Ember Flint wiped a circle in the fog on the glass and watched the count die. It reached zero over a picture of cloud-bolsters. It blinked. It came back as fourteen. Beneath the numerals a line read ONLY TWO LEFT IN THE REALM. The stock card on her lamp, in her hoof since morning, said six hundred and eleven, size ordinary, dye lot unclaimed.
She keeps the returns rail for Ponyville Market. The Market takes the order. The glass that takes the bits stands in a Las Pegasus stall. The stall pays for the mirror. The Market's budget ends at the rail. On Tuesdays the mirror is her problem. The stool was under the void slips. She read standing up.
Before noon a runner from Ponyville City Council brought a pasteboard folio down the lane. Inside sat a draft from the Wharf Accord's Choosing Bench, watermarked SAMPLE OF CARE, still short of a vote of the realms. It named ten traps. The names were still inside the folio. The shops were working off yesterday's buttons. The copy room had been told to post the pages by evening, for the instruction of buyers.
The cover was set in school-sheet type. It said the list would teach the realm to choose in friendship, and that a buyer who reached the last line would be harder to fool. Luna Starlight read that sentence at a marble annex in the Accord quarter, to empty chairs and one recorder.
"A shopper who sees the trap has already learned the better path," Luna Starlight said. "We are simply writing the path where it cannot be missed."
Ember turned the page with a wet fetlock. She had been stamping these since spring.
The ten were plain. A clock that ends and begins again. A count of stock the shelf will not swear to. A leaving-button printed in the color of the cloud behind it. A gift tick already filled, so the bits go unless the buyer hunts the box. A refusal set down as an insult: "No, I would rather fail my friends." A banner dressed as a friendship report, which is a paid stall. A club that takes one tap to enter and a hearing to leave. A line naming a nearby friend who bought the bolster, and no such friend. A window that returns each time the buyer says later. A second, smaller price that appears only after the pouch is open.
Silver Hoof keeps four stalls on the strip, including the mirror she clears. He had the morning receipts. The folio had not reached him. "Take the number off and they stand there until lunch," he said. "The number lets a busy pony go home. Trap is a hard word for a clock."
His bolster club is the hearing. A buyer who wants out confirms through eleven screens and then must attend a gratitude minute at the stall, between second bell and the lock. The lock is the following minute. Ember's stamp for it reads MINUTE MISSED. The hinge squeaks. She oils it with her own bits. The requisition asks what lesson the oil would teach, and she has no short answer for a loud hinge.
Under the folio the Council had clipped Slip Nine, headed Notice of a Trap Observed. Forty letters are allowed for the lesson learned. Ember's older notices have been returning stamped INCOMPLETE LESSON. "Bits returned" came back. The buyer's name and the sum came back. Forty-one notices sat on the rail at lunch. She ate over them. Mustard hit the shame-line. She left it.
"They want the sentence at the end," Ember Flint said. "The customer wanted the bits. The bits are in the drawer. The sentences are in the reject pile."
The recorder at the annex asked whether any clerk had been consulted. The Bench minutes, tucked in the same folio, record the question and record that the lesson had already been set in type. Consultation is down for a later season.
After his own clerk borrowed a copy, Silver Hoof sent a note before close. He would rename the fourteen-second clock "a gentle reminder of the day's shape." He would rename the gratitude minute "a farewell among friends." The lock stayed on the lunch minute.
Ember wrote the stock number in the margin. The margin carries no lesson box. Six hundred and eleven. She locked the drawer, wiped the glass clear, and left the count running. It fell off zero. It set itself to fourteen. The card on the lamp was the same card.
