The argument started in the pump hall’s long room, among the pipes.
The clerk had called the delegates. Under the joint custody terms, a change to the well’s entry conditions needed the institutions it named to be present, or to send someone who could speak for them. So she had called them, on the relay, and within the hour they had come down the service stair to the fourth level one after another and stood in the long room between the great iron mains with the pumps thumping at the far end.
An engineering delegate from Meridian’s Directorate. A man of forty in a good coat, with a slate.
A terrace council delegate. A woman from the third terrace, where the failing regulators were, in a dock worker’s jacket.
A hospital delegate. A woman in a physician’s grey smock under her coat, from the lower terraces’ clinic.
And Caldris, at the back. And Sen, at the table the guild had carried out into the long room, with the plate on it, face up.
Mara stood beside the table.
She had thought, coming down the service stair at dawn, that the hard part would be finding Sen. It had not been. The hard part was this. Five people from five institutions in a pump hall, each with a reason that was true, each wanting the lock open on their own terms. She had stood in rooms like this before. The guild hall, the Council, the arbitration chamber. She was beginning to…
