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CHAPTER 120
Dana brought the exchange file to the council in the evening, and laid it on the trestle in the order it had been written.The first sheet was the one from the envoys' signing, copied fair in her hand. Terms of provisional cooperation, as Ezra had set them on the north service gate, in the presence of the signatories. Each settlement kept its own people and its own governance. Supplies moved on negotiated terms, written down and read aloud. Mutual defense depended on the threat and on what each side could spare. The agreement stood for a stated period, and either side could end it with notice.The second sheet was the exchange of the first morning, the one with the seed quantities written in black and the words Not released beside the medicine line. Dana read it aloud because the council always wanted to hear the terms in the room, not just see them."The first lot of seed conditional on fit," she read. "The second on wire. Medicine not released. The runner to come every three days if
CHAPTER 119
The request had been waiting at the bend since the afternoon before, and the council had let it wait. Talia thought that was the right thing to do, though she would not have said so to Mateo Ruiz's face. A decision made in a hurry was a decision somebody would have to unmake.The council sat in the common room after the evening rotation. Dana had the record open at the page where the request was written, in her clear hand, with the words Meeting requested outside the line. Not decided. Beside them, in the same hand, the question the council had sent through the runner's route on the night of the vote: Do the envoys hold confirmed information about this group, or about the name given? Under that, there was no answer. No runner had come to the bend since. The envoys had not written back."Two things before we vote," Ezra said. "The meeting. And what we say about the question that's still out.""The meeting first," Grit said from the door."The meeting first," Ezra said. "The request ask
CHAPTER 118
The visitors came to the bend in the middle of the afternoon, when the light was flat and the wall walk had changed its names for the second time that day. Talia saw them from the storehouse steps, two figures standing where the road curved out of the rail spur, not walking toward the wall, not turning back.They were not the people from the river. She knew that before she could see their faces, because they did not stand the way the river people had stood, close together and watching the road behind them. These two stood apart. One held the strap of a canvas bag. The other kept both hands at his sides.Grit was on the north walk. He lifted one hand, and his men turned, and the window stayed shut. Dana came out of the storehouse with the folder under her arm and the pen on its string, and walked to the painted line, and did not step over it."You've come to the bend," she called. "The gate's open to names, and the window's closed. What do you have?"The taller of the two stepped forwa
CHAPTER 117
Omar brought the first seam readings to the council in a folded page, and he did not read them aloud until Dana had opened the record book and written the date."Upper run, east panel, begun," he said. "The seats I checked on the day the panel was fitted are the only readings I've got on that run. I haven't taken the seams yet, not with the caliper, and I'm not going to write more than I've measured. Desmond's tally shows the frame work on the upper run. The north walk isn't measured. It's begun, nothing more.""Begun yesterday," Desmond said from the foot of the table. He had come in from the frame with dust on his forearms and had not sat down. "He had me on the top rail most of the afternoon. I'd say he's a hard man to climb for, if I were kind."Ines laughed, short and surprised. Grit did not.Ezra listened with his hands flat on the wood. He had been listening to the reading for some minutes before it was finished, and Talia could see the tiredness in the set of his shoulders, th
CHAPTER 116
Omar's recommendation had been waiting on the agenda since the morning he had walked the wall with Ezra. Dana had copied it into the book in his own words, and beneath it she had written the line the council had asked for: Recommendation, not policy. Council to decide.Talia read it again at the trestle before the council sat. The north walk had been checked by Desmond's eye and called dry. It had not been measured by anyone who could say what a measurement was for. Omar wanted it measured, the way he had measured the lower corner, and he wanted the council to say so.The common room was full by the time the lamps were lit. Ezra took the head of the trestle. Grit was at the door, Roz at the window with her clipboard, Ines and Omar on the near side, Marlene in her corner. Dana had the record book open, and beside it the interface's governance screen, which Talia had turned face down out of habit. It was not a thing the council used every night. It was there because the protocols were l
CHAPTER 115
The hearing was set for the next sitting, and the council kept to its word, which was the first thing Talia noted when she came in and found the chairs already arranged.They had put the trestle at the far end of the common room, away from the window and the storehouse door, with a single chair on the near side and Grit's roster open on the table beside it. Dana had the record book at her elbow and a second pen laid beside the first. The lamps were lit early. Nobody had brought food.Dominic came in between two of Grit's men at the quarter hour, in the gray coat they had given him from the holding wing, his hands unbound but his wrists marked red at the cuffs. He had shaved. He had not slept well, and he did not try to hide it. He looked at the room the way he had once looked at a restaurant with a table he wanted, quickly and completely, and then he sat down in the chair without being told to."Thank you for seeing me," he said."You're not here to be thanked," Ezra said from the hea
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