Not the instrument — the instrument was already written. What she was writing was the sequence. The order of operations. The specific dependencies that determined what had to happen before what, which piece had to be in place before the next piece could move.
The sequence looked like this:
The revenue bridge required the independent bank instrument to be formally integrated with the imperial treasury — which required the administrative director's office to file the integration instrument, which had been submitted two weeks ago and was in the processing queue.
She stopped.
Looked at that.
The integration instrument was in the processing queue.
She had submitted it two weeks ago. She had noted it as submitted. She had moved on to the next item.
She had not followed up on the queue position.
She looked at the wall for a moment with the specific expression of someone who was registering a thing they should have registered earlier.
"Nadia," she said.
"Mm," Nadia said.
