The old landing frame had outlived its welcome.
It hung against a Marcher’s lower armor above the western basin, a small human shape beside a body that made the whole riverbank seem temporary. Its broad feet rested on prepared pads. The upper fastenings joined an old permitted receiving seat, not raw tissue, but the animal had stopped accepting the traffic that gave those fastenings a purpose.
The human owners wanted their frame back.
The Marcher wanted it off.
For once, Iven thought, the problem began with people who could agree about the result.
They came by Low Lantern on a nonmedical work hire, its white medical bar covered for the industrial turn and the clinic schedule kept separate. Otha brought the boat into the outer channel and stopped well clear of the darker water beneath the feeding bank. Her authority over the river did not make the body on the bank a fixed mooring.
Pera stood beside a local interpreter named Korin. He had worked this lower route for years. She knew several of his signaling patterns and none of the private history that made him choose one interval instead of another.
“Keeps-the-Low-Bank,” she told Iven. “That is how the local workers say the name. It doesn’t mean a promise to stay.”
