The argument went on for seven hours.
Mara sat on a bench at the back of the hall by the door for most of them. Her back ached. The bench was hard and had no rest, and after the second hour the dressing on her arm began to throb in time with her pulse, and after the fourth she stopped noticing it except when she moved.
The chair rang her cup for order at the start of each delegate’s turn. Spoon on china, a thin clear note. By the third hour she was ringing it between sentences. By the fifth she stopped ringing it, because nobody was listening to it, and sat with the spoon in her hand and let the room argue.
The delegates argued from their reasons.
Population, first. The Meridian delegates: their lamp served the most people, the city and the outer ring together, more than Hearth and Lorn combined. A relief path to the outer ring would keep more people alive than any other. Simple arithmetic.
Food, next. The outer ring’s agriculture fed Meridian and half of Tal. If its domes went cold, the city starved within a winter.
Medical dependence. The crop dome technician from Cinder had come, the one with the fever bark, and stood up in the fourth hour and said again what she had said at the guild hall table: her patients needed the warm hours. Others stood after her. Hospitals on Lorn. A clinic on Tal that ran its children’s ward…
