The cultivation house’s inventory was smaller than Iven had expected.
He had seen its claim carried into a service court by five men with nets. On the magistrate’s table it occupied one narrow page, with a batch number, a damaged-stock mark and a value entered before he had ever put the graft into his arm.
The house’s representative kept the later valuation beside it.
A much larger page.
Magistrate Dama Eres looked at both before asking anyone to speak.
Her temporary room had been a host district’s ordinary disputes office before the crossing began. The chairs did not match. A shallow groove ran across the desk where years of people had set down cases, tools and elbows. Someone had put the new transferred-case board on the wall without covering the older list of land and water hearings.
Iven sat with Halwen beside him.
The clinician had come off Mercy with the final support turns. His papers smelled faintly of the same packing cloth Vessa used around the instrument cases.
