Chapter 359 --359
Fen moved the desk. It was a heavy desk — old, solid, the kind of furniture that expected to stay where it was put. She moved it without asking for help, efficiently and without drama, and when it was in the new position she stepped back and looked at it and then moved it approximately three centimeters further.
"Better," she said.
Elara sat in her chair in the new position. The window light was different — slightly more angled, less direct, but still adequate. The doorway was fully covered. She looked at the room from the new position.
"Good," she said.
She told Fen about the outer district information gap — the problem she had identified on the road coming into the capital, the need for eyes in the outer districts that worked differently from the administrative summaries, the specific kind of information that was only visible from inside a community rather than above it.
Fen listened without interrupting.
"You want an embedded network," she said, when Elara finished. "Not formal. Not official. People who are already in the outer districts for their own reasons, who can observe and report."
"Yes."
"That takes time to build correctly," Fen said. "If you do it quickly, you get people who are reporting what they think you want to hear rather than what’s actually happening."
"I know," Elara said. "I’m not looking for quick. I’m looking for right."
Fen nodded. "I know people," she said. "From the Castin posting. People in the outer districts who I had — informal contact with, during the posting. People who trusted me because I was honest with them about what I could and couldn’t do." She paused. "I could start there."
"Yes," Elara said. "Start there."