On Thursday the Canterlot Royal Gardens held the first ballot since the Lower Gate breach, with Premier Harlow Vetch's card at the head of Table Four.
The West Trellis was tented in green-ink cloth. Table Four stood under the crossbeam, set for Vetch, the Tin-Roof whip, the Ferry Guild, the Night-Watch pensioner Jute Pell, two counters, Lavender Bloom, and the ward. The ward's card read "Ward Seat — Lower Gate." The chair in front of it was empty. The napkin was fanned. The glass had been poured. A moth worked the rim and did not land.
Vetch took the head in a black-bronze coat, the hem scorched on the morning after the breach and turned inward, restitched where the lawn would not see the thread. Duchess Pemmican Glaze hosted. Her dress was candied-apricot satin with a sugar-glass collar that clicked when she nodded at ponies who were looking at their cards. The program gave her four past nine and the line "Unbidden Words for the Chair," printed in the same type as the fish.
The Canterlot Economic Watchdog had posted its sheet at dusk. As one hall, the Gardens would unseat Vetch by three cards in five. As the three small tables that seat a premier, Tin-Roof, the Ferry Guild, and the pensioners would keep him by a single card, if every card within reach of Table Four was still within reach when Mareline Verdict closed the bundle book. The sheet called that figure a remainder.
Bloom had carried the ward list from the Gate to the inquiry. The first card put her on Vetch's left, where a pony could see the empty chair. After the soup the card was reprinted on a shorter stock: "L. Bloom — service pass," and beneath it, "cider." She was placed facing the kitchen door. Behind her, on the sideboard, sat the box, the butter plates, and Verdict of the Canterlot Regulatory Authority, calling bundles in a voice that reached the pass and stopped there.
"They printed the new card while I was washing," Bloom said. "The first had me at the trellis, on his left. This one has my back to the book. I can hear the numbers. They poured cider."
Ember Hearth had both the trellis and the pass.
"The Ferry Guild settled before the peas came back," Hearth said. "They wrote the pensioners onto the rim of a butter plate, and I took it to Verdict with the peas still on the other side."
Pell left at the second bell. He was the single card. He set it face-down under his fork, dried the ink with the side of his hoof, and went out by the west hedge with his coat unbuttoned. He did not look at the ward's chair. The Authority's rule, pinned to the sideboard in last year's type, says a card left face-down, ink dry before the second bell, counts as a seated pony. Pell was in the hedge. The card was at Table Four. Verdict marked the bundle and did not send anyone after him.
Sedge Marrow stood when the program reached the pledge printed under his name. He had dressed for a chair that might come free: grey formal, a white flower, the buttonhole sewn after lunch. Table Four did not turn its heads.
"I stood at the minute they printed," Marrow said. "The empty chair was the whole offer. They asked Hearth for another plate."
Vetch stayed seated. At the inquiry, asked if he would leave the chair, he had said the chair was "a Gardens matter" and returned to the order of courses. He ate the peas. Hearth took the butter plate up with the writing still on the rim. Verdict copied the rim into the open book. At four past nine the sugar-glass collar clicked, and the trellis stayed bent over its cards.
The moth landed on the ward's glass. No hoof moved it. The book showed the three small tables intact, Pell's card inside the remainder, Bloom's pass outside the count, and the Lower Gate chair carried as vacant. The apricot cake reached Table Four with Vetch's name piped on the nearer side, in the same hand as the place cards. The fork was still on Pell's card. Verdict had the book open and had not called the remainder closed.
