The commission for four specialist path troops was signed on the cedar Meridian table in the Canterlot Royal Gardens, between the lemon ice and a cake cut in the shape of a ridge. Corven's Ministry of Outer Paths called the units police. The Canterlot Regulatory Authority stamped the same word. The capes came out on a tray, cut from the same bolt as the garden bunting, and the program listed the moment as unplanned.
Pellam Croft, minister for the Outer Paths, had set the Meridian table for twelve under the east pergola. The twelfth card, lettered for Envoy Quennet Holt of Haltmere, stood over an empty chair and a dish of white salt. Ember Hearth, who had the pergola for the night, put the salt down before the first guest.
"They ordered the salt with the ices," Ember said. "I set the chair. They told me it was spoken for."
Haltmere's mission had answered the invitation with the salt and a card the size of a place card. The card read "received." It lay under the dish. On Haltmere's maps the high ground is the Inner Pasture. On Corven's maps it is the Pale Lease. The four troops are to walk the ground that carries both names. The route card at each setting left Haltmere's names blank, pending courtesy.
Captain Soren Vale of the First Scree Troop took the cape on the mark the program had printed as a star. The line under the star, in the same type as the waltz, read: "Captain Vale will be overcome, briefly." He was overcome, briefly. A pin from the bunting roll was still in the lining. Mareline Verdict's classification, filed that afternoon with the Regulatory Authority, allows the troops to carry commando warrants as path police on the garden side of the form. The form ends at a contour line.
Warden Ilex Bram has marked that contour for eleven winters. Nessa Kite, Croft's protocol chief, had put him at the Meridian table, two places from the empty chair, because he could read the route with the legend covered. Before the soup his card was lifted. A half-table went up under the cloak pegs, set with a dessert spoon and the route card. His Meridian card was turned over, the warden's rank scratched out in pencil, and laid for Captain Vale. Ember swept the shaving into a saucer and kept the saucer at the station.
Nessa Kite left when the capes came in. She took her card, the pencil, and her coat, and was on the garden path while the ridge cake was still whole.
Lavender Bloom took the seat in iron-grey silk with a copper hem, the dress she had worn to the frost audit. Her house had asked that the scree commission be written as a trade path with lanterns. Croft's office had chosen commandos and a police stamp.
"They set the patrol and the waltz in one size of type," Lavender said. "I kept the page with the waltz. Somebody has measured those shoes."
The east pantry had the warden's fork at the captain's place, and the captain's warrant as a garden permit with a commando ribbon in the seal hole. Croft's office called the ribbon a field distinction. It matched the bunting. Cressida Holm, at Croft's right in slate velvet and a silver lease-chain, turned her plate so the iced ridge faced the empty chair. The route card in Ilex Bram's coat had sixty marks and a blank quarter.
The First Troop is due on the scree in twelve days. The Second, Third, and Fourth stand in the warrant and in a tailor's book. Each pair is to go up with a cake of compressed tea, the silk cape, and the map that leaves a quarter empty. The Canterlot Economic Watchdog holds the appropriation under seasonal path maintenance. The snow shoes are at a dyer in the lower ward, the color taken from the pergola cloth so a troop will read as one party from the far slope.
Ilex Bram folded the route into his coat at the half-table and passed the dessert spoon back to Ember.
"Twelve days," he said. "The dye will still be wet. Wet shoes freeze in the first hour, and I have walked that hour."
When the lanterns came down, Ember left the salt on the plate. The chair matched its setting from the soup. The pencil shaving stayed in the saucer under the station counter, with the card that said received.
