The cut is two miles behind me, and the firs have the sun. Forty minutes of light if the ridge cloud holds. The survey sheet shows Odell Varn's dry-goods stall at the eleventh pace-marker, a cleared lane, and a stamp opening Harrow Wood to licensed parties through first frost. The sheet leaves out the second shutter, the paste on the step, and the nail straightened twice since morning.
Varn sat on a crate, mouth split, near fore in a feed sack he kept from the warden's colt. Four posters had gone on the stall front at first light, in his hoof, condemning the chalk marks and the beatings put on the Cinder Quarter families. Three were gone. The fourth hung on a bent nail at chest height, turned to the lane.
"They don't want the oats," Varn said. He spoke to his left so the split would hold. "Till's latched. Same yesterday, same the day before. They read it, they put a hoof through the glass, and they put the next one in me. Then they take the paper."
The first pair came before the paste dried. Gray coats, marks too plain to swear to from the marker, one with a coaching-inn mug kept in his teeth. They took the left poster and opened the lip with the mug. Three more at midmorning took the shutter off its pin and the second poster with it. After the mail cart they put him down and took the third. He hung the fourth from the crate. Doors shut after that, stall to cottage.
Wren Halder keeps the last cottage before the game trail. Split woodpile, no sign. She walked the eleven paces when the glass broke and walked back when the gray coats left the lane. Nineteen seasons of parties into the wood. The board's paper stays on the board.
"Runner at noon," Halder said. "Wood's seeing increased interest, he told me. Book the overflow. I told him the interest could read." She looked at the nail. "Boar's on the mast this month. He roots and he moves. A mug out of the inn is a different animal. These wait on the cart. Paper first. Pony second. The money stays. You can put a clock on it."
The Opportunity Desk at Marrow Gate had the lane on the morning sheet under openings. I read the card on the trough nail coming up: Harrow verge, seasonal, suitable for a short heroic, poster disturbance noted, forty bits, back before dusk. Forty bits is what a party pays to walk the lane and file the walk as a job. Beneath it, small clerk's letters: ambient resistance possible. Bright Prospect's hand. A colt at the trough said Prospect was at the coaching inn briefing a party off the midday coach.
That party was done before I reached the crate. Halder had their order. Unicorn, cleaned breastplate, two retainers with new rope, a portrait pony with a box camera. They seated the broken shutter so the cracks would catch, stood the unicorn on the step with his chin at the last poster, and made three plates. He told Varn he had answered the call of the verge. He asked the camera pony if the crack would show. Fir shadow hit the eleventh marker and he was on the coach. The portrait pony bid two bits for the bent nail, for the caption. Varn kept the nail.
Cinder Quarter keeps its own days. The carts stayed off the verge. Halder said the chalk pairs work the quarter after full dark, same gray, marks on the doors. Two fillies were kicked on Mill Row three nights ago. The wardens' book, opened for me because the night clerk wanted the hour entered as weather, calls the kicks lane disputes and calls Varn's morning a commercial disagreement about signage. Yesterday's till slip is spiked by the oats: salt, twine, lamp oil.
Prospect's runner made the pace-marker while I still had light to count, and he stopped there. The card thanked private enterprise for its vigilance on the verge and promised a review of signage guidelines so condemnation posters would not inflame traffic. He asked if the notice could sit inside, smaller, off the lane. Varn said the fourth poster faced the lane because the gray coats stood in the lane to read it. The runner wrote uncooperative and trotted for the gate with the light he had left.
The boar crossed the mast while we were still at the crate. Halder named the sound and left it. He rooted, he went east, and his line ran clear of the stall. I passed the trough again with the lower branches already dark. The sheet had been copied over in the same small hand. Forty bits. The poster line sat higher than it had at noon, directly under the word opportunity.
