The live link opened in Meridian’s operations office at the tenth hour of the night, and Anwen’s face filled the console.
Mara had been waiting for it since the courier’s packet was logged at Meridian’s orbital transfer that afternoon. The packet itself would not arrive for two days. The seal was in it, in its case, with the limit sheet. But the well’s quorum did not need the seal in the room. Under the old route’s rules, a seal could be presented on a live link, by its holder, if the holder was present and the seal’s record was on the console. Caldris had found the rule in the well’s own manual. The Founders had thought of distance.
So the link opened, and Anwen was there.
She was at Lorn’s forge hall. Mara could see the forge rail behind her, and the cradle’s frame, and the governor on its bench with its new bracket curving round the inspection hatch. Anwen sat on a stool in front of the console’s camera with her sheet on her knee and her face lined with tiredness and the forge’s heat.
And behind her, from somewhere further back, Nemi’s voice.
“—no, you may not go out yet, not until the figure’s read, sit down—”
