Speaker Harlan Pell left the Chamber of Delegates at 5:12 a.m. He set the gavel on the night desk. Dusty Verdict's name was on the morning slate.
The docket for the morning held six items. Item two was a harbor tally. Item four was a seating dispute carried over from Thursday. Pell was on the Saltmane coach before either item was called.
Verdict stamped Form 7-C at 6:40 a.m. The form is the Chamber's sheet for travel on the public bit. The office line read "Speaker of the Chamber." The purpose line read "Listening sessions, Saltmane Coast, three days." Under that line sat a box marked solicitation. The box was empty.
Pell landed at Port Solace at 7:49 a.m. The room was the Netmenders' Hall, rented through lunch. A crystal bowl stood on a side table. The bowl was the size of a washbasin. A card in block type stood against the bowl.
The card said: "Front table, four thousand bits. Photo with the Speaker included. Middle tables, one thousand. The door is two hundred, and the door does not include a chair."
Clover Margin keeps the Chamber's number book. Another office had written the card. Margin read it on the wire because the card had followed the Speaker's purse onto the public tally.
"The form has an empty box," Margin said. "The card has prices. I can add. I can't make them the same document."
Pell took the podium at 8:02 a.m. He spoke for twelve minutes. The remarks ran to one page. Line three left a blank where a name belonged. A volunteer had penciled "VOSS" above the blank.
"The coast deserves a voice that can count," Pell said. "A conversation like this one keeps that voice in the room."
The bowl moved on the sentence about counting. It came back heavier. Pell kept his eyes on the page. Penny Ante watched the bowl.
Ante prints the seating cards for Measure candidates along the Saltmane Coast.
"The hall costs more than the pamphlet," Ante said. "Ponies who want a chair pay for the chair. That's the whole morning."
Calder Voss stood at Pell's left. Voss is the Measure candidate for the Third Saltmane seat. Harmony List delegates have held the seat across five tallies. Voss thanked the Speaker for the flight west "to hear the coast."
The second room was the grange at Cinder Pasture. The hour was 1:10 p.m. The page was the same page. The pencil mark read "BRACK." Ione Brack is the Measure candidate for the pasture seat. She told the grange that Pell had set the gavel down to stand with working ponies. The gavel was on the night desk in Canterlot.
Brack's front table filled by 1:20. The middle tables stayed empty. Ante moved two chairs forward and entered them as a second front table. The card allowed the change. A lower line read "adjusted seating, same acknowledgment."
Maretta Holm had started at Port Solace and missed the Speaker by an hour. She reached the third room, a rented loft in Halter Bay, at 6:30 p.m. Holm mends nets from a stall off the second pier. Her petition asked for a plain reading of the pier lease. Fourteen stallkeepers had signed it. She paid the two-hundred-bit door.
The Halter Bay page still showed the blank. The blank stayed blank. Pell came to the line, stopped, and said "your candidate." The loft applauded. The bowl went out for a third pass.
Holm lifted the petition at the rope line. A mare with a tray offered a gavel pin and a card for the photo wall.
"I paid the door with stall money," Holm said. "I still have the paper. He thanked the coast for its commitment and went to the wall."
The Solar Office card reached the loft at 7:05 p.m. by Chamber wire. Spike, who logs the Solar inbox, had marked the card out at 9:18 a.m. The sun seal sat over one sentence: "The Crown notes the journey and trusts the coast to remain cordial."
Ante slid the sealed card under the price card. The seal stayed face up, half covered by the line about four thousand bits.
Verdict shut the filing room at 8:00 p.m. The solicitation box on Form 7-C was still empty. Margin's second sheet had arrived at 7:41, listing the bowls: eighteen thousand bits at Port Solace, nine thousand at Cinder Pasture, six thousand two hundred at Halter Bay. Verdict pinned the form to the sheet with one brass pin.
Item two on the morning docket, the harbor tally, was still uncalled. Holm's petition rode in her saddlebag on the last coach out of Halter Bay. The first name on it was hers.
