By the time the strings sat down at the Canterlot Royal Gardens, the chair on the honoree's right at Table Orchard was empty. A silver net dress lay over the back, grey slip turned out. The mare who had worn it was gone. Mareline Verdict, counsel for the guest the chart called Companion, Unarranged, said at the court gate, "She was incapable of consent." She alleged the palace covered it with a second printing.
Table Orchard sits on the east hedge. Twelve covers, one candelabra, and the gap. In the first chart the card read As Arranged. In the second, sent out between soup and fish, it read Regrettably Absent, Sends Her Warmth. The card credited her with a message the table never heard.
Sir Calder Fen, listed as honoree, stayed through the last waltz. The mare left by a service door before the second dance, a steward at one shoulder and no companion at the other. Ember Hearth, who keeps the garden service, went out after her with the tally slate. Hearth did not return for the cider.
Verdict's filing runs four pages. A sweetener from Sir Calder's flask went into the mare's cup before anypony walked her to the hedge gallery behind Orchard. She could not stand. She could not answer. What followed in the gallery, the filing says, was without her agreement, because agreement was no longer hers to give. The new chart, the new program, and a thanks offered to an empty chair were the cover. A clerk at the Canterlot Regulatory Authority stamped the pages received for social harmony. The stamp carried no docket number.
"She couldn't hold the cup," said Tansy Moor, server on Orchard. "I took it so it wouldn't mark the cloth. They had me pour a fresh one anyway, for the look of the speech. The first card is in my apron. The second card is theirs."
The slight was set before the guests. A footpony shifted the mare's chair two lengths toward the service screen so the painter's frame would close on Sir Calder alone. Her card was pinned to that screen. Near tables were told she liked a draft. The draft was the kitchen passage.
Lavender Bloom's card said Table Orchard. Her chair was in the pantry, facing the pass.
"I was seated where the plates go and the guests don't," Bloom said. "They lifted her dress off the chair and carried it back like a centerpiece, so the table would look finished. She was already in the hedge. Everypony with a free hoof had a job. She wasn't one of them."
Baroness Vesper Quill, at Table Laurel, has spent the week on the feud the leaked chart started. She treated the empty place as a separate matter.
"We were fighting over a card," Quill said. "I can see an empty chair from Laurel without a glass. They thanked a mare who was not in the room. The thanks was printed beside the cake."
Lord Brindle Harrow's toast sits in the program between the lemon ice and the donors, under the heading A Spontaneous Courtesy. He delivered it. He bowed to the chair. He used the name the second card had retired. A few ponies at Laurel struck their hooves together, looked at Quill, and studied the ice. The painter kept the frame where the footpony had set him.
Stewards, asked who ordered the second run, named a committee and no chair of it. The printer's ticket, folded into Hearth's slate, names the social desk of the honoree's patron and a Thursday morning time, sixth hour. That is before the doors, before the flask, and before any guest could have been marked absent. The line about warmth was set in the same proof as the price of the cake.
Under the heading, in small type, sits a direction. Honoree turns to chair. Chair is occupied. Guest inclines her head. The direction was on the Thursday proof. It was still on the cards the servers carried at dusk.
A harmony clerk called the gallery a private interval and the reprint a courtesy to guests who dislike a gap. Moor is still in the apron. The first card still reads As Arranged. The chair was empty, and the proof had never been told.
