The building let them go slowly.
There were forms to sign. There were always forms after a tribunal finding the formal acknowledgment of receipt, the documentation chain for the permanent record, the specific procedural signatures that turned a verbal finding into a filed one. Maren handled most of them with the efficient one-handed grace of someone who had been doing paperwork under difficult conditions for years, and Aelara signed what was put in front of her and read every line before she signed it because she had always read every line and today was not the day to stop.
It took forty minutes.
By the time they came out of the building the morning had become midday, the grey sky of earlier burned off into something pale and cold and clear. Aelara stood on the steps and looked at it and felt the specific quality of the air, the clean fact of it, and breathed.
The city was going about its business.
