The Heart lighting ended at dusk and took the east ration window with it. By the time the southbound cleared the platform, the plaza crystals were on full draw and the public sacks were still inside. The facet stones read minus nine and still falling. The question in the lane was the one the Hearth Bench has carried out of every hearing since the first hard frost: what a warm week costs, and who in the hall can say the number without changing the subject.
The Bench holds the Facet Hall and the mountain levy. It took both last winter on a short promise, repeated at every shed door, that oats, the lamp rate, and the coal notch would come down and stay down. The session mark is days out. Floor Warden Harlan Voss has spent the week on other sentences: the pass, the Bright List's old levy, a lumen count his office called a record, and a ribbon the Environmental Compliance Board gave the city for plaza brightness. At each stop a pony asked the price. The next sentence was about something else.
On Tuesday the Hall cloakroom still had a Next Steps card on the bench by the door, left for members and sitting there through the lighting. The card is titled "Turns if Asked About the Week." It lists twelve subjects in the order a speaker is meant to use them. The pass is first. The lumen count is second. A warning about the Bright List is fourth. Near the bottom, in smaller type, it says that if a sack is mentioned the speaker should thank the pony for the feeling and return to the lumen count. Somepony pinned the card to the shutter of the closed ration window. Under it, in grease pencil, the week is written where any pony can read it: oats at nine and a half bits, lamp rate at four, coal notch at three, roof-ice fee at two.
Marron Keel read the pencil because she already knew the figures. She loads the salt sheds on Lower Facet and keeps two rooms over the cooper's arch, third winter in the same place. She made the morning bell and got a half sack. The evening bell never came. The ceremony had closed the window so the plaza could be swept for the lighting.
"I marked them when they said the sack would move," Keel said. Her book was open to the old price, seven bits, from the week the Bench asked for her mark. "They can thank me for a feeling. The sack is nine and a half. A feeling does not cook."
Counsel Lior Fen of Next Steps had already filed. He stood on the platform, called the week-price a seasonal narrative, and took the southbound with the copy. The dispatch that left on that train led with the lumen count. Prince Aurel blessed the Heart between the lighting and the same train.
Voss's office said the question had been addressed in committee. The committee met for eleven minutes, recorded that affordability remained "a shared winter concern," and adjourned so members could reach the plaza before the Heart was struck. Voss stayed off the shutter. A hall clerk said the Floor Warden was grateful for the brightness and would speak again after the session mark.
The pony on the night board is Underclerk Reeve Tallow of the Municipal Lamp Trust. He stayed. The draw sheet on the nail by the stair still prices Crystal City at the summer crystal rate. For lighting week, by order of the Hall, the plaza side burns full until second bell. The lanes take what the sheet has left.
"The Heart side does not get a choice, and neither do I," Tallow said. He had shortened the Lower Facet wicks once, then again after the facet stones passed minus eleven. "They call it a ceremony. After the guests have had their hours, I owe the lanes the rest. There is not a full wick for both."
At the Crystal Mountains gate the board read minus eighteen before midnight. A coal notch of three, set before the frost and left there, leaves a two-room house short on a night of that. Keel banked the grate and kept to the room that still held heat. The Bright List called the week a scandal and offered a pageant credit against the lamp rate if the lighting runs longer.
Tallow posted the night draw at second bell. Plaza crystals still full. Lane wicks at half. The ration shutter unchanged. The week's price remained the pencil under the card, still outside the record.
