The first withdrawal landed nine minutes after the prompt went out to the four seats. It came from the smallest of them, a river council with two thousand registered residents.
Nobody in the capital had bothered to lobby that seat, since nobody had expected it to matter. It held the smallest enforcement share of the four and answered first by a wide margin.
A river council on the eastern reach cut its enforcement-coded portion and confirmed its disaster share in the same submission. The System processed it in eleven seconds, and the hall's calibration frame reported the change before anybody in the room said a word.
[ Enforcement contribution withdrawn: one contributor. Champion execution mandate reduced. Disaster-response capacity unchanged. ]
Marek felt the withdrawal arrive and made no attempt to hide the effect of it. The Load Hold he had kept in reserve came apart in his hands while the room watched.
