Effigy of Anarchy

“Canterlot?” Chase asked. Silent, as usual, had already begun preparing for a flight, despite the injuries and fatigue.

“Yes.”

“How do you know Messerschmitt was a professor there? That’s a stretch, even by your standards.”

“I don’t,” Silent said flatly. She flared her wings.

“Hey!”

Cloudchaser charged over and grabbed onto Silent’s wing with a hoof. Silent obliged, and straightened her feathers as soon as Chase released her. “Yes?”

“We’re in this together, and you had better start acting like it!”

“I have a pony I consult with on academic matters. I’ve worked with her on previous cases, and she’s likely to know who can point us to our next clue. Also, I need to consult with my notes. Now, if you’re done, we can get flying.”

“After all that? I’m exhausted!”

Silent narrowed her eyes, turned, and leaped off the edge of the building. Chase ran to the edge as the figure of Silent rose into the air and glided across the darkened rooftops of snowy Trottingham.

“Just five minutes…” Chase said to herself, coaxing her aching muscles to action once more.

Dawn broke on the flight to Canterlot, bringing stinging light to Chase’s bleary eyes. Skipping one night’s sleep was doable, but most ponies weren’t expected to fly, run, and fight while doing it. Right now, the only thing she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a day.

Silent hadn’t spoken a word during the flight, and was keeping at a constant distance. Despite their new found understanding, Chase felt no less revolted than before. She had suppressed it as any good pony does in a dangerous situation, but now it seeped into every thought.

A cold-blooded murderer, that was what her companion was now. Then again, this was the same pony as before, and it was her own blindness that had led her to this. She should never have asked for Silent’s help in the first place. Trying to find Flitter on her own would have been much smarter, in retrospect, than calling upon that empty shell which talked like a pony.

Harsh, too harsh. She was tired, and it clouded her judgement. It wasn’t Silent’s fault, and she was doing what little she could to fix herself. Wasn’t that all that could be asked?

Canterlot’s city limits were coming under them now, but Chase’s vision had blurred and she needed to shake her head to keep from falling asleep mid-flap. All the myriad roads and buildings beneath her became as one confusing mass, and all her attention went to following Silent’s lead towards a tan building someplace mid downtown.

While Chase had been to Canterlot before, she’d never spent much time there. Only when the train stopped there on its way to her cousin’s farm in Dusty Dries had she had any contact with it. Even through her sagging eyelids she could see the orderly beauty of the city’s layout. Streets formed lovely geometric patterns of squares that wrapped around tetrads of buildings that gleamed the morning sunlight. Few others were in the air at this hour, not even postal workers, and it gave the impression to her beleaguered mind of a great portrait laid out on the ceiling above her bed.

Her warm, comfy bed. She could see the city on the roof as she lay down and closed her eyes…

Once again, Chase shook her head to wake herself up. Silent had landed now, and was waiting next to an unadorned doorway leading around back of what looked like a bowling alley. As Chase landed, Silent disappeared without waiting.

Following her, she pushed the door open and was greeted by a long, dull brown hallway made of stucco. A warm breeze floated past her, escaping into the icy streets. For a moment she merely waited and let the feeling of warmth flow over her, until she mentally prompted her body to keep moving. She could take a nap wherever they wound up. Silent wouldn’t mind.

Silent had vanished yet again, so Chase trod along the hallway. Every ten paces, a black doorway stood closed with a bronze nameplate adorning it, listing the name of some business or individual. The fifth door down read ‘Silent Rivers’ and nothing more. Chase rested her head against it, and it slid open easily.

Beyond was a room with no windows and a solitary electrical bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was too large for a broom closet, but gave every indication of being one otherwise. There were two post boards along one wall, supporting a hundred tiny notes written on yellow paper and stuck on with tacks. Chase could read some of the words as she strode into the room proper, and quickly recognized names like ‘Flitter’, ‘Messerschmitt’, and ‘Alabaster’. Her curiosity piqued, she searched for her own name, but did not find it amidst the sprawl.

Silent had a simple wooden desk in the middle of the room, with no sitting pillows or chairs anywhere to be found. A few newspapers sat on the desk, and Silent had busied herself with them. Other than that, there was a wastebasket with a dozen broken quills and scraps of paper within. The office was otherwise completely empty.

“Is this where you work?” Chase asked idly.

“Yes,” Silent replied.

Silent looked up from the newspapers and glanced at Chase. “You need some coffee?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Cloudchaser replied with a weak smile.

“We’ll get something on the way to the University. I don’t keep any here.”

Chase frowned and wondered how, even for a brief moment, she had expected otherwise.

Silent spent the next few minutes reading through the newspapers on her desk. Chase merely leaned her head against a wall and tried to relax, but that dreaded feeling - of being tired but unable to sleep - had overcome her. There was nothing she could do, and she groaned in exasperation.

“You need something to do?” Silent asked.

“Yeah, can I help?”

A newspaper smacked against the wall next to her. “Read that.”

Chase shook her head a few times to clear out the blur, and glanced at the newspaper which had landed next to her. Picking it up, she read that it was the Canterlot Post-Gazette dated the day previous. This was a paper they didn’t have in Ponyville, but many of the headlines were the same as the Ponyville Daily News.

“The newspaper? Why?” Chase asked without considering the question.

“Papers are good sources. Keep your eyes out for anything that could relate to the case. Kidnappings, extortion, anything going on in Trottingham.”

“This is how you knew about the meeting? What about - “

“How Messerschmitt got his house? Yes. It was on the socialite gossip page. E4.”

Chase frowned as she glanced over the headlines.

“Is something wrong?”

As Cloudchaser looked up, she found Silent had not deviated her eyes from the paper in front of her. As she spoke, she did not look up.

“I just thought it’d be something… uh… more interesting. Than that.”

“Papers are a good starting point. I connect the dots that others miss. Police blotters are good too, but the Royal Guard doesn’t let those out unless you’ve got a permit. Or you’ve got an arrangement.”

Chase squinted to try to bring the paper back into focus, giving her head another shake as she did. It helped slightly, and her fuzzy brain spent its limited resources on parsing the wall of text before her.

“What do you mean ‘arrangement’? Is it blackmail?”

“No.”

This time, Chase only had to stomp one of her hooves to prompt Silent. It was becoming a routine.

“I take excess cases off the Guard here, and consult on cases they can’t solve. That, or won’t solve.”

“Won’t?”

“What I do isn’t always legal. I told you the Guard doesn’t necessarily like me, but they know not to ask questions when they want something done.”

Chase merely shook her head at that. While she would have pressed more, she did see something she thought might warrant further investigation. However, the article ran over the front page, and was continued within. She flipped through to find the continuation.

Silent opened one of the desk drawers and extracted a small scalpel, which she used to slice out one of the articles in the paper she had. Then, she took the paper over to her note board and tacked it in a corner. She stood for a moment, staring at it rather intently, before trotting back to her desk and resuming her study.

Chase found the rest of the article she had seen on the front page. It mentioned that a pony from Trottingham had traveled to Canterlot to give a private showing to Princess Celestia. However, that wasn’t the sort of thing Silent would care about. The mention of Trottingham had caught her eye, yes, but there was no way it could have been Messerschmitt. He was definitely in Trottingham the night previous. Chase shrugged and went back to the front page, intently scanning it for any other link.

At last, Silent shoved aside her paper and strode to her note board. There she stood scanning it again as Chase finished up her paper. Figuring there would be little else to gain, Chase discarded hers and went to the board with Silent.

Hundreds of notes about the case lay sprawled all over the board. It hadn’t occurred to Chase initially, but the entire board was dedicated to the Trottingham case. She could even trace the series of events from the left side of the board to the right. Silent had noted every single occurrence, and was now in the process of scribbling down the events of the night previous. Even little details, like Flitter’s reactions to the stone that Chase had barely noticed, had their own notes and arrows connecting them to other parts of the board.

“Wow,” Cloudchaser muttered.

Silent shot her a look, but her mouth was busy running a quill over another note to soon be attached to the board.

“Do you do this for every case?” Chase asked.

Silent placed the note on the board and attached it with a tack. She wordlessly trotted over to her desk and waited. Chase rolled her eyes and followed.

Beneath the desk was a series of narrow folders attached to a small metal bin. Every few folders, a divider had been placed with a month and year marked in black ink on the side. Chase could see the edges of a few notes sticking out of the folders, but nowhere near as many as were currently on the note board.

“Left to right in chronological order, cases go back two years. After that, I send them to my archive across the city.”

“That’s nice, but why are you telling me this?”

“It may become necessary for you to use my filing system at some point in the future. If you do, I’d prefer it if you didn’t ruin it.”

Chase frowned. “What am I, your secretary?”

“No. You’re an adviser.”

Suddenly Chase had an urge to crack open one of the folders and read about Silent’s exploits in the field. No doubt there were plenty of dangerous situations and exciting hoof-fights she had won in order to take down murderous criminals. There were about three or four folders for each month in the storage bin, which worked out to about one case a week, give or take. Chase wondered if she could keep up with Silent’s breakneck pace of action and globetrotting.

She peered towards one of the newer folders, before suddenly recoiling. What if Silent didn’t want her going through her old notes?

That question was answered, as Silent had already left and returned to her note board to write more and shift the papers around. She clearly wouldn’t mind.

The folder slid out and Chase carefully opened it to avoid letting it spill. Inside were about a dozen notes and a few pieces of formal-looking papers with the Royal Guard’s seal atop them. On one was a particularly large black-and-white photo of a young mare with a scowl on her face. The caption beneath read: ‘Suspect should be considered extremely dangerous. Approach with caution.’

Intrigued, Chase tried to organize the various notes into something resembling a narrative.

‘Suspect: 22-year-old female Earth Pony. Blue hair, grey eyes. Wanted due to petty vandalism, assault, forgery. Turbulent background, multiple previous offenses. Guard stretched thin, unable to devote resources to apprehend.’

‘Suspect’s parent’s address is fake, points to an empty lot. No friends or known associates. Suspect has returned to her registered apartment at 1712 Flax Street sometime within the past four days, based on accumulated volume of unsolicited mail.’

‘No money located in apartment, four out-of-place travel brochures found in suspect’s unkempt bed. Considering suspect’s background in forgery, it is extremely likely the suspect has fled the Guard’s jurisdiction.’

‘No observation of activity at suspect’s apartment for two weeks. Case referred to Guard as unlikely to be resolved due to suspect escaping the country. Case closed.’

Most of the other notes in the folder were on descriptions of things Silent had found in the pony’s apartment, but she had evidently concluded there wasn’t enough to try to guess a location and track the pony down.

That was it. That was Silent’s previous adventure. Chase put the folder back in its place and resumed keeping her eyes open long enough for Silent to finish her ruminations.