Luminara Starwhisper's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Luminara left the filing room with the sealed petition warm in her hand, but she did not reach the street. A page in council livery caught her at the arched window and pointed her back inside, up the narrow stair to the reading room on the second floor. A senior councilor waited for her there, seated at a long table with her petition scroll already open in front of him. He had signed for it from the clerk while she was still on the steps. He did not stand. He tapped a second scroll on the table and slid it toward her. "Sponsor this before your seat is confirmed," he said. "Sign it as first name, and your chair is confirmed at dusk. Refuse, and the confirmation vote fails tonight." Luminara read the ruling. It stripped Tempo Flux of any right to hold recovered myth-relics and handed all eight pieces to the council's own vaults, under his personal warrant. She knew what the ruling meant. Tempo Flux had already agreed to appear before the council with the relics. This scroll would seize them on arrival and cut Aldric Moonwhisper's deal to the bone. It would also put the assembled artifact under one councilor's key. Luminara set the ruling flat on the table and said she needed an hour. She found Aldric in the corridor by the west stair, and Tempo Flux behind him with the chrono fish cupped in a glass jar of river water. Aldric had brought them both up the moment he heard the page called her name. Luminara told them the demand in three sentences. Tempo Flux said, "He wants the engine too. Not just the pieces." The fish turned once in the jar and stilled. Luminara made her choice in the corridor. She walked back into the reading room and told the councilor she would not sponsor the ruling. She said the relics were bound to a witness debt already logged with the clerks downstairs, and any seizure would void her own petition by conflict. She was guessing on the second part. He did not know she was guessing. He closed the scroll slowly. "Then your confirmation fails tonight," he said. "You may keep the petition. The chair goes back to open call in the morning." Luminara picked up her sealed scroll and walked out. On the stair she passed two clerks already carrying the notice of vacancy down to the front desk of the council office. Outside, Aldric was waiting with Tempo Flux and the jar. Luminara told them the seat was lost for the night and would be contested again at dawn. Tempo Flux said, "He will file his own name by sunrise." Luminara nodded. She had kept the relics out of one councilor's vault and kept her petition sealed, but the chair she had filed for yesterday was open ground again, and now she had a fourth debt-holder watching her from inside the council itself.