The first person to arrive brought a chair and refused to lend it. By dusk there were fourteen people outside Reed’s workshop, counting Mara, and six places to sit. Ines’s aunt had put a saucer over the milk jug. Every time someone lifted it, she looked round from the doorway.
Mara weighted her notice with a jar of washers. Her route book stayed in her satchel, beside the buttoned compartment containing both receipt pieces in their tin. She had delivered the meeting copies that morning; one had come back with a butcher’s prices on the reverse.
“We should wait for the Registrar,” Ines’s aunt said.
“She’s here,” said Ines. “She’s deciding where to stand.”
Vesper stepped around a handcart and stood beside the drain. Her clerk carried clean forms. Mara asked him to keep those underneath until people knew what they were for.
A carter named Berris held up his circular. “Mine says continuity of district service. Hers says I lose my yard. Which one gets corrected?”
“The buildings would remain,” Vesper began.
“My horses don’t read buildings. Can I get to them?”
“Without a surviving address trace, potentially no.”
Ines’s aunt put down the milk jug. “You told me the lease would remain valid.”
“It would.”
“For a workshop we couldn’t enter?”
Mara pulled the jar off her notice. “Say what reassignment means. Before anyone offers anything.”
Vesper turned to the clerk. “Write a correction to the circular.” She faced the chairs. “Bell Foundry’s proposed reassignment would remove ordinary access to the affected addresses. There is no promised restoration date. Retaining your leases would not preserve your ability to use the premises.”
Someone behind Mara said, very softly, “Christ.”
“An agreement obtained by concealing that cost would fail when the signer learned it,” Vesper continued. “I cannot accept signatures on the explanation you received.”
“You sent it,” Berris said.
“Yes.”
Len read his account without his spectacles, holding it nearly against his nose. He said he had withheld the absence of a restoration date from Tomas Vale. When Berris asked whether that was Mara’s brother on the memorial, Mara said yes, and that he was alive.
She read Tomas’s account next, including the occupied rear stair he had left off the survey return. A woman sitting on an upturned crate asked the occupant’s name.
“We don’t know yet,” Mara said.
“Then write that where people can see it.”
Mara did.
“He learned the duration that same night,” she told Vesper. “What did that leave working?”
“His signature could no longer sustain the diversion on those terms.”
“He’s still shut in.”
“Failure of that consent does not supply a new witnessed entry restoring his address.” Vesper rested her fingers on the clerk’s board. “I must account for the later exchanges individually. The index I showed you cannot establish that each explanation was truthful.”
“So are we protected now?” asked the woman on the crate.
“I cannot certify the whole chain to you tonight.”
The woman stood. She lived below the ferry approach and had water marks above her kitchen shelf. She wanted the proposed exchange completed before the next high water.
Berris asked whether she had understood the part about his horses.
“I understood. My mother sleeps downstairs.”
They spoke across each other until Ines’s aunt struck the milk saucer with a spoon. It cracked. She inspected the crack, set it down, and told them both to finish one sentence at a time.
Mara moved the empty chairs farther apart.
Ines spread the estimate beneath the workshop lamp. Dain, who had arrived carrying his wooden case, held down the curling corner.
“Bearing housing, two seals, stop assembly, a lifting crew for one shift,” Ines said. “Opening the remaining section is the first stopping point. If it shows more damage, this price stops being useful. Then an unloaded test and a supervised water trial. Until those pass, nobody gets to sell you a smaller flood.”
“How much?” Berris asked.
She turned the estimate toward him. He whistled through a gap in his teeth.
“That includes people being paid,” she said.
Dain laid out the route drawing. Gate operation would close the lower cart access. The upper service lane could carry hand loads; the marked outer-yard route would remain exposed to water. He would close that route when conditions required it.
“Even with the gate working?” asked Ines’s aunt.
“Yes. Stock left there can be lost.”
“And this saves the street?”
“It gives us grounds to calculate what still needs protection,” Dain said. “The trial may disappoint us.”
Mara drew columns on an ordinary sheet: offer, limit, permission still needed.
Ines offered two working days and use of her bench. Her aunt agreed to pay for the listed seals, with no substitutions charged to her. Berris offered his cart until noon tomorrow to move stock uphill. He would neither leave it in the exposed yards nor lend the horses.
“Put the horses down separately,” he said. “People get expansive with a pencil.”
The woman from the lower streets offered no money. She agreed to take the corrected notice to her neighbors, provided Vesper signed it first.
Two residents left without offering anything. One said they should have held the meeting after supper.
Those remaining agreed to use the upper lane for hand deliveries during any gate operation, accepting that heavy work would wait. Berris agreed to clear his share of the exposed yard route for temporary use, subject to Dain’s closure. He made Mara read that entry back.
Ines’s aunt took the workshop’s new pump order off its nail. “Tell them next week at the earliest.”
“They’ll go elsewhere,” Ines said.
“Probably. You’ve offered the bench.” She folded the order and put it in her apron.
Dain pointed to the closed ferry office forecourt. They could ask to stage stock there during repairs. He had also pencilled it in as a limited receiving location for a possible exchange after testing; that would end its usefulness for storage. Vesper said the extent and duration needed assessment. Authorization would require a willing witness signing at the affected threshold.
Mrs. Pell pushed the drawing back.
“You want me for that.”
“You know the premises,” Vesper said. “You hold the key.”
“I also let people store things there. There are six trunks belonging to a woman staying with her daughter. She expects to collect them Friday.”
“We could move them,” Mara said.
“With whose permission?”
Mara looked down at her columns. “Could we use the forecourt tomorrow, while it’s still accessible? Leave a way through?”
“No extra storage, and no clearing anything out until the owners answer. I promised room to collect their things. Your stock would fill it.” Mrs. Pell tapped the drawing. “That applies whether you do an exchange or never touch the Ledger again.”
Mara crossed out the forecourt staging on their work sheet. With Pell withholding storage permission, Berris could move only the stock that fitted inside the upper workshop. The rest would stay in the yards.
Mrs. Pell buttoned her coat. “And I’ll lend you no signature that makes her come asking me why she can’t reach her own things. Get her answer. Get the other owners’ answers. Then bring me a proposal with an end I can understand.”
Len began, “Perhaps if I were to—”
“You’ve given us your experience of explaining conditions, Mr. Sayer.”
He sat back. Vesper drew a line through the witness space and wrote declined. She said they had no witness agreement for that proposal.
They authorized the listed repair preparation within the recorded limits; the exchange remained unagreed. Mara stayed outside the workshop while Ines counted the stock that would have to remain below. Mrs. Pell carried her chair home herself.