He ate a normal breakfast and checked the arm and walked to the Division.
The city was mid-morning by the time he arrived. He had not gone earlier—the meeting was at the ninth hour and arriving before the ninth hour would have communicated something he did not want to communicate. Urgency. Or anxiety. Or the particular quality of someone who had rearranged their morning around an institutional appointment and wanted the institution to see that they had.
He arrived two minutes before the ninth hour.
Sael showed him in without speaking.
The assessment hall had been rearranged.
Not dramatically. The raised platform was there, the observer benches, the board table. But there was a second table now, placed perpendicular to the board table, with one chair on each side. The director's chair was in its usual position along the right wall. Assessor Lindh was at the small table she had used before, the same position, the same posture.
