On Thursday evening the Canterlot Regulatory Authority seated the revised capital roll on the west lawn of the Canterlot Royal Gardens. Marchers filled the promenade from the lamp posts to the citrus hedge and read names off pages pasted to the bars. The roll is the largest any free realm keeps. The Authority's afternoon sheet put the capital cut at 418,602 names.
Clerks had knocked for six days. One knock, at midday, counted. A shut door came off the book as empty. The objection desk was promised for Monday, with two stools. The forms sat in a crate behind the citrus tubs, under a spare cloth, while the lawn was set.
Table W-2 faced the lanterns. Dame Sable Orth, the evening's honoree, wore a narrow pewter dress with the recheck seal pinned at the left hip. Commissioner Corvin Ash sat at her right. The program ran fourteen pages. At 8:40 it listed a spontaneous cheer for the cleaner book. The cheer came at 8:40. Ash stood at 8:41, where the program had placed the cheer, and took his seat again.
Table W-4, under the orange lanterns, was set for the ward captains. Eight cards, seven ponies. The empty chair belonged to Brindle Moss, a lamplighter the recheck had marked deceased at 11:40 that morning. His lamp on the promenade was burning at noon. His program lay open to the 8:40 line.
Mareline Verdict, who holds the objection docket, had been on the W-2 list. Before the soup she was at the clerks' table by the hedge. She asked a gate captain to unbar the south entrance. He told her the lawn stayed closed until nine because the program said so. Her brief stayed under her napkin.
"The book lost a lamplighter who lit the gate at noon," she said. "They knocked once, found a shut door, and called it a fact."
At Table W-12, past the citrus tubs, the Authority had seated Marrow Fen, porter at the south gate for nineteen seasons. The clerk reached his room on Thursday while he was on the latch and marked him not resident. His chair faced the hedge. The place card was the torn lower corner of page 214. The line still read FEN, MARROW — REMOVED, NOT RESIDENT. In pencil above it: "service, if he comes."
Dame Sable's card was pressed board with a gold edge. Her recheck slip lay on the drinks trolley: residence confirmed by gate; clerk did not enter. She had been at a fitting in the upper ward. Her household of nine remained on the roll.
Marrow Fen left at 8:22, before the cheer, through the service gap. He took the corner of page 214. His tart stayed. The chair stayed turned toward the hedge.
Ember Hearth carried the course. The almond tarts sat on pages from the struck supplement, cut to the trays. Page 88 held tenant-house names from the lower ward. Lavender Bloom, in a plain green dress at Table W-4, keeps those houses. She read the page as the tray came down, stood before the fish, and went out through the same gap, coat left on the chair. The coat was still there at the cheer.
"They said the pages were the right size," Ember Hearth said. "I poured for three of those names last council season. Mine is on page 40, between a foal who changed wards and the lamplighter."
The Authority's evening note called the promenade "a spirited appreciation of civic hygiene." The note was dated that afternoon and lay on the chairs before the march reached the gate. A junior clerk dropped a tray at the hedge when the names got loud. Ash's office sent word that the recheck would move to the hill wards next week. The forms stayed in the crate.
Of 60,114 doors knocked in the capital wards, 11,208 were marked empty. The brief under Mareline Verdict's napkin listed forty-one of them as ponies at their posts that hour, including the porter and Ember Hearth. The clerk had confirmed Dame Sable from the gate.
At half past nine the promenade was still full. Ember Hearth cleared W-12, set the uneaten tart on the trolley beside the honoree's slip, and replaced the warm water at the empty chair on W-4. She walked to the south gate. They were reading page 40. She waited at the bar, glass in her hoof, until they reached her name.
