The roll notices went up at 06:14 in Brine County and at 06:22 in the Hollow Range, on the third morning after the gate. By 09:02 the Canterlot circuit had a suit. The plaintiffs were Maren Solt, a hauler on a six-season shore paper; the Hollow Range Compact; and nine Gallery whips whose names were off both duty sheets.
Roll Inspection had posted a nine-page card. Page one asked for the tape time, the name of the pony on the door, and whether the box was sealed before the lamp was lit. The page at Barn C was still the first page when a runner came in with the filing. The runner's saddle clock read 08:51. The court stamp read 09:02. Eleven minutes sat between the two times, and the second page stayed down.
Solt came up the south road on a haul permit and took the late fog shift at Westfen Dock Seven. She marks weather for the boats that miss the second bell. On gate day she voted at Barn C and went back to the dock. Her complaint calls the 06:40 question — which cot, which paper, which season — an injury to the placing. It runs 22 pages. The exhibit is a rubbing of the inspector's first sheet with the figures covered in gray hoof polish.
The Compact joined from the stone room at Hollow Range, where the second notice went up eight minutes later. Chair Odell Kern filed a rehearsal sheet printed on cloud-fiber. The fiber is cut to dissolve under a desk lamp. The request under it asks the court to accept the dissolved sheet as the record of what stays off the inspectors' copies. Kern's pony brought the lamp in the same satchel as the fiber.
Nine whips signed beneath Kern in the order of the Gallery seating chart. Four sat this season without a ballot. Two had run. Three sit for districts outside the card. The caption calls all nine "affected fliers."
Spokespony Merit Glass at the Gallery desk read the line the desk had set before the runner left Canterlot. "The questions are the injury," Glass said. "A pony should not have to say where she slept in order to have already won."
Director Even Keel of Roll Inspection answered from the factory stair. "Page one is procedural," he said. "The remainder of the card belongs to a later window, and the window will be described when it is appropriate to describe a window." He left the shore-paper count off the answer. His statement ran 28 words. The card runs nine pages.
The late shift had already kept its own count. Night chief Harp Eddowes closed Barn C. The posted marker left at minute 40 with a strained wing and a note that said only "wind." Reserve marker Silt Quinn was off the poster. She took the door, held the line, and logged the slips the posted marker had left in the tray.
"They can sue the card," Eddowes said. "The marks are in the box. I signed the tape at 22:16. I walked home in the wet, and the wet was on time."
Quinn's log is four columns and no speech. "I was not on the poster," she said. "I stood the door from minute forty. They did not ask me for a line. They asked the line to keep moving, and it moved."
The suit asks the circuit to ground both probes, return the page-one rubbings, and bar any further question within forty paces of a barn that has already reported a placing. It asks, in the alternative, that the Compact keep the carbon and that inspectors be issued the duty poster instead of the roll. The poster at Barn C has twelve names. The roll has the ponies who marked.
Canterlot Council posted the matter with the hearing unset. The clerk's slip said priority, unscheduled. Union Resistance sent a one-line note that it would watch the docket from the hall.
Keel's office released one figure before second chime and asked the desks to file it under staffing. Barn C ran with eight ponies on the posted crew and one reserve. The Hollow Range stone room ran with five. Eddowes called the figure Tuesday.
The fog shift at Dock Seven starts at 03:10. Solt was on it this morning. The boat that missed the bell logged in at 03:26, sixteen minutes late. The suit's table of injuries lists the question, the clipboard, the walk from the door to the box, and a second inspector who kept quiet.
Eddowes kept the late log in the tin under the tape. The complaint's exhibit list stops above the tin.
The tin shows 318 marks on shore papers still open at the office.
