The gallery of the High Senate Chamber had filled to capacity by the second bell of the afternoon. A hundred and twenty residents of Lowbank and the Mill District occupied the hard wooden benches, their damp wool coats and oiled leather aprons smelling of river mist, coal soot, and wet dog. Between them and the floor stood six town watchmen in blackened iron breastplates. Their polearms were held at parade rest.
At the center of the raised dais sat Councilor Elna Vesk. She was a woman of sixty, with hair the color of river gravel wound into a plain knot, her dark wool senator’s gown fastened with a plain silver clasp. On the desk before her lay the iron-bound town charter, open to the articles governing public waterways. Beside the charter sat an hourglass filled with fine black river sand. It measured the speaking allotments of the petitioners.
‘The Extraordinary Committee on Heavy Safety is in session,’ Vesk announced. He struck the table once with a heavy boxwood gavel. The dry crack of wood on wood silenced the murmur in the gallery. ‘We have received two opposing petitions concerning the working sign-off of the Sluice Crown. The College of Summoners asserts that the Crown is fully steadied and demands immediate civic endorsement. The Municipal Works Board asserts that the rig creates dangerous backing-up pressure in the Lower Wards.’
