The South Bar of the Tally Cut opened at 06:40. Four mares of the East Sluice Company walked through. A bolt clerk held the pass. The Harmony Office held the seal.
The pass was leaf four of Mutual Quiet, Third Copy. The Cut Council signed that copy at 04:50. A courier carried the ribbon copy to the Harmony Office before dawn. Clerks there glued the ribbon to a cover and entered the packet as Harmony Decree 19. The seal went down at 08:02. Princess Celestia read from the East Balcony at 09:00. The bar had been seated for more than two hours.
Leaf four carried a printed heading. Return of Speaking Inventory. Four lines sat under the heading.
Sedge Harp, corporal, East Sluice, second file. Nessa Quill, corporal, same file. Briony Taft, guard, same file. Lute Calder, guard, same file. The pass spelled Calder as Caldor. The South Bar will not pass a wrong name. Henbit Sallow, bolt clerk on the third shift, turned the sheet on the ledge. Calder initialed the margin at 06:31. Sallow entered the minute. Then he drew the bar.
The condition box held three words in block letters. Walking, speaking, unchanged. The coats were East Sluice issue, winter weight. The company thread at each collar had been picked loose. Sallow matched the thread to a swatch on the duty board. The swatch matched. He wrote the match at 06:38 and called them through two abreast. The slot is cut for two shoulders. Harp gave her name before he read it. He read it from the sheet.
Leaf three of the same copy concerns glass. Broken panes on the cistern stair are to be swept by the side that holds the stair that week. The Cut Council initialed that clause. A crown deputy initialed it. Leaf four, the mares, carries one initial, set down at 04:40 by a deputy who was gone before the council signed. Sallow had leaf four. He called the names on it.
Willa Keel stood on the outer stones. She is Sedge Harp's dam. She carried Petition 44-Mare. Clover Margin took the petition at the outer window on 12.3, at 14:16. Margin stamped it received. On the return line Margin wrote "in holding, Cut Council." The window keeps no second line for a promise. Margin handed the sheet back. Keel still had it when the bar moved.
"They stamped it received," Keel said. "Same coat as the day they took her. This is still the only page with the stamp and her name."
Sallow spoke after the bar seated. He wiped soot off the ledge with the side of his hoof.
"The pass fits the slot," he said. "Decree 19 is a cover. A cover does not fit the slot. I logged the pass."
The other direction ran at 07:10. Twelve ponies from the crown's east lock walked to the north sally. The Cut Council took them over. Their names filled leaf five, under the heading Return of Quiet-Hold Detainees. Dock Pritchard, sally clerk on the day watch, signed the leaf at 07:11. His line reads twelve, coats wet, door shut. Leaf five stayed at the sally. The balcony sheaf did not include it.
Pennant Smile, Undersecretary for Mutual Quiet, took questions at 09:06 beneath the balcony. He carried a pamphlet on pale stock.
"Careful language," Smile said. "That is the instruction from the office. The mares were guests of a temporary stillness. The paper provides their return."
The princess's reading ran four minutes. The usher's sheaf held the cover, the glass clause, and a page of thanks to the signatories. The four names were absent from that sheaf.
"Harmony has chosen the narrower path," Princess Celestia said. "The narrower path is enough."
Ash Bramble, speaker for the Cut Council, remained on the inner side of the bar. His copy showed the glass initials first.
"We keep this gate," Bramble said. "The paper named 06:40. The gate opened on 06:40."
The East Sluice roll lists thirty-one names still in holding across the Cut. Decree 19 moves four. Twenty-seven remain on a card nailed in the council duty room. The card is pencil. The Harmony Office has issued no form for it.
Sallow's bolt book for the third shift ends in five lines. The lines record the four names, the spelling correction, and the time. The time is 06:41. Sallow wrote seated and closed the book.
