The petitions clerk at Third Hall, in Manehattan, logged Form 2-M at 8:40 a.m. The form asked the Borough List to take its march off the first hour of the first. Candle Court opens the Lantern Opening that morning. Sixty-four stalls had paid for the curb.
Clover Margin signed on line 6. She keeps a tinware stall at the east end of the court and sits on the row's fee sheet. "Move it past noon and the street works," she said. "Leave it at nine and I pay a day's rent to watch flags."
Form 2-M is a street-yield. It runs four lines. Line 4 reads: "Yield requested from the first hour to the twelfth. Reason: Lantern Opening, cash drawers, cart width." Dusty Verdict stamped it at 8:41. He wrote the stall count in pencil in the margin. The printed box stops at twenty.
The march is the Long Listening. Pell Ambry's office posted the date in September: the first of the month, at 9:00 a.m., from Binder Lane into Candle Court and back. The route uses the curb the stalls rent. The chair's office sent the route card to Public Ways on the 12th. Public Ways acknowledged the card on the 13th. The acknowledgment leaves the fee line blank.
At 11:15 a.m. the chair's clerk, Ivo Pell, pinned a one-page note to the district-room door. The note says the route "remains under review" and that the first "stands, pending courtesy." Ivo Pell told the hall runner the chair would speak at 4:00.
Notice 11 left the Crown Bench at 2:06 p.m. The style line calls it "A Harmony Reminder." Alden Pike, the Day Secretary, signed over the small day-seal, the seal the bench uses for a calendar note. The notice runs four pages. Paragraph two reads: "The Crown Bench notes with regret the seasonal indifference of the Borough List." Page three cites the fellowship decree and the duty to leave a market "unobstructed in its cheerful commerce." The stall count is absent. The form number is absent. Clover Margin's name is absent.
Alden Pike read two sentences from the side door at 2:20. "The Borough List picked the morning the drawers open," he said. "A list that wants the city can wait its turn on a curb."
A clerk from his office set six copies in the tray Dusty Verdict uses for yields.
Dusty Verdict set the copies to the left and kept Form 2-M on the right. "I stamped a yield," he said. "The notice is a speech with a number on it. They came in on the same tray at 2:28."
The Day Secretary's office called Notice 11 a response to "public concern from the trades." The concern on file was Form 2-M and a second sheet, signed by nine stallholders, asking the same noon start. The second sheet lists the first hour's usual stock: lantern cups, wick oil, pie tins, and the short red string the court hangs before dusk. The pie tins are three bits the pair until the gates crowd. After the crowd they go to two, or back in the crate.
Pell Ambry's September card calls the first "the open date of the Listening, not subject to a shop calendar." The card is pinned in the district room. The 11:15 note is pinned beside it.
Notice 11 does not move the march. It has no operative line. It regrets, it cites, and it seals. The street-yield binds a curb only if Public Ways countersigns. By 4:00 Public Ways had not countersigned. Nessa Holm, chief clerk there, said the route card and the yield were "both in the book," and that the book closes at 5:00.
At 4:10 Pell Ambry spoke from the district-room landing. He thanked the stallholders for their "seasonal diligence." He said the Listening would "honor the market and the hour already posted." He named neither hour. The row stayed at the stalls and counted cups.
Clover Margin waited until the pencil on Form 2-M dried. She asked whether a noon yield needed a new fee. Dusty Verdict told her the fee follows the curb. She took a copy of the yield and a copy of Notice 11. The tray does not sort them once they have touched.
At 5:00 the board book entered the small day-seal as a harmony item. Form 2-M sat under it. The pencil in the margin still read 64. Nopony from the Crown Bench had initialed the number.
