CANTERLOT — The Office of the Sun Seal posted a guard reading for former Marshal Calder Vesper at the fourth hour on Thursday. The card went up in the east corridor after Vesper's notice called the empty hour on his form a refusal.
Vesper sits for High Fold in the Day Assembly. He carried the marshal's baton for four years and set it down in the spring. Paragraph six of the standing order keeps a former marshal on the reading list while he sits. The paragraph says he is read on request. The request is a form.
Form 12-C is titled Security Reading, Standing. Dusty Verdict, clerk of the reading book, stamped Vesper's copy received on the second day of this month. The hour line was empty. The reason line was empty. The refusal box was clear. Today is the nineteenth. The second remains the top stamp. The lines under it stayed blank until the afternoon card.
Chair Soren Carr of the Watch Committee filed her 12-C on the ninth. Her hour was written the same morning. She was read on the eleventh in the small room behind the seal office, with a guard on the bench. Her reason line says standing request.
Vesper put his notice in the public book at the third hour this morning. One page. It names the Sun Seal, Form 12-C, and the second of the month. It says an empty hour, held seventeen days, is a refusal. The page asks for the date the form was printed to hold.
At the fifth hour the east corridor had a new card. Thursday. Fourth hour. West Chart Room. The reason line, in the seal office's hand, reads: "Notice in the public book, this morning." Verdict copied that line into the reading book under the old stamp. He used the pen he uses for oat deliveries and witness lists.
The West Chart Room holds the cloth ledger on ordinary days. Colm Harn, junior clerk, counts linen there at the third hour. Thursday's fourth hour was empty because the cloth cart is late and the ledger has no line to enter. Harn was told to take the bolts out, leave the pitcher, and lock the oat drawer. The guard reading will sit in that gap. The room key hangs on the linen peg.
A decree traveled with the card. Princess Celestia's sun seal is at the bottom. The text is four lines. Former marshals in the assembly may be read when a matter touches the guard. The reading is called harmony. Verdict slid the decree in front of Form 12-C and marked the top corner cover sheet.
"It tells me to write an hour," Dusty Verdict said. "The form already had the line. I dated the new card for today and left the second of the month where I stamped it."
Merrick Pale, secretary to the Sun Seal, stood in the corridor at the sixth hour with the decree turned so the seal faced the hall.
"The crown places a reading where the day can bear it," Pale said. "Thursday can bear it. The notice hurried a courtesy that was already on its way."
Pale's sequence starts on today's card. Every earlier page under Vesper's name stops at the received stamp.
The matter to be read is the ordinary guard packet: the eastern marches, the strength of the night companies, and a short list of names kept off the public board. The names stay in the room. The packet is the one Carr heard on the eleventh. Paragraph six puts Vesper on the same list. The paragraph counts a request. The seal office's card counts a notice.
Vesper stood outside the book room at half past five with the morning page folded once.
"I asked on the second," he said. "The hour line was empty this morning. They wrote Thursday after the public book had the word refusal in it."
Princess Celestia stayed on the upper floor. Pale carried the card down. The marshal is down for four on Thursday in a room that will have a pitcher out and an oat drawer locked.
The refusal box on Form 12-C is still clear. The Thursday sits in the hour line beside it, in the afternoon's ink.
