Nobody went to bed.
The crew gathered at the common bench under the east window, with Hearth’s night glow laying its faint stripe across the scarred wood. Tavin on the stool at the end. Eshel standing, his bandaged hands flat on the bench edge. Sera leaning against the window frame with her arms folded. Gell, who had finished banking the fire and stayed. The slate lay in the middle of them with the model on it, and beside it the gauge rack, three clamps filled now.
Mara laid it out.
She told the crew what she had told Sera in the passage, but slower, with the slate in front of them so they could see the lattice and the outlets and the red marks while she talked. The plan in its four steps. The worst cases. And the offer.
“Close one more lamp,” she said, “and Hearth’s brace can carry Cinder. That’s what it said. The load moves inward, the pressure at Hearth falls inside the brace’s envelope, the city lives through the winter.” She touched the slate, the far side of the lattice where the point had pulsed. “It didn’t say which lamp. It marked one and left it unnamed. I said no.”
