Sedge Harlan pays 410 bits a week for the quarter-loft at 12 Soot Terrace. The room is nine hooves by three. The Clearance Office form that came with it has a rehousing line, and the line is empty.
He sorts stock at the Hearthstone Smithy, 16 bits an hour, six days of ten. That is 960 bits before the tool share. The loft fits a cot, a kettle, and a nail for the apron. The privy is down the passage. Harlan has kept the room three years. On the civic stall list he is number 6,408. The window at the list office is still working through names entered five years back.
Mayor Pippin Pines put the Basic Stall Standard on the books at the start of the month. A rented room now needs forty square hooves, a window on open air, and a privy of its own. Anything short must be rebuilt or given up. At the noon briefing she said the drive would "retire indignity on a timetable," and that beds would follow through "a synergy between clearance and the private stack." She answered two questions about dates. Where a pony sleeps while the dates are out stayed off the briefing sheet.
Ponyville Property Pros keeps Harlan's building and 600 like it. His notice ran two pages. The second was a standards levy, 35 bits, due on receipt, billed to the occupier. Quill Acre, at the collections desk, said the terrace had taken 400 notices.
"We don't write the hoof-count," Acre said. "We print the office's page and we take what it asks. Every pony who comes to the desk calls the 35 rent. Rent is the 410. The 35 is the page."
The office marks a loft restored when an inspector passes it. The manual that went out Tuesday also marks a loft restored when the pony is gone. Air, light, and privy are scored per head, and an empty room has no head to fail them. The first bulletin showed 400 restored and none rehoused. A loft with the door left open scored a full pass at midmorning, cot still warm. The bulletin was printed on the back of the levy. Acre said that cut a paper run. The bulletin called the arrangement efficient.
The civic list has 11,400 names on it. Bridge berths this season come to 220, drawn for rooms with a foal in them. Harlan's sheet says he has none. A clerk told him those berths were filled by the last draw and that the next draw would wait on "supply." She had no day for it. The wait painted on the glass still reads five years. Nobody has scraped the glass.
Tansy Bricker lets the two lofts over her dry-goods shop on the terrace and sleeps behind the counter. A sawyer priced a true window and a proper wall at 900 bits and a month, coin first. The late fine is 200 bits a week until a loft is legal or empty. She gave notice upstairs on Friday.
"The fine lands whether the saw is in the wall or not," Bricker said. "I had to put the same sheet in her hoof that they put in mine. She buys her thread somewhere else now. I would too."
On the letting board by the smithy gate, the one room that met the window rule was 890 bits a week, six weeks ahead, no kettle after dusk. The slip was in Acre's writing. Six weeks is 5,340 bits. Harlan has never held that. He paid the levy out of the jar. The jar had 40 bits left. Two lanes over, a loft that still fails the measure has gone from 380 to 470, and the pony letting it has a line down the stair.
"I can pay 410 if I keep the sixth day and eat at the smithy," Harlan said. "I can't pay 890 and I can't find 5,340. They can have the room Thursday. Somebody ought to write on that line."
The office entered 12 Soot Terrace as restored before the cot was out of it. Harlan had the 35-bit receipt, the smithy shift card, and the form with the rehousing line left blank.
Payroll at the Hearthstone Smithy posts Thursday's wage to a smith who sleeps where the wage ends. Harlan folded the blank form into the apron with the 35-bit receipt. The jar at 12 Soot Terrace stays with the building. Acre's ledger will show the loft restored and the 35 collected, and the cot will be in the lane by dusk.
