Dream d1841-s: Lamps Lit, Stores Low

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we walked Nettlesquare in the hour the lamplighters make their round, and the town showed itself in the way a well-ordered place does: quietly, in layers.

The Bridgekeeper found us at the east arch; we had not gone looking for her. She had the compact manner of someone who has answered questions about load tolerances since she was half the height of a lintel, and she walked the party along the town wall explaining the course of each gate without being asked. The Builder listened with her hands clasped behind her back, nodding at intervals that were not polite but technical. "Stone dressed on two faces," the Builder murmured, more to herself than anyone, running a thumb along a course joint. "That's not cheap work." The Bridgekeeper said it wasn't, and moved on.

Lano trotted beside me through all of this, nose low, ears easy. At the north side of the square she stopped and gave one short, flat bark. I said "quieta" but she did not come. She stood with her ears pressed back and her feet planted, and I understood we had found where we were going.

The Miller was inside the supply hall, bent over a ledger, and she looked up without surprise. The Clerk of the square stood at her shoulder reading along. On the table sat an open inventory I recognized at a glance as a declining one - the kind of page where the columns narrow as you go right.

"Fuel," said the Clerk, by way of introduction or explanation, I could not tell which. "The generator runs on fuel brought in on the southern wagon-road. That road has been quiet three weeks now."

The Weather Reader pulled her barometric column from its case, read it, said nothing, and then said: "How long can you hold?"

"Two weeks at current burn," the Miller said. "Three if we drop to lamplit hours only and bank the hall hearths."

The Builder came in behind me. She looked at the hall's stored salvage - timber offcuts, ironwork, binding cord - and the assessment took her about four seconds. "You've been working through the reserve," she said. It was not a question.

Rurik had settled in the doorway, amber eyes open, watching the Clerk's face.

I opened the book of readings to a fresh page and wrote nothing yet, just the date and the square's name and a notation for the column figures. A reading is not the same as a conclusion. We were here for five days. This was the second one.

Outside, the lamplighters finished their round. Nettlesquare lit up evenly in the dusk, every bracket burning, the way a well-maintained town does right up until it cannot.

Lano's ears stayed flat.