The long yew table under the east lanterns in the Canterlot Royal Gardens had been set for twelve. By the fish it was split over forty-one burst-vials in a powder house by the north gate. The March Guard had taken them Monday from a Fold Compact barn in the South Fold. On Thursday the court sat to decide whether the taking would stand. The hold order stayed on the latch. Captain Oren Bell, who signed it, was gone before the second course.
Table One was the negotiation. The cloth was the pale green the Gardens use when a dispute is meant to look like a season. Envoy Calder Voss of the Fold Compact had the center place, charcoal silk, and a copper clasp cast as a sealed vial. Third from the end, Bell's card stood at an empty chair. The napkin was still in the laundry's four-o'clock fold. He had come as far as the cloakroom. He left at the fish.
Bell commands the detachment that sealed the barn. The Canterlot Regulatory Authority posted his sheet at noon. It lists forty-one burst-vials, twelve coil fuses, and a crate of caps carrying the Compact's barn mark. Under the stamp, in Bell's hoof, the line reads "not for weather." Councilor Cotton Fuse, at Voss's left, with a white bloom the size of a plate, spent the soup calling the same objects heritage stores.
Fuse and the Fold bloc wanted the vials carted back before morning and written down as a courtesy. They said the Compact is the eastern guarantee, and a guarantee belongs in the marches that keep it. Mareline Verdict, across the cloth, wanted the hold kept and the word stores struck out of any garden ledger that touched the caps. Neither motion carried. A motion to bring the quartet two lengths closer, so the bows would cover the table, carried on a voice vote.
The program had been printed Monday, the day of the seizure. Between the cake and the quartet, in italic, it read: "Spontaneous Thanks for the Restoration of Misplaced Stores," with a blank left for the hour. Chamberlain Briony Quill hosted. She called the blank a printer's kindness. The line stayed on the page. A deputy rose as if the thanks had arrived. Verdict stayed in her chair. Half the table applauded the gap.
"You may call them stores," Verdict said. "The stamp is the Compact's. The weight is a siege weight. A supper changes neither."
The slight was the soup. A footman set Bell's bowl at Voss's right, above the envoy's own, and told the near chairs the captain had sent regrets in advance. Tansy Reed had the cloakroom spike by the service door. Bell's ticket was on it. He was on the gravel in his coat when the bowls went out.
"They told me to pour for his chair through the soup and stop at the fish," Reed said. "Then they said he had never been sat. The napkin was still warm. I stopped when he left."
Reed has kept the east tables for six years. After the fish, Quill's house lifted Bell's chair off the boards and stood the Compact's standard in the place. The standard had a plate.
Pellin Ash had weighed the vials on Monday and copied the figures while the sheet was still crisp. Her bench was the service trestle behind a fern, a seat meant for cloaks. At Table One her card had been revised in a hurried hoof to "P. Ash, covers." A footman with the sorbet called the cache rockets, Fuse's word from the noon note. Ash corrected him. The footman apologized to Voss.
Voss faced the lanterns. "Nothing seized stays seized between allies," he said. "The Fold keeps what the marches require, and they require it closer than a gate."
Quill smiled into the cloth and told the near end that the evening was a seating matter that had picked up rumors. The Authority's second note, under the bread at dusk, chose neither bloc. It placed the vials "in administrative suspension," and both sides repeated the phrase as if it were their own. Outside the powder gate the Compact's watchers took the gravel in pairs and called the standing a courtesy. The Guard doubled the latch. The order on the latch was still Bell's. His chair stayed off the floor through the cake. Fuse told the lantern side that warmth had been restored.
Ash ate standing, the clean weights in a cloth bag on the trestle. On Table One, under the honoree's menu, Bell's signature showed through a smear of cream, and the standard still occupied the place where he had been sat.
