The Eastern File cleared Marl Gate at 11:40 on Fourthday. The paper was Form 18-W, Recall of a Finished Garrison, signed at the Day Desk before second bell. It ran four lines. Line one named the lancers, the wagons, and the spoons. Line two gave the roads to the Marl Guard. Line three thanked the realm for its patience. Line four was Princess Celestia's seal, set down in a copy hand. The banners were off the form.
Forty-one companies stayed in the lower yard. They kept their spears. They kept the east-road stall. At 11:52, with the last wagon still short a linchpin, Envoy Gladhoof read a departure card from the gate step. The card said the chapter was closed. The card said the partnership endured. The card said the Guard was ready. Forty paces off, a pony from Third Ash wore a customs sash the customs house had logged as stored. He took two bits from a hay cart. The Guard calls that passage free.
Clover Margin, feed clerk to the Marl Council, read the billet book at 12:05. The book is cloth. The ink matches last month's ink. Reed Company, Low Arch, Third Ash, and thirty-eight other names are still on feed. Third Ash's morning chit carries a Sootspire mill mark and the hour 6:10, five hours before the arch cleared.
"They are still here," Margin said. "The book has no column for gone."
The Cinder Court at Sootspire has paid the companies since the second year of the file. Marl's ministers call the sums neighborly support. The Crown's copy of Form 18-W calls the same ponies unaligned local defense. Margin's index uses the names on the chits and the stall numbers painted on the yard wall. Stall numbers do not wash off for a seal.
Captain Rook Halder took the Marl Guard's road brief at 13:00. His roll is two hundred. The ballista on the brief is borrowed, and the arm is cracked. Margin's armed count for the yard is about nine hundred, plus cooks. On Halder's map, drawn by the Eastern File in the spring, the banner stalls are temporary civic clusters.
"I can hold the west stair," Halder said. "I would not put the word roads on it."
Dusty Verdict entered Form 18-W at the Marl notice window at 14:20. He entered it as a civil instrument. The title he wrote was the title on the form. In the margin, which the form leaves blank, he added: banners, armed, unlisted, present. The note stays in the margin. Verdict's window takes paper in the order it comes. He set the recall under the grain notices and above a lost-bridle card.
The Crown's outer office answered a mirror at 15:05. Duty speaker Sable Quinn read a card and stopped when the card stopped. Full authority remains with the host realm. Volunteers, where present, fall under ordinary law. The card has no line for the granary key and no line for who pays Third Ash.
First Minister Torren Vale had posted a readiness notice at dawn. One page. The Guard assumes every gate at noon. At 16:00 the north gate was a Guard pony and a Third Ash pony on one stool. Vale's aide called the stool coordination. The banner pony gave his posting as Tuesday. Vale was in a side room with Iver Moss, a Cinder factor, on what the aide called a grain question.
Moss spoke in the yard at 16:40, which is where the companies eat. The banners, he said, are guests, and guests leave when the house is quiet. The house decides. Neighbors do not invoice a kindness. Margin held up the chit. Moss said mill marks travel. The sum stayed on the paper.
The lancers are on the north road, a day and a half from the Equestrian marker if the wheels hold. Form 18-W points them north. A lieutenant at the rear said at 17:10 that a call from Halder goes to the Day Desk. The desk closes at 18:00. The file took the mirror.
The billet book, copied forward at 19:00, shows the forty-one companies fed, armed, and in yesterday's stalls. Third Ash put a night watch on the granary. Margin wrote the watch on the page. The Day Desk has not sent for it.
