Three more tests came over the following month, each one smaller than the mineral dispute but each one offering Mercer a fresh opportunity to choose between swift unilateral action and slower, collective deliberation. A disagreement over tax assessment for a struggling merchant family. A boundary dispute between two farming collectives. A request from the city watch for expanded authority to search private warehouses without formal council approval.
Mercer chose collective process each time, even when doing so meant enduring criticism, delay, or occasionally outcomes less efficient than unilateral action might have produced. He found the pattern growing more natural with practice, less like forced restraint and more like genuine instinct reasserting itself against the regent's chair's con
