The Rookmere watch opened Form 12-C at 4:18 in the afternoon. Sergeant Holm filled the hour, the place, and his own name. The place was the Lower Exchange arcade. He left the caster line blank. In the casualty column he wrote "count open" and underlined it once.
By 4:40 the crystal relays had closed what the form had not. They had a name. They had a chant. They had a toll of thirty. The name was Brant Hollis, a flour clerk on the annex list. The chant was a border vow. Holm's slip records no vow. It records bolts, a ribbon stall, and a request for more lamps.
Hollis was second at the flour window. Receipt 4418 carries the window clock at 4:07. That is eleven minutes before Holm's hour. Dusty Verdict, clerk of the tally office, clipped the receipt to Form 12-C. The relays that named Hollis cropped the receipt number and the clock. What remained was the apron.
The image moved fastest. Hollis stands in flour to the fetlocks, at the same window. Block letters under him read CASTER, LOWER EXCHANGE, CAUGHT. Three copies put a bolt-caster in his teeth. The drawn caster matches the parade piece on the annex wall, from last autumn's Founder's drill. The poster has a crease through the stock. So do the copies.
"The form has a blank where a name would go," Dusty Verdict said, at the window, at 5:20. "I do not fill blanks from a crystal."
Deputy Quick Seal of the Harmony Desk released a settled account at 5:10. The account took the toll of thirty. It moved the volley to the Old Baths, three streets north, which the tile crew had locked at noon. It cited "public steadiness." It did not cite Form 12-C. Quick Seal signed over a seal cut for market hours.
"We had to put a number out," Quick Seal said, at 5:26, to the board tender. "Ponies were choosing their own."
Princess Celestia's decree followed at 6:02. It called the settled account sufficient. It said the realm's balance had been kept. It repeated the toll of thirty. It set no hour for an inquiry. It named no dead. The stamp is wider than the text. Verdict put the decree in the incoming tray. He did not copy it onto the form.
The Clarity Office corrected the account at 6:40. It put the arcade back. It kept thirty. At 7:15 a second note struck thirty and wrote "as per the watch, pending." Clover Margin, auditor of outbound notes, counted the carries at 7:50. The 5:10 account had gone out on forty-one crystals. The 6:40 note had gone on twelve crystals and carried no new seal. The 7:15 note had gone on two. Those two were the watch house and the tally window.
Mara Pell came to the window at 5:55. She had been at the ribbon stall. She asked for a witness line. A junior clerk gave her the settled account, printed for the board. The front had no empty line. She turned it over.
"I stood by the ribbon stall," Pell said. "They gave me a paper that said I was at the baths. I wrote on the back."
Her statement runs four lines. She saw a grey cloak and a caster with a wrapped stock. She saw no face. She heard no chant. Verdict entered her as petitioner and kept her lines off the caster blank. He initialed the back of the harmony paper so the two writings would stay attached.
A third account named Sergeant Holm as the caster. Holm's name sits at the foot of Form 12-C, under the words "reporting officer," in his own letters. The desk book shows the first call at 4:16. His first line is at 4:18. He was at the desk for both.
At 8:05 Holm added a line. Four dead. Nine injured. Names held for kin slips. The kin slips had not come back. He struck "count open" and wrote the figures beside the strike. He did not write thirty. He did not write Hollis. He did not write the Old Baths.
Nell Parrow tends the slate in the square. At 9:00 it still read thirty, Old Baths, caster held. She keeps a hook for sealed paper. Pencil does not go on that hook.
"I hang what the desk seals," she said. "I don't hang the watch's scratch."
The 7:15 note lay under her counter, face down. It had come by runner. It had no seal. Quick Seal had gone home at 7:40. His account was the last sealed page on the nail by the square door.
Verdict locked Form 12-C in the side drawer at 9:12. The caster line was still blank. He had initialed the blank. The nail by the door still held the decree. The decree still repeated thirty.
