THE ORGANISER'S SQUARE

The square had no official name. By the time the maps called it Organiser’s Square, Nara was already trying to stop people using the phrase.

She had learned that movements became monuments too quickly.

The assemblies now sent delegates from thirty-one districts. Every session was open. Every decision took too long. People argued about grain quotas, police powers, transit access, inheritance, labour contracts and whether Marian Vale should be allowed to speak.

Nara considered the slowness a feature.

Revolution had been fast under Ostrog because orders had travelled downward. Democracy, if that was what they were building, moved at the speed of disagreement.

Marian came without guards and waited ninety minutes for her turn.

When she stood, the square booed her before she spoke.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘If you were cheering me already, this would be pointless.’

She announced that she would not accept private ownership of any asset covered by Schedule Nine. She would accept temporary legal succession only if it enabled those assets to be transferred out of the estate.

Nara asked the obvious question.

‘Transferred to whom?’

Marian had no answer.

The crowd disliked uncertainty. Nara trusted it.

That night the assembly created working groups for water, transport, food, archives and law. Arun sent engineers. Eliza sent archivists. Even the custodians sent observers.

The square became something nobody had designed: part parliament, part market, part argument and part emergency room.

Then the first bomb exploded at the western entrance.

It killed eleven people.

The black seal was painted on the wall behind it.