The neon sign had been dead since the first impossible night, but its iron tubing still caught the November dusk. Mara swept sumac leaves from the walk outside Room Four.
Four and Nine remained uncharged. Twelve was a dark store, one spare mattress removed for the Nouri placement. Seven had been reopened for that family; the medical circuits stayed in Five and Six. Twenty-four residents occupied nine charged bedrooms. Seven ordinary rooms cost seven, the two medical rooms four, reception one and Wren one: thirteen units each dusk.
The message indicators showed receipts and alarms, not a common power gauge. Opening another room here would spend Candlewake’s own measured reserve; it could not lower the pump’s gauge over a signal wire.
Mara leaned the broom against the railing and walked into the office.
Behind the desk sat Salma Nouri.
Salma had been elected weekly duty coordinator by the adult resident voters on Sunday evening, after the posted count and two witnessed nominations. She was wearing a thick knitted sweater over her denim work shirt, her reading spectacles perched on the tip of her nose as she checked the kerosene delivery slip against the root cellar inventory.
The brass register lay open between her elbows.
