renne looked back at the letter. Her gaze stopped for one moment on the signature. Iva saw the stop, saw the brief registering of the full name, and felt a savage private satisfaction so small and fierce it almost counted as joy.
"The guild will be sorry to lose you on Norstave," Renne said.
Lose, not fail to secure. Renne was trying, in the only vocabulary she had.
"That is kind of you."
"It's accurate."
Renne set the letter down carefully rather than dropping it atop the other papers.
"May I ask," she said, "whether this decision is related to your circumstances in Brineshell."
There were six possible lies available immediately. Iva dismissed them as they arrived.
"It is related to my circumstances for the last three years," she said.
Renne's brow moved by the slightest degree. She understood enough to know the answer had been pointed. Not enough to locate the point inside the machine she represented.
"I see," she said.
The letter lay on the table between them. Four minutes, perhaps less. That was all the handing over took. The most important professional choice Iva had made since the censure reduced to an envelope, a question, an answer, and the sight of her full name drying in front of a guild representative who could no longer route it into smaller shapes on her behalf.
Renne slid the letter into the leather portfolio at last.
"If you pursue independent work," she said, "I hope you pursue it at the level your skill warrants."
That was as close to blessing as the guild could manage.
Iva inclined her head. "Thank you."
Renne closed the portfolio. "Travel safely, whatever you choose after the festival."
After the festival.
Iva left before either of them had to invent another sentence.
The market outside had brightened into late morning. Fish scales flashed in wicker trays. Lantern sellers were alreadycalling rates to out-settlement visitors come in early for festival trading. Somewhere a child was beating yesterday's practice rhythm on an overturned crate and getting half of it wrong with admirable conviction.
Her feet turned toward the wall out of habit.
The lane opened on the restored mural and the bare space where the scaffold had been. Yesterday's unveiling crowd was gone. Only a few market passersby moved along the far edge, glancing up at the wall with the proprietary fondness of people checking that a newly healed wound had stayed closed through the night.
The mural held.
Flood numerals steady. Claim bands alive under the morning light. The courtship-record panel still catching the eye first, that better-than-original detail in the witness hands and throat line refusing to flatten even in ordinary daylight.
She stood where the scaffold's lowest rung had once begun and felt the unfamiliar emptiness of having nowhere practical to direct her hands.
She was not in Brineshell under contract anymore. The restoration was complete. The next commission had been refused. No guild schedule was carrying her forward. If she left now, she would leave as a woman who had chosen departure with open eyes. If she stayed, she would stay stripped of every professional excuse she had been using as shelter.
A step sounded behind her on the lane boards. Not heavy enough for Mavrek. More deliberate than Fetch.