The proctor’s dining room had a window on the furnaces and another on the people who benefited from them.
Iven stood between the two while Rovan’s attendant took his coat. On one side, the forge stacks rose above the basin, their smoke drifting low beneath a ceiling of cold air. On the other, a row of apartment buildings climbed the slope toward a public garden. Their windows glowed. Steam rose from a bathhouse roof, and a group of children crossed a lit courtyard without coats.
“Most of them have never seen the extraction lines,” Mara said.
She had come at Iven’s insistence. Rovan’s invitation had been amended without argument, though the attendant’s expression suggested the amendment had caused work somewhere in the household.
“Have you?” Iven asked.
“Not all of them. I’ve seen what comes back.”
The dining table held four places. Rovan entered with a woman who introduced herself as Councilor Tes Veran, one of Caldrin’s municipal heat commissioners. She wore a plain dark dress and carried a folded report instead of jewelry.
“I asked to attend,” she said. “The proctor’s staff didn’t think a worker delegate would enjoy the company.”
