This is a simple matter of cultural mismatch. Solarel does not value the mechanical secrets of the Kathresis' composition. She does not value the concept of [i]value[/i]. The idea that you can learn something, reproduce it and make a profit thereby does not exist where she is from. Even in the Evercity this idea is alien. Technology cannot be understood, cannot be controlled, it can only be respected and negotiated with.

So the skepticism behind Solarel's eyes as she silently stares at Ivy isn't because she thinks she's getting a [i]bad deal.[/i] It's because she thinks that the Terenius Consortium is too spiritually backwards to be able to interact respectfully with a god like the Kathresis. The guardian spirit who had lived alongside it had been vicious and the God itself was probably just as dangerous in its own way. The Boatmen, in the mind of this barbarian from the stormlands, risked offending her God at best, or getting themselves all killed at worst. 

So when Solarel folds her arms and nods again at her painstakingly typed lawsuit, a less insightful negotiator would have perceived it as stubbornness or savvy. Ivy can see that it's because, for all her research, Solarel fundamentally doesn't [i]get [/i]it. If a Zaldarian priestess arrived and [i]told [/i]her in formal language that she was now in charge of her God's maintenance then Solarel wouldn't bat an eye, and if another priestess wanted to challenge that one for rights to work on the Kathresis she would let them fight. Knights of Zaldar don't make [i]bargains[/i], they accumulate [i]households[/i]. They will fight to protect those households and maintain justice internally, but those contracts are written only in tradition. A household naturally appears around a skilled knight, and so the knight need do nothing other than be skilled to accumulate one.