Night clerk Cinder Pell warmed a copper die the size of a bit over a spirit lamp at Ward House Three until the rim would take spit without a hiss. She set it on the roster vellum, said each name once, and held the press for a slow three-count. A taken second-oath turns iron-grey ink a dull green and will not scrape. From second bell to fourth she ran the late shift. Forty-one names went green. Three stayed grey.
The three grey names were born on the Siltgate side of the post. The die had cooled on its left edge after the lamp was trimmed to save oil. Pell raised the wick, waited for the rim to even, and pressed those three again. They stayed grey. She logged the miss beside the takes: three failed, left edge cool, no hold on a second heat.
At dawn the Foreign Desk sent Thorn Hold a note urging the ruling circle to act against the Split Banner, the company Siltgate blames for a month of broken mile-posts. The next paragraph denied that Siltgate had recruited any Thorn Hold fighter into a ward company, an auxiliary, or a paid band. Both paragraphs left in one folder. The staple also caught three salt tickets from the Ward House Three window, punched the afternoon before. The pouch clerk peeled them off the ration slate. The edges were still soft.
Dusk Stripe had that window. The tickets carried three of the green names. "They came through the slot and I punched them," he said. "Two took the oat cake. One took the oat cake and asked if the salt was the coarse kind. I don't keep a second salt."
The dawn note listed the forty-one green names and told Thorn Hold to seize them as Split Banner. Thorn Hold had sent a shorter list last month, ponies missing from its hamlets. The three salt names were on both.
Envoy Bram Hollow read the denial at the morning briefing from a clearing-card. The reader speaks the card in one breath. If the charge is meant to drop, the card goes blank and the last word comes out clean. Hollow reached "Siltgate does not recruit." The card stuck to his tongue and held for a count of eight. A failed card keeps a tick, and the room counted with it. He pulled it free. The card stayed printed. The remainder, "from Thorn Hold or from any other neighbor," was damp.
"We have asked Thorn Hold to police its ground," Hollow said. He said the green was weather in the ink. He did not read the forty-one names. A clerk held out the night book. Hollow said the morning was for the note, and the note had gone.
Pell missed the briefing. She was on the scrape test the shift requires when a stamp is challenged before lunch. The tool is a bone scraper, ten strokes to a name. She ran the first five green entries and all three grey ones. Grey ink dusted off at stroke four and left the pale scar a failed stamp leaves. Green ink smeared and remained. She wrote the counts in a column another shop could repeat without her in the room.
"The green means it took," Pell said. "I don't grade the desk. I grade whether it comes up. It didn't. The three that failed were born on our side of the post, and they go in the same column."
The Canterlot Institute holds the other press certified for second-oath work. Pell's supervisor sent the locked book and the cooled die on the midmorning cart. Intake logged the lamp residue on the die and returned the book. The slip under the strap read one line: a neighbor-charge is not confirmed on a single press.
Thorn Hold answered before dusk by runner. Warden Osse Pine, who keeps the hamlet rolls, signed in a small script. The reply said Thorn Hold would look for Split Banner ponies on its own ground. The next line asked the return of any Thorn Hold-born pony drawing Siltgate salt, and it gave the three ticket names with Dusk Stripe's punch times. Pine had told the runner one sentence at the handoff. "If they are on your salt, they are not in my hills," he said.
The night stamps are still in the book. Hollow's card is in a drawer, damp on the unfinished line, and the Foreign Desk has no second press booked. Pell lit the lamp on the edge that cooled and set the scraper on name six.
