On Tuesday the lower yard in Crystal City held fourteen ponies from the Crystal Mountains, called them volunteers, and tied a ribbon on each left foreleg. The Ridge Standard, which keeps the winter garrison through the passes, names that formation the Willing Company. The city resident book lists the same ponies under mountain households. Both listings were read aloud. After the reading, the orders came out of the garrison book.
A princess from the southern circuit pinned the first ribbon on her way to the 4:40 south. The platform dispatch left on that train with the ribbons and a line about enrollment. At five the yard thermometer read eighteen below. The warm room used for the reception was barred after the last cup. The stove was banked with the ceremony's leftover coal.
The fourteen went to the lamp shed. Captain Osric Dane read them the roll from the Ridge Standard copy. He is commissioned out of Grey Mantle, and his weather comes on the garrison wire. The shed has a lantern hook and a dirt floor. They heard their names and the rule that keeps a mark once the coal window takes it.
A household in the Crystal Mountains draws its coal sack when a pony on the premises signs the Willing line. Garrison ink put that line in this season across the heating-priority box. The box is crossed through. The older words still show. Sergeant Cal Voss witnesses the mark, and Sergeant Voss hands over the sack. One window does both jobs. It shuts at dusk. A pony who leaves the Willing Company is entered for leaving a post. That entry cuts the house off coal and puts the name on a board nailed to the lamp shed. The night clerk passes that board to reach the oil.
Nessa Korr keeps two rooms over the yard. Her brother remains inside the fourteen, moved to the sick list and still marked, since nothing on that list lifts a Willing signature. "He marked the sack where they stamp it," she said. "No mark, no sack. They called that volunteering and went back down."
Odell Bram keeps the night lamps and the city's copy of the roll. The Ridge Standard meters his oil. "I can enter a name when the captain sends it," he said. "I can't take one off. I asked to fix a spelling at first frost. They wrote back that a volunteer is free to ask the captain." He has filled the lantern over the board every night since the pinning.
The festival office printed a program with the words "our volunteers" and Crystal City as host. By dusk that office could not name the officer who promotes a Willing pony, the fund that pays the stipend, or the desk with the power to dismiss one. The welcome's second page was a Ridge Standard punishment table in the low-province form. A clerk folded the page into the program box.
Advisor Yarrow Fen had come north for the pinning. He spoke beside the platform and left on the 4:40. "They lined up on their own hooves," he said. "I call that a choice. The rest is clerical." The account he filed names the ribbons. The crossed-out heating box is absent from it.
Twelve of the fourteen carry Crystal City resident marks and were born in the Crystal Mountains. Two come from a slope village the Ridge Standard lists as garrison ground and the city still taxes as mountain. None holds a rank past the ribbon. Pay is eleven bits a week, booked against coal the old box already called owed. A dead lantern on a Willing watch comes out of the eleven. The watches run the shed, the gate, and the stair under Nessa Korr's rooms.
Asked who the volunteers were, Captain Dane said they were crystal ponies who had chosen the Standard. He gave the strength as a company and crossed the yard to the warm room, which opened for officers at six. The festival banner was already down. The nails were still in the post.
At lights-out the shed board showed fourteen names under Willing. The coal book showed the same fourteen in the column marked owed, each line crossed through, and Sergeant Voss's initial sat in the margin where the mountain clerk's initial used to sit. Bram had filled the lantern over that page. The oil in it was poured from a garrison cup.
