Pell came back to the bench in the small hours, past midnight, with three districts that did not add up.
The crew was at the bench: Mara, Tavin, and Eshel at his gauges, with the guild shop’s note pinned beside him; the pocket’s grain had been checked against all four trial runs and passed. Gell and Brisk had gone home. Sera was at the Tern. The work lamp was lit. The bench model sat in its ring of coils with the pocket fitted between the probe and the governor, and the four trial traces were pinned on the board beside the drawing of the ring and its twelve gauges.
Pell set his survey sheet on the bench. Three of its district pages were marked with crosses in red pencil.
“These three,” he said.
Mara looked. They were the three districts she had marked for him that evening: three districts on the western slope, the rising ground beyond the river where the Low Brace ended and the rich districts began. The north terraces. The glass houses. The orchard lanes. She had marked them because Wendell, reading tithe slips at the bench, had said they lied.
“Their reported demand,” Pell said. “The figures on the public model. The one the Directorate publishes, that Eshel’s been using for the bench.” He put his finger on a column. “They leave something out.”
