The council did not vote on whether Ilyan was right about the old word.
It voted on what he would be authorized to say, what he would be required to disclose, and which questions he must bring back rather than answer on its behalf. Eli stood behind the visitors’ chairs while the interpreter read the proposed mandate. Ilyan sat with the council, his notebook closed.
The selected records could be copied for surface publication. The public account would include the measured withdrawals, the matched-record trial under its approved privacy terms, and the disputed historical evidence about the seal’s upkeep. It would describe uncertainty as part of the finding. Personal names remained subject to separate permission. Secret routes were outside the release.
The rival historian asked for the disagreement over voluntary service to be named in the mandate itself.
“Otherwise he can say there was discussion and give only his conclusion,” she said.
Ilyan did not answer for the council. The council member conducting the vote asked the reader to insert a requirement that the competing translations travel with the selected passage and their sources. The interpreter read the changed wording aloud before anyone marked assent.
Several members spoke about what had happened to the settlement’s people. Their losses were not merely illustrations for a surface argument. Ilyan would be required to describe them within the permissions given, without turning protected households into exhibits. He could ask for independent investigation and medical cooperation. He could not promise occupation, permanent access, or…
