Mara took the witness chair on the sixth day and was asked about Halvek’s obstruction. His sentence, read two days before, stood; her testimony was for the record filed beside it.
The witness chair stood at the front of the hall, a little apart from the long table, so that the person in it faced the tribunal and had the gallery at their back. Mara had not sat in it before. She sat now, with her hands on her knees, and looked at the chair and the two members either side of it and the clerk with her pen.
Halvek sat at the respondents’ place, with his folder.
Eshel was in the gallery. He had asked to be, for this day. He sat in the front row where Tavin had sat, with his cracked spectacles and his hands folded.
Tavin had gone back to Cinder the night before. The yard needed him; there were jobs on the cart. He had said goodbye to Mara on the dock in two words, come home, and gone.
“The obstruction of the Hearth warning,” the prosecutor said. “In your own words. In order.”
Mara had been asked to tell it many times. At the Board. At the inquiry. To Nemi’s shelters, on the public link, in the dark months. Each time she had told it the way the room needed: short for the Board, with figures for the inquiry, plain for the shelters. She had never told it in front of Halvek.
