Mira gave them three sealed copies and made Iven choose who carried each.
He took one. Neri took the second. Ruka put the third inside the route case she kept beneath her coat.
“If a pack falls in a channel,” Mira said, “I don’t want the whole agreement going after it.”
“Neither do I,” Ruka answered.
The originals remained at the Sill. Elian had his own copies and the host council had theirs. No single box in Iven’s hands contained the future of two hundred and sixteen thousand people. He liked that more each time someone made it true.
They left on the two hundred and thirty-second day.
Oren and Anja stayed under the cooperative’s paid assembly contract. The receiving frames needed familiar hands through the first transfers. Neri had given them a work limit, the inspection sequence and authority to stop a fitting if the actual carriage differed from the drawing. Neither needed her permission by relay to decline an unsafe improvisation.
Anja hugged her before they parted. Oren lifted a hand from the tools he was already sorting.
