The card sat on the workshop bench for most of a day while four people worked around it. Nobody moved it, nobody put anything on top of it, and everybody who came through the door read it once on the way past.
Four words in an unsigned hand, in a case worth eighteen thousand credits, delivered by private courier at the eleventh hour. It was the most expensive sentence anybody in that workshop had ever been handed.
"You are going to send it back," Jia said, on the second morning.
"I am going to send the card back," Vell answered.
That distinction took the room a moment to arrive at, and it took Luna about four seconds. She has spent two years pricing things that other people treat as gestures, which is a useful habit in a workshop.
"You are keeping the bottle," she said.
"I am selling the bottle," he said, "and I would like you to do it publicly, through the trading index, at the price it is actually worth."
