Lyra moved Felix’s chair away from the draft and closer to the table.
He tried it, lifted his injured arm once and looked at her.
She moved it back.
“Sorry.”
“What was wrong with it there?”
“It looked as though you were avoiding the visitor.”
“I hadn’t met him. I was reserving judgment.”
She set the sponsor’s letter on the cleared table. There were still timber marks on the floor and a paid materials receipt beneath Pell’s abandoned fruit cup. Tamsin refused to hide the timber.
“He’s sponsoring instruction in a workshop,” she said. “He might survive seeing one.”
Lyra looked at the shirt Felix wore. It was clean enough. She made herself ask rather than order.
“Will you explain the work we’ve actually done?”
“Yes.”
“And try to look interested?”
“That’s a second negotiation.”
Barnaby finished checking the public credentials and confirmed that Edric Lorne had standing to sponsor a charter. Former student. No present disciplinary restriction. The introduction had come through an academy office, not a name guessed from a fancy seal.
Lyra put her original estate records away under her own control. They had nothing to do with the offer tonight. She wanted, very badly, to discuss something that didn’t require defending that satchel.
The hauler called from the landing. Lorne arrived carrying a flat leather case and wearing a coat too good for the rough path. He paused to clean one shoe before entering, then shook hands with everyone whose hands were available.
Felix offered his left. Lorne adapted without remark.
“I was told you had quite a place here,” the visitor said.
“That depends which pieces were included,” Felix answered.
Lyra gave him a look. He pointed courteously toward the table.
Lorne admired the kettle first. He asked a practical question about its cutoff and watched Tamsin show the control. Then he examined the support drawings and Hana’s written acceptance, reading the customer terms rather than merely looking for an impressive seal.
Lyra began to relax.
He understood what a small useful thing could be worth. That was already more promising than a visitor who measured empty air beneath the garden.
He paused over the old wooden stand beside the wall.
“We used those in my first year. Half the screws had to be tightened before you started.”
“That one’s waiting for a screw,” Tamsin said.
“Then it’s an authentic academy specimen.”
He laughed at himself, and Lyra found she liked him a little. He asked whether the students still learned to carve their own contact marks. Barnaby answered that the requirement remained, with two approved material substitutions and considerably worse handwriting.
Lorne told them about a lesson in which his own practice board had spent an entire afternoon turning the wrong way. His instructor had left him to discover that he’d copied the diagram from its reflection in a polished plate.
Felix looked at Barnaby. “An established teaching method. Letting a person demonstrate the whole mistake.”
“It depends how far the mistake can travel,” Tamsin said.
Lorne nodded. He wasn’t embarrassed by his old failure. Lyra pictured the workshop receiving students who could afford to make small foolish mistakes here instead of finding them for the first time beside a damaged bridge.
Lorne took his tea, tasted it and asked whether the kettle had heated it through an ordinary circuit. Felix explained the modest repeating action without claiming it could teach the student drinking from it.
“I learned formations here,” Lorne said. “Then spent most of my life making money elsewhere. People remember the money. I’d like them to remember something I helped build.”
He opened the leather case.
Inside lay a sponsorship form and a colored sketch of a plaque.
THE EDRIC LORNE WORKSHOP.
There were several proposed borders.
Felix studied the sheet.
“Does the border matter?”
“A certain dignity is appropriate.”
“We have a wall facing the academy. Less attractive from inside. Excellent viewing distance.”
Lyra suspected he’d found a profitable use for the draft.
Lorne considered the suggestion seriously. “Visible from the main approach?”
“What’s left of it.”
Barnaby tilted his head over the sketch.
“Must the lettering fit the wall, or the wall fit the lettering?”
Lorne looked between two versions. “The longer inscription could go below.”
He had thought about this. Lyra didn’t blame him. He was offering his financial standing and an introduction he could put in front of the registrar tomorrow. A plaque was a small price for the possibility of sleeping without counting days to removal.
Tamsin rested one hand on the form.
“My tools remain mine. The public safety advance isn’t your donation.”
“Naturally.”
“And the paid jobs are paid jobs.”
“I have no objection to a workshop earning its keep.”
He slid the sponsorship terms toward Lyra.
The first provisions concerned the name, the records the academy required and ordinary inspection of instruction. She could work with those. She read more slowly when she reached the reserved use periods.
Lorne’s guests would have priority during specified sessions. Other users must leave. He would hold first claim on new devices developed under the charter and nominate pupils. Applicants with unpaid academy obligations would be excluded until their accounts were settled.
Lyra put her finger beneath that line.
“Any unpaid obligation?”
“We need some assurance of reliability.”
“An attendant under emergency registration?”
“If the account remains unpaid, yes.”
She thought of Hessa without saying the woman’s name. A medical prohibition, housing tied to employment and a debt that did not disappear because an inspector said she mustn’t work today.
“A craftswoman disputing an assessment?”
Lorne glanced at Tamsin. “There could be an appeal.”
“Before exclusion or after?” Lyra asked.
“We can’t have every applicant disputing every obligation to evade the standard.”
Felix had stopped looking at the plaque.
Lyra took a clean sheet.
“Could we reserve a limited number of appointments for your nominated students instead? A fixed allotment. Material costs stated separately. Safety instruction available regardless of an unresolved account.”
Lorne read her suggested wording. He accepted a smaller change to the device provision, allowing ordinary repairs without asking permission. He considered her appointment limit, then restored the exclusion with a more polished sentence.
“My associates won’t support an institution open to every troublesome applicant. There must be a distinction between promising students and people needing help with their affairs.”
Tamsin leaned forward.
“During one of your private sessions, the district needs this bench for an urgent repair. My own paid bench time. What happens?”
“You would ask to alter the session.”
“Ask whom?”
“The sponsor’s designated representative. I may not be present.”
She sat back.
Lyra could almost hear the promise changing shape. It was still lawful. A man could support a private establishment and reserve its benefits. But this was the little public craft household whose work she’d planned to put before the registrar, and she was being asked to sign away decisions everyone else had already made with one another.
She tried once more before asking for the private conversation. On a fresh line, she wrote that disputed accounts would be reviewed before they affected access to essential safety instruction.
Lorne read it with the careful attention he had given the repairs.
“Who reviews?”
“The workshop and the relevant account office. With an independent person if they disagree.”
“That could take weeks.”
“Then no exclusion until it’s settled.”
He shook his head. “That’s precisely what I can’t offer my associates. They expect standards that mean something on the day.”
“And if the account is wrong on the day?”
“There are existing offices for that.”
He wasn’t raising his voice. Lyra wanted him to, because anger would make him easier to refuse. Instead, he reached for his cup and waited for her to accept what he considered an ordinary condition.
She looked down at the crossed-out sentence. Her suggested review would have added work, delay and another possible dispute. It would also have prevented one disputed account from deciding everything before anyone heard it.
Lorne had understood the revision perfectly. That was why he wouldn’t take it.
“May we speak outside for a moment?” she asked.
Lorne nodded. Tamsin offered him more hot water, which he accepted. Nothing about his manner demanded they dislike him. That made refusing harder.
On the porch, Felix took his chair because standing dramatically would have hurt.
Lyra folded her arms, then unfolded them when the movement pulled her healing cut.
“One year,” she said. “We could agree for a year. Get through the auction.”
Tamsin stood beside the door. Barnaby perched above the frame, looking outward so their discussion wasn’t an exhibit for the man inside.
“And when somebody needs the access?” Felix asked.
“We find a way. Ordinary hours. A separate appointment.”
“And the first urgent repair in his private session?”
She stared toward the broken bridge brackets.
She knew how to find ways around a rule. People with influence did it constantly. Her father had made exceptions for deserving petitioners. Balthazar had learned to make the exceptions serve him.
She had wanted to sign first and decide later who deserved protection from what she’d signed.
Tamsin rubbed the side of her thumb, working a little ingrained grease from the skin.
“A private shop can run that way,” she said. “But I won’t call it the open instruction people are signing for. And I won’t tell a customer her safety repair matters until a sponsor’s friend needs the room.”
Lyra let out a short, angry breath.
“We need a sponsor.”
“Yes,” Felix said.
“You were going to take the plaque.”
“I still would. I like arrangements where a wall does most of the work. This one has expanded.”
Barnaby turned his head.
“A condition remains a condition when its signers hope not to use it.”
She wanted someone to offer a clever route that let them keep both things. Nobody did.
Inside, Lorne examined Hana’s acceptance again. He was not sitting there planning how to destroy them. He simply wanted an institution that answered to him, and had brought enough resources to make that wish reasonable to himself.
Lyra went back to the table.
“We can’t sign these access terms.”
He lowered the paper.
“Even with the revised device clause?”
“That revision helps. The exclusions and control of the bench remain. We can offer a narrower paid partnership. Your name on a defined project, with its own appointments. Not charter control.”
His expression cooled.
“I’m not looking to purchase another service.”
“I understand.”
“I doubt you’ll find many sponsors with no expectations.”
She kept her hands flat on the table.
“We negotiated the expectations. We couldn’t agree on these.”
For a moment he looked as though he might argue further. Instead, he gathered the sponsorship form and the plaque sketches. Barnaby asked to retain the written terms of the declined proposal for their record. Lorne allowed a copy, waiting while Lyra completed it.
She hated how steady her hand had to be.
At the gate, Felix thanked him for coming. No final insult followed him down the path. The passenger basket carried away the clean coat, the leather case and the easiest route they’d found to saving the charter.
Lyra sat hard in the chair by the table.
The kettle clicked. She ignored it.
Tamsin gathered the cups.
“Ask the people using the work,” she said. “What they’d actually put their names to.”
“They’ll have expectations too.”
“Of course.”
Lyra covered her eyes briefly, then took the copied terms out from under her wrist. Edric Lorne had not asked for the satchel. She’d almost been grateful enough for that to miss what else he’d asked them to hand over.
Barnaby brought in Valen’s message from the landing. The evening safety review would proceed as arranged. The inspector wanted the dated work records ready.
She stood, moved the rejected proposal aside and set out the measurements from the terrace.
Felix carried his cup to the chair she’d moved back for him.
This time she left it there.