The collector waited until Iven put down the empty bowl.
“Your left arm,” he said. “Keep it where we can see it.”
Iven looked at him, then at the four men standing beyond the service court’s low wall. One held a short crossbow. Two carried weighted capture nets. The collector wore a restorer’s stiff collar over a visible graft scar and kept a metal-headed baton loose in his right hand.
The passenger lane ran beyond a stone partition on the other side of the court. People continued through it. Iven could hear a marshal repeating the next receiving mark.
“Who’s we?” he asked.
“Lask. Acting for the cultivation house whose specimen you took.”
Iven dried his hands on the cloth beside the washing tray.
“Yes,” he said. “I took a graft.”
