Yoshi and Liya took empty seats at the table, next to a spirit who had their chair tilted up on two legs and their feet on the table. They opened one pale eye lazily at Liya as she sat, and Liya looked back at them with a frown. They had dark grey, very freckly skin and an almost gaunt face with high cheekbones, and their head was shaved bald except for a stripe of very, very long dark red hair that was tied back from their face.

"He brought these books, you see," the pregnant spirit was saying, patting the thick volume sitting on the table. "One for each Assembly member. It's full of testimonies from slace trade victims, letters from people begging Aetheri to do something about the trade, and an in-depth report on how bad the trade has gotten."

They lifted the volume onto their shoulder. "The Cynn came in with one on his shoulder," they explained, and then lifted the book above their head. "Slammed it down, and said--"

< Let's begin, > Cynn Numair said loudly. The sound of the book hitting the podium had echoed some in the Assembly space, which was large and dimly lit, despite the lanterns at each Assembly member's elbow and the daylight filtering in from overhead. The floor was an unbroken plane of marbled blue and green stone, and the Assembly members sat before the Cynn in a series of low, tiered seats that recessed back into the dim. In the front row, four spirits wrote furiously; in contrast, the Assembly members didn't move much at all. Only a couple of them had bothered to open the thick book that had been placed in front of them, identical to the Cynn's own.

The Cynn looked testy, but very small, on the floor of the Assembly hall with a set of huge coppery tubular bells hanging behind him.

< Last year, three hundred eighteen people were abducted by slavers in Aetheri alone, > he said. < Three have been recovered. This is appalling. And yet, here we sit. >