POV: steris-harms
Summary
Steris takes two deep breaths on the threshold of the Senate assembly hall — the kind of thing she has read about and seen Marasi do in stressful moments. She is not certain breathing works. She is, however, certain that walking into the chamber as the acting senator for House Ladrian is normal and proper, and so she walks. Aides flutter; senators shout across the floor; emergency editions of local broadsheets carry Bilming reprints with the same flavour and different spins — *constables dead, secret Elendel force, an early act of war, seventeen dead*. The headlines are not nuanced about who the casualties actually were. She has already sent her children south to her father's estate with Kath and prays to the Survivor they are safe there.
She delivers her husband's authorisation paperwork to Vice Governor Adawathwyn and crosses to Wax's desk — her desk. He was right about this: standing for the house is her right, and one of the original reasons they considered a union. Her fortune; his authority. Her heart pounds at her like an alarm bell, which makes her smile faintly — her heart insisted for years she would never fall in love either, and has no expertise in what she cannot do, only in what she has and has not done yet.
People notice her standing in silence, as they always do, and the chamber goes quiet enough for Adawathwyn to shout it the rest of the way to order. Governor Varlance asks the acting senator for Ladrian to explain herself; Steris answers that her husband's Bilming mission was approved by the constables-general under the governor's own authority, every permission filed and documented. *Sometimes,* the governor returns, *the documents being in order does not make an act proper.* She forces down her outrage — that is the literal definition of proper — and reaches for the move she has spent the morning preparing.
She motions for a Governor's Select Council — a small commission of senators and at least one constable-general with concentrated authority for a fixed period. Past uses have been for traffic ordinances and the choosing of opening-ceremony flowers, but a thorough reading of the law makes its emergency application obvious; she is quietly shocked it has never been used for a real crisis. Varlance honestly asks whether such a thing is allowed; Adawathwyn pulls him down to whisper, fetches a legal clerk, and the motion is carried — twenty-four hours of council authority on the Bilming crisis. Varlance names Lord Darlin Cett, Lady Hammondess, and Lady Gardre to join him and his vice governor in chambers, and adjourns the rest.
He has not named her. Steris feels the heat in her face — she called for this council and is not on it; she should have seen the possibility a mile off, and writes the failure down in her head to study later. While she is fighting nausea, Admiral Daal rises from the observation seats in his red-lined wooden mask and *requests to observe* the council on the workings of internal Basin affairs — and, in the same breath, offers his personal pleasure craft to the governor. Varlance takes the offer in full view of the chamber, recasting it as battle-hardened wisdom. Adawathwyn puts her palm to her face. That is the trouble with a pushover for governor: other people are perfectly capable of pushing too.
Shame snaps off into resolve. *You can push,* Steris tells herself, and shoves between two senators to reach Varlance before he leaves the floor. She has insight relevant to this council. Varlance looks at her, then at Adawathwyn, who shakes her head; he tells her the council is already crowded but it was wonderful of her to suggest it. She tries again — there is a dire threat to the city; he needs to hear her out. Adawathwyn cuts in to inform him about the warning letter Steris sent earlier in the morning, never delivered, dismissed in front of him now as *some nonsense about a bomb capable of destroying Elendel* — citing House Ladrian's history of overstating problems. Steris insists it is true; her husband has confirmation from Harmony himself. Adawathwyn returns, with no daylight to it, that if Harmony were going to speak to anyone he would speak to the governor. Varlance asks whether Wax has actually seen a bomb, has proof; she has to say he is gathering evidence. *Come back when you have it.* Then, softer: this is a tense, important situation; not a place for a woman who has been a sitting senator for less than an hour. He smiles. *Indeed, this is going to require delicacy and tact, not…* The sentence finishes itself in the air behind him as he walks away to join the others at the chamber door.
Steris is left standing alone on the empty floor, humiliated, instincts already laying out an afternoon of planning the next plan. She cuts the impulse off — she cannot afford the time. She has to be in that room. And as she stands there, she thinks of one way she might still manage it.