Paloma charges for a room, so they used the back office of a repair shop that owed her a favour and had four chairs in it.
Calista read the conversion wording off Ossian's own account of it, given that a system panel has never once been visible to her.
"Say the second line again," she had the notebook open and the pen down, which is how he knew the answer mattered.
"It takes the mask off me, not a copy of it," Ossian gave her the wording twice, the way the system had given it to him.
'She worked out what that means before I finished the sentence... and she has gone somewhere behind her own face,' he watched the pen stay down, 'let her get there.'
Giving her the wording twice had taken eleven seconds, and she had spent nine of those looking at the wall.
Solenne's office had written to Calista two days earlier, and she put that letter on the table before anybody had opened a file.
The offer was better than his in every column a sensible person reads: a funded clinic, a shorter timeline, no clauses about who owns her body afterward.
'A better offer has been in her coat for two days... and she came here first anyway,' Ossian read it twice without touching the page, 'do not argue against it, it is better paper.'
Then Calista offered to walk away from the whole arrangement, in the flat voice she keeps for things she has already decided.
"Your build needs precision more than my arm needs fixing," she said it like a line from a survey report, "Keep the mask."
Her argument was better than anything he had prepared against, and she had built the whole thing out of his own fight record.
'Everything I have wanted this month was a paper somebody else signs... now I am the one signing something away,' Ossian watched Paloma set the terms out, 'this one is mine.'
Grave Rush commits, Jackal Right locks onto damage, and neither of those two can read a wall before it comes down on somebody.
Every fight he has won since the Gate came off one of those three tools, and she has watched him use all of them.
Without that face he is a man who runs at problems in four-step lines, and the Glass Mantis had spent a whole fight punishing him for it.
'She has costed my whole build in nine seconds flat... nothing in it I can argue with either,' Ossian put both hands on the table, 'open your mouth and give her the real answer.'
"I'd rather have you standing next to me than have one more good face," he said it badly, at the wrong speed, looking at the table while he did it.
The line came out smaller than the thing it was carrying, and that is what happens to a man who rehearses nothing.
'Shit, four versions of that on the walk over and I used none of them,' Ossian kept his eyes on the table edge, 'she heard it anyway.'
Calista did not answer that for a while, then refused to let it end the negotiation.
"That's not a reason to hand me something permanent," she picked the pen back up, "It's a reason to write it down properly."
'She is not letting me be generous at her... she wants the paperwork instead,' Ossian felt the tightness go out of his shoulders, 'she is better at this than either of us.'
Paloma had been waiting for somebody to say the word paperwork since the moment she sat down.
Nobody expects a permanent agreement to get written in the back office of a repair shop, and that is part of why she likes the room.
"Then we draft," Paloma decided, turning her screen around, "And you two are going to hate how long this takes."
Her people had given Calista fourteen days to reply, and that kind of deadline reads as courtesy while working as pressure.
Drafting took four hours, two pots of coffee, plus one argument about the word permanent that neither of them won.
The first condition came from Calista rather than from him, which set the pattern for the whole afternoon.
Independent witnesses were to be present at the binding, none of them chosen by Ossian, all of them named on the page in advance.
"You don't get to be the only person in the room who saw what happened," Calista wrote the clause out longhand before Paloma could type it.
'She is protecting herself from me... and damn it, that is a sensible thing to do,' Ossian read it upside down, 'do not argue with one word of it.'
Paloma read that clause back twice and told her it would hold in front of any panel in the city.
The second condition put bodily ownership in her name permanently, in language that does not soften anywhere.
Her body remains hers in every particular, and no part of the mask's function transfers a claim over it to anybody, under this page or anything that follows it.
The third condition gave her control of every future evolution the mask goes through, with no exception written in for emergencies.
"Evolutions happen mid-fight," Ossian put that on the table as information, not as an objection, "You might be unconscious when one arrives."
"Then it waits," Calista did not look up from the page, "Or it doesn't happen."
'She has pictured herself unconscious in front of me... and she did that well before today,' he sat back in the chair, 'sign it.'
The fourth condition was the one Ossian had not seen coming from any direction at all.
Nobody may be bound under this page, or anything drafted after it, without being shown every failed case in the public registry first.
"That's not about us," Calista wrote it in the same careful hand as the rest, "That's about the next one."
'She is legislating for people we have not met... in a repair shop, with a borrowed pen,' Ossian read the clause twice, 'damn it, that is the first rule this thing has.'
Nine failed bindings sit in that registry, and not one of those nine was shown a single case before saying yes.
Two of them had damaged channels and a mask that promised repair, which is the exact shape of the woman holding the pen.
'Nobody warned me this came with legislation... and she started it, not me,' he watched Paloma type it up, 'that clause outlives both of us.'
Paloma billed them both for the drafting before the ink had dried on the last page.
Billing a client who is handing away a permanent asset costs Paloma nothing in the way of visible discomfort.
"Four hundred for the work, sixty for the room, and I'm itemising the coffee," she turned the invoice around so both of them could read that line.
The coffee came to twelve credits, listed by cup, with the shop's name printed underneath it.
'She has billed us for four coffees when I had a single cup... and she watched me not drink the others,' Ossian read the itemised line, 'pay it, she is worth ten times this.'
'Two weeks ago she would not let me thank her out loud... now she is writing rules for strangers,' Ossian watched her hand move down the page, 'quite a fortnight.'
Calista signed first, then Ossian, then two witnesses who had been called in off a repair shop floor.
Neither witness had any idea what they had signed, beyond a woman's name and a date, which is how Calista wanted it.
The system read the page while it was still lying on the table, without being asked to look at it.
[Every condition on this page is accepted]
Paloma poured a fifth coffee on the strength of that, since a clean acceptance is a rare thing in her line of work.
Then a second panel opened under the first one and refused a single line.
[One clause is rejected]
[The clause claiming that Calista does not belong to your Court]
Nobody at that table had written the word Court anywhere on the page, and none of them had heard the system use it before.
The clause it meant was the one Calista had put in herself, three lines up from the bottom, stating that she joins no organisation by accepting any of this.
She had put that line down before her own name went on the page, without asking one person at the table about it.
'It has read a clause about independence and answered it with a word none of us used,' Ossian looked at the panel with the room going quiet around him, 'shit, what is a Court.'