She found Damon in the kitchen.
He took one look at her face and said "well?"
"He took the outline," she said.
"And?"
"And he’s not done," she said.
Damon looked at her.
Then he smiled.
"Four factions," he said.
"Not yet," she said. "He has to talk to his mbers."
"He took the outline," Damon said. "He’s not done. That’s four factions Eve."
She looked at him.
"Almost," she said.
"Almost," he agreed.
***
Corin ca back to the estate four days later
But this ti around he didn’t co back alone.
He brought seven people with him.
Eve was in the study when the ward chid and she looked out the window and counted them crossing the courtyard and felt sothing tighten in her chest that was equal parts nerves and anticipation.
Seven people.
That was his senior leadership.
He hadn’t just consulted them. He had brought them.
She went downstairs.
They assembled in the formal dining room.
Eve had asked Silas to set it up for a larger group this ti, more chairs, more tea, the kind of arrangent that said I was expecting you and I’m glad you ca.
Corin’s people were....varied.
An older woman with silver locs and the careful eyes of soone who had been in too many political rooms and was still deciding if this one was different. A young man who couldn’t have been more than thirty, supernatural, with the barely contained energy of soone who had been angry about sothing for a long ti and hadn’t found a place to put it yet. Two middle aged n who sat close together and communicated in the small gestures of people who had worked alongside each other for decades. Three others who ranged in age and expression from cautiously open to actively skeptical.
They all looked at Eve when she ca in.
She looked back at all of them.
"Thank you for coming," she said. "Sit down. There’s tea."
Corin sat at the center of his group.
He had the outline in front of him, the sa copy she had given him four days ago, now covered in annotations. Pencil marks in the margins. Sections underlined. Questions written in small precise handwriting at the bottom of several pages.
He had gone through it properly.
So had his people. She could see copies of certain pages that had clearly been distributed, the representation reform section, the oversight chanisms, the transparency requirents.
The older woman with the silver locs....her na was Petra Vane, Corin had introduced her as the faction’s senior legal advisor, had a separate folder of her own notes.
Eve looked at all of it and felt sothing warm move through her chest.
They had done their howork.
"We have questions," Corin said.
"I expected that," Eve said.
"A lot of questions," Petra Vane said. Her voice was dry and precise. "So of them uncomfortable."
"Good," Eve said. "Ask them."
Petra looked at her.
"You’re not going to tell us the uncomfortable questions don’t apply," she said.
"Why would I do that," Eve said.
"Most people in your position would," Petra said. "They’d manage the conversation. Steer around the difficult parts. Make it easier."
"I’m not trying to make it easier," Eve said. "I’m trying to build sothing that actually works. That requires the uncomfortable questions."
Petra held her gaze for a mont.
Then she opened her folder.
"Section four," she said. "The oversight chanism for faction representatives. You’ve proposed an independent review body with rotating mbership." She looked up. "Who selects the rotation?"
"Random selection from a pool of qualified candidates," Eve said. "The pool itself is assembled by a cross-faction committee in the first year and then reviewed every five years."
"Who decides what qualified ans," Petra said.
"The cross-faction committee sets the criteria in year one," Eve said. "The criteria are published publicly and can be challenged by any faction through a formal process." She paused. "The challenge process is in section seven."
Petra turned to section seven.
Read it.
Made a note.
"It’s not perfect," Eve said. "No system is. But the challenge process creates a check on the criteria itself so no single faction can define qualified in a way that excludes everyone else."
"We filed sothing similar four years ago," the young man said. He had introduced himself as Tam. His voice had an edge to it that wasn’t quite hostility. More like....wariness. "It died in committee."
"I know," Eve said. "I read it. It’s cited in the footnotes of section seven."
He blinked.
"Page forty two," she said. "Footnote eleven."
He turned to page forty two.
Found footnote eleven.
Looked up at her.
"You cited our filing," he said.
"You did the foundational work on the challenge process," she said. "It would have been wrong not to acknowledge that."
He looked at the footnote again.
Sothing in the edge in his expression softened.
Not completely. But noticeably.
They went through the outline section by section.
Petra asked most of the legal questions. Tam asked the structural ones. The two middle aged n....brothers, she had gathered, nad Edric and Fenn, asked about implentation tilines and practical chanics. The others asked questions that ranged from specific to sweeping.
Eve answered everything.
Not perfectly. Twice she said I don’t have a good answer for that yet and here’s why and both tis she explained exactly what the gap was and what she was doing to address it.
The first ti she did it Corin’s expression shifted slightly.
After the second ti he leaned over to Petra and said sothing quietly and she wrote sothing in her folder.
An hour in the silver locs woman said sothing that stopped the room.
"The faction seat weighting system," Petra said. "Under your reform it’s eliminated entirely. One faction one vote regardless of historical precedence or mbership size."
"Yes," Eve said.
"The Military faction agreed to this," Petra said.
"Yes," Eve said.
"The rchant faction agreed to this," Petra said.
"Yes," Eve said.
"Those are the two factions with the most to lose from equal representation," Petra said. "The Military faction currently has weighted voting on security decisions. The rchant faction has weighted input on comrce regulations." She looked at Eve steadily. "You convinced them to give that up."
"I convinced them that long term stability is worth more than short term advantage," Eve said.
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