The single voice got no answer. Before Mara could give one, the chorus closed over it again, the many voices folding back together, and began to lay out its plan.
It did it in steps. The wall showed each one as it spoke.
“First,” the voices said. “Close the outer lamps. In sequence. One after another, from the edge inward.”
On the model, the bright points around the lattice’s outer struts began to go dark, one at a time. One, then a pause, then the next, moving around the lattice like a hand turning down the wicks on a row of lanterns. Sable was already dark. So were Sorrel and Whitlow, the two the auditor had inherited. Then the model went on past them, and a fourth point dimmed, one whose name Mara had never learned. Then a fifth. Then Lorn’s, which the new heart and the clamp and the third floor had kept lit, flickered on the model and went out as though none of that had happened.
The model left out what had been done at Lorn. It had not been told.
“Second. Move the remaining load inward. To the lamps that remain. Their draw will rise.”
The bright points that were left flared brighter. Hearth among them, Mara supposed. She watched the red lines of strain on the struts near them thicken.
