Her rate for a first consultation is nine hundred credits, payable before she opens the case, and she named that figure without apologising for any part of it.
That was said at ten the following morning, on a loading bay, to a man who had slept four hours and owed a landlord six hundred.
Maelle stands taller than Ossian by an inch and carries the shoulders of somebody who moves metal for a living.
Black hair cropped short with one temple shaved clean, flat dark eyes, a smoked visor hanging at her collarbone on a steel chain rather than sitting up on her head.
'Nine hundred to look at my own hands... we have four hundred in the account until Friday,' Ossian did the sum standing up, 'she knows that, and she said it anyway.'
"I do not do introductory work," she pulled a stool out with her foot, "the last time I explained something for free, a corporation put its name on the explanation."
Four years ago Maelle argued in print that monster cores carry behavioural memory instead of neutral energy.
A weapons company took her preliminary study, published a version with three names on the cover that were not hers, and the review board struck her registration inside a month.
Since then she has not written a word she was not paid for in advance, which is either bitterness or a policy, and she treats the difference as nobody's business.
Paloma arrived nine minutes into that and turned a flat demand into a negotiation.
"You want the fee because somebody robbed you," she sat down opposite, "and he cannot pay it, so let us talk about what you actually need instead."
What Maelle actually needs is material, since a blacklisted engineer cannot buy monster components through any licensed channel in this city.
Nobody has sold her a component since the ruling, so she scavenges yard floors and tests her theories on rubbish.
The contract Paloma wrote on the back of a delivery note gives her first access, at cost, to everything The Unmasked recovers for two years after the guild reserves what a live operation needs.
Ownership of nothing whatsoever, access to every single piece, plus her name registered on each design before she puts a hand to it.
'She traded a fee for a supply line... and Maelle read that page three separate times,' Ossian watched the pen change hands, 'nobody has offered her anything since the board took her name.'
Bastien read the contract over her shoulder without being invited to, then pointed at one line and asked what happened if the guild folded inside the two years.
She wrote the answer into the margin herself, that the access clause survives the company, and initialled it before Paloma could object to the wording.
Maelle signed, then joined The Unmasked's filing as a technical member rather than a contractor.
Her exit clause kept every design hers if she left the guild, after which she lowered the visor and opened her case.
Examining Dreadweight took six hours, and she talked the whole way through in a flat working monologue nobody was expected to answer.
The shell fragment in the left gauntlet behaves nothing like inert material, which she established first and found least surprising.
Contaminated shell carries residue, everybody in the trade knows that much, plus the salvage window pays a quarter rate for anything a Gate has touched.
What nobody says out loud is that the residue holds structure, meaning the shell remembers what the animal did with it.
"Your left hand is not storing a substance," Maelle turned the gauntlet under a lamp, "it holds a behaviour, and that sentence cost me my registration."
'She is describing the thing I have lived inside for six weeks... in the words somebody destroyed her for using,' Ossian held the arm still, 'shit, she was right and they took her name.'
Behavioural memory explains every strange thing the gauntlets have done since the nest under the terraces.
That covers a plating which rejected bonding compound, a left hand which took a shell chip nobody offered, a right fist which drags toward damage instead of the target he picked.
The gauntlets are not equipment holding a mask, and nobody could call them armour with a slot cut into the wrist.
Dreadweight is a paired vessel in the middle of learning, and each hand learns on its own schedule.
"Two sockets, two different appetites," Maelle set the left gauntlet down, "your right wants pursuit since you fed it a pursuit hunter, and your left wants impact after a month of use as a wall."
Nothing in the system had ever told him that, and the system has had six weeks to mention the matter.
'It let me work that out by burning my own hand for four hours... she got there in six by looking,' Ossian flexed the fingers, 'that is what a specialist is.'
[Your left vessel is hungry and has no shape]
[An empty stomach in a hunting animal is a problem that solves itself badly]
'The system agrees with her, in the worst possible wording... a stomach that solves itself,' Ossian shut the panel down, 'damn it, the left hand will take whatever reaches it first.'
That is the thing Maelle wants tested, and she would like the work finished before the socket fills itself with something nobody chose.
An empty vessel with an appetite will accept contaminated scrap off a yard floor, and she watched a prototype do exactly that once already.
Her second prototype was a forearm brace for a dock worker, which swallowed a chip of drainage plating off her floor and has swung wrong ever since.
"Feed it deliberately," she said that without one grain of drama, "or it eats whatever is nearest, and then you own that for life."
Ossian asked what happens if the wrong thing gets in first, and she answered with a number rather than with reassurance.
Removal of a settled imprint has been attempted eleven times on record, with two survivors, and neither of those two kept the limb.
The material she wants is an Ironback Ape core, since no other animal in the district stores impact the way the left hand keeps trying to.
Two Ironbacks live on protected ground outside the city, behind a fence nobody unlicensed gets through, and Maelle has written to that estate four times.
Calista found the third one in a district incident feed at ten that night, filed under nuisance rather than under threat.
An Ironback has nested inside stacked freight containers at the Halvers yard, in a block scheduled to open at the morning shift.
'Forty containers, one ape, plus a shift starting at six... and a foreman who has not rung a guild,' Ossian read the entry over her shoulder, 'hell, a guild costs money.'
Bastien knows the foreman, has known him twelve years, and says the man hires cheap before he considers anybody licensed.
The Unmasked is cheap, unlicensed, plus four hundred credits away from missing rent on eighty pigeonholes.
Nobody at the depot has ever seen an Ironback outside a training film, where a handler stood behind two metres of reinforced glass throughout.
Particular kind of animal, that one, since an Ironback never swings first and has no reason to.
Paloma made the call at twenty past ten and quoted a rate that would have embarrassed her in any other week.
Six hundred to clear the block, payable on completion, no guild licence mentioned anywhere in the conversation.
The foreman agreed inside forty seconds, which tells everybody at the depot precisely how large the animal in his yard is.
'He said yes before she finished the number... nobody agrees that fast about something small,' Ossian watched Paloma put the phone down, 'we are cheap for a reason we do not know yet.'
Rent falls due in ten days, six hundred against an account holding four, with a job that pays six on completion.
'The whole company balances on one ape in a freight yard... nobody has said that part out loud yet,' Ossian looked round the office, 'so nobody say it.'
Maelle pushed her visor back up and offered the only sentence of the evening that sounded like enthusiasm.
"I will come and watch," she picked up her case, "from a distance nobody sensible would describe as safe."