Chapter 30: The Sound of the Long Work

The harbor authority officers were thorough. Karev watched them work from the pier's middle section, where the mooring lines were thick as a man's forearm and smelled of salt-rot and old polymer, and did not interfere.

It took four of them to manage Serrath's transition from emergency command posture to custody posture, which said something about how much institutional architecture a man could wear as a second skeleton. The first officer asked for his authorization credentials. Serrath provided them with the practiced calm of someone who had been providing authorization credentials since before the officer was born, and it didn't help him. The council authority seal from Ark Culver was on the detainment order. Meridian's seal was beside it. Two fractured councils, and the fracture was sufficient.

Serrath said something to the lead officer that Karev couldn't hear. The officer listened, nodded, and continued the procedure without amending it.