High Canter Civic posted Selection Note 9 at 11:04. The note names Ivo Marsh, left-side forward, out for up to eight weeks. It names Kellan Doss, the striker, as a player who may be fit to face Kolmera on Thursday.
The treatment office had entered the stop before the seal existed. Ness Hob, clerk at the second window, timed Form 14-B at 07:12. The form carries a line for the hour, a line for the part, and a line for the weeks. Hob filled each line in ink.
Marsh stopped in the Tuesday drill at 16:05. The part was the right foreleg, low, where the wrap sits. The weeks box takes one figure. Hob wrote eight. At 06:50 the sporting office had sent a chit asking the clerk to leave room, in case the leg returned early. Hob set "up to" in the margin, in a smaller hand, and pinned the chit behind the sheet.
"The line holds a number," Hob said. "Eight is the number I will read at this window."
Ada Quill filed the petition at 08:02. She keeps the players' copies at the guild desk on Lot Street. Marsh had sent one sentence before dawn: make the public board match the sheet. Quill copied Form 14-B at the window and timed the copy 08:06.
"He can count a week," Quill said. "He packed the boot at dawn. The board can carry the weeks already written."
Selection Note 9 wears the civic seal, gold, about the size of a bit. Under the wax, the margin has been set in the large type. The public line reads "up to eight weeks." Doss stands under it as "May be fit." His hour, his part, and his count are blank. Allswell Pim, sporting secretary, signed the foot at 10:58.
Pim read the note at 11:11 in the east passage, where the clerks walk. He called the page a harmony of selection. The page is one sheet. The harmony is the wax.
"We are comfortable with the picture," Pim said. "Day by day is the method. The method is working."
Doss worked apart from the group at 09:40. The session was a walk, a strike at a still ball, and one question from the treatment pony. Hob keeps those answers on a card the size of a feed ticket. Tuesday's card, timed 17:10, says the strike was clean and the next step was short. Wednesday's card, timed 09:52, says the step lasted longer. Two mornings short of a release line leave the name in pencil. Hob has kept Doss there.
The release line is a box. The choices are fit and unfit. Note 9 leaves the box empty. In its place the note offers may, the word Pim used in the passage. The form has a column for the box. The passage word has the seal.
Kolmera plays the continental tie at the Trench Ground on Thursday. The whistle is 20:00. Travel is a short relay. The print has already gone further than the leg. Ruth Hale, compositor, cast the public sheet in iron type at 18:20 on Tuesday, hours before Hob's ink. Kellan Doss stands in that type as number nine, in the column that means he starts. The column holds a name or a blank. A fresh blank needs a new cast, and a new cast needs a signed pull from Pim's office. The print log at 14:00 still waited on that pull.
Hale locked the frame at 18:40 Tuesday and wrote the lock in her book. Forty committee cards left the room with Doss in the eleven. The carbon kept Marsh on the left until 07:20 Wednesday. Hale scraped the surname then and left a bright patch in the metal. She told Quill she scrapes a name when a form sits behind it. A verbal can wait on the stone. Quill entered Hale's sentence in the guild book at 07:46, with the hour beside it.
Marsh's eight weeks, counted from the Tuesday stop, reach the morning of the fourteenth of Frostfall. Hob wrote that date on the back of Form 14-B, in the space kept for a return drill. The space reads "not before" and the date. Quill will read that back line to any pony who asks what the player is owed. Pim's office still uses the margin. A margin can close on the morning a seal says the leg has agreed.
The lot board on the east wall still carries the buy paper from last month. The paper names the fee, the term, and Marsh as the answer on the left. At 08:40 he was in the second stall of the dry barn, wrap on, the copy face down after one reading.
Kolmera's list arrived by relay at 13:05. Their clerk wrote two outs, each with a part and a date, and left every other name as in. Pim set the list in the tray and called it a different custom.
On the guild copy, under Quill's stamp, the last line is Hob's. It reads: out, eight weeks, the fourteenth of Frostfall, entered 07:12.
