Why in the world did I agree to this?

I just couldn’t figure it out. Oh yeah, Celestia asked. Stupid alicorns. In every single sense of the word.

Hesitating by the doors, I looked at the gold inlays, adjusted my cloak with my magic and then my medallion. Why the ever flying fuck did I agree to this!?

I thought only Luna could talk me into doing this fucking stuff. No, apparently, you just needed to be female! Damn it!

Renewing my illusion, I took a deep breath before letting it out and entered through the doors. The guards went to attention as I approached the thrones, ignoring the ponies gathered to the side of the throne_room to watch.

Nope. Not happening.

Celestia can have her fun and I don’t mind helping out… not too much. But that’s not happening. Ignoring the thrones, I sat stood between and in_front of them before sitting down.

“Lord Page?” Light Velvet said as the unicorn approached. She was pretty young for her position as one of Luna’s court assistants, wearing a simple dark blue dress with her white coat and pale grey mane, “Good evening.”

“Good evening, Miss Velvet.” I answered with a nod, “How are you tonight?”

“Doing very well, Lord Page,” She answered with a smile, shifting the papers floating in her magic before continuing, “…We have gotten quite a lot of last minute appointments. As soon as ponies found out that Night Court would reopen even though Princess Luna was not back yet, we got hundreds of applicants.”

Oh, joy.

Likely nobles and merchants thinking they could get things past me they couldn’t get past Celestia or Luna.

Please let me not fuck this up.

“What’s first on the agenda tonight then?” I sighed.

“One Lady Glittershine would like to discuss the purchase of mining rights for the hills outside the village of Stonebend. A vein of Opal had been located there of exceptional purity. The claim and mining rights are being contested by the Grapevine family whom has a vineyard on the other side of the hill. Here are all the documents and an map of the area,” she explained and floated some papers and a map over.

Hmm. The hill wasn’t that big to be honest. Where was the water table? Mining was to be done by mostly earth ponies as they had the best affinity for the work.

Explosives and picks mostly. Or even water and fire where things were too fragile for explosives, such as digging gems out.

Finally, I nodded, “Send them in,” I said without looking up from the papers floating before me.

It didn’t take long before a voice interrupted my reading, “Lord Page, I would like to thank you for seeing to this case even though Princess Luna is unavailable.”

“Mhmm.” I answered and switched paper, barely glancing up at the bright blue unicorn mare, covered in enough jewelry to start a chain.

I just kept reading until she cleared her throat, “…Lord Page?”

I looked up at her, “Yes?”

Lady Glittershine visibly hesitated, “If you would sign the papers, I’ll stop taking up your valuable time, Lord Page. As you see, the counter claim is completely baseless. The mine wouldn’t be on their side of the hill and wouldn’t extend beneath their land.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening. The mine would pollute the ground water; It’s below the water table and way too close to large farms, not only belonging to the Grapevine family, but half the valley,“ I answered and shuffled the papers together, “Not only no, but fuck no.”

“Lord Page! You can’t possibly mean-”

“I do. Sweet dreams now, Lady Glittershine.”

“The Princesses would never…”

I raised my eyebrow as I watched her slowly trail off and then make a frustrated sound before storming off,

“I’ll be logging an official protest with Princess Celestia!”

You do that.

I really should have expected something like that. Without one of the Princesses, with me being really, really inexperienced in this stuff, of course they would try to ram stuff like that through.

I’m so fucking glad I refuse to have this as my day… well, night job. Luna can bloody well keep it in my opinion.

The peanut gallery was full of whispers and talks along the sides of the room where the normal onlookers were gathered.

Also not unexpected. Honestly, if it wasn’t the middle of the night I would have expected even more ponies to show up to watch. Now it was only the ones without jobs in the morning and enough spare time to waste here. Meaning, the normal rich hanger-ons and lobbyists that hung around the throne room when Luna held court.

Well, whisper on.

I may have agreed to do this, but if I’m to do it, I’m doing it my way and I have zero patience with your normal bullshit.

Luna sits and listens to it all calmly and then make her ruling.

Celestia could do the same with a smile.

I’ll hear you and read the information available. But I won’t suffer your crap.

“The next one, Miss Velvet?” I asked, looking over to the unicorn standing by the side with a stack of papers.

Smiling, she nodded and stepped up with a single paper. “A dispute between the families Harnthrew and Pineapple regarding the payment owed over the water from a well.”

“…How many of those do we have?”

“Four more, Lord Page,” she said with a smile, “We also have an application for Crown sponsorship for a business and other requests of loans and favours from the crown.”

At least those sounded interesting.

I took the paper Velvet held out for me and read through it. Seemed clear enough, one claimed there was a vocal agreement for a monthly fee for the water used and the other said there was no such thing. Lower courts had failed to get them to agree.

“Very well, send them in please.”

Oh well, back into the bullshit mine we go.