Ashley put her arm out, hole pointed at him, and he had to turn the hand ninety degrees to stick the pole out and put it into the hole. There was a faint sound like something sliding into a sheath, Ashley pushed out to help the final connection pop, then twisted her arm around to rotate the hand before something caught.

“Thank you,” she said. She flexed her hand, forming a fist, then moving the fingers. She turned to Rain. “Feels wrong.”

“You threw your hand down like someone throws down a gauntlet in a duel. It’s going to screw up the fine tuning.”

“Guys,” Tristan said.

Gary glowered.

“You might have really hurt relations with Shin or Cheit,” I said. “I don’t know what happens to the mayor, but if this leads to her being ejected or removed, I think it hurts all of us.”

“We can disagree on that.”

“We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, if you need help with something else, if you have questions or if you want to meet us halfway? You can contact us. I think there are better ways to use the listening ears you have. If you get tired of tearing things down with no plan to build them back up, I have ideas about how you could educate and inform people, or broaden what we have in the way of the Patrol, that lets people have more involvement.”

“Something else,” he said. “In other words, you think I need help with what I said about the mayor, Cheit, or Shin, but you won’t give it.”

I thought about it. That had kind of been my intended implication. There were so many toes to step on. Territory I didn’t want to get into. Like my sister.

“If it does turn out that that’s the case, reach out. We’ll see what we can do.”

Mr. Nieves didn’t nod or shake his head. He turned to the table where the two and a half pounds of laptop and twenty pounds of cabling were, motioning for them to wrap things up. I heard the blip of the speakers being disconnected as wires were undone.

And that somehow felt like the end of the conversation. I backed away, Ashley turned. I spotted Sveta in the crowd, looking relieved.

That was it.

“Want a book?” Mrs. Darleet asked, as we went to go. When everyone had backed up, she’d stepped away from her podium and into the edges of the crowd. Now she was back at it.

“Read it,” Ashley said. “I was talking to my team about it earlier.”

“That’s great,” the woman said.

Probably a publicity stunt, or a chance to make us look bad when we refused, or pure irony. I didn’t have a read on her. But whatever. I held out my hand, took the book, thanking her. People would interpret our taking the book however they wanted.