The seven member cities convened at the First Citadel on the nineteenth day after the spine opened.
Nobody had ratified anything during the war, which had been the point at the time. The charter they had fought under was a draft with seven provisional signatures on it.
A provisional signature holds for a campaign and holds for nothing afterward. Vasa had said so in the spring and had put it in writing four separate times.
They came to sign a document that had already been used, and every one of them arrived with amendments.
Vasa had circulated the draft nine days ahead with every clause numbered. What came back was two hundred and eleven proposed changes from seven separate chambers.
Nobody in the confederacy tried to reduce that number before the delegations arrived. A charter negotiated in advance by one office is a charter with one author.
The Citadel had no hall of the required size, which nobody had considered until the day before.
