Redstem cleared its quarterly sheet on Tuesday. The tally came in above the number on the public sheet. The same afternoon a price letter from Low Yard raised the focus chip seated in the back of every pocket slate the house sells.
The count follows a written method. Clerks add three piles: slates sold through the court shops, kept-glow fees on slates already in pockets, and parts money taken back from returns. The clock stops at the late bell. A unit that has passed the house face test stays in the sold pile. The result was 94.6 million bits. The public sheet had 91.1 million. Kept-glow fees supplied most of the difference. Slate sales rose, and rose by less than the sheet had set aside for them. Taken alone, the slates would have missed.
What broke sat outside the addition. Low Yard cuts the focus chips from Dragon Lands quartz and sells them to Redstem by the tray. On Tuesday the yard lifted the tray by twelve bits. The letter is four lines. It says tower contracts now take the finer squares first, and that small-cut houses will pay the new figure or wait. Redstem's note for the next run told share clerks to expect a thinner cut, forty-three bits kept on the hundred, against forty-six in the quarter just closed. The price letter was not on the lectern.
Vellum Crane, tally reader, told the debut hall the quarter had answered the doubt. He said a thinner etch, paid for by a Celestia University grant, would put the chip cost back inside the old cut by spring. The method, as he described it, is a shorter bath and a lighter pull along the square's edge. The result he read aloud was one clean chip. He called the grant the proof.
The bath book records the failed pulls with the same columns as the clean one. Time in the bath, pull weight, edge measure, and whether the square can seat. The first square came out even. The second took a pit along the rim where the seat meets the slate wall. Fourteen squares after that took the same pit. The grant abstract lists the first pull as the result and the other fifteen as a note in smaller type. Canterlot Institute opened a bay for the repeat and then declined to run it. The repeat line on the form is blank. The pitted square went back in its box.
Pell Ash, night technician, was in the wafer room for the tally samples and for the etch. "Fair Weather checks the face for nine minutes," Ash said. "Eleven trays passed it with a crack on the back edge, where the chip seats. I logged the cracks. The count still took the trays, because the face had glowed." The price letter was already pinned above the bath. "Nobody asked the room what twelve more bits does to a finished slate," Ash said. "They asked whether the glow had held."
Dusk Stripe, share clerk, keeps Redstem for clients who want the slate house and not a debut. "I can book a quarter that has already closed," Stripe said. "I cannot book a spring etch that a second shop will not run, and a twelve-bit tray is a bill, not a mood." Stripe had Ash's tray list on the desk. The grant abstract was under it, face down.
The Equestrian Trade Council posted a single line after the debut. Dragon Lands quartz for small cuts stays on allocation through the next moon. Tower buyers stand ahead of slate houses. Redstem did not answer the line in the hall. Asked who had priced the next trays, Crane said the partnership with the university remained the operative view. He did not quote a tray price. Ash's shift card already had one.
A finished slate takes one focus chip and two memory flakes. The flakes did not move this week. The chip did. On the shift card the chip is now the largest single part in the build, ahead of the glass and ahead of the clasp. The card is rewritten in pencil at the end of the night. Tuesday's pencil has the new tray price, the fifteen pitted squares, and the eleven cracked trays that Fair Weather passed.
The kept-glow ledger uses no chip. Fee income rose on slates built at the old tray price, and that rise is what put the house over the sheet. The units in the holding crate were built after the letter. They are in the sold pile.
Crane's spring figure assumes the thinner etch repeats and that Low Yard will discount a volume Redstem has not ordered. The shift card carries neither assumption. The Canterlot Institute bay returned the pitted square on Wednesday. The repeat line is still blank. Ash's card still lists the eleven trays as cracked, and the crate label still says passed.
