The council room had not been emptied for the visitors.
A resident was still explaining why the lower shelter needed a second water point when Eli reached the doorway. He waited with the others until she had finished. The delay was only a few minutes. After the chamber it felt almost offensive, and that feeling told him how easily his emergency had become the measure by which he expected everyone else’s time to be arranged.
Ilyan stood beside the council’s recorder. He had washed the dust from his hands but not changed his torn sleeve. The recorder asked him to sit with the witnesses rather than the council while the account was taken. His representative appointment did not make his own actions beyond examination.
Tessa remained at the workroom until a local healer accepted the immediate handoff. She arrived carrying a sheet with patient needs and no public names. Juno brought a verified copy of the current transfer record. The compact reader itself stayed under the council’s storage watch, connected to the checked supply and recorded in the custody book.
The captain spoke first.
She described the routes she had authorized, the workers she had received, the passage she had ordered sealed. She said which observations came from her guards and which she had made herself. When a council member asked whether the visitors had obeyed every position instruction, she identified Mira’s departure and attack. She also identified the rescue that followed. Neither detail was allowed to replace the other.
