The Outer Signals desk posted the card at 14:10. Sable Quill, adviser to the Day Court, read it standing. He did not sit. Princess Celestia was not in the west gallery.
Quill said the Reed March is in talks to lift the speed on its military sky lattice. He called the talks constructive. He named no offer. He named no hour for a change. The card used the word partnership. It did not use the word cap.
The cap is Field Latch Circular 6. The Latch Office keeps the original at window three. Page one, line four, reads: "No martial mirror shall outrun a posted trot. Twelve sealed lines an hour. Excess held for the next bell."
Clover Margin penciled the twelve. The note is dated 11 March, in the left margin, under the rate box. A harmony seal went on that afternoon. It is the small seal. The office uses that stamp for parade intervals and for school carts on crown avenues.
Spike had the circular on the counter before the card ended. He is the clerk at window three this month. The sheet was already stamped received.
"The line still says twelve," Spike said. "A talk does not strike a line. If the cap comes off, somepony initials the correction, and the hour goes in the book."
Hess Pike filed the March's petition at 09:20. He is the petitioner of record. The sheet asks that the trot sentence be cut and that field mirrors take the ordinary crown rate. He waited on the bench outside the window while the gallery listened to Quill.
"We filed before the card," Pike said. "Captains on the reed line are holding orders for the next bell. I came for a correction. I did not come to discuss pace."
The March has run its officers through Hart Lattice since the fighting reached the second dike. The charter names the Day Court as patron. A field mirror is a glass hung high, set to carry a sealed line past the dikes. On page two the ordinary crown rate is "as the glass will bear." The martial rate is the trot.
Lumen Hart did not come to the 14:10. His office sent a slip at 13:05. The slip said the lattice "continues under existing terms."
In the Latch book a sealed line is one order, one sender, and one receiving glass. The thirteenth waits. Window three's book showed forty-one lines held from the morning watch. The oldest stamp was 06:16. The line asked for a cart count at the north sluice.
Quill took questions for six minutes. Asked who had set the cap, he said the harmony seal spoke for the arrangement. He did not read it. Under the ribbon the seal says, "For good order at intervals."
Asked if twelve lines had been enough on the reed line, he said the lattice had many users. He said one march could not skip a queue built for the whole sky. He said the talks were a sign of respect. Then he stopped.
Exhibit B is the March's own signal sheet. At 07:40 a glass at Dike Four asked leave to pull two companies off a soft bank. The answer left the capital lattice at 08:55. The bank had taken water at 08:10. The sheet lists the times and stops. Spike gave it a number.
Hart Lattice bills the March by the glass and by the month. The rate card hangs beside the window. A field glass is four bits a day inside the trot. The back prices a "temporary elevation" at forty bits a day, "subject to crown comfort." The October book shows no elevation for the March. It shows one for a harvest fair and one for a night market that wanted its lamps answered on the same bell. Both carry the small seal.
"Comfort is not a box I can file," Spike said. "Page two has the box for a higher rate. The box is blank."
Quill's card did not mention bits. It credited the March with an "ongoing interest in a modern pace." It sent the talks to "the appropriate window." The board says that is window three. The window closes at 16:00.
Pike was still in the hall at 15:40, with a second form asking a same-day strike of line four. The form needs the adviser's initial beside the clerk's. Quill had left the gallery at 14:22. He did not pass the window. An aide said petitions would be seen in the order received. Pike's was number 18 on the spindle. Numbers 12 through 17 were parade glass for a visiting band.
The seal on Circular 6 has not moved. Celestia's name sits on the charter two doors down, inside a frame. It is not written on the correction line. At 15:51 the hold count stood at forty-four. The newest line came from east of the sluice and asked if the trot still bound after the card. Spike entered line four as the answer, and he entered the time.
