The Senior Circuit on Tuesday posted a nine-page guide to the 115 ledger charges against Calder City. Every cup named in the seasons under charge is on the same nail it was on Monday.
The guide is the Circuit's account of the charges. It sets out the method, the seasons, and the penalties an independent panel is allowed to choose. It records no choice. The last page is a ruled box captioned "outcome." The box is empty.
The method, as the charges describe it, ran for nine seasons. House Merrow, Calder City's principal seat on the Glass Coast, paid two sponsors for the marks on the sleeve and on the stand. Northlane Weather Cloth received one payment. Pell & Daughters, a transit-charm house, received the other. Both houses then paid Calder City. The club entered those payments as the market price of the marks on its disclosure.
Tess Harlow, second-shift ledger technician at the Circuit Clerkship, had the repeat test on the night the crate came in. She priced a blank sleeve of the same measure for a mid-table club in the same weather band. The repeat came back at 1.2 million bits. Calder City's line for the comparable mark was 48 million. Harlow entered the gap on night-log line 14, wrote "unrepeated," and initialed it. Half the sums on the slips had been lifted with a blade. The stroke still showed.
"I price a sponsorship the way I price a ferry contract," Harlow said. "A ferry comes back at a ferry price. I ran theirs twice and got the ferry."
What the Circuit says broke is the disclosure, and then the cooperation. Fifty-four charges allege the filed figures do not match the slips. Twenty-six allege that Coach Soren Pell's fee, and the fee of the coach before him, moved on a side retainer the form asks for by name and that the retainer stayed off the form. Thirty-five allege the club withheld the slips or sent them scraped. The guide prints the 115 counts. Line 14 is not among the printed lines.
The panel has held the sheet for two winters. Three ponies have it in a locked room. The guide says the panel may fine the club, take points, strike a title, or find the lines ordinary. Calder City took the Circuit title in four of the named seasons. Those cups stand in the west-stair case at Calder Wharf.
Chair Alden Moss said the payments were ordinary sales to houses in good standing with the Equestrian Trade Council, and that the club's own review had already closed the matter. "Our review closed it," Moss said. "Anything else is a misreading. We'll say that every time the panel sits."
Professor Ilex Bram of the Canterlot Institute debuted a paper on the same arrangement in the second season under charge and called the arrangement compliant patronage. He kept the claim on Tuesday. "The structure was ahead of the form," Bram said. "The debut went very well."
Harrow Pike, which draws a quarter of Calder City's gate, lost eight points in the same standing book for a filing that reached the clerk nineteen days past the bell. The eight points are in the book now. Secretary Pella Dorn still has the notice. "They told us a late page is a late page," Dorn said. "Ours was one page. We played the year on the line it left."
Pell is still the coach. He has won the Circuit three times since the charges were posted. After Tuesday's match he answered one question in the corridor. "Sunday is the work," he said. "The rest is paper."
Page four fines a sample club the price of a hay cart for one missing slip. The cart is listed at 90 bits. At the briefing, the pamphlet's table was set in a type the upper rows could not read, so a clerk spoke the charge numbers into the record from one through 115. The hospitality office had sold those seats as Clarity, at 400 bits, with tea. The tea was gone by charge forty. The clerk's glass was the same glass from the start of the session.
The night log remains in the clerkship drawer. Line 14 is still 48 million, unrepeated, with Harlow's initials. The outcome box on page nine is still blank. Harrow Pike's eight points are already on the table.
