The Sunward Board’s notice arrived on the public channel at the twentieth hour of day twenty-one, and the clerk read it aloud.
Mara heard it in the lowest chamber, on the recorder clipped to Breda’s jacket. The Board clerk was in the engineering hall above, with the observers and Caldris and the Board’s relay. Her voice came down the service line flat and even. It stayed the same for every line of the notice, the important ones and the plain ones alike.
“The Sunward Board,” she read, “having heard the engineer’s terms entered in the command well’s control log, and the Custodian’s offer, and the views of the local keepers at Hearth, Lorn and Tal, resolves as follows.”
Mara stopped at the bench. Tavin, at the furnace, set down his tongs.
“One. The Custodian is isolated from direct control of all flow-moving instruments on the route. Valves, governors, seals. From this resolution.”
“Two. The Custodian’s archive is kept. Its records remain open to consultation by the Board, the keepers, and the engineers at every return.”
“Three. The archive may advise. It may not instruct.”
“Four. The Board will rule on the archive’s further standing when the lattice is stable.”
