CRYSTAL CITY — The train cleared the switch at four minutes past the bell, trade folio in the overhead rack, the southern party already counting gloves. Trade Warden Pell Ambry had read his line from the platform and posted the card under the station lamp. First Seat Harren Cole would decide on new sanctions against Vell. The card said "to decide." It gave no hour and no measure.
Minus eight on the city glass at the lamp standard once the last carriage went. Ponies from the lower wards who had stood through the Heart rite were already in the side streets. The rite was finished. The public coal window had closed in the same hour.
The ceremony had been put on the city book to mark the Crystal Heart and to receive Cole's word on Vell ore, Vell coal, and the bit-levies tied to a border scrape in the Crystal Mountains, while a southern prince smiled at the Heart and took the second carriage. What the hour closed was the docket. Clerk Ivo Brenn, who keeps the night keys for the municipal lamps, said the second bell ended the hearing and the coal desk ended with it. Households on the lower schedule remain at a half-scuttle and four salt bricks. The festival schedule that covers the Heart quarter was left as printed. No change was posted for that quarter.
"They can decide in a warm room," said Sarn Keel, who keeps the salt warehouse on Third Siding. "Tuesday still owes this ward a half-scuttle. I can weigh that. I can't weigh a card."
Ambry's dispatch, written on the platform and already moving on the southern wires, ran ninety words and contained one promise. Cole, the warden said, "holds the question personally" and will "weigh fresh measures at the proper turn." The city calendar, the lamp list, and the coal board name no turn. With the dispatch came a cover sheet titled Next Steps. The first line read Vell. The second read measures. The third read see the Seat. A banquet card had been pinned to the back, sugared snow listed at forty bits a bowl. Brenn took the card off the public board after a mare at the coal desk tried to pay with it.
Vell sells the ore the mountain forges use and the hard coal Crystal City burns when the crystal conduits frost over and the ordinary grade fails in the grate. The scrape that put sanctions in the folder is five weeks old. A waystation on the mountain road was broken open, two wagons were taken, and a flag was left that no yard boss in the lower wards had requested. The city trade room stamped the folder urgent in the first week. Cole has left it unmarked. A sanction, if he chooses one, stops the ore tickets and the coal contracts together. If he declines, the September tickets continue, including the Vell chits the warehouses already hold. Ambry called the two outcomes "on the table." The trade-room table still had yesterday's salt ledger stuck to it where a clerk's breath had frozen the edge.
Brenn walked from the station standard down to the warehouse row with a can of oil and a list that ended at wicks, glass, and the hour of each lamp. Someone had nailed Cole's card over the salt prices. The wind left the card where it was nailed, flat across the numbers. Brenn moved the card a hoof to the left. The half-scuttle showed again.
"I can keep the lamps until the oil runs," Brenn said. "I can't keep a decision that left on the train. If this window is meant to open, send a word that stays in the building."
Keel locked the warehouse at nine. The last loose salt went to a road crew in from the Crystal Mountains, up for the rite and stuck once the road froze to glass. They paid in ore chits drawn on a Vell house. The chits cleared. Whether they clear next week sits in the folio Ambry carried south, which is the only copy of Next Steps the city was given.
On Tuesday the coal desk opens for a clerk with a key and a word from the Seat. The word has not come back over the pass. Midnight at the lamp standard read minus eleven. The lamps on Third Siding were burning. The ration board showed a half-scuttle, four salt bricks, and a blank line under the heading for new measures.
