By six in the evening on the twenty-first day, the legal and financial terms of the ninety-minute deployment were locked into the Courtesy Bridge’s brass ledger. In Sister Merrow’s washroom, Councilor Elna Vesk, Senior Inspector Korr Var, and Pella Rook stood before the arch. She watched the nine silver coins gleam inside their recessed brass sockets.
Beside the nine coins lay three extra silver coins—the contingency reserve established by Eren Tal and Sister Merrow to guarantee medical care and instant extraction in the event of an unforeseen load-bearing collapse. Not a single coin of that reserve could be burned up for ordinary transit. It sat as an inviolable guarantee of life and limb.
‘The terms are equitable, Councilman,’ Varo Nenn reported, blowing the sand from the final copy of the compact. ‘If the specialists withdraw before ninety minutes because of a safety hazard, they retain full triple wages. If they complete the shift and the Crown is steadied, the locked deposit is discharged automatically to their accounts in Harrowby.’
Councilor Vesk pressed her signet ring into the warm red wax beside Pella’s thumbprint. ‘For forty years, this city has spent forty thousand crowns a year on academy rituals that never prevented a single cellar from flooding,’ Vesk said. He looked down at the plain brass arch. ‘Twelve silver coins to buy ninety minutes of honest building from another world is the cheapest town bargain struck since the founding of Lathmere.’
