The tribunal began months after the crisis, in a hall in Meridian with the windows left open for the public.
It was the old Compact assembly hall, on the upper terrace, with tall windows along both sides that the Board had ordered unshuttered. Through them came the noise of the courtyards: voices, a cart, someone selling hot bread. And through them, anyone who wanted to could look in. People did. They stood at the windows in the cold and watched.
Mara sat at the long table at the hall’s front, on the witnesses’ side. Beside her chair, the record boxes. Stacked, labeled, each with its custody tag. She had brought them herself from the stabilization room, on a trolley, with the clerk walking beside her reading every tag.
On top of the stack, in its own envelope, a luggage tag. Logged. Its number in the custody log in Lisan’s hand.
Tavin sat in the gallery above, in the front row. He had come from Cinder on the freight. He had not said why.
Beside him, Lisan, in his inspector’s coat. Behind them, the families’ representatives: a row of people from the Low Brace and the lower terraces and the outer stations, in their best coats, with their hands in their laps. Nemi had come from Lorn. Bren from Tal. Pell from Cinder, sitting very straight, with the household sheet folded in his breast pocket where Mara could see its edge.
