The 08:15 note from Windfall Margin put the Amber Reach sun-catcher market at 48,000 units by the close of the third season, up from the 11,200 the same desk printed at seedtime. Canterlot Institute bound the note with a map. South of the Sparks spur, the Reach was filled in a flat noon yellow, the color the print shop uses when no shift has been assigned.
At Spur Glass Works, director Calder Voss read the figure at the 09:10 stand-up. He told the floor the line would make the glass if the furnaces held their 1,180-degree pull through Sixthday. The works press office moved his line at 09:22. The picture with it showed one catcher aimed at the lens. That catcher is Unit Noon, bolted to the office wall in season 14. It faces stucco. On a clear day it returns the light of the placard lamp under it, and that lamp is the load.
Pebble Hart clocked the late shift at the Kiln Cross yard at 16:00. Wind was 18 knots west-southwest by 16:20, flags straight, grit in the hinges. The note reached the yard at 16:40. She counted catchers at 17:05 with a grease pencil and the roof list.
Nineteen stood on roofs in Kiln Cross and the two streets west of the tannery. Eleven of the nineteen had glass seated. Four of those eleven fed a junction box marked TEMP. Eight frames on the same roofs were bare iron. The works ledger lists those eight as delivered.
The glass for them sits in three crates on Arcane Express Sparks Rail car 6, on the spur since last Secondday. The yard crane's left brake sits a quarter turn shy of holding a load. Hart wrote the quarter turn on the shift card. Until that turn is made, car 6 is a siding and a market. The car stands 400 paces from the first roof.
"Pay the shift and I will hold clear air from the second bell to the fifth," Hart said. "The 14:00 hour on my sheet is already a rain order. Forty of those are initialed for the third season. A clear market has to buy the hour back from the towns that bought the wet one."
Margin's note builds the 48,000 on 11.2 clear hours a day. Hart's flying sheet shows 9.4 on a day with no order booked, and 6.1 when a shower is on the book. The 11.2 is the reading off a test roof in Canterlot under a standing cloud exemption. The Reach flies the scheduled sheet. Shower orders from the northern towns are already on the third-season sheet, in ink.
Sedge Quill took the reserve slot at 12:40. The poster flier was in Canterlot for the works luncheon, beside the map. Quill's name sits on the bottom of the duty board, under the line set in the larger type. She pulled cloud off the sample roof at 13:10 and set it on the tannery, two streets west. The pull ran 22 minutes. At minute 18 she called a strain in the left wing and held the heading. The injury is logged day-two. Tonight's board has her in the same slot.
"The capacity table lists me as a full clear-air unit," Quill said. "I had the one wing and the yard radio. The radio said to hold the sample roof and leave the other nine. The sample roof is the one on the invoice."
The junction card at Kiln Cross rates the line for 40 catchers before the far end drops under the mark the lamps need. Hart took the 40 off the card. The note's 48,000 would take 1,200 lines of that size. Kiln Cross has 600 roofs. The Canterlot Council's lamp list still has 60 of them on wick after the fifth bell. On Firstday the Council wrote 48,000 into the trade appendix. The appendix leaves a blank where the card's 40 would go, and a blank where the brake would go.
Asked for the tied-in figure after the second bell, Voss said, "Scale is already in the book if you spread the orders over the season." At 18:05 the press office sent the 48,000 again. The yard at 18:05 was the yard at 17:05.
Union Resistance pays the Reach clarity shift at half the storm rate. Clear hours go on the card as waiting. Hart's six-day card shows 46 hours, 11 of them past the fifth bell, every one at the waiting rate.
Nineteen catchers were producing on a line at the 17:05 count. Spur Glass had already banked 2.41 million bits against the Reach book.
