Callandra was the first to speak. “Nothing?” she said softly, no criticism in her voice.

“Nothing,” he conceded. Even in the single word there was a trace of some European accent, very slight, only an extra preciseness which marked English as not his mother tongue. His voice was rich and very deep, and at the moment expressive of his utter contempt. “They have a hundred prevarications, but they all amount to the same thing. They don't care enough!”

“What excuses?” Enid demanded. “What could there possibly be? People are dying, scores of people, and it could be hundreds before it's over. It's monstrous!”

Hester had spent nearly two years as an army nurse. She was used to the workings of the institutional mind. No local authority could be worse than military command, or in her opinion more stubborn or totally fossilized in its thinking. Callandra's late husband had been an army surgeon; she too was familiar with ritual and the almost insuperable force of precedent.

“Money,” Kristian said with disgust. He looked up and down at the length of the now-scrubbed warehouse with satisfaction. It was cold and bare, but it was clean. “To build proper drains would add at least a penny to the rates, and none of them want that,” he added.

“But don't they understand . . .” Enid began.

“Only a penny . . .” Callandra snorted.

“At least half of the members are shopkeepers,” Kristian explained with weary patience. “A penny on the rates will hurt their business.”

“Half shopkeepers?” Hester screwed up her face. “That's ridiculous! Why so many of one occupation? Where are the builders, the cobblers or bakers, or ordinary people?”

“Working,” Kristian said simply. “You cannot sit on the council unless you have money, and time to spare. Ordinary men are at their jobs; they cannot afford not to be.”

Hester drew in breath to argue.

Kristian preempted her. “You cannot even vote for council members unless you own property worth over one thousand pounds,” he pointed out. “Or rental of over one hundred a year.

That excludes the vast majority of the men, and naturally all the women.”

“So only those with a vested interest can be elected anyway!” Hester said, her voice rising in fury.

“That's right,” Kristian agreed. “But it helps no one to waste your energy on what you cannot change. Rage is an emotional luxury for which we have no time to spare.”

“Then we must change it!” Callandra almost choked on the words, her frustration was so consuming. She swung around to stare at the empty barn of a place, tears of impotence in her eyes. “We should never have to fill something like this with people we can't save because some damnable little shopkeepers won't pay an extra penny on the rates for us to get the sewage out of the streets!”

Kristian looked at her with an affection so naked that Hester, standing between them, felt an intruder.