Caldris wanted to see the drawings.
She came down to the lowest chamber in the morning, with one guard, and sat at the end of Mara’s bench on the stool Sera usually used, and held out her hand. Mara gave her the design: the load sheet with Nemi’s count and the children’s thirty-one and the cistern’s line and the thirty patients in words; the channel plan she had drawn from it; the first fold’s layout, root at the center, seam over it, crown outside; the cut seam piece marked with its thirty-four minutes. Caldris took photographs of every page with her slate, one by one, and then read them on the slate, scrolling, her stylus moving.
She read slowly. Mara stood, and stayed standing. She had learned that from Halvek.
“The Venn file,” Caldris said, without looking up, “left a trunk, a debt and three notebooks.”
Mara said nothing.
“It did not leave a license.” Caldris scrolled. “There is no record anywhere in the registry of a license issued to the Venn file for forge work. There is a record of field metallurgy. Compact employment. Nine years. There is a record of a mark registered for metallurgical samples. There is no license to work a heart.” She looked up. “You are building a heart on the methods of someone who was never permitted to build one.”
