The Manehattan Inbound Hold entered Award Form B-12 at 09:00. The form names eleven detainees. It posts 214,000 bits to each name. The total on the face of the form is 2,354,000 bits. Dusty Verdict read the total into the record and stopped there.
The award covers the west bay on the lower drain level. The wash log is dated 14:40, in the second month of the shiver year. The log calls the work the Kind Rinse. The barrel card for that hour names stone.
Clover Margin brought both papers to the posting. She is the records clerk for Bay Three. She set them on the rail by the clock.
"The barrel card says not for coats," she said. "The log says coats. I filed both. That is the job."
The card reads, in block type: "Lye-Ward. Stone, iron, drains. Not for coats, manes, or feed." The Hold bought eleven barrels. Rowan Keel, shift lead, signed the purchase order at 11:02. The line under his name says the occupants were present.
Keel filled out Wash Log WH-4 at 14:40. He ticked all four boxes. His note is six words. "Kind Rinse complete. Occupants shiny."
Bramble Holt was third on the bay list. He had been in the hold nineteen days, waiting on a stamp. He filed Petition 441 at 11:20 the following week. The second page is a list of hours.
"They told us to face the wall and close our eyes," Holt said. "I asked what it was. The guard said the floor. Then he said hold still."
Injury slips start at 15:05. Holt's slip lists eye burn, coat loss along the neck, and a taste that stayed past supper. The Hold's reply box is one line: "Aroma within standard." The treatment box is blank. The blank carries the time 15:11.
The bay ledger calls them unstamped arrivals. The ledger was updated at 08:00, before the purchase. The morning line is the line that remains.
Decree 19 is the paper the Hold cites. The Harmony Desk issued it at 08:15, on the first morning of the shiver year. The decree is one page. It orders inbound bays rinsed "for the comfort and safety of all inside." The page carries the day-seal. Princess Celestia's name is on the stamp. The posting went on without her.
The desk sent a sentence. It reached the clerk's window at 13:05, after the award was entered. Clover Margin read it into the file.
"The sentence says the rinse reflected the best understanding at the time," she said. "It leaves the barrel card where it was. I put the sentence behind the card."
Rowan Keel spoke for the Hold at 13:40, in the service hall. The decree was in his hoof. The log stayed on the rail.
"The seal said rinse," Keel said. "We rinsed. The closet had one kind of bottle. We were told the air was sick."
Asked who ordered Lye-Ward, he named Decree 19. Asked which line, he named the word kindness. That word sits in the last sentence. The sentence runs fourteen words, all of them about comfort.
Dusty Verdict stayed with the nouns on the page. The form calls the payment "a resolution of wash claims." A footnote entered at 09:00 reads: "The crown does not concede the rinse was the contents of the barrel." Exhibit D is the barrel card. Exhibit E is Keel's purchase order. Both exhibits stay on the same clip.
"The number is on the form," Verdict said. "Two hundred fourteen thousand bits a name. The bits are still on the paper."
The first of three transfers is due at 10:00 on the first of next month. The voucher office has stamped the drafts "hold for scent review." Margin said B-12 carries no such stamp. Her query left at 15:50. It asks who ordered the review, and under which form.
Holt left with his copy of the award and his copy of the slip. The treatment box on the slip is still blank.
The Hold posted a notice at 16:10 on the bay door. The notice says Kind Rinse remains in the manual for shiver-air days, and it gives the closet number. The award number and the hour 14:40 stay in the file.
At 16:22 Margin added the notice to the petition file. She wrote the time on the corner, then the barrel line about coats. The day-seal on Decree 19 is the same seal. The line under it is still the line about kindness.
