The Cup bracket is drawn in public at the governor's hall, which is the one part of the competition nobody arranges privately. Thirty-two seeds go onto a board in front of eleven hundred people, arranged by a committee whose members are never published.
Vell drew the lower bracket, which surprised nobody who had been reading the sponsor papers that week. It carried four of the seven names Luna had flagged from the northern range register, plus a first round against a specialist nobody could describe.
"That is not a draw," Jia said, reading the board from the public gallery, "that is a schedule somebody wrote."
"It is a schedule somebody wrote," Yenna agreed, "and every one of them will testify under oath that the committee is independent."
Regina Vance was drawn into the same lower half, four places along from him. The committee had put the reigning champion and the man who had taken her guild apart on the same side of a board, which means they can only meet before a final.
