At two miles on the east drove, with an hour and a quarter of light left, the smoke off Dunwick's Registry lay in a low tan band over the Brake. The evening wind came through the gap in the west hedge and held it flat toward the ferns.
By the yard, forty minutes of light remained, enough to see the west wall and the bell on the steps. The upper story was gone. The stone footings held. Marriage rolls, road levies, and the warrant book had been kept on that upper floor, over the stair, under the oldest thatch. A duty slate by the door dated the hall to the year the drove was graded, one hundred and twelve years back. The slate was warm and still readable.
Ward constables had taken Colm Asher, a charcoal burner from the second mile, in a cart toward the ward seat. He had a key. The evening before, he had stacked six sacks where the steward told him to stack them, under the stair and clear of the trough. At the gate the charge was read as setting the Registry alight. The warrant was written on the back of Bounty Card No. 12. The warrant book had been upstairs.
Bounty Card No. 12 had gone up on the board three days earlier. It called the Registry a heritage site, forest-adjacent, suitable for a party of four, minimal resistance expected and vermin if present. In a neater hoof the board's clerk had added restoration opportunity. Fete Ribbon's company took the card that afternoon and camped in the lee of the west wall, on the dry ground where the hedge gap breaks the wind. Their fire ring was a circle of Registry brick, still warm at dusk, an easy step from the lean-to.
The sheet sold at the square, Brake Approach, revised this spring, marks the hall with a star and a kettle. The fuel lean-to, the hedge gap, and the age of the thatch are off the sheet.
Bramble Stitch lives at the tree line and resets the drove markers when they sink. She stopped at the trough. The heat off the stone was still enough to keep her there.
"Coal under that stair and a cook-fire on the lee side, and the thatch goes," she said. "It goes the way bracken goes in a dry week. Low, then all at once. I told the board in the spring. They drew a kettle on the map and said the Brake was an opportunity if somepony would open it."
A pine marten came out of the south gutter when the bell rope gave. It shook ash from its coat at the trough, drank, and crossed the lane into the ferns at a steady trot. Bramble Stitch said it dens in the bank in dry years and climbs to the gutter for mice when the hall is quiet.
Soren Hale, the steward, sat by the pump with a soaked cloth on his left foreleg. A strip of mane was gone to the skin along the near side. He had opened the shutter at first light, which is when the shutters are opened. The air pushed him down the steps. That leg will not take a bucket for a while. The cart had already cleared the gate.
"Colm's coal was where I told him," Hale said. "In the sacks. Under the stair. I saw the strings still on before the air hit me."
Fete Ribbon stood upwind of the ash with his card held flat against a board. The ward clerk listened with a wet scarf over her muzzle. The square's posted sheet already carried the arrest in large type. The bell on the step was still too hot to roll, and the crack through its crown had opened when it fell.
"That's access," Ribbon said. "The work is done. If they want the vermin line honored they'll need a fresh card. I don't see vermin."
The clerk told the ponies at the trough that parties booked for the Brake would be met at the square until the footing cooled, and that the posting schedule stood.
Light left the west wall first. At the rise the cart was a dark shape on the last sky. The receipt for six sacks, signed by the duty clerk, rode on Colm Asher's halter, tied with the same string that held the card now serving as the warrant.
