The Upper Bench in Canterlot sat forty-eight minutes on the valley suits Tuesday and left them unresolved. The questions ran 31 to 6, Kettle over the shires. Reed Hollow, Marl Cut, and Lower Merin want their own courts to bill the Kettle for a season that overran: 11 heat days on the west shelves, 6 flood hours in the low cuts, and one hail lane through a drying rack. The Kettle sells stack-oil and the held fronts drawn off it, under a realm license. The shires say the extra minutes still sit outside that license.
Gale Report read the times into the record at 10:11. Hail on the Reed Hollow rack at 14:12. The same fall in Marl Cut's north ditch at 14:19. A thinner fall on Lower Merin's road at 14:27. The gate gauge held northwest at twelve for all three marks. Justice Calder Voss asked for the map first. "If the rack is yours, the ditch belongs to the next town," he said. Soren Pell, counsel for the three shires, said each town could price its own minute.
Exhibit 6 is one page, clipped behind the Reed Hollow complaint. On the Monday card the town bought "moderate hail, west rack, release 14:10" from Standard Kettle for 220 bits. The complaint, filed in shire court six weeks later, prices the same rack from 14:12 to 14:41 at 1,840 bits and calls the hail off the card. Pell told the Bench the purchase covered a different weather. The order form and the damage sheet carry the same date, the same rack, and the same northwest twelve. Pell called the match a coincidence of scheduling.
Windfall Margin, the Kettle's commercial director, spoke from the 09:40 press sheet. "We sell hours. What an hour does on arrival is the buyer's business. A shorter hour is a box on the card, and a clerk can fill the box." A clerk held out the late card. He said the quarter's summary was the document that counted.
The Wonderbolt press office filed an unrequested note before lunch. The note said the Tuesday front was a sanctioned flyover and had met the card. A poster came attached. It shows the captain over the racks at 14:12. Tab 4 places the captain on the ground in Cloudsdale at 14:12 for a sponsor mark. At 13:50 the office issued a revised caption and kept the picture. The line now reads "present in spirit."
Bramble Kern ran the late shift on the west kettle that Tuesday and still has the card. "Hail release was 14:10, and that one was on their purchase. The evening hold was the next line down. Sales wrote linger at 18:22. Release was 19:10. I logged the linger off at 19:36. Both lines are on the sheet I turned in."
Plover Ash flew the linger. The poster carries the captain. Ash's name is on the chit. "Twenty-six minutes past release, west shelves to the low cut, wind on the nose, second slot empty. I wrote 19:36, gauge at eight gusting to eleven. I was booked for the line sales added after the card closed."
The Kettle's injury sheet lists the rack as a third-party mark and leaves the flier line empty. Kern's overtime line for the 19:10 hold is blank. The shift board has him off at 20:02. Union Resistance takes the blank line in the morning. Page 14 bills Reed Hollow a linger premium for that evening, entered before the shift chief initialed the wind.
Counsel for Standard Kettle asked the Bench to move the three suits onto the realm docket or to close them. A sky crossing four boundaries, he said, belongs to the weather charter. Pell said a hail lane is a town price. Voss asked whether the charter prices the license that lets the Kettle sell one. The next question, from the far seat, was about the license.
The late shift runs again tonight. The 16:40 card puts Ash in the second slot over Marl Cut at 21:15.
Ash's chit for the Tuesday linger pays 9 bits. The sales book bills those twenty-six minutes to Reed Hollow at 4,800.
The Bench took the three complaints under advisement at 10:59 and set no date. Pell's reply brief is due in nine days. The Kettle's answer is due in twenty-one. Neither filing asks the court to open the sales book.
Kern's sheet for the west kettle that night lists the linger premium as collected. The line under "paid to flier" is a dash. Page 14 of the Reed Hollow bill shows the 4,800 entered at 18:19, three minutes before Kern wrote the linger onto the card.
A clerk in the records room said Exhibit 6 is the last page in the packet. The sales book stayed in the director's office.
Standard Kettle's charter fee to the realm for the quarter that holds that Tuesday is 61 bits.
