Eshel found the other rule that same evening, before the shrine rang the evening bell. He found it by reading the dock’s meter.
“The dock grid,” he said, in the yard, with his case open on the bench and a sheaf of printouts spread around it. “The public civil dock where the Tern landed. It draws its power from Hearth through the district substation, like everything in the Low Brace. But the dock has its own meter. A separate one. Because the dock authority bills the freight haulers for power, so the dock’s draw has to be recorded exactly, every four seconds, on a public meter record.” He put his finger on a printout. “And the meter record is one the shrine’s wall can read. I checked. The keeper has a read line to every public meter on Hearth’s network. It’s in the keeper’s clauses. Clause nine.”
“What does clause nine say?” Mara asked.
Eshel read it from his slate. The guild lawyer had found him a copy of the keeper’s published clauses, the ones the Directorate posted on its maintenance board for licensed yards; nobody ever read them.
“An unexplained variance above the published band on any public meter on the lamp’s network requires inspection by the lamp’s keeper.” He looked up. “Inspection. Neither reading nor review. Requires.”
