The capital's ward assemblies answered him before he had asked them anything at all.
Nobody in the confederacy had filed a request for entry, and nobody had intended to. The assemblies read a public map and decided they did not need to wait for the question.
Diana's open relay had made the spine map public two hours earlier that night. Every district in the capital could read exactly where its six locks stood.
Four ward assemblies convened inside the hour with no councilman among them. People do that when the buildings around them stop being reliable, and those buildings had stopped days ago.
Their answer came back as a single refusal with eleven thousand signatures under it. It arrived on the confederated channel at nineteen minutes past the hour, addressed to him by name.
Nobody had asked those assemblies for an opinion, and nobody had offered them one. They had read a map, understood what was coming toward their streets, and written a document about it.
