The Purse Window of the Lower Day Court opened at the tenth hour. Wren Calder stood first in line. She is envoy of the Cinderfen March. She set Form 9-B on the stone. The form asked for grain, spears, and forty sky-carts through frost. The totals sat in the right-hand column. The column for a bench mark was empty.
Clover Margin took the sheet. She is clerk of the window. She read the top line, the totals, and the empty mark. She stamped the receipt at 10:14.
"The form is in order," Margin said. "The line is unfunded. Both of those go in the book."
At the ninth hour Princess Celestia had signed Harmony Decree 40 in the Solar Gallery. The decree said the crown stood with Cinderfen "in sun and in supply." It named the grain, the spears, and the forty carts. It carried the solar seal and a blue ribbon. A purse mark lets coin leave the yard. Decree 40 had the seal. The purse mark was absent.
Glad Banner read the decree before the seal was dry. She is Reader to the Solar Gallery. The reading took eleven minutes. The gallery stood for two of them. The record calls the two minutes an advance.
"They heard it," Banner said. "A room that stands has already decided. The quill work is a courtesy."
Margin stayed at the window. The window stays open through a reading. She entered Decree 40 in the side book as "language, no draw." She wrote the hour. She initialed the line. The side book is the one the auditors open when a seal and a sheet disagree.
At 11:40 the gallery kitchen sent a tray to the bench outside the window. On the tray sat one oat cake stamped with the solar seal. A card in Banner's hoof said, "A friend eats with you." The cake was billed to the hospitality line. That line is funded. The spear line on the same day's purse sheet was blank. The kitchen runs its bills through Margin's window. She wrote "cake, one" on the receipt. The receipt is a public slip.
The Half-Bench had seated its new members at dawn. The Mid-Tally is the middle of a reign, when the wards send ponies back to count the purse. Hayward returned Rowan Peck. He ran on road stone and a shorter docket. He took the chair of the Frost Hearings.
Peck saw Calder at 14:05. The meeting ran eight minutes. The decree sat in a leather sleeve. Form 9-B sat in a pasteboard folder. He left the sleeve shut.
"Hayward sent me for the road bids," Peck said. "Cinderfen may keep the decree. It is a handsome decree. Oats, then stone. Foreign draw comes third, if the week is still there."
Calder had brought the march count, copied at the Cinderfen gate on the second day of the eleventh month. Three outer wards stand under Northglass. The inner store holds twelve days of grain. The spear crates sit at a third of the spring mark.
"Twelve days is the count we brought," Calder said. "The seal is already on the form. The Half-Bench can put a mark next to it this week."
She left a copy. Peck set it behind the oat bids. The oat bids are yellow. The march count is gray. At 14:16 an aide squared the stack. The gray sheet went under.
Northglass keeps its own carts in the three wards. The court posted a notice at 15:00. Decree 40 will hang in the stair "until the friendship is fulfilled." The notice names no office for the fulfilling. At 16:22 Banner's statement went up beside it. She thanked the new benches for courage, Cinderfen for patience, and the cake for symbolism. Margin kept the cake sentence off the stamp. She stamps lines that match a book.
The benches meet again on the fourth day. Frost hearings sit first. Foreign draw sits third, behind oats and stone. Peck's office sent Calder a chit for the public row. The chit opens the row at the eighth hour.
Margin closed the window at 17:00. The rule names the hour. Form 9-B stayed in the open tray. The funded tray held two road bids and a bill for bunting from the dawn seating. Calder took the west stair with the receipt on top of her bag. Under the stair, in the cart yard, the forty canvas covers stayed tied. Gate chalk was still in the tin.
