The guild lawyer came to the yard that evening with Halvek’s office’s reply, and a guild clerk with a ledger, and behind them both, at a careful distance, a Directorate messenger in a grey collar carrying a folder of his own.
They stood in the yard under the work lamp, the four of them and Mara and Pell and Tavin, in a rough circle around the bench, and the lawyer read the reply aloud.
“The office of the Director of Energy, Cinder, consents to a public technical hearing at the hall of the dock workers’ guild, Low Brace, at which the candidate Mara Venn will present her procedure and its records for examination by the office’s engineers. The hearing will be public. The guild will hold duplicate records of every pulse file presented. The hearing will sit tomorrow morning at the seventh bell.”
She lowered the paper.
“He’s giving you a hearing,” she said. “Public. In our hall. With our records. That’s more than I expected.” She looked at Mara over her spectacles. “He wants to be seen being reasonable. It’s a good sign and a bad one.”
“Why bad?” Pell said.
“Because a man who wants to be seen being reasonable,” the lawyer said, “has already decided what the reasonable outcome is.”
