The West Trellis was set for twelve and sat eleven. Dame Vesper Quill wore a copper mesh sheath, the hem beaded in clear glass to the height of a retaining wall. The program called the dress "the Mile, walking." The chair at her right belonged to Brant Elloway, chief surveyor of the Pale Mile. His place card was the largest on the linen. Staff had shaken the napkin out and left it. He did not come.
Colm Ash, under-secretary for grounds to the Salt Principality of Oranthal, left between the soup and the fish, collar tucked, a folded card at his teeth. The Rising Table let him take the gravel. The service pass watched.
The dinner was printed as a courtesy seating for the Mile Pitch, the glass ground Oranthal offered as opening venue of the All-Realm Cup, eight years out. The Pale Mile is the principality's one-street city in the empty quarter. The brochure still says rising. The Pitch was to stand at the north end, roofed and wind-cooled, with ninety thousand seats and no doors. The missing doors began as a printer's error. They are the part that proved accurate.
Ember Hearth had the Trellis and the pass. The kitchen order changed before the menus did.
"They told us Tuesday the stadium cake was off," she said. "On Thursday it was back, and if a guest asked, it was a pavilion. I piped ninety thousand seats. The card was specific. The cake has the seats and the roof, and it stops there."
The sugar pitch sat on Elloway's plate, no longer than a foal's hoof, the roof scored to slide. A cushion from Dame Vesper's carriage raised it to table height and took the surveyor's chair. Mareline Verdict, a filing clerk with the Canterlot Regulatory Authority, had been on the original twelve. Her card was moved to a tray table under the citrus, one hoof on the path, beside the water crock. She carried the amended venue roll in a pasteboard cover. Three pages. The Mile Pitch is on the third, in a clerk's hand, smaller than the bid type.
"Held, unspecified," she said, and turned the page so the ink faced the path. "They filed the correction with us on the first. They filed this dinner as cake and remarks. I stamped cake and remarks."
Between the fish and the honor, the program promised a figure "at a moment of her own choosing." Dame Vesper stood on that line and held up a ribbon of three hooves. She called it a section of the outer wall. The wall was shortened last winter, in a notice to creditors, from a day's flight to a walk that ends before supper. The ribbon fit between her teeth.
Lord Cassian Pell spoke after her. Ember refilled glasses that were already full.
Sable Venn came from Harrowgate, the port whose stone ground the bid lists as reserve. The seating office had one overflow and two ponies who had read the roll, so Venn sat the tray table with the clerk. Harrowgate holds forty thousand, has doors, and has held a final.
"They can shelve a picture," Venn said. "They cannot shelve the opener. Some ground has to be standing there when the Cup arrives, and it will have a gate. I'd like that written down. The last word they gave me was reserve."
Cider for the tray table came in the plain mugs the gardeners use. The Trellis had the crystal. A page who did not know the clerk's name brought a note from Dame Vesper's office: the pasteboard cover was to stay shut, "so the evening can remain a courtesy." Mareline weighted the open cover with the water crock and ate where she had been put.
The Canterlot Economic Watchdog priced the Mile Pitch in the spring. The principality still quotes that figure whenever the brochure is in the room. The shelf has no Watchdog number. Asked in the room, the principality quotes the brochure. The roll says held. Both papers were in the Canterlot Royal Gardens in the same hour.
Ember boxed the uneaten roof, wrote the date on the lid, and set it with the centerpieces nobody cut. The cushion went back to the carriage. Elloway's card stayed face up through the clearing. Staff turn a card down only when the pony it names asks. The roll dried under the crock, the Mile Pitch in the smaller hand, under a stamp that read cake and remarks.
