Location:Seven Peaks — Command Center, Residential Quarter, Maren Harren's Rooms
Date/Time:TC1856.09.12 – TC1856.09.15
The argument took two days to arrive, which was longer than Raven had expected, and it arrived the way real arguments in her council always did — not as an ambush, but as a request for a scheduled hour.
Taron came in with a written page, which he had never once done in three years.
"I wrote it down," he said, "because I say things badly when I'm angry, and I'd rather not be angry at you. I want to be right or be corrected, and I can't do either if I'm shouting."
"Then read it."
He read it.
"One. We have two anchors. We need eight to ten. We have found the third in five months, and we found him by luck — by a paste that flags twenty-two people in a hundred who aren't anything.
"Two. He said no. He is four days' ride east, and he is not going to change his mind, because the reason he gave was not a mood. It was reasoning. Reasoning doesn't wear off.
