The shrine had an archive, under the bell tower, and Cant kept it.
It was a small round room off the forge passage, its walls lined with dark glass panels instead of shelves, and a single bench in the middle where a reader could sit. Mara had asked Cant for any precedent for a brace: any record of a lamp whose heart had been supported from outside while a replacement was made. She had expected a clause. She got a record.
“One precedent,” Cant said, from a grille in the archive’s ceiling. “For an interim brace. On this lamp.” A pause of punctuation. “This keeper will display it.”
The panel in front of the bench lit.
It was short. Most of it was numbers. A brace had been built around Hearth’s heart, long ago, a ring of metal fitted around the old heart’s equator, to share its load while a new heart was forged. The record gave the ring’s dimensions, its segments, its alloy. It gave the dates of its installation and its removal. It gave the load it had carried, day by day, in columns. The ring had held. The lamp had stayed lit. The new heart had been seated, and the ring removed.
