The first guild refused before Bram finished explaining the request.
Its receiving clerk said the council would not meet a former Aegis enforcer on the strength of his changed allegiance. A written packet could be submitted through independent counsel. No personal approach to the members would be accepted, and he was not to seek them at their relief posts.
Bram repeated the condition back and left the packet through the permitted desk.
The second group declined more quietly. They had people who remembered him from before the present coalition. Some did not want to enter a room where he might ask them to distinguish his fear for his family from the pressure he had helped place on theirs. They would receive records from a neutral source if offered. They would not give him a meeting now.
He accepted that answer too.
Sera had accompanied him under the revised surface contact arrangements, carrying no sensitive settlement route sheet. They had traveled through an authorized contact point after a current scout check, with Ilyan’s packet remaining under its inventory. Bram’s outreach did not create unrestricted movement for the whole team. Tessa stayed with the care handoff and joined the working contact only when a witness arrangement required her.
