Delphine Counts Her Wicks
- Cheap passage
- Busier than the day
- Passage slackens
Delphine Copthorne stayed behind on the Sun-House lamp-floor after the link came down, and went along the brass row of wicks with one finger, touching each in turn. Forty-one lit, and one that smoked when it should not. She counted them again, slower, the way her father taught her to count debts. Forty-one. Above the glass roof the Lantern hung thinner than it had in her mother’s day, and she did not count that.