Winter apples at the stall beside the Hearthstone Smithy were two bits and a half at noon. A glint Bramble Cotter bought in spring for nine bits went out her door the same morning at forty. The gain was thirty-one bits. The Low Benches of Figshore, sitting past second bell in the white hall above the harbor, voted to take ten percent of the gain on any glint sold from that morning's dawn. On Cotter's sale the tenth is three bits and a tenth. She had already spent the forty on seed.
The tenth comes due when a glint changes hooves. A seller owes ten percent of the sale price minus the figure on the receipt, and owes it in ordinary bits. The statute tells the revenue window to settle in bits alone, "whatever the slate may claim." A mark that stays in a saddlebag waits.
Cotter's produce book has a flour stain on the cover. A second slip, in the tally-mare's writing, shows the nine bits. She sold one of her two marks because the seed house wanted its money before the ground froze.
"I paid for seed that is already in the ground," Cotter said. "They can have the invoice. The bits are in the rows."
Harlan Vetch, who collects at the Ponyville window for the Figshore revenue, pinned the rate card beside the hours. The card shows ten percent, a due date on the Friday after the sale, and a line in block letters: NO GLOW. Vetch said the window would make change down to a tenth of a bit. He set a scrap tray beside the card for any pony who arrived with a speech.
"Bring the receipt and the bits," Vetch said. "If the receipt is a scratch, bring the scratch. If the bits are still a scratch, that is not a payment."
Where a receipt is unclear, the statute tells a clerk to use "the last uncoerced price posted before second bell." On the night of the vote the only tally still awake was the slate Skyline Sprocket keeps behind the smithy, between a jar of rivets and a cold kettle. Sprocket sold one glint to himself at second bell so the book would close on a number. He priced the sale at one muffin from the morning tray. A harbor circular, in Vetch's tray by dawn, names that muffin the reference price for unclear sales until a better trade is posted. Sprocket ate the muffin on the walk home.
"I was hungry and the line was blank," Sprocket said. "They can come audit the crumbs."
Cotter's slip sits outside the muffin rule. It names nine and forty. Zephyr Windbreaker, who carried the measure on the floor, told the benches his glint came "from the early tally," by handshake. Vetch, asked how a handshake would be priced, said a pony could read the circular at the window on the day the bits were due.
Windbreaker chairs the Visiting Board for Tally Modernization. In his floor speech he said the tenth would "bind the tally to the civic purse through synergy." The purse written into the bill is the Figshore Festival and Welcome account. The account's winter sheet, passed around before the roll call finished, budgets eleven hundred bits for lantern oil, four hundred for a visiting choir, and an outreach line larger than those two together. The lane past the smithy still has its hole. The sheet leaves the hole where it found it.
"The reference price is a temporary bridge," Windbreaker said. "The festival calendar is already printed."
Ponyville Property Pros wrote to cottage owners before noon. Unsold glint, the note said, "may support a refreshed asking figure" if the owner will attest that a mark is kept on the premises. The premises line was left blank. The firm will be elsewhere when Vetch's window opens. A cottage the firm had listed Monday at one hundred and eighty bits was listed again at one hundred and ninety-five, with a footnote about value kept off the roof. The roof was the same roof.
Mayor Pippin Pines posted the statute on the board outside the town hall and underlined the Friday due date. Ponyville will leave the tenth with the stall that owes it. The harvest sheet will stay a harvest sheet.
Cotter's seed bill was eleven bits, stamped paid. The slip Vetch wrote for her sale is three bits and a tenth, due Friday. At four in the afternoon, while the benches were still counting yes votes, the Festival and Welcome account recorded an order for the lantern oil.
