Stowing the cooking set had proven to be more than a pain in Rosewater’s rear. She’d been stuck in the pantry with the legs wedged uncomfortably against her sides and the top barely shy of the ceiling, so that when she tried to back out, the top and legs pinched into her ribs and kept her in place.

Getting out had been a simple case of dropping to her belly while holding the confounded contraption up and carefully wriggling backwards out of the pantry. But she’d done it. She’d disappeared from her home earlier the day before with nopony the wiser, and reappeared at home with nopony the wiser.

Her second date had gone off… well. Maybe well. She hadn’t been expecting the memories of the past to be so close to the surface, nor for Collar to be the one to give her the candies now sitting on her office desk.

They were sitting in a crystal dish that Carnation had used for the same purpose, and it was full once more.

Things are moving back to normal, it seemed to say. This will all be over soon.

It was a remarkably calming thought for so simple a display. It was a promise that spoke to her heart every time she saw it.

The sight also let her write the latest letter to Carnation, telling her that she’d decided what they were. Mother and daughter who shared a daughter of the heart. It didn’t change her relationship to Rosemary, or the way she saw the very real connection she had in her strange connection to Carnation’s daughter.

Even in Merrie circles, it was a strange family dynamic.

She folded the letter carefully, slipped it into an envelope, and addressed it to Carnation Rosethorn by way of Celestia. If she ever got to send those letters, they would arrive. She slipped it not into a hidden place to be taken to her perfumery and stowed in the vault in her lab, but into a cubby for outgoing mail. There, it would sit until she was in power or she had to flee.

“Plan for the worst,” she murmured as she tidied up her work area, “and hope for the best. But also plan for the best.” Lest the best happening and bite you in the rear.

Rosewater was just starting to prepare to go to the garden for lunch after another bath to remove the last of the black soot stains that had ground themselves into her coat when a knock at the door alerted her to a visitor.

“Who is it?” Rosewater asked politely, checking the mail slot to see if anypony had dropped a letter in.

“Your dear sister,” Silk said politely, if not a little acerbically. “I’m here for a fitting.”

“So soon?” Rosewater hesitated pulling open the last ward, letting the magic hang in the balance for a bare few seconds before giving a mental shrug and pulling it open. She’d already moved all of the familial pictures from her sitting room into her office or bedroom and left Carnation’s watercolor landscapes behind as well as her own poorer attempts. She opened the door to find not only Silk, but Vine as well standing on her stoop, the latter looking skittish. “I’d not expected word from you for another week at least.”

“With the amount of money you’re paying me, dear sister, the least I can do is be accommodating, and it’s so dreadfully hard to catch you at home these days.” Silk sniffed delicately and glanced at Vine. “Vine, actually, was the one to tell me you hadn’t been seen leaving your home for a day and a half at least.”

Vine licked her lips as she followed at Rosewater’s behest, paused to thoroughly scuff her hooves clean, and said softly, “We’ve been worried about you. After all the time you’ve spent at the garden, we worried maybe something had happened.”

Silk gave her younger sister an annoyed glance and rolled her eyes as she sauntered past Rosewater with a covered dress form floating behind her. She at least held her tongue until she saw Rosewater re-engage the wards and power the charms bringing silence to the forward half of the estate.

“Vine lacks the guile to be a good infiltrator,” Silk said with a sigh. “She’s too open and honest with her emotions.” Her expression softened when Vine gave her a hurt look. “It’s part of why I love her.”

“‘Tis a rare trait in our family,” Rosewater agreed. “Please, make yourselves comfortable in the sitting room, and we can get the fitting started.”

“Your relationship with the garden—”

“Is mine,” Rosewater said more harshly than she’d meant to, breaking in over Silk’s question. “I appreciate your concern, but you must understand that who you hold allegiance to, for whatever reason, makes you necessarily suspect. I can’t hold you in my confidence even if I wanted to.”

Both of her sisters flinched, but after a moment Silk nodded, drew in a breath, and let it out. “I understand. I apologize for prying.”

“In truth,” Vine said after a hesitant moment of worrying her lip. “Mother did ask us to attempt to infiltrate your home under your nose. We had to agree to try.”

“And you’ve succeeded.” Rosewater flicked her tail and tossed her head. “Behold the sanctum she’s spent more than a decade trying to infiltrate, and spent the loyalty of a good mare to achieve.”

“You mean that turncoat? Cloudy Rosewing?” Silk raised a brow. “How did you find out about that?”

“From my niece, of course. Her former lover.” Rosewater took a seat on one of the long couches and gestured to the opposite side of the sitting room. “Please, sit, and tell me what you plan to tell my mother you saw here.”

“There’s nothing much to see. She was half-convinced you had pictures of yourself and Carnation in carnal poses.” Silk raised a hoof before either Vine or Rosewater could object. “Her words to us, not my words or thoughts. She believes her own lies half the time these days.”

“Your home is very nice,” Vine said, tapping a hoof on the quilted duvet covering the short couch. “Very clean.”

“Thank you for noticing,” Rosewater said politely, bowing her head briefly to the younger mare. “I have little to do here at home besides cook and clean anymore.”

Silk was studying the watercolor landscapes dotting the walls and most likely noting the faded spots where paintings had hung before, but if she did, she made no comment until her eyes drifted to the side of the room dedicated to Rosewater’s works, the side Carnation had usually sat facing when they’d had tea and entertained guests.

“Two different styles of paintings. I recognize some as Carnation’s. I’ve seen them signed often enough in taverns around town to know the style.” She gave Rosewater an appraising look. “I never knew you painted.”

“She taught me, hoping I would find another artistic outlet beyond my perfumes.” Rosewater shrugged and pulled one of hers down, a painting of the distant Crystal Mountains with their blue and purple haze at the top, bounded by the rushing white of a springtime flood along the Merrie at the bottom, and the mottled colors of green, brown and white of new springtime growth and melting snow in between. It was far more an impression of all of those things than anything concrete.

“Carnation tried to teach me to leave enough space to fill in the shapes of things later,” Rosewater said softly, holding the painting at an oblique angle to show her sisters. “Hers have the whispiness of watercolor and the sharpness of pencil and charcoal all at once.”

“I can still tell what time of the year it was,” Silk said with a wry smile.

“That’s better than you can get out of me,” Vine added with a grin. “I try to fit it all in at once. Or did. I gave up and settled on poetry and horticulture long ago.”

Rosewater hesitated, waiting for a sign from Silk about the real purpose of her visit, and glanced at the dress form hanging from the arched doorway to the sitting room.

“In case you were wondering, yes. I did bring a prototype of your dress with me,” Silk said when she noticed Rosewater’s glance. “I didn’t lie about that part. I do need to get your measurements in the dress and see if I need to adjust anything when you move around.”

“And get her approval,” Vine said, sniffing. “Honestly, just because she told you to surprise her doesn’t mean she’ll agree with your idea for what will suit her.”

“Think of it like a trust exercise,” Silk said more seriously, glancing between Vine and Rosewater. “This isn’t something either of us is doing altruistically. We both need something from each other.”

“I know what I need from you,” Rosewater said. “What do you need from me?”

“Do you know what you need from us?” Silk jabbed a hoof at her. “Do you know what we can offer?”

Rosewater took a moment to study her sister, really look into her eyes and attempt to divine how far she was willing to go, and how far she thought she could trust Rosewater. “I trust you to make the best dress you can, and I trust that your description of my sitting room will be detailed and accurate.”

“There’s nothing to see, though,” Vine protested.

“There’s plenty to see,” Silk corrected quietly. “What there is isn’t what mother wanted to see. A fine distinction, I know, but we can’t pretend like we know what Roseate wants to see. She told us to get a description of anything in Rosewater’s home. That she meant ‘incriminating’ anythings isn’t something we can read into her orders.”

“But…”

“She can hardly punish us for doing exactly as she asked by the letter,” Silk replied quietly and pressed a hoof to Vine’s shoulder. “I know what she said, and I know what she meant when she said it was our necks on the line. But if we’re to succeed at doing exactly what she asked, she can’t fault us for not finding what she really wanted. Not if she wants her other agents to get the right message.”

Vine sighed and nodded. “I know, I know, but I love it here in Merrie. I don’t want to face the rest of our lives running from one mistake in our past, love.” She scrubbed at her cheeks and drew in a shuddering breath. “I… don’t mean to sound like I want to betray your trust, Rosewater, but… that’s what we need from you. Support.”

“Gladly given. How much support remains for debate.” Rosewater flicked her ears and descended from her couch. “My public support may be a poisoned pill for the two of you.”

“Undoubtedly,” Silk said with a sigh and followed her down to the floor. “Where do you want to do the fitting? Your sitting room is a little small for what I need you to do.”

Rosewater hummed softly, glancing around the admittedly cramped room. It was big enough to seat four comfortably, but the very furniture that made it possible also made it impossible to do much more than sit or stand placidly. There were quite a few rooms in the estate that would be large enough for the purpose, but all of them contained what Roseate would probably deem ‘incriminating evidence.’ Even if it didn’t stand up to the Treaty’s scrutiny, it would still cause unnecessary headaches until the matter was cleared.

Rosemary’s room had too many paintings by Carnation of the three of them as a family, and likewise Rosewater’s master bedroom had the same. Her office had a few of the more peaceful ones that she liked to look at while she thought over things.

The basement was right out. Vine would probably fret a storm to even think about setting foot in the cobwebs and grime that ‘basement’ usually meant. It was true, there was more dust down there than the rest of the house, but that was because of disuse and the fact that the basement was for storage, not for casual use. Rosewater prided herself in keeping the wards that kept mildew, rodents, insects, and other vermin out of the basement.

She also couldn’t let them divine the purpose of the single closet that didn’t have dust on the floor leading up to it.

But… the office would be the least incriminating. Either that or she could model her dress out on the front stoop of the house.

She snorted. “What is it you need from me? What kind of support?”

“We want to save what we can of the family,” Vine whispered. “From Roseate. In whatever way we can. You’re her eldest. You watched all of us grow up. From afar, maybe, but we were still playmates on occasion when you were growing up. When our fathers could drag us away from her attention for a little while.”

“We want to be a family again,” Silk said thickly, moving to lean against Vine and rest her chin on her sister’s head. “Not a collection of strangers who sometimes remember we’re sisters.”

“There’s no ‘again.’” Rosewater’s voice was no less thick with emotion, her throat straining. “I was never part of the family. Not after my father passed away. Sometimes, I think, not even before that.” She let the statement hang as she gathered her thoughts and memories of a time before then, and after, when four different stallions had approached Carnation to introduce her sisters.

Nine sisters by five stallions. The last being Rosetail, and he’d never even been on the scene for more than a month before he’d been scared off. Rosewater couldn’t even remember his name.

“But I would like to try to save what I can. There is good in you. And in Crown, I’m almost certain, and Glory.” She took another breath and started down the hallway, mind made up. “And I would like to know how it feels to have sisters I can trust.”

Silk opened her mouth as if to say something, stopped, and nodded. “There are others, but those two are good ponies. Crown and her book club do their best to stay out of mother’s way, but only succeed half the time.”

“And less of late now that Glory’s failed her.”

Failed. Rosewater snorted and gave a short nod. “My office, then. And I’ll let you ‘steal’ a letter from my desk.”

Silk’s eyes popped open. “Steal?”

“Well, Vine will steal it, while I’m distracted with the dress fitting. I have a few letters of little import that are old and sealed. Orders for goods from overseas that I haven’t sent yet, and won’t until the next year.” Rosewater shrugged.

“And when she finds out it’s useless?” Vine asked softly, trailing behind on soft hooves.

“You could hardly open it in my presence without me hearing the crackle of wax breaking.” Rosewater glanced behind her to see her sisters wide-eyed and staring at her. “Or cast a spell that I wouldn’t detect.”

As soon as she entered, the letter she’d written to Carnation she slipped into a cubby hidden behind a leaning small painting of Rosemary, professionally done. At the same time, she rifled through the letters she’d written placing orders for various ingredients from far off Saddle Arabia that would have to go out at the earliest spring tide.

She chose one she’d already decided she wasn’t going to send due to a change in her planned lineup and showed it to her sisters. “In case you have any hangups still, I wasn’t even going to send this one.” The addressing on the envelope hadn’t even been filled in yet, and the wax on the back was sealed with the gold ribbon of confidential correspondence.

“Why was it… secret?” Vine asked as she turned the letter over in a spell and stared at it as if it would reveal its secrets on its own.

“Because I changed my mind on what I was going to plan as a secret new lineup for my summer perfumes.” Rosewater shrugged and moved a few potted plants to a small corner of the office, clearing a large space in the middle of the space for her to move about freely, even to perform a few dance moves. “Is this large enough?”

Silk jerked her attention away from studying some of the more familial-themed paintings to nod quickly. “It… it will.” She waved a hoof at the wall. “This is what mother wants. Isn’t it?”

“I suspect so. I’m trusting you. Not with anything that will get me exiled, but with my relationship to Rosemary.” Rosewater fixed her sister with a look, and made it explicit. “She is, and has always been, the daughter of my heart.”

Vine’s head jerked up, eyes wide. “Stars above.”

“I’m also her legally adoptive mother.”

“How did you even keep that secret?” Silk asked, a low hush of awe in her voice. “That should be public record.”

“It was accorded to the treaty and sealed to the sun. If it ever came up, I would have produced the papers. It was my last card that mother couldn’t have anticipated.” Rosewater shook her head slowly. “It was, and still is, a secret to her. All she knows is that I am her guardian, but I have full parental authority to deal with her disposition under the treaty.”

“So that’s why Firelight keeps rebuffing her, and why she’s been spitting mad every time you cross the river.” Silk chuckled, then laughed and shook her head. “Stars above, she’s claimed it was because you raised your tail for him.”

Rosewater raised an eyebrow.

“Nopony believes her. Not even Rosary. But she still rails about it.”

“So… now you know a part of the truth. Whether you give that to mother or not…” She shrugged. “It’s not enough to destroy me. Not even close. Firelight would laugh her out of his office if she tried to file an exile order for being a mother.”

“But it would complicate your plans if she knew?”

“Undoubtedly. The only ponies who know besides you are the leadership of Damme.” Rosewater jerked her head at the dress form. “Shall we get to the real reason you’re here?”

“It’s safe with us,” Vine said softly, blinked, and chuckled. “Stars, you as a mother.”

Silk was less amused, glancing again at one of the paintings. “I can believe you took every duty seriously. Too much so, probably.”

“Maybe. But I love her dearly. I wanted to give her, freely, everything mother denied us as foals, Silk.” Rosewater flicked her tail. “If we dally too long, she will wonder what we were up to. Now. Surprise me.”

The privations of a long patrol, the long periods of loping trotting, the campfires and tents they had to set up at every evening stop, and the infrequent, often tense encounters with bandits and wild pony clans had long since stopped being an inspiration for Crown’s next poem and become the state of her life instead. An inspiration all its own, she was certain, but she would be damned if she could see it out in the lands far beyond Merriehollow.

The trees grew taller, wilder, and the monsters that lurked in the woods eyed their campfires with fearful, greedy eyes.

Not all of those eyes were the simple red gleam of reflected light in unintelligent eyes, but the jealous, fearful eyes of bandits looking over their weapons and armor.

Those times, they kept a double watch, and the party of fifteen well-trained Merrieguard kept weapons close to hoof.

It rained. It snowed. It did both at once, and the farther they went along the foothills of the Crystal Mountains, the colder it got. Slow days trotting in rain or snow ate up the distance between them and their unknown objective, and put more and more distance between them and the increasingly warm-sounding Merriehollow tavern despite the only accommodations for the hamlet being in the barn.

Four days in, and a goodly hundred miles from Merrie, they came upon a tiny hamlet that barely deserved the name. Three homes and a few desultory fields that had already been harvested.

The ten ponies that came out to greet them with scythes and pitchforks were hardly welcoming, but they were hardy folk, unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony all together. A well mixed group for living out in the wilder lands.

“Hallo,” Crown called in the brusque voice of Lieutenant Rosewire. “We’re not bandits, nor wildling raiders.”

“We can see tha’,” the leader of the small group growled, brandishing a pitchfork under his raised foreleg. “We can handle matters jus’ fine.”

“We’re on a long patrol from Merrie,” Crown continued, taking a step forward. “We’re wondering if you’ve seen any of the Dammeguard flying overhead recently.”

“Hain’t got no care what you peddlers of flesh do in that city o’ yours. Best be goin’ if ya know what’s good for yer health.” He jabbed the pitchfork at her, a desultory gesture, as he was still a good twenty paces short of her.

Crown glanced back at her second in command, sighed, and waved for their party to reverse back down the dirt track leading to the trio of houses. “Our apologies, good sir. We’re merely concerned that bandits may be massing for winter.”

“Bah.” One of the other ones shook his scythe in the air, making several of his fellows wince and back away. “Her ladyship, the sun princess, she done sent patrols this way a’ready not a week past. You useless gits.”

Crown’s blood froze. Could Cloudy have been meeting with an Equestrian scouting party? She shook her head and recovered her wits enough to send her guards back the way they’d come and back onto the open plain south of the woods. She waited, watching the settlers warily, then nodded politely and followed after when she was sure they weren’t going to rush them when their backs were turned.

Bandits could just as well pose as settlers, after all.

She found her guard gossiping about the Equestrian Army patrol when she joined back up with them, breaking any hope she’d had of keeping that little tidbit secret, as small as that nebulous feeling had been.

“Lieutenant,” her second said, giving her a wary look.

“Yes, Longrose?”

“Why’s there an Equestrian patrol out this far? Isn’t this still outside their territory?”

“It’s not ours, either,” Crown reminded him softly, glancing south as if she could spot the smoke from a fire likely more than a hundred miles distant already. “I doubt they’ve been out here long. Takes northerners like us to stand the cold.”

“They seemed to be doin’ alright,” Longrose said, jerking his head back up the trail. “Didn’t look much the worse for wear, and those houses are less than a year old or I’m a Prim.”

“Time will tell if they get much older.” Crown frowned down at the ground, then to the east. It was possible they’d headed that direction, too. If there was one settlement, sparse as it was, there could be more. She glanced at the company’s scout, Seafoam, and nodded to her. The mare was a Canterlot descendant, and wholly a Merrier, even if her family hadn’t married into any Roses yet. “How far can a pegasus fly in a day if they keep a steady pace?”

She thought for a moment, glanced up at the sky, then to the north, and raise a wing to test the air. “In wind like this? Two, three hundred miles if they keep it up for a whole day.”

Cloudy wasn’t an endurance flyer, though. She could make the air crack when she went full out, but she couldn’t do that for more than a few seconds. She was made for speed. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t pace herself if it were important.

Crown frowned into the east. There was no saying she hadn’t turned north or south either somewhere along her apparent straight line. The Imperial Highway was now fifty miles south, and it would ease their passage back to Merrie if they went south. But no matter what, she was making a gamble on what Cloudy might have been doing out this far.

“We have enough food to make it back and another day besides,” their quartermaster stand-in said quietly into the silence around her thinking. “We can stretch it if we graze, but the grazing around here is…” The stallion made a disgusted face.

“We are not eating plains grass if we can help it,” Crown said after a moment’s consideration. “We will if we have to, but I’m not going to subject you all to that indignity.” She waved a hoof south. “We’ll make better time on the old highway anyway. We go South and see if we can intercept the Equestrian patrol and get any news of bandits in the area. If we don’t see them by the time we reach the highway, we go back.”

“What about that Dammeguard scout?” another one of her soldiers asked.

“Forget about her.” Crown shook her head slightly. “She could have gone anywhere in a six hundred mile diameter circle from the city and circled back to make us think she’d come this way. We’re switching to our secondary goal. Bandit patrol.”

Hearty agreement met her statement. None of them had been particularly happy at the prospect of freezing their asses off in the middle of the great plains for Roseate’s whimsy, but bandits affected almost everypony. Most of them knew a friend or relative who’d been hurt, robbed, or even—in the rarest of cases—killed by bandits.

The latter cases had seen entire clans of them arrested and sent on prison ships south to meet their justice in Canterlot along with all evidence of crimes from their camps.

“By this time four days hence,” Crown went on, “your lovers will welcome you home to warm fires, hearty meals, and good sex.”

They made another fifteen miles that day, totalling nearly thirty. It would have been a record if not for the wild squall from the northeast that had forced them to bed down early.

Author's Note

The dress isn't gonna get revealed to you guys until Collar gets to see it for the first time.

Also, my buffer has reached 8 chapters. So... In celebration of (next week) hitting 300,000 published words... double chapter post!