Yara Fen began the meeting by opening a valve.
She stood beside the upper reservoir’s working board in a dark field coat, one sleeve pushed back from a wet wrist. Two local keepers watched the gauge while a third counted the water passing into the protected clinic branch.
“Watch that mark,” she told Iven.
He watched.
The first pointer rose. A second, lower on the board, barely moved. Beyond the retaining wall, the reservoir’s brightness narrowed between the old high-water stains and the present surface.
The morning wind carried the sound of the freight lifts from the shelf below.
Neri stood on Iven’s right with her field book open. Sera had joined the clinic keeper. Elian kept the route plan folded until someone needed the ground it described.
They had come for the actual water turn on the nine hundred and twenty-first morning, rested after the long road. Iven’s graft held its full useful reserve. His tools remained at his belt. Nobody had asked him to become helpless as the price of speaking to a commander.
