The Quiet Equestrian

by Neon Czolgosz

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Prince Blueblood, Gilda, Lightning Dust, Alternate Universe, Twilight Sparkle, Trixie, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark
Length: 40201

An ill-conceived royal decree causes months of wacky demesne-related antics for Twilight Sparkle. Then it triggers a civil war between the Noble Houses of Equestria. Things get markedly less wacky.

Side Story to The Demesne of the Reluctant Twilight Sparkle

When Doctor Princess Twilight Sparkle got Ponyville and the surrounding lands as her exclusive demesne, she knew it meant changes and stuff. Glittering opportunities. Dire crises. Friendships gained and imperiled. The dawn of a new age for Ponyville. A renaissance of the arts and sciences. A great test of her abilities as a leader and as a friend.

The brewing civil war took her by surprise, on the other claw.

The Princesses and their allies in Canterlot are working to change the laws, disband the new militias and ensure a lasting peace, but they need time. Soon, this cold war of arms and intimidation will heat up, and all the laws and decrees in the world ain't stopping it.

Doctor Princess Twilight Sparkle will buy them time. She will do what it takes to keep her friends, her family, and yes, her demesne safe.

With the help of a handsome griffon security professional—that's me, by the way—a devious illusionist, a ruthless athlete, a bored noble, and a pair of boater-clad con-ponies, she'll stop the damn war herself if she has to.

Touch wood I'll live to tell about it...

Published 2014-10-28 02:20:03 UTC
Last updated 2017-01-18 20:23:41 UTC

1. Where Can We Go To Fix Time

I packed the null-tube into the canvas bag, padded it out with seven pairs of white gym socks, then piled the smokers, stunners, tape recorder, and cracking tools on top. Not my usual style, but that’s the whole point: if they think you’re tough, go sly; if they think you’re sly, go tough. I’m a very tough bird, so I topped the whole thing off with two pool balls in a sock, zipped up the bag, and set out into Farriershire.

Brass Pauldron was a guard captain, or might as well have been. Not one of those shiny-armored sods with halberds and blue crests that you see all over Canterlot standing stone-still and reporting directly to the Princesses, no, some local dweeb pledged to whatever noble family owned Farriershire and the land around it. He’d hired me on retainer, a freaking good retainer too, to act as muscle for him.

His actual ponies were a skeleton crew of local colts, timid little mommies boys who could just about manage not to wet themselves patrolling the mean streets of eastern Equestria. They’d make any mugger think twice—any pony mugger—and dole out enough parking tickets to keep the city lights on, but they didn’t have the guts to carry out real orders. They wouldn’t steal from a smuggling ring, or put the heat on an idiot shopkeeper who won’t sell his holdings to the nobles at a reasonable rate, or make some dipstick reporter think twice about sticking Brass Pauldrons’ extramarital funtimes in the gossip section. Y’know, real work.

That’s where a griffon named Gilda—yours truly—came in. I did my national service, spent three years as a scout, then another three years as a bouncer in Condorcorum. I can and will do all those things, so Brass paid me a pretty handsome sum to do so.

Three weeks ago, he went dark. No pay, no meetings, nowhere to be seen. He came into money, a freaking ton of it, spent it all on a recruiting drive. Guard patrols stopped entirely while they built up this big wooden camp with a freaking pallisade like it’s the year 403, put up recruiting stalls on every street corner, started offering contracts and cash enough to lure ponies away from the family trade and into the soldiering game.

Then I hear he hired some heavy-hitter mage from Canterlot to stone me. Word was, if I came in quietly, he’d make sure I was unconscious first.

Now, I’d have just freaking winged it outta here since I doubt his goon squad of rent-a-guards could have tracked me down if I’d have moved one town over and started up Gilda Redbeak’s Bar and Delicatessen on the high street, but two paychecks from this guy is a pretty hefty sum and he was tossing around cash like rice at a wedding. Birds who say stuff like ‘do not be led by greed’ have longer life expectancies, but they never retire at thirty, so screw ‘em.

Brass lived in a fancy apartment building with wide balconies and carefully-tended rooftop gardens, five storeys high (these places were never more than five storeys high) and overlooking the Farriershire Promenade, where the marble flagstones glowed gold in the evening light and fussy little gardens of red and yellow tulips lit up like a second sunset. It took longer than I wanted to slink up to the building, cut the fire alarms, crack the transmission crystals in eight different ways, take a slash in the alarm horn, drop a smoker in the lobby wastebin, gag the doormare, stuff her into a broom closet, set the stunners up, all that crap that might buy me an extra ten minutes before the whole town turns into a hornets nest, long enough that the sun drooped away and the low glimmer of twilight was all that was left as I hung above Brass Pauldron’s balcony.

The sliding glass door had a real beaut of a lock—mushroom pins, dislocation field, spite matrix, chill-resistant alloys, shock absorption engine, all stuff you need on your home locks both for primary entrances and windows, balconies, etcetera when you live in a place with flyers and flingers strolling every street—which would take me half an hour to pick on a good day so I ignored the lock completely, used the cracking tools to splut the two-bit alarm charm on the glass, and made a neat, fist-sized hole in the door with a glass cutter.

I sighed. Used to be that you could pick up an up-to-date set of cracking tools from any pawn shop in Manehattan. Not any more. I had to bully a fence into finding me a half-decade old piece of crud like this one. Felt like you had to be pretty tough to even aspire to slyness, these days.

My claw slipped inside my bag and clenched around the tape-wrapped handle of the null tube, resisting all temptation to tap my finger against the trigger. Sweat on my palm. Little bit nerves, lot of excitement. I wanted to bottle that feeling and drink it. I fished the detonator out of my gym bag and blew the first set of toys, a bouquet of stunners in a wastebin plonked in the hallway outside of Brass Pauldron’s door, exactly in the opposite direction of his balcony window. I didn’t flinch at the bang—three months of scout training will rip that habit out of you—I just strolled in through the door, hauled a chair at Brass Pauldron’s neck and hefted the gym bag up, dull-grey tube poking through the end and pointing directly at his pet mage.

“Hey nailhead,” I said, “Ever been hit by a null tube? I hear it resets your whole nervous system. Sounds painful. Sit down.” I gestured to the chair.

The mage looked at me, half annoyed, half impressed, and let out a snort before he took a seat. Ex-Royal Guard, clearly. Horseshoe mustache, tropical shirt tailored tight enough to show off his muscles, shiny gold watch hanging off a hoof, a hint of grey dye still lingering in his dark-blue coat. I turned back to look at Brass, dusting himself off.

“You know, Gilda,” he said, “that toy of yours only works on unicorns...”

I barked out a laugh. “So what? You’re a dweeb, Brass. Try any of that lame semper-fu crap on me and I’ll feed you your own face.”

He smiled, but took a seat anyway. “Charming as ever.” His voice grated on me. Hick pony with hick parents gets pushed into boarding school just for the accent, doesn’t work because he’s hick through and through, so he shoves so much damned smug into his voice that every syllable sets your beak on edge and you’re too busy trying to block everything out to notice him dropping his ‘g’s at every chance he gets. “Is there a reason for your visit?”

“Don’t play dumb, Brass, it’s unnecessary,” I said. “You know damn well what I’m here for. You don’t pay me for three weeks and then hire some geek to turn me into a garden ornament.”

He sighed. “There have been extenuating circumstances, Gilda. I’ve been given rather drastic orders by the Earl of Hayswich, and although you are a fantastic worker I have been burdened with too much oversight to pay you as I should have done. I have no plans whatsoever to ‘turn you into a garden ornament’ as you so colorfully put it. Starblaze is here to offer you an escape route. He can teleport you away from Equestria during the coming troubles, or he can hide you in Equestria. Petrification is one way to conceal you, but it would strictly be your choice.”

Brass Pauldron: feckless weasel, but at least he’s a bad liar.

“Uh-huh. And why would I need to ‘escape’?”

He sighed again. "Tragically, not because of anything you've done. You've been nothing but discreet in all of our dealings so far. You are, however, associated with me, and that puts you in some measure of danger. There are militant elements in the neighboring demesnes, ones that Lord Hayswich is taking bold steps to pacify. We're proceeding according to Equestrian rules of conflict, which should keep most of my ponies' hooves out of the fire, but you are not a pony and would not be treated as such in a time of war. You would be a mere 'enemy combatant,' and hence quite unsafe."

Rules of conflict. Enemy combatant. Time of war. Hadn't heard those words in a while, at least not about Equestria.

I'd heard demesne a few times over the last month or so. Things were starting to make a sick sort of sense.

"That's nice of you, Brass," I said. "Real touching in fact, didn't know you cared that much. Still, I can make my own way outta here, thanks. I just need you to hoof over three weeks back pay, plus reasonable severance."

A smug almost-smile crept over Brass's lips. "Reasonable severance?"

"Yeah. Say, one-hundred thou for early termination of contract, and another hundred thou as dickhead tax."

That got a full-fledged laugh out of him. "And if I said I had nothing like that quantity of money, and certainly wouldn't be keeping it in my own private apartment?"

"Then I'd call you a damned lying grifter and slap the stupid out of you until you told me exactly where to find it."

"I see." Brass stepped out of his chair and circled around his desk. His mage, Starblaze, got out of his chair too, nice and slow, and then flexed his toned muscles until the buttons nearly popped off his shirt. "You're aware that we outnumber you two-to-one, and that toy of yours only works if Starblaze is directly channelling magic?"

That gets a laugh out of me. "Outnumber me? You big Mary, you think I'm here alone? Only reason I'm so close to you is to tell my sniper exactly where you're standing."

I pressed a button on the side of the null-tube's handle, and a red dot shone out directly between Starblaze's eyes. I'll give him credit, his reflexes were top notch. He dropped to the floor without a second's hesitation.

Right as I dropped a stunner in front of his eyes.

The flash didn't even bother me I'm so used to them but I don't think Starblaze liked it and before he could say 'Hey!' or 'Stop!' or 'Oh Celestia my eyes!' I had the sock-and-balls wrapped around my hand, wailing down on his body, slapping out meaty thuds every time it hit his ribs and flanks and muscles. I knocked a tooth or three out before I landed a clean hit on his horn. Felt kinda tingly when it cracked open. He passed out after that.

I turned back to look at Brass. A few drops of his bodyguard dripped off the sock and onto the floor. “Sun above...” he whispered.

“He’ll be fine. Blood clots, bones mend, chicks dig scars yada yada.” I stepped towards him. “You, on the other claw, won’t be so lucky. I don’t even have to touch you to make you regret messing with me. You were paying me for silence, dumbass. Mess with me and your secrets will fall on you from such lofty freakin’ heights it’ll be a Zephyr-damned hailstorm of cack on your bonce.”

I could see him turn pale through his pastel-yellow coat. Bless his sour little heart.

“You just want the money,” he said, “Two-hundred thousand bits severance, plus back pay.”

“Now you’re getting it. You can pay me out of the massive stash in your apartment that you don’t trust anypony else to guard.”

He swallowed and nodded. “I see. I may not have that all in bits. Are gold and diamonds acceptable?”

“Bits, gold, silver, super-precious gemstones, triple-A-grade mage-stones, unmarked bearer bonds, Canterhorn 500 stock certificates, Barnyard Bargains coupons, change from your couch cushions... I’m a reasonable bird, okay? Just gimme the loot.”

Slowly, carefully, never taking his eyes off me, he walks away from his desk and over to a closet door. He opens the door to an empty closet, and presses a hidden button in the back. The floor of the closet opens up, and a wheeled chest ascends from an opening below. He brings the chest into the room and opens it.

Gold bars, diamonds, high-denomination bits, all filed away in pretty little removable compartments. A few million in there, easy. I was surprised he hadn’t taken the whole damn chest and ran.

He looked at me, wary but not wary enough for my taste. Something was up. “You want your pay, yes? As soon as you get it, we never hear from each other again?”

“Yeah,” I said, and fished out a few folded-up canvas sacks from inside the bag. “Stick it in here, bits first, diamonds second, anything else last.”

He pulled out the little compartments and dutifully emptied them into my bags. When he finished, he said, “Your pay. All there. There’s nothing else you want?”

My fist clenched around the sock. Something was up. “I’m going to tie you to the chair, and by the time you slither out I’ll be long gone.”

He nodded. “Just to be completely clear—you have your pay, that’s your job finished, we’ll never see each other again?”

Something was very up. “Don’t even think—”

Brass Pauldron whistled, and the walls came tumbling down.

Pegasi burst in through the windows and the balcony. A ten-pony team of guards tore through the drywall from the next apartment over. Two unicorns knocked the front door down and blinked between me and Brass Pauldron. Another team of guards followed in behind them.

I spun the sock in a loop to knock back anypony too close to me, but they weren’t closing in yet. They were keeping a wary distance, and forming a wall of flesh between me and Brass.

Brass looked smug again. “Well, Gilda, I apologise for dragging this affair out for so long. I had to be sure that you were merely the greedy, venal parasite I had you pegged for and not a spy for Lord Bigglesblythe.”

I took a look around. “Congrats, Brass. Some of these lads look almost tough.”

A smirk. “Yes, it’s wonderful what money can buy these days. Well. I suppose I should tell you why I simply didn’t pay you off and let you leave for the mountains, no?”

“Go right ahead,” I said. “Buy me some more time.” Lots of ponies. Nearly thirty, the closest ones less than three meters away. They don’t look like soldiers, not good soldiers, but they’re all hench. They don’t need to be good soldiers, hells, if they’re even middling hoofball players one’ll snag me and the rest will dogpile me. It’ll be like trying to swim through an octopus orgy without getting pregnant. I could set off the rest of the stunners and smokers and wing it while they’re all trying to find their own bumholes, but if they’ve even got one pony outside the balcony or in the hallway, I’m scuppered.

“You’re a barbarian, Gilda,” he sneered. “A pony who committed the deeds you do would at least feel shame for their actions, but you simply price the amount of shame a pony would feel and add it on to your fee. You lack the traits that make even the lowest of ponies redeemable. Behind a predator’s eyes, there is no shame, no guilt, no pride, no honor. There is nothing in your heart but greed, cowardice, and lust for violence.”

I snorted. “I didn’t do a damned thing in Farriershire that wasn’t a job from you.”

“Precisely. I gave these orders for the greater good of my liege and my country. You did them out of sheer greed. As commander of the local guard I have taken troubling actions that I will carry to my grave, yet none trouble me more than the sickening fact that I was forced to work with a monster like you.

Say what you want about ponies, but they’ve got rationalization down to a science.

Brass continued, “I had intended to have you petrified, and leave instructions regarding you to my great-grandfoals. Perhaps in a century-and-a-half in the New Equestria they would be able to perfect a low being such as you, and if not they could simply bury your statue for the archeologists of the far future. That would have been the cleanest solution, and your best hope of survival. I see now that you will not be so reasonable.

He turned to his soldiers. “Guards, consider this a test of your resolve and abilities. Dispose of this griffon, however you feel appropriate. Be creative; make sport of it. When you’re finished, I never want to see her again. Goodbye, Gil—”

He paused, mid-sentence, mouth open like he was thinking of his next word. I dropped low and got ready to pounce, see if I could tear through enough of these dweebs to send the rest running. Probably couldn’t, but I had to try.

He didn’t finish the sentence. He was perfectly still, not moving, not even blinking.

All his guards were the same way. They weren’t shifting from hoof to hoof any more, half-hyperventilating and ready for a fight. They were all shock-still unblinking statues.

They weren’t even breathing.

I took a step forward. None of them moved. The room was completely silent. I said “Hey!” and waved a claw in front of the nearest guard’s chest. Nothing. I poked him on the chest. Nothing. I poked a second time—

“Oh! Please don’t do that, you’ll weaken the spell,” came a voice from behind me.

I spun around. There was a purple alicorn in front of me.

“Uh,” I said. “Hi?”

“Hello! I’m sorry for leaving you to stew for so long,” she said, “I wanted to check that you wouldn’t panic in a difficult situation. Though, to clarify, had you panicked I would of course made sure you made it out of here safely, I just wouldn’t be offering you a job. Well, asking you for help. Well, both, really...”

Gears ground together in my head. There was something weird about this pony—beside the whole wings-and-a-horn thing—in a Junior Intelligence Officer way, that mix of self-deprecation, nerves posing as naivete, and flailing friendliness that makes a spook dangerous, either to their enemies or to everyone around them.

“...You need a help-job!”

She beamed and nodded. “Yes. A paid one!” Her expression turned suddenly serious. “Equestria stands on a brink of civil war. I’m putting together a team of capable individuals to stop it. You came highly recommended.”

“Civil war? Team—wait, I know you! You’re the other-other-other-Princess! Princess Nightlight!” I said.

She smiles. “That’s my father. Well, just Nightlight, not Princess Nightlight. My name is Twilight, Twilight Sparkle. Princess Twilight Sparkle. Well, technically Doctor Princess Twilight Sparkle, but please, just Twilight is fine.”

“Huh.” I knew her from some place else, too. Couldn’t peg it, though. Everything had turned kinda surreal. “So these guys, did you paralyze them all or something?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Paralyze? Oh Celestia, no, that would be horribly dangerous. I don’t have half the magical ability to keep forty-six ponies magically paralyzed without risking heart attacks, renal failure or partial blindness. Safe paralysis is far more difficult than it looks in films,” she said. “I just stopped time in a hundred-meter radius.”

“Oh,” I said. “Cool.”

“It’s still a difficult spell to set up in it’s own right, however, it took twelve hours of local preparation and it is not something I could cast on the fly. Don’t expect it for an easy rescue twenty-four-seven, not that you would expect that, haha...” her laughter trailed off awkwardly as she finished.

“Right. So, uh, what now?”

‘Doctor Princess Twilight’ brightened up considerably and walked straight past me. “First, I teleport Sergeant Starblaze directly into the ambulance waiting on the street outside.” She touched a hoof to his prone body, lit her horn, and he disappeared in a dull blink. “He should be fine, though his horn will take months to heal. He’ll have more important things to worry about I’m sure, like explaining to his commanding officer why he took on expressly-forbidden contract work while on leave.”

“Couldn’t you have just healed him yourself?” I asked.

“What? Oh, I’m not that kind of doctor. PhD, not MD,” she said. “I have a portal set up in the hallway outside. It’ll take us directly to my, uh, base of operations as it were. Follow me.”

I look at my bags. “I can bring my pay, right?”

“Yes, of course. In fact, take the entire money chest.”

I grin at her. “You need the cash, Princess?”

“Not as such, but Mr Pauldron does, and I think that’s a good enough reason to take it away from him. I’ll explain more when we leave; this spell won’t last forever after all.”

I shrug. “A’ight,” I said, loading my kit onto the money chest and grabbing it by the handle. “Lead the way.”

Twilight turned to me, then beamed at me again with a face full of dangerously-friendly eyes. “Excellent. Welcome to the team, Gilda.”

Author's Note

Whaddya know, I'm doing fanfic of fanfic again!

This is all, unless stated otherwise, canon to Demesne. I'd like to thank Mr Numbers for allowing me to write an official sidefic, and giving me a delightful new universe to play around it.

Sharp-eyed readers will note that the opening is a loving homage (read: not plagarism because I'm citing) of Johnny Mnemonic by the unparalleled William Gibson. Expect some —punk tropes in this story.

2. Lookin' For Dirt Crime

The first thing I noticed after the twisted-inside-out shock of the teleport was damp grass under my paws. We’d appeared in an empty park. It buzzed with crickets and stunk of freshly-cut grass. There was a burnt tang in the air, like somepony had been barbecuing bell peppers an hour or two earlier.

The second thing I noticed was the cold. The sun had gone down but even at midnight it wasn’t normally this chilly. A stiff breeze made my crest fluff up. Wherever the princess had taken me, it wasn’t Farriershire.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We’re just north of Manehattan,” said Princess Twilight. “Specifically we’re in Puddinghead’s Park, in Golden Stirrup.”

“Golden—You mean the Golden Stirrup?”

“Oh, you know the place?”

“I know its rep.” Golden Stirrup was the richest ‘village’ in all of Equestria. Every yuppie in Manehattan wanted a summer home here. You needed three years membership in an invitation-only air-yacht club to even get a look-see at an apartment around here.

The princess smiled at me, again. “Well, that makes things a little simpler. Down that street—” she raised a hoof and pointed towards a well-lit road, “—is a bar called Hydrogen. Go to the bar and order a greyhound with a lemon twist. That’s the code-word, your contact in the team will then approach you. He’ll fill you in on the details.”

“Go to Hydrogen, order a greyhound with lemon twist. Gotcha.”

She pulled a satchel out from under her wing, and then I twigged that the money chest hadn’t teleported along with us. Neither had my gym bag and null tube. “I had a friend of mine pack this bag for you,” she said, “it’s got a bow tie, a blazer, designer spectacles, feather highlights, and a pocket mirror. Hydrogen is a pretty high-class bar, you’ll want to look the part as well.”

“Hey, what did you do with—”

“Your bag? I sent it to the team base along with the money chest, you can pick it up when you get there. It’d be very conspicuous in Hydrogen. Speaking of blending in, there’s some bits in the pockets of your blazer, you’ll stand out less if you spend it freely; it’s that kind of bar. Oh, shoot, it’s past moonrise already! I’m sorry, I’ve got to go right now.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry, your contact will explain everything. Hydrogen, greyhound!”

Before I could get so much as ‘what does my contact look like’ or ‘but my cracking tools are in that bag’ or ‘when are you even paying me for this crap?’ out, she winked out of existence, and I was alone in a chilly park.

“Freakin’ ponies,” I muttered.

It took twenty minutes to get to Hydrogen: five minutes walking, one minute getting the blazer on, fourteen minutes messing with the bow-tie in the dark. I didn’t bother with the makeup. I’d only look like a clown and besides, red lipstick clashes with my beak. I slipped the doormare a hundred-bit note. ‘Some bits’ was a joke, there was ten large tucked away in the inside pocket of the blazer. I could get used to working for an org with this kind of budget.

Hydrogen was yuppie as they come, the walls were all a tasteful latte-mocha-whatever-cream lit by soft lights, the tables were black granite, and the drinkers were stupid-drunk. You could tell by their fetlocks—the smart ones kept the vomit away from their five-hundred-bit silk shirts, but it always splashed onto their hooves.

I sat down at the bar next to a loud-mouthed lawyer and toyed a hundred-bit note between my talons until the barmare made eye contact.

She smiled widely and rocked on her hooves, more sober than her customers but only by a few drinks. “What can I get for you tonight, hon?”

I slid the note across the black granite bar. “Greyhound with a lemon twist. Keep the change.”

The mare winked at me, turned around, and turned back with two bottles, a fist-sized cube of ice, a glass, and an ice-pick all nestled in her fores. She perched the ice on top of the glass and started whittling it away with the pick, until a sphere of ice dropped from the cube and rattled into the bottom of the cup. She twirled both bottles in her hooves and poured them in at the same time, managing a perfect two-to-one ratio of grapefruit to gin. A stainless-steel stirrer appeared from thin air with a lemon rind twisted around it, and when she finished stirring the drink, the rind was wrapped around the ice ball. She passed me the drink and left to serve another customer. I took a sip.

Not bad for an earth pony.

“You have rather good taste in drinks.” Canterlot. Didn’t recognise the voice but the accent was Canterlot, Old-Money Canterlot with capital letters for ‘Old’ and ‘Money,’ private education, booming laughter and quiet little fencing scars. I don’t know who this guy was impersonating, but he had him down to a tee.

“Y’know, I’m more of a jello shot girl if I’m honest, but this ain’t that kind of bar...” I took a look at him. Unicorn, golden coat, royal-blue mane. Red rose for a cutie mark. Wrong about the fencing scar, he could have been a model. He stunk of hair dye and cloaking magic. I guess the other ponies were too damn drunk to notice.

“You’re right, it isn’t. My name is Goldenrose, by the way,” he said, holding out a hoof.

I put a fist out to bump it. “Cool. I’m—”

“Gilda, yes? Of course. We have a mutual friend. We also have a job to do.”

I nodded, slowly. “Uh-huh. Wanna talk about it somewhere quiet?”

“Here will do just fine. We’re swaddled in a distraction charm, anypony who can hear us will be listening to other, more interesting things. My years at the School for Gifted Unicorns weren’t entirely in vain, it seems.”

“Sly. So what’s the job?”

Goldenrose smirked and sipped at his drink. “There’s a mare five seats to your left. She’s a unicorn with two doves for a cutie mark, a fashionably cerulean coat and a bespoke Coco Pommel saddlebag. She’s also delightfully drunk. You see her?”

I glanced out of the corner of my eye. “Hard to miss.”

“I need you to start a fight with her.”

“There’s four bouncers and one of me. It’ll be a short fight.”

He sighed. “It shan’t get that serious, and besides, this isn’t that sort of bar.”

“The baseball bat hidden under the wine rack says otherwise.”

“Those are mere precautions. You don’t have to harm her, just get her hackles up. Ruffle her feathers.”

“She’s a unicorn.”

“A figure of speech, my dear. ‘Get all up in her face,’ as those in the Lower Districts say. As soon as it kicks off, I’m going to separate you.”

I looked back at the mare. Tipsy. Loud. Arguing something something contract law something with her friends. “So what are you gonna—oh.” Goldenrose had disappeared. Freakin’ ponies.

I sighed and prepared myself. Stretched my neck. Shook the tiredness from my shoulders. Downed my drink, and let the dregs pour down my chin. I stood up, glass still in claw, and let myself sway a little. Then I walked over to my target.

I fell into her shoulders-first and let my glass clatter to the ground. I shoved her into the bar with an open claw before she could open her mouth.

“Whaddya think you’re doin’, dork? You spilled my drink!” I slurred.

Her jaw dropped and she gawked at me, red in the cheeks. Before any of her friends could start yapping or step in, she snapped, “You pushed me!”

“Yeah, ‘cause you spilled my drink!” I snapped. “You think you can mess with me just ‘cause you push papers for some podunk crew of ambulance-chasers?”

“‘Ambulance-chasers?’ Do you even know who I am?” She was practically screaming. Good. “I am a junior partner at Wellbright, Bookend and Sunchaser. You’re wearing a made-to-measure blazer in Hydrogen. I earn in a day what you make in a month, you know that?”

I moved back just enough to let her step towards me, and grinned. “Wellbright, Bookend and Sunchaser, huh? I didn’t know they were hiring jennies these days, long-ears.”

All her friends went deathly silent. The bartenders froze. I could hear her pupils shrink. “You racist bitch.”

She lunged. I’ll give her credit, if her first punch hadn’t glanced off the side of my head, it’d have given me a shiny new black eye. I grabbed her and wrestled, shifting us both from side to side, mostly keeping her friends on the backs of their hooves and stopping them jumping in.

I felt somepony practically leap between us, and tear me away from her. Goldenrose, making good on his promise.

“—a thousand apologies for my friend’s behaviour, she’s had a trifle much to drink and she’s yet to adjust to the more civilised norms in Equestria—”

“—your ‘friend’ should know that this is not that kind of bar—”

“—could sue you for—”

“—again and I’ll have security escort you both off premises—”

“I feel sick, take me to the bathroom,” I droned, half-draped over Goldenrose. I’ll give him credit, he works out at least.

“—just plain out of line, I work pro-bono for the Donkey Anti-Defamation League and those kind of remarks—”

“—I must apologize once more and also bartender could you please take this thousand-bit note and buy several rounds of drinks for this mare and her friends and if you’ll excuse me I just have to drag my foreign friend to the doubleh-vey say before she spills something unpleasant over the delightful decor, ta-ta!”

I groaned and dry-heaved until he ‘carried’ me into the bathroom and locked the door behind us.

I dusted myself off and said, “Not that I don’t like fighting in bars or nothing, but why’d you just have me go nuts on a random lawyer?”

“To distract her while I relieved her of these,” said Goldenrose, as he magically dangled a set of keys in the air.

* * *

We slipped out the back of Hydrogen and headed over to the offices of Wellbright, Bookend and Sunchaser. I leaned against a tree on the other side of the street to scope the place out. Two floors, stone building, terracotta roof and ivy climbing the walls, all keeping in line with the ‘rustic aesthetic’ of Golden Stirrup. Ground floor lights on. One guard visible, sitting down in the reception area.

I nudged Goldenrose and whispered, “You new to this, dude?”

“Excuse me?”

“Like, are you new to this whole business? Some kind of hobbyist, amateur, or something? Not really used to ‘security’ work?”

He snorted. “And why in Celestia’s mane would you say that?”

“One, you’re dodging the freaking question and two, you needed my help to filch keys off a drunk pencil-pusher in a crowded bar. From her bag. That’s cub’s play, dweeb. So I’ll ask again: you new to this, dude?”

He sighed and smirked at me and I wanted to slap that smirk off his face with sharpened claws. “Yes, it would have been no challenge to simply pick the keys from her pocket and walk away,” he said, “but my task was somewhat more complex than that. I took her office keys, and only her office keys from her key-ring, and replaced them with blank keys of an identical brand. She won’t know that her keys are missing when she gets home tonight, and hence she won’t call the office and warn them that her keys might have been stolen. By the time she finds out her office keys are all blanks, it will be far too late.”

“If you’d given me the blanks I’d have done that alone, and I’d have a new set of drinking buddies.”

“And you might have gotten yourself caught, thrown unceremoniously into a cell, and asked some rather sticky questions by the Manehattan Night Watch for the rest of the evening. Speaking of night watch, we have three minutes before the security guard starts her rounds. The stairs are past the door on the left side of the lobby, and two doors on the right upstairs is the target room.”

“A’ight. What’s the plan?”

“You’ll have a better chance of remaining undetected if you sneak in alone. Go to the room—2E on the door—and find all the legal documents relating to financial companies. We need those documents. You can get out through the office window, which would be your way in if not for the alarms. Here, take these.”

He passed me a set of keys, and a black metal tube. I hefted the tube in my claw and grunted. “Keys and a flashlight? Hearth Warmings’ come early, huh?”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine. Good luck.”

I walked across the street as the security guard got out of her chair and started her rounds. I waited thirty seconds in case she turned back to grab another donut out of her conveniently-placed snacking box. When she was gone, I unlocked the front door and slipped inside, locking it behind me.

I didn’t run for the stairs, not yet. If they were smart enough to have alarms on the windows, they’d be smart enough to have motion alarms inside all the locked offices. I didn’t want to deal with those on a case-by-case basis, so I slipped behind the guard’s desk and took a glance around. The central alarm system was built into the wall behind the desk. A Jet-Set Technical brand, mid-range model, around six years old. Pretty new for a legal office. Ancient for a thief.

Alarm systems are made by the same ponies that make card banks, analytical engines, and smoke alarms: they might talk big about idiot-proof systems and redundant backup measures, but nobody wants to hear 130-decibel screeching for the week it takes a technician to arrive because some idiot forgot the key-code. All but the most paranoid of models have a tiny little hole hidden somewhere on the back with a ‘reset’ button deep inside. A good model will start a count-down when you open the panel and give you about ten seconds to find that tiny little hole (or enter the code) before it starts wailing. If you’re in this business for long you’ll carry around a list of model series and bypass locations, and if you’re in this business and you’re smart you’ll carry that list around in your head. The police or watch or whoever call notepads full of that stuff ‘exhibit B1 for the jury.’

I knew exactly where the reset hole for a JS-Tech LC-OK300 pattern security suite was, so I grabbed a paperclip off the guard’s desk and I made it putty in my claws before the countdown reached ‘8.’

I made off for the stairs with a spring in my step. I’d have to be real unlucky for a tired night guard to get to her desk, double check the alarm system, notice it had been reset, and figure it was an intruder and not a glitch, but real unlucky is something that happens to ‘security professionals’ who don’t move quick enough, and that’s without my brand-new partner screwing something up for me while I worked. Finding office 2E in the dark was no problem—ponies and unicorns have crap night vision, griffons don’t—and neither was getting inside. Finding the right documents was going to be tricky.

It was the right room, there was a picture of the mare from the bar hugging a significant other, but it was a mess. The desk was covered in documents, the drawers were filled with documents, and there were five filing cabinets along the walls of the office filled with more documents. I ain’t gonna lie—most of my experience with legal documents comes from smacking ponies under the tail with a rubber hose until they sign one. These were all in heavy legalese and talked about companies I barely knew and ponies I’d never heard of.

This was going to be difficult. It’d take an hour to whittle out the right documents and I’d have to be damn quiet too. Griffons see better than anypony, even pegasi, but ponies hear better than we do. If I was stomping around in this room and the guard was stomping past it, she’d hear me before I heard her. The window was a problem, too. Any nosy pony could see a flashlight in a dark room, and Zephyr-knows that freakin’ ponies have a deep need to tell the nearest authority if they spot something like that.

There was a paper flip-board in the corner of the room. I took a roll of sticky-tape from her desk, ripped sheets from the back of the flip-board and started to make a jury-rigged set of blackout blinds, and then there was a noise from the window that sounded like ‘tunk’.

Then another ‘tunk.’

And a third ‘tunk’.

I crept over to the window and saw a weird shape tapping against the glass. The end of a piece of rope, floating up from the ground. On the ground below, Goldenrose.

I opened the window and grabbed the rope with both claws. Goldenrose bounded up the side of the building with speed and grace I didn’t think a unicorn could manage, and then I saw that the rope had shrank to a metre long. It had been enchanted to haul the lazy dork up the side. Unicorns. Figures.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“Finding the right documents, I was simply waiting until you’d removed the alarms,” he said, way too loud.

“Keep your damn voice down,” I hissed.

“Sorry! Sorry, I mean. Anyway, I forgot to tell you where the documents were.”

I look around the paper-strewn room and glare at him. “Freakin’ everywhere, right?”

“The ones we need. Look,” he said, and pulled the chair out from under the desk. He pressed his hoof against the carpet below, scraping and rubbing until he found something. A square of carpet peeled up from the floor under his magic. The shiny face of a floor safe shone up at us.

“The keys, please,” he said. I fumbled for a second and passed him the keyring.

He opened up the safe and pulled out a few kilograms of documents, which he stuffed into a bag. “Now for the cover up,” he said. “Take the paper out of the cabinets and spread it over the desks and floors.”

While I did that he locked the safe shut, broke the key off in the lock, and then ripped the smoke alarm off the ceiling. When we were done, I saw his horn spark up. The sparks danced on the strewn papers.

I slapped him right in the horn. He squealed like a foal, and I clamped a claw over his mouth just so he wouldn’t give us away. “What are you doing?”

He whimpered and stumbled away, looking hurt. “I-I’m setting fire to the office, you fool! If I burn everything h-here, the office will be sealed off until it’s been investigated. She won’t be able to find which documents were stolen and which burned in the fire, and she won’t be able to open the safe to check inside!”

“Yeah that’s cool except you’re using your horn, you freakin’ dumbass,” I spat. “Every lick of flame that first spark makes will have your magical signature inside it, and the more the flames grow the stronger that mark will be. The Manehattan Watch has an arson squad, and they’ve got forensic mages and diamond dog trackers and by the time this little fire burns out they’ll see your magic from their freakin’ bedrooms. They’ll catch up with you before you’re one town over, and thems will be some sticky freakin’ questions that you’ll be answering, you get me?”

He stepped back. His ears were plastered to his skull, and he looked downright miserable. “S-sorry. I made a mistake. I am, um, I’m not r-really used to arson, I must admit...”

“You don’t say.” I sighed. “Look, I get it. You’re a con-pony, and that’s a tricky skill-set. Not everyone in this business has every skill, that’s cool. Just—just freakin' warn me when you’re gonna do something like that, okay? I can handle that. Speaking of, you want me to start the fire?”

Goldenrose swallowed, and nodded. “Yes, please.”

Starting a fire would be easier if I’d had more than a flashlight and a blazer full of money. I searched through the desk. No cigarettes, no cigars, no lighters. Bottom drawer had a make-up kit and a pint bottle of hoof-varnish remover. I looked above the window. There was an air-con unit bolted onto the wall. Score.

“Goldie, you got a spell to muffle sound?”

He nodded. “Where do you need it?”

“On the air-con unit, I’m taking it off the wall.”

A white glow covered the metal box. When I grabbed it, I felt the weird sensation of thin metal folding and nails tearing from brick with no noise coming out. I opened it up and tore out the compression matrices. Wires sparked and crackled, and the coolant array turned into a makeshift space heater. I opened the hoof-varnish remover, poured it on the papers around the unit, and then directly into the glowing, sparking insides. It went up in flames with a ‘fwop’.

I said “Time to go?” to Goldenrose but he was already propping the window open and trailing his rope down the building. We were outta there before you could even see the blaze from the window.

“Well, that could have gone worse,” he said, a few hundred paces down the street.

“We got what we came for?”

“All here,” he said, tapping his saddlebag and smiling. For the first time that night it was an actual smile and not an insufferable smirk. Arson brings out the best in ponies.

“So what’s the plan now, then?”

“It’s been a long night,” he said. “Time to go back to base, I think. It’s about time you met the team.”

INTERLUDE: When The War Comes It's The Only Currency That Matters, Is Knowledge

Princess Twilight had her plan hours before she saw the Lotus Blossom tree. The tree simply crystalised her thoughts, turned them from protean mires of hope and worry and what-ifs into a granite-paved path ahead. Before the tree, she knew what she had to do. After the tree, she believed it.

Twilight was in the Oxfjord Library again. She had burned through all essential princess-related activities before lunchtime, refused further visitors and delayed her appointments, left Ponyville just after midday, and arrived in Canterlot via Twilyport shortly after three. She would stay in the library until 2am, return to Ponyville by 4am, sleep for four hours and do the whole thing again tomorrow. Everything else—sleep, friends, food that wasn’t vending machine ramen—could wait until she knew the solution to Big Problem No. 1.

The problem was more widely known as the Brewing Equestrian Civil War, but the term Big Problem No. 1 caused less involuntary twitching and shame spirals whenever Twilight thought about it (which was currently dozens of times per minute), so she preferred the latter designation. Or better yet, BPN1.

Twilight was here to re-read, to re-think and to re-search. Equestria hadn’t had a true civil war in a millenium. ‘Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it’ was a truth that had laid low leaders of far grander domains than her own. Twilight vowed that if she failed, it would not be born of sloth or ignorance.

Besides, the books, notes and self-imposed exile let her temporarily forget the business with Rainbow Dash and Golden Retriever, which, to her tremendous guilt, seemed to weigh on Twilight’s mind as heavily as BPN1.

Twilight could remember most of the names and dates, but knew this was far too important to trust to old memories. Still, she chose to read about the Battle of Pasty Post in 198 OE first, because it was the best-case scenario for an active civil war and it added levity to a place where there was very little levity to be found. The night before the battle, the opposing armies of House Daisybutter and House Twinklestar steeled themselves for the coming battle by getting really, really drunk. On the morn, House Daisybutter woke up an hour late and marched the the battlefield without taking their armor; House Twinklestar marched in the wrong direction entirely and nearly invaded an alehouse. By the time they had found their armor and the right battlefield respectively, a wild storm came from Griffhala, and after being thoroughly soaked and chilled they gave up, went home, and negotiated a peace treaty. They then did the exact same thing the next year, except their battle was prevented by a stampede of hormone-crazed bunny rabbits. This was taken as an omen of sorts, and the second peace treaty stuck.

As the bovine philosopher Maisey-Boo the Perverse once said, ‘History repeats itself, first as farce, and then as even bigger farce.’

Twilight read an account of the Hoofington Strife of 1344 OE, and that had no such humor inherent. The Hoofington Strife was neither particularly vicious nor particularly grand, not thunder or hail but a dreary, overcast time that stretched on longer than it had any real right to. Two demesnes had erupted into war over the rights to a river between them. A few pitched battles exploded between them and produced a dull, horrible stream of wounded soldiers and cold bodies, but most of the war stayed as skirmishes, riots in border towns, raids that were more robbery than assault. Neither party dared to cease all industry, conscript the peasantry and ride to war, so the tension simmered year after year until there was so much anger, such bitterness, such hate between the opposing villages and townships that a strange cold crept in long before wintertime and twisted shapes wrapped themselves around the clouds above and the two sides very hastily beat their spears into hoes, sent offerings of good tidings and arranged a few dozen intermarriages a day until the strange creatures left for the aether.

Depressingly, she could have switched ‘Hoofington Strife of 1344OE’ for any number of conflicts and the description would have been identical. Bloody battles, full of brutalities muted only by the long passage of time and the dull footnote they were given in the historical parchments, quickly waning into a series of skirmishes and petty banditry, only fading away when outside circumstances forced unity. Windigoes once or twice—usually after court wizards had meddled with mind-magic to whip their own forces into a frenzy—but it could have been dragon raids, or bandit encroachment, or a national war, or a third demesne reuniting them via conquest, or Discord’s molten bunny-jackals, or sudden mountains.

Twilight took a piece of parchment, and under the heading ‘Category One Conflicts,’ wrote down the names and dates of the important ones, listed their pertinent characteristics, noted their resolutions, and referenced academic papers that examined them in greater depth and explored how they might have been prevented or ended sooner.

She stopped a moment before filing that piece of parchment away, and under the heading wrote a subtitle: ‘Second-best case outcome in event of BPN1.’

The next set of conflicts were less like a sudden forest fire and more like a snowball rolling down a hill. The warring factions never had the time or resources to mount a full assault, or the ruler could not unite all of his nobles in time, or the attacks were only ever meant to be retaliation for some offence, real or imagined, by the opposing party.

These conflicts never had the grand battles, but their effects were more insidious still. Fear was ruled a substitute for conquest. Mercenary companies took the place of conscripted armies, and after the money ran dry they went to ground, looting farms for food and taking peasants for sport. There was no concept of ‘honor in warfare,’ the lines between scouting and banditry blurred, terror and bloodshed became ends rather than means. Outsiders were shunned, more than usual.

Such wars were blights, even after truces were drawn and concessions were made, the villages and the ponies and the noble families never really recovered. The loathing and anger remained, simmering beneath the surface, ever eager to find an outlet. There were parts of Southern Equestria that still hadn’t recovered from the Forty-Years War. When one side conquered another after a war, the results were truly horrific, and Twilight was glad for the distance that the old, dry narratives provided. Entire towns were erased from existence, and the winners seemed to take sadistic pleasure in such erasures.

These were ‘Category Two Conflicts.’

Category Three Conflicts came in two varieties: rolling conquests where a strongmare would take over weaker, neighboring states, absorb their wealth and armies, and continue to expand until they met an implacable foe, retreated to quell internal strife, or otherwise lost momentum. They were bloody from sheer size alone. The law of the land would be the strongpony’s spear. Only one such ‘empire’ would need to arise for modern Equestria to change forever. More than one noble had the land and funds to tempt such dreams. They could go from minor lords to controlling more land and ponies than the Royal Pony Sisters.

The second variety was well-known to the Northeastern Griffons: the Flustercluck. Four neighboring demesnes all trying to fight each other at once. Pitched battles over strategically-worthless breweries. Succession crises turning capital cities into wine-drenched assassination fests. One fiefdom conquering a demesne, only to be taken over by a different demesne. A bar-fight between nobles turning into a war and then into sixteen wars over twelve decades. Times when Equestria avoided foreign invasion simply because belligerent neighbors peered over the fences and thought they’d rather not get involved.

Whatever the exact variety, a Category Three Conflict would mean unpredictable, irrevocable, devastating change. Equestria would be unrecognisable.

A Category Four Conflict was currently a purely hypothetical concept. A wide-scale war that escalated indefinitely until it consumed all of Equestria. Massive magical weapons would start as threats, then tactical displays, and then full-scale strategic use. Modern communications and logistics would allow armies to travel further and faster than ever before, and prevent refugees from escaping. A modern army, equipped with mages and weaponry devised with natural philosophy in mind could attack a poorly-defended town at noon and leave everypony dead before dinner. Every mare, stallion and foal would be involved in the war effort. Every village would become a police state.

There was no good end to a Category Four Conflict. At the better end, a few scarred victors would rule a ruin. At the worse end, ash and dust.

As the hours turned to nights and Doctor Princess Twilight continued her schedule of reading, referencing, and meticulous note-taking, depressing patterns revealed themselves, ones she had not seen when she was first taught these histories.

Ponies turned insular in times of war, viciously distrustful of outsiders. Griffons and zebras experienced their share of xenophobia, but the donkeys had the worst of it: pogroms and witch hunts were distressingly common in old times. They would be blamed for anything, for bad crops, plagues, faulty intelligence. When a noble needed money and land to raise his army, the donkey landowners would be rounded up, driven off, and worse, the spoils divided among the pony gentry. When popular sentiment turned sour, the nobles would whip their subjects into a frenzy about poisoned wells and Asinine conspiracies. These attacks only began to fade away after Nighmare Moon’s banishment, and overt attacks disappeared less than a century ago. Three-hundred years ago the region of Arborlysium—where the Apple clan originally hailed from, among others—experienced such a brutal pogrom that donkeys referred to it even now as The Great Misery.

The effects on magic and science were equally unhappy. There was a popular theory among the educated, dinner-party classes that conflicts increased the rate of technological progress, that leaders gave engineers and thaumaturges their backing to give them any kind of edge, that the necessity of war became the mother of all sorts of inventions.

Twilight had long known this theory to be incorrect, but oh how it was incorrect! Applied sciences accelerated during warfare, this was true. After all, every researcher turned away from their esoteric hobby-horses and towards theories of not-getting-stabbed. The collected knowledge in their minds, in the minds of their apprentices, in the thousands of pages on their bookshelves were all deployed for practical purposes.

But they had not discovered a new method of farming knowledge, they were merely eating their seed corn. Applied technologies were constructed from their pool of knowledge, and those pools became stagnant. Basic research withered. Those ‘esoteric hobby-horses’ that their patrons chided them for pursuing and rewarded them for pursuing were the questions that made the current batch of technologies, both physical and thaumaturgical, possible.

In fact, under any reasonable estimate of scientific and philosophical progress—the Alfalfa-Oghma Continuum, Side Winder’s Backwards Space-Time Consideration Chart, Star Swirl’s Minor Slood Assemblage, Night Quill’s Implacably Advancing Guesstimate—learning slowed down immeasurably not just during war but for years afterwards. Intellectuals could no longer correspond with scholars in other states. Foals were taught how to fight, not how to read. Libraries and towers were pulled down and burned. All literature was checked for steganographic messages or subversive sentiments, and destroyed along with its authors if it didn’t pass muster.

Twilight now realised that many ‘dark ages’ and ‘dead centuries,’ said to be times of tragic backwardness after previously amazing progress, were simply lulls occurring after long periods of war had exhausted the basic research, and scholars struggled to rebuild the infrastructure of monasteries, libraries, and lairs. Likewise, ‘golden ages’ were times when relative peace had allowed trade, arts, and scientific progress to continue unmolested.

By the time that these considerations were rolling around inside Twilight’s mind, she was already working on the next set of problems. Diplomatic solutions. Potential aggressors. Probabilities of conflicts type one through four. Possible casualty totals. Evacuation routes. Blood pacts. Proportionate retribution schemes. Targeted dissuasion.

Nothing came of it, not yet. Every solution was too weak, and would risk total warfare, or too drastic, and involve deeds that made her stomach uneasy, and her chest ache for simpler times.

She flicked through Steel Thaumocracies: Long-Lasting Conflicts In Old Equestria by Happy Days, an account of the Forty-Years War she had already read. Not the worst conflict in Equestrian history, nor the cleanest. In the middle of the book, there were copies of engravings and drawings made at the time.

There was an engraving of a town called Lotus Blossom, a town allied with the Dragonlily Thanes, after it was conquered by the Earl of Foxglove’s forces. Many of the townsfolk were accused of banditry and espionage.

The engraving showed a tree, a grand, sprawling oak, more than two-hundred years old and tended to with love by generations of ponies. Thirty ponies dangled from the branches.

Eight of them had no cutie-marks.

Twilight made her mind up.

Later that night she returned to Ponyville with her folders of notes neatly in order and an oddly tranquil smile on her face. Ponyville looked a thousand miles from warfare. It bustled and buzzed with barter and building and carpentry and merchantry and all the trade that comes with interesting times and bags of money. The smell of lilacs and broom and the evening batch of bear-claws from Sugarcube Corner hung in the air, following Twilight even as she walked into the library. Spike’s giant, adolescent form lounged in a reading chair.

“Hey Twi,” he said, glancing up from a Daring Do book, “good day at the other library?”

“Yes, thanks,” she replied. “Very productive.”

“Good to hear. I was gonna make some dinner for me and Golden, see if I can still rule the kitchen when I’m seven-feet tall, you hungry?”

“Actually, Spike, don’t worry,” said Doctor Princess Twilight Sparkle, her oddly tranquil smile still lingering on her lips. “I’m going to order a take-out.”

3. Lookin' For Cloud Crime

The morning air at the Golden Stirrup Air-Yacht Club was cold and sweet, the warmth of the pastry stalls and coffee stands drowned out even as the smell of sugar and donuts reached us. Thick, dimly-lit clouds rested on the horizon looking like swirls of ice-cream hanging in the sky. Above us a hundred giant dirigibles hung in the sky, like jelly-beans dropped by the gods.

What I’m trying to say is that ponies are all candy-asses and that I have not had a decent steak sandwich in two years.

Goldenrose popped back into view carrying two cardboard cups of coffee in his magic field. I took a sip. I’ve lived in Equestria for ten years and I’m still not used to normal milk in my coffee. I know it’s the real thing and all, but it tastes too damn thin. Condensed milk is the way to go. I like coffee that you can paint your walls with.

I took another sip. Not bad, for pony coffee. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” he replied. “Our tickets have been stamped and the Summer Breeze will soon come in to dock. We should make our way to the western landing pad. It pays to be on time; there are rather stiff penalties for overstaying your docking slot.”

“Huh. Can’t put ‘airship fines’ on the expense report?”

“Fines? Oh heavens, nothing so plebeian. If you accrue too many penalty points, you have to volunteer your craft for public tours. Do you know that common ponies will actually bring their foals to that sort of thing? Horrible creatures...”

“Right.”

There were four landing pads that loomed above us like giant chanterelle mushrooms, the ‘stems’ as thick as four houses strapped together and a hundred meters high, with a hoofball-pitch sized landing zone spreading out high on top. The northern pad was thickest of all, and had a kind of novelty shopping center housed within the stem. The western pad was a few dozen meters shorter than the others. One elevator trip later, and we were at the top.

We stepped out onto the landing zone just as the Summer Breeze was touching down. Classic design, an early Equestrian military communications craft long-since converted into a luxury cruiser. The balloon had been painted like a starry evening, and the house-sized gondola’s white frame was covered in baroque, golden patterning.

“Not bad,” I said. “Our boss likes to travel in style?”

“Actually, it’s mine. A birthday present from an aunt.”

“Wow. Some aunt.”

“Indeed.”

The boarding ramp came down and two unicorn soldiers—no uniforms, but you can tell—came out. They saluted Goldenrose and let us on board. Goldenrose led me straight down a corridor into a bar-type room, with plush seats and a big window view over the rest of the yacht club.

“I’m going to report in, I’ll be back shortly,” he said. “Make yourself at home, there’s food in the minibar.”

He left, and I took a look around. The bar top was pretty well-worn, and the rack of spirits and liqueurs behind it were partially drained, and had spares tucked away in a cabinet below. This room had seen a lot of use. Goldenrose—or whoever it was who really owned this airship—was a real playcolt, apparently.

I looked through the minibar. Two cases of blueberry yoghurt—yick. Lots of fruit salads. Lots of smoothies. A random block of parmesan. A—wait, a prawn cocktail? Must have some pegasi on board. I started to dig in when Goldenrose came in. He grabbed a smoothie from the fridge and sat down next to me.

“Sorry for the wait, we’ve been rather keen to get our hooves on the documents you and I recovered last night,” he said. “By the by, exactly how familiar are you with this operation of ours? I understand that the Princess left to meet you yesterday, and apparently you didn’t have time for a full induction...”

“Hah, you could say that. We didn’t even sort out what she’s paying me, though she helped me out of a tight spot, so I figure I can give her a few hours grace on that. As for the mission, blah blah Equestria in crisis blah stop civil war blah blah special skills blah etcetera. That about right?”

Goldenrose smiled. “Yes, that’s about the long and short of it. Hmm.” He paused, and looked halfway-thoughtful for a second. “Well, since I’ve seen your personnel file, I might as well begin by dispensing with this disguise of mine.” His horn shimmered and his coat and mane faded, leaving only the hints of magic-triggered dye remaining. “You see, my real name is—”

“Blueblood, you puffed-up, micturating turd!” The speaker was a turquoise pegasus with a golden lion’s mane and pure equicide written over her face. She strode into the room and got an inch from Goldenrose—or Blueblood’s?—face.

He didn’t look too comfortable. “Ah, ahem, Lighting Dust. I’m sure you’ve seen the records we retrieved—”

The pegasus’s face twisted into a freakishly cheerful grin. “Oh, you brought back some documents? That’s cool, y’know I heard about those. I heard you went into the office with the griffon and ‘helped’ steal them, just like I’d explicitly ordered you not to, you ceruse-shellacked husk. Now, tell me why you decided to ignore that order and don’t try and lie to me.”

“W-well, there were some complications with regards to locating the correct set of papers, and, uh, I only improvised as a last—”

“Improvised? Improvised? Blueblood, you princely scoop of dock-cheese, if you improvise your way around another order of mine ever again, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to improvise you into a filing machine by balling them up your precious documents and stuffing them down your throat,” she said, miming the action, “then I’m going to sort through them by shoving a hoof up your rump and wiggling it around. And then, every time I see a document I don’t like the look of—which will be all of them—I’ll make you cough up another by punching you in the sheath with my other hoof! Do you understand where I’m coming from?”

“Um—”

“Get out of my sight,” she spat. Gold— Blueblood scurried off, and the pegasus suddenly noticed me. “Hey!”

“Uh,” I said. “Hey.”

Her rage-rictus faded, and she gave me an easy grin. “Sorry about that mess. Our mutual colleague, he don’t really get the intricacies of this business yet, y’know? Name’s Lightning Dust. You’re Gilda, right?”

“The one and only.”

“You were friends with Rainbow Dash, huh? She told me about you.”

I tensed up. “Yeah. Friends, I guess. What she say?”

“She said you were a thieving bully with ‘attachment issues’,” said Lightning Dust, laughing. “Hay, ‘attachment issues,’ she actually said that, can you believe it? Anypony she whines about is cool in my books.”

I broke into a grin. “Yeah. She’s got her good points, but...”

“It’s balanced out by the stick up her ass,” she said. “Anyway, I hear you got thrown straight in the deep end last night. Walk with me, I’ll fill you in.”

Lightning Dust turned around and walked into the hallway. I followed behind. I could see where the airship was being converted from a luxury pleasure boat into something leaner and meaner. Plush carpet stripped away and rubber mats in their place. Fire extinguishers everywhere. Cases full of crossbow bolts, boarding bats, and smokers placed in easy reach. Lightning Dust glanced over her shoulder as she talked.

“We all got recruited the same way. Purple princess shows up, save Equestria, big reward at the end, yada yada. She might check in but she’s not running the nitty-gritty, that’s Illusionist’s job. Oh, we have call signs, always use them off the ship. Basic OPSEC. You’re Prowler, I’m Soldier, that moron Blueblood is Charmer. You’ll meet Illusionist, Tinker, and Caster in a minute.”

We went down a cramped set of stairs, into another corridor, and through a steel door. It led to a well-lit room with a huge round table in the middle, covered in a giant map of Equestria. The map had dozens of tiny plastic figures on top, as well as a bunch of papers. In one corner of the room there was an analytical engine, and in another a strange metal machine I’d never seen before. There were more tables at the side of the room, buried in papers, and every inch of wall surface had a corkboard on it, pinned thick with maps, papers, photos, financial returns, and a maze of red string connecting it all.

Four ponies were already in the room. There were two unicorns I didn’t know feeding documents into the analytical engine. Blueblood was reading a file. The other—

“Trixie?” I said. “You’re working here too?”

Lightning Dust laughed and slapped me on the back. “Working here? That’s Illusionist. She’s the one who recommended you.”

A year back or so I was bouncing at the Yin-Yang Bar in Fillydelphia—they wanted a cook but wussed out when they found out I was a griffon—and this unicorn called Trixie was tending bar. I wouldn’t say I liked her, but I respected her for two reasons: first, she was the only pony there who was surlier than me, and second, she was the only pony there stealing more than I was. Buybacks, pickpocketing, counterfeit change, topping up 90-bit bottles of Ascot Reserve with 9-bit bottles of Ole Crow Sippin’ Whisky, fake cloakroom scams, you name it and she had a hoof in it. She was in a real hurry to get bits. We worked together on a few hustles, and in the end held a rigged poker game together on pay day with the entire bar crew and a few choice customers. We both skipped town that night a few large richer. She was alright. Kinda tight-wound, but she had her head screwed on straight.

Also, Fillydelphia is a dump. I hope this war gets rolling just long enough to burn the place down.

Trixie raised her head from the documents she was reading and smiled at me. That was weird. She looked pretty much the same as last I’d seen her—blue coat, silver mane hanging down her neck and withers, silly purple cape—but I’d never really seen her smile before. Most of the time she looked like she wanted to stab whoever she was talking to right in the mouth, and the closest she’d come to smiling was a poison smirk.

“Gilda,” she said. “It’s so good to have you join our magnificent team!”

“Nice to see you too, Trix. Didn’t think I’d see you again after Fillydelphia.”

She laughed, and it was definitely not her usual laugh. Way less world-domination in there. “You almost didn’t, but my fortunes as of late have been matched only by my tremendous talents. How have things been for you?”

I grinned. “I’m an ex-pat griffon in Equestria. Money’s great and food’s terrible. Same as ever.” I looked over the round table. “So what do you do here? You’re ‘Illusionist,’ right?”

“You are correct. Trixie’s roles here are many and multifaceted. Aside from my unparalleled—” there was a cough from one of the other two unicorns that she totally ignored “—magical skills, I handle strategic planning, resource requisition, and assign tasks. I’m also the one who liaises with Doctor Princess Twilight Sparkle to ensure our plans have approval and to receive any additional orders.”

It took me a second to read between the lines. “...She put you in charge.”

Trixie’s smirk could melt steel. “Yes.”

“Has she met you?”

Something crept over that smirk—embarrassment?—and she coughed. “More than once. Our dear leader gave Trixie this role because I, ahem, have the most hooves-on experience with hostile takeovers of entire territories...”

I raised a brow. “You never told me that story.”

“It hadn’t happened yet,” she huffed. “I might deign to tell you later, after we have both been fed an intimidating quantity of gin. Anyway, enough of this! Ponies and griffons, gather round, we have much to discuss!”

I took a seat at the round table. Blueblood, Lightning Dust, and the two unicorns did the same. I twigged that the two unicorns were twins—a pair of stallions with off-yellow coats and white-and-red manes, both wearing striped waistcoats. One had an ugly mustache.

Trixie said, “Flim, Flam, our new arrival is Gilda, call sign Prowler, and the final member of our team. Gilda, the stallion on the left is Flim,” she pointed to the clean-shaven one, “call sign Caster, our other magic specialist. His handsome brother is Flam, call sign Tinker, our resident technomancer.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Gilda,” said the mustachioed one, “Isn’t it just, brother?”

“I’m elated!” said the unmustachioed one.

“Excited!”

“Indubitably delighted!”

Trixie coughed, and continued. “You’ve already met Lightning Dust and Prince Blueblood, so—”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, “he’s actually Prince Blueblood? The Prince-Prince, from Canterlot? Not like, his brother or something?”

“Yes, I am Polaris Blueblood, Prince of Canterlot,” he said, looking miffed. “No, I am not my brother Procyon. He has no role in this endeavor, and every mare, stallion and foal in Equestria should sleep easier for that one fact.”

I looked at him. “How come you’re part of this? Shouldn’t you be out there grabbing more land for your demesne like every other noble?”

He was about to respond, but Lightning Dust cut in. “Because somepony didn’t get a demesne,” she cackled.

“The demesne of Canterlot belongs jointly to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, sad to say,” said Flim, not looking sad at all.

“When the demesnes were passed around, poor Blueblood the elder was passed over like chopped endives at Hearth’s Warming!” said Flam.

“Yes, the tragedy of it,” said Blueblood, sardonically. “Nevertheless, I still volunteered to be part of this operation. Some of it is boredom, some of it is a surely-misplaced sense of noblesse-oblige, but for the most part I’ve simply decided that if I can’t have a demesne and a pet war to go along with it, I’ll be damned to Tartarus if any of my chums at the country club can.” He took out a silver cigar case, pulled a slim cigar out, and silently offered it around the table before clipping and lighting it. “As delightful as this digression is, we doubtless have more important things to discuss.”

Trixie nodded. She seemed to glow a little every time the attention turned back to her. Her horn lit up and the papers and mess disappeared from the table, leaving only the giant map and the plastic markers. She said, “As you all know, Equestria stands on the brink of civil war. Every noble in control of a demesne now has the legal right to invade and conquer any neighboring territories. These conflicts might not begin with bloodshed, but we can’t expect them to continue cleanly.

Her horn lit up, and a hundred wriggling, snake-like lines popped up all over the map of Equestria. “There are one-hundred and fifteen demesnes in Equestria. Of these, forty-one have no military or economic capacity—” several lined-off areas glowed red, and faded into larger areas “—and can already be said to be absorbed into larger demesnes. This leaves seventy-four ‘true’ demesnes.

A couple dozen areas flashed blue. “Of the remaining seventy-one demesnes, between twenty and thirty either lack critical resources and must rely on their neighbors, or lack the economic and military strength of neighboring demesnes. We predict that they will form alliances with stronger nobles almost immediately, both to avoid conquest and to join in the possible spoils.

Nine areas flashed red. “Nine demesnes are immediate, serious threats. Either their economic power, their military might, or their proximity to critical locations mean they could snowball, expanding their area of conquest before anypony could stop them. If any one of these demesnes get lucky and don’t get embroiled in a stalemate with another party, they could essentially split Equestria in half. With sufficient territory they could become independent states who negotiate with the Royal Pony Sisters, not answer to them.

“There are dozens of potentially critical locations—the Satin Trail, the Californeigh Reservoirs, Site Redacted to name a few—that could cause chaos if captured, but we don’t know enough about the nobles and their forces to see who could take advantage yet. Prowler and Charmer retrieved a set of financial and legal information for many of them. Flam, has the analytical engine finished cross-referencing them with the information the Princess gave us?”

A ‘ding’ rang out from across the room, and Flam said, “It has now, my dear!” A crystal popped out of the analytical engine. Flam levitated it across the room, and plugged it into a hole at the base of the map table.

The table shimmered, and the images rose off it. Each demesne now had a hovering set of words and numbers above it. They listed the noble houses and heads of houses, the total wealth of each demesne, the current military capacity, lists of probabilities, closest known critical locations, and a dozen other bits of trivia.

All over the map, more information popped up. Weather patterns, magic lines, points of interest. Shipping lines over the Southern Seas. Wind currents over the Western Ocean. Towns I’d never heard of over the Giant’s Tears Lakes to the west, just before Californeigh and Neighvada and Las Pegasus. Thick, dense text over Baltimare, Manehattan and Fillydelphia to the east, Trottingham and Hoofington to the south, Stalliongrad, Highfrench and the Moon River Delta to the north. The boxes of text were even color coded: the closer to grey each hovering box was, the less reliable the information.

There were a lot of grey boxes.

“As I’m sure you can all see, there are some hinky bits with our current map,” said Flam.

“What my brother is trying to say is, it’s a hot mess,” said Flim.

“Not perhaps the nicest way of putting it, brother, but—”

“—unfortunately—”

“—correct. It seems that our previous information was far too simple. Now it looks like half of all demesnes could be serious, immediate, threatening and all that. And that’s before we get into who is friends with who.”

“We’re better off than you think in that regard,” said Blueblood. “Give me an hour with this map and I can figure out half of the who’s who problems. Give me ten minutes at a party in Canterlot and I’ll figure out the rest. My noble peers will be dying to spill their guts to anypony who has the class to know what they’re talking about but demesnes to be a threat. I’m a budding generalissimo’s dream confidant.”

Lightning Dust shook her head and muttered darkly. “It’s a strategist’s worst nightmare. Even if Celestia and Luna roused the Canterlot Guard and conscripted every mare and stallion in Canterlot, they could maybe take a third of Equestria before the other two-thirds split off.”

“We’re here to make that unnecessary,” said Trixie. “If we stop the nobles from getting their war on immediately, they can be dealt with one at a time until Celestia and Luna cut away enough of the legalities to stop the war outright. Our plan stays the same: First, cut off funding for as many nobles as possible to stop them from raising armies. Second, stop well-prepared nobles from deploying their armies through threats and blackmail. Third, cripple and sabotage the forces of any nobles who cannot be dissuaded.”

I waved a claw and said, “Wait, wait, sorry, but this don't make sense. Ever since I heard about the civil war thing, there's something I just don't get about what we're doing.”

“How so?”

“All the sneaking around. I mean, nothing wrong with it but I don’t get why you need it. You’ve got two rulers who are almost gods. They’re monarchs, like, I get that you’ve got a parliament and local councils and a house of lords, but they’re basically running stuff because Celestia and Luna let them. Why not just come on down from the sky in all that golden shiny crap and tell each and every noble that they’re been stripped of their title and that if they try to raise so much as an erection they’ll get punted straight moonwards?” I asked.

“I believe I can answer that,” said Blueblood. “The short answer is that it will cause more chaos and destruction than letting a civil war happen. Do you know what a ‘currency run’ is?”

I looked at him dubiously. “Never did economics. Only did home economics. I flunked it.”

“Well, do you know what a bank run is?”

I wracked my brains for a moment, then snapped my talons. “Yes! Somebird starts a rumor that a bank has no money and is going to close, so everybird wings it over there to take their money out. All the money gets taken out, and now even if they could pay their debts, now they can’t. The bank fails, and everypony betting against the bank gets rich.”

“That’s right. Everypony is convinced that the bank can’t honor their debts, so they rush to grab whatever they can before the whole edifice falls over.”

“Still not getting it, dude. Even if that happened to like, the entire Equestrian Bit, that can’t be as bad as a civil war.”

Blueblood smiled wanly. “Bits aren’t the only currency that my aunts have issued, I’m afraid. For example, you’re from the Kingdoms, correct?”

“Yeah, Griffhala.”

“And over there you have a somewhat tense relationship with the Canine’s Independent Democratic Republican Free Parliamentary Definitely-Not-A-Junta Dog State, yes?”

“Who? Oh, you mean those punk-ass diamond dogs in the foothills. Screw those dweebs. Nah, we don’t get along. Every once in a while we send scouting parties over to mess with them, especially when they send over some malachite-sucking dorks to steal our stuff.”

“Why isn’t there a full-scale war?”

“If there was, we’d win it. Most of the time, anyway. Also, there’s treaties and stuff. If things get too hot, a bunch of minotaurs, ponies and camels would step in.”

“Yes, the security council for the Southern Alliance. What would happen if the dogs launched a full invasion say, this weekend during the Spring Hunt, and the camels—who don’t get along particularly well with the Kingdoms these days—voted against intervening?”

“Hmm. The minotaurs are cool, and Equestria would kick off about it. They’d both vote for intervention and win, two-to-one.”

“Correct. Now, imagine a world where the camels point out that Equestria has just broken contracts based on the exact same powers and exact same vows as their relationship with the Southern Alliance. They then claim that Equestria must recuse themselves from the vote, and that if the minotaurs move without majority backing—which without Equestria, they do not have—that all contracts between the minotaurs and the camels are also void.”

“...Yeah I think we’d have a problem.”

“Every one of the hundreds and hundreds of nobilities that my aunts have commended over the past two millennia rests on the same legal foundation. Princess Celestia gelded the nobility in other fashions, but Princess Luna’s recent actions caused a flare-up, as it were. Nobilities were always reciprocal, always gifted in exchange for something, gold, knowledge, bravery, something of value, never given freely. The prospect of war between demesnes was never such a problem in the past because Equestria had adapted to constant, low-level infighting. Now we do not have that dubious luxury

He continued, “Worse yet, nine-tenths of all the international agreements that Equestria has a part in are based on that same foundation. Trade laws. Anti-piracy agreements. Banking regulations. Peace treaties that stop half the world’s population from conquering the other half. Everything based on Equestria being a viable mediator. The worst case scenario would no longer be a civil war. It would be a world war.”

“Huh,” I said, nodding. “Well damn. You’re kinda screwed whatever we do then, aren't you? ‘Cause six of us and one demesne might be able to slow down a war, but we’ll never stop it completely if the others want it bad enough. And if the Princesses can’t order the nobles to stand down, it’s just a matter of time.”

Blueblood genuinely smiled for the first time since the meeting had started. “Not exactly. See, the nobilities are legal constructs, and so simply ignoring them would open the proverbial Gates of Tartarus. However, laws can be changed and reinterpreted. My aunties will have their work cut out for them and many lawyers in Canterlot will be sleeping on giant beds of money, but they can strip the nobility of their ‘the-time-is-right-for-a-great-big-fight’ privileges. They have more power in the courts than even the warriest and lawwyest of my noble peers do. Still, this will take time. In six months they will have made major strides, but in six months, Equestria could be three different countries.”

“Unless we step in.”

He beamed. “Precisely.”

“In any case,” said Trixie, “this new information is disturbing. We have eight days to initiate Operation Show Stopper at the limit. We should prepare immediately. Blueblood, the Cherryblossom Ball is tomorrow, yes?”

Blueblood grinned, puffing away on his cigar. “Indeed. Lightning Dust, Gilda, dig out your tuxedos and gilded feathers. We have a party to crash.”

INTERLUDE: He's The Champion Of Nothing!

Twilight didn’t bother to knock before entering. She’d left a message at the reception of the Grand Brassica Hotel to tell the prince that she’d be there at seven on the dot, and if she knocked now he’d likely make her wait ten minutes at the door while he made himself ‘presentable.’ Instead, she leeched the safety charm out of the door, deposited it in a small lump of activated axinite, and teleported directly inside the room.

Prince Blueblood started when the alicorn appeared behind him, but quickly composed himself. He turned his head a quarter-inch, and looked at her from the side of his eye, keeping his attention on the mirror and the comb.

His voice came low and short. “You brought the package?”

Twilight held aloft a paper bag the size of a picnic hamper in her telekinesis. “Of course.”

Prince Blueblood stood up and shook water from his mane. “Outstanding. Allow me to put things in order, and then we can proceed.”

He walked across the spacious hotel room and past his spacious bed until he reached the desk at the edge of the room. He lifted the granite-and-steel desk and pushed it into the center of the room, thews and sinews rippling as he did so. His gym-sculpted figure was not purely for vanity, only mostly.

His horn lit in a pale-yellow nimbus and two chairs drifted out of the closet, folded in on themselves in a way that was dizzying to look at. He blinked and grunted as his magic worked, and the two chairs unfolded. Each one was placed at opposite ends of the desk, and one was held out for Twilight to sit on. She giggled.

“You really went out and got a pair of seats from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns cafeteria?” she asked.

He leaned back on his seat and flashed an easy smile. “I was feeling a touch of nostalgia, old chum.”

“You strolled on down to the school, reeking of alcohol, and borrowed a pair of chairs?”

“Borrowed?” His brow furrowed. “Heavens no, I just strolled in and took them. It’s never too early for a stallion of my standing to develop a reputation for eccentricity, after all.”

Twilight raised a brow. Blueblood relented. “Oh fine, I sent a pony to fetch them for me. You arranged this whole thing at quite short notice, and I was busy.”

“I can see,” said Twilight, looking over the room. It obviously hadn’t been cleaned for more than a day. The bed was unmade and tangled, The floor was littered with discarded clothes, books and magazines. The prince’s grooming kit was scattered around the mirror, and there seemed to be damp towels hanging from every conceivable surface. Plates, espresso mugs, and drinking glasses dotted the room.

Prince Blueblood was not his usual pinnacle of perfection tonight. His eyes were glassy and bloodshot and even though he had showered minutes ago he still stank of strong alcohol. Under his eyes were deep bags that spoke of many Neighples coffees and little beauty sleep. He hadn’t shaved for at least a week, and a patchy, woolly, golden beard had sprouted over his cheeks and jawline. Traces of whatever he’d been drinking had crusted at the edges of his lips.

“So, my Princess,” said Blueblood, leaning forward to peek into the hamper-sized bag. “What do you have for us tonight?”

Twilight smirked and shifted the bag just out of reach. “You’re not going to offer your guest a glass of that wine you’ve been quaffing since ten in the morning?”

Blueblood looked aghast. “Wine? Wine? Princess, this is no time for wine! Wine is the drink for quiet celebrations, for sipping at the sight of a delightful sunset, for relaxing with a good book. It is a drink of calm melancholy and quiet love, a drink for sweeter times, the drink that makes the present perfect. No, not a damned drop of wine has touched my lips since my blasted aunt started this blasted business with these blasted demesnes. I require a stronger drink to cut through my troubles.”

“Let me guess, you’re drinking the finest, smokiest, peatiest, most masculine Shetland whisky from the depths of the royal cellars?”

He grunted dismissively. “Whisky? Twilight, my dear, I’m the Crown Prince of Equestria, not some well-to-do accountant having a mid-life crisis.” He lifted a bottle of champagne, a fifth of vodka, and a gallon of freshly-squeezed orange juice onto the table, along with a pair of flute glasses. “I’m necking champagne screws by the dozen. Care to try one?”

Twilight nodded, and so the prince took the glasses and poured in a measure of vodka, a measure of orange juice on top, and a measure of champagne to follow. He sunk a tendril of his magic into each glass and stirred gently. As the tendrils withdrew, a stillness fell over the ripples in the glass, and he slid one across the table.

Twilight took the glass and lifted it, pausing an inch before her lips. Smirking, she said, “Hey, isn’t there some rich-pony rule against stirring cocktails with magic?”

Blueblood snorted. “Pah, a rule made by pretentious gusset-snufflers who couldn’t tell pinot noir from peanut brittle. Princes can stir their cocktails however they damn well please.”

Twilight let the glass touch her lips, and took a long, slow sip. She smacked her lips, and nodded. “I’ve got no complaints.”

“Only the best,” he said, before drinking half his glass in a single pull. “Now stop being coy and take out the takeout. If I don’t fortify myself good and quick, all this tipple will go to my head.”

A series of white card boxes floated out of the bag and settled to the table, doodled stasis-runes glowing faintly on their sides. “I asked the maitre ‘d at le Persil Or what you normally get, and she tells me you already sent your order in via the hotel telegramophone. I don’t know why you made me go pick it up instead of, y’know, just having it delivered.”

“Well, if I’d had it delivered it would have either arrived before you did and I’d be sitting alone in my room and willing myself not to start without you, or it would have arrived after you and we’d be sitting here getting steadily more blotto until we both forgot whatever business we had in the first place.”

Twilight rolled her eyes, and opened the box labelled ‘1’. The lid contained a pair of unfolding paper plates which she laid out, and then divided up the six bite-sized appetizers inside the box between them.

“Potato skins stuffed with caviar,” said Blueblood. “I thought you might like to try some classical pegasus food, now that, uh...” He made a hoof gesture towards the wings on her back.

She lifted one to her mouth and took a bite. The briny, salty pearly popped gently in her mouth, surrounded by the rough, hearty crunch of the baked potato skins. A clean taste, like a swim in the summer ocean. She took a second bite, and then a third, and then moved on to the next skin.

Between bites, she said, “They’re growing on me.”

“So,” began Blueblood, after eating the first skin, “I know that this is vitally important business and whatnot, but I’d feel a tad embarrassed just jumping straight in. Declasse, almost. I thought we should have small-talk first, and get to the point just as we start the main course. How’s your brother?”

“He still hates you.”

“Ah. He’s consistent, I’ll give him that. Hmm. You still have those friends of yours, I take it?”

Twilight looked at him flatly. “Yes, Polaris, I have friends.”

He lifted his hooves in mock surrender. “All right, all right! I simply remember a purple, pint-sized magic tutor of mine from some years back that never had time for such things.”

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up. I had my study group. And I had you I guess.”

Blueblood dabbed at his lips and scruffy beard with a napkin, and topped up both drinks. “For what that’s worth, yes. I must say, though, I don’t think I’d have survived my last three years of Celestia’s School if you hadn’t turned up.”

Twilight blushed. “Come on, I helped you pass a few mathematics and magic exams. You’d have graduated without me.”

“Not so much the help, though I’d never have earned that merit in applied thaumaturgy without your all-nighters. No, for the first few years of school all I heard was ‘work harder than the prince!’ and ‘Blueblood what did you get on that test,’ and ‘prove you’re smarter than the Crown Prince of Equestria,’ and it drove me quite mad. By the time I started my fourth year, they’d already cleared a space on the common room corkboard to pin my results for everypony to see and compare.

Prince Blueblood took a swig of his cocktail, and lifted the glass excitedly. “And then you arrived, my tiny savior! A twelve-year old prodigy who had already passed the third-year magic tests with a distinction. Celestia’s personal protege no less! Suddenly nopony cared about beating some prince, it was all about keeping up with the school’s resident genius. Then the only subjects anypony cared to measure themselves against me were jousting scores and bedroom notches, and I thoroughly trounced everypony at both. Your tutoring was simply icing on the cake.”

Twilight sipped her drink and giggled. “It’s nice to be appreciated.”

“Quite. Anyway, I take it your friendship-friendship-magic-friends are all well?” he asked, finishing his last bite of potato skin.

“They’re good. Most of them have even forgotten you.”

“Oh yes, I met a few, didn’t I?” The hint of a smile crossed his lips as he took the next dish from the takeout bag. He popped the rune-crossed cardboard tray open to reveal scrambled eggs on toast, next to sauteed on-the-vine cherry tomatoes and black-eyed beans with cumin and coriander. He dished them out onto more paper plates, and summoned a set of silver cutlery. He took another pull of his champagne screw, and began to eat. “Well, asides from Pinkie Pie, everypony knows Pinkie Pie. But I do recall meeting two others, Purity and Apple Tart was it?”

Twilight gave an irritated snort. “Rarity and Applejack. You were rude to both of them, even by your frankly unimpressive standards. I was half-surprised that Rarity didn’t demand satisfaction.”

“Mmm. Shame, that. It was quite a fun evening, otherwise.”

Twilight simply rolled her eyes and took a bite of food. The toasted rye was thick with a satisfying crunch behind it, and the scrambled eggs were smooth and velvety, almost an immensely-thick sauce rather than an actual portion of food. The taste of truffle shavings lingered on her tongue well after each bite. Even the sip of bubbly, citrusy cocktail she took afterwards did not wash it away entirely.

“You know, I like you more when you’re not being an insufferable, snobbish bastard to everypony you meet. I mean, Hay, if you were that bored you could at least have come and hung out with me while I had to greet every single noble in Canterlot for two hours.”

“I was having a little me time, excuse me for not being perfectly composed every minute of the day,” whined Blueblood. “Hardly my fault that your friend made me her date by fiat, or that your other friend sold commoner’s nosh at the Grand Galloping Gala.”

“The Apple Clan make some of the best food in Equestria. Those are your aunts’ words, by the way.”

Blueblood paused to pop a cherry tomato into his mouth and said, “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong as such with commoner food or the way commoners eat. I’ll still sit down and eat with you after all, even though you persist in holding a knife and fork like you’re dual-wielding a pair of cartridge pens.”

“I don’t care what your etiquette manual says! It’s the most efficient way to apply force to my food!”

“It clinks against the plate and it’s quite uncouth. My point is, while Miss Applejack’s deep-fried grease-soaked apple-flavored cholesterol injections might indeed be delicious, they were not suited to the Gala. It’s like bringing jello shots to a wine tasting.”

Twilight shook her head and tried a cherry tomato, the flesh giving the lightest bit of resistance before flooding her mouth with hot, zesty tomato juice. “Fine, then. Let’s talk about your friends instead.”

Blueblood froze for a moment, looking straight at her and chewing his mouthful of food slowly. After swallowing, he said, “What of my ‘friends?’”

“Well,” said Twilight, “I’d imagine they’re all pretty busy with this demesne business. Hundreds of nobles and families, all finding out they have new rights and new powers, and that they can earn further fortune and fame for their families if they act quickly, or lose everything if they don’t. So exciting...”

“Yes. Quite.” Blueblood set his half-eaten slice of toast down gently on the plate.

“I mean, I heard—I only heard this mind you—that the Canterlot Joust is off this year because so many competitors and owners have pulled out to deal with their new gifts. I don’t remember the Joust being cancelled since, I dunno. Not in my lifetime.”

“No. Not in thirty years.”

“It’s very surprising. I’d imagine you’re disappointed too. You weren’t competing this year, but this was your first time coaching a team, right?”

“It was.” Blueblood’s knife-and-fork clinked down onto the plate next to the half-eaten toast.

“So, Blueblood, who are you with?”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, you know every noble in Canterlot who owns a demesne, and know the families of everypony who owns a demesne in all of Equestria. I know you got passed over for your own demesne, what with Canterlot exclusively belonging to Princess Celestia, but any lord with their head screwed on straight would want you in their team for your connections alone. I’m sure a few would even offer to split their domain, so you could really get in on that sweet, empire-building action. I’d be shocked if you hadn’t got a half-dozen offers this morning alone! So, Polaris Blueblood, who’s your new best friend? Who are you going to stand with?”

Blueblood stood up, red in the face and ears splayed back, and shouted, “You know damn well where I stand!” He sat back down and snorted, forehooves on the table. A few flecks of spittle clung to his patchy beard, which he quickly wiped away with a napkin. “I may not be the true ruler of Canterlot, but this city is everything I was raised to believe in. I stand with Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and the Greater Demesne of Canterlot. Do you think for a second that I would join this new rabble that my ‘peers’ have formed out of petty pique?”

Twilight leaned back in her chair and simply shrugged, saying nothing.

“Don’t shrug at me, godling,” he spat. He sighed heavily, shifting in his seat. “I... I suppose I’ve always known that I’d be little more than a paragraph in the history books. I accept this. They say ‘a mare’s grasp should not exceed her reach’ and I agree. When ponies make mad gambles for power and glory it rarely ends well for the gambler, and rarer still for the ponies around him.” He paused to drain his drink once more, and this time let Twilight refill it for him. “I did not expect this. It will be, at best, the death knell of the Equestrian aristocracy. When my aunts win and bring their errant foals to heel, they will make sure nothing like this happens again. They will strip away the very framework that allowed this to happen. Even if I am allowed to keep my titles, they will end with me. I will be last of the Bluebloods.

“My goals as prince and peer were modest. Pass any needed reforms. Find funding for good causes. Listen to my aunt and heed her advice well. But now... I am beyond irrelevance. After my peers are through with their collective insanity, I’ll be lucky to be remembered as Equestria’s most beautiful jousting champion.

He gave a long sigh and swirled his champagne flute, contemplating the cocktail as it twisted around the glass. “I admit, I did not expect to find myself so quickly and surely forgotten. The realisation hurt more than I had expected.” He propped his chin up with a hoof, and glanced downwards. Twilight had finished her dish. Half of Blueblood’s still remained, now quite cold.

“You know,” he said, straightening up, “I’ve entirely lost my appetite for eggs. What’s next?”

“Whole artichoke with aioli,” said Twilight, opening up the third box to reveal the spiky vegetable and dipping sauce inside. She snapped off a thick, green leaf, dipped it in the sauce, and crunched it between her teeth. Blueblood did the same.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t envy you,” said Twilight.

“Hah, I was about to say the same,” he replied. “At least I didn’t inadvertently start this whole affair?”

“I didn’t start it, that was Princess Luna,” huffed Twilight.

“Yes, and who freed her from the moon? Joking, old bean, joking!” he said, throwing his hooves up once more at Twilight’s glare.

“That’s not even fair...”

“No, it’s not. Still, I genuinely don’t envy you. You’ve been given quite the burden to bear. If I could be any use to you, I’d help you in an instant.”

“Thank you, Polaris,” said Twilight, smiling warmly. “Anyway, enough maudlin stuff. What’s your plan?”

“Pardon?”

“You know, your plan to solve this demesne business, kick a ton of rump, and earn three paragraphs in the history books.”

Blueblood barked out a harsh laugh. “My dear, you are quite mistaken. I am finished. I have no such plans, or anything even like such a plan. I have withdrawn from all usual social affairs until my so-called ‘friends’ bring themselves to talk about anything but demesnes and alliances and ‘honorable rules of combat.’ I start drinking before noon every single day. It’s Thursday night. Do you know what I do on a Thursday night? I go to a restaurant with a peer or some noveau riche businesspony or a few models and have a high time while I secretly write the restaurant review column for the Canterlot Times. No longer, now I stew in a hotel room, get drunk, and eat takeout. Look at me, for Heaven’s sake!” he cried, pointing at his scraggly blond beard. “I look like a surf bum!”

“I see where you’re coming from,” said Twilight. “Except that’s the biggest pack of lies I’ve heard all week. And yesterday, I spoke to an investment banker.”

“I’m not lying. You want to know what my plans are? First, hide in my hotel room until I can tolerate being in public again. Second, write a memoir that paints me as an ineffectual and harmless critic of these crazed times, so that whoever wins, I don’t get made into a wonderful scapegoat. Third, drink until I forget what a demesne is. There. Those are my plans.”

Twilight laughed and shook her head. There was the slightest tinge of red to her cheeks, the alcohol finally affecting her. “Polaris, it’s good to know you can still lie with a straight face. Do you really think I’ve completely forgotten what it’s like being around you? Do you want to know how I know that you’re preparing for something?”

Blueblood crossed his fores, and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “No I don’t.”

“Go on. Humor me.”

“Fine. Tell me.”

Twilight grinned smugly, polished off the rest of her cocktail, and stood up. “I remember—I know—what your moods are, and how you react to them. If you were elated, you’d be going to parties and holding charity balls and ignoring anyone who didn’t help puff your ego. If you were bored, you’d be out rutting, and my sources tell me you have not been out rutting. If you were feeling melancholy, you’d be playing the piano and reading poetry. Oh, and writing deliberately bad poetry, too.

“You’re not feeling elated, or bored, or melancholy. You’re feeling bitter and overlooked and wanderlusty. When you get those feelings, you practice card tricks and read pulp adventure novels. I can see a pile of books on the floor next to your bed and one of the spines looks an awful lot like ‘Amazing Tales from the Far East,’ so check, and there’s an open pack of cards on your bedside table, so another check. Still, there’s a tea saucer balanced on top of the cards and you don’t have an open book on your pillow, which means you haven’t been doing either since at least this morning, which means you’ve moved on from idle fantasizing to something more.

“You haven’t been hidden in your room all the time, you’ve been going to the gym every single morning. There are enough sweaty gym towels on the floor to prove it, and that one there is both fresh and kinda gross. You got back from the gym just before you showered and let me in.”

“I didn’t let you in, you teleported in.”

“Semantics. Lazy beard or not, you’re pushing yourself hard. Over there on your writing table. Several well-used notepads, and a pile of books next to them. Could be poetry, but I don’t think so. That thick burgundy hardback looks suspiciously like that copy of Clover the Clever’s The Science of War that you borrowed from the school library one year and never returned. In fact—and honestly, I’m just guessing at this point—I’d say that somewhere in this room is also your fencing gear, your little black book of blackmail secrets, and that forgery kit we made for your seventh-year science project. Also, at some point in the last forty-eight hours, you have mentally thought out a list of peers whose wives or husbands you will sleep with as a ruse for ‘intelligence gathering.’”

Prince Blueblood threw his hooves in the air. “Fine! Yes, okay! I admit it, I’ve been... preparing. For something. But I don’t have a plan! I have two notebooks of terrible, crossed-out not-plans, and a third note book of hypothetical map sketches. They’re relaxing.”

Twilight crossed her fores on the table, leaned forward, and looked directly into his eyes. “Maybe the reason you haven’t come up with a workable plan is that you need the right perspective.”

“Oh?” asked Blueblood. His eyes widened. “You have a plan.”

“Maybe.” She glanced at the take-out bag. “What’s next on the menu?”

“Dessert, but never mind that. You have a plan. Not a panic-plan either, you’re perfectly calm, so it’s a good plan.”

“What’s for dessert?”

“Damn dessert straight to Tartarus and seal the gates behind it, what’s the plan?”

“Get the dessert out and I’ll tell you.”

“Fine,” said Blueblood, and so he unboxed the final course from the takeout bag, and Twilight told him her plan, and as she spoke he dished out the desserts, and as she spoke his eyes grew wider at points and his grin grew wider at others, and as he ladled out the sauce and set the knives and forks down at their proper positions Twilight finished telling him her plan and gave him a moment to soak it all in.

Twilight stuck a fork into the desert and pulled a portion loose. She dipped it in the custard, blew on it, and began to eat. “Mmmm. This is good. I missed this.”

Blueblood just threw his head back and laughed. “Heavens above, Twilight, I didn’t think you had it in you!”

“Mmhm?”

“Well, it’s just... dark. It’s the sort of thing I’d expect from Auntie Luna. When she’s in a bad mood.”

“There’s no killing,” said Twilight, reproachfully. “Not even petrification.”

“Yes, and there could well be a plethora of those two things if this demesne business carries on much longer. By Sol, your plan doesn’t half look fun.”

“I thought you’d say that,” said Twilight, a wry smile on her lips. “I still need a team, though.”

“Why? You’ve got me, you’ve got your magical friendship division—oh.” Blueblood smirked. “You’re not getting them involved. You haven’t even told them, have you? No doubt you either think they lack the fortitude for such dark work, or you think they do have the fortitude and don’t want to leave them with this on their conscience.”

Instead of snapping back, Twilight looked down, guilt written over her expression. “Little of A, little of B...” she mumbled. Looking up, she said, “Blueblood, I didn’t come to you just—”

Blueblood walked around and slapped her on the back. “Twilight, honestly, I know. You have good friends, you probably feel guilty for exposing your friends to such a mess in the first place—that noblesse oblige lark is a real stinker, I should know—and you don’t want to drop them further in the midden-hole. I scrapped half-a-dozen plans that involved using my jousting team as a crack suicide squad for that exact reason. So, you need ponies who either have the strength of will for such deeds, or ones whom you simply don’t care if they get a little morally tarnished. I’d hope, given our long friendship, that I’m in the former category—”

“Little of A, little of B,” interrupted Twilight, smirking.

“—but really, it hardly matters. I think it’s a fine plan.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. You didn't even flinch when I mentioned the kidnappings. I don’t know if I should be grateful or kinda terrified.”

Blueblood sat back down and waved her off. “Please, I put up with worse as a fagging colt. Either way, I’m with you.” He took a sniff of the steam coming off his dessert. “Mmmm, and my appetite is back, too. I do love spotted dick and custard.”

Twilight nodded, finishing another mouthful of the pudding. “I didn't realise you were so—mmhm—nostalgic for Celestia’s School.”

“The feeling strikes me every once in a while. I miss a few things. Playing pranks. Fighting in empty classrooms. Stealing out of one pony’s bag and hiding it in another pony’s. Sneaking about the grounds after curfew. Endless plotting against rivals. That sort of lark.”

“And there I was, actually studying...” said Twilight, rolling her eyes.

“Good thing too, or we wouldn’t have a plan. Do you have any thoughts on who you’re recruiting next?”

“A few names, but I haven’t really decided yet. Why, got any ideas?”

“Well,” said Blueblood, leaning back in his chair, “if you’re going to do this much trickery, I’d advise finding a pony who can pull off a damned good trick.”

4. How's Your Backyard Barbecue Going, Fancy Pants

I slept my first night on the Summer Breeze in a cabin near the stern of the ship, lulled off by the whump-whump of the propellers. Instant coffee and half an orange for breakfast. We’d spent last night planning, and we spent the morning drilling our plans. Just before noon, the team met in the command center for the final run-over.

Trixie stood in front of the whiteboard, waving her pointer like a magic wand. “The Cherryblossom Ball will be held tonight at the country manor of Fancy Pants as a sort-of diplomatic-meet-up-slash-moot. Most of Equestria’s demesne-holders will be in attendance, or at least have agents present. They will be making alliances, spying on enemies, and establishing rules of engagement before outright hostilities begin.

“We have three goals. The first, information gathering. We want to monitor every conversation that occurs during the party, and thanks to the work of Tinker and our royal benefactor, we have the magical means to do this. The second, targeted intelligence. Charmer, Caster and I will blend into the party and directly elicit information from guests. The third, sabotage and opportunistic attacks. We will spread disinformation, attempt to disrupt major alliances, and if possible, extract high-value targets.

“We will operate in three teams. Charmer, Caster and I are Martini Team. We will enter the grounds as Charmer’s coterie, and activate magical disguises once inside. Tinker and Soldier are Party Favors Team. They will work from a mobile base outside the premises, coordinating the teams, providing equipment, and staying on-call for emergency escape or extraction of high-value targets. Prowler is Icepick Team. Her role is to create holes in security, distribute surveillance bugs before the guests arrive, and scout for traps.

“The party begins at seven p.m. sharp. We will return to our designated extraction points by nine the following morning. Any questions?”

I stuck a claw up. “Yeah, when you say ‘extract high-value targets,’ you mean alive, right?”

She nodded. “Yes. Assassination is strictly off limits unless expressly ordered by the princess. If we cause any negligent deaths, this operation will be disbanded.”

Lightning Dust chuckled. “What’s the big deal, Gilda, I thought griffons were cold killers?”

“Yeah, ponies do think that,” I said. “Guess what part of town gets firebombed if there’s ever a suspicious pony death. “

“The donkeys, usually.”

“Yeah, well, after them. I might fight and steal, but anybird dumb enough to kill a pony doesn’t last long, especially when the community leaders in Little Pinionsburg are happy to hand over a griffon corpse if it’ll stop them from being run out of town.”

“Regardless,” said Trixie, shutting our tangent down, “there will be no killing, and we will only extract targets if a safe opportunity presents itself. Any more questions? No? Excellent.”

She cast a spell and the whiteboard rippled and shifted with metallic grey blobs, darkening until the entire thing was a black mirror. “Twilight Sparkle, are you there?” asked Trixie.

The black mirror rippled again, and a purple alicorn appeared on the screen. She was in a big crystal room, surrounded by books. “Good morning, Trixie.”

“We are ready to begin,” said Trixie. “We merely await your resources and your go-ahead.”

Twilight beamed. “You have them both. My friends in Canterlot have acquired a sky-wagon to your specifications. There is a valet ticket for it at the Cloutsworth Hotel desk, where I have booked rooms for all of you through a third party. There are additional disguises and equipment waiting in your rooms.”

I looked closer at the room around the princess. She was sitting next to literal piles of books. Like, five-hundred books easy. Maybe more. Trixie must have noticed them too, since she asked, “Are you reading up on ghost stories, Sparkle?”

The Princess’s eyebrows shot up, and she looked at the books around her. “Oh! No, medicine, actually. In a manner of speaking. Oh, and before I forget, my friends at Oxfjord made some modifications to the surveillance bugs. I’ve included one for each of you, follow the instructions and you’ll be able to use them as concealed walkie-talkies. They do tingle, though. Anything else?”

“That will be all, Princess,” said Trixie. The alicorn waved goodbye, and the screen rippled black again. Trixie turned back to look at the assembled team. “Stallions and gentlemares,” she said, “we have our mission. Soldier is coordinating our actions from hereon in, we will take our orders from her until she says otherwise. Good luck.”

* * *

I found my gear in an attache case under the bed in my room at the Cloutsworth Hotel. The case was enchanted with four compartments, two held various disguises and false documents, and the other two held a variety of toys. Coded vials of strange liquids, zip-ties, bypass markers, a jar of wriggling surveillance bugs, and best of all, a set of cracking tools. The tools came with a note that read:

’Caster and Tinker said you might find these useful. I had them made to their specs.’

I took a look and whistled. Best kit I’d seen in a few years. I’d have to hang on to these.

Last, there was the earpiece. It looked kinda like the rest of the surveillance bugs—like a shrimp made from crystals and jelly—but smaller. The guide was simple enough. I held it by the tail, and dangled it into my right ear.

I stopped flopping around on the floor a minute later and got back to my paws. Zephyr, that thing tingled.

“Soldier,” I mumbled, “this is Prowler, can you hear me?”

Lightning Dust spoke words directly into my mind. “Loud and clear, Prowler. Party Favor Team is ready with the Party Wagon. Are you ready to move out?”

“I’m ready. Hey, can I talk to the others through this?”

“‘Fraid not, this model is two-way only. Don’t worry, me and Tinker will keep everypony in the loop. Good luck.”

I changed into gardeners coveralls and left the hotel. The manor was two miles south at the edge of one of Canterlot’s satellite towns. I circled around to the west of the manor and flew up to a cloud for some recon, lying in the cool fluff with the afternoon sun on my back.

The front yard was the size of a hoofball pitch, and I’m pretty sure the back gardens were measured in hectares. I could see the areas cordoned off for the party, an area about as large as the manor itself. I could also see a lot of guards.Two kinds of guards in the manor and in the gardens, a small set of muscular unicorns in floral-print shirts, and a larger force of ponies in dark suits and dark glasses. The former were likely bodyguards for this Fancy Pants dude, and the latter bouncers hired for the party.

That was just on the grounds, though. On the fields outside of the gardens, there were two-dozen barrack-sized tents pitched on the grass, each with a detachment of troops. They all wore subtly different uniforms. Insurance, in case the diplomatic summit wasn’t diplomatic enough.

Getting into the grounds wouldn’t be a problem. There were enough holes in the patrols to sneak in over a hedge, and once I was on the grounds I could pass as a gardener. The first problem was cracking the wards. The two biggies were the magic shield and the dispelling matrix. The shield surrounded the walls of the house and formed a dome over the party area in the garden, and would stop anything unapproved from passing through. The dispelling matrix was set up over the front door. It cast a spell on everypony who walked under it that would nullify any illusions or magical disguises, even if they were applied after they entered the manor.

I slipped onto the grounds and headed for the front of the manor. The suited bouncers didn’t look twice at me, and I stayed out of sight of the bodyguards. I took a thaum-meter out from my cracking tools. The dispelling matrix would have a control center, close to the door. The meter would pick it up.

It led me to the gravel outside a ground-floor study, two windows down from the front door. I peered inside. Two bodyguards lounging back in their chairs, tables around the room covered in crystals and chalk circles, monitoring portals, and a film reel projector. They were both watching a slapstick comedy. Perfect.

I took a thin tube from the cracking kit and aimed at the projector. The tube fizzed under my claws when I pressed the button. Nothing happened for about ten seconds, before the film turned to a mess of grey static.

“The reel’s bust!” cried one of the guards.

“Aw, crabsnacks,” said the other. “C’mon, let’s grab another reel before the party starts. If I have nothing to stare at for six hours but dumb nobles and your dumb face, I’ll go stir-crazy.”

Both guards got up and left the room, locking the door behind them. I cut a hole through the glass of the window, opened it, and climbed inside. This bit requires finesse. You need to have the right kit, and you need to be smarter than the average bird.

See, you can’t just disable the dispelling matrix wholesale, or even just nullify the spell. Even if you fuss with the arcane circles well enough that the guards don’t realise it’s turned off, they only have to do a simple test to discover your meddling: try to cast an illusion spell inside the building. If they’re super-sloppy they might not do that, but if they’re that sloppy, they wouldn’t have a dispelling matrix in the first place.

Instead, you gotta find which ritual circle controls the dispelling matrix, and find which crystal controls the sensors. That crystal picks up a signal from the door frame, tells the matrix that a pony is walking under it, and the matrix then casts the spell. Now, you take a second crystal, one you brought yourself and preferably had a powerful mage prepare for you. This crystal has already been split into several parts, one part for each member of your team. You take one sliver and graft it to the sensor crystal, and this tells the sensor crystal that anything carrying a similar crystal shard is not a pony and should not be treated any differently than say, a gust of wind.

It took longer than I’d wanted, but it seemed to take. I hoped that Trixie and company would have the good sense to test a spell or two to make sure it took before they tried any real magecraft. Adding the exception to the magic shield was simpler. The shield was powered by actual unicorns, but routed through this room so that several could maintain a shield at once. I could have managed it without the crystal seed, but it made my job simpler. By the time the guards returned to the room, I was long gone.

I hid in a bush and changed into my second disguise. This one depended less on my acting skill and more on the Princess’s prep-work. If she’d done what she promised, I’d be fine. Otherwise, I’d be dropped in the cack.

I walked up the steps and rapped on the front door of the mansion. The door opened just enough for a sunglasses-wearing bodyguard to pop his head out.

“Messengers go through the trade entrance, please,” he said. He went to shut the door, but I held it open with a claw.

“Do I look like a damn messenger?” I snapped. “I’m head of security for the Griffon Kingdoms Diplomatic Envoy. Open the damn door before you cause an international incident.”

“Let him in,” came a voice from inside.

The door opened wide enough for me to step through into a decadently decorated antechamber. There were three more bodyguards inside. One looked between me and his clipboard.

“Your name, please?” she asked.

“Grizelda Greywing.”

“Credentials? Just a formality, your name is on the list, but we’ve gotta ask...”

I passed the documents over. She glanced at them, cast a quick-and-dirty scrying spell, and passed them back. “That all seems to be in order,” she said. “You’re authorized to inspect any room in the central manor, the eastern wing, or grounds. You may enter the western wing but only with an escort from the security team here, as this wing is closed off to the guests.”

I thanked her and began the second task. Ducking into a bathroom, I slipped a handful of surveillance bugs, wriggling and crawling, from the jar into my jacket pocket. I dropped one on the floor, where it scurried off into a potted fern and disguised itself in the dirt.

I began my tour of the manor. I pretended to look over my security checklist as I slipped bugs into every room I could access. The ballroom, the kitchens, the stairwells, the grand hall, the banquet hall, the dozen studies and game rooms open to the guests, the guest bedrooms, the hallways, everywhere. There were enough rooms that I had to mark them off on the blueprints that Trixie provided. I had to make a few passes to drop bugs where the bodyguards couldn’t see me. They had some wits about them, unlike the hired bouncers. The maids, cleaners and decorators were easy to deal with. It’s a perk of being a griffon: glare hard enough at a pony, and they’re happy to look literally anywhere but where you’re standing.

I caught a glimpse of the manor’s owner, Fancy Pants, as I dropped bugs under gazebos and on top of buffet tables in the gardens. He looked like a pony who had aged ten years in two weeks. You’d figure somepony with a spread like this would be happier, but no. Ponies, right?

By the time I’d done the third-floor rooms it was dusk, and guests were trickling in. I set up a metal cone in one of the bedrooms looking down onto the gardens, to work as an amplifier for the bug I’d dropped in it. We had near-perfect coverage of the party.

I saw a glint from the western wing.

The windows of the western wing were dark, but I saw something inside on, on the third floor, the counterpart to the room I was standing in. Not a maid or worker—they wouldn’t be working in the dark. I could see Fancy Pants and his partner in the garden. A pet? A family member? I looked at the blueprints. It wasn’t even a bedroom, it was a drawing room. Something was up.

The normal entrances into the western wing all had bouncers posted. I snuck into the attic in the eastern wing and made my way through. Each wing had a separate attic, but they both had skylights. The shield-bubble around the manor meant they hadn’t bothered posting aerial sentries. Sneaking from one wing to the other was just a matter of staying low and not slipping on the tiles.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I got into the third floor hallway. The door to the stairs at either end were locked, and had the key broken off inside. The carpets were scuffed in a way that carpets in a house like this weren’t.

The lock to the drawing room had been plain torn off. I oiled the hinges and slipped inside.

Lying prone on a table, facing the window, was a minotaur. He held a needle-slinger the size of a bass guitar with a bipod and a fancy scope. They were interesting toys. Press the button on the handle, and they’d fire out a crystal dart imbued with whatever magic you fancied. It could put your target to sleep, kill them outright, burst into flames, explode, freeze everything in a meter radius... I’d never seen one outside a weapons demo. Super-experimental, a ‘portable battlemage’ they’d called it. No army in the world could afford to equip more than a clawful of troops with one. I wondered where he’d picked his up.

Fighting minotaurs is simple as long as you remember to avoid the danger zones. Avoid their paws, which can crush your skull like an apple. Avoid their mouth and avoid their horns, which can tear your flesh and impale you, respectively. Avoid their elbows, which can break your sternum with a glancing blow, their knees, which can pulverize you, their shoulders, which can break you against a wall, and their buttocks, which can sit on you. Be sure to avoid their hooves, as a glancing kick against a limb can mortally wound you. Their wounds heal freakishly fast, and pain only excites them.

Okay, so fighting minotaurs is tricky. Luckily, I’d got just the thing. I took a green vial from my kit, and the cloth that came with it.

The minotaur had cut holes in the window for the needles to pass through without giving away his position, so the noises of the party carried up to the room. He was so focused on the scope that I’d have to walk in front of him to be seen. Again, lucky. If the room had been quieter, he’d have found me already.

I jumped onto his back and held the soaked cloth to his face. He grunted in surprise, tried to right himself for a moment, and then grabbed me with a meaty paw to try and haul me off. I felt my bones creak beneath his grip. I pulled my knife with my spare claw, stabbed him below the ribs, and twisted. It wouldn’t do any damage, but he inhaled from the surprise. I felt his grip weaken, and held tight until he was completely limp.

I didn’t have long to work. The sleeping draught wouldn’t last the minute, and I didn’t have enough to keep him under. First, I rolled him onto his front, pulled his arms behind him so that his elbows almost touched, and then pulled his wrists upwards until they touched each other just below his neck. I bound them together with three zip-ties. It almost dislocated his shoulders, but any other way and he could snap free by flexing. I gave him another dose of sleeping draught before I worked on the legs, they were trickier. First, I bound his hooves together. Then, I took a length of twine, tied one end around the bonds on his fetlocks, and tied the other end in a lasso around his unmentionables. If he tried to stretch his legs out or flex them, well... you get the picture.

I focused on the thing inside my ear and said, “Soldier, do you copy?”

”I hear you, Prowler, what’s your status?”

“Both barricades are down and I’ve freed the shrimp. Party Favors Team and Martini Team can move when ready,” I said. “Also, I’ve got a package. It’s a tied-up minotaur assassin, third-floor western wing, the drawing room. Can you make a pick up?”

”...You’re lucky it’s dark. Go to the room across the hallway, I’ll bring the Party Wagon up to the window.”

It took me ten minutes to drag him twenty meters to the next room, reapplying the draught once a minute to stop him from waking up and thrashing around. I hear minotaurs think it’s obscene to grab a bull by his horns, but when you’re drugged and trussed up, a bit of obscenity is probably the last thing you’re worried—okay, actually, it’s probably the first thing you’d be worried about.

Lightning Dust had the sky wagon backed right up to the window. It had ‘Roseluck’s Florists’ printed on the side. She opened the doors, revealing Flam hunched over the thaumaturgic control center inside, and gave an appraising whistle.

“Been big game hunting, huh?”

“I found this chump with a needle slinger that weighs more than I do,” I said, “I think he’d planned some big-game hunting of his own.”

Lightning Dust chuckled, and hopped out into the room. “Is he still out of it?”

“Yeah, but he won’t be for long. Minotaurs don’t stay drugged for long, and I’ve got one dose left.”

“I believe I can be of assistance,” said Flam. He rooted around in a shoebox under his console, and pulled out a funny-shaped crystal. He then placed one end between the minotaur’s lips. The bull suckled it, and relaxed where he’d begun to stir. After taping the gem into his mouth, Flam said, “The Gem of Slumber. He’ll sleep peacefully until such a time as we take it out. It’s got Caster and I out of some sticky situations, I’ll say.”

“It’s a magic pacifier,” I said.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Lightning Dust took a knife and cut away the minotaur’s barding and webbing. “Let’s see what presents this sucker has for us.”

“Uh, aren’t you guys exposed with your sky wagon sticking out from a third-floor window?” I asked.

Lightning Dust shook her head. “Nah, Tinker’s got it covered.”

Flam smiled smugly. “The wagon has a concealment charm built in, normally it would only last two minutes before dissipating, but with my know-how and your machinations with the manor’s spells earlier, the manor’s shield is actually powering the charm as long as we’re attached to the building. If anypony were to look at us, the most they would see is a minor distortion in the shielding field.”

“Yeah, yeah, give her a sloppy kiss later, look what we’ve got here!” Lightning Dust had spilled the contents of the minotaur’s satchel on the ground and was gleefully rooting through them. He had a pair of fulminating apples, spare needles for the slinger, a knife the size of my leg, half a cigar and a pack of matches, a piece of cardboard with a rough pencil drawing of the garden below on it, with distances marked for all the tables, gazebos and bandstands, and a crumpled booklet.

The booklet was four pages long, and each page had several photographs printed on it. The height, weight and cutie-mark of each subject was scrawled at the bottom of each photo.

“Definitely an assassin,” said Flam.

Lightning Dust’s eyes narrowed. “Wait, none of these guys look like nobles. Hey, I know that mare, she runs an underground fighting ring in Los Pegasus. Bitch tried to have one of my fighters kneecapped!”

I flipped through the pages myself and saw a familiar unicorn. “Somepony hired that dweeb to turn me to stone a few days ago. Starflame or something. He won’t be making it to this party, that’s for sure.”

“Just below him is an old friend of ours from Hoofington,” said Flam. “Well, I say ‘friend...’”

We looked through the booklet and found a few more familiar faces. Ponies in a similar field of work to mine. If you wanted to hire an assassin or kidnapper, this booklet wouldn’t be a bad start.

“This guy ain’t an assassin,” said Lightning Dust, “he’s a counter-skirmisher. Somepony’s getting paranoid.”

“Look at the ones on the back,” said Flam. “These ones are nobles. That’s the Earl of Hayswitch, she’s Rubyhock of Hockton, that one’s Lord Goldbuttle... They’ve all got ‘only on signal’ written on top.”

“He’s kinda an assassin, then. Whatever, let’s get him outta here. Prowler, Tinker, take a leg each, I’ll grab the shoulders...”

We hauled him inside with some effort, stuck him in the passenger seat, and draped a blanket over him. As soon as we finished, Lightning Dust put a hoof to her ear, and tuned her headset.

“Illusionist? Good... Right, I hear you, good, good—right. Good. Okay, good. That’s perfect. I’m sending Prowler down now.” She turned to look at me. “Prowler, open your attache case and grab disguise number four. Our royal benefactor rerouted a griffon diplomat. That’s who you’re impersonating.”

I opened the compartment and looked at the suit and the documents. “Wait, a cravat? A single-breasted blazer? My name’s Gilbert Bundcrest?! This dude’s a dude, how the hay am I supposed to pretend I’m him?”

Lightning Dust shrugged. “Most ponies can’t tell the difference between a mare griffon and a stallion griffon.”

“What—but—I’m obviously, blatantly a molly! Look at the way my crop fluffs up! I have purple crest feathers, for Hoelun’s sake!”

“Just drop your voice an octave and you’ll do fine,” said Flam.

Grumbling, I changed into the suit. It was a nice fit. If I was a tom, I’d have had to splash out half-large easy. At least the Princess knew a good tailor...

“Go down to the garden and meet up with Illusionist. She’ll be standing next to Charmer, and will greet you with ‘hello, old bean.’ Do you remember Ironheart Ironhoof from the briefings?” asked Lightning Dust. I nodded. She continued, “Avoid him, and brush him off if he approaches you. He wants aid from the Griffon Kingdoms, and we think it’s better if he doesn’t get it. Understood?”

“I got it. Anything else?”

“Try not to get shot.”

I left them to pack away and made my way back to the main hall. The party was in full swing now. Hundreds of guests in evening gowns and white tie, sharp-suited lawyers and bankers draining gin with shaky hooves, everypony half-ecstatic, half-terrified.

I saw a few faces from the briefings—hay, I recognised some from the papers—strolling through the halls. Two of the Brackenshin siblings, Rubyhock of Hockton drinking with Dame Periwinkle, Lord Shimmering Path sizing up the paintings on the walls... I got a few respectful nods, and a few glares. Ironhoof wasn’t the only pony expecting the diplomat, by the look of it. It was good to get into the fresh air of the gardens.

The gardens were lit by firefly-lanterns strung between dozens of plum trees. There was a band playing guitar and accordion, instead of the normal string quartet for this kind of shindig. I guess the owner was showing off his eccentricities, or he just had a thing for the ‘charmingly rustic’. Ponies had formed up into nervous mingle-groups. I heard snippets of conversation as I walked through the crowds.

“—have you tried that new cocktail they have for lunch at Buntings?”

“—tastes lovely but it looks like snot, don’t know what Mudge was thinking—”

You could tell the class of the ponies from what they were drinking. The businessponies, the bankers and the lawyers were all getting bombed. The nobles were pretending to be drunk. The servants were pretending to be sober.

“—so you’re shacking up with that Snozzencranzt harlot now, so I hear—”

“—don’t be like that, Stimothy, I don’t relish this demesne business but it’s the best way to keep my lands and my villeins, noblesse oblige and all that—”

“—only teasing, dear, just do watch out for—”

I glanced at the buffet tables and the waiters’ trays. Mostly pony food like grass. I’d kill for a stoatburger right now.

“—what of the announcement from the Royal Palace, to quell the hostilities before they begin?”

“—read between the lines, good chap, it’s obviously the diplomatic way to say that Canterlot will remain neutral, otherwise why—”

I was lost in a sea of ponies who earned more money than me. I recognised a few now, but it was mostly a crowd. I’m not in the noble-spotting business, excepting cases where they walk down dark alleys wearing lots of jewelry.

“—think you’re overstating the nature of the conflicts, for the most part it amounts to ‘capture the flag,’ where our forces will raise our standard atop the capitol hall of the next demesne over. No dirty tricks or blades, just damn big sticks and a lot of tally-ho! It’s in everypony’s best interests to keep the conflicts to a gentlemarely standard, after all.”

“But what if they don’t acquiesce, or try to escalate?”

“Well, then. I suppose that’s when we bring out the knouts and show them up for the prideful foals they are, then!”

I caught a glimpse of Ironhoof. He raised his brow and smiled at me. I raised a glass, but kept walking.

“—best plan the Royal Pony Sisters have had since the new millennium, in my opinions. It’ll stiffen the backbone of this country, right and proper!”

“But what of harmony?”

“Bah, harmony! A wonderful thing, but don’t you see we’ve swung too far? That Tirek blighter ran roughshod over us far too easily, never would have happened in the olden days! Like my nanny always said, if you want cream to have bite, you need to whip it!”

“This conflict is a good thing?”

“It’s bold! It shows vision! Why, look at what Celestia did freeing the spirit of chaos, what spine, what bravery—”

I saw Prince Blueblood through the crowd, undisguised, holding up a very drunk pony in a very expensive suit. I saw Ironhoof break off from his clique, and slipped into a deeper crowd to avoid him.

“—honestly, Percival, it’s no wonder your house has the reputation of a grass-snake if you won’t lead the charge into battle—”

“—pish-posh, the commoners have been suckling the teat of the Noble House of Staines for too long, growing indolent off the fat of the land, it’s about time they buckled up and gave something back—”

I had to go through two different fields of party-goers to shake Ironhoof, but I ended up in the clear, standing next to Prince Blueblood.

“The Crown Prince of Equestria!” I rumbled, “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

He offered a hoof, and I shook it. “The pleasure is all mine. Lord Gilbert, I presume?”

“Hello, old bean!” said a white mare with a pink mane. Trixie in disguise. I guessed that the grey unicorn standing next to her was Flim. “How have you fared?”

“Very well,” I replied. “Has our mutual friend kept you all abreast of the recent developments?”

“She has indeed,” she replied. Her horn lit up and cast a subtle spell. “We can talk freely here, anypony who tries to listen to our conversation will overhear somepony else's instead.”

“Right. How’s the mission going?”

Blueblood grinned. “Wonderfully. This place is a goldmine if you know what buttons to push. Speaking of buttons, we have a task for you, Gilbert.”

“Hit me.”

“See the head waiter by the champagne fountain? Go distract him for us. We need his eyes off the toasting tipple.”

“On it.”

I walked over to the waistcoat-clad waiter. He had an insomniac’s eyes, a pencil mustache, and the queasy look of a pony who desperately needs a cigarette. Gross-out time.

“Excuse me, garcon,” I intoned.

He smiled politely. “How may I help you, sir?”

“The food here is all unpalatable to my tastes. Would it be possible to have something made up for me?”

“I believe that is eminently possible, sir, what did you have in mind?”

“I require something with meat. Red, bloody, dripping meat, preferably meat that has been hung for several days in the open air to mature before being tenderized with a flesh-pounding mallet,” I said. I was laying it on thick, but better safe than sorry. “Bloody, stinking, raw meat from an animal that was alive and is now dead. Fish are acceptable, but only ones with claws and carapaces—”

“Ah!” said the waiter, his eyes lighting up. “Good sir, we indeed have such a delicacy in stock. Tiger prawns on the shell, sauteed with garlic and chilies, served with a soybean dipping sauce.” I hadn’t noticed the ruffle of wings under his waistcoat. Pegasus waiter, and a foodie to boot. “I can personally assure you that this dish is of an unparalleled quality. Shall I instruct the kitchens to bring it out?”

“Chilies and garlic, you say?” I saw Trixie from the corner of my eye. surreptitiously tipping a sachet of something-or-other into the champagne fountain. “That sounds delightful.”

“I shall do that for you now, sir,” said the waiter, and then departed. I straightened the lapels on my suit, and returned to the others.

“I take it we’re missing the toast,” I muttered.

“Of course we’re taking the toast, we’re simply taking something else as soon as we’re back at the Summer Breeze,” said Blueblood. “Nothing dangerous, just a small request from our benefactor.”

“Speaking of tasks,” said Trixie, “we have another job for you. You’ll like this one.”

“I’m buzzing with excitement.”

“There’s a pegasus mare under that persimmon tree over there,” she said, nodding in that direction, “Blue mane, white coat. Her name is Rainchaser, and she’s part of Lady Patterprance’s attache. She lived in Condorcorum for some time. Go and flirt with her. We’ll give your next orders via the earbug.”

“I don’t like this job,” I said. “First, I’m a molly—”

“Yes, but are you straight?”

“No, that’s not the point. I’m a molly and she’ll know that because she’s lived in the Griffon Kingdoms, it’s not going to work—”

All three of them rolled their eyes. “Just bluff it,” said Flim, “You’ll manage fine, I’m sure.”

I sighed, poured myself a gin and tonic from the drinks table, and headed over to the pegasus. She was sitting on a stone bench, sipping something colorful. “Can I take a seat?” I asked her.

She looked up at me over her browline glasses and smiled warmly. “Of course.”

I extended a fist. “Gilbert Bundcrest,” I said.

She bumped it with a hoof. “Rainchaser, business consultant for Lady Patterprance. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Gilbert.”

I grinned. “I thought you were too sober to be a noble.”

She laughed, and held her drink aloft. “Just carrot juice for me, tonight. I have to keep a head for numbers if my mistress requires me.” She took a sip and sat back in her seat. “So, this little soiree has reached the diplomatic halls of Condorcorum, then?”

“You can say that again. How’d you peg me as talking corps?”

She waggled an eyebrow. “Everypony has heard about the griffon diplomat coming to the party. All sorts of rumors flying about. I’m surprised to see you out in the open, come to think of it. I thought you’d be chomping cigars in some back room with a passel of nobles.”

“Heh,” I scratched the back of my neck, “truth be told, I’m here as eyes in the clouds. All this talk of ‘civil war’ has the Kingdoms on edge. We like having one peaceful neighbor.”

“I can understand why. Good to hear they’ve got a sensible molly on the case, at least. The last thing either of our nations needs is some fool noble dragging you into our conflict.” She drank from her glass, and looked at me nervously. “Celestia, I haven’t made some terrible faux pas calling you a molly, have I? Did you say your name was Gilbert?”

I laughed again. “Don’t worry about it. I go by Gilbert here because ponies confuse me for male. I just roll with it. It saves on endless apologies, and I look damn good in a suit.”

“You cut a rather striking figure, I’ll admit. Where are you from? The Southern Kingdoms, by your accent.”

I nodded. “Grifhala, an eyrie west of Pinionsburg. I don’t know many Equestrians who can tell one griffon accent from another. You been to the Kingdoms?”

“I lived in Condorcorum for a few years doing insurance work—less interesting than it sounds, believe me—and I spent a year travelling. It’s a wonderful place.”

“Everybird’s gotta see the capitol at least once. Were you there for the night of flames?”

“Oh my gosh, that was incredible! Terrifying, but incredible!”

We chatted for a while, reminiscing, joking, flirting. We’d both lived in Cloudsdale at one point, and both dated athletes there. The best lies are the ones that are closest to the truth. I told her about my work as a scout, borrowed a few anecdotes from my family in Griffon Intelligence. We made fun of the nobles. She even made insurance sound interesting.

“Ah, sir, I have your meal!” The waiter had arrived, bearing a dish of sauteed king prawns with a dipping sauce and a moist towel. “Enjoy!”

I glanced nervously at Rainchaser. She was a pegasus, sure, but still a pony...

“Those look delicious,” she said. Oh Zephyr, this one’s a keeper...

“Would you like to try one?”

“I’d love to, but I’ve never had one on the shell before.”

“Here, lemme get it for you.” I twisted off the head with a talon, peeled away the shell, dipped the juicy flesh in the dipping sauce, and presented it to her. She didn't take it in her hoof, or grab it with a napkin. Instead, she leaned down and wrapped her lips around the prawn, looking straight up at me as she did.

As she pulled away, sauce dripped down her chin, and her hoof shot up to catch it. We both tried to keep a straight face. It didn't work. We nearly fell off the bench laughing.

A voice boomed out from the door to the manor house. Fancy Pants, magically amplified, standing on a podium, said, “Stallions and Gentlemares, thank you all for coming to my abode tonight! Once more, we find ourselves living in interesting times!”

There was a rumble of “Hear, hear,” from the crowd, laughter, and the clink of glasses.Waiters sped around like ants from a nest, passing out glasses of champagne to every drinker in attendance.

“Friends, I wish for the safety and success of everypony assembled here tonight. Whatever events the future holds, I pray that we will keep our honor, ennoble the spirit of the aristocracy, and create a stronger Equestria!

“My friends, a toast!” He raised his glass. “To bravery, to mercy, and to glory!”

‘Hip-hip, hooray!’ ran through the crowd, and hundreds of glasses clinked together as all but the few teetotalers drank their champagne.

A voice buzzed in my ear. ”Prowler. In ten seconds, leave Rainchaser and walk to the bandstand, but leave your attache case by the bench.”

I turned to Rainchaser. “Rainchaser, I’m glad I met you. This has been wonderful.”

“It has,” she replied. “It’s not every day I meet a molly as cute as you.”

“I’ve gotta go send my first report of the night,” I said. I placed a claw on her fetlock. “Will I see you again?”

She smiled. “I’m sure of it.”

I got up and strolled towards the bandstand. Through the crowd, my eyes locked with Ironhoof. He drained the rest of his champagne and started towards me.

“Gilbert!”

Rainchaser ran up to me, holding the attache case under a wing. “You left this,” she said.

“Zephyr! Thank you, thank you so much,” I said. I pulled an envelope from my suit pocket with my room key inside. As she passed me the case, I passed her the envelope. “Meet me in the bar at the Cloutsworth Hotel, after the party.”

She blushed. “I will,” she said, and walked away.

I turned just in time for Ironheart Ironhoof to stride up to me, his bodyguard in tow, both of their buzz-cuts vibrating with rage. I could see the veins bulge in his eyelids.

“You honorless cur!” he barked. “We had an agreement!”

I tapped the attache case. “Somepony made a better offer.”

He walked up an inch from my face. “You think you’ll get a chance to spend that money?”

He was starting to get on my nerves. “Get out of my face before I tear you to shreds.”

I couldn’t tell if he laughed or grunted. “Go ahead and try. My bodyguard will beat you to pulp if I don’t first.”

“Cute. You think you’re the only one here with a bodyguard?” On cue, Flim walked past Ironhoof’s bodyguard and bumped his rump.

“You promised me information.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I paid for this information. You have five seconds to give it to me, or you will be dead before you hit the ground.” His eye flickered upwards just a hint, and I knew he was looking at a certain third-floor window.

I shoved him. He yelled out in surprise, and he and his bodyguard both lit their horns. “Thought I’d get bull-rushed, huh? Maybe your friends aren’t as friendly as you think.”

Before they could say a word, we were swarmed by bouncers. Three ponies swarmed each of us, surrounding and glaring.

“Calm down,” ordered one. “This is a peaceful meeting. If you can’t stay peaceful, leave.”

I apologised, and ignored Ironhoof’s glares as I walked away.

The voice buzzed in my ear again. “We’re done here. Let’s go.”

I downed the rest of my gin and tonic walked out of the garden. We would all leave separately, and meet in the lobby of the hotel tomorrow morning. I saw Flim go first. Blueblood would stay until late, for appearances sake. After I saw Trixie leave, I went to the bathroom, stuffed my attache case with cream puffs from a dessert table, and strolled out.

A few hundred yards down the road I saw three ponies yelling. Two muscular unicorns, shouting at a third mare, a pegasus. Damn it, it was Rainchaser, Ironhoof, and Ironhoof’s goon.

“—if that dippy jenny Patterprance thinks she can steal from me—”

“—you’re mad, I have no idea what you’re talking aahh!” Ironhoof slapped her across the face.

“Get your stinking hooves off that mare,” I said.

He turned. “You.”

“Yeah. Me. Back off, pal, before I start an international incident on your face.”

He chuckled darkly. “Oh, I think not. You and Miss Rainchaser are going to accompany Mister Greyface and I back to my lodgings, where we will ask some very pointed questions. You will do this before I lose what’s left of my patience.” His horn and his bodyguard’s horn lit up. I steeled myself for a fight.

A dark bolt hit the bodyguard from the side. He toppled to the ground, his spell fizzling. As soon as Ironhoof looked, I leapt. I slammed my fist straight into his chin.

I’ll give him credit, he took the punch pretty well. His legs wobbled and his spell failed but he didn’t crumple. He reared up and swung for my face. It glanced off my shoulder, so I grabbed his hind legs and tackled him to the ground. I punched him twice more for good measure, then got up.

Ironhoof and the bodyguard got shakily to their hooves. “Back the hay off,” I said. “I have diplomatic protection. You hurt me, and you’ll have every Griffon Intelligence armed team in this hemisphere so far up your backside you’ll be coughing up feathers.”

From the corner of my eye I could see Trixie, standing at the side of the road in the dark. When I blinked, she was gone. The two stallions swore, and then stumbled away.

I turned to Rainchaser. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, thanks.” She swallowed. “Celestia, I knew things were going to get a little crazy, but I thought it would take more than a day.”

“That’s Equestria for ya,” I said. “Wanna come get a drink at the Cloutsworth?”

“I’d love to.”

We flew off together, the sounds of the party growing weaker in the distance.

5. Pretty Good It Doesn't Seem

I got out of bed at five AM, kissed Rainchaser’s forehead as she slept, and took two-hundred bits from her purse before slipping out of the room. I checked out at the desk as Gilbert Bundcrest, and walked out of the hotel as Gilda Redbeak. At an all-night bakery I picked up a coffee and a stale donut, drank the coffee as I flew, ate half the donut, tossed the rest. By the time I got to the Summer Breeze, they were already arguing.

“It won’t work. Even if Manehattan doesn’t set itself on fire when House Quicksilver and the Periwinkle family find out they’ve been duped, you’ll leave REDACTED unguarded. The Princess said that no matter how otherwise marvelous a plan of ours is, we can’t risk that.” Trixie had her poison smile on, the one she wore whenever she was one bad tip away from slipping a customer a sleeping draught and getting me to haul them out and steal their wallet.

The rest looked no better. Blueblood hadn’t shaved or showered, with a cigarette between his lips and an ashtray full of stubs in front of him. Flim and Flam were half-listening, hunched over some machine of theirs, smudged with engine oil. Lightning Dust looked like she was about to put her hoof through someone’s skull, more so than usual. The espresso machine in the center of the table was getting a heavy workout. I don’t think any of them had slept.

“That’s simple,” said—growled, more like—Lightning Dust. “Rubyhock of Hockton is the only leader close enough to put REDACTED at risk. We knock him over, nopony touches REDACTED, war ends, we go home as heroes. Boom. You dorks are just overthinking everything.”

Blueblood groaned. “Rubyhock’s force is the only barrier between the Trottingham navy and the River Duckspill, if we lose that, we lose southwestern Equestria. Lightning Dust, I know you weren’t hired for your genius, but do you know anything? Do you know anything at all? About nobility, warfare, strategy? Do you even know where you are right now—”

“I know I’m going to perforate your lungs if you don’t shut your inbred mouth—”

I took a seat between the two of them. “You guys seem cranky. Is this a bad time? Should I come back later?”

Trixie rubbed her nose. “Gilda, don’t.”

Flam looked up from his gears and grinned at me. “Ah, our favorite playbird! How did your night go? That charming diplomat seemed rather taken with you, if I recall.”

“I filched her purse.”

“Bet that’s not all you filched, eh?” said Flim, waggling his eyebrows. “Rainchaser is the kind of gal who sleeps diagonally, if you know what I mean?”

Flam swatted him. “Don’t be crude, brother, you’re distracting us from the problem at hoof.”

“What, engineering a bloodless civil war? It’s impossible, Flam, a pipe dream. I’d forgotten about that problem two hours ago.”

“I know that problem is impossible, Flim, I’m talking about fixing this blasted gearbox.”

There was a soft thump as Trixie planted her face on the table. The central map was covered in hundreds of tiny flags and markers, espresso stains, cigarette ash and sticky notes. On the blackboard behind Trixie, there were the remains of a flowchart.

“When’s the last time any of you guys slept?” I asked.

“No time to sleep,” mumbled Trixie.

Lightning Dust grunted. “Sleep is for foals and slackjaws.”

Blueblood stubbed out his cigarette, downed an espresso, and lit another cigarette. “In two weeks, if we do nothing,” he said between drags, “the civil war will be irreversible. Equestria’s political landscape will be unrecognisable. In a month, Equestria as we know it will no longer exist. Every hour we waste brings us closer to failure, and several of the plans we have made must happen tonight at the latest.”

“Look on the bright side, old bean,” said Flam, “none of the plans we have so far will work, so it’s no great loss if we lose a few.”

The prince laughed hollowly. “There is that, yes. Nevertheless, sleep has not been a high priority.”

I scanned some of the notes they had made. “Hiring minotaur gangs to segregate Hoofington? Declarations of war on accountants? Submarine attacks on Cloudsdale? Look guys, here’s a different idea: get some freaking sleep because you’re all cracked up and your ideas are all terrible.”

Trixie moaned and shook her head, still face-down on the table. “It won’t work,” she said, finally looking up. “Nothing will work because nothing can work. There are too many critical locations to watch, too many idiots and not enough time.”

She pointed to the map. “Just that one corner there, that one stupid corner means none of our plans can work. Why? Because if any one of five different demesnes gains control of the Californeigh water reserves, they will have total control over western Equestria and likely start a war with Cloudsdale. It would take all of our attention to keep the reservoirs neutral, and then, and then—” she pointed to a line of red flags that ran from the southwestern corner to the northeast “—an alliance between Goldbuttle, Snozzencrantz and the entire Patterprance clan will take over the Satin Trail. That’s two-thirds of all ground trade in Equestria, and a third of trade between Equestria and other nations. Equestria would be split into three parts, those who rely on Cloudsdale air, those who rely on the Trottingham navy, and those who swear fealty to the masters of the Trail.

“Even if by some miracle the Satin Trail and the Californeigh reserves stayed neutral without our intervention, there are too many other points of failure. Trottingham industry. REDACTED. The Neighravo crystal mines. Any of the cities.

She slumped down, resting her chin on her hoof. “The problem is that it’s too easy for any idiot noble to raise an army. Stop one noble from doing so, and troops are cheaper for the next noble along. It’s a Gordian knot, except instead of a sword we’ve got a wooden spoon and a bottle of glue.”

“Perhaps we’re overthinking the whole thing,” said Flam. “Try to reduce the problem down to its purest possible form: what is the most straightforward action that would end the civil war, regardless of feasibility?”

“Travel back in time and muzzle Auntie Luna,” said Blueblood.

Trixie cracked a smile. “That would do it. This demesne business wasn’t exactly a successful political experiment on her part.”

“She should hang out in the Griffon Kingdoms for a while,” I said, “we consider anything under twenty-five kilodeaths a successful political experiment.”

Lightning Dust banged a hoof on the table. “Wait a minute, sprockethead over there has a point,” she said, nodding to Flam. “It’s like Trixie said: the problem is that it’s too easy for nobles to buy soldiers. These nobles, they’re not thinking like warriors, they’re thinking like accountants. It’s economics, with these guys. Soldiers are just a way to earn a bunch of money, or keep a bunch of money safe. If we make soldiers too expensive to hire, they won’t be worth the returns. No armies, no war. Boom.” She glared directly at Blueblood, “Heroes.”

Blueblood nodded slowly, tapping ash off his cigarette. “I hate to admit it, but she has a point. It’s not something my aunts could pass with a quill-stroke, but if we focused our efforts on Canterlot, a tax bill to make soldiery prohibitively expensive could work.”

“How long would that take?” I asked.

“Two weeks at the shortest, unfortunately. Still, it could at least limit the scale of the war.”

Trixie sighed, and flicked a switch on the wall of the room with her magic. “I’ll try to contact Princess Twilight. She needs to know what options we have, at least. Maybe she has the other half of our answer.”

“Shame we can’t just take away all the nobles’ money,” I mused. “No money, no soldiers.”

Lightning Dust shook her head. “Nah, couldn’t happen. They’ve got their hooves in too many pies. Equestria’s economy would have to crash through the floor for it to touch them. It’s not like we can just steal all the money in Equestria.”

“Well—”

“Well—”

“Well—”

Flim, Flam, and Blueblood all spoke at the same time, and then all shut their mouths so quickly you could hear the snap.

Trixie sat bolt upright, and Lightning Dust glared between the three of them. “Nah, nah, that’s crazy,” said the pegasus. “You can’t steal all the money in Equestria.”

“We-ell, Princess Twilight did say,” said Flam, “that she would be happy with almost any conceivable solution as long as there was no bloodshed...”

“No, I mean you can’t do it! It’s impossible, Equestria's money is too big, it’s in too many ponies! We can’t make a world tomorrow where every baker forgets how to bake, every farrier forgets how to farry, and every dentist forgets how to dent! As long as they’re working, they’re earning! You can’t just have some big, great... depression where nobody has a job, it’s not possible! That’s high school economics!”

“Actually...”

“Technically...”

“Theoretically,” said Blueblood, carefully, “you could have a, ah, total unemployment crisis. It’s... it’s hypothetical, in Equestrian economic history, but it’s not unheard of elsewhere.”

“Nah, you couldn’t,” I said, “‘cause of the economics. Me and Trixie tried this scam before; it doesn’t work. Even if everypony decided overnight to just stop buying, I dunno, clocks, and everypony in the clock industry went out of business, ponies would still have the exact same amount of money and they’d spend it on some other crap, like beekeeping or something. We lost four grand before we figured that one out, ain’t that right, Trix?” She nodded.

“There’s an exception,” said Flam.

“It’s a doozy of an exception,” said Flim.

“What if everypony gets scared,” said Blueblood, “that they’re not going to have enough money tomorrow. Or, that the money they have invested isn’t safe. They’ll stop spending it and start squirreling it away. Suddenly, the money that other ponies are relying on—to pay bills, buy goods, meet invoices—isn’t being spent. It’s hidden under a mattress. If it happens on a grand enough scale, the effect would snowball. Businesses would shutter ailing divisions, close factories, stop paying dividends. Investors would look at a wobbling market and panic, and shuffle all of their money into the safest, most inert places possible to protect their fortunes. The Equestrian economy would go into a defensive crouch.”

“Entire families of nobles would lose their fortunes,” said Flim.

“We’d price the buggers right out of the army-ing business!” said Flam.

Trixie rubbed her temples and sighed. “No. Okay? Just no. Even if your plan wasn’t insane and probably impossible, Princess Twilight would never approve it.”

“What wouldn’t I approve?”

Every single one of us jumped damn near a foot out of our chairs, and me and Lightning Dust flapped in the air for a few seconds. Princess Twilight's face had appeared on the projector screen behind Trixie.

Trixie's head snapped round so fast I heard her neck click. "Sparkle!" she blurted, "why are you--oh yes, I requested your presence. Thank you for coming, Princess."

“It’s my pleasure,” said the Princess. She had the irritatingly perky look of a pony who had slept more than four hours that night, and I wanted to slap it right off her face. “What were you saying I wouldn’t approve of?”

Trixie waved her hoof airily. “Oh, a nonsense hypothetical, just a tangent from—”

“A plan to defund all of the nobles in Equestria by intentionally crashing the economy,” said Flim. I could hear the creak of Trixie’s teeth grinding together as she glared at him.

The Princess didn’t glare or scream or pop a monocle or anything. She looked... curious, I guess. “That’s an interesting plan,” she said, slowly. “How would you do it?”

“Manehattan Stock Exchange,” said Flim, so quick and chirpy that you almost missed the bags under his eyes. “Every lord and lady worth their salt has a considerable investment in it, and if they’re buying armies wholesale they’ll be leveraged to the hilt. Kidnap a few stockbrokers, set fire to their records, add a few clever forgeries to the rubble, and fortunes will go tumbling like a drunkard down a steep stairway.”

“That would be a shock, certainly,” added Blueblood, “but if the ponies at the banks keep their heads screwed on straight, they could still recover. They send copies of all of the previous day’s trades to the Canterlot Banking Authority, as well as a medley various guarantees, failsafes and ensurances that are kept at their headquarters. That’s not even counting the trading that also happens there.”

“You’d want to tussle with the Equestrian Retail Banking Conglomerate in Fillydelphia, to boot,” added Flam. “Some real hale and hearty businesses might weather a stock crash, but if retail banking is all but shuttered, but if they can’t even take bits out of the bank to pay their invoices, they’re going to hurt.”

“I know some ponies who work at the Canterlot Banking Authority,” said Princess Twilight with an edge to her voice. “Good ponies, who I would not see harmed.”

“Harmed? Perish the thought,” said Flim, his eyebrows raised, “but surely we could keep these good ponies locked away in a hotel room for a week or three, while everypony else looks at the rubble and wreckage at their places of work and simply... assumes the worst, so to speak.”

The Princess almost seemed satisfied. “I see. What kind of timeline are you thinking of? You realise that as soon as you attack one site, the other two will do everything they can to protect themselves and pick up the slack, right?”

Blueblood puffed on his cigarette and shrugged. “It seems to me that we’ll simply have to raid all three locations at the same time.”

“Right,” said Twilight, a sarcastic edge clear in her voice, “this plan of yours—I’m assuming it’s not one of Trixie’s plans based on her expression, and neither Gilda nor Lightning Dust look particularly taken by it—involves attacking three buildings full of wholly innocent civilians in three different cities, hundreds of miles apart, kidnapping dozens of ponies and detaining them indefinitely, and doing this all within the span of maybe ten hours. You plan to do all that, with five ponies and a griffon.”

“I feel like that’s a very pessimistic spin on it, and I’d reject your characterisation of merchant bankers as ‘wholly innocent’, but yes, broadly speaking, that is the plan,” said Flam.

“I mean, we could do it,” said Lightning Dust, “it’s just crazy.”

Blueblood sat up a little straighter. “Wait, we could?”

“Sure.” Lightning Dust nodded. “That plan we had to raid Baron Huckleberry’s cotton supplies needed basically the same skills and logistics, and that involved way more soldiers. I’m not saying it would be a cakewalk or anything, but with the right tools and enough support, we could do it.”

“Yeah, but we’re not actually going to do it,” I said. “Look, I’m a griffon, and we know what it’s like to do crazy stuff in the name of winning, but this... I just don’t see the point. Half of the country would be out of a job, and if we’re unlucky, there’d be food riots and worse. You’d be setting Equestria on fire in order to save it.”

Twilight Sparkle wasn’t smiling any more. Her face was perfectly still. “Unless someone was standing by, ready with a firehose.” Her brow furrowed. “Wait here, I need to check something.” With that, she walked off the screen. The wall behind her flickered on the projector screen.

We sat around the table in silence. I wanted to ask Blueblood if it was normal for Twilight to do this, but he was already dozing. Lightning Dust slapped at the espresso machine until it poured her another cup. Flim and Flam were back to doodling. Trixie stared straight ahead and blinked slowly, as if sleepwalking.

I sat in awkward silence. Ten minutes later, Blueblood was snoring, Lightning Dust was back from the mare’s room, and Flim and Flam had gone through another half-dozen pages.

“Uh, Trixie?” I said, “do you know—”

“Yes, it is normal for Sparkle to disappear mid-meeting for an indefinite amount of time,” she replied, not moving her head or even looking my way, her eyes completely unfocused.

“Yeah, actually, I kinda wanted to know if we were billing our hours for this whole thing, or if it’s just an end-of-project lump sum, generally, y’know, when we’re getting paid and stuff—”

A dull thump came from the projector and the Princess appeared back on the screen. Blueblood had woken up and there was already a cigarette in his mouth. Everyone else looked at the screen. “Hey! Sorry for the wait, I just had to hash out a few details with Discord.” She paused to clear her throat, and then said, “I’m provisionally approving your plan to disrupt the Equestrian economy. Come to me with the details as soon as you have them confirmed, and I’ll provide you with what resources you need.”

I think all of us were too tired to be shocked.

“Oh, and um, I’d suggest you get some rest,” she added, sheepishly. “You guys have a teensy bit of a ‘triple-all-nighter’ look. Best of luck, and I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

She reached up to the camera, and the screen went blank. I looked around the table.

“Was, uh,” I fumbled, “was any of that normal?”

“No,” said Lightning Dust, “none of that was normal.”

The others were already asleep.

INTERLUDE: A Couple Of Genuine Wrestle-Boys

The teal pegasus stood in the doorway of the cloud-brick gym, unmoving as she stared at Twilight. Her lip twitched as a bead of sweat rolled down it, which she wiped away with her fetlock. The smell of old sweat and heat balm wafted out into the cool night air.

“Hey.” The pegasus spoke but did not move. Light and noise from inside moved around her, accommodating her, as if she had always been in the doorway, as much a part of the building as the bricks and boards themselves.

Twilight extended a hoof, which the pegasus took cautiously. “Ms. Lightning Dust, I presume? We corresponded via telegrammophone, I’m here representing the treasury of the Royal Demesne of Ponyville—”

“Yeah, I know you,” said Lightning Dust. “You’re that new princess. Princess Twinkle Winkle.”

Twilight gave a genial smile. “Princess Twilight Sparkle, I’m pleased to—”

“Oh.” Lightning Dust had a knack for interruption. A muscle at the corner of her lips wavered, and she glanced over her own shoulder as she spoke, “Sorry. Uh, sorry, Your Majesty.”

“‘Your Majesty’ is actually only for reigning monarchs, for a princess the term is—you know what, call me Twilight, please. May I come in?”

“Yeah,” said Lightning Dust, a touch of wariness in her voice, “sure, come on in.” Slowly, she stepped back and allowed the purple princess to pass into the gym. “So, you’re recruiting, right? You wanted to set up a gym in Ponyville, or something?”

Twilight stepped neatly onto the linoleum floor of the cramped lobby, and began to follow the pegasus deeper into the building. “Broadly, yes. We in Ponyville have money to invest in the demesne, and we’re looking to invest in artistic, scientific, and athletic pursuits. Since you’re an Equestria Games level athlete in several sports with an excellent training record, I thought it would be prudent to meet you on behalf of the treasury.”

Lightning Dust shook her head and laughed as she passed through the double doors into the gym proper. “Your guys send a princess to do your interviews? What, weren’t the Wonderbolts available?”

Twilight smiled wryly, her nose twitching as the blast of hot, sweaty air from the gymnasium hit her. The sounds of fighting and exertion filled her ears, hooves hitting pads and mats, the rhythmic swish of jump ropes, bags swinging to-and-fro on their chains. “I’m told they all had prior commitments,” she said.

“Hah, alright. Look, Princess, I just gotta check that everything is okay with the classes before we talk. You can follow me and take a look if you want, or I’ll point you to my office and you can wait for me.”

“I’ll follow, if that’s okay.”

“Sure thing. Right this way, Princess.”

She led Twilight into a side room where the entire floor was covered in interlocking mats. Two-dozen ponies wrestled in pairs, pushing and grappling and sweeping for a winning position. Lightning Dust walked around the edges, scrutinizing her charges but saying nothing. Minutes passed as they watched, and Twilight saw that the wrestlers were only practicing a set of three different attacks. One pony attacked, the other defended, and when either gained a decisive advantage, they stopped and began anew. An egg-timer rang, and as it did the pairs switched roles, with the other party attacking.

Lightning Dust nudged her. “You know what you’re watching?”

Twilight nodded, slowly. “I think... they’re drilling a fore-lock, leg-choke, shoulder-lock combination.”

The pegasus smirked and whistled. “Somepony’s done their homework, huh? I just wanted to know if you knew what this class was, but it looks like the answer is yes.”

Twilight couldn’t stop a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “Yanagi Jutsu, the Yielding Willow Art.”

“Right in one. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a willow tree win a wrestling match, but—Posey, hook his damn hinds when you go for the leg-choke, don’t let him stack you—yeah, but every champion brawler in the past century either mastered this art or one just like it. It’s not great if you’re being mobbed by thirty goons, but if you need to trap an opponent or escape an opponent’s trap, there’s nothing like it. You’ve seen it before, huh?”

“My brother, Shining Armor, trained before he went into the guard. He won a few tournaments, I think.”

Lightning Dust raised her eyebrows. “As in, the old captain of the Royal Guard, Shining Armor? I knew him. Trained with him, once.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, back when I was in the Glider Regiment, my unit went to a big cross-forces training camp. I think your brother was a lieutenant back then, but I remember he ran the PT and edged weapons training. I thought he’d be a big wimp who coddled everypony, but he cranked up the marching until half a dozen ponies dropped out from heatstroke, and he kept up just fine with his men. I’m surprised he got his ass kicked by a bug.”

Twilight’s face hinted at a glare, but it slipped back into her gentle smile. “He won in the end.”

Lightning Dust shrugged. “True. Anyway, it looks like these idiots have things in hoof for once, let’s move on.”

They walked along the edge of the mats until they came to the door, back into the main gym where ponies worked over heavy bags and skipped ropes. In one corner, eight ponies stood on their hindlegs, practicing combinations of strikes on leather pads.

“You said you were in the Glider Regiment?”

Lightning Dust made a noise between a grunt and a laugh. “You know I was. Spent five years with the Mauve Machine, spent most of that time on whatever courses and postings would keep me far, far away from my company because the Gliders are a bunch of dickheads, when the few decent dudes left I transferred out into the Aerial Scouts—sneakiest bastards on the planet I tell ya—and stayed with them for two years, passed Wonderbolt selection and stayed as a cadet until I realised they sucked and left. That’s pretty much my military career, right there.”

“You left the Wonderbolts to get back into Mixed Martial Arts? But your test scores at the academy were excep—I mean to say, I’d heard you were a very strong candidate.”

The pegasus’ expression soured. “I was the strongest candidate. I joined them because I heard they were the best of the best, that they do the impossible, but it’s all midden. They’re a bunch of posers who can’t take danger, can’t take risks, and need to swaddle everything in cotton wool like a bunch of babies. So I left. Got back into the one sport where you prove that you’re the best, no matter what it takes, where there’s nothing between victory but your opponent’s hooves and head.” She looked at one of the pairs of fighters and stopped them. “Poppy, Weaver, hold up.”

A mare and a unicorn stallion stopped mid-drill, the mare falling back to all fours and the unicorn lowering his telekinetically-suspended focus mitts. “Poppy, those combos are leaps and bounds better,” said Lightning Dust, “now let’s see you work them into sparring! Weaver, don’t KO her, but if she drops her guard, make sure she feels it!”

Both ponies grunted in assent and nodded, the stallion strapping on hoof-gloves as the mare took a sip of water. They approached one another, touched gloves, and reared back to stand on their hinds. They circled for a few moments, the mare darting in to test her distance with quick jabs, the stallion maintaining a careful guard.

“It must be difficult to fight on two hooves,” said Twilight.

“Uh-huh,” replied Lightning Dust absently, her eyes fixed on the students, “takes a lot of cardio, you gotta build up muscles you didn’t even realise you had, but it’s one of the most versatile stances you can train. Doesn’t mean you can neglect all-fours or clinchwork, but you can’t compete without it.”

The unicorn shot two powerful bursts of magic from his horn, bright enough to sting Twilight’s eyes, which his opponent blocked with crossed forehooves. Before he could follow up with a third, a low kick disrupted his balance and turned his next spell into aether. A straight kick to the stomach in response staggered the mare, followed by two straight punches and another blast of magic. She dropped her guard and a third punch grazed her cheek, but she grabbed him in a clinch and held him close. They pummeled each other with little effect, looking for an opening, until the mare ducked out and hit the unicorn with a clean jab to the chin. He backpedaled as she continued his assault, but kept his guard up and parried the next blows, and they were back to circling once more.

“Good pace, keep it up,” said Lightning Dust, “don’t kill each other yet, the fight is still six weeks away.” She nudged Twilight and beckoned her to follow. “C’mon, Princess, one more stop.”

They walked to a boxing ring, where a donkey and a unicorn sparred each other. As they approached the ropes, another egg timer rang, and the two fighters returned to their corners.

The donkey—a jenny, Twilight realized—waved to Lightning Dust. “Cascos Sucios, how you doing?”

“Cascos Sucios... ‘Dirty Hooves?’” asked Twilight.

Lightning Dust nodded. “My nickname.”

The jenny laughed. “She got a record for the longest ban for a single DQ.”

Twilight’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait, you can get disqualified in mixed pony martial arts?”

“Oh yeah, it’s not a total free-for-all,” said Lightning Dust, “you can still get disqualified for stuff like biting, going for the eyes, going for the dock, spitting, fighting after the ref tells you to stop, that kinda stuff.”

“What did you do, bite an opponent in the eye after the referee said ‘stop?’”

Lightning Dust laughed. “Nah, nothing like that. I grabbed the ropes while I was kicking the nag. Got banned for three years.”

“They banned you for grabbing the ropes?”

Lightning Dust and the donkey laughed harder. “Nope!” said the donkey, “she leaked pay details to the press, and when the bosses found out they ‘banned’ her for the DQ! Bunch of midden-grazers, mare.”

“It was worth it, though,” said Lightning Dust, still smiling, “I had eight pro fighters in my stable back then, and they all got a twenty-five percent raise because of it. Now I’ve got thirty-two pro fighters here.”

The timer rang again and the sparring resumed. The donkey slipped around the ring like a fluid made of spite and roundhouse kicks, never wasting a movement. She was relaxed compared to her opponent, an effervescent unicorn who darted in-and-out of range with jabs and feints so fast that they appeared to flicker as if unreal.

The unicorn’s horn lit, but instead of releasing bolts of pure force, he channeled magic through his limbs. Even his lightest jabs carried the weight of a haymaker, and audibly snapped in the air as the donkey parried them. A hook to the liver interrupted his casting and dissipated the spell, sending out a wave of energy that shook the ring and made the ropes stink of singed nylon. The force blew the sweat off the donkey’s face, but she continued her assault until the unicorn stumbled back on his heels.

Twilight flinched at the blast. “Wow.”

Lightning Dust didn’t take her eyes off the ring, watching her students with a gleeful smile. “I know, right? Archer is scary-good at casting shots, and Dominique is scary-good at resisting them.”

“I can see. I know that ponies can upset casters by staring, and that they can resist direct magical effects by controlling their autonomic bodily magic, but I’ve never seen it done so fast.”

Lightning Dust pulled her eyes from her fighters. “Have you ever been Stared?”

Twilight shook her head. The pegasus smirked and nodded, but said nothing until the timer rang once more and the round ended. As the two fighters walked to the ropes to take a drink, Lightning Dust tapped the post.

“Guys, wait up a sec. I wanna show the Princess here how a Stare works.”

Twilight stammered for a moment as the pegasus breezed past her objections and helped her up into the ring. Dominique the Donkey leaned against the ropes and her training partner slipped out of the ring, looking up at them with a mixture of apprehension and excitement. The princess pushed herself up on two hooves and tottered around for a few moments.

“Do I, uh, need to stand up like this?” she asked, and fell back to all-fours with a relieved look when Lightning Dust shook her head.

“Nah, normal is fine,” said the pegasus. “The game is simple. You two stand at the opposite ends of the ring, and don’t approach each other. Princess, you gotta make a soap bubble appear on top of Dominique’s head. Dominique, you gotta stop her.”

Twilight lit up her horn to cast, already picturing the bubble and the correct proportions of water, air and earth, let her magic snake around the scent of lye to lock these mere thoughts into the correct vessel. In a split second the thought had become a spell, a mere pervulsion away from being cast. All she had to do was look at the right place and—

—the donkey looked at her, and the look bore such hate, such hate, so thick with venom and rage that it became its own being, bringing the whole room to bear down on her with such pressure and darkness that even a sun would flicker and die, as if Twilight’s existence was such a grievous insult that only the utter annihilation of all that Twilight ever was and ever would be could right the world, leering at her as if Twilight was no longer a pony, not even a tangible thing, just a pile of hair and sinew and bones hiding a heart that could be crushed like an apple underhoof—

Twilight shrieked and released her magic. No bubble appeared, but the force of unchanneled power hurled the donkey off her hooves and slammed her into the ropes so hard that the posts holding them up fractured. Several seconds later, Lightning Dust and her two students picked themselves up off the mats, laughing uproariously.

“How’s that for blowback?” asked Lightning Dust, dusting herself off and grinning. “Hah, I’d heard you were a phenom.”

The princess stood rooted, her teeth chattering, shaking all over. “I—I’m so, I’m sorry, I broke your ring I’m so, so—”

Lightning Dust made a dismissive noise and helped the shivering alicorn down from the ring. “Chill, it’s covered by the warranty. Anyway, let’s go to my office, some whisky will sort you right out...”

They made their way out of the room and up a set of stairs—shakily, in Twilight’s case—until they reached a pokey office only a little bigger than a bathroom. The carpet was dotted with bleach stains, the walls and shelves were lined with piles of paper, mismatched gloves, empty heavy-bags, first and second place certificates, and empty coffee cups. A small glass cabinet behind Lightning Dust’s desk was crammed with medals and trophies. A pair of weighted horse-shoes hung on a nail on the outside.

Lightning Dust poured whisky into a chipped mug, topped it up with ice cubes and sour mix from a tiny ice box next to her desk, and passed it to Twilight. As Twilight drank the mixture greedily, Lightning Dust opened a bright-blue sports drink and sipped it.

After Twilight had calmed down, she slumped in her chair and looked at the pegasus. “So,” she muttered, “that’s what the Stare feels like...”

“Nah, that’s just a Stare. Not the same as The Stare.”

“A stare?”

“No, a Stare. A stare is just staring at someone. A Stare makes them freeze up and freak out. The Stare is a myth.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” said Lightning Dust, lounging back, “some legend of a great Qirin master whose Stare was so great that it was known as the Stare. His gaze could calm seas, shame gods, even freeze a cockatrice in its tracks. Total horse-shit, of course. Even Celestia ain’t that powerful.”

“Mmhm.” Twilight cradled the mug in two hooves, not yet trusting herself to pick up anything in her magic without dropping or crushing it. Every time she inhaled, the smell of damp leather and scrambled eggs filled her nose.

“So, are you gonna tell me what you’re really here for, Princess?” said Lightning Dust, almost smiling. “I feel like I’ve been an okay host so far. Care to treat me like I’m not a moron?”

Twilight blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Cut the crap, Princess Sparkle. You’re not here for some ‘athletic renewal’ program. You’ve got every member of the Wonderbolts at your royal command, Ponyville has a crazy earth pony marathon culture, jeez, your damn sister-in-law hosted the Equestria Games, if you wanted sports you wouldn’t be here. So what’s your game, huh? Did your little crybaby suck-up friend Rainbow Dash beg you to keep a tab on me? Huh? Huh?”

Twilight sighed, and cast a spell. Lightning Dust bristled. “What the hay did you just do?”

“I created a magical simulacrum identical to this room in every respect, except that the only conversation occurring in the magical room is dreadfully boring and normal. Any surveillance, magical or otherwise, will pick up on the decoy instead.” She paused for a moment, mulling over her words. “I have not been entirely forthcoming, but I do have a job offer. You have the exact set of skills I am looking for.”

“Yeah?”

“You spent seven years in two of the most decorated units in the Equestrian military," said Twilight. "You graduated Glider School top of your class, deployed immediately for an eighteen-month peacekeeping action in the Melicopse Defile, received two commendations for bravery and a rebuke for unauthorized heroism. After returning from deployment, you took courses in room clearing, close-quarters-combat, sniping and spotting, light and medium cloud artillery, wingless maneuvers, combat technomancy, first aid and triage, intelligence attache training—top marks in all of them. Rose to the rank of corporal, your commanding officer wrote on your evaluation that you were a ‘loner’ and ‘reckless with the ponies in your command’ and denied you any further promotion. You passed selection for the Aerial Scouts—one of the most psychologically testing courses in the military—deployed to four different countries that the Equestrian military is categorically not supposed to be in, and transferred into the Wonderbolts when your military contract expired. You broke eight Wonderbolt records in two months of training. I only know of one other pegasus with your level of athletic and physical ability."

"All my military stuff is sealed. Jeez, they shredded half my records. How do you know all that crap?"

Twilight reached into her pack and pulled out a manila folder. "It's all in your dossier."

"What the hay kind of job is this?"

"The kind with dossiers," said Twilight. “Tell me, Lightning Dust, what do you know about demesnes?”

“Huh? Domains?”

“Demesnes. With the ‘e’s and the ‘s’s.”

"Oh, those. Well, let's see, I know that Las Pegasus is a Cloudsdale territory," drawled Lightning Dust, "so demesnes don't matter to me one dumb bit."

"They should matter to you," said Twilight, softly, "because if we don't do something, Equestria will change for the worst. You and I won't recognise the new Equestria, but I guarantee it will not be a place where your thirty-two pro fighters can snap up a twenty-five percent pay raise."

Lightning Dust made a farting noise with her lips, and said dismissively, "The civil war stuff? Feh, even if it does get past the tag-hoofball stage, so what? I've lived worse and I've thrived. I could charge a queen's ransom as a mercenary, and retire someplace warm and sunny on the other side of the frickin' planet."

"I might have misjudged you, then. I'd heard you were more than an errand girl for braying fops who wouldn't know honor and duty if it press-ganged them," said Twilight, acidly.

Lightning Dust bristled. "Or maybe you just look like another fop. You think I'm gonna take your side over every other noble in a bloody war just because you've got a pointy forehead to go with those chicken wings?"

"There won't be a bloody war. I am going to end it before it could ever be called such a thing. With or without your help." Twilight stood, and prepared to leave. "Good day, Ms Lightning Dust—"

The pegasus waved and beckoned her to sit back down. "Hey, Princess, don't be a dumb-bum. Maybe I just wanna hear your offer before I commit to anything..."

"If you join the team, I will authorize the treasury to pay you six figures, right away. If the team succeeds, you'll be paid seven figures," said Twilight. "Also, I wasn't being entirely facetious about bringing you in as an athletic consultant for Ponyville. If that interests you, well, you could have government backing behind your sport and behind your organizations."

Lightning Dust mulled it over for a moment. "That's an okay start, I guess. There's one thing I really want, though, and it's absolutely non-negotiable."

"I'm all ears, Ms Dust."

"Your pal Rainbow Dash, she's still hanging around with the Wonderbolts, right? I want that to stop. I want her kicked off the team, barred from competing in any sporting events that the 'Bolts are at, and banned from both the Wonderbolts Academy and the team barracks. Shoot, if you give her a 200-yard restraining order for all current and former members of the team, I'll halve my fee. Keep your schmancy consultancy plans. That's my terms."

"Two years and you're still interested in petty revenge?"

"It's got nothing to do with revenge," growled Lightning Dust, "it's about principles. The Wonderbolts are the best team in Equestria. If you sign up, you’re not there to become the best flyer, you’re there to make the team strong, even if you have to be ground up to do it. You’re supposed to push yourself past limits, train harder than even the fittest, hardiest ponies are capable of training, work so hard that many—hay, even most—of you will get injured and drop out. If you wanna make diamonds, you crush a whole lot of coal.

“Rainbow Dash talked big about loyalty, but she only cared about herself, not the team. She wanted her name to be in the books and on the rosters, she wanted to be coddled to bring out her skills, and when I tried to push the other recruits, she swaddled them in cotton wool, whined to the boss, and got promoted through ass-kissing and office politics. She is a cancer within one of the four institutions in this world that I hold dear, and if I achieve one unambiguously good deed in my life it will be to excise her smarmy flank.”

Twilight nodded, slowly. “I see you have very strong feelings in that regard.”

The pegasus stretched back in her chair and fixed her with a hard stare. “Yeah. Rock-solid.”

“Well, first I’d like to say that your demands are feasible,” said Twilight, her horn flashing with magic, “but I think there is a pony you should discuss it with first.”

The door-handle turned, and Lightning Dust’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t—”

Rainbow Dash strode into the room, a polychromatic flash of brashness. “So you want me outta the ‘Bolts, huh?”

“Get out of my gym, you degenerate poser!” snarled Lightning Dust.

“I guess supporting your fighters doesn’t matter as much as seeing me fail. Big surprise there.”

“Get out. Go away. Leave.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Jeez, chill your flanks already. I’m just here to say I’ll do it. If that’s what it takes to get your help, I’m outta the ‘Bolts. I’ll sign anything—legal, magical, whatever—to keep that promise.”

Lightning Dust made a noise as if she’d been slapped. “You would? Ugh, you would, wouldn’t you? You’re even more pathetic than I thought.”

Rainbow Dash simply shrugged.

“It actually disgusts me that, that you would stoop to this level, Dash, you, you failure of a pony,” spat Lightning Dust. “You were the only other cadet in our class with the skill to even dream of wearing the blue goggles, and you’re gonna forget it all because what, because your friend asked nicely?”

“Twilight thinks she needs your help to save Equestria, and she’s usually right about that stuff,” replied Dash. She sighed, and looked almost solemn. “This civil war thing is bigger than me, it’s bigger than you, it’s bigger than—jeez, I can’t believe I’m saying this—than the Wonderbolts. If it takes giving up my dreams to save Equestria, well, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Lightning Dust’s nose wrinkled as if she’d smelled something foul. “That’s such a crock of mealy-mouthed— you know what, Dash? Screw it. Keep your damn Wonderbolts, you weak-winged pansies are made for each other.” She turned to look at Twilight. “Six million bits, and another million up-front. That’s my price, okay? Now give me the damn details and then both of you jackasses get out of my office,” she said, bitterly.

Twilight pulled another folder out of her bag, and slid it over the desk. “Your instructions are here, enchanted to your cutie-mark. If anypony else tries to read them, the papers will turn to dust.”

Lightning Dust snatched the documents and shooed the others away with a wingtip as she began to read. Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash turned to leave, but Twilight stopped just before stepping out of the doorway.

“Oh, Lightning Dust?”

“What?”

“It’s good to have you on the team.”

* * *

Rainbow Dash waited until they were both in the back of the sky carriage before shifting back to her true form, her skin crawling as it shrank and changed.

“That was certainly an ordeal, even without the shape-shifting” she said. “What would we have done if she hadn’t agreed, by the way? I’m not sure the real Rainbow Dash would have taken such a promise lightly.”

“I’m sure we would have thought of something,” said Twilight, “though I was fairly sure that Lightning Dust would react that way. It’s all in the psychology of the individual.”

“Ah, you imagined Rainbow Dash with more anger and no moral compass. Very creative, Sparkle. Whatever happened to the bookish unicorn who couldn’t read ponies if they had their thoughts tattooed on their faces?”

Twilight grinned wryly. “I guess you’re starting to rub off on me, Trixie.”

6. This Cream-Faced Business Bird

Blueblood was waiting for me in a boxy steam room at the San Pescador Baths, a public swimming pool in Canterlot’s Western Quarter. He’d dyed or spelled himself a lime-green coat, an electric-blue mane, and a big ugly walrus ‘tache, the kind of mismatched technicolor combo that meant he’d blend in perfectly with any crowd of ponies.

“Be a good fellow and give the rocks a splash,” he said, pointing at a cast-iron ladle.

“Sure.” I ladled water from a bucket onto the heated stones in the middle of the room. A plume of steam went up, smelling of rubber lemons and ersatzkaffee. My nostrils twitched. “Jeez. You branching out into aromatherapy or something? Stick to Princing.”

The corners of his mouth turned up. “It’s a little bit of alchemy, actually. A few oils and unguents that are sensitive to probing magics. If there are eavesdroppers, we will know about them. Please, sit.”

I sat on the wooden benches, already starting to sweat from the heat. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take sunny Equestria over chilly Griffonstone any day of the week, but steaming like a dumpling isn’t my idea of a good time.

Blueblood slouched in his seat like a boneless chicken, and spoke at the wall. “Your name is Grendel Gronkhürt—”

“I like ops better when my cover name doesn’t sound like I made it up on the spot.”

A smug little noise came from deep in his throat. “Grendel is a real griffon, actually, she’s—”

“Tell her I’m sorry.”

“—she’s a vice president of sales for Vaahn Ironmongery. I happen to know that she’s off the grid at the moment, so you’re going to impersonate her. Your job is to suss out the Royal Guard posting schedule for the Equestrian Public Archives for the next month, street level and interior. You’ll be working with Illusionist, she’s arranged a meeting between Gronkhürt, herself, and a Royal Guard quartermaster, at RGHQ for two-thirty on-the-dot this afternoon. There’s—”

“RGHQ?”

“Yes, the Royal Guard Head—”

“—Quarters, yeah, I know, I just wanted to check that you’re sending me into a building full of soldiers, cops, and soldiercops with five hours notice.” The sauna wasn’t helping my tense muscles. “I was worried, see, that you might be sending me to do something that isn’t crazy and dumb.”

“You’ll be fine, I’m sure. Now, you—and by you, I mean Grendel—are going there to make an offer for barding materials. Vaahn Ironmongery does interesting work with arcane weaving. You’ll be offering uniforms woven with mithril, cold iron, sternsblut and the like.”

“Marking and masking.”

Blueblood pulled his head forward to beam at me. “Ah! I forgot you were a military mare. Or molly, as the case may be.”

“Hah, nah. Ain’t from scout days, it’s from hunting. Infravision tabards aren’t cheap, but it’s worth the price to not get a crossbow bolt in your butt because you looked like a quarry eel in the underbrush.”

“You’ll find yourself in like-minded company, then. The Royal Guard wish to acquire uniforms that will make it possible for a pegasus to overlook a riot scene from a thousand yards in the air and immediately pick out the guards from the rioters, and a different set of uniforms that make trying to find a guardspony by magic like trying to find a mosquito by taste.”

Blueblood sipped from a bottle of spring water. “Illusionist will provide the distractions and directions, but the quartermaster’s office is directly across the hall from the scheduling lieutenant’s. You will break into the office, make facsimiles of the schedules, and return to Illusionist without being detected. Needless to say, you may not so much as pluck a hair from any member of the Royal Guard; you’ll be burned and disavowed if any of them come to serious harm.”

I took a glug from his bottle. “You want me to be half-burglar, half-secretary.”

“Well now, that’s the spirit of espionage really, isn’t it? It’s a straightforward job, and drinks are on me afterwards.”

“I dunno, buddy, it doesn’t seem that straightforward to me. Our boss’s big bro is the former Guard Captain. She could walk in, grab the stuff, and they’d hold the doors open for her since she’s, y’know, a Princess.” I leaned forward and levelled a talon at him. “So I gotta be suspicious when you’ve got a longer, trickier, risky plan where it’s my ovaries on the line if things go wrong.”

Blueblood sat up, shaking the tension from his muscles. “You’ve got a very good point, and I’ve got a very good reason.”

“And what’s that?”

“Our boss does not know about this plan. She has not been read in, she knows none of the details, and it does not have her knowledge or approval.”

I blinked. “Did I miss the part where we went rogue?”

He paused for a second, then said, “This is a delicate operation, most of it rather illegal. Up until this moment, we have only broken laws that affect Equestrian citizens, and if her role in this operation was compromised, our boss would only be accountable to the Equestrian public. She is, however, a sovereign, and our mission requires several actions with... international implications. If she could be tied directly to these actions, it would not reflect private citizens committing illegal acts, it would be considered a military action by the state itself. As I have no official power or role within the Equestrian government, I direct all sub-operations that our boss has asked to have no knowledge of.”

He pulled over his water with telekinesis, took another sip, and moved the towel next to him. There was a manilla folder on the bench underneath. He passed it to me. “This is your briefing pack. It contains details of your cover, your identity documents, blueprints for RGHQ, as well as background on Vaahn Ironmongery, the technology you’re selling, the details of your bids, the workings of Royal Guard acquisition, and your competitors,” he said. “Illusionist will meet you in the pool cafe in three hours, you have until then to familiarize yourself with the details. We’ll RV back at the airship at, oh, six-ish.”

He stood up, finished the last of the water, and prepared to leave. I peeked at the thick wad of papers inside the folder, and looked back up at him. “Yeah? And what are you doing till then?”

“Why, I’m going for a swim.”

I snorted. “What, in a public pool? You?”

Blueblood smiled from under his ugly mustache. “Everypony has to make a few sacrifices. Enjoy your time with the Guards, Gilda...”

* * *

Sometimes you can run into somebird you haven’t seen in a while, and without them saying a single word you can tell right away that they’re up to their beak in cack. You see the cigarette stains on their paws, the way their wings bunch up at the back, the bags under their eyes, the preening foam stuck behind their ears, and you just know that something is up, that they’ve lost their job, or their boss has his talons so far up their butt that they’ve become a claw puppet, or they’re either going through or in desperate need of a heavy breakup.

RGHQ was that but for a whole building.

Trixie and me got searched three times on the way in, a peek in-and-under for our taxi at the gates, then they patted us down and took our bags before they let us into the lobby, and in the lobby they scryed both us and our stuff for hidden enchantments, concealed weapons, and hostile intent.

After a disturbingly intimate final patdown, a constable moved us aside. “The scrying spells came up positive for deception, underhoofedness, and unethical monetary gain.” She scowled at us. “Anything you two gentlemares would like to tell me?”

“We’re in sales,” said Trixie.

The constable nodded, but remained scowling. “The quartermaster will be informed of your arrival. In the meantime, I advise you both to consult these complimentary pamphlets explaining Equestrian law on trading standards and fraudulent conduct, violations of which are punished with both civil and criminal sanctions.” She whipped two booklets from a rack next to the scrying circle, passed us our bags, the booklets, and our visitor identity lanyards, and stomped away.

Now, if you’ve never had to wear body armor and a sidearm all day long at work, you might not know that it freakin’ blows. It’s like walking around with hardback books stuffed up your shirt, and the better the armor is the more annoying it is to wear. The more powerful a weapon is, the less you want it dangling off your hip while you’re filing reports and sending out invoices. Equestrian Guards barely wear their reinforced barding on the beat, let alone behind the desk, and why would they? Violent crime ain’t really a big thing in Equestria, and definitely not in Canterlot. Add in unicorn magic, pegasus agility, and general pony scrappiness, and I don’t think I could even tell you what the official peacekeeping sidearm for guards on policing duties was.

Until now. Now I know it’s a Coke & Speckles L1A2 Threaded Baton, with arcane charging and whip capability. I found that out because every single stallion and mare in RGHQ had one sheathed on the webbing of their Level 2 Personal Protective Barding.

“Huleew, are yew tew with Varn?”

I snapped my head round to see an apple-cheeked, middle-aged Guardstallion smiling at us. “What?”

“Are yew the reeps from Varn Eernmerngrey?”

I honestly didn’t realise he was speaking Equestrian until Trixie said, “Yes, we’re with Vaahn. I’m Star Nimbus, Director of Exports, and my colleague is Grendel Gronkhürt.”

“Eh pleesure, eem Rooner Bean, der Quoortymerster. Would yew leek to fellow me?”

I stood up, blinking, wondering if this guy had a really bad speech impediment or if he was some kind of deaf.

“Are you a Chicken Choker?” asked Trixie.

My eyes went wide, and... “Rooner Bean?” gave her a fixed smile.

“Been a weel since eev heard dat term...”

“You’re from Stilltree Lakes, aren’t you?” Trixie beamed at him. “All my dad’s side of the family live there, proud Chicken Chokers for generations.”

He relaxed straight away, and laughed. “Eh, ey leafed der herf mey leaf. Sooch a preedy pleece.”

“Do you visit often?”

“Ween ey get leave, doh mey hoosbund and keeds all leaf in Keenterloot so eets noot as ooften as eed leek.”

He beckoned us and we started walking through the offices, while Trixie and... Runner Bean, that’s it! talked about his hometown, and vacation plans, and how was the journey from the Vaahn offices in Cowbec and stuff like that. After a few minutes I started to get used to his freaky accent. Ponies are weird.

The ground-floor offices at RGHQ were long and open, rows of desks either side of the hoofpath down the middle, organized in that weird government style that can’t decide if it’s a bank or a school. It was weirdly empty. It wasn’t like, unused, or abandoned, all the desks had nameplates and scattered paperwork and personal effects, but there were sixty desks in a single room and a dozen ponies sat at them. At half-two in the afternoon! I saw whole crowds of guards in the courtyards outside, training and drilling and milling about, but the offices were a ghost town.

Just before we passed into the next hall, in one corner of the office I saw the emergency armory, a well-oiled cabinet where they kept plate armor, halberds, and starfire lances in case of a full-bore attack on the building. I also saw a giant pile of paperwork, banker’s boxes, stationery, and office detritus on the floor to the left, a pile that had clearly been sat on and around the armory until somepony recently decided that it had to be kept clear. In the next office, I saw the exact same thing.

We got to a stairwell, and Runner Bean asked us to stay put while he sorted out the meeting room. As soon as he was out of earshot, I turned to Trixie.

“Okay, what the crap is a Chicken Choker? And what’s wrong with that guy’s voice?”

Trixie smiled, and adjusted her collar and tie. “He’s from Stillwater Lakes, in the northwest. Most of the ponies who live there came from Scandineighvia and Hayre, giving them a... distinctive accent, and ‘Chicken Choker’ is a semi-affectionate epithet based on the tale that centuries ago, the dedicated but not-particularly-bright locals mistook a rare chicken for a griffon spy, and then tried, judged, and hanged it.”

“Ponies are weird.”

I saw a corkboard on the nearest wall. No birthday reminders or staff party details or employee-of-the-month certificates, just signup sheets for different courses, filling up every spare inch of the board and a few sheets pinned into the drywall next to it. Riot training, magical concealment, long-range scouting, counter-demolition training, close-quarter battle training, advanced first-aid, counterintelligence, signups for selection for the various elite units of the Royal Guard. Four-fifths of the sheets had “FULL” stamped on them in big red letters. I looked away when Runner Bean returned.

“[Follow me up the stairs,]” is what he said, probably. We went up a flight of stairs, through a corridor, and into a meeting room, with glass walls, fluorescent lighting, and a chipped wood-laminate table big enough to seat eight. The hard-backed chairs scruffed against the thin carpet as we sat down. I shot Trixie a worried look, and she shot one back.

“[I’m afraid my own office is being used for temporary storage this week, so we’ll have to use this interview room instead. Can I offer you a drink?]” I guess Runner Bean said.

“I’ll have a coffee, thanks.”

Trixie leaned forward and looked slyly at him. “Have you got any... Yonge?”

He froze, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “[We don’t keep it on hoof, but I have a private stash. Would you like a cup?]”

“Oh, I’d love one, thank you.”

He left to fetch the drinks. Trixie turned to me, panicked.

“This is the wrong room!”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “It’s the wrong floor. Also, what’s ‘Yonge’?”

“A fermented yeast drink, it’s very popular up north.”

“Oh, like Tarmite.”

“Yes. Any ideas?”

“There’s a bathroom two floors up. If I can get in there, I can get into the right room. How’s that sound?”

“Hmm. Tricky.” Her horn glowed for a half-second. “The building is possessed by a spirit of sympathetic magic, making the Guards more powerful and damping everypony else. The place has its own nervous system. If I start forming illusions, every unicorn in this wing of the building will know about it.”

I held up my lanyard. The card glowed pale green, and had my name and reasons for being here written on it. “And if I stray off path or take it off, this thing will throw a tantrum?”

“Yes, but you’re prepared for that. How long do you need?”

“Twenty to thirty minutes, depending on the lock.”

She winced. “I’ll see what I can do...”

Runner Bean came back in with a tray of drinks, and before he could get a word out I said, “Sorry, can you show me where the bathroom is? I’m not feeling so hot.”

“[Oh dear, it’s just at the end of the corridor.]”

“Thanks. Star Nimbus has all the details, I’m just here for troubleshooting, please, start without me,” I said, high-tailing it out of there with a pained look on my face.

I locked the door behind me as soon as I got into the bathroom, and checked my watch. Two fifty-one P.M. already. At three twenty, they’ll start looking for me. Had to move fast.

First, the lanyard. If I go anywhere the building senses I’m not supposed to be, it’ll flash red and start yelping that I’m in a restricted area and should ask a guard to escort me out of it. If I take it off, it’ll sense that it’s not attached to me and start screeching like a hatchling. We’d come prepared, though.

I took a three-ring binder out of my messenger bag. There were dozens of punched plastic pockets inside. One of them had a sample of concealment weave fabric from Vaahn’s catalogue. I took off the card and wrapped it in the special fabric, then stuffed it back in the pocket. The building was now completely blind to the card.

Then I took out a glossy, card-backed piece of marketing copy for Vaahn Ironmongery, with high-quality pictures of our best-selling product lines. I pinched a tiny tab off at the top corner and pulled, tearing a strip of card off, and then unsealing it along the other three edges. The two pieces of card came apart, and on the back of each piece there was a copy of a RGHQ identity card. I punched both pieces out, glued them back-to-back with the contact adhesive in my makeup kit, and fastened the fake card to my lanyard. It didn’t have the magic glow, and anypony who got a close look would see it was fake, but at least it wouldn’t tell everyone in earshot that I was trespassing. I left the bathroom, and locked the door from the outside with a half-bit piece.

Usually, magic makes it easier to do criminal stuff. Sure, it can be used against you, but when the thieves and the thieved-from both have magic tricks, it’s easier for the thief to find a weak spot and exploit it than it is for the thieved to find and protect every single weak spot that can be exploited. Cracking tools, calming powder, shrinking potions, all that stuff makes my job a whole lot easier, so I try to make sure I’ve got it at my clawtips.

When you’re robbing a place where they search you three times to make sure you’re not carrying any sneaky crap like that, and where the building’s own magic will turn your firecrackers into squibs, you’ve gotta go low-tech.

Like this perfume bottle.

If I’d filled it with Lethe water so that anyone who took a sniff without the prophylactic would forget what they were supposed to be doing, the scryers at the gates would have sent the whole building into red alert and I’d be cooling my paws in a cell.

But if I fill it with a completely non-magical and non-harmful substance, a mixture of esters, phenols, extracts, and seven herbs and spices that the unicorn twins blended together, one that just happened to smell exactly like a margherita pizza fresh from the oven, nopony will give it a second glance.

Smells do strange things to the mind. Specifically, they do things to Royal Guard minds so that when they walk out into the hallway and see a griffon civilian they don’t recognise, their first thought isn’t “Who is that handsome bird and what are they doing here,” it’s “Who has the pizza and where can I find it.”

I spritzed it every few yards as I walked to the stairwell.

I got up one flight of stairs, and stopped dead when I saw the ponies coming down from above. I didn’t see his face, but I saw enough of the shiny purple barding to know it was the Captain of the Guard. I ducked into the hallway, blind, saw two guards at the far end talking to each other, slipped through an open door and shut it behind me.

It was a break room. A radio next to the sink played pop songs. There were two vending machines and a pool table, with a half-finished game on top of it. Overhead there were big ugly fluorescent lights and big ugly ceiling tiles. I tried to remember the building blueprints. This room should work.

I climbed onto the counter, looked down, and grinned. Some dumbass had left their wallet on the side.

“—I’ll be right with you, I think I left my wallet on the side—”

Crap.

I shot upwards a second before the door-handle turned. I pushed up the ceiling tile, wormed into the ceiling space, and scrambled to slide the tile back into place before the idiot decided to look up. My grip slipped, and left me pinching a corner of the tile between two talons, balanced on the edge of the slot, straining to hold it so it wouldn’t fall through.

The guard’s hooves clopped on the carpet for approximately eight years before he reached the counter, where he stood still, grunted in a very dumb and stupid way, and stood still some more.

A bead of sweat dropped from my forehead onto the dusty tiles.

He rifled through his wallet. Then he stood still. He started to walk away.

He walked over to the vending machines, and said ‘Hmmm.” He actually made that noise. Like some kind of moron.

I turned my head just enough to glance at my watch. Twenty four minutes left.

He took two entire minutes to decide what to buy. It clunked to the bottom of the machine, and when I heard the sound of him standing still while unwrapping his candy bar, I truly wished that everyone in this building would choke on their own spit.

My whole body was overextended and my outstretched claw shook from the strain of holding the tile in place.

Half a lifetime later, chewing loudly, he started to walk out of the room. I heard his hoof on the handle. My breath hitched.

The tile snapped.

I have never heard a louder noise than the one that fibreglass ceiling tile made as it crashed down to the floor.

The guard roared. “STEELHEART—”

Fuck. Fuck! Compromised. No good options. Escape or bluff? Quiet or fast? Don’t know—

“—STEELHEART, THE CEILING RATS ARE BACK!” He groaned, and stomped his hoof.

“You serious?”

“Yeah, they’re chewing at the tiles again, just like last time. How many dang times have I told the greenies to not leave food out on the side?”

“Greenies, mare. They got no brains.”

He sighed. “Right. Darn it. Okay, I’m coming, we’ll tell Animal Control later...”

The relief I felt when he walked out of that door was the closest I’ve ever got to religious ecstasy.

Ceiling spaces are hot, dusty and cramped, so I try not to spend much time in them. I crawled forward between beams, concrete, and fluffy, itchy insulation until I was over a different room. Maybe some unicorn would trot over to throw a scanning spell at the ceiling to see how big the rats were in the break room, and I didn’t want to be there if and when they did.

I couldn’t just go straight up. It’s not like you’re in the ceiling, you’re between the ‘drop’ ceiling, and the real ceiling. The real ceiling, crazily enough, becomes the floor for the next level, and for some wacky reason they’re made of stuff like concrete. I’m not busting upwards without a jackhammer. I have to come out of the drop ceiling, either down through the tiles, or out through the sides.

‘But Gilda,’ I hear, ‘aren’t the sides made of concrete too?’

No. They’re made of bricks. I can’t punch through those either, but there’s also vents that go out of the building, too small to crawl through—I ain’t a microwave dinner—but just big enough to squeeze through. There’s not much use in kicking a vent out of the way, unscrewing the grate, and wriggling out to the outside of the building. Lucky for me, I didn’t need to.

If you’re an architectural historian, or you spent the morning looking over the blueprints, you’ll know that RGHQ used to be two buildings, with six yards between them. Fifty years ago they got joined up, but the gap is still there. There’s channels running through it where hallways link the buildings up, but there’s wriggle room.

It took a lifetime of slow, dusty crawling to get there. Twenty-one minutes left. Hole in the brick where an air grate used to be, stuffed with insulation. Punch through it and it falls down into the void. Lucky they hadn’t filled the whole thing with that stuff.

The way up wasn’t comfy either. The space wasn’t exactly empty. Wooden support beams, metal vents, and hallway extensions crossed every which way. I could hear things skittering around, above and below. They really weren’t kidding about ceiling rats.

Also, it was pitch black. Griffons have good night sight, but that just means we can make a little light go a long way. When there’s nothing, not even a pinprick coming through the gaps in the ceiling tiles, we’re as blind as a pony.

I propped myself up against an old beam and rooted around in the makeup kit. Tube, bumpy rubber cap. Flim and Flam’s Miraculous Claw Polish. I twisted the lid twice to the right, once to the left, and shook the whole thing up.

A cherry-red glow flooded the gap. Dim light bounced off the cobwebs and shot rays though the dust clouds.

Damn, those were some big rats.

Hauled myself up a floor, crawled back into the drop-ceiling. Twenty yards ahead, eight yards right, straight down. More crawling. Heard snips of talking below.

“—messed himself. Sergeant Sentry chewed him out for fifteen solid in front of the whole platoon, and that was just a warm-up for the carpet parade with the Captain. Peeled the paint off the walls.”

“I almost feel sorry for the stupid sod.”

“I don’t, he’s an idiot. Talking about getting an early discharge at a time like this to go into private security? Minotaurs would hang you for less.”

“Well, I said ‘almost’ didn’t I?”

Eighteen minutes, ten yards. As long as I’m on my way back when they start looking, I might be okay.

”—lucky, in a way.”

“How’s he lucky? Two demotions, a month of punishment duties, and he’s still crying.”

“If Captain Armor was still here, he’d have pulled Brassie’s soul out through his mouth.”

“Hah, you’re not wrong.”

I slowly, carefully, lifted up a ceiling tile to peek down below. Two-pony shared office. Nopony there. Blinds all closed. Peered at the name tag on the desk. Cart Right on one desk, Right Way on the other. Bingo.

First thing I did when I got down there was take out the tube of false-eyelash glue from the makeup kit. It’s glue, alright—contact glue. I checked that the door to the office was locked, then fed the glue into the locking mechanism.

I looked on Cart Right’s desk. It was a mess. This guy freakin’ loved butter popcorn. Half a dozen mugs, pens and pencils everywhere. Eight different jobs going on in the paperwork, and half a memo in his typewriter. His day planner was open. Back from lunch in ten minutes. Damn it.

His desk drawers had labels. I only cared about one. ‘Schedule.’

The drawer had a three-pin tumbler lock. Not high security, not intended to be. It’s a lock for keeping your co-workers from getting into your candy stash. With the right tools, it’s a doddle to pick.

I didn’t have the right tools. I had whatever bits and pieces Flim and Flam could make resemble a manicure kit. The picks were too thick and the wrenches were too thin, and they handled like greased garbage.

If you watch action serials at the cinema, you’d think that picking locks is as smooth and quick as a shot of nineteen-year old whisky. You think wrong, pal. It’s as smooth as trying to get a cranky and very dumb receptionist give you a replacement key for a room not in your name, and you can say one word every five seconds.

You know what ‘high security’ means in lockpicking terms? It means a lock that takes ten or more minutes to pick. An ‘easy’ lock takes a professional locksmith a minute or two, and it takes me about four.

Four minutes. Not normal minutes, lockpicking minutes. Lockpicking minutes are like dog years: everything is longer, and if you’re counting in them you’ve probably got a below-average life expectancy.

I slid in the first pick aside the torque wrench, and wrangled the first pin into place. Then I snapped the second pick in half when somepony body-slammed the door to the office. My head shot up to look over the table and my heart shot up to about 200bpm. I saw a silhouette through the door blinds.

“Hey Whetstone, it’s locked!”

“Ech, typical. I got a key for this floor, gimme a minute.”

Oh, frickin’ shit it. Half of the broken pick dangled out of the lock, thank Hoelun. This wouldn’t have been a good time to bust out my tweezers. I put my head down and got to extracting it.

“Got it?”

“Yeah I—wait, nah, that’s for the conference rooms, that’s the spare for the toilets, this is—”

A bead of sweat dripped into my eye as I slid the second lockpick number two in beside the wrench and the first pick. I focused on the drawer and tried to drown out the sound of their voices. Took a deep breath.

“Is it the red one?”

“No, that was the old—here it is, lemme just... huh...”

Lockpicking isn’t like shucking oysters. You don’t just stick your tool in there, wrestle it down, and assert your dominance. Gotta be sensitive. Feel every click and squeak, keep testing it, knocking down pin after pin until you can curl that torque wrench and just make it roll over for you.

“That’s the wrong key, buddy.”

“No, it’s—I’m sure it’s the right key, it’s just stiff.”

“Let me try it.”

A third voice. “Hey, are you two trying to get into Cart Right’s digs?”

“The Captain sent us, he wants—”

“Whet’s using the wrong key.”

“I’m not using the wrong key, it’s just—”

Gotta be real calm for lockpicking, gotta just tune everything else out, not think of arrests or interrogations or uncomfortable tricks to play with threaded batons. If that big wave of adrenaline washes over me, if I get the shakes, if I can’t feel the clicks of the pins over the pulse in my claws, it’s not getting picked.

“—jammed it.”

“I haven’t jammed it.”

Too freakin’ right you haven’t. Enjoy the contact glue, ya dweeb.

“Have you tried turning it?”

“Yes, I have tried turning it. That’s the first thing I tried. I’m trying it right now, as you can see, in front of your eyes.”

“Sorry. I could try—”

“It’s a lock, not Cobblestone’s wife. Everypony does not need a turn, alright?”

“It looks jammed, Whetstone.”

“Are you sure that’s the right key?”

“Well, which key do you think it is?”

“It’s the red one, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not the red one.”

“Give it a try, just in case.”

“Fine, I—huh.”

“We should hurry up, Whetstone. The Captain’s in a rush.”

“It’s stuck!”

“Yeah, we know, you’ve been fiddling it for a minute.”

“No, it’s stuck. It won’t come back out!”

“I told you it was the wrong key.”

“Cobblestone, I swear to—”

Second pin down. A little more twist on the wrench. Just enough turn in the lock to keep the first two pins trapped in place at the shear line. Take one pick out, move the other to pin number three.

“This is embarrassing, guys, just let me—”

“Don’t—oh, fine.”

“Huh, yeah, this is the right key, it’s just...”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is it stuck?”

“Pfft, it’s just stiff—”

“That’s what she said.”

“—a spot of finesse and it’ll—”

I grinned as I heard the snap.

“Aw, nuts.”

“Brilliant.”

“Well done, idiot, you just broke the key. Inside the lock, no less.”

“Laugh it up, it’s a bum key and you know it.”

“Tell that to Cart Right and Right Way.”

“What do you even need from in there?”

“Cart Right has a key for the Guests and Dignitaries cache in the mess freezer. All the officers on second floor want pizza. They say somepony has it and isn’t sharing it, so the Captain tells us dig out the former captain’s personal pizza stash so they’ll stop bellyaching.”

“I think he’s craving it too, if I’m honest.”

“...I just got back from a refresher course on breaching tools. There is a pry-bar under my desk.”

“The Rights won’t be too happy if you pull their door off.”

“They won’t be happy if I break their lock either, and since I’ve done that already...”

“Also, the Captain won’t be happy if he waits much longer, and if he ain’t happy...”

“Nopony’s happy, I know. Fine, get the tools.”

“Hah, it’s funny if you think about it. Cart Right’s got all his keys on his desk under that ugly clay pot, and we’re stuck outside this door...”

His words clicked just as the last pin fell into place, and the lock turned with the torque wrench. Energy bubbled through my whole body as the drawer opened. Before I grabbed the files, I peeked at the desk, lifted a really ugly clay pot, and saw a big bunch of keys.

One was labeled “Schedule Drawer.”

I held in my scream and yanked the drawer open. A dozen sets of schedules, neatly filed by area of operations. Didn’t take me long to find the ones we needed. A folder with nine pages inside. Opened it up to confirm it before—

Wait, what?

...A single street patrol and a uniformed auxiliary for the Securities Commission office in the building? That was wrong, totally wrong. A building that size, that important, should have three-dozen Royal Guard members stationed there in uniform, and another two-dozen plaincoat officers alongside them. Blueblood’s files said he wouldn’t be surprised if there was a triple-digit number of guards in the Public Archives.

I grabbed a few other folders at random and compared them. They were all normal, with uniform and non-uniform postings right there on the page. Heck, the one for the Peak District was a almost a copy of the example schedule from the briefing files, even some of the names were the same.

I checked the postings for the areas surrounding the Archives just in case it they’d shoved it somewhere weird. Nothing.

“Cack,” I muttered. I took the ‘facial masques’ out of the makeup kit, stretched them out, and pressed them onto the pages of the schedule, again and again, and then did a few other schedules just in case, and stopped when the guards came back. I slid up into the drop-ceiling as they started to batter the door.

I scrambled through the ceiling. Didn’t look at my watch, knew I was outta time anyway. Practically crashed into the beams inside the void on my way down. Think I riled up the ceiling rats, too.

I went two floors straight down this time. Just had to get to that bathroom. Twenty yards.

Over the hallway now.

“—in there? Ma’am, if you don’t respond I’m going to have to break this door down!”

There’s my cue. Right over the bathroom. Hooves rapping on the door. He’s about to start kicking. I take the tile off and slip down. Covered in dust and cobwebs. Tile back in place, brushing myself down. Gonna have to bluff it.

The door swung open.

* * *

Trixie pulled the elevator level, and we started to rise. “I’m genuinely shocked they bought it,” she said. “‘Bugborne Sleeping Sickness?’ Is that even real?”

“Yeah, it’s Lyme Disease’s shy cousin.”

“Big mean Gilda, dozing off on a toilet. A perfect disguise, I think, or a lucky one at least.”

I grit my beak. “Don’t mention today and lucky in the same sentence, please. It was a shit-show.”

Trixie quirked an eyebrow. “Wait, did you actually—”

“Figure of speech, you dork.”

She snorted and the doors slid open. We trudged over the airship platform to where the Summer Breeze was waiting.

Flam doffed his hat when we got into the bar, and Flim raised a glass. “Good day, my chimeral companion, how did the—”

“Thanks for the toys, broke your lockpicks, where’s Blondie?”

“Right behind you,” said Blueblood. He walked into the room with Lightning Dust in tow, and we all took a seat around a cramped table.

Blueblood glanced at the face masque packet. “You have the schedule?”

I slid it over to him. “It’s garbage.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Take a look,” said Trixie. “It’s not as... useful as we’d hoped it would be.”

Flim’s horn flared up and sent a beam of green energy onto the extracted rubber masque. A ghostly stack of papers shimmered into place in the middle of the table. Blueblood rifled through them, his brow furrowing and his frown getting deeper.

“I was worried you’d find something like this,” he muttered. “This is... clearly not an accurate accounting of the security at the Archives.”

“We’ve been removed from liquor stores with more guards,” said Flam.

Blueblood rubbed his chin. “This isn’t the right folder.”

I crossed my arms. “It’s the one you sent me for, pal, down to the reference number.”

“And it’s the one I asked for.” He looked up at me. “Still, there are two possibilities. The first is that for some reason, the Equestrian Public Archives are run through the Royal Palace detachment. Infiltration is out of the question, but I could retrieve it myself. I’d would almost certainly be implicated afterwards, but it should be there. Unfortunately, it could just as easily be in the other place.”

Everyone glanced around the table uneasily, except Lightning Dust, who took out a stick of gum and chewed it loudly. Trixie coughed.

“Erm, dare I ask what the less-fortunate possibility is?”

Blueblood looked over the documents again, and sighed. “That it is guarded entirely by undercover officers. Assigned to individual handlers and offices, working under assumed names, not on a schedule. Any details on their assignments will be confidential, and any documents will be in code. Their supervising officers might not even be in Canterlot.”

“How many more guard stations am I gonna have to break into?” I asked.

“It would be pointless,” said Flim. “Like playing catch with a hoof-full of itching powder.”

“Why, it would be a big white cloud of pain and frustration.”

“Coughing, wheezing, irritated skin.”

“Terrible irritation. Swelling, redness...”

“Oozing, even.”

Trixie held up a hoof and shushed them. “Antics later.”

“Flim and Flam are right. There would be no point in any other break ins,” said Blueblood. “We could do manual surveillance of the public areas, but other than that...”

“We’d be flying blind,” I said.

“Yes. I realize this isn’t the best—”

Lightning Dust sighed loudly enough to drown the rest of his sentence out, rolling her eyes and slumping back in her chair. She took out her blob of chewing gum and placed it in the middle of the table. “Don’t touch that.” She got up and walked out, in a hurry.

Blueblood blinked. “Is she—”

“Shut up, Blueblood,” she said, bustling back in with a big rolled-up sheet of paper. She spread the paper out on the table, using her gum to pin it in place. It was a blown-up page of an educational book, one of those ones filled with cross-section illustrations of famous buildings and big stuff—inside an ocean liner, inside an Grand Aerie, inside an airship, that kind of thing. This one was a cross-section of the Equestrian Public Archives.

Lightning Dust took a pencil in her mouth, circled three spots on the drawing, and spat it back out. “Here, here and here. Sixteen-pony detachment in each room, forty-eight total, plus your Royal Guard auxiliary in the Securities Commission office.”

Everyone stared at her. She bristled. “Well? You ain’t gonna thank me?”

I pointed a claw at her. “Did you know this shit all along and send me into a building full of cops with a fake name and a bag full of spy toys just so you could show up Blondie?”

She waved a hoof. “Nah, nah, that was just a funny accident. I thought this might be right, but you just made me sure.”

Blueblood straightened up, eyes wide. “You think the Smiss are stationed—”

“Shut up Blueblood,” she snapped. He gave a long-suffering sigh, sat back, and mimed zipping-his-mouth-shut to her. She stopped glaring at him, and turned back to look at the rest of us. “The Smiss are stationed there.”

Flim and Flam and Trixie looked confused. “Erm,” said Flam, “sorry to broadcast my lack of worldliness in this setting, but what exactly is a ‘Smiss’?”

“Special Magical Service,” I said. “Part of the Equestrian military’s Peculiar Operations Group. They’re the most elite unicorn soldiers in the world.”

“I thought the Firecasters were the elite troops,” said Trixie.

Lightning Dust shook her head. “You can sign up to the Firecasters the day you turn twenty, and if you pass the physical and get through the six-month training, you’re in. The Smiss will only take unicorns who’ve been in either the military or the Royal Guard for three years already. They let a hundred-fifty soldiers go through selection each season, and a hundred-twenty get returned-to-unit.”

Trixie nodded. “How do you know it’s them, and how do you know where they are?”

Lightning Dust popped another stick of gum into her mouth, chewed, and then said, “I know they’ve got units on permanent standby in Canterlot. The Aerial Scouts did a lot of joint missions with them, and soldiers talk, even really freakin’ good ones. I know the classes of buildings they’d be stationed in—ones vital to state integrity, with high-magic environments, that don’t contain immortal alicorns. I know they don’t work well with plods, so there ain’t gonna be a whole bunch of Royal Guards in the building. From the locations of possible high-value hostages, defensive channels, ease of breaching, and proximity to pool tables and vending machines, I can say with about ninety-percent confidence that our mares and stallions are in these locations.” She folded her forelegs, sat back, and looked at Blueblood expectantly.

“Thank you, Miss Dust,” he said. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

She chuckled, and then her expression turned serious. “Yeah. They don’t put a Smiss detachment in place just because somewhere is valuable or high-security. All the money in the country flows through the Royal Mint, and they’ve got a gross of Royal Guards. They put the Smiss in places where any attack, break-in, or infiltration would amount to an attack on Equestria itself. There’s four units under the House of Lords for that reason. They’re A-rank spellcasters, they are all trained in hoof-to-hoof and close-quarters combat, and each and every one of them is itching for a fight.”

She picked up the pencil again, and drew a line on the drawing where the public area of the archives ended. “Any funny business past this point,” she drawled, “and these guys come at us like it's World War Twelve...”