The chandeliers at the Glass Comb in Las Pegasus had been lowered to speaking height, which put the lowest crystals level with Calder Brant's ear. He did not duck. He faced the rented chairs, held up a hotel napkin, and said he would easily beat Arden Pell. He called Pell highly overrated. A waiter with a tray of crushed ice stopped short of the table and waited to hear whether the line was a toast.
Brant has held the Western Chair since the last cold season. Pell held the same chair for two terms and left it nine seasons ago. At the send-off the public mark stood at sixty-one, and the line under it read "steady." Brant had written EASILY across that word in the Comb's blue wax pencil. The napkin was damp in one corner. The glass that dampened it was already back on a tray.
"I would easily beat him," Brant said. "Highly overrated. Any room that has heard both of us knows it. This room has heard me."
Pell keeps a small office over a feed stall at Ponyville Market and was in it that afternoon, a day's rail away, initialing a receipt for oats. He had not stood for the chair since he returned the seal. Western rules do not let a former holder be entered by napkin.
Luna Starlight came through the service door with Pamphlet 14-C still warm from the press in the carriage. The lesson, set in recitation type, said that a pony who calls another overrated has forgotten that ratings are a kind of hug. She read it, then added a line.
"When we rank our friends we shrink the pasture, and a smaller pasture is how a friendship closes," Luna Starlight said.
The pamphlet notes that applause counts as participation. Brant nodded as if the nod were a return. The waiter set the ice down. It had started to pool.
Ember Flint was not there for the sentence. She was there for the form. She came up the service stair with a stamp, a mop, and Form FR-9, which turns a public boast into a friendship report before midnight. The sheet has a box for the lesson and a box for the pony who contradicts it. Luna Starlight had filled the lesson box in the carriage. The rest of the page, and the floor, belonged to Ember.
Blue wax speckled the marble where the napkin had been waved. She mopped a stripe the width of a hoof and wrung the head into a bucket until the water took the color of a cheap ribbon. She sleeved the napkin and marked it Exhibit Friend. The form asks for a shared contest and will not accept a blank. She counted nine seasons in the margin and wrote the number where the blank had been.
"They were never on the same card," Ember Flint said. "His chair and Pell's chair sit nine seasons apart. I can stamp a lesson. I cannot stamp a race that nobody held."
The napkin was the only proof on offer. Ember set her initial in the Y, where the pencil tore a nick in the damp, and smoothed it with the side of her hoof. She did not apologize to the pamphlet.
Pell read the afternoon dispatch at the market office without getting up. The runner waited while he finished the oat receipt. He looked at the lesson, then at the note on the exhibit, then at the door, where a customer was asking after bran.
"I left on a schedule," Pell said. "If a pony wants a race, the pony can print a ballot. I still know a napkin when I see one."
He went back to the receipt. The runner took the stool and the water. A mare in the aisle, buying mash, asked if the race had been moved onto the feed calendar. Ember heard the question later and found her answer already on the form.
Luna Starlight told the evening dispatch that the report was complete and the realm had been taught. She did not mention the margin.
The lights came up on schedule. The napkin rode in a canvas bag on Ember Flint's shoulder. Form FR-9 listed two chairs, two seasons, and no shared line. The lesson box still called a rating a hug. In the contradiction box Ember had entered the only figures the archive could check. Pell's send-off mark remained sixty-one. Brant's last public mark was forty-four. The word easily had not moved either one.
