On Tuesday night the Crystal Assembly sat tied. The mountain bloc and the city bloc held the same number of certified seats, and the only ward still open was Ward Nine, above the rail cut in the Crystal Mountains. The count there had stopped on one ballot. A voter had scored it with a belt knife. The Heart Concord closed at dusk, and the square went dark on the festival schedule.
The evening train took the bunting, the spare lamp oil, the ponies who had come up for the heart-lighting, and a prince from the southern court who left no statement.
Quin Ash, the junior night clerk, read the tally at the stove. The mountain slate stood at 1,204. The city slate stood at 1,203. The knife-cut ballot lay apart from both piles. On Saturday the Environmental Compliance Board had pulled the marking pencils after the graphite failed a cold-spark test. No replacements came up the line. Voters were told a dark mark would do. Ember Scale, who keeps the lane furnace on Lower Flank, used the knife he carries for coal straps. The cut runs clean through one name and nicks the rule printed under the other.
Fairweather Gloss, a southern advisor attached to the city slate, filed from the platform at 6:10, while the ballot box was still frozen at the hinge. The dispatch said Ward Nine had turned with the heart. The evening sheet in Crystal City printed the line under a banner headline. Gloss was in the second-class car when the clerk reached the held ballot. The sheet did not correct itself. The platform dispatch is the copy most of the city has.
The counting room floor stood four degrees below freezing. The festival kitchen had reclaimed the oat tins for the return trip, and the crates were tagged before the last speech ended. What remained was the winter issue: half a barley brick for each counter and a coal scoop measured for a hall with its doors shut. Quin Ash lit one lamp. The committee inventory listed every other lamp as festival property, and the inventory left on the train.
The seat controls the gavel for the coming session. The gavel sets the order of the winter allotment and names who sits on the Environmental Compliance Board when the pencil ruling comes due. Two observers stood at the table while Quin Ash turned the ballot under the lamp. They did not agree which name the cut favored. The city observer asked that the nick be read as intent. The mountain observer asked that a mark through two lines be thrown out. Quin Ash entered both objections in the night book and left the ballot unassigned.
Ember Scale spoke at the furnace door with the draft on his coat. "I marked the slate that keeps the pass crew on the winter allotment," he said. "The square can go dark. I still live on this lane, and the allotment is what gets the carts up after the visitors are gone."
"I can keep this lamp until the oil in it is gone," Quin Ash said. "I cannot certify a majority off a platform dispatch and a cut I will not guess. The Board sits in the morning if enough members are still in Crystal City to make a quorum."
Four members of the Board had accepted invitations to the heart-lighting and took the evening train. Three remain in Crystal City. A ruling on whether a cut counts as a mark needs five. The next train north is posted for Thursday if the weather holds. Ward Nine's coal for the lower street was drawn down to dress the square for the Concord. The replacement cart sits in Crystal City behind the festival crates, and the lane furnace is burning scrap the decorators left in the alley.
By midnight the thermometer outside the ward hall read twenty-one below. Ember Scale banked the furnace and went back to the pumps, which seize if they sit. The held ballot stayed on the clerk's table, the knife mark dried pale at the edges, and the lamp burned on the last cup of oil allotted to Ward Nine for the week.
The coal scoop for the hall was already short by a third, measured that afternoon against the festival inventory. Quin Ash set the night book on the ballot so the draft would not lift the page. Outside, the pumps on Lower Flank knocked once and held, and Ember Scale kept his hoof on the valve until the knock stopped.
