The count closed at 17:00. Clerk Clover Margin posted Tally Minute 4 at 06:12. Every slate stopped short of half the valid marks. Bench Order 19, paragraph 4, set a second mark for the 25th, same hours, same boxes.
Margin read the minute from the steps of the Count House in Markstead. He read it and stopped. The minute runs two pages for the Federated Reaches. It lists 14 slates. Two carry the quarrel. The rest share 9 percent.
Minister Lark Pellen, household ledgers, stood at 44. Governor Tess Maren of High Pasture stood at 47. Pellen runs on President Harl Pike's list. Pike sits the palace until winter. Compact Article 12 bars a third running stay in one sentence. Maren runs on former Captain Rodd Calder's list. Calder stays off the slip until the tenth year. Dusty Verdict's bench entered that bar as Order 7, after a crowd broke the Assembly glass and Calder, from a balcony, called the last count a theft.
Margin's cloth count, Note 12, covered two school tables in Reed Crossing. Pike's red hung on 60 banners. Calder's barracks green hung on 55. Pellen's name hung on six. Maren's name hung on five.
Pellen's headquarters completed Form C-Win at 21:40. The form declares a popular mandate. The hour sits in a second ink. The sentence leaves the runoff as courtesy. Maren's headquarters completed the same form at 21:46. Her sentence leaves the arithmetic for the 25th. Both forms went into the incoming tray. Tally Minute 4 stayed as posted.
"The minute says runoff," Margin said. "A stamp fits a minute."
Pike spoke at 22:10 from a side room. The Count House typed the transcript. His office sent none. He said the cane provinces had answered. Those provinces supplied Pellen's floor. Maren took High Pasture, the Mill Belt, and the Cold Slope. The map matches the last two palace fights.
Maren spoke at 22:30 in a High Pasture yard. The sash on the lectern was Calder green. A temple roll from the Mill Belt, pinned to the gate since Sixthday, told stewards to carry Calder's word and, where the bench had scratched him, to carry Maren. An aide took the pin down at 22:41. The far gate still had a copy.
"I am the name on the slip," Maren said. "Cloth is cloth."
Calder missed the yard. His barracks desk issued one line at 19:02, ahead of any total. "The boxes have done what boxes do. The provinces know the hand." The night clerk logged it as correspondence. It still reached the slope inns before Order 19.
Schoolhouse 3 in Reed Crossing supplied a doubled tray. The room holds 412 registered adults. The first tape read 1,206 marks. The table captain lifted a spare tray off the spindle. The corrected tape read 397. Margin posted Errata 2 at 02:14, one paragraph. Before that paragraph, Pellen's list sent a chain-note calling the spare tray the old trick. Maren's list sent a chain-note calling the correction the new trick. Both notes used 1,206. The figure 397 stayed in the errata.
Pell Amber, a cane hauler, filed Petition Slip 88 at 16:40 from the school line. He had seen the spindle sitting proud of the housing.
"I asked for the tray in front of us," Amber said. "They lifted it. The chain-note sells the other one."
At 10:17 a runner from Princess Celestia's outer office brought Form H-2. The form invites the finalists to share a podium and a civil sentence. The hour line is blank. The penalty line is blank. The reply blank leaves the time to the campaigns.
"Somewhere kind will do," the runner said. "Four lines together would please the office."
Margin stamped the form at 10:19. The stamp reads Received — Not a Count. The sheet went into the drawer labeled Courtesy. Order 19 stayed on the nail over the counter.
Ned Harrow, Pellen's floor chief, called the note a kindness to answer once the mandate is formal. Maren's yard called it noise. The reply blank was empty at dusk.
The Bench sits at 09:00 to fix the runoff roll and the words on Slip B. Slip B will show Pellen and Maren. Amber's receipt is in a wax sleeve. He will mark on the 25th. The fine for staying home is 12 bits. Margin locked the Courtesy drawer at 18:00. Order 19, still on the nail, gives that morning and the same boxes.
At 18:04 Margin initialed the wax sleeve. The sleeve line reads Slip 88, Reed Crossing, spindle proud of the housing.
The night clerk, Bramble Cot, logged both C-Win forms at 18:11 as unmatched claims. Her line reads, "Mandate not in the minute." She set Amber's receipt on the counter spike, above the Courtesy drawer.
