On Thursday the open-seat supper for Kestrel and Saint Elowen was laid on the Lower Cloister Lawn, which the Canterlot Regulatory Authority had already released for the footing of a receiving hall. The pegs were still in the turf. A footman had dropped a napkin ring over each one so the cake stand would sit level. The program, set at every place, called the night a defense of green and timed a stroll for nine.
Cressida Quill, the court list's candidate and the evening's honoree, wore bottle-green silk with glass-bead limes and a hem still basted from the hire room. She had the high table, facing the arch. The chair on her left stayed empty. The card in front of it read Harlan Fen, Canterlot Economic Watchdog. Fen had brought the lawn's price in the afternoon. He left before the soup, coat over one foreleg, and put the folded sheet under his fork on the way out.
Lord Ashwen Carr stood up with his glass between the fish and the thanks. The program gave the moment a heading, A Word, Offhand, and a paragraph long enough to have been set that morning. At Table Linden, the round beneath the remaining arch, the aides kept their heads down. Quill's ponies and Mareline Verdict's ponies traded phrases about retained character over the cake. A steward shifted pegs with his hoof so the stand would sit.
Ember Hearth keeps the Cloister beds. The program put her at Table Linden, "among friends of the green." The card on the stool at the service flap said only her name, and the stool belonged to the glass washer. Her cake was the high table's first slice, sent back for a crack in the icing and walked down on a clean plate. When she rose to answer a question about the lime roots, a footman set a tray on the stool and told her the seat was for trays until pudding.
Ida Crowe had carried both plates. She set the returned slice down and stayed at Ember's shoulder.
"The roots went On Thursday on the flat wagon," Ida said. "The invoice is under the spare napkins. The sideboard was kept for moss in boxes."
The Canterlot Royal Gardens, two streets north, were printed in the program as untouched. The green the joined seat uses is the Cloister strip, one acre and a path, with the benches along Kestrel Mews. The Watchdog's price, the sheet under Fen's fork, covered the turf, the limes, and the air above the benches, listed as transferable. The benches were already numbered in chalk for a hall with its own seating.
Mareline Verdict came to the service flap. She spoke to Ember and to Ida, and she looked at the pegs when she answered.
"They are holding a supper for a footing," Mareline said. "The mews had one path to air, and the path is chalk. That is the ballot."
Quill told a circle near the arch that the limes had a habit of returning in season. The beads on the gown clicked when she turned. No one at Table Linden wrote the sentence down. An aide of hers asked Ida whether the wagon docket could be described, in a ward letter, as winter work. Ida said the wagon had taken living trees, and that the letter could say so if a pony on the list wanted it said. The aide took a smaller slice and went back to the arch.
The seat came open when its long holder accepted a signing post at the Regulatory Authority, the body that released the lawn. The court list has treated Kestrel and Saint Elowen as settled. Along the mews, residents count the pegs on the way to the baker, and the baker writes the number on the bag under the price of bread.
The card still timed a stroll for nine and still offered a remark to be delivered under the limes. The holes were in the route. By the time the high table rose, Ember Hearth was on her hooves at the flap, and the lawn's price was in Ida Crowe's napkin drawer.
The program still called the stroll spontaneous. Ida Crowe counted the rings as she cleared Table Linden: fourteen pegs, fourteen rings, and Ember's name still on the washer's slate.
