Elara called at 6:40 in the morning, which was the first wrong thing.
The hearing had been set for nine. A magistrate did not rule before the room opened, a clerk did not leak it, and the decision on a thirty-day reclassification petition was not the sort of thing that traveled two hours ahead of the people it landed on.
Caleb stood in his mother's kitchen with the phone against his ear and watched the gray come up over the yards, and he listened to Elara tell him a thing she should not have been able to know yet.
"It's denied," she said. "The petition. The magistrate's denying it."
"The hearing's at nine."
"The ruling's written. They do that. They write it and then they read it out for the record." A pause, short. "I wanted you to hear it from me before the Guild feeds put a spin on it."
He let the silence sit a second longer than was comfortable, a thing he had started doing without deciding to.
"How'd you get it before nine."
