The Crown Contract Office extended the bid ban on Vale, Moss, Grey & Ash at the fourth hour. Form 9-K carried the line. New crown work is closed to the partnership for two winters. The ground occupied one cell on the form. Serious ethical failings.
The office sits in the West Annex in Canterlot. The clerk on the book was Mara Dodd. She stamped the form at four. She read the operative line into the afternoon docket. The daylight seal took the lower corner. The signature under the seal was Undersecretary Lumen Calder.
Vale Moss keeps its rooms on Ash Court in Manehattan. The partnership counts books for mills, railroads, and, until the first bar, for the crown. The first bar went on after the Count Board opened the Northspan file. Northspan had built barracks and spans for the treasury. It failed in the wet month with the pay chests light. Vale Moss had signed the last three counts.
The cell on Form 9-K named the minute.
The Count Board reviewed the Northspan count. The partnership produced a minute of a meeting at the third hour. The page read, "Third hour. Lane in the chair. Variance of nine bits noted and closed." It carried partner Odric Lane's initials under the time.
Lane's ticket for the northern spur was punched at the third hour. The punch is round. The station keeps the stub. Three of the four names on the minute appear on the Annex door log at that same hour. The log puts them two floors above the room the minute named. The room slate for the third hour lists a linen count.
Dodd read that set into the docket before she read Calder's decree.
"The form says serious," Dodd said. "The minute says he was in the chair. The stub says he was on the spur. I entered all three. The form is the one they sealed."
The petition that forced the hour came from Henley Parr. Parr runs Parr Tally, two desks and a rented window off the lower stair. He lost a small bridge count to Vale Moss in the year before Northspan failed. His petition asked the Bid Room to keep the partnership off new crown paper until the minute was answered. He filed it on a grey card. The card is still the top sheet in the jacket.
"I waited eleven months to hear a nine-bit question about my own book," Parr said. "They wrote up a meeting that did not sit. The bar moves two winters. My card is still in the jacket."
Calder's decree is two pages. Page one cites public confidence and the partnership's own admission. Page two is the bar. It runs from this week's fourth hour to the thaw after next winter. It covers bids not yet opened. It names Form 9-K as the parent. The ticket stub, the door log, and the linen slate stay off the page.
Schedule B is stapled behind page two. It lists seventeen instruments already let. Barracks maintenance at Northspan's old sites. A count of the grain stairs. Advisory paper on the wet-month chest. The noon draw on those seventeen is unchanged. The decree says the draws sit outside the bar.
Sable Faircount, managing partner, sent a statement at the fifth hour.
"We accept the extension in full," the statement said. "The partnership has renewed its culture from the hoof up. The Northspan minute was a serious failing by former staff. Our counts going forward meet the highest standard."
The statement left Lane's third hour blank. Lane remains on the partnership roll. The Count Board set his fine last spring. The Ash Court general account paid it. The account booked the fine as an ordinary cost.
Calder spoke to two reporters in the annex hall at half past four. The jacket stayed in Dodd's drawer.
"The decree protects confidence in the count," Calder said. "The seal is the Crown's. The term is two winters. That is the decision."
Dodd closed the docket at five. She put the ticket stub behind Form 9-K and left the petition jacket in the day drawer. Schedule B stayed on the nail by the pay slot.
The pay slot opened at noon. Instrument one on Schedule B was the grain-stairs count. Bess Harl, the slot clerk, called Vale, Moss, Grey & Ash. The partnership answered from Ash Court.
Parr stood on the lower stair with his copy of the grey card.
"Four thousand bits for a stairs count," Parr said. "My card asked about nine."
Harl marked the instrument paid at twelve-fourteen. Her slip carried the partnership's name and the grain-stairs code. Form 9-K stayed in the day drawer.
