The lift happened at the fourth rise on the Hinge Path, 6.2 miles out of Marrow Gate and 1.1 short of the cabin at the scrub line. The ridge had already taken the sun off the slate. Sable Nightshade figured an hour and ten minutes of usable light if the party kept moving. The map in Wick Hollis's case showed a spring at the third rise and a small star the legend called a guest. It left out the narrow, where the path takes one set of hooves, and the guest who works while a pony looks down.
Ellis Brant was the guest, out of the Crystal Empire on the gate board's summer line. He came up the downhill side at a walk, asked Hollis if the view matched the poster, and had the timber purse off the right ring before the answer was done. He stayed at a walk. He signed the lining, slid a gate card into the place where the bits had been, and gave the purse back on the snagged strap. Hollis turned for it. The outside hoof left the slate. The hock swelled, and Nightshade put on the wrap from her kit. The card was the two-bit kind sold at the wicket. It said the holder had been chosen. The date on it was the Thursday package. Hollis had left the yard that Thursday with forty-eight bits of crew pay and no wish to be chosen.
Nightshade watched from the rock where she counts parties through. She has kept the edge cabin nine seasons.
"He waits until your eyes go out over the drop," she said. "Then the hoof goes in. I wrote the board in spring and again after thaw. They sent a new poster and a line that the forest is an opportunity if the guest is priced."
Hollis sat on the flat stone with the bad leg straight and the purse open on his lap. The signature was still damp. He clerks for a timber crew. The bits were due at camp before full dark.
"He did the line from the Empire play, and I knew it, so I answered," Hollis said. "He can keep the answer. The purse was the payroll. I need the forty-eight bits, and I am not walking the last of this on the hock."
The Thursday sheet, nailed at the wicket and again on the mile post, puts Brant's name in the large type and the package name Pocket & Heart under it. The incident line reads zero. A wicket clerk, asked while the party was still supposed to be on time, said the zero meant the guest had appeared. Loss sits in a column the public sheet leaves blank. The public sheet has a box for letters. Nightshade said most of the letters thank Brant for the wording and leave the sum off.
Brant was still above the narrow when the leg would take a slow step. He had stopped where the poster wants a figure, three lengths up, easy to see from below. "I only take what a pony is already holding out," he said. "The card is so nopony feels skipped." He went on toward the gate at a walk, downhill, on the side that still had light. His outside ring was empty. Nightshade left him unsearched. A search of a booked guest voids the day's sheet, and the day's sheet is what the wicket pays against.
The copy on the mile post calls the fourth rise a meeting. It lists the spring, Brant, and a feeling printed as warmth. The payroll, the strap, and the hock are absent. So is Hollis. The crew camp sits 3.4 miles past the cabin by the inner cut. Forty-eight bits covers two weeks of edge wages for the saw team and a day for the cook. The card cashes for two bits at the wicket. At the camp it cashes for nothing.
Nightshade's book calls it a theft and an injury at that hour and mile. The wicket, she said, will call it attendance by morning. Brant is already in next Thursday's type. The new poster at the third rise is smooth. The old one had a scratch through opportunity.
The light that remained reached the cabin. It ran out short of the camp. The bits were already on the downhill track, going the way the poster faces.