On Thursday, under the west arbor of the Canterlot Royal Gardens, Lord-Marshal Bram Holst of the White Hold took his seat at Table Meridian one course before the prize. The prize was the old chair: garden credentials restored, the North Gate bit-ledger opened, his name back in a copper stand. He brought a charcoal coat, the medal from the Lower Glen, and a folio whose only border was the ribbon.
Table Meridian is the long cedar, black runner, twelve covers, fern at the service end. Holst took the second seat from the fountain. The card there was engraved. The engraver had been paid in late winter. Ivy Quill, wife of the host, wore a candle-yellow silk with a dropped shoulder and no train. The sash at her barrel had been dyed court-blue that afternoon. The knot was still tacky and left a blue thumb on the cedar when she reached for the salt.
The seventh cover stayed empty. Its card read Adjustment Deputy. The napkin had been folded into a crown and was still a crown when the nuts came. Mareline Verdict's office returned the invitation and kept its deputies in chambers. Holst's four sat where the program had seated them. None of them carried a map of the Lower Glen.
Yarrow Fen, tally clerk for the Lower Glen settlements, had a service stool at the fern, half off the runner. Her card was in pencil and faced the kitchen doors. A White Hold aide, talking about the weather, lifted her water glass and set it in the fern pot. He brought no second glass. The first took a leaf. She left at the soup, down the kitchen stairs, pencil behind her ear.
"They sat me where the trays turn," Fen said, on the stair. "My name was in pencil. His was engraved. The word on his was already Restored."
Ember Hearth has kept the arbor service for nineteen seasons. She ran the courses off the card and skipped the applause the program had timed at four beats. Between the cheese and the nuts she set a ribboned folio on the cake stand, in the place the card had marked for a sweet.
"One sheet," Hearth said at the pass, wiping the blue thumb off a tray. "Blank. Their half of the line had no rule. I only set down a signature that is on the page, so the folio came back with the stand. Then the cake. Twelve layers. Their half was plain. Our half had mutual iced across it, and mutual cracked when the stand came off."
Holst ate from the plain half. The medal stayed pinned through the nuts. He offered the table no new border.
Lavender Bloom kept Table Orchard, on the east arbor, and had asked that any clasp wait on her committee.
"Pellam had the clasp in eleven-point," Bloom said. "Unrehearsed, east of the fountain, four beats, if weather holds. I watched him count the beats behind the fountain before the rope dropped. He sent that line to the printer on Monday. Holst came up the path with one hoof already gloved. Nopony gloves a hoof for soup."
The weather held. The clasp happened on the step the program had named and ran the length the program had named. Quill's surprise occupied page three.
At four that afternoon the Canterlot Economic Watchdog's note reached the arbor. The concession column held no entries. The North Gate ledger was to stay shut until one appeared. A junior tucked the note under the fern, next to the water glass. Pellam Quill read the menu. Under the soup, in the same type, it listed Spontaneous Cordial, to follow recognition.
When the cordial came, Holst lifted the engraved card from the copper stand and slipped it into the inner pocket of the charcoal coat. The empty chair stayed as set. The stool at the fern was already folded. At the pass, Ember Hearth had the blank sheet flat, Fen's pencil across it to keep the heat from curling the page. The North Gate night clerk opened the bit-ledger, entered credentials pending in pencil, and found the Lower Glen line still waiting on a word from Table Meridian.
The lamps came up on the west arbor while the cordial glasses were still full. Pellam Quill initialed the program's last box, Recognition, and sent a runner to the North Gate with the menu alone. The night clerk copied the engraved name into the credentials column and left the concession column as the Watchdog had sent it, empty.
Holst's carriage took the fountain road with the charcoal coat buttoned and the medal still on. At the pass, the blank sheet stayed unsigned under Fen's pencil. The Lower Glen line in the bit-ledger carried the same blank it had held at noon.
