The External Desk at Brindle logged Consideration 14-C at 9:40. The form offers ponies for the war at Cinder Reach. The strength line reads "a regiment." The regiment's name block is empty.
Minister Glad Banner signed the face. He holds the office for distant calm. The purpose line reads, "to assist the open government against the Closed Port, and to restore the lane." The return line reads, "upon the restoration of calm." Line four is pay. The line was blank when the desk stamped the hour. Four pages are pinned to the back.
Page one is the seating chart from the restoration supper on the 3rd. The soup course is still printed in the margin. Thirty-one names carry a green tick. A note at the foot of the chart says the green pencil was for ponies who took the fish.
Quartermaster Holt Venn entered his noon count in the day book the gate keeps. He has had the stores office for eleven years. A runner brought him 14-C at 11:02.
"I have 214 sets that would pass a sergeant," Venn said. "The regiment line in our book is 800. The color guard is the only company marked clear for distant duty. They finished a wreath drill at 8:15. The travel entry on their card says the south stairs."
The Closed Port holds High Cinder through six dry seasons and fires on the spice lane from the ridges over the old harbor. The open government sits at Low Water. It writes orders for streets its clerks leave alone. Amber Court has supplied ships and grain against the Closed Port since '19, and its regiments have stopped short of the ridges. At 3:40 an Amber Court clerk wired thanks and asked what day the regiment would board.
Brindle recovered its seal fourteen months ago. The companies still on the roll stayed after the old court left. That court kept a Furnace envoy in the east wing. His coal bill was in the desk when Glad Banner changed the locks. The Closed Port draws its shot from the same Furnace. Consideration 14-C would turn Brindle's companies toward that supply.
Dusty Verdict, senior reader for foreign paper, had the form at 10:05. He wrote across the face.
"I read this as a request," Verdict said. "A march order is a different sheet. I marked that at 10:17. The marked copy is on my spike."
The Crown Office pressed a harmony seal on a fair copy at 11:20. The seal text calls 14-C a willing share in a neighbor's peace. Glad Banner's signature sits over the empty pay line. Princess Celestia kept a receiving hour through 11:20, and the attachment stayed in the tube. The seal office marked the supper chart "supporting color" and returned it downstairs before noon.
Clover Margin refused the initial at the pay window at 12:30.
"Put a count of ponies in the box and a count of bits next to it," Margin said. "I will initial the counts."
Petitioner Marrow Quill came at 1:40 with page three. Her brother, Sedge Quill, carries one of the green ticks. He cooks the Tuesday fish in the west kitchen. The company roll carries no kitchen names. Quill filed a strike-request on the ordinary form. In the error box she wrote that the tick came off the supper chart.
"He was on the fish until the second bell," Quill said. "He walks home after. His tools are pots."
The strike-request took a received stamp at 1:51. Sedge Quill's tick is on the copy that left for Amber Court in the 4:00 pouch. At 4:40 Glad Banner told three clerks by the water cart that the consideration was a kind of steadiness. Line four stayed unread. The clock over the cart read 4:40.
The desk has no reply from the Closed Port. At 6:20 the harbor master at Low Water filed a lane notice: two shots on spice traffic after dusk, both from the ridge in the purpose line. Brindle's last party out the gate, in '24, was fourteen ponies and a survey flag. They returned on a cart borrowed from a hay factor. The loan sheet is open. Its return line is still blank.
At 6:35 Holt Venn initialed a stores note and pinned it under Verdict's mark. The note named the fourteen ponies from the '24 party, company by company. None of those names carried a green tick.
The strike-request sat in the window basket at closing. Marrow Quill had asked for the copy back. The clerk on the basket wrote "pouch gone" at 6:52 and left the request on the spike.
