Counsel Pella Voss stood on the west steps of the Low Bench with the filing under a foreleg. She said Celestia University's defense was trying to silence her. The papers ran forty pages, and the last six were Appendix C.
Appendix C is a mute charm. The defense entered it before the afternoon sitting in the matter of the mare the roll calls Open Line. The complaint says a stallion on a university grant assaulted her in a closed studio. Her name sits in a sealed sleeve. The new filing asks the bench to bar Voss from any further account of the case on the steps, on a sheet, or in a public yard until judgment. The appendix names the charm as the way the bar would hold.
"They're trying to silence me," Voss said. "The filing says my talking is the harm."
Hearing Warden Silla Peck called the filing a routine limit on talk outside the well.
Dusk Stripe had the afternoon shift in the records room, one floor above the well. He built the working off the sheet the defense sent over. A tongue-still takes a speaker mark, a list of verbs, and a boundary. The mark on the sheet read "counsel for Open Line." The verbs were said, told, gave, and alleged. The boundary covered the Low Bench steps, the gallery, and any sheet that leaves the court door. Inside the well the charm was meant to sleep. The work order bills Stripe's shift at forty bits and lists a spare nib under supplies.
He ran it once before the sitting, door shut, against a copied page. He spoke the mark and one verb. The pen on the copy desk stopped. The desk faces the east window. Ink held in the nib. The page kept a blank about the length of a hoof where the rest of the sentence should have sat. Stripe logged a hold on the copy desk. The sheet has a box for a hold. He checked the box and wrote the minute beside it.
The break was in the mark. The court invented Open Line so the mare's name would stay in the sleeve. The charm reads a mark as a name and looks for that name in the speaker index. The index lists Pella Voss under Pella Voss. The four words on the work order attach to the mouth that says them.
Defense chair Holm Barrow read the request into the record. Dusk Stripe stood at the reporter's elbow for the live run. Barrow spoke the mark on the way into his argument. He had his face toward the bench, on the indexed side of the room. The court reporter's pen stopped. Barrow went on for two clauses about jurisdiction. The board shows dashes where those clauses would go. In the margin the reporter wrote that the mouth kept moving and the ink stayed in the nib.
Voss's clerk had told her to skip those four words. She said "my client" and "the mare on the roll." Her verbs stayed on the page. The gallery heard the whole answer. A clerk from The Road Ahead sat in the third row and took the answer down in pencil.
"I keyed it to the words on the work order," Dusk Stripe said. "He said them. The pen quit, and she got through."
A grant note under Clerk Amble Rowe's name went out before the well cleared. It calls Appendix C a completed courtesy seal and thanks the records room for a clean first run. The dashes stay on the reporter's board. The Canterlot Institute keeps the spare bench for a second run of any new working. The bench book shows an empty line beside the filing's number.
Stripe set the stopped nib in a tin by the east window. He wrote the minute on the tin card. The card is still on the tray.
The Canterlot Institute's spare bench never took the sheet. A clerk there, Maree Quill, said a second run needs the original work order, the stopped nib, and a witness who was in the room. Defense sent a clean copy instead. The clean copy has no hold box checked.
"They want the courtesy line in the grant book," Quill said. "I don't run a charm off a thank-you."
Barrow's two missing clauses remain dashes. The afternoon sitting closed with the mute charm still listed as entered. Voss walked the west steps after and gave the same account she had given inside. The gallery pen kept up. The tin by the east window still has the minute on it.
