The memorial was set for the ninth hour in a yard behind a low quarter tenement, on ground nobody in the family owned. Luna had put it on the board the evening before, above nine other notices, in her own writing.
Vell came to the gatehouse table at the sixth hour with the tower salvage sheet ruled into columns. He had the figures ready before anybody else in the yard was awake, which is the detail Yenna has described most often since.
[Tower salvage: 3,600 Forge Energy.]
"We can take the salvage first," he said, "since the weighing district shuts its book at the tenth hour."
"No," Yenna answered, turning the sheet face down under her forearm.
She has never claimed the refusal was planned, though Luna was in the room for the whole of it. What she said next took about forty seconds, at the volume a person uses for a delivery instruction.
