Three witnesses stood along the back wall of the repair shop office, and Ossian had chosen none of them.
Paloma sat at the end of the table with the signed page in front of her and a clock running on her screen.
Every one of those witnesses had been given the clauses to read before walking in, on Calista's instruction rather than Paloma's usual practice.
Calista put both hands on the Glass Mantis at four in the afternoon and told the room she was ready.
Ossian had spent the walk over deciding what he would do if she changed her mind at the table, and the answer was nothing at all.
[Conversion has begun]
[This face is being written into Calista]
Her channels fought it inside the first second, in the way scar tissue fights anything that tries to move through it.
The left arm seized at the elbow and stayed there, with the fingers curling in against her palm.
'That is the same seizure as the training hall... except now it has somewhere to go,' Ossian watched from four feet back, 'do not touch her.'
Calista made a sound through her teeth and did not let go of the mask.
Nobody else in that room could see a system panel, so the next part of it belonged to him alone.
Then a panel opened in front of Ossian alone, offering him a way to make all of it stop.
[Your retainer's channels are refusing the rewrite]
[Impose your Will on her and the process completes in under a minute]
The wording was plain, and it did not pretend to be anything other than what it was.
Her face had gone grey by then, with her jaw set hard enough that the muscle stood out along the side of it.
'It is offering me a button that finishes this in one minute... and she would wake up fixed,' Ossian read it twice, 'no, that is the whole thing she wrote four clauses about.'
The Jackal wanted him to take it, and the wanting came up through his right hand before he had finished the thought.
Something in that mask understands a body refusing an order, and it has opinions about how to answer one.
Ossian has spent two weeks learning that the Jackal never argues with him, and it moves the hand before any argument starts.
'My hand has come off the table without me... shit, it wants to press it for me,' Ossian looked down at his own arm, 'behind your back, now.'
He put both hands behind him and locked one wrist inside the other fingers, the way a man holds a child away from a hot pan.
Two of the three witnesses saw him do it, and neither of them understood what they were looking at.
One of them told Paloma afterward that the pair had barely moved, which is how the afternoon went into the record.
The binding ran for nineteen minutes at the pace Calista set for it, start to finish.
Under a minute was available the whole time, sitting on a panel eighteen inches from his face.
No witness in that room could see the offer, so nobody but Ossian would ever have known he took it.
'Nineteen minutes of the slow version... not one of them shortened by me,' Ossian kept his hands where they were, 'I want her out of this as herself, that is the whole list.'
Twice she stopped altogether and breathed for half a minute before going on with it.
'Watching somebody pick the slow version on purpose... and she picks it again every thirty seconds,' Ossian kept his eyes on her hands, 'do not offer, do not help.'
Nobody in that room said a word during either pause, since Paloma had briefed the witnesses on exactly that point.
Nineteen minutes is long enough for a person to change their mind eleven times, and she used none of them for that.
At the nineteenth minute Calista finished the binding out loud, in her own words, with her own name in the sentence.
"Calista accepts this face and everything that comes with it," she got the whole line out before anything else happened.
Her eyes closed before her legs folded, so Ossian put a hand under her head with about an inch to spare.
[The conversion is complete]
'She got the words out herself... nobody in this room spoke for her,' Ossian knelt on the boards with her head in his palm, 'count, start counting now.'
Eleven minutes went past with a woman unconscious on a repair shop floor and four people standing over her.
Paloma checked her breathing at the third minute and again at the eighth, then wrote both times down on the page.
Ossian counted every one of them out under his breath, and he was still counting when her eyelids started moving.
'Eleven minutes and four seconds... no idea what any of that number means,' he watched her face, 'damn it, wake up and be yourself.'
Calista opened her eyes, worked out where she was, then lifted her left arm off the floor without using the right one to help it.
That arm had not moved on its own for eight months, and every person in the room knew it.
Mana came up through her repaired channels and along the edge of the forearm as a thin bladed line, the way light comes off glass.
Eight months of a dead arm ended on a repair shop floor in front of three strangers and an invoice.
Paloma stopped typing for the first time in four hours and put the screen face down.
The public registry updated inside ninety seconds, given that it watches for exactly this kind of event.
[A registered Level has been posted for Calista]
Her name went onto a public list with a figure beside it, in front of three witnesses who could all confirm the date.
'She is on the registry again... and the guild that discharged her will read it before dinner,' Ossian sat back on his heels, 'she did every part of that herself.'
A registered Level puts a person on a list the guilds have to account for in writing.
Then a second panel opened on his own side of the room and took payment for the whole afternoon.
[Glass Mantis has left you]
[It belongs to your first retainer now, for the rest of her life]
The figure underneath that line was the count of what he had given away, printed the way the system prints everything else.
'That is the precision gone... every bit of it, off my sheet and onto hers,' Ossian read his own panel with both hands shaking, 'shit, worth it, say so out loud later.'
He can still read a wound, a fault, or a load, since half the Mantis had been paid into him permanently a night earlier.
What he cannot do is put that face on again, and the system had told him so twice before he agreed to any of it.
Nine bindings in that registry ended with somebody who answered to their own name and nothing else.
Every one of those nine had been finished faster than nineteen minutes, which is a fact Calista had read for herself.
Calista got herself upright against the table leg with her left hand flat on the floor for balance.
Something crossed her face then, in the second after she understood the arm was working.
It did not reach her mouth or her eyes, and it was gone before anybody in that room could name what it had been.
'That was relief, or it was fear... and it went off her face like a light going out,' Ossian watched the place where it had been, 'ask her about that when we are alone.'
Calista looked at her own hand opening and closing for a while, then asked Paloma for a printed copy of the registry posting.
She wanted it on paper with the date printed at the top, and that is the kind of thing a person asks for when they expect an argument.
Ivory Banner would read the posting inside a day, and both of them had known that before the mask went into her hands.