Hester Ro won the acting delegate’s vote by fewer hands than Mara expected.
Mara counted them twice with the clerk, then stepped away from the table before anyone could mistake her preference for another ballot. The culture-room candidate accepted the result and asked for the bed-watch authority to remain with the people trained to hold it.
Hester agreed.
That was the first useful decision of her term.
It was day fifteen hundred and sixty-five in Caldrin. Far to the east, other people were examining other machinery. Mara’s current knowledge of Rootwell still came from letters that had crossed the distance, not from whatever had happened there that morning.
Lori and Hend’s long-awaited account had reached the workshop six days earlier. It described their arrival, the old garden wheel, the damaged ratchet dog, the first local culture beds, and a young worker improving an inspection flap so it could be opened with a glove. It had been written before the first mature cut.
If the bed had continued well, the earliest cutting date was already past.
Mara did not turn that calculation into news.
