On Thursday the Canterlot Royal Gardens set the Clear-Current supper on two tables with the reflecting pool below the high edge. Table One, the Intake Table in the seating book, took that edge. Table Seven took the lower terrace, reed runner down the middle. The kitchen book had the lower table as the spill. Baroness Opaline Weir, whose house keeps the Upper Intake pens, wore a pearl-grey column and a collar of trout scales dyed the brochure's blue. The place card for Harlan Voss, night tally at the pens, stood at the end of Table Seven. The chair in front of it stayed empty from the first tray to the locking of the gate.
The Canterlot Regulatory Authority had set renewal of the Clear-Current Mark on the same card as the menu. Between the fish and the cake the program printed a heading, Spontaneous Thanks to the Intake Crews, with the thanks already set in type. A smaller line said they would be offered if the pool was calm. Lavender Bloom, who keeps the terrace beds, had logged the pool at dawn for a grey film and a smell she wrote as sweet rot. The log stayed on the garden desk. She left after the fish was down and before the program reached that page. Her napkin remained in its fold.
Mareline Verdict, carrying the feed-ratio brief for the Canterlot Economic Watchdog, sat at Table Seven with her back to the water. Her chair leg stood in the service track. Bramble Nye, on the fish, turned the platter sideways to pass. The loin faced Table One. The rim faced her. A sauce boat caught her foreleg and left a streak. Table One went on with the loin. She wore court black, let out at the shoulder, throat bare.
Bramble's sauce card was clipped to a feed bill from the Upper Intake. "Not for the room," he said later, at the service door. "Three stone of wild smolt, minced, feed grade, for each stone of trout on the platter. I served the trout. The bill stayed on the clip."
A brochure in the collar's blue lay on each charger and said the wild run had been rested for the season. The bill put that rest in mince. A pail of trimmings, marked for the night board, went out on the garden cart while the loin was still being cut. The pen office holds Harlan Voss's passage chit until his feed tally clears, and the tally is written by the house that sells the feed. His name was in the program as a well-wisher who regretted the distance. He was on the night board.
The Watchdog's morning note, left on the press bench, called the ratio customary. Mareline's brief had it at three to one, in her own hoof. "I was sat where the trays turn," she said. "The numbers were under the chair. That was the seating."
Ember Hearth sat at Table Two in copper wool. The program had suggested sea-blue silk. Her bid for the next season's provision of the terrace was still open on the clerk's blotter, unanswered. The reed-sugar cake came out with the Clear-Current mark piped in blue icing and already soft in the garden damp. "They offered me the contract if the ratio stayed off my card," Ember Hearth said. "I print what I buy. We did not agree."
A signing clerk from the Canterlot Regulatory Authority kept the renewal under the cake stand and took it back dated Thursday. The Authority's page called the film pollen. The mark's own sheet, copied at the back of the program, allows no visible sheen within forty lengths of a public garden. The pool's second step lies inside that measure. The film reached the step Lavender Bloom logs as the terrace line while the icing mark lost its edges.
The renewal carries the Clear-Current Mark into the next pen season. Harlan Voss's passage chit was still at the Upper Intake office when the garden staff locked the lower gate. The bill on Bramble's clip still read three stone of wild smolt for every stone of trout the room had been served.
At the service door Bramble Nye slid the feed bill under the night-tray strap so the scullery count would carry it. The place card for Harlan Voss came off the reed runner in the clear-up and went into the garden's unclaimed box. Mareline Verdict kept the sauce streak on her court black through the lower walk. On Table One the pearl-grey column came away clean. The signing clerk's dated renewal sat in the Authority pouch. The spontaneous-thanks leaf, pulled from the programs at the stack, was still blank.
