The chief physician of the Crystal Mountains warned on Tuesday that the Ember Scale could be raised over every hold in the range. He gave the warning in the hall that had been the lower fever ward until the closing needed the door.
Dr. Soren Pell said four contact fevers had been logged outside Crystal City since the weekend, two of them in houses on one well. Four is where the mountain service stops calling a cluster local. The grade above adjacent holds is the whole range.
He read the warning from a card the size of a seat card. Clerks had copied the contact roll into seat order for the closing, and the card in Pell's hoof still carried a table number. The number belonged to a pony already listed as exposed. Her chair stayed empty. She was in a west room above the second switchback, on the wayhouse side of the well.
The closing was called Next Steps. It ran two hours. For those hours the intake desk held cloaks and the cots stood in the corridor under a cloth. A visiting princess cut the ribbon and took her carriage before the questions. The southbound stood open while the ribbon was still being folded. The probe's clerks were already in a carriage.
Pell asked for the ward before night. The steward said the portrait light was hired through the evening, and that the Environmental Compliance Board's order on the boiler still stood. The order, pinned since the sitting, bars a full fire while the portrait hangs on the warm wall. None of the nine thrones that vowed warmth had a pony in the corridor.
Warm-coast donors had funded both crystal primaries this season. The scuttle by the door was still the half left when that sum was published. The night shift has been feeding the grate by the cup.
At dusk the corridor stood three degrees above freezing and the step one degree below. The ward thermometer had spent the afternoon in a cloak pocket. Six tins of broth and a sack of oats had been set aside for the logged cases. The receiving line took four of the tins. The kitchen book called them favors. The ward book still called them supper.
Annel Strand keeps the wayhouse at the second switchback. The two ponies from the shared well are in her west room. She came down with the bucket because the city pump holds a boil longer than her grate.
"He drank half and then he couldn't hold the cup," Strand said. "I don't need the range explained. I need the blanket they took for the chairs, and a pony still here at midnight."
The blanket was on a hall chair with the seat number pinned to the wool. It was the number on Pell's card. Strand folded it, pocketed the pin, and started up the switchback while the steward was still thanking the room.
Clerk Tamsin Reeve has the infirmary night duty. She lights the lamps, tries the flue, and copies the temperature into a book the day staff carries to the train when there is a dispatch. Tuesday's dispatch made the southbound. Advisor Lyle Pimm of the warm-coast mission filed it from the platform and got on after it. Reeve was measuring the oil tin.
"I can hold the lamps to Thursday if I shorten the wicks," Reeve said. "I can't open the boiler. The board's seal is on the hasp, and the seal didn't hear him."
Pimm's note said the closing had strengthened range resilience and that the mission would remain engaged at a distance. The line he gave a porter stayed out of the note. "We've done the part people can see," he said. "Weather is a local competency."
Pell stayed. He and Reeve hauled the cots back in and found two signed out as seating. He entered the shortage in the night book under the Ember Scale, which stands at adjacent holds. He will ask for the range-wide line if Strand's well shows the fever by Thursday, or if a fifth case appears off her road.
The broth Strand carried back up went cold on the climb. At the infirmary door, Reeve's book showed the stair at three above, the oil at a thumb, and the scuttle at half. The warm wall was the portrait's. The ward door was shut, and there was no fire behind it.
