Noblesse Oblige

Chapters

II - What "Nephew" Really Means, Part Two
III - What "Nephew" Really Means, Part Three
IV - What "Prince" Really Means, Part One
V - What "Prince" Really Means, Part Two
VI - What "Prince" Really Means, Part Three
VII - What "Blueblood" Really Means, Part One
VIII - What "Blueblood" Really Means, Part Two
IX - What "Blueblood" Really Means, Part Three
I - What "Nephew" Really Means, Part One

II - What "Nephew" Really Means, Part Two

Thinking to demonstrate my superior manners, I turned to my counterpart and gestured for him to precede me. But he already had, traipsing after His Highness with the eyes-half-closed expression of a sleepwalker. I didn't rush to catch up, but I used every micrometer of my larger stride to enter the prince's office close upon my competitor's hooves. The guard this time remained without, the glow from His Highness's horn skittering along the door and pulling it closed just as I scooted inside.

Other than the absence of guards, the room looked much the same as it had the previous day. A large crystal bowl sat on His Highness's desk, however, and even knowing little about antiquities, I could tell that it was old. The designs etched along the sides had an abstract, flowing quality to them—for reasons I couldn't begin to fathom, they made me think of moonlight—and the material itself glistened as delicate as a soap bubble, rainbows shimmering from it over the desk's surface in the room's muted light.

"Very nice," my inexact duplicate breathed, his voice a bit too nasally for my tastes. "It's not Hereford crystal, but something nearly as fine, I should say."

"Nearly?" Prince Blueblood's glare could've cut the crystal if he'd not had his beetled brow focused on the fellow beside me instead. "This piece is over a thousand years old, I'll have you know!" He snapped around to face the bowl, the light from his horn wavering out to snatch the thing and raise it into the air. "There are only two others like it in the entire city, and by my estimation, only six still extant in the world!" His frown curled upward into a greasy smile. "I use it to hold the candy I give out to the children on Nightmare Night since the bowl dates to the time when Nightmare Moon herself strode across the face of Equestria." He cocked his head. "Are you gentlecolts familiar with the story of Nightmare Moon?"

I knew the legend, of course, but I found that I didn't much want to contemplate mythical pony-eating monsters right at the moment. "I don't know," I said in a tone designed to convey how little I cared. "Have they made an opera from it?"

The stocky stallion next to me, however, absolutely quivered. "Oh, Nightmare Night! It's my favorite holiday! The children look so scrumptious in their little costumes, why, I could just gobble them up myself!"

His Highness arched an eyebrow. "Personally, I prefer the costumes my companions don for the interior activites that commence once the children have been sent on their way."

My competitor didn't seem to be paying attention. "Ah, foals." He gave his upper lip a long, slow licking from one end to the other. "I find them to be endlessly fascinating. So innocent and needy."

The way he leaned into that last word made me want to take a large step away from him, but instead, I gave a gentle snort and said, "I had a doctor friend once prescribe me a regimen of pills, and upon the label of the bottle I found a good deal of instructive advice including the phrase 'Keep away from children.' It's a dictate I've attempted to follow rigorously from that day till this."

The other contestant's nose wrinkled, and I'm fairly certain he inched away from me. His Highness, on the other hoof, let loose with that booming laugh I knew so well from his visits to the Music Center, and—

Well, all I can do is report the facts. He wheeled away from us, his magic flaring, and the crystal bowl went dashing across the room to slam into the bookshelves behind his desk. It more exploded than merely shattered, the report so alarming, I swear I felt it as a physical force.

I jumped back, of course, as did my next door neighbor, but Blueblood simply stood staring at the shards embedded in the spines of the books and scattered along both the wall and floor. "Oh, dear," he said into a silence as thick as clotted cream. "What an unfortunate turn of events."

Now, it was about at this point that the various stories I'd heard growing up concerning Prince Blueblood began hammering somewhat insistently at the back of my brain, stories that used words like "wanton" and "capricious" and "cruel" with unpleasant frequency.

That the guard didn't come rushing in, however, suggested several other things to me, but by that time, the prince had spun around again, his eyes wide and his lips pulled back. "I hope I didn't startle you gentlecolts!"

This time, it was my competitor who snorted. "I've caused louder noises to be made while eating my breakfast cereal."

At which I couldn't contain a sigh, but I tried to cover it by bringing a front hoof up to fan my face. "Are we to be taking notes, sir, on the proper method for alarming and confusing one's guests? For if so, I fear I've left my quill pen in my Sunday pajamas."

His Highness's eyelids lowered to about half-staff. "I'll tell you what you're to do, you hapless twits. You're to leave here and not return until you have in your possession one of the remaining two bowls of this type that are located within Canterlot city limits. You'll have until my aunt Celestia raises the moon this evening, and I'd honestly think twice about returning at all if you haven't procured one by then." He waved a hoof at the door, and the guard opened it from the other side. "Off you go, now. And have fun!"

Blinking first at him, I then turned to blink at my opposite number. That individual, however, was already trotting out the door. Not wanting to remain alone in a room with His Highness, I followed.

A bit of effort caught me up to the fellow just as he was lighting his horn to push open the reception room door. "Well!" I said in my heartiest tones. "What say you to a nice bit of lunch at Semolina's, then we can pool our resources and track down both these bowls for His Heinous?"

That the look he squirted sideways at me through narrowed lids didn't drip with disdain, I could only attribute to the dry weather we'd been having. "I know where one of them is," he said. "And since the information can't possibly do you any good, I shall gladly share it: the Canterlot History Museum off Trellis Square."

I only had to exaggerate my gape slightly. "You mean all that blather was true? He just shattered some truly ancient objet d'art?"

"His Highness plays for keeps." We'd reached the lobby of the building by then, and he rounded on me with a most unpleasant look on his already unpleasant face. "And I do the same." He jabbed a hoof at my chest. "If you get in my way, I'll gladly run you down like a stray dog in the street. And in case you haven't noticed, you're already in my way." He tapped the hoof against my blazer in what I'm sure he meant to be a threatening fashion, but in all honesty, I was more worried about the silk.

"Careful!" I shoved his hoof away and brushed at the imaginary mark he'd left. "You'll soil the material!"

When I looked back up after a close and phony examination of the spot in question, he was gone, and I mentally bid him good riddance. For another brief moment, I wondered just what sort of trouble I'd gotten myself into this time, but I pushed those thoughts quickly aside. Whatever His Highness was up to, I couldn't let that short-legged vulgarian who'd just left have any part of it. I would need to deploy all my charm and cunning and find this blasted bowl before he did.

Determination so overcame me that I forgot all about lunch and marched myself several blocks west from the Tower District to Canterlot's Nasturtium Park neighborhood. There, I wended my way to Ebony & Alabaster, my favorite of the several jewelry stories I patronized in town when seeking commemorative baubles for those mares whom I had the good fortune to call my special friends.

Alabaster herself had been one of those special friends on occasion over the four years that I'd been, oh, let's call it "socially active," shall we? But as much as we both enjoyed spending time in each other's embraces, our trysts had an uncomfortable "mixing business and pleasure" aspect to them that neither of us felt was quite proper somehow. So for all the warmth that spread over, under, around, and through me upon stepping into their establishment and seeing her at the front counter, I kept my thoughts as pure as I was able. "Alabaster!" I called, trying to glide into the shop in the style that Prince Blueblood had displayed yesterday and earlier today. "Bosom companion and helpmate! You continue to be in every possible respect exactly the pony I'd hoped to see!"

"Polaris!" Her eyes lit up in a most complimentary fashion—for all that Alabaster was at least two decades older than I, her deep purple eyes surrounded by her namesake skin tone gave her a beauty that would never wither. "Have you brought me another thousand bits?"

I drew back in feigned horror. "By the bright blue above, madame! You wound me!" Collapsing to sit upon my haunches, I touched one hoof to my heart and draped the frog of my other foreleg across my eyes. "To think that after all we've meant to one another, you view me merely as a customer; as a gawker who, slack-jawed and drooling, serves nothing but your bottom line; as a common moneybag, feed trough, and source of revenue!"

She made a little clicking sound with the side of her mouth. "Larry, darling, there's nothing common about a pony who speaks using semi-colons."

With great effort, I ignored both the nickname and the dig. "But," I went on, activating my horn and plucking Prince Blueblood's latest bank draft from my blazer's inner pocket, "because I find you so exceedingly scintillating, I've come to you in search of a very specific object."

Those lovely eyes widened as they beheld the numbers enscribed upon the slip. "Five thousand? And with the royal seal again? Larry, what've you gotten yourself into this time? Or maybe I should ask instead who you've gotten yourself into..."

"Tut, tut, now." I certainly didn't want to bring the prince's name into things and spoil the conversation, so I instead unveiled my most disarming smile and tapped the bank draft. "I'm on a bit of a scavenger hunt, it so happens, and am in most pressing need of information about the whereabouts of a certain sort of crystal bowl."

As best as I could, I described the item I'd seen smashed to spangles back in His Highness's office. Alabaster's eyes continued their expansion, and at the conclusion of my miniature monologue, I feared they might burst like the balloons they now resembled. "An Ecuelle Lunaire?" she whispered as wispily as an evening breeze through palm branches. "You...you've seen one? Up close?"

Her reaction only fanned the flickering uneasiness in my stomach, but I swallowed against it lest any worry lines mar my smooth-as-a-snowbank forehead. "In point of fact, I should like to see one up close, specifically the one not housed in the Royal Palace or the History Museum downtown." I pushed the bank draft toward her. "Would you perhaps know where within our great and glorious metropolis this third bowl currently resides?"

"Pastel has it," she again more muttered than said, then she started back as if coming awake from a dream of lemon pie and ice cream. "Pastel Palette, the art collector," she went on in stronger tones. "I'm surprised you've not had occasion to spend time with her before, actually. She and I enjoy so many of the same sorts of things that I'm entirely certain she would appreciate your sterling qualities." Her eyes flickered, and I could almost feel her gaze touching here and there upon those aforementioned qualities.

Now, since the Music Center is a public facility, we maintain a top-of-the-line magical fire alarm system. To the best of my knowledge, it's never been used in its actual capacity, but we employees conduct drills every two months or so wherein we execute the management-approved evacuation plan while that infernal alarm clangs away in the background.

I only bring the matter up because a similar alarm had begun at that very moment to bleat in the back of my brain. Its wailing only increased in volume and urgency when Alabaster lit up the bank draft with her own magic, plucked it from beneath my hoof, folded it, and tucked it back into the inner pocket of my blazer. "Give me a moment," she said. "I'll fetch Ebony to take over the desk here, then you and I will saunter across town to Hevosenvalta Heights so I can introduce you to Pastel."

Only years of careful training kept my smile light and my voice breezy. "Any other time, sweet one, I would be overjoyed to spend the afternoon with you and your lovely friend. But alas, my time is not my own today. So I hope you'll forgive me if I must scarper." I bent forward to kiss her hoof and with my jauntiest step took myself away before I might be tempted to do something I'd likely regret unto the final breath of my being.

Where I wandered the rest of that day, I'm not entirely certain. About midafternoon, I visited a branch of the First Equestrian Bank to convert my cheque into bits, then I pulled in at a nearby watering hole for a late lunch and a lick of salt or three. It was not the merriest of meals, the word 'tawdry' echoing with alarming intensity over, under, around, and through me, a sensation for which I didn't care in the slightest.

How simple it would've been, after all, to go skipping along with Alabaster, to spend a few succulent hours entertaining her and her friend, to perhaps even exert myself in the effort and so captivate Ms. Pastel Palette that she would willingly part with this Ecuelle Lunaire.

Except that there are words for ponies who do such things, words that I'd had rustle through my head on those dark nights when I would lie awake contemplating the decades ahead of me. I had used my gifts so far for the loveliest and most benign of purposes—the mutual exchange of pleasure—with nary a glance toward personal gain or solo enrichment. The very thought of profiting in any way from these arrangements left a sour taste at the back of my tongue and quite literally put me off my salt.

Fortunately, the establishment served an excellent cider, and several mugs fortified me enough to rise from the booth I'd occupied for the past few hours. With the majority of my five thousand bits left there for the dutiful and attentive staff, I hied myself out into the onrushing dusk and arrived back at Prince Blueblood's office just as our actual beloved sovereign was magically bringing the day to its end.

The reception parlor stood empty, the only light coming from the barely crackling fireplace along the wall, my old friend the clock ticking turgidly above it. Shadows flickered across the sofas, the tables, the bookcases—and a figure standing by the inner office door, a figure of tarnished gold and yellowed ivory. "You're late," Prince Blueblood said.

"Am I?" I made a show of patting up and down the front of my blazer. "I seem to have mislaid my almanac, but I'm almost certain moonrise isn't scheduled for another fifteen seconds."

He glowered at me, then turned and stomped into his office. Perhaps I was still under the influence of the salt and cider, but rather than making my prudent way back out into the corridor and away from that place, I did some stomping of my own and entered the office myself.

And there, nestled amongst the paperwork covering his desk, sat an Ecuelle Lunaire identical as far as I could tell to the one I'd seen there earlier in the day. "Once again," Prince Blueblood said from his spot on the other side of the desk, "I inform you that you're late. Your competitor brought this to me forty-five minutes ago and has an appointment to see me again tomorrow morning at eleven." He pressed his front hooves together and leaned forward to rest his chin on them. "And what have you brought me other than disappointment?"

"My sheer and unbridled contempt," I replied, waving my hoof at the bowl. "That you would knowingly accept an item either stolen or fake fills me with a loathing so deep, I can scarcely summon forth the stamina to express the sentiment!"

His eyes gave one slow blink. "Well, it's not a fake, I can tell you that much." He cocked his head. "And what proof have you that it might be stolen?"

I drew myself up to my full height. "I have a dear friend who is a dear friend of Ms. Pastel Palette, and the thought that a collector of Ms. Palette's caliber would simply give an object as exquisite as that bowl to the low-lived, filthy-minded scoundrel into whose company I was forced earlier today, well, sir! I shan't give such a thought even a moment's consideration!"

The prince's oily smile returned in earnest. "Would you consider the thought that Pastel allowed the object to be taken as a personal favor to me?"

During my days in the orphanage, I'd had many an opportunity to observe a fellow who for some unknown reason, had loved to spend hours standing dominoes by the hundreds into intricate patterns upon the common room floor before tapping one and sending the whole swirling line-up of them toppling over from one end of the design to the other. Again, I only bring the matter up now because something very similar was occurring inside my head. "A trick," I heard myself saying aloud. "Everything today. From the very beginning."

"Indeed?" His Highness's voice seemed exceedingly loud, and I started back to see him standing beside me, his smile so oily now, I swear it smelled like a cheap bistro's house salad. "Oh, I do so love a good trick! Why don't you tell me all about it?"

"This!" I was still struggling to understand the insight I'd suddenly received. "And you! And—" I stopped, took a breath, started again. "The test today was to see how far we'd go to follow your orders, to see if we'd be willing to break into another pony's home just to fetch you—" Another few dominoes fell, and I became very convinced of another point without a great deal of proof. "To fetch you an item you already had." I pointed to the part of the bookcase against which His Highness had smashed the Ecuelle this morning. "If Ms. Palette agreed to cooperate with you in this little bowl game, then you never broke the first one. That was all fireworks and illusion. You pulled our strings, then sat back to watch us dance."

Nodding, Prince Blueblood leaned toward me. "And how does this make you feel?"

I considered for half a heartbeat. "Weary," I decided to say, and I turned toward the exit door I'd used the previous day. "Are we done here? I've an appointment with my pillow to weep for the future of ponykind, and I'd hate to miss it."

"We could be done," he said behind me. Movement to my right caught my attention, and I watched a section of shelving swing open to reveal an undamaged crystal bowl. Floating out in the golden glow of his magic, it joined its twin upon his desk. "What a shame that would be, however. For did you not bring me the requested bowl as per the rules of the contest? And did you not do it in a much more stylish fashion than that other grotesque slab of horseflesh?"

I swung around to lambaste him thoroughly; to upbraid him in the strongest possible terms; to inform him in a brief and concise manner that I wanted nothing more to do with him, with his contests, with his peculiarities and his vulgarities and whatever simple-minded game he thought he was playing—

But while he was still standing there displaying the same greasy grin, his eyes half-closed, insouciance wavering up from him like steam from an overfilled bathtub, he was no longer alone.

Now, Princess Celestia stood beside him.

III - What "Nephew" Really Means, Part Three

That I froze in place is, I hope, understandable. I'd seen Princess Celestia from a distance many times over the years, but being in the same room as her was nothing I'd ever thought I'd experience: the fresh rainwater scent of her; the flannel-blanket-on-a-cold-night warmth she exuded; the slight stirring of the air from the breeze constantly caressing her mane; her sheer physicality—as if everything else I'd ever seen in my life till now had been a crudely rendered cartoon, and here for the first time, I was seeing what roundness and depth truly looked like.

So, yes. I froze in place.

Her Highness had been looking at the two bowls, but then her gaze came up, met mine, and nearly knocked me over backwards. "Please," she said, and the way the word stroked my ears, I couldn't've left even if I'd wanted to.

How I took those two steps toward them without collapsing, I'll never know. I did bow, though, all the way down to the ground and would've gone further if the carpeting hadn't been there to stop me.

When I straightened up, the princess had moved to a spot behind Prince Blueblood’s desk, her attention on some paperwork across which a quill pen was dancing in the light of her horn. "Thank you for staying," she said. "Although the first order of business is for me to inform you that I'll be offering you two opportunities to leave. You can go with my nephew right now into the reception parlor, receive another bank draft for ten thousand bits, and submit to my personal physician Dr. Pineal removing all memory of you ever having seen me here. Blueblood will never bother you again, and you'll have seventeen thousand bits for your trouble." Her head came up, and what I perceived in her face, I simply don't have the words for. She was calm, of course, was in control, of course, but—

She wanted something. The only alicorn in the known world, the sole monarch and undying Sun Princess of Equestria, she wanted something. From me. I could smell it more than see it, could taste it when I inhaled the breath she'd just exhaled.

I had no idea what that something might be.

But I knew I could never live with myself if I didn't find out.

"Your Highness," I said, displaying my most fetching smile. "You seem to have gone to a great deal of effort if your aim was merely to send me away. So I'll thank you for your kind offer, but I fear I must decline." I bowed again, and when I straightened up this time, she and I were alone in the room.

Or rather, we were alone in a completely different room, a larger and more shadowy one. She was still at the desk, but that was really all I could make out of our surroundings despite the glow that seemed to radiate from her. "Thank you," she said again, and while her voice sounded the same, the way it settled over me made the fine hairs along the base of my mane stand up. "I'll now explain to you what's going to happen next. Once I've done explaining it, you'll have one last opportunity to leave before we get started. If you take that opportunity, I'll send you back to Blueblood's office where Dr. Pineal will do her work. The only memory you'll retain of this day is Blueblood's scavenger hunt, and you’ll find yourself in possession of a bank draft for one hundred thousand bits."

As hard as I was trying to retain the air of cool detachment that had gotten me through this thing so far, I couldn't help gasping, "One hundred thousand?"

"Yes," she said simply. A smile pulled at her mouth, and the aromas I caught this time made me think of thunderstorms in the distance. "For your troubles," she added.

I forced my breathing to slow, bowed in order to once more break eye contact with her, and managed to squeak out, "What trouble could possibly come from meeting the beloved princess of Equestria?" I swallowed to clear my throat, raised my head slowly—

And this time the desk had vanished, Princess Celestia standing massive and majestic in the light she herself was casting. "We will be playing a scene, you and I." Her voice seemed tighter, her whole body as solid as if she'd become a marble statue. Her mane still flowed, however, her chest still expanding and contracting. "You will be playing Prince Blueblood, my nephew." Her tongue darted out to touch the center of her upper lip. "The scene will end in only one of two ways. Either I'll tell you it's over, whereupon you will go back to Blueblood's office to receive Pineal's ministrations and a bank draft for two hundred thousand bits. Or—" She took a deep breath, and behind her, part of a wall faded into view, something on the floor against it, something large and round and slightly lumpy.

"Or you and I will have sex," she finished, and I realized I was looking at a bed, piled with white satin pillows and covered with gold-embroidered blankets.

Now, perhaps I'd been wandering through this entire scenario so far with a child's naiveté, but this revelation of hers shocked me to the core. Even as I stood there gaping, though, the part of my mind that devoted itself to my little hobby sprang joyfully to life, taking everything I knew about Princess Celestia as well as everything I'd learned in the last two days and collating it all into a profile of what she was likely to enjoy and what she was likely not to enjoy.

The princess began speaking again, and the useful bit of my brain drank deeply of the information while the rest of my consciousness flailed and sputtered in incomprehension. "With this scene," she said, "there will be no stops, no breaks, no safe words. I've done this sort of thing hundreds of thousands of times over the past ten centuries, so I know your capabilities more thoroughly than you do yourself. No shame will accrue should you demure now before the scene begins or if I should demure later and end the scene prematurely. Playing the role of my nephew can be daunting, but you've been highly recommended by the pony currently bearing the Blueblood name." Her tongue darted out to touch her upper lip again. "And I very much like what I've seen of you so far."

"Your Highness is too kind," I heard a voice that sounded somewhat like mine say, but when her lips tightened and her nostrils flared, I put that particular phrase on my list of things to avoid.

"So." Whatever annoyance she'd felt didn't come out in her tone at all. "If you'd like to leave, tell me now. Otherwise, the scene will begin."

My mind spun with inferences and leaped wildly to conclusions. The original Blueblood a millennium or so ago: her actual nephew and a bit of a bad boy? She'd been attracted to this bad boy, and whatever had happened between them way back then, odds were it hadn't ended well. It had struck her so deeply, however, that she'd been recruiting unicorn stallions to recreate some version of that long-dead relationship ever since.

This didn't strike me as particularly healthy. Possibly, however, if I were anywhere near as clever and talented as I liked to pretend I was, maybe—just maybe—I could navigate my way to some sort of understanding of the situation and help guide her to some sort of peace with it.

So I looked up at the pony about whom I'd had my first sexual fantasy—a pony who, I daresay, had played a featured role in a fair percentage of such fantasies throughout the length and breadth of Equestria—squared my shoulders, put on a rakish grin, and said, "Really, now, Auntie: I don't see what all the fuss is about."

The stomp of her hoof shook the room, and the Princess Celestia I'd known my entire life—the sweet, wise, gentle, all-knowing and all-loving ruler—vanished without a trace. "You dare?" she bellowed, fire blazing from the corners of her eyes and her wings flaring open more like the bared claws of some predatory beast than anything else. "Chambermaids are not objects for your perverse pleasures, Blueblood! They are ponies with thoughts and feelings, and you will treat them with the respect they deserve!"

About ninety-five percent of me wanted to shriek in terror and fall cowering to the floor. But that wasn't what she wanted, the other five percent of me knew, and it was that five percent that I trusted to arrange matters whenever I found myself in a mare's bedroom. So I rolled my eyes and lied: "Chambermaids are always so melodramatic, wailing and protesting and whatnot. But once you pin them to a bed, I've found, they become nicely tractable."

"You filth!" she roared. A sizzling ball of flame burst from her horn, seized me about the middle, and hauled me roughly into the air; spinning, I came to a halt dangling before her narrow and volcanic eyes, her lips pulled back from gritted teeth. "I've warned you again and again and again, and yet you choose not to listen!"

The breath I pulled in smelled of burning forests, but I refused to let my voice waver. "Shall I tell you what I hear, Auntie?" I couldn't free my forehooves to tap the tip of her nose, so I leaned forward instead, touched my muzzle to hers, and whispered, "Jealousy."

She exploded. Quite literally: the force of it catapulted me backwards, whirling away from her. But a force more solid than any iron or steel quickly grabbed me and slung me in another direction. Light and darkness smeared across my field of vision until I collided with something soft and yielding. The most delicate possible scent of roses wafted up, and I found myself sinking into the white satin pillows and gold-embroidered coverlets I'd noticed earlier.

Which was about all I was able to notice before she was upon me, stooping and striking like a hawk after a mouse. The whole bed shuddered under the impact, but so precise was her control, I felt only a surge of blanket beneath me and the slightest tap of one hoof where it came to rest in the center of my chest. The careful flow of her pastel rainbow mane had come completely undone, the colors sticking up in a shamble from the back of her head, and with her eyes wide and her lips drawn back in a hideous grin, her face resembled a skull more than anything else.

"Pinned to a bed, I think you said?" she asked, and the low, maniacal giggle that followed made goosebumps stand up all over me. Of course, her long, large body settling down along mine was causing other parts of me to stand up as well, a process she appeared to be encouraging by the motion of her hips.

And while fear and desire both warred for my attention, I knew that neither of those was the reaction she wanted. Mustering all the outrage I could, I clenched my own teeth and exclaimed, "You wouldn't!"

She did, however.

And I? I simply don't have the words. Rapturous, perhaps? Glorious? Ecstatic? Overwhelming, certainly, but still, even engulfed as I was, I knew that anything I experienced here was strictly secondary. All my attention had to be on her, on assisting her to achieve whatever closure this process granted her. So I made sure to cry, "Oh, Auntie, Auntie!" a few minutes into things and was rewarded when her entire being seemed to pulse, her own wordless cry telling me that this word was indeed one of her triggers. And when I felt myself nearing the peak of this mad, incredible whirlwind, crying the phrase once again brought us to the plateau together and plunged us off the edge still clutching one another.

How long I lay there breathing afterwards before I managed to locate my eyelids, I have no idea. It then took me some moments to recall how to operate them properly, but once I did, I saw the ruler of all Equestria sweetly sprawled beside me, her mane flowing as it should, her own eyes closed and one wing draped over my side softer than the finest blanket I'd ever touched. "Three more points," she said then, her voice as warm and smooth as hot fudge. "First, in your role as Prince Blueblood, you will commit a regular series of small scandals amongst the populace. You will, however, cause nopony harm, nor will you break any of the more serious laws."

Her eyes came open, and for all that I wanted to lose myself in the beauty of them, the hard kernel at their center demonstrated the folly of that idea. "For instance," she went on, "this scenario we just played with you forcing your attention upon unwilling chambermaids would be completely unacceptable. Is that understood?"

I nodded, not quite trusting my brain or throat to form coherent words quite yet.

"Good." The intensity of her gaze quieted a bit. "You should arrange for the outcry against you to reach my ears two or three times a week, whereupon I will call you to task during a session much like the one we've just concluded." Her wing flexed gently against my chest, and I almost whimpered with joy, my nervous system firing at her touch in ways it never had before. "Second," she said, "in your role as Prince Blueblood, you will never marry. If, however, a mare is willing to bear your unacknowledged issue, the royal treasury will offer mother and child as much clandestine support as she might require."

Relaxation spread further across her features again, her head lolling forward so her horn nudged mine. "After all, your own great-grandfather served ably as my Blueblood for several decades during the previous century, and finding that you've inherited many of his sterling qualities fills me with an unutterable delight."

The only reasonable response to this information seemed to be either maniacal laughter or hysterical screaming, so I chose to keep silent. Tests, Prince Blueblood had said, indicating that there would be more than one, and I refused to be found wanting during any of them.

Princess Celestia gave a sweet-scented sigh, stretched her legs, and closed her eyes again. "And finally, this time immediately post-coital is the only time we will ever address each other as ourselves. From now on, you will be Blueblood every hour of every day of every week of every year, but here—and only here—will we speak freely. Understand this, though." A slight crease formed along her forehead, a slight frown touching her lips. "If you insist on extolling my imaginary virtues or rhapsodizing upon the alleged wonders of being in my presence, these moments will grow shorter and shorter till they vanish from our lives completely."

Her eyes opened once more, and this time, sheer, unadulterated beauty reigned throughout. "Still, welcome." She shifted slightly, a hoof coming up to stroke my hair. "I look forward to our working together." Her smile became a bit more mischievous. "Now, have you recovered enough to ask your first question?"

Lying there next to the most powerful being in the entire cosmos, I drew a breath and hoped that my confounded brain was viewing the situation correctly. "Yes, as a matter of fact, Your Highness. I'd like to ask about my pay."

She raised her head, her expression completely blank: eyes wide, nostrils flared, mouth a straight, flat slit across her muzzle. "Excuse me?" she asked.

"Well?" I scooted myself closer to her, reached up to make little massaging motions along her shoulders, and deployed the dimples and twinkling eyes that I kept ready for such occasions. "Is not the plowhorse worth his hire? I mean, surely you don't expect me to maintain myself upon gossamer and moonbeams?"

For an instant, I thought my brain had failed me, that I'd gotten everything completely wrong, had misread her and the situation, had let the most precious treasure I would ever know slip from my fumbling hooves mere moments after finding it.

But then she smiled. "Oh, really?" she purred. Her hoof came up again, planted itself in the center of my chest, and pushed me over onto my back. "Perhaps you do need a bit more training..."

She did like the bad boy, after all, and since she appeared to despise the loving accolades heaped upon her by the public at large, well, despite my heart yearning to expound at length upon her perfection, it seemed that my role was to be that of Scoffer in Chief.

Of course, since we spent the next half hour reaching a veritable cornucopia of personal bests, I certainly had nothing to complain about. And judging from her reactions to my devoted attention to detail, neither did the princess.

Our second moment of afterglow proved to be every bit as fleeting as the first, but for a much less satisfying reason. "I've got to get back to work," she said with a sigh. She bent her silken and graceful neck to plant a chaste little kiss upon my snout, and I was so wrung-out, I couldn't even think unchaste thoughts about it.

For my part, I wanted nothing more out of life than to remain there gently entangled. But I had a part to play; pushing myself as upright as I could manage, I bowed my head. "My Lady, I hereby promise that, for as long as I'm able to do so, I will give you whatever it is you need." Not wanting to get too sincere, I gave a bit of a shrug. "It may not necessarily be what you think you need, but, well, who are we going to trust in such matters? The mare with the thousand years of experience, or the now unemployed theater usher?"

With a roll of her eyes, she managed to make the act of crawling out of bed look like sunlight shimmering across a pond. "On your hooves, mister," she said. "You've appointments to keep as well, you know."

"Have I?" The way I gained the floor would've made an amateur ice-skater look professional. "I hope there'll be a tailor involved." I brushed at the remains of my poor tattered blazer.

At her laugh, my heart skittered around inside me, and I vowed silently that a part of my job from now on would involve causing that sound to occur as often as possible. Then she was turning, her horn flaring, my field of vision flashing, and Prince Blueblood's office formed itself around me.

His Highness sat slumped at his desk. The Ecuelles had been replaced by a bottle of some amber liquid. An empty tumbler glass stood beside the bottle, and he was sipping from a much-fuller tumbler floating in the shimmer of his magic. His gaze snapped over to meet mine, and he swigged back a double gulping swallow of the stuff before his hornglow took the bottle and poured a good deal more than a splash from it into the empty tumbler. Without a word, he nodded to the tumbler and took another mouthful from his.

I nodded in return, stepped up, took the glass, and emptied half its contents down my gullet. It felt like I was drinking a burning tree branch, but it was just damp enough for me to realize how dry I was inside. Draining the tumbler, however, didn't help in most ways, but oddly it did help in others.

Turning my slightly shaky attention toward the prince, then, I asked, "Now what?"

He was pouring himself another glass. "Now I adopt you," he said. "You take the townhouse, the title, the office here, and the yoke while I retire to the country and try not to think about how I'll never touch her again." He held up a hoof before I'd done more than draw in a breath. "Spare me any damn platitudes, if you'd be so kind. This day's been rushing toward me for decades, and I've made as much peace with it as I plan to." He tipped the tumbler back, and his throat quivered and jerked as he sucked it all in.

The glass drifted to the desktop, and something almost peaceful came over his face. "You'll be good for her," he muttered. "Better than I was, I hope. She's—" His head wobbled around on his neck till he was looking in my general direction. "Complicated."

"So I'm beginning to gather." Behind the pleasant and incipient alcohol buzz, that oh so useful part of my brain twitched out a helpful little thought, and I slammed my tumbler onto the desk. "Well, then, dear Pater. What say we show this town what two Bluebloods can to do to it when they're in a celebratory mood?" I gestured toward the door.

A smile wriggled across his snout, and he leaped to his hooves.

Our spree would lead, I was certain, to property damage at the very least followed by a joint admonitory session with the princess and the opportunity for the two of them to say good-bye in the only way they knew how. After that, of course, my true work would begin, and I swore as I charged out of that office at the side of my predecessor that I would do my utmost to unburden my princess of whatever romantic disorder afflicted her before my decades had played themselves out.

Ah, the strenuous life of the royal nephew...

IV - What "Prince" Really Means, Part One

"Inexcusable!" Princess Celestia shouted, slamming a front hoof into the marble floor of her shadowy bedchamber with a thunderous retort.

This, of course, was something I'd heard before.

"A heroine of the realm," Her Highness continued, lightning crackling at the corners of her eyes, "and you treat her like soiled linen! One of the six ponies who fought the very forces of destiny itself to return my sister whole and reformed after a thousand indescribably horrible years of exile, and you expose poor Rarity to nothing but ridicule and scorn!"

"I exposed her?" Touching a hoof to my chest, I put on an aggrieved expression, something I'd gotten quite good at over the past two years if I did say so myself. "I was left lying on my back in the palace ballroom, covered in cake and flooded with frosting!" I pointed to an orange smear I'd specifically left behind my ear from the incident earlier this evening. "I'm the injured party here!"

"Injured?" Her magic snatched me about the middle and hoisted me into the air with an unusual roughness. "My sister spent a millennium suffering for my stupidity, and you claim that you were injured?" The room spun, my legs flailing like a rag doll's. "Perhaps you'd like to experience some real injuries, sirrah!"

This, unfortunately, wasn't something I'd heard before. I didn't have time even to blink, however, before an invisible bludgeon struck my right side from shoulder to flank with the force of a cart hurtling down a mountain road, and I went tumbling mane over fetlocks through the empty air.

Ice stabbed my stomach, and my jangled brain popped up with the geography of her room to tell me that I was not hurtling toward her bed as had happened on every other occasion when she'd tossed me about like this. Rather, I was hurtling toward the room's far wall at a fairly high rate of speed.

More information went popping like bubbles through my brain: how Princess Celestia's ever-growing public joy at Princess Luna's return last summer and her slow reintegration into life at Canterlot Tower had been mirrored by an ever-deepening discontent during our private sessions; how every adjustment I'd tried to make to our bedroom games in response to her increasing snappishness had proven to be a good deal less than successful; how I trusted my beloved princess with my very life; but how I was nonetheless mere seconds away from what would undoubtedly prove to be a very painful collision.

That last one, I felt certain, should be my priority at the moment, so I fired up my horn and pushed back against the onrushing wall with all the force I could muster. I still struck the lovely, eggshell-colored enamel surface more heavily than I would've liked, but the crash, while it rattled my teeth and sent pain crackling through me, was not the most jarring part of the whole experience. Sliding to the floor, I couldn't help focusing on the idea that Princess Celestia, whom I'd had the great pleasure of serving as secret consort these past two years, had just hurled me into a wall.

And yes, she'd done so many times as part of our routine, but this was the first time she'd failed to catch me. She hadn't even tried, as a matter of fact, and pushing myself to my hooves from the crumpled heap into which I'd collapsed, I raised my head to behold a sight I'd never before so much as imagined.

The fury of a forest fire roaring along a hillside of dry trees would've been, I was sure, more akin to a candle sputtering when compared to the monstrous visage glaring down upon me. For all the acrimony, the shouting, the rage, and the outrage I'd seen portrayed in this room, she'd never been anything but exquisitely in control of herself, of me, and of the situation for every second of our time together.

Until right now. Her mane literally boiled around her head, the usual pastel colors tinted with red and the flowing lines more like cracks in a looking glass, her teeth clenched so tightly, tendons stood out like steel cables along the sides of her neck. Every panting breath I took singed my nostrils and sent twinges through the ribs along my right side, the air stinking of sweat and electricity.

She took a step toward me, and I realized that I had no other option but to aim straight for her heart. "You threaten me with injuries, madam?" I screamed. "Being forced to endure your loathsome presence is more than should be expected of any mortal body! Kill me, therefore, and release me from this unending cycle of misery and degradation!"

The most beautiful being in the entire history of creation winced back, the rampaging inferno that had surrounded her an instant before puffing away like mist on a breeze. My chest twisted at the thought of playing upon her deep-seated insecurities in this way, but how else was I to shock her thought processes back into action?

It seemed to have the proper effect: at least her face hardened almost as quickly as it had fallen, her horn flaring and wrapping its glow around me once more. "Kill you? You'll not be so lucky, worm!" Flinging me across the room again, her magic this time deposited me the way it was supposed to in the middle of her bed.

Immediately, she slammed herself down upon me, though the way her hooves hit the coverlet to dissipate the impact before her chest so much as touched mine told me she was back to herself, back in control, back to whatever passed for normal between us. Even the familiar hissing disdain had returned to her voice: "You treacherous, lecherous, vile piece of filth! There's only one punishment fit for something as foul as you!"

Her hips had begun their incredibly coaxing motion against my own, and despite the ache that simmered up and down me, certain parts of my body responded to her as they always did. She was physical perfection, after all, and knowing intimately the jagged shards of her psyche as I did endeared her to me all the more. With a stretch of my neck, I pressed my lips to hers, willing the contact to convey the message of my love for her in ways I was unable to express in words.

Because I still had my role to play, didn't I? Still had to force myself away from the peach-sweet pressure of her mouth and spit poison back at her. "You harridan!" I knew all her favorite terms by now. "You hoyden!" And the one that never failed to send her into a frenzy. "You jade!"

She shuddered, and her body seized mine, enveloped me in every possible way, and all but swallowed me up entirely. Since I cannot describe the sensation, I shan't attempt to, but the ecstatic flood of warmth and joy swept all pain from my memory, every last fiber of my being alive and singing with the pleasure of her touch. And this embrace was so much more than a mere touch, it took every ounce of the control I'd learned since puberty not to abandon myself to the glory of her, not to fling myself mindlessly into her liquid depths with no desire but to be lost within her forever.

Shoving my mind away from that incandescent abyss, I forced it to remember who and where I was. "Oh, Auntie! Auntie!" I shrieked, knowing it would arch her back in orgasm, and I shrieked again, wordlessly this time, when she pulled me even closer and redoubled her pounding, driving efforts. And while I know that I in fact did not instantaneously evaporate at that moment in reaction to her ministrations, that's nonetheless what it felt like. I ceased to exist as a solid and sublimed into some higher state, a geyser of pure, superheated wonder and elation, and clinging to her, I knew she'd done the same.

The intensity of the experience was orders of magnitude greater than even the euphoria of our regular sex, and I have absolutely no idea how much time elapsed before I began to realize that the gentle rumbling in my ears was the sound of her breathing, that the flicker and swirl of colors before my eyes was the lazy wavering of her mane coiling and uncoiling across my face. My bones practically creaked like rusted hinges, but I managed to bend my neck, pulling my face away from the damp magnolia scent of her chest to see her stretched out among the scattered mounds of bedclothes beside me.

Peace smoothed her countenance, but as I watched, one closed eye twitched. Her head moved, both eyes opening, and when she met my gaze, I could see the first dark tremors of fear and doubt just starting to shimmer there.

Which could not be allowed to happen. After all the work I'd done to nudge her away from the idea around which her whole consciousness seemed to whirl—sex with her, she was convinced, was the most horrible penalty she could ever mete out—I was not about to lie there and allow her to voice the apology I could smell welling up from her throat.

So I leaped. Figuratively speaking, of course: I'd never had the strength to leave her embrace in the aftermath of a session. No, I let my cutie mark guide me, let the compass rose on my flank pop a thought onto my tongue and trusted that it would lead us all in the correct direction. "So," I said, not at all sure what words were going to come out of me, "about your sister..."

Princess Celestia's eyes widened, then became cold slabs of amethyst. "She's not for you," she more growled than said.

"Me?" I gave a well-practiced laugh and stroked a hoof along her side. "You know I prefer my mares large, bleached, and neurotic."

The tiniest hint of a smile flickered around her lips, and when she asked, "You're just bringing her up to make chit-chat, then, I suppose?" I knew we'd taken at least a step away from the danger zone.

Still, this situation called for a bit more honesty than I usually liked to deal with, and I couldn't help aiming a few inner curses at my cutie mark for throwing me under the cartwheels like this. "I bring her up," I said, "because she's incredibly important to you—and to all of Equestria, for that matter—and yet she wasn't at the Gala tonight."

"Last night." The princess nodded in the vague direction of her balcony. "It's already two thirty-nine in the morning."

I pursed my lips. "I shall synchronize my pocket watch once I discover what's become of my waistcoat." Refusing to be sidetracked, however, I pressed on. "That your sister needs help re-entering modern society should surprise nopony, and I feel—"

"No." The tightness of that one little syllable told me that we were moving toward the danger zone again. "Not you. You'll only make things worse."

"Well, of course not me!" I touched my own chest. "A sodden train wreck like myself is hardly a fit role-model for a sweet, innocent filly like Princess Luna."

Her eyes narrowed. "Not the adjectives I would have chosen for her, but putting that aside, who do you have in mind as a role-model, then?"

"That's just it." My brain had finally caught up with my cutie mark, and I was fairly certain I'd figured out what it was up to. "I don't know what sort of pony would best tickle the fancy of our recently returned princess. Mare? Stallion? Bold warrior? Clever courtier? Who?"

"A poet," Princess Celestia said so quietly, I wasn't sure at first that she'd even spoken. Her gaze had come all unfocused as well, and I could barely restrain a shiver at the thought of how many centuries back into her memories she was venturing. "Luna was always a secret romantic, always the iron shoe around the tender hoof. She wants the world to see her as hard and dark, aloof and brooding and mysterious. But inside, she yearns for a soul-mate, a stallion who will patiently and quietly overcome all the loud and boisterous obstacles she throws into his path, who will woo her with gentle but tireless words and will prove by his chaste devotion that he is worthy of admittance to her own poetic heart. And she was hurt so badly the last time..."

Holding my breath, I watched her eyes clench, tears trickling from the corners. "Blueblood and Sombra, they...they conspired to poison us against each other and against Equestria, wormed their ways into our hearts and beds and would've led us to—" Her eyes burst open again, and she grabbed my shoulders, her nostrils flaring. "It's why you mustn't talk to Luna! You mustn't even allow yourself to be in the same room as her if you can help it! Sombra was so dangerous, we had to destroy him, but when I let Blueblood live, that...that was when it all started to go wrong..."

This outburst took me completely by surprise, and I couldn't keep my own control from slipping. "Sombra?" I asked, certain I'd never heard the name before.

The openness in her face slammed shut with the suddenness of a door caught in a wind storm. "Never mind," she said, something brittle in her voice. "Just another of my hens that'll soon be coming home to roost." She took a breath and blew it out. "Still, that's a very good idea, trying to get Luna a rutting partner." Sliding away from me, she rose in all her grace and majesty to stand beside the bed. "You can't allow her to see even a hint that any meeting you put together has been arranged, or she'll reject your candidate without another thought. Relationships have to evolve naturally and organically for her." That ghost of a smile touched her lips again. "I can hardly even remember what that's like..."

I wasn't quite ready to try that much moving yet, but I somehow maneuvered one foreleg around so I could push myself up a bit. "I shall leave less of a trace than the breeze among the pussy willows," I informed her. "All will be hearts and flowers, soulful glances and chirping birds." I waved a hoof. "You know, that sort of nonsense."

Her smile broadened, and she leaned forward to brush a kiss between my ears—or rather, I quickly realized from the damp sliding of her tongue through my hair, to vacuum up the remains of the cake that had somehow remained tucked there this whole time. "Thank you," she said.

My heart pounded, but I gave a snort. "I could say that I'm Your Highness's devoted servant in all things and that I live only to ease Your Highness's burdens in whatever poor way I can, but, well, we both know your opinions on such statements."

Straightening, she laughed, and the glower she turned upon me was patently and entirely false. "Don't make me come back in there, mister."

My ears perked at the thought. "Is that an option?"

"It isn't." Her horn lit, and most of the tangled blankets whisked away from beneath and around me. "On your hooves, nephew." The slight emphasis she put on that last word told me unequivocally that the curtain of falsehood had descended fully upon us once more. "Some of us have to be up at dawn, after all."

I sighed, and rolling for the edge of the bed, I just barely got my hooves under me rather than tumbling to the floor. "Ah, the sun's a harsh mistress."

She'd been heading across the room for the laundry chute, the bedclothes in a bundle floating along behind her. She stumbled slightly, however, before continuing on. "She doesn't mean to be," came an almost inaudible whisper from her direction. "But all the sun knows how to do is burn."

It made me shiver, but instead of running to her with words of love spouting from my every orifice, I kept my voice just as quiet. "Untrue," I said, knowing she would hear. "For the sun also shines, does she not?"

No reply drifted back to me, Her Highness seemingly too involved in shoving our soiled linens through the chute and gathering clean bed things from the nearby closet to have paid the slightest bit of attention to whatever it was I might've said.

Forcing my head not to shake, I bowed, turned away, and got the dry tree limbs of my legs to shuffle me toward the door. Princess Luna's return to Equestria had changed my relationship with Princess Celestia in ways I was only now beginning to understand, but I knew one thing for absolute certain: I couldn't survive many more sessions like this one.

So time for me to change a few things. Seeing her sister settling more fully into the world would help relieve a great deal of the guilt Princess Celestia felt about matters that, again, I was only beginning to understand, and relieving that guilt was a vital step in keeping my beloved from sinking deeper into the morass of her own mind.

Which meant I needed to find a stallion, and I needed to find him quickly. Without ever bringing myself to Princess Luna's attention, of course, and without ever letting anypony realize that Prince Blueblood was anything other than the empty headed and boorish buffoon that most of Equestria saw when the latest scandal I'd manufactured for Princess Celestia's benefit forced their attention toward me.

Simplicity itself, in other words...

V - What "Prince" Really Means, Part Two

"Ah, Captain Armor!" I'd bedecked myself this morning, two days after the Gala, in an outfit I'd had specially tailored for those times when I needed to stir outrage among Canterlot's military class: a hat, large and bicorned with my cutie mark emblazoned upon the front; a jacket, blue and white and dripping with gold fringe from epaulets to buttonholes; canvas trousers, form fitting and bleached blindingly enough to cause traffic accidents; and two pairs of shiny black rubber boots that made my frogs sweat so profusely, I often squished when I walked.

It made for an impressive overall effect, if I do say so myself.

Shouldering my way into Shining Armor's office with that whole rig jingling and dangling from me, however, I'm fairly certain that 'impressive' was not the word that went running through the captain's mind. "I'm kind of in the middle of something right now, Your Highness," he said, the glow of his horn separating the large stack of papers in the middle of his desk into four smaller stacks. "If you can come back in an hour, I'll be happy to—"

"One brief moment, Captain, is all I require." I honestly liked Shining Armor, him and his sister both, and did my best to spare them from direct contact with the sort of trouble I was duty bound to create in my role as Prince Blueblood. In this case, however, I hadn't much of a choice. "I simply need to borrow the personnel files of the soldiers you've assigned to Princess Luna's guard, and I'll be on my way."

The flow of papers across his desk froze, and his head tipped back slowly to bring his laconic gaze up to meet my not-so-laconic one. "Excuse me?" he asked, adding a "Sir?" at the end of it because that's just how polite a fellow he was.

I leaned across his desk while making sure some of my fringe brushed menacingly against his paper stacks. "All very hush-hush, you know," I said in as loud a whisper as I could manage. "Can't be too careful, you know, with this new princess." I tapped a hoof to the side of my snout and gave poor old Armor a twitchy sort of a wink. "Best to keep a close watch on her and those around her till we know whose side she's really on, don't you think?"

To his absolute credit, Shining Armor neither punched me in the face nor demanded that I remove myself at once from his presence. The tightness that came across his eyes, though, and the clench of his jaw made me think that he was likely considering one or both of those options. "Excuse me, sir," he said again, a phrase he used rather often when speaking to me, "but Princess Luna has declared her loyalty to Equestria multiple times since her return. If you have any credible reason to think she's lying—"

"Oh, come now, Captain!" I waved in a way that again threatened to scatter his organizational schemata to the proverbial four winds. "When have you ever known me to be anything other than incredible?"

Had I been in his position, I'm fairly certain that I would've become slightly gruff at that point. But Captain Armor? He always held his temper in a most exemplary fashion. He did raise his voice, certainly, but only to call, "Sergeant?" over his shoulder in the general direction of the doorway behind him before returning his gaze to me. "I'm sure you understand, sir, that personnel files are much too sensitive to leave this office. But Sgt. Greaves here—" And with timing worthy of the opera stage, a dark silver pegasus in spotless armor stepped through the doorway. "—will be happy to assist you in any way that you need assisting. Now, if you'll excuse me, sir?" His horn lit up once more, and he went back to his sorting.

Choosing not to make a complete ass of myself, I instead nodded, gave a travesty of a salute—all flailing pasterns and overextended knees—and marched toward the unfortunate sergeant. "The personnel files, my good fellow, and be quick about it!"

And he was quick about it, too, leading me into an empty conference room, adjusting the curtains before I could begin complaining about the light, bringing me a stack of file folders, and checking whether I might like a cup of tea and a plate of cookies while I worked. Even playing the part of the persnickety Blueblood, I was hard-pressed to find fault with him. I did turn up my nose at the profferred cookies with the declaration that they were no doubt pasty and plebian, but with so much work before me, I kept it to that.

In a rumbly but gentle baritone, the sergeant informed me that he was situated right across the hall should I require anything further and that he would bring me the next batch of files as soon as I called for them. I nodded absently, waved him away, and set in to reading.

It quickly became apparent that the squadron of guards assigned to Princess Luna were an excellent group of soldiers, each and every one of them a credit to the force and an ornament with which Canterlot could be proud to adorn herself. They were also, however, nearly as uninteresting as the tea Sgt. Greaves kept pouring for me while I wasn't looking: I mean, I would empty my cup, dive into a folder, come back up for air after an unknown stretch of time, and discover that at some point during my submersion, the sergeant had apparently glided into the room without a single rattle or clank of armor and refilled my cup. It was positively uncanny.

It also, I realized with a start, was positively interesting. "Oh, Sergeant," I called, my cutie mark giving me the little shiver that I'd come to recognize as it telling me I was headed in the right direction. "Might I have the next bundle of files, please?"

He appeared soundlessly in the doorway a heartbeat or two later, more files held in his teeth. I rose and made a show of bending the kinks from my legs and neck. "Dry and dusty work it is, Greaves," I told him, "but essential to the safety of Equestria."

"Of course, Your Highness," he said, and his intonation was so perfectly balanced that even a pony as steeped in snark as I was couldn't tell if he was being serious or ironic.

Which meant I had to find out. "You know, Greaves, I'd appreciate your opinion on this matter, if you've a moment."

His eyelids didn't flick, his lips didn't purse, his ears didn't waver. "If you feel that I'm trustworthy enough, sir."

As dry and cool as a breeze on a muggy afternoon, his words washed over me, and I knew I'd found my first candidate. Swallowing any semblance of joy, I screwed an annoyed look over my snout. "These guards who've gone over to the dark side, as it were." I waved at the two stacks of files. "What d'you suppose might be going on in their heads?"

This time I caught the barest bit of a twitch at the corner of his mouth: stopping a laugh and a smile, I thought, rather than a growl and a frown. "Perhaps they think they're doing their duty, sir. We all swore to protect the princess, after all, and now that there's three of them, we get assigned to wherever we're most needed." Something else tugged at the edges of his face, something I couldn't identify. "Very few in the squadrons now carrying out night duty volunteered, though: I can tell you that."

And why, I most pointedly didn't ask aloud, can you tell me that? Yes, he was apparently some sort of personnel clerk around headquarters, but surely he didn't memorize the details of each soldier's deployment. So could it be that—?

"Oh, well, yes," I said, trying to find a way to ask the question I wanted to ask without actually asking it. "I mean, who would ever volunteer to serve this alleged aunt of mine when my actual aunt is available?"

Sgt. Greaves's eyes darted to the stack of files, and I had my answer. He had volunteered to join Princess Luna's guard. And he'd been turned down because, well, I suppose because Captain Armor needed him at HQ to shuffle paper.

But as much as I hated to inconvenience the captain, I was on a much larger mission here than the mere safety and security of Equestria. I had to select and groom a romantic partner for the newly rethroned Night Princess without said princess ever knowing the process was going on.

"Still," I said briskly, and the sergeant's expression smoothed like quicksilver. "It might very well take a volunteer to accomplish this mission, some stalwart pony willing to risk fraternizing with the, well, not the enemy, of course. As Captain Armor pointed out, I've yet to find any actual proof that Princess Luna's anything other than my genuinely long-lost aunt." Rubbing my chin, I narrowed my eyes as if trying to follow my own train of thought. "But if I could find a volunteer willing to go undercover amongst those in the night squadron and report secretly back to me all that's happening over there..."

"Sir?" Greaves's voice had roughened a bit more. "I'd be honored to."

"You?" I gave him several rapid blinks in the fashion of one who's only just noticed there's another pony in the room. "A file clerk?"

Fire flashed briefly in his eyes—another promising sign—and he whooshed out of the room and back so quickly, only the wind stirring my mane and the new file folder he had clenched in his teeth indicated that he'd actually moved. "I think you'll find, sir," he said after setting the folder down on the table, "that I possess exactly the qualities Princess Luna will find most useful in those surrounding her as she re-acclimates to life among ponies."

I was feeling better and better about him with each passing second, but for the sake of the role, I did some more blinking, took his folder in my magic, brought it near, and flipped it open. To keep him talking, I asked, "And what qualities are those exactly?"

"Forgive me, sir, but I prefer to let my record speak for itself."

My cutie mark gave another positive tingle, and I scanned the paperwork carefully while doing my best to appear as if I was giving it a mere cursory glance. The word "orphanage" leaped out at me with such force, however, I could barely restrain myself from leaping into the air. Not the Hooves of Mercy Orphan Asylum I'd grown up in, I quickly reassured myself, but Haven Space, the other large orphanage in town. I paged through nothing but glowing reports from the matrons there about how he went out of his way to help those of the other foals who were having difficulties, from the drill instructors at the Royal Guard Training Center about his even temperment and fierce determination, and from all his superiors up to and including Captain Armor about his general character: quiet, knowledgeable, quick on the uptake, and willing to take whatever initiative he was given.

Now if only he knew something of poetry...

Touching a hoof to my chest, I let fly with a quotation that I as the loutish Prince Blueblood would no doubt consider apt under the circumstances: "'Declare the truth, or let the record speak. For one belies the other, claw to beak.'"

Greaves's ears flicked, and he came right back with the next line from Pentameter's farce Bells Before Breakfast, the line Dodger uses when the jealous griffon Gorgonio accuses the lovable rogue of lying about where he'd spent the previous night: "'It's yours the beak, and doubly yours the claw. So rend my words; you shan't reveal a flaw.'"

Which meant he knew something of what we in modern Equestria would call the classics and what Princess Luna would call the contemporary theater. I smiled, let the folder drift back onto the table, and stuck out a hoof. "Welcome to the conspiracy, Sgt. Greaves."

His jaw tightened, and his hoof failed to rise from the floor. "Permission to speak freely, Your Highness?"

The tiniest sort of icicle jabbed into the back of my neck, but I kept my smile broad and waved my unbumped hoof in an expansive manner. "By all means, Sergeant! If we're to be partners in this, then—"

"We're not to be partners in this, sir, if by 'this,' you mean some plot to trump up false accusations against Princess Luna." Even though his voice didn't became appreciably louder, his words bit a good deal harder into my ears. "I've observed Her Highness at the few state functions she's attended since her return, and I will state my unequivocal opinion that she has reformed her life and is once again working in union with Princess Celestia and Princess Cadance to advance Equestrian civilization and ideals into the future and into the wider world."

The hair at the base of my mane stood up and shivered at the utter convinction in his tone. More than conviction, too: this fellow was half in love with our Dark Princess, or my cutie mark was nothing but a few daubs of paint spattered across my hindquarters. And if he was going to be honest with me and jeopardize what might be his only chance to join her retinue, well, I could be honest with him.

Not completely honest, of course. That sort of thing was reserved for Princess Celestia. But partially honest, at least.

I put a good deal more steel into my expression than I usually allowed to leak over it, leaned forward, and held out my hoof again. "Then prove me wrong, Sergeant. Bring me the paperwork necessary for you to join Princess Luna's staff, and then find a way for the rest of Equestria to see her the way you do."

It was the first time I'd seen Sgt. Greaves at a loss, his eyes widening and his lower lip quivering. His hoof came up slowly, though, almost as if it were acting on its own, but it clacked against mine with what I could only characterize as firm resolve. "Captain Armor won't like this, sir."

Puffing a snort through my nostrils, I tossed my head with enough force to spin my bicorne hat a quarter turn. "Leave him to me."

Alas, I must admit that things got a bit uglier than I would've liked between Shining Armor and myself that day. Greaves had set the transfer up as a simple staff exchange—he would be trading places with another sergeant whom he said was having more than a little difficulty adjusting to her assignment in the Night Guard. But Armor reacted as if I were taking half his staff, all their desks, and a fair percentage of the building's roof with me. "I'm the captain of the guard, sir!" he exclaimed more than once during our exchange.

So I finally had to shut him down. "Captain of the guard, yes!" I stomped my squishy boots. "But until you muster up your courage and marry that princess you think you've been inconspicuously wooing for so many years, only one of us in this conversation will bear the title of prince!" Fluctuating my magic, I waved the paperwork at him. "I am informing you of this situation merely as a courtesy, but I believe you'll find that my signature upon these forms is even more valid than yours! Complain if you must to my aunt, but since I've already sent a copy of these orders to Princess Luna's staff, I suggest you prepare for Sgt. Brandish's arrival while Sgt. Greaves gets on his way!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Greaves give a salute, his face as devoid of expression as a crystal ball, before he turned and marched from the office. "And," I went on quickly and loudly enough to stop Armor from calling after the sergeant, "I suggest you count yourself lucky that I don't take a greater interest in whatever skullduggery might be going on in these corridors!" I considered knocking over one of his carefully arranged stacks of paper, but I knew that the fallout from this little escapade would already prove sufficient to get me called into Princess Celestia's chamber. And considering how out-of-sorts she'd been during our last session, I couldn't stifle a shiver.

Shaking my head, I settled for merely pointing in an accusatory fashion at the good captain, then spinning and storming out. "No pony is above suspicion, and my eyes are everywhere!"

Much later, of course, I had reason to wonder whether transferring Greaves and his eye for detail out of the main office at headquarters might not have been one reason why so many clues went unheeded before and during Queen Chrysalis's infiltration of Canterlot and her near-marriage to Captain Armor. Such speculation, however, can only serve as a parlor game. The past is the past and all that, and our story moves on.

Fortunately for my ribs, my meeting with Princess Celestia that evening proved to be more usual than unusual, and her embrace as we lay tangled together afterwards seemed properly relaxed. She even spoke first once I'd recovered my senses: "Sergeant Greaves, is it?"

I nodded against her chest. "As a first attempt, I think he should prove admirable."

"First attempt?" From the tone of her voice, I could tell she was arching an eyebrow at me. "How many attempts have you in mind?"

"As many as it takes." I'd regained enough muscle control by then to tilt my head back and meet her gaze. "Though I may need to invite your sister to the opera."

Every bit of warmth vanished from that gaze. "I told you you're to interact with Luna as little as possible."

Fortunately, I'd rehearsed my arguments ahead of time since her obvious displeasure nearly froze every fiber of my nervous system. "I'm not him," I said, knowing that I was trotting into uncertain ground: I'd found almost no information about the original Prince Blueblood in the course of my two years wearing his name, but from Princess Celestia's occasional hints, I'd pieced together a picture of the pony who'd conspired with a second unicorn named Sombra to overthrow the Diarchy back in its earliest days. Even in its failure, however, the mistrust implanted by the conspiracy had led directly to Princess Luna's rebellion and thousand years of exile.

Not a pleasant sort, my adopted ancestor. So I repeated my assertion before going on: "I'm not him, and Princess Luna needs to see that I'm not him. I can't be forever scampering about in the shadows, afraid that I might encounter her around the next corner. And this will be the quickest way to make sure she notices Greaves."

Princess Celestia's frown always made me think of a crack in an exquisite porcelain vase. I hurried on with my plan. "Next week, the Music Center is staging a revival of Verismo's opera The Baker of Wickerham. Princess Luna will be familiar with Iambic Pentameter's original tragedy, but since the opera was written five hundred years later, it will be a combination of the old and the new. Greaves is likewise conversant in Pentameter's plays, so when I let him know that he needs to be part of the princess's honor guard that night, we'll all be together in the Blueblood box during the performance. I'll proceed to make a series of outlandishly stupid remarks about the low quality of the material, and the two of them will be able to unite in opposition to my idiocy."

Her frown began softening. "Make sure Greaves conveys a subtle contempt for you. That will definitely attract Luna to him."

I snorted a laugh. "I only met Greaves today, but I can assure you that he already thinks of me as unworthy of my office."

"Good, good." And for all that it's a dreadful cliché, I'll still say it: Princess Celestia's smile was like the sun coming up. When she bent down and touched a kiss to my lips, however, well, I haven't the words to adequately describe the sensation. "I'll leave it all in your capable hooves."

Her own hooves began doing wonderful things along my neck and shoulders, and my last coherent thought for quite some time afterwards was: what could possibly go wrong?

VI - What "Prince" Really Means, Part Three

The best-laid plans of ponies and pangolins, as the saying goes—

Or is it "ponies and penguins"?

Either way, all the strategies I'd so carefully designed, all my schemes to unite the unsuspecting Princess Luna and the equally unsuspecting Sergeant Greaves in solidarity against my stupidity, all the arrangements I'd been prepared to make in my mission to draw the two ever closer and so bring some romance into the life of my beloved princess's younger sister, all that went tumbling down the hot-fudge-covered slopes and into the mustard-scented cesspool of events beyond my control.

Beyond anypony's control, for that matter, and I mean that quite literally: some ancient spirit of chaos came bursting forth from a statue in the palace gardens and swept the entirety of Equestria into his sticky, sloppy embrace.

Unfortunately, by the time that Princess Celestia's delightful student and her rustic friends had resolidified the beast, the Canterlot Music Center's carpeting had become nothing but lemon rind from one end of the building to the other, and all the wood in the seats had been replaced with papier-mâché. Which meant the entire complex became "closed for repairs until further notice." Which meant no opera. Which meant no opportunity for Princess Luna and Greaves to bond in opposition to me.

Fortunately, however, Princess Luna had leaped directly into the fray when Discord's chaotic shenanigans had threatened to engulf the city even while the creature himself tangled with Twilight Sparkle's forces in distant Ponyville. And Greaves, it turned out, had leaped into said fray right alongside her.

I'm told it was quite the stirring sight. I myself, like many in the Canterlot Tower district, awoke that morning beneath bedsheets and blankets turned to the gooiest possible caramel. So quite a number of us lay largely immobile for the duration of the adventure.

Greaves, on the other hoof, distinguished himself with flying colors as it were, rescuing foals and old mares, carrying out Princess Luna's orders with élan and alacrity, even taking command of a squadron or a battalion or something along those lines when the princess felt it necessary to divide her forces to better serve the needs of Canterlot's citizenry. And at the end of the medal ceremony after Discord's defeat, Princess Luna made her first public proclamation since her return by awarding Greaves the Equestria Star, a decoration that apparently hadn't been given out in more than a thousand years. She also promoted him to Captain of her Night Guard—much to the relief of Silver Dagger, the mare who'd originally been assigned that position by Captain Armor—and in general praised him at the top of her prodigious lungs as the very model of military propriety, honor, and dutifulness.

In short, she noticed him.

My job then became both simpler and more complex. I would need to turn that first notice into a long-term sort of interest, and then turn that interest into romantic fascination. I'd rather need Greaves's assistance for that, I supposed, but, well, the best way to procure his assistance would be to encourage him in a direction opposite my true goal.

It took me several days to come up with an appropriate scheme, but when I did, I sent to Greaves by unicorn magic a missive detailing my desire to meet with him to discuss what I referred to as "our joint project."

His answer, delivered to my rooms via military attaché under triple seal and stamp, was absolutely the politest invitation to hurl myself off the nearest cliff that I'd ever received.

Not that he stated his desire in so many words, of course. In fact, if I'd been as solidly dense as I pretended to be, I would've seen nothing in his message but a statement of regret that his new duties disallowed him from giving his full attention to the matter in question at the present time.

Since I wasn't dense, however, I couldn't help but notice how he made no offer to reschedule, and his reply, conveyed in so public a fashion after the private and personal message I'd sent him, told me that he had no interest in keeping our relationship clandestine. And since my ostensible goal was to undermine the princess he now served as Captain, by keeping our correspondence limited to open channels, he was all but inviting me to broadcast my treasonous thoughts throughout the entirety of Canterlot Tower.

That the steed disliked me so strongly even after so short an acquaintance, I felt, spoke volumes about his good character.

So I altered my plans a bit, decked myself out in my regimental baubles, bangles, and beads, and jingle-jangle-jingled my way across to the night side of the castle just shy of sundown a few evenings later.

The guards stationed throughout the hallways all looked appropriately unimpressed as I stopped to inspect each one, and I had to make up flaws in their uniforms or their deportment since they largely lacked any. I was guessing that by now, Captain Greaves had transferred those who wished to return to the day shift and had taken into his ranks those who felt themselves drawn to our mysterious Night Princess. The air of the whole wing seemed more than a little prideful, at any rate, as if the ponies here knew they had something to prove and were devotedly determined that they would indeed prove it.

I made my way slowly toward the Night Guard headquarters in the hope that word of my approach would arrive before I did, and I wasn't disappointed. "Your Highness," the adjutant said the instant I stepped into the office. Before I could even speak, he had risen from his desk, saluted, and gestured to the doorway behind him. "Captain Greaves is expecting you."

And as quickly as that, I found myself ushered down a hall and into a small conference room, the new captain waiting at the table within and wearing the sort of blank expression I'd come to expect from him. He rose at exactly the correct speed to make me unsure if he was conveying some minor insult—though I knew he was, of course—and I nodded with the pleasure I genuinely felt to see him again. "Well, well, well!" I said, stepping in and looking around. "If efficiency were a disease, Captain, I'd say that you were highly contagious!"

The adjutant behind me gave the tiniest snort, but Greaves remained as stony as ever. "Thank you, Your Highness. Would you care for a tour of the facility?"

"No, no." I held up a hoof. "Since you couldn't get away to come visit me, I thought I'd come visit you." I glanced in as blatant a fashion as I could at the adjutant still in the doorway. "If we could perhaps speak privately?"

"Of course." He nodded. "That'll be all, Polaris."

My mane wanted to frizz very, very badly, but by sheer force of will, I kept it contained. Had Greaves just called me by my real name? Or—?

"Yes, sir," came a voice from over my shoulder, and a smile nearly burst over my snout. Greaves was pretending that the adjutant was named Polaris to see if he could get a rise out of me! That could only mean that he'd investigated my background, and if he was being subtle about his findings this way, he must no longer subscribe to the dimwitted portrait I'd painted of myself!

The door clicked shut, but I didn't look back. Greaves's left ear gave the slightest flicker, and I thought perhaps he was annoyed that I hadn't reacted to his little ploy. "Won't you sit down, Prince Blueblood?" he asked, gesturing to a spot across the table from him.

"I will," I said. And since I wanted to show him I wasn't the enemy here— "That was very good, too, learning my pre-adoption name and all." I sat and unveiled the most 'hale-and-hearty-fellow-well-met' grin I had at my disposal. "I trust you also learned something of my life and pastimes before I joined House Blueblood?"

Greaves remained standing for a few seconds, then slowly took his place at the table. "I did indeed, sir," he said quietly. "And I must say that I don't understand you in the slightest."

"Excellent!" I slapped the table. "Shows you're a pony of proper moral character, and shows me that I was right to bring this along." Activating my horn, I used my magic to pull a slim volume from the coat of my phony uniform and send it sliding across the polished wood toward him.

He slapped a hoof over the book, bent his troubled gaze down toward it, and let that troubled gaze pop right back up again. "I already have a copy of Pentameter's Sonnets, sir."

I'd more than suspected as much. Still, I beamed at him: this was going to be a delicate row to hoe, as out rural cousins put it. "Yes, but this'll be the copy you'll share with her." I almost waggled my eyebrows, but that would've been entirely too much for the situation as it was unfolding.

The slight salty tinge that came into his scent told me that he knew who I meant. But he still asked, "Could you be more specific, Your Highness?"

Lowering my voice and glancing around, I said, "My recently arrived aunt."

Whether his wings wanted to foomph outward or pull tighter to his sides, I couldn't quite tell. He was straining to hold them still, at any rate. "You want me to share Iambic Pentameter's book of sonnets with Princess Luna?"

"Now, now, Greaves." I tapped the side of my muzzle. "We're both stallions of the world. We both know a damsel in distress when we see one, and we both know it's our duty to help said damsel become undistressed."

Distress was a very good word for what I was seeing creep across Greaves's face at that moment, as a matter of fact, but I pressed on, certain that I had the situation well under control. "What my aunt Luna needs is a good romantic fling, something that'll get the blood pumping in her veins again after so long lounging about on the moon." I cringed internally at the words, but while I didn't want Greaves to see me as an utter ignoramus, I also didn't want him to consider me to be too many steps above a twit, either. "In short, Greaves, she needs you. Well, you and Pentameter: she prob'bly knew him, way back when." I gave a fatuous little laugh. "So what do you say, Captain? Once more into the breach and all that?"

Slightly misquoting Pentameter himself there at the end, I felt, could only help my cause, and I sprang to my hooves before Greaves could do more than blink. "You've the tools, and you've the talents, so there's a good fellow! Show her a lovely time!" Pushing the door open with my magic, I clattered and squished out into the hall—

Only to see Princess Luna herself sweeping toward me from the direction of the outer office rather like a cold front. She stopped, her eyes widened, and the atmospheric pressure began to drop even more precipitously.

Without a second thought, I let a smile be my umbrella. "Your Highness!" I didn't charge forward, but neither did I arrest my motion: I set myself adrift, one might say, a bit of dandelion fluff floating before her glowering storminess. "I don't believe I've yet had the opportunity of welcoming you back to the warm embracing bosom of Equestria!" Arriving before her—she and I were nearly the same height, but the way she glared down her snout made me feel a good deal smaller—I bowed jangling to the floor. "I'm sure Aunt Celestia's told you all about your nephew Blueblood, and I'm both pleased and proud to announce that I am that very nephew!"

"Indeed?" Her pinched contralto went quite well with her pinched expression. "Truly, sirrah, we rejoice in thy declaration, for our first impression upon beholding the farcicality of thy dress held thee to be a clown wandered away from the circus. Great and grievous would have been our annoyance to have inadvertantly maligned that noble profession by lumping the likes of thee amongst their number!"

Accustomed to insults as I was, it still took me several eye blinks to unravel this one, and by then Her Highness had sailed past me, head and dudgeon both held high.

The smile I'd forced into place became genuine: oh, this was definitely my beloved's sister, all right. Turning to wave cheerily at her, I put the most brainless inflection into my voice to convey my most sincere sentiment: "Well, I hope we can talk more in the future, Your Highness, when neither of us has such pressing duties to attend to."

I took myself away then as quickly as I could, feeling lucky to have escaped with nothing more than the slightest of tongue lashings and leaving the ball in Greaves's court.

Some thirty-six hours later, however, I was back, creeping on little cat feet, as they say, through the pre-dawn corridors of the palace's night side in a desperate attempt to keep my plans from coming entirely unglued.

He sent the book back to me was the thing: the book of Pentameter's sonnets that I'd left with him. Greaves had wrapped it up in a diplomatic pouch and dispatched it to my office the day after I'd given it to him with a little note inside: The loan is appreciated, Your Highness, but not needed.

My cutie mark twinged at the thought, and I slipped from one shadowy pillar to the next, my ears pricked for the slightest clatter of armor. Knowing what mares wanted from a romance, after all, was intrinsic to my very being, and I would stake my life that Princess Luna wanted poetry recited to her in the slightly husky voice of a stallion who'd fought alongside her and whom she'd so come to trust that she'd named him the captain of her guard.

And in fact, I was rather staking my life on it. I couldn't imagine that Greaves fumbling his approach to Princess Luna would cause Princess Celestia to become gentler in her attentions to me...

I'd studied the plans for the suites occupied by the Night Guard before outfitting myself in a black skintight outfit I'd originally procured for more boudoir-related activities, and I stole my way along the hallways that led to Greaves's quarters, the book of sonnets tucked into a pack strapped to my side. The duty roster had told me that he'd not be in his room at this hour of the morning, so my plan was to leave the book in plain sight with a note of my own that said, "Kindly reconsider."

Grinning at the thought of spinning the tale of Polaris Blueblood, Love Ninja, for my princess, I rounded the corner of the corridor at the end of which lay Greaves's apartment. Since my teen years had found me once too often in a situation where a magically sealed window had stood between me and escaping the wrath of an outraged parent, I'd long ago become proficient in the art of lock picking. A few quick but precise spells nudged and tickled the tumblers aside—perhaps I needn't mention that such manipulation spells have several more delicately delicious applications as well—and I stepped as silently as a bug's blink into Greaves's apartment.

As expected, its furnishings held all the joie de vivre of a barrack house, everything plain and hard-edged and functional though the bookshelves in his bedroom bore the aroma of loving attention. I was just depositing the collection of sonnets on the severely utilitarian table beside the double doors that led onto the smallest balcony I'd ever seen when a rough but pleasant bit of hummed music began tickling my ears.

I froze, but the melody—almost recognizable even in my panic—appeared to be drifting in through the balcony doors. The balcony itself, I could see, stood empty, but recalling the layout of the palace grounds told me that a side garden lay below the windows of this wing. I briefly allowed myself to wonder who in the wide, wide world of Equestria would be out in a garden humming an hour before the sun had even begun hinting at the horizon, but as this seemed to be none of my concern, I turned to go, my mission accomplished.

At which point, a voice from outside froze me again: low and female and ever so slightly breathtaking. "A good final watch to thee, Captain."

Princess Luna. Unmistakably. And when the humming stopped, I heard Greaves say, "To you as well, Your Highness."

At which point, I couldn't've left the room if I'd wanted to.

The princess's chuckle made me think of a campfire, all warm and smoky and surrounded by tender darkness. "Ah, yes. 'To you.' We must train ourselves to speak thusly, I suppose, although in truth, such was the habit of speech amongst the general populace even when last I trod Equestria's soil. That a princess might've dared to essay the vernacular, however?" What followed then was a sound that I would've called a snort had it come from any pony other than a member of our ruling diarchy. I decided to call it an emphatic sigh instead. "The scandal, Captain, we fear, would have mounted beyond the top of the Canterhorn itself."

Greaves's answering snort I could safely call a snort. "'The past is a foreign country,'" he said, and I knew he was quoting something even though I couldn't recall what. "'They do things differently there.'"

Whatever the source, it was most definitely not romantic in any way, shape, or form, and I couldn't help wincing at the silence that followed. But then, "Thou knowest Helps Heartily's work?" the princess asked, a waver in her voice.

"Just that one novel." I couldn't see the two of them from where I stood, but Greaves's shrug was very nearly audible. "It was all I was ever able to find of his in print."

"Truly a gentle soul," she more murmured than said. "For all that we were forced to read his work in the hidden rooms behind the walls of our former palace due to it being written in the common tongue, his short fiction shone like the most exquisite of gems." And this time, not even the mask of propriety could've called her snort anything but a snort. "Heartily's work is all but unknown whilst I've seen shelf after shelf in library, bookstore, and corner apothecary throughout this, my sister's modern city, filled with the overblown drudgery penned by that fool Iambic Pentameter!"

I almost leaped through the balcony doors to fall upon them, a defense of Pentameter welling up from my soul, but then Her Highness puffed a sigh. "Nay, we oughtn't to say such things. Pentameter deserves his reputation, for he was a fine poet and a fine friend. Yet so many exemplary artists have fallen through the millennium-wide crack between our memories and the memories of our little ponies." Her always-formal tone became even more formal suddenly, and I was once again certain I was hearing a quotation. "'Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves.'"

"Ah," Greaves replied, and even though I had no idea what he was going to say, I knew he would be completing the line she'd begun. "'We lose as much to life as we do to death.'"

Silence again expanded through the doorway, and I could only stand there grinding my teeth. The connection between them all but glowed in the words they spoke, but how could I push them together? As melancholy as the conversation had become, I feared I was going to see their glow fade and die before anything could spark!

And at that very moment, my cutie mark went off like an explosive device, shooting an idea straight up my spine with such voltage and velocity, I nearly yelped there in the quiet darkness of Greaves's room. The tune he'd been humming when I'd first come stealing into his room! I remembered where I'd heard it before! And it was absolutely perfect!

Scrambling for his bookshelves, I thanked Princess Luna for the moon settling toward the horizon and casting its pearly light across the carefully sorted spines. For I was easily able to find the book I'd known would be there as surely as I knew the contours of Princess Celestia's inner thighs.

Grabbing it with my hornglow, I wafted it across the room, out the balcony doors, and let it drop while at the same time crashing myself into the bookcase in such a way that I managed to strew half its contents across the room.

Of course, with Equestria's newest warrior princess and the captain of her guard in the garden below, I was instantly engulfed in a straightjacket of silver light, a blast of sound enveloping me with the words, "Hold, varlet!"

"No!" I shouted, easily finding enough fear to flood my voice. "I surrender! I surrender!"

"Prince Blueblood?" someone more mortal asked. "You Highness, it's just Prince Blueblood."

Several minutes seemed to go by before the blinding radiance whisked from my eyes, but then I was able to see Princess Luna and Captain Greaves just inside the balcony door and glaring down at me, encased in magic upon Greaves's carpet. "Is it indeed?" Princess Luna growled. "And what would said varlet be doing, we cannot help but wonder, lurking about your quarters, Captain?"

"Your book, Greaves!" I squeaked. "Well, not your book since it's technically mine, but—"

"This book?" The princess very nearly smacked me in the face with a book she had floating in the glow of her horn. "The weapon with which thou didst attempt to strike us from above? A poor instrument of assassination, sirrah, unless it be some weighty tome such as—" Her eyes widened, fixing upon the book's cover, and I hoped once again that my cutie mark had even the slightest idea what it was doing.

"No!" I cried again to fill the silence with a sound she would instinctively ignore so as not to pull her attention away from the book. "I left my book on the table there by the window! But as I was attempting to leave, I tripped over the—"

"This is the libretto to Ruddygore." Princess Luna looked from the book to Greaves. "Captain? Thou art familiar with the works of Filbert and Puddle Jump?"

Greaves was glancing rapidly back and forth between a variety of objects—my trussed-up self, the books, the bookcase—but he quickly focused on the princess. "Of course, Your Highness." A smile played across his snout. "In fact, I forced my entire class at the academy during our senior year to organize a production of Ruddygore so I would have the opportunity to play the part of Mad Marshgrass."

And the brightness that spread across the princess's face made me think of the moon coming out from behind a bank of clouds.

I'd seen the comic operetta in question during my time working as an usher at the Music Center, so I'd recognized—eventually—the tune Greaves had been humming as the catchy but horrendously tricky Patter Trio from act two. And considering the storyline of Ruddygore—

It hinges upon a pair of sisters, y'see: Despera, the younger, is left to become Baroness of Ruddygore and inherit the family curse when her elder sister Riven vanishes at sea. The curse requires the Baroness to perform one evil act per day lest the ghosts of her ancestors leap from the paintings in the castle library and torment her mercilessly. As one of her evil deeds, Despera woos and then jilts a young stallion named Marshgrass from the village below the castle; the poor fellow goes mad as a result and takes up residence in a nearby swamp.

But the action really begins when it turns out that Riven faked her death to escape the curse and has been living quietly in the village under the name Robin Oakapple. Once the deception is uncovered, Riven must assume the wicked Baroness's duties, and Despera hurries off to make good her promises to Marshgrass.

Since it's Filbert and Puddle Jump, further complications ensue, of course, but everything nonetheless ends happily for all involved. Still, the parallels between the two main characters and our two princesses had leaped out at me during my epiphany of a few moments ago and had lead directly to my kicking bookcases and whimpering and lying sprawled in magical bindings upon Captain Greaves's carpet.

The princess's rapturous expression, however, made all my discomfort worthwhile. "And so it shall be!" she announced, her mane flaring despite the lack of anything resembling a breeze. "We spent many a joyous hour ensconsed within the hidden chambers of our castle, clutching copies of Filbert and Puddle Jump scores to our breast, the ink often still wet and smudged with the hoofprints of those dear servants who smuggled the parchment sheets in to us from the composer's very studio! We committed to memory every part Filbert and Puddle Jump wrote for our vocal range, and Despera was...is...she has always been..." Her eyes shimmered, her booming voice dropped to a whisper, and the look she turned upon young Captain Greaves would've melted the sternest of hearts. "Wouldst thou consider, Captain, being our Marshgrass?"

Which is how, some weeks later, I came to be sitting beside Princess Celestia with the widest possible grin upon my face in one of the more mid-sized of the many auditoria scattered throughout Canterlot Tower. The Music Center orchestra, glad for the gig, I would imagine, after so many idle nights waiting for the building's repairs to be completed, had performed admirably under the baton of Doily Cart, the foremost modern conductor of Filbert and Puddle Jump. And Princess Luna?

I'll admit that I'd held a few reservations before entering the theater that afternoon—it was a matinee performance, of course, so as to interfere the least with either princess's duties. But the sweet, dusky contralto that issued forth from Princess Luna's throat captivated instantly and effortlessly, and her scene with Greaves after Despera has tracked Marshgrass down and finally married him as she'd promised—including the straight-faced humor of the "Blameless Dances" duet they sing—was a model of comic timing and romantic restraint. Greaves's rough baritone was perfect for the part, and more importantly, their two voices complemented and complimented each other so exquisitely, I know I wasn't the only one in the audience to suspect they'd been doing more during reheasal than warm-up exercises....

The finale, with all the principles, the chorus, and the entire orchestra pouring their hearts out—one wag once described the conclusions of every Filbert and Puddle Jump operetta as being full of words and music and signifying nothing—brought everypony to their hooves with cries of "Encore! Encore!"

After the cast and orchestra took their well-deserved bows, Princess Luna, flush and grinning, stepped to the front of the stage and thanked the audience. "It strikes us somewhat fitting our character," she said, her words filling the hall without benefit of amplification, "that we should make our stage debut a thousand years after learning the part."

Holding up her hooves after allowing a spate of applause and laughter, she somehow widened her grin. "However," she said, "we should be sadly remiss should we hog the hooflights on our own. So we shall ask all those here present to encourage our own personal Riven to join us upon the boards for the encore you all so pleasantly requested." She held out her hoof to Princess Celestia, and while it isn't often that a crowd of Canterlot nobility goes wild, I will without hesitation confirm that the crowd in this case went absolutely bonkers.

Princess Celestia hemmed and hawed in as false a manner as I'd certainly ever seen, but as the shouts and whistles from the audience and the mocking gestures from her sister continued, my beloved arose like a rose unfurling before the dawn and delicately took the steps up to Princess Luna's side. And when Greaves moved forward to join them and Maestro Cart launched into the introduction to the act two Patter Trio, well, after having already used the words 'wild' and 'bonkers' to describe the audience's reaction, I find that I haven't another word sufficiently explosive to employ at this junction.

All I can say is that I saw three ponies faint dead away, and that the maestro had to run through the introduction six times before the bedlam had settled. Every eye still conscious throughout the entire hall fixed with rapt and unbridled concentration upon the two alicorn mares and the pegasus stallion standing between them, and Princess Celestia, since it's Riven whose section starts the piece, raised her head, shot a dirty look at her smirking sister, opened her mouth, and began.

Golden, pure, and bright as sunlight, her soprano flowed forth, every word of the intricate rhythm and rhyme emerging exactly on the beat and in tempo. The other two added their harmonies in perfect synchronization for the quadruple "And it really doesn't matter" chorus, then Greaves moved forward to take the second verse while the princesses behind him performed a little knee-dipping sort of dance in such unison that I would've sworn they'd rehearsed it. They all joined in once more for the chorus, Princess Luna took her stance for the third verse—

And the orchestra suddenly sped up to a pace I can only call breakneck. She'd been grinning this entire time, but now a glint of sheer madness shone from her, and she launched into the tongue-twisting verse as easily as if she were providing her listeners with directions to the local bakery. Greaves's expression looked decidedly less sanguine, but Princess Celestia threw back her head and laughed with a delight I'd never before seen from her.

They both stepped up for the final chorus, though, and for perhaps the first time in Equestrian history, we in the audience were able to actually make out the words to that final chorus as they flew by: "This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter isn't generally heard, and if it is, it doesn't matter!"

How long the ovation at the end lasted, I'm unable to say. The princesses were hugging, we in the audience were hugging, the actors and the musicians were hugging, the entire auditorium stomping and embracing, laughing, whooping, and hollering. But I did notice Princess Luna spinning away from her sister to where Greaves was standing, and after the briefest hesitation, sweeping him up into a hug as well.

I'll present two more scenes, if I might, before finally drawing this overextended section of our narrative to a close.

During the post-performance reception that evening, after the princesses had performed their respective crepuscular duties but before I'd had a chance to execute my plan to sprawl into a table and upset as many teacups as I could manage, something tapped the tip of my horn. I was alone at the punchbowl along the side of the room at the time, and glancing up, I beheld a small bubble floating before me. The instant my gaze touched it, however, it popped, and my beloved's voice whispered forth: "My room. Fifteen minutes."

I briefly considered crashing into the table on my way out just so Princess Celestia could add another item to the list of complaints she no doubt had prepared in anticipation of our forthcoming activities, but I decided against making a scene. The warmth and camaraderie in the room, Princess Luna mingling among the guests with Greaves always at her side, it simply didn't deserve to be shattered by Prince Blueblood's buffoonery.

Perhaps I could needlessly berate a guard or two tomorrow to make up for it...

Arriving at the princess's boudoir, I took a breath and a swig from the flask in my pocket so my breath would reek appropriately, then pushed my way in with a slurred, "You wished to see me, Auntie?"

Princess Celestia stood halfway along the darkened room, her eyes closed and her head bowed. Her mane flowed more brilliantly and beautifully than I'd ever seen it, the walls of the room and the very air around her shimmering with pastel rainbow light. "Come in," she murmured, "and close the door."

If I'd been even the least bit drunk, the sight of her would've simultaneously struck me sober and plunged me even further into the depths of joyful inebriation. As it was, though, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open for a moment before I somehow lurched forward, a flailing strand of my magic catching the door and slamming it shut behind me.

"Tonight," the princess said, the quiet throatiness of her voice making me both shiver and steam, "was perfect, and I...I..." She raised her head, and the tears streaming down her face shattered the heart within me. "I can't punish you, can't punish myself—don't want to, I mean, and that...that's a sensation I've not felt in...in centuries." Her neck drooped again, her face downcast like a lily too long denied water. "So go back to the party, nephew. I'll not be inflicting my usual horrors upon you tonight."

The hair stood up along my hide the way it did before a thunderstorm, and it took a great deal of effort not to shout, "Are you kidding me??" at the top of my lungs.

Instead, I reached for all the wryness I could muster and said, "If you think you can get rid of me that easily, then you've obviously not been paying attention these past several years."

That snapped her head back up, her wide, wet eyes still wanting to induce weeping throughout the entirety of my fine ivory frame. But I resisted, knowing that mutual waterworks was the very last thing she needed. Plopping myself down on the carpet, I gave what I thought to be a rather dignified pout. "I hereby solemnly declare to you, Princess Celestia, who are the unending splendor of Equestria's skies, lands, and seas, that I'll not budge from this spot till you've told me a story."

The several blinks she aimed at me served admirably to stem the tearful tide, but she still sounded a good deal more tentative than I liked when she repeated, "A story?"

"I should say so!" I waved a hoof at her. "If, as you've said, I've been a good little pony for once in my sordid life, then I would argue, Your Honor, that I deserve a story."

"I see." When those until-recently limpid eyes narrowed, the whole 'dying flower' aspect of her decreased by about half, and her voice slid into something that was at least within a stone's throw of her usual tone. "And what sort of story did you have in mind, if I might be so bold as to ask?"

I didn't want to completely destroy the delicate spell this afternoon had apparently cast upon her, so I said, "Tell me about Filbert and Puddle Jump."

A certain amount of the dreaminess returned to her smile. "Separately, they were the most charming stallions: witty, erudite, sparkling raconteurs. But put them in a room together, and they'd begin sniping at one another as viciously as a pair of street gossips."

Since I've already stuffed this chapter nigh to bursting, I'll forbear to detail the several hours of fascinating social history I heard that evening. I will, however, declare with the utmost sincerity that I drew closer to my princess during those fleeting hours than ever I had during all the time I'd spent squeezed between her legs. Her prickly little idiosyncrasies seemingly forgotten, we became two ponies simply sitting on a floor and enjoying one another's company. And even though I left with all my clothing intact—something else that had never happened before—I wouldn't trade a moment of that night for anything under my princess's sun. To conjure up the memory of the smile that spread across her face as I tucked her in, turned, and closed the door behind me settles my mind whenever I feel troubled...

Our final scene, though, came three days later. Returning to the palace late after my regular Thursday rounds visiting certain spots that owed their disreputability largely to my patronizing them, I lurched around a corner to find Princess Luna glaring silently at me.

Fortunately, I never imbibe quite as much as I appear to during these outings, but I still felt it incumbent upon me to act the part I'd been assigned when I took the Blueblood name. "Merciful heavens!" I exclaimed, staggering sideways with a shuffling of hooves carefully calibrated not to pitch me over onto my flank. "Princess Luna! The very tippedy-top of the evening to you! How delightful to come across you here in—"

"Cease," she more hissed than said.

Unsure how to react to that, I chose a blank-eyed, smiling stare and a guileless, "Of course, Auntie! Delighted to!"

This response only seemed to deepen her scowl, but then she took a breath, shook her head, and smoothed a less unhappy expression over her countenance. "We have it on very good authority that for the most part, thou but weareth the appearance of a feckless fool. So we would have thee abandon this mask for the next few moments and speak to us with thy true self displayed."

"Ah." I made a show of looking slowly about to see if anypony were near at hoof, a debate springing up below my ears like a sudden nest of hornets. With Princess Luna having been away for some time, after all, I had no idea how much she might know about her sister's unusual proclivities and the part I played in assuaging them. Add to that the several dark and pointed comments Princess Celestia had dropped here and there concerning the original Blueblood, the one Luna had known, the one who'd apparently conspired to depose the sisters, and I found myself once again relying upon my cutie mark for guidance through unknown waters.

Not that it was giving me so much as a tingle at the moment, of course. So I set in to hemming and hawing. "The problem as I see it, Your Highness, would be that the truth's a dashed difficult bit of business to pin down. I'm certainly all for it in principle, but, well, I've always found it rather rough to wrestle with when push comes to shove as it were."

Princess Luna's face had begun clouding up, but I pushed on regardless. "And as glad as I am to know I'm not considered a—what was the term you used? A feckless fool?—I'm not entirely sure what 'feck' is. But if fools have less of it, then I must certainly have more. 'Feckful,' one might even go so far as to—"

"Cease thy prattling!" she shouted, though the word 'shout' completely fails to convey the sheer mass of the sound she blasted over me: it quite literally shoved me back into the wall and held me immobile there. She recovered herself quickly, however, put a hoof to her forehead, closed her eyes, and took another breath. "That thou art not cut from the same cunning and treacherous cloth as thy worm of a forefather seems evident enough, and we hesitate to begin any serious contemplation of what utility Celestia might find in thee. Still—" And here she opened her eyes, the moon's own soft silver in them. "We thank thee. That is all. We thank thee." And turning with a flare of horn and wings, she was gone.

I bowed there, alone in the darkness. "You're welcome, Princess," I whispered. Then I went off to find a bed to collapse into.

Author's Note

So many references in this chapter!

The line about the past being a foreign country comes from the beginning of the novel The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley, ponified here to Helps Heartily. The quote that Blueblood doesn't recognize about time being a cruel thief is from the novel A Woman of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey—whom I could've ponified as Forthright or something, I suppose, but, well, I didn't.

Filbert and Puddle Jump are, of course, Gilbert and Sullivan, and their operetta Ruddigore, here rendered as Ruddygore, has pretty much the storyline as I assigned it here—though in the original, it's a pair of brothers trading places as the Bad Baronet. If folks want to go looking for the Patter Trio from act two, various actual versions exist on YouTube, but my favorite is the one Joseph Papp and his collaborators decided to rewrite slightly and insert into their production of The Pirates of Penzance. So I'll link to that below.

Mike

VII - What "Blueblood" Really Means, Part One

After that, what with one thing and another, several years went by.

The first of those things, of course, was the almost painfully adorable courtship of Princess Luna and Captain Greaves, the two quickly becoming fixtures at various of the libraries, art galleries, cafes, and performance venues about town. Their project? To engage in some light snuggling, yes, but more importantly, to familiarize the princess with the best writing, music, art, and assorted creative whatnots the citizens of Equestria had committed during her long absence.

What Princess Luna immediately and accidentally discovered, however, was the lurid lore that had accreted over the past thousand years concerning Nightmare Night.

She took it much better than anypony had a right to expect, actually. Princess Celestia told me that her sister burst into her room one evening about a week after the Ruddygore performance, recited some old bit of rustic doggerel about Nightmare Moon gobbling up foals, and fell to the floor laughing. She then declared her determination to seize this quickly approaching holiday and make it truly her own by—and I believe this is a direct quote—"appropriating its symbols and reimagining its conceits."

I'm told she fashioned a spell that transformed Greaves and his adjutant into some semblance of the mythical "bat ponies" who, according to legend, formed Nightmare Moon's entourage. She further conjured up a fantastical chariot for them to pull, and the whole team of them set off for Ponyville on the night in question, Princess Luna wishing to begin her public reformation efforts at the site where she'd reclaimed her true identity some months previous.

Once again, Princess Celestia's former student, the redoubtable Twilight Sparkle, managed to keep the evening from dissolving entirely into fiasco, and Princess Luna returned to the capital emboldened by a new determination to absorb Captain Greaves's modernization lessons.

All of this, I thought, would bend my admittedly rather bent relationship with Princess Celestia in a more positive direction. A great deal of the self-loathing she revealed only to me in the privacy of her rooms, after all, apparently stemmed from the centuries of guilt she'd been steeping in after banishing her sister on that first Nightmare Night. So now that Princess Luna was back and, to judge by the discreet and not-so-discreet smiles and more-than-smiles she and Greaves were sharing all over town, was happily reconnecting with the earthier aspects of a non-lunar lifestyle, my princess would undoubtedly find a great deal to smile about as well.

I thought.

But while Princess Celestia made no comment when I began curbing somewhat my previous life of wretched excess, she made it quite clear in the same unspoken way that she expected me to continue providing a bad example to proper ponies everywhere so she could upbraid me and then upend me, as it were. Even more troubling? She never varied an iota from her view that the mind-meltingly fantastic experience of being physically intimate with her was somehow a punishment she was inflicting upon me. I longed to express the joy that surged within me like the sweetest possible storm clouds whenever we were together, but her eyes pleaded with me not to say a word—including, oddly enough, the word "Auntie," her unfailing orgasmic trigger during our first years together.

So her needs and wants were indeed changing. I just had no idea whether they spelled a cessation of her assorted neuroses or the arrival of a whole new batch. Especially when she started escorting me to join her, her sister, and Captain Greaves for breakfast on those mornings after we'd engaged in one of our sessions.

Awkward wasn't a strong enough word to describe the first several dozen of these little shindigs. From one of the many balconies dotting Canterlot Tower, Princess Luna would lower the moon, her captain and main squeeze standing at attention to her left, while Princess Celestia raised the sun, my bleary self slumped in a slightly less perpendicular fashion to her right. Then we'd all adjourn to the royal coffee nook—a bit more well-appointed, perhaps, than the average coffee nook, what with the full dining table in the center, the several steam trays along the walls, and the quiet attention of at least six liveried attendants who shuttled in and out with platters of pastries, carafes of coffee, tureens of tea, and a wide variety of non-alliterative substances as well.

Whether it confused and/or angered Princess Luna, this tacit admission that something was most certainly going on between her sister and me, I found myself unable to tell. She never asked a direct question, of course—and Princess Celestia certainly never offered even a hint of an explanation—but the implication that we were rising from our shared bed just as our nocturnal counterparts were settling into theirs shone brighter than anything in the sky outside.

However, I allowed more of my actual nature to peek through the Blueblood guise I maintained in public, and after several weeks, the partial glares jabbing across the table lessened from nearly crippling to merely severe. That Greaves and Princess Luna were besotted with each other helped, I think: she seemed unable to remain in a grumpy mood while he was anywhere in the vicinity, and I did my utmost to treat him with as much respect as I could manage.

That I actually did respect him made the task easier, but, well, the steed was so upright, forthright, and just about every other compound adjective one could think of involving the concept of 'right' that I had no choice but to needle him now and again: "Keeping a stiff upper whatever the foals are calling it these days?" I would ask him, for instance, or imply that he could assist the national treasury by releasing his claim upon his bedroom "since I doubt you've spent much time there recently."

He took the gibes as stoically as his namesake armored shin guard, and his sterling example rather forced Princess Luna to take them as well. Of course, he didn't have to say a word to make his own comments, merely lifting an eyebrow a scant hair's breadth and aiming it in my general direction when I would collapse into my place at table beside the elegant, flowing perfection of Princess Celestia.

That's the problem with stoics. They can be every bit as insufferable as us loudmouths without making a single sound...

Still, as fall got run into winter and winter got wrapped up into spring, I couldn't help feeling a tension spread throughout Princess Celestia's fine, ivory frame. She had often in the past become randier as the days grew longer, summoning me to her room sometimes four or five times a week. But this year, a desperation clung to her actions, a certain wild jitteriness taking her when she climaxed.

From any other pony, I would've thought I was detecting fear and uncertainty in those gasping, shuddering moments when her true self came as close to breaching the many layers in which she cloaked herself as it ever did. A saltiness touched the edges of her usual river-water-trickling-over-stones scent, but since I was hardly in a position at those times to be taking precise measurements, I could never quite be sure.

One late evening in early spring, however, the sense of something unhinging my princess tingled in my mind after the other tingling that always filled me when we lay tangled with each other and the bedclothes had faded. Unable to remain quiet, I let the words bubble out: "Is there anything else I can do to help, my Lady? Anything at all?"

Her embrace, already oddly tight, gave a small but convulsive squeeze before slackening just a bit. "Tell them I tried my best," she murmured into the hair between my ears. "If things go badly in the next week or two—and the chances that they will go badly are not negligible—speak soothing lies to the survivors if you're among them and tell them I failed rather than that I betrayed them."

It took every ounce of the control I'd learned during my twenty-odd years not to leap from her arms at these words. Instead, I tilted my head back along the pillows until I met the depths of her gaze. "Are there perhaps any other pertinent details you'd like me to share with these hypothetical survivors should I hypothetically find myself chatting with them?"

The tiniest bit of a smile tugged her muzzle, and she bent her head to touch her nose to mine. "All right, fine," she said. "I'm being mysterious and melodramatic. I'd've thought you'd be used to that by now."

"Oh, I am, I am." I forced as much breeziness into my voice as I could. "But if I'm to bear your legacy into the post-apocalyptic doomscape of the future, I just thought my listeners might enjoy a few more tidbits upon which they can gnaw whilst we sit scratching at fleas around our guttering bonfire. That's all."

She drew a breath, her barrel expanding between my forelegs. "We have two disasters imminently looming. One I've been expecting for a thousand years, but the other's just come to my attention within the past few days. Alone, either could easily destroy everything ponies have been striving for since before I first felt the warmth of the sun. But together and properly managed, these disasters could lead to an Equestria that's stronger than she's ever been."

I blinked at her. "'Managed' seems an odd word in this context."

"It is." Pulling me closer, she tucked her chin over the top of my head once more. "Because the only way I can see for this all to work out successfully is for Luna and I to do nothing. To do less than nothing, in fact: I myself must be beaten down by one enemy and mustn't even approach the other while Luna...she must know nothing about the one and must listen to reason about the other. And that other is a subject about which she's proven herself to be less than reasonable on multiple occasions in the past."

With my face pressed to her chest, the great steady kettle drum of her heart thudded faster than I'd ever heard it. My thoughts a jumble, I fell back to first principles and began kissing my way up the glorious flex of her neck. "Again," I murmured, "what can I do to help?"

The princess made a purring noise deep in her throat. "Just exactly what you're doing right now," she said, and the rest of the night passed without an intelligible word from either of us.

I slept late the next morning, but upon arising in time for an early lunch, I learned of two announcements that had the entire city in a tizzy: first, Princess Luna had detected some nebulous but virulent threat to Canterlot during her nightly sojourn into the dreamscape, and second, Captain Armor had at long, long last made his intentions official toward Princess Cadance by scheduling their wedding for the end of the week.

This, I hardly need mention, signaled the beginning of the first disaster, the one in which my princess had to be struck down by her enemy so that others—Captain Armor, his aforementioned sister Twilight Sparkle, and the actual Princess Cadance—could step forward and foil the planned destruction of all we ponies hold dear.

Well, they did so, of course. And that evening, after the invading army had been blasted away by the sheer power of love, and the new marriage, I assumed, was being consummated the same way, Princess Celestia hurled me into her bed without any of the ritual chastisement that always opened our sessions and took me with an outpouring of passion even more overwhelming than usual.

"We're so close!" she murmured between kisses that were in and of themselves as intense as I imagined being struck by lightning would be. "I told Luna to concentrate on finding the threat while I took care of the wedding, but of course the wedding was the threat, so she was deep in the dreamscape when the changelings attacked! Chrysalis had absorbed so much love, I barely had to fake anything when she smacked me aside, and now? Now we're more than halfway there, and it's going to work! I know it is!"

Once again, her tender—and not so tender—attentions left me in no state to ask what exactly she knew was going to work, but when, not many days after the wedding, the news burst over Canterlot that a sizable but largely unknown empire had appeared to the north, I began to suspect that this might in fact be the beginning of disaster number two.

The heated conversation at breakfast the next morning rather confirmed my suspicions. "This will not stand!" Princess Luna exclaimed the instant Princess Celestia and I stepped into the coffee nook. The Night Princess had apparently been disemboweling a grapefruit with a runcible spoon before our entrance, but now her hornglow was brandishing the sharpened edge of said utensil like a cutlass in our general direction. "If that foul traitor Sombra has returned as well, we must sally forth at once to bring about his final, ignoble defeat!"

Greaves's ears perked. "But say the word, Your Highnesses, and I will lead the forces of Equestria against whatever fiend lurks within the heart of this Crystal Empire!" He shrugged. "Since Shining Armor's still on his honeymoon and all..."

And while I'd never before imagined I'd see such a thing, Princess Luna went absolutely pale, the midnight blue of her hide turning a sickly shade of gray. "No, my captain," she said quickly. "We would not waste our valiant troops in this fashion. This...this is a problem of our own—and by our own, I mean my own—making, and I will deal with it." Her glare sharpened again and fixed upon her sister, seating herself with a cup of tea at the table. "In the way that it should have been dealt with many centuries ago!"

Princess Celestia didn't raise her eyes from her cup, nor did she make a sound as she stirred in a few drops of milk and a few grains of sugar. It was Greaves who spoke: "My Lady? Can I serve you in no way in this matter?"

This time, Princess Luna didn't pale. She blushed a deep and glowing shade of purple. "Do...do you recall, my love, the conversation we had some months ago wherein we shared assorted details about those ponies with whom we had each—" Her jittery gaze grazed my own for an instant, then sprang away as if I'd stung her. "—had relations?" I could almost smell the effort it took for her to turn that gaze toward Greaves. "I told you that, in all my many years, there had been but one pony who had touched my heart in a manner resembling the way you've touched me?"

Greaves went very still. "This Sombra?" he asked, his words as brittle as eggshells.

Princess Luna leaped to her hooves. "He means nothing to me now! Less than nothing! He was a brute and a tyrant and the most devious monstrosity ever to arise among the pony tribes!" Again, her gaze darted to meet mine, but something with a much harder edge shimmered there now. "One of the most devious monstrosities, at any rate!"

"And yet?" Greaves said quietly. "You say that you loved him."

The entire room seemed to freeze this time, Princess Luna's eyes going wide.

Princess Celestia set her cup upon its saucer with the tiniest of clatters. "Sombra had developed a spell," she said without looking up, her voice so gentle that, instead of breaking the silence, it just nudged it a bit to the side. "Utilizing the magical crystals the Empire is known for, he cast upon himself properties of reflectivity and conductivity. He'd originally thought that this would let him absorb power from the ponies around him, and the spell did that quite well. But he found that it also allowed him to discern and assume whatever traits those ponies found most desirable. He was able to pull those traits over himself like a mask, projecting erudition and compassion while keeping his true venality and pettiness hidden."

I couldn't help blinking. Firstly, it sounded like a very useful spell to have in one's arsenal, and secondly, well, I couldn't recall the last time my princess had simply come right out and explained anything in this fashion. I was considering mentioning these two observation aloud in an effort to lighten the mood when Princess Celestia nodded toward me. "A thousand years ago, Sombra made an alliance with that era's Prince Blueblood, the last surviving remnant of the old Unicornian nobility, and the two of them used Sombra's spell to woo my sister and myself with the sole purpose of marrying us, killing us, and taking our thrones."

Which statement rather put the kibosh on any idea of lightening the mood...

"By the time we saw through their scheme," Princess Celestia was going on, "Sombra had absorbed so much of our power that the both of us combined could barely turn him to shadow and seal him in the ice, and we couldn't stop the curse he'd placed on the Empire from vanishing it away into a thousand years of slumber." She raised her head at last, her attention focused solely on her sister. "I hope you'll forgive me for acting without consulting you, but at the first report of the Empire's reappearance, I dispatched Princess Cadance and Shining Armor to lead the aid efforts. Captain Armor's natural organizational skills, I feel, will prove indispensable to the task, and the love and compassion that form the basis of Cadance's power will—"

"Her cutie mark!" Princess Luna said suddenly, her eyes going even wider. "I'd not before noticed how greatly it resembles the Crystal Heart around which the Empire revolved!" She nodded. "I approve entirely of their appointment, Sister, but they will need our help to—" Her eyes, which had been descending toward their normal size, once again flew wide to such an extent that I feared for her ocular safety. "And yet we cannot! If Sombra is indeed flitting about the edges of the Empire, his spell will latch onto our familiar energies and add them to his own! We...we can do nothing!"

Princess Celestia sipped her cup. "I've also asked Twilight Sparkle and her friends to call upon us this morning."

Princess Luna's whole countenance brightened. "That is most excellently thought of as well! They have shown their capabilities time and again, and this will stand as a most appropriate test to see if your young student is truly walking the path we both hope that she is." Her ears fell, and she turned to Greaves, chewing the same mouthful I was sure he'd been chewing for the past several minutes. "While we await their arrival, Greaves, might we retire to our chambers and talk? I would clear the air between us."

Greaves's slow smile told me everything I needed to know, an opinion that was only reinforced when he set a hoof upon hers and said, "No clouds could ever come between these eyes and the face upon which they long to gaze."

She made a little giggling noise, and they took their leave—I assume to their chambers to talk. Or perhaps to commune in some other way...

My princess and I finished our morning meal side by side in companionable silence. I didn't commend her for the way in which she'd played her sister like a well-tuned cello, nor did I ask any of the questions that bounced around the confines of my skull. This wasn't the time for questions, after all, and some of them—whether the spell that my ancient forebear had cast upon her had ever been dispersed, for instance, and how said spell might explain her continued predilection for ponies whom she could call Blueblood—I discovered that I didn't really want answered.

Still, as students of history will recall, the return of the Crystal Empire didn't become any sort of disaster whatsoever, nor did the return of Discord not many weeks later, nor the ascension of Twilight Sparkle to alicornhood as the Princess of Friendship not many weeks after that. It was a rather busy spring, one might go so far as to say.

Of course, the rest of the year had its share of pitfalls as well, what with both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna falling into one of Discord's old traps the day of the Summer Sun Celebration and the entire country nearly coming unglued due to yet another rampaging, semi-mythical, would-be tyrant. But for all the explosions both good and bad, for all the drama and the trauma, for all that some of us were forced over and over again to sleep alone in our own rooms while our princesses were off attending the multitude of sudden summit meetings in the far-flung corners of the world that are apparently de rigueur when one's nation starts producing princesses at an alarming rate—at least Greaves got included in his princess's entourage what with him being the captain of the Night Guard—

But for all of that, nothing seemingly affected my princess more than Princess Cadance and Prince Armor becoming parents.

"Astonishing!" she murmured as we lay curled together the night after she returned only slightly singed from the crystal-based ceremony to which the ponies of the Empire apparently exposed their children, her bedding strewn haphazardly about us. "That Cadance's daughter should be born an alicorn! I can't begin to understand how it happened!"

"Well," I drawled, touching a hoof to my chest, "I've been told that when a stallion and a mare love each other very much—"

She stopped my lips moving by judicious application of her own lips. "It's a good thing," she said when she finally let me up for air, "that you're nearly as cute as you think you are." Her gaze above me became unfocused again, and I couldn't even begin to guess where her thoughts were taking her. "These events open so many possibilities for the future," she finished after a moment.

"Do they?" And as certain as I was that those thoughts of hers weren't wending in a maternal direction, well, this was the time for questions, after all. So I blew out a theatrical sigh. "Will this call for a great deal more effort on my part? I'm all for sacrificing myself for my country, of course, but there's only so much the mortal pony body can be expected to—"

Again, her lips smothered mine, and my treacherous mortal pony body reacted rather stereotypically to her ministrations. But she pulled away before events could lead to more than some cross-eyed panting on my part. Lying back along her pillows, she shook her head. "Fear not, my hapless Lothario. No pony would be less-suited to motherhood than I." She stretched herself long and luxuriously beside me. "Twilight Sparkle, however..."

My cutie mark began tingling. The return of Polaris Blueblood, Matchmaker to Royalty, was it? I scooted myself close to her side and was rewarded when she enfolded me within one of those great, gorgeous wings. "I don't know," I said into her neck. "I've got this rather demanding marefriend whom I don't think would take it well were I to throw her over for a younger model."

Her chuckle vibrated through my skull, down my spine, and out the end of my tail. "That's what happens when you become invaluable." Her feathers stroking me fore and aft forced me to clench my teeth lest I begin rhapsodically exclaiming the joys of being helplessly enthralled to her. "You've made two of our five current princesses ecstatically happy by your efforts, and now you're being called upon to go three for five."

That I didn't freeze in her embrace I can only ascribe to the heat flowing between us. For while I'd certainly assumed that I'd been making her happy these past several years, she had never before so much as implied that to be the case. And for a pony as allusive and elusive as my lady to so very nearly come right out and say that she enjoyed my company...

I snuggled closer to her. "I'll expect overtime pay for this."

"Of course." The rise and fall of her breathing so lulled me, not even her next words could keep me from tipping headfirst into the sweet abyss of sleep. "I've already bought your ticket: you'll be leaving for Ponyville on the dawn train tomorrow."

VIII - What "Blueblood" Really Means, Part Two

Were I in truth the boorish cretin I portray whilst out and about in Canterlot, I daresay I could've raised a most vociferous stink about being punted out of bed at a time any logical creature would've called 'the middle of the night' instead of 'morning' so that I could be packed onto a rattling death trap and sent careening down the side of a mountain for eight or ten hours.

But since the bed in question was that of my beloved princess, since the 'punting' consisted more of 'kissing' and 'feather stroking,' since the train compartment into which I was shown was more luxurious than my pre-Blueblood-era apartment, and since the coffee I was served made me wish I had occasion to take more early morning rail trips, I found it easy enough to confine myself to the minimum allowance of grumbling and grousing that the public expected from a pony who wore the Blueblood name.

And in all honesty—well, all right, not all honesty; I can scarcely lay claim to so much of a quality of which I so rarely partake. Still, I was honestly glad to have the hours to think, the landscape outside the picture window of my private car refreshingly boring. Because for all that I'd met Twilight Sparkle several times before her alicoronation, "pudgy" and "guileless" were the first two words that sprang to mind when I thought her name.

A bit of mental prodding brought forth a few more phrases: calm and quiet when not loudly panicking; resourceful when presented with a problem formally but floundering when confronted with unexpected difficulties; both extremely powerful and extremely awkward; and only the fourth pony in recorded history to attain the title 'princess' rather than being born or married into it.

Even as I reviewed these basic notes, I knew most of the underlying assumptions upon which they were based had become hopelessly outdated. She'd saved the country—indeed, the entire world—on multiple occasions, and I'm told that that sort of thing can have a broadening effect upon a pony. Therefore, I would need to learn more about who she was now if I were to succeed in my mission of finding her a suitable cuddling companion.

I'd need to be both more circumspect and less when compared to the efforts I'd expended uniting Princess Luna and Captain Greaves, but fortunately I thrived on such paradoxes. I merely needed, I was certain, to trust my cutie mark, and I'd soon introduce the Princess of Friendship to the pony who'd usher her into the larger world of romance.

So certain was I, in fact, that I closed my eyes and slept the rest of the way to Ponyville. I had the vague outlines of a plan, after all: what more could possibly be expected of me?

Disembarking once the train arrived took a bit of doing. I'd trusted that Princess Celestia had packed for me, and apparently she'd decided that I would need more accoutrements than usual. I watched through the window as porters stacked trunk after trunk emblazoned with my mark upon the platform. A clearing of throat, however, caused my attention to focus on the conductor standing in the doorway of my coach. "Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but the lads were wondering what you wanted done with your luggage."

Nodding, I decided it was time to see how adept Princess Twilight had become at dealing with the unexpected. "Why, take it to the palace, of course!" I yawned, rose, and stretched. "When a prince calls upon a princess, he usually stays in her royal guest suites, does he not?"

The conductor bowed and turned. "I'll take your word for it, sir."

I followed him out into the afternoon sunshine. The platform had largely cleared of passengers by this time, but my eye was drawn past the stevedores wrestling my mountain of baggage onto carts to a line of ponies still standing at the door leading into the station house. They were shifting from hoof to hoof, their tails switching back and forth, the air sour with their nervousness, and looking to the head of the line, I could see why at once. A large, misshapen creature slouched in the entryway, a hodge-podge of parts crazy-quilted into one semi-coherent whole whom I recognized from the descriptions I'd read as Discord.

Rather than doing anything outrageous, however, he stood propped beside the station door in a mud brown vest and a hat with the words 'Chaos Inspector' blinking on and off across it. In his talons he held what looked for all the world like the forked branch of a tree, and with his eyes half-closed, he was waving this stick over and around the first pony in line. Yawning, he squinted at the stick, tapped one of his lion claws against it, and called out, "Next!"

The mare he'd been examining rushed past, and the stallion behind her stepped up, sweat visible on his forehead. The creature waved the stick for several seconds, glanced at it, tapped it, and stepped back with another call of, "Next!"

I blinked, then turned to where the conductor was levitating the last of my carpetbags onto the last of the carts. "See here, my good fellow! What's the meaning of that?" I waved in the direction of the station house.

The conductor didn't look away from his work. "As long as he's not turning things into other things, sir, we've instructions to leave him be." He grinned. "Sometimes, he's even helpful, comes through and cleans all the soot outta the engines, for instance. Says he uses it to make furniture." Finally, he looked over, and when I followed his gaze, I saw Discord motioning the second-to-last pony in line forward. "Don't know as how I've seen him do this before, but, well, unpredictable's kinda what chaos means, isn't it?" He nodded. "Just go on through, sir, and we'll get your bags up to Twilight's castle."

My ears pricked. He'd used my title earlier, but Princess Twilight didn't even get a "Miss" or a "Lady" before her name. This implied that he'd been instructed not to address her thus. If I were to further guess, I would stake a stack of bits that she'd told him this personally, directly, and no doubt repeatedly.

A data point, in other words. Our Princess Twilight seemed not to care for formalities...

Filing this away, I headed for the station house. The line was gone, but the beast still lay sprawled across the doorway, his stick tucked under one arm and his attention apparently riveted entirely upon the comic book he was reading. For a moment, I wondered if I should bring out my high dudgeon when confronting him, but then I recalled the morning of his initial rampage several years back when I woke to find my bed sheets had been transformed into caramel.

So politeness won out. "Perhaps you can tell me, my good sir," I called, stepping up to him as if I confronted unnatural monstrosities at least twice a week, "if this is the correct exit. I'm staying with Princess Twilight for the week, and I'm fairly certain I've never set hoof in Ponyville before."

The expression he turned toward me made me think of sompony looking at a bug, and not an interesting bug, either. Heaving a sigh, he tossed his comic book into the air, the pages flapping like wings and carrying it away into the afternoon sky. "Just when I was getting to the good part, too." He grabbed the stick, waved it in my direction—

And lights began flashing all up and down his uniform, the most ear-splittingly annoying alarm horn blaring out. Discord's eyes bulged like balloons expanding, steam blasting from his ears, and he quite literally exploded, his uniform bursting into confetti that swirled out and away from him in whizzing, pinwheeling cascades.

Suffice it to say that I took a step back.

"Well, now!" a braying baritone announced, and the creature stood intact before me, his grin gleaming unevenly along his snout. "I had a feeling a nice little bit of chaos was heading my way, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was!" His eyes narrowed, and he bent down to prod a claw at me. "You seem distressingly normal, though. What d'you s'ppose it was that set my stick off?"

I've always prided myself on my ability to maintain my equilibrium when all about me were losing theirs, but I must confess that it took me a bit longer than I would've liked to draw myself up and say snootily, "I'm sure I have no idea what you're—"

By then, however, he was bending over me, his nostrils flaring and drawing in such gusts of air, I felt my hooves lose contact with the floorboards. An absolutely atavistic fear sliced through me—did the monster mean to devour me?—and I exclaimed the most heartfelt, "Now see here!" that I believe I've ever uttered.

For his part, however, instead of sucking me bodily into that unusual head of his, Discord gave a gasp, his talons clutching his chest, and started back as if I'd done something untoward to him. Staring up at his spinning eyes, I couldn't quite get my legs to move, and when an even more massive grin spattered like spoiled milk across his face, I cursed myself for not fleeing while I'd had the chance.

"This is simply too much!" he crowed, then he leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper and the air suddenly smelling of nothing but mustard. "You've been making yourself useful between her sweet, creamy thighs, haven't you?" He straightened up with a ratcheting sound, slapped his knee, and the station swirled away around us like bathwater down a drain. "Oh, if only I'd known! I would've been prancing about all blonde and white-hided this whole time!"

Ignoring the melting colors of the scenery took a fair amount of doing, but I'd become rather adept at ignoring things over the past several years. "Is this going to take long?" I asked, fishing my pocket watch out of my vest. "I'm fairly certain it's considered impolite for one's luggage to arrive at one's destination before one has arrived oneself."

Discord blinked at me. "I count four 'ones' in that sentence." He fanned several playing cards between his paws and claws, a green eyeshade springing out from his forehead. "Well, that beats my full house." He tossed the cards away, and they swooped up beneath us, stretching and locking together into a sort of flagstone courtyard. Purple and orange palm trees appeared with little popping noises around the edges, and the sky resolved into something as dimly lit and out of focus as a poorly rendered mid-century Neo-Impressionist painting.

"Speaking of a full house," the creature was going on, throwing himself back to sit on a barrel-sized toadstool that had conveniently sprouted behind him, "if you're regularly plowing those alabaster fields, I don't suppose you and Cay-Cay are expecting a little bundle of hooves or anything appalling like that, are you?" His eyebrows waggled like caterpillars doing calisthenics. "I've always thought that having a foal would do wonders to settle our Celestia's disposition, and besides, the pranks practically write themselves, don't they?"

I pushed out as extravagant a sigh as I could manage under the circumstance. "This is all so fearsomely irregular, I'll be on a diet of prunes for the next week." Patting my lips, I forced a discreet belch. "I don't suppose you have a bicarbonate of soda I could borrow? I'm certain I'll return it with interest—and possibly with the force of a projectile vomit."

He pursed his lips. "I can't imagine many things less interesting, actually." His gaze softened, and he tapped his snout. "In my experience, however, you equines can't vomit." Grinning, he reached his eagle talons toward me, a beaker of bubbling green liquid clutched therein. "Shall we experiment?"

Slumping back in a mock fainting spell, I waved a hoof weakly. "You go on without me, old fellow. I fear I shan't be much longer for this world: another six or eight decades at the most."

"Alas." Discord shook his head slowly and raised the beaker. "I drink to your memory, sir." He swigged down the vile glop, and twin jets of glowing gas shot from his ears. "But then, were you ever anything more than a memory even when you were here?"

"Hmmm?" I gave him a few blank blinks. "I'm sorry, but I seem to have forgotten what we were discussing."

With a grin, Discord snapped his lion claws, and I found myself sitting on the grass beside an outlandishly odd-looking structure, a sort of cross between a tree, a castle, and a kidney stone. "We were discussing the next stop on our itinerary," Discord said beside me, a small megaphone suspended from helium balloons floating in front of his mouth, a tall hat with the words 'Ponyville Tours' sticking up between his horns. "The Friendship Palace, seat of Equestria's second newest princess, Twiglight Sprackle."

"Not a very comfortable seat, I'd imagine," I was simply unable to refrain from muttering, "what with all the towers and crenulations and such."

"Ah." Pulling the hat off with a pop, he stuffed the megaphone in, then pulled out a spyglass. "Observing the Alicornica Crepuscula in her native environment will reveal the generously upholstered posterior she's developed specifically to perch upon said battlements." He held the spyglass out to me, and the end of it winked at me. "Or should I say, 'butt-lements'?"

"If you must," I said as politely as I knew how.

"Oh, I must." He jammed the spyglass into one eye—one of his own eyes, I suppose I'd best add for clarity's sake. "I can't even begin to tell you how much I must." Turning the glass in such a way that it began screwing itself into his head, he sighed. "If only she were airborne. Then I could show you her flying buttress."

Fortunately, I truly needed no telescopic assistance since we were sitting scarce yards away from where Princess Twilight stood staring at the burgeoning mass of luggage a veritable army of porters was unloading on the front steps of the aforementioned Friendship Palace. "You're sure he said to deliver them here?" she was asking.

"Pardon me a moment," I said to Discord, then I waved a hoof toward the princess. "Yoo-hoo, Your Highness! Yoo-hoo!"

"Splendid idea!" Discord produced a small yellow box, jabbed a clear straw into the top, and began noisily sucking brown liquid out of it.

I spared him the briefest of glances since Princess Twilight was wheeling her more-than-slightly frazzled gaze in our direction. "Prince Blueblood?" Her gaze hardened almost audibly. "Discord? I should've known you'd have something to do with this."

"Moi?" How that odd face of his managed to look as innocent as a kitten's, I can't begin to imagine. "I'm merely here to learn a valuable lesson about hospitality."

Displaying my most oblivious smile, I made my way over to the luggage pile. "I do hope that I'm not imposing, Your Highness, but when I mentioned to Princess Celestia that I'd not yet had the opportunity to visit you here in your new demesnes, she became frightfully concerned and entreated me to journey hence forthwith."

She winced, but whether her reaction was due to my use of 'hence' when I meant 'hither' or to our impending 'guest/host' relationship, I had no way of knowing. "I see," she said through her teeth. "Well, I really must thank Princess Celestia the next time I see her." She turned, tilting her head back to take in the entire expanse of luggage. "For now, however, let me get your baggage sent up to your room." Her horn flashed, and—

Now, I'd been secret consort to the single mightiest being in the entirety of the known universe for some time by that point. I'd found myself enveloped by Princess Celestia in every way that a stallion can be enveloped by a mare and in several ways, I'm certain, that were original and unique to my beloved. I was intimately familiar with the flow and feel of mind-bogglingly powerful magic, in other words.

Which was why the casual, almost shrugging manner in which Princess Twilight flicked that tonnage away almost literally stole my breath from me. I'd known this young mare since she'd been an absent-minded wallflower, a prodigy, yes, but mostly notable in my eyes as the sister of Canterlot's Captain of the Guard. Now here she was, a bit taller at the shoulder, a bit leaner at the flank, the wings along her sides looking as natural as if they'd been there all her life, and without even a twitch at the corner of her eye, she had successful conjured and directed more sheer supernatural force than I would likely generate in the next decade.

And she did all this just to stow away a few dozen steamer trunks.

I could almost hear my beloved quietly chuckling. While finding my former student a suitable romantic partner, she seemed to be telling me, don't under any circumstances underestimate her.

With my impedimenta gone, Princess Twilight turned back to me, something closer to an actual smile on her face. "We'll put you on the second floor, Your Highness." She gestured to a balcony jutting out just above our heads and to the left. "It gives a lovely view of Ponyville and the Everfree Forest."

My bow took me clear down to the ground, and I had to remind myself to straighten up. "Your Highness is too kind," I said, hoping it was true.

"Oh, now." The smile she gave then was friendliness itself, her head cocked and her eyes curling closed. "Call me Twilight, Your Highness, please."

"Then you must call me Blueblood," I replied, although for the space of an indrawn breath, something about this Twilight Sparkle made me consider asking her to call me Polaris, a name that only the vanishingly small section of the populace whom I considered my nearest and dearest ever used for me. Well, except for my beloved, of course. She never called me anything but—

"And I," Discord announced suddenly, startling me from my thoughts and shying me sideways so that I nearly collided with the strawboss of the stevedores who'd lugged my luggage up from the station, "shall be Dr. Hippopotamus Q. Bird Sanctuary, local ornithologist and amateur saxophonist extraordinaire."

"Discord," Twilight said with a sourness I'd so far only heard her employ when speaking his name, "what are you even doing here, anyway?"

He spread his forearms. "Where else would I be when the scion of the ancient and noble House of Blueblood pays our fair village a call? In fact—" One of those forearms popped from its socket, flashed through the air like some sort of winged serpent, and wrapped itself around my shoulders. "I've found myself so taken with the fellow that I'm volunteering my services to make his stay as...memorable...as possible." He punctuated the word 'memorable' with a grin that made me think of a large and sharply honed knife slicing into a helpless watermelon.

"No, no," I said, surprised I could make any sound other than a rapid and high-pitched gibbering. "No need to trouble yourself."

"Trouble?" His arm flashed over to reattach itself, and he waved two sudden pennants in his paw and talons: one with his smiling face and one with my frowning one. "Oh, my dear sir, let me assure you!" He continued smiling expansively, but the expression of the face on his pennant portrait became positively diabolical. "You don't know the meaning for the word!"

"Discord," Twilight said again, and the sternness in her voice reminded me shiveringly of the way her mentor was wont to speak during our pre-coital role-playing sessions. "I'm glad you want to help, and it would actually be really great if you could show Blueblood around town for a couple hours." Her voice lost its edge when she turned a look of sincere apology toward me. "I have some duties this morning—in fact, my assistant and my student are probably at the hospital right now wondering where I am." She looked back at Discord, and her lips tightened once more. "But if you do anything to make our guest feel uncomfortable—"

"Uncomfortable?" He put a claw to his chin. "You mean like arriving unannounced with enough luggage to drown a giraffe and expecting somepony to drop all her plans for the day so that she can cater to my every whim?" His eyes narrowed, his gaze fixing on me. "I'd never do anything as discomfiting as that. I mean, I'm a spirit of chaos, not a witless, tactless buffoon."

"Discord..." She more growled it than said it this time, but then she took a breath and blew it out. "Just...promise me."

That got Discord blinking for a change. "Promise you what?"

"You know what."

He puffed out a breath of his own—a green cloud with little red spangles flashing in it—folded his arms, and looked away pouting. "Yes, I suppose I do." His ears came up quickly, though, and his demeanor became all kittenish and innocent once more. "Very well. I promise to be every bit the gentlecolt that our esteemed visitor is." A halo popped into place above his horns, and he smiled at Twilight, his foreclaws pressed together before his chest. "Surely that should be sufficient?"

The doubt that twitched across Twilight's face spoke volumes: she knew my reputation, after all, and I couldn't imagine she'd want Discord behaving even remotely like that. She couldn't say anything about it, however, I'm sure she thought, without insulting me.

So I said it. "Oh, come, come, now, old fellow! Let's not set the bar that low!" I pressed my front hooves together. "Instead, you shall promise to be every bit the gentlecolt that I am, and I shall promise to be every bit the gentlecolt that you are. We shall each therefore be constantly upping one another's game until we become so excruciatingly proper and polite, ponies will rise up against the sterling examples we provide and run us out of town for exposing their shortcomings to the glaring light of day!" I couldn't summon a halo of my own, but I did flare my magic to create a smoke ring, widening and dispersing around the tip of my horn. "In the nicest possible way, of course."

Her jaw hanging open and her eyes wide, Twilight looked like a fish pulled suddenly from the river to the bank. The air around Discord, however, burst into a shower of sparks, and he clapped his lion paw across my back. "You, young fellow, will be the brother I never had!" The strip of black mane along his neck rippled and became a blonde rivulet that matched mine. "Come along, then!" He spun toward the town. "Ponyville awaits!"

"Umm," Twilight said, raising a hoof.

I stepped forward and took that hoof between my own. "Fear not! We shall be the gentlest colts anypony has ever experienced!" And besides, I most pointedly didn't say aloud, I could use this opportunity to ask her friends what sort of romantic partner Twilight might be interested in. Friends, I'd discovered over the years, always had opinions on such subjects, and a colorful groups such as the Princess of Friendship had gathered about her over the past few years should prove a positive gold mine.

Giving Twilight my most radiant grin, I turned, tossed a bag of coins to the chief of the railway workers, and trotted off to rejoin my tour guide.

IX - What "Blueblood" Really Means, Part Three

Searching for the right word to describe my day in Ponyville, I find, presents me with something of a difficulty. Shall I use 'stultifying'? Too harsh. 'Unsatisfactory'? Too misleading. 'Surreal'? Too simplistic.

No. Instead, I shall characterize my stay as a thing of beauty and a joy till Tuesday, if I might rather aggressively misquote that insipid poet Jonquil. Every time I try to read one of his pieces, I'm left with nothing but an impression of words fitfully rhymed and spasmodically spattered across a page, so let's employ that image as a metaphor for my visit, shall we?

Discord escorted me with a flashing snap of his talons from the steps of Twilight's palace to a dirt path leading to a quaint and rodent-infested cottage tucked away in a bosky dell altogether too close to the fringe of the Everfree Forest for my citified tastes. "Is it safe?" I asked, the looming mass of brownish greenery inspiring more than a few shivers beneath my blazer.

"Tut, tut, young fellow." Discord polished his claws against the gray hide of his chest. "You're in the company of the most dangerous creature within several dozen square furlongs." He winked. "Or rather, you will be once I introduce you to Fluttershy!"

She actually turned out to be quite the charming young mare, a lip-smacking combination of the ethereal and the earthy. True, she stammered a bit when Discord invited the two of us in for an impromptu bout of tea, but once another of his oh-so-useful snaps summoned kettle and cups, scones and sandwiches, crumpets and crullers, treacle and tarts and all, she began displaying the sorts of amused and indulgent smiles that parents bestow upon their children on those rare occasions when said children are behaving in an extravagant but acceptable manner.

The three of us settled in for a nice bit of a nosh, but I couldn't help noticing that Fluttershy kept giving me sideways, wide-eyed glances. And not the good sort of sideways, wide-eyed glances, either. That my reputation preceded me went without saying, of course, but, well, this was a pony who'd befriended one of Equestria's greatest monsters and had played a major role in him becoming the tea-toting teetotaler now seated to my left. Surely I couldn't be more frightening to her than he was!

Discord had been prattling on about his plan to feed magically colored pellets to Fluttershy's chickens so that any pastries made with their eggs would naturally bear the sort of garish tones that the local baker apparently preferred when I caught yet another splinter of Fluttershy's worried gaze. She snapped her attention back to him almost immediately and said, "I don't think that's the sort of thing the chickens would be interested in, Discord, but I can ask them if you'd like."

"Speaking of asking," I said, always light on my hooves with a segue, "might I ask what I can do to make you feel more comfortable in my presence, Fluttershy?"

She winced almost as if I'd threatened to strike her, but it was Discord who replied. "Oh, our Fluttershy can be so sensitive when meeting strangers. Especially strangers who terribly insulted the pony who's perhaps her best non-draconequus friend in the whole wide world." His eyes half-closed, he sipped his cup.

I did not sip my cup. Instead, I stared at him and managed to stammer, "I'm sorry?"

He waved a half-eaten scone. "I'm not the one you should be apologizing to, young fellow."

Still entirely in the dark, I glanced from him to Fluttershy, her blush making her face almost the same color as the strands of hair covering half of it. "Rarity," she murmured, her gaze on the table in front of her. "You hurt her feelings very badly at the first Grand Galloping Gala we all attended. She hasn't talked about it in a while, so it might be that she's gotten over it. But still, I...I'm not sure I should really be having tea with you after the way you treated her." Gently and quietly, she set her cup down on its saucer.

As perhaps you can imagine, that made for a bit of silence. I'll be the first to admit that, having been tasked with creating at least two deplorable incidents a week for the past several years, I occasionally find the individual circumstances of those incidents running together a bit in my mind. But since it was my behavior toward Rarity at that year's Gala that had led directly to my involvement in pairing up Princess Luna with Captain Greaves, I maintained a very clear memory of that occurrence. And to find myself reminded of that very same incident here on the threshold of my involvement in finding a partner for Princess Twilight seemed somehow oracular.

Setting my own cup down, I nodded. "You are both absolutely correct. So I shall hereby ask your advice." I looked from Fluttershy's wide-eyed confusion to Discord's wide-eyed glee. "As I'm today sworn to act in as gentlecoltish a fashion as possible, what must I do to make things right with Miss Rarity?"

"Ritual abasement," Discord said without a second's hesitation. "Dressed in sackcloth and ashes while crawling upon your belly like the loathsome worm you are, you must wail your sorrow along the streets of Ponyville till you reach her front doorstep, imploring her forgiveness while flagellating yourself mercilessly." Another of his snaps conjured a cat-o-nine-tails to float in front of me. "In as gentlecoltish a fashion as possible, of course."

"Umm," Fluttershy said from behind her forehooves; she seemed to be attempting to cover her mouth, her eyes, and her nose simultaneously.

A similar reaction gripped my own limbs, but thinking quickly, I instead raised a hoof and an objection. "But recall, old fellow, that a gentlecolt always considers how his actions might affect those around him." Focusing back on Fluttershy, I asked, "Would such behavior on my part perhaps embarrass Miss Rarity? Especially if she were, let's say, with a customer at the time?"

"Yes." Fluttershy hesitated even less than Discord, and while the expression she turned upon him may have been meant to be a glare, it seemed much more a pout than anything else. "That's certainly the sort of thing that would make Rarity very uncomfortable."

"Of course." Discord tapped his snout. "Rarity prefers to conduct her ritual debasements behind closed doors." The grin he gave me absolutely dripped with implication. "Much like certain other white-hided ponies we could mention."

My first impulse—leaping up to drive a hoof into his grotesque face—I immediately squelched, clucking my tongue instead. "Really, sir. Does that strike you as the sort of thing a gentlecolt would say?"

His eyes narrowed. "You've obviously not known many gentlecolts." Then he brightened, and I mean that quite literally: a swarm of lightning bugs swept in the open window and swirled about his antlers. "How about this, then? The three of us will wend our gentle way to Rarity's boutique, and there, we shall present young Stewstud to her in all his penitent glory. She might, of course, boringly accepts his apology, but she could just as well create some scene of tooth-gnashing extravagance, couldn't she?" The lightning bugs formed into a heart shape, and Discord breathed a sigh. "She does that so very, very well..."

And the look that Fluttershy gave him then, well, 'glare' wasn't a glaring enough word for it. Everything about her sharpened and focused upon Discord like a beam of sunlight through a magnifying lens. The lightning bugs made a high-pitched squeaking noise and fled, the window's curtains whooshing outward in their wake. "Discord," was all she said, but honestly, had she said anything more, I likely would've followed the bugs.

Discord barely blanched. "I'm only speaking the truth, my dear. For you can't deny that Rarity knows how to properly react when the circumstances call for a proper reaction." He waved a claw or two at me as if to deflect her attention. "And surely you agree that this situation calls for the most proper reaction anypony's ever given."

Fortunately, Fluttershy reduced the intensity a bit before she swiveled her neck to bring her gaze to bear upon me. "Do you honestly mean to apologize, Prince Blueblood?"

At that point, I would've sworn any vow she asked of me simply in the hope that she would direct herself elsewhere. And here I'd thought Discord had been joking when he'd referred to her as the most dangerous creature within earshot. "Yes!" I more babbled than said. "I've made a good many questionable choices during the course of my life and have acted in ways both pickable and despicable, often to the detriment of those around me. If I can make amends in some small way to Miss Rarity by issuing her a formal apology—"

"Excellent!" Discord crowed, slamming a paw across my snout to stem the swelling tide of my blather, and Fluttershy's sudden smile transformed her instantly back from a glowering juggernaut into the pleasingly put-together young mare I'd been having tea with mere moments ago. "Then we're off on our cavalcade of regret!"

It took me several good-sized blinks to banish the colored specks that tingled about the edges of my vision, and by then I found myself marching over a rustic bridge toward the ever-so-slightly less rustic town, Discord on one side of me, Fluttershy on the other. "You'll tell her you're sorry," Fluttershy was saying, "Rarity will graciously forgive you, and everypony will live happily ever after!"

Slowly regaining my equilibrium between my two newest comrades, I traipsed along with them into the village streets—although using the plural seemed somewhat uncalled for the more I saw of the place—and realized that this could very well be a boon to my actual mission here in Ponyville. If I could gather more of Twilight's close friends at Rarity's to hear my apology, that would be a lovely icebreaker for me to subtly bring up the question of her romantic proclivities. But where would I find the rest of her cohorts on such short—?

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" a sharp and scratchy voice called from above, and my view of what had to be that rural location known as 'the town square' was cut off by yet another glaring young mare's face, this one blue with narrowed violet eyes. "I know you! You're that hoity toity stallion from Canterlot!"

"Umm, actually?" Fluttershy murmured beside me. "This is Prince Blueblood, Rainbow Dash, not Hoity Toity."

"Like I said!" Rainbow Dash prodded a hoof into my chest, and it wasn't a friendly sort of a prod, either. "This guy kidnapping you or something, Fluttershy?"

My ears folded, but Fluttershy giggled. "Not at all!" she said, saving me, I can only assume, from something a bit more vigorous than a simple prodding. "His Highness has come to apologize to Rarity!"

I found a contrite expression and attempted to fit it into place. But instead of those violet eyes going wide in surprise, they narrowed even further. "Huh," Rainbow Dash said, then she drifted back about half a pace, her wings hovering her directly—and quite picturesquely, I have to admit, should one's taste in mares run toward the athletic—in our path. "Hey, Applejack!" she shouted then.

"What'cha got, Dash?" another voice responded from further ahead.

"Prince Blueblood!" Rainbow Dash folded her forelegs, her gaze never leaving mine. "Fluttershy says he's here to apologize to Rarity, but Discord's wearing a t-shirt that says 'hostage situation' on the front!"

Swinging my head, I caught Discord in the act of wadding something white and cottony between his lion paw and his eagle talons, his cheeks puffed out in an attempt at nonchalant whistling.

"That a fact?" An astonishingly sturdy mare of deep cidery hue sidled with panther-like grace around the corner from the town square, and I found myself suddenly wishing I'd grown up in these scenic parts. If Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy were at all indicative of Ponyville's female citizenry, and had I had the opportunity to become acquainted with them before the role of Blueblood had been thrust upon me, ah, what magic we all could've made...

Of course, the way they tended to glare at one could perhaps grow wearisome after a while. "I am here," I said, stretching the truth so slightly, it was hardly noticeable, "at the express invitation of the Princess of Friendship herself to mend a long-standing rift between the House of Blueblood and certain ponies whom I've wronged here in Ponyville." I swept a hoof around the circle to indicate them all. "I would be overjoyed should the leading lights of the town deign to witness my apology to Rarity as a first step toward clearing the air between—"

"He means," Discord said, popping an over-sized pacifier into my mouth, "that he wants you all to watch when he tells Rarity he's sorry." That much-too-toothy grin bristled across his snout again. "I'm imagining all sorts of wonderful ways she might react!"

Rainbow Dash and Applejack both blinked, then a grin almost as jagged as Discord's stretched itself over Rainbow's muzzle.

For her part, Applejack cocked her head and called, "Mac?"

"Eeyup?" came a basso rumble more like a landslide than anything equine.

"Watch the cart, will you?" Her grin also took on a ferocious edge. "Something's come up I gotta take a gander at!"

"Eeyup," the unseen avalanche replied.

Applejack doffed her hat in my general direction. "Lead on, folks."

An explosion that sounded vaguely like the word "Hooray!" struck me with gale force, and only the timely intervention of Discord's paws and claws against my shoulders kept me in a position that could reasonably be called upright. Colored specks flashed before my eyes, and I thought perhaps I was passing out before several of the flecks landed on my snout and revealed themselves to be confetti. "Let's have a parade!"

The voice this time rang out at a slightly less ear splitting volume, and a pink pony for whom the word 'voluptuous' could have been invented marched into our midst wearing a curve-hugging drum majorette's uniform that set my heart racing with a glee more marital than martial. A whistle appeared between her lips, and she blew it with such force and exuberance, my imagination began roaming among a variety of other uses to which such lips could be put.

Discord shaking me with unnecessary vim and/or vigor dislodged all such thoughts and brought me back to the band of absolutely gorgeous mares now surrounding me. "A wonderful idea, Pinkie Pie!" He shoved me forward, his own narrow torso suddenly wrapped in a red wool and brass buttoned outfit much like hers, a bass drum bulging out from the front. "And here's the Grand Marshal himself!"

"Hooray!" Pinkie Pie shouted again. She spun and started high-stepping up the street, Discord's drum somehow supplying squirts of music when he struck it, screeching flutes here, a blare of trombones there. I fell in behind him—or rather, the other three mares closed in upon me with sharpened gazes of varying degrees and gave me no choice but to fall in behind him—and Pinkie began chanting in a rhythmic and possibly melodic fashion:

"Prince of Snooty came to town
Just to say he's sorry!
Everything's gone upside-down,
The daytime sky all starry!"

Ponies around the entire square joined in, then, as if they'd been planning this moment for years:

"Prince of Snooty, that's the stuff!
Show us that you mean it!
Saying sorry can be tough,
But you've been strong: we've seen it!"

I'll spare you the other twelve verses that accompanied our progress.

For my part, I added it all to the list I'd begun keeping in order to fully answer the query I could already hear my beloved princess directing toward me, that lovely little half-smirk on her face. How did you enjoy your trip to Ponyville? she would ask, and I would proceed to give her what I envisioned to be a heated dissertation of several hours' duration.

The surprise wasn't that we found Rarity blinking at us from her front doorstep when we arrived at the Carousel Boutique. The surprise was that we only had half the town bellowing away behind us at that point, merely a single pair of uniformed ponies skipping along on either side of me, the poles in their mouths holding a banner aloft and stretched between them that bore the legend "Prince Blueblood Apology Tour" in large flashing letters.

My entourage wound up with one final run through the chorus, then gave a cheer and dispersed back to their lives leaving me facing Rarity with the four mares and Discord behind me.

That I'd forgotten how exceedingly lovely Rarity was I can only ascribe to early-onset dementia. In fact, with her eyes half-closed, the air of style and savoir-faire surrounding her pushed her beyond the realm of the merely lovely into the realm of the truly formidable. "Your Highness," she said, and her voice cut through me like a specially sharpened icicle.

I bowed, almost wishing I'd chosen Discord's original sackcloth and ashes plan. "Miss Rarity," I said, trying to find a tone that conveyed both sorrow and joviality, "I hope you can spare a moment for a foolish, foolish stallion who would like to offer some solid recompense for the serious wrong he's done you."

For a single brittle moment, her lip not quite curled in disdain, I thought perhaps Discord's promise of sturm und drang might indeed be in the offing. But then she stepped back, the glow of her horn pushing the door wide. "Won't you all come in?" she asked, and the neutrality behind the words was about all I could've realistically hoped for at that moment.

Truth to tell, however, once the whole group of us had gathered around a well-appointed tea table in Rarity's back parlor, the actual apology came out as a bit of an anticlimax. I told her that I'd been a boor to treat her as I had and that I would happily do what I could to recommend her clothing line to all the noble ladies with whom I came into contact during my wanderings about Canterlot. She nodded, assured me that it was all "water under the bridge at this point," and asked everyone how many lumps of sugar they wanted in their tea.

Discord and Rainbow Dash, I thought, seemed particularly disappointed with the sedateness of the affair's conclusion, though they allowed themselves to be mollified by a box of sugar cubes and a tankard of cider respectively. An offer of the same to Pinkie and Applejack secured their continued attendance while Fluttershy very nearly glowed behind her teacup as if she was happy simply being invited to the party.

Still, I felt that too much small talk might prove detrimental to my goal, so, after thanking Rarity once more for being so gracious, I continued with: "If only Princess Twilight could've been here to witness the outpouring of friendship you've all just bestowed upon me!" I sighed. "But I suppose her duties must keep her too busy for any but the most serious of social activities."

Rarity gave as ladylike a snort as it has ever been my privilege to hear. "Forgive me, sir, but it's clear you've not spent much time around our dear Twilight. She's always eager for a chance to get together with any or all of us."

"I'll say!" Pinkie had crunched her way through about a quarter of her sugar cubes and showed no sign of slowing. "Doesn't matter if it's silly or serious, Twilight's always up for fun!" She stopped then, a sugar cube balanced on the edge of one hoof above those delectable lips. "'Cept I'm not too sure how a pony has 'serious fun.'" She gave me a half-lidded look, slowly extended her tongue, wrapped it around that sugar cube, and pulled it into her mouth in a way that left me wondering if she perhaps knew more about 'serious fun' than I did.

Rainbow Dash burst out laughing. "Don't start, Pinkie! I mean, yeah, it's pretty much the cutest thing ever when you get Twilight blushing with that kinda talk, but I'm betting this jerk"—I'll give you three guess at whom she waved the hoof not wrapped around her cider mug—"hasn't blushed in, like, ever!"

"Hmmm..." Discord stroked his beard. "Knowing where the young fellow in question spends his free time, I might just take that bet." A line of red rapidly rose up his neck and across his face, steam shooting from his ears when it reached the tips of his horns. "As warm as the sun, some might say, up inside that particular piece of real estate."

Twin gasps sliced the air, Fluttershy covering her own blushing muzzle and Applejack slamming her mug onto the table. "Smear my ears with honey and tie me to an anthill!" she declared—and I don't have to specify which of the two let fly that particular colloquialism, do I? "Ain't no way in the sweet green hills of Equestria that you're saying what I think you're saying!"

Rarity had frozen, her teacup hovering in a cloud of silver magic and her enormous blue eyes fixed on me. "You and Princess Celestia?" she asked as if she were attempting to spit pins from her mouth.

Discord grinned at me, and I did my best not to scowl at him. Letting fall all my preconceptions about the provincial innocence of these Ponyvillians, I started to fabricate something from the fabric of my recent life. "I'll ask please that not a word of the following leave this room since Her Highness and I have yet to make the formal announcement."

I drew in a lungful of the ensuing silence. "It's in fact entirely due to my beloved's influence that I'm here today." Multiple years of having to hide my true feelings for Princess Celestia began bubbling like swamp gas at my innards, my throat tightening and my eyelashes dampening. "She looked upon me and saw a pony whose existence I would never have imagined. She wrapped me in her wings, touched her horn to mine, and showed me my true self, showed me the way to become a pony worthy of her, a pony worthy of the name Blueblood."

Five beautiful faces stared at me, but I would've traded every last beat of my heart if only the most beautiful face in all of Equestria had been there among them. "I fail her often," I said, unable to smooth the roughness in my voice, "but every time I do, she strokes my mane, bids me rise, and makes me even more determined to be the pony she knows I can be." Pulling back from the unaccustomed shore of truth, I focused on Rarity. "Which is why, Rarity, that when the time comes for our announcement, we're hoping that you might—"

"Yes!" she shouted with a force that rattled every piece of crockery in the room. Leaping to her hooves, she seemed to glow so intensely, I felt the need to squint. "The wedding of the century—the wedding of the millennium! And my designs at the very center?" She pulled in a breath, and I braced myself for another joyous shriek.

Instead, though, she bowed her head, then looked back up with a tiny smile. "I will say this for you, Your Highness: when you make an apology, you don't fool around." She took her seat once more and sipped her tea with more dignity than any half dozen Canterlot duchesses.

By that time, the others seemed to be recovering from my shocking non-announcement, so I held up a hoof to forestall any questions. "Don't look for this all to occur anytime soon, and I must once again ask you to keep the news under wraps even from—or perhaps I should say, most especially from—Twilight Sparkle."

"Oh, dear." Fluttershy set a partial scone onto her plate. "I'm not very good at secrets."

"Aw, c'mon, Eff!" Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "We keep stuff secret from Twilight all the time!" She turned toward me. "Don't get me wrong, Your Princeliness. Twilight Sparkle's the best thing that ever happened to this town, and spending time with her is like...like—" Her mouth went sideways, and she gave the table several taps. "Like the sweetest nap you ever had, y'know? A half hour, forty-five minutes just hanging out with her, and you're recharged better'n just about anything else." Raising her mug, she waved it at the other mares. "Back me up here, guys. Sex with Pinkie's a close number two, but there's nothing like palling around with Twilight, right?"

They all nodded, varying degrees of blush touching each of their faces. Struggling to keep the fine hairs along the base of my mane—and certain other parts of my anatomy—from standing up at the visions of them individually and collectively intertwined with Pinkie, I glanced her way.

She shrugged. "What can I say?" Her tongue unlimbered itself once more to entirely subsume another sugar cube, and watching her swallow made my own throat go dry. "I'm a giver," she murmured, her voice resounding with unstated promises.

"Steady, girl." Applejack gave a low chuckle. "Tonight's my night with you, and the prince here's got a sweetheart already. Don't reckon you wanna tangle with a mare who juggles the sun."

"I guess." Pinkie sighed, then her ears perked at me. "But if you and the princess ever want one of my special package deals, you just let me know!"

It took several glasses of water till my tongue felt damp enough to move. I assured Pinkie Pie that I would convey her kind offer to Princess Celestia, and the party broke up soon afterwards with many a 'thank you' and a 'lovely to have met you.' On Rarity's doorstep, Discord snapped his claws and popped us back to the steps in front of Twilight's castle, the purplish greenish spires rising into the early evening sky.

"So!" He clapped, a bellhop's red jacket wrapping itself around his torso, a little round hat appearing on his head, and his grin a thing of deep cracks and crevices. "I assume you'll be wanting to check out, sir?" A pile of luggage, none of which seemed to be any of the myriad bags I'd arrived with, crackled into place beside him like popcorn. "Do feel free to stay away much longer in the future, especially when my friends learn how many lies you've told them today."

My thoughts were doing their own sort of crackling, those familiar little tingles from my cutie mark guiding me to discard some conjectures while pursuing others. "Oh, don't worry," I told him, still not sure I had the entire picture but absolutely certain there was a picture here to be had. "Every word I told them was the purest undistilled truth. And for my part, well, the more I think about it, the less inclined I feel to tell them about your little scheme."

He froze for the tiniest sliver of an instant, but with a creature of constant motion like him, it stood out like a belch from the audience during a play's most dramatic pause. "Scheme?" he asked. He peeled his bellhop's jacket away like a banana skin to reveal a dark blue business coat beneath it. Reaching into this coat, he pulled out a small notebook, adjusted a sudden pair of spectacles, and started flipping through the notebook's pages. "I've got the cheese regatta down at the lake tomorrow afternoon, but other than that, my schedule's empty for the next several thousand years." He shook the book by the spine, and blank white pages fluttered out and away like a whole flock of butterflies.

Which caused yet another tingle from my cutie mark, yet another piece of the puzzle falling into place. "Certainly you don't think it'll take that long, do you? But of course you both have the time, so—"

"Enough." Everything about him—voice, expression, demeanor—darkened, and I saw before me the monster who two or three times in the past had done his best to make Equestria his own personal chew toy. "Perhaps you'd best go, Your Highness, before either of us does something he might regret."

And if he was that serious about all this... I delved back into my well of sincerity. "Discord, it's all right. I fully approve of what you're planning, and I'm certain Princess Celestia will as well as long as you continue pursuing your goal in the way you've been going about it."

A shiver ran through him, and I could almost hear the argument going on in his head. "I don't know what you mean," he finally said, but the words were flat, not an ounce of passion behind them.

I stepped forward, trusting the compass rose on my flanks to guide me safely to port. "Our young princess, Miss Twilight Sparkle," I said.

He remained still and silent, something I might've relished under other circumstances. But considering that he was very possibly about to resolve my quest and allow me to return in triumph to my beloved, I rather felt I needed a bit more of a confirming reaction on his part.

So I began laying out my thought processes. "It's quite the extraordinary thing." I gestured to the village behind and below us. "Meeting Twilight's compatriots in town, I found my thoughts straying along the lines to which they always stray when I meet a lovely mare. But meeting Twilight herself, while recognizing that she is very likely the third most powerful equine the world has ever known, I continue to find it almost impossible to contemplate the luscious curve of her haunch, the perfect depths of her eyes, the sweet jasmine and lilac aroma that wafts up from between her—"

"Stop it!" he hissed, then wrapped his paws and claws around his snout, his eyes bulging out and fixed on me. And for all that the various odors he gave off at seemingly random intervals didn't correspond remotely to the usual sorts of pony scents, I knew fear when I smelled it.

"It's all right," I said again. "Listening to her friends has shown that I'm not the only one unable to conceive of Twilight as a—" My voice caught, and I actually had to force myself to say it: "A sexual being. In fact, one might extrapolate from the evidence that, when she became the Princess of Friendship, either consciously or unconsciously, she put the entirety of Equestria into the 'friend zone,' and further that the entirety of Equestria seems to be just fine with that."

Again, he gave me no reaction. Under other circumstances, I'd likely have made a joke about him turning to stone once more, but perhaps all the day's talk of gentlecoltish behavior had actually rubbed off on me. "Except for you," I continued. "You seem to go rather out of your way to keep her 'on edge' when the two of you are together. You're aiming for something other than friendship, so you do all you can to keep her from lumping you in with the rest of the world."

"You won't tell her." His voice wavered so much, I couldn't tell if he meant it as a question or not. "She's not ready, not anywhere near ready. She's barely begun to sprout, and she needs good, true, nurturing soil around her for another few centuries before—"

With a loud choking sound, he spat out a ping-pong ball wearing a thatchy blonde wig. Catching it, he examined it, his mouth going sideways. "Every time I start getting too maudlin, I cough up a hair ball." He shook his head, tossed the thing over his shoulder, and looked down his snout at me, his eyes half closed. "I've turned ponies to pigeons for less provocation than you've shown me here, you know."

I waved a hoof. "Hardly gentlecoltish behavior, though, is it, old fellow?"

That got a curling wisp of a smile from him. "And you really think her Tighty Whiteness won't mind me playing the long game with her former student?"

"Ah." This time, my hoof came up in gentle reproach. "But you're not playing a game here: that's the part about which I'm going to have the most difficulty convincing my beloved. Whatever it is you feel for Princess Twilight, you're treating it with an unaccustomed amount of seriousness."

He produced the box of sugar cubes Rarity had given him earlier. "Do I need to replicate Pinkie's earlier demonstration of the concept behind 'serious fun'?" An altogether too reptilian tongue flickered from his lips.

Hiding my shutter seemed impossible, so I didn't even try. "Perhaps you could simply tell me the whys and wherefores?"

Things got quiet again, the evening breeze rustling the branches of the trees in the nearby woods. "She risked the whole world on me, did you know that?" Discord asked, his gaze unfocused. "After I'd betrayed her and the others and myself and everything everywhere, she would only give Tirek the power he wanted if he would give me back to her." One eyelid twitched. "I'd already proven that I was worthless, and she still made me the hinge that swung Equestria either further into darkness or back into the light. I haven't got— There simply aren't words to express how—"

His neck bulged, and retching, he vomited up a bowling ball wearing an elaborate beehive style hairpiece complete with bees.

We each took a step away from it. "Which," he said, his voice back to its usual dry baritone, "is more than enough of that. Although..." He snapped, and not only did the bowling ball lose its wig, but quite a variety of unbewigged balls clattered to the grass beside us. "Perhaps some lawn bowling while we await our hostess's return?"

Of course, with Discord involved, the experience became rather more three-dimensional than I was used to, balls drifting upward as often as they rolled along the greensward. But a gentlecolt is nothing if not adaptable: by the time Twilight came trotting up perhaps a half hour later, I was merely losing badly rather than abysmally.

Trotting along with Twilight was her constant companion Spike, and since I was still acting the gentlecolt, I didn't announce in a loud and braying voice that I'd forgotten entirely about his existence. Seeing Discord and I together seemed to bring an instant touch of suspicion to his already pinched little face, and I'm sad to say that said touch remained in place during the entirety of my visit.

On Twilight's other side trotted a slightly older but extremely striking mare of a more lavender hue and a more somber disposition. It surprised me, then, when she called a friendly greeting to Discord and received a friendlier reply than I'd certainly been expecting. He introduced her as Starlight Glimmer: "She and I saved Equestria during the second changeling invasion, you know," he said, polishing his claws on his chest.

Ms. Glimmer gave an actual, genuine smirk, a look few ponies can successfully carry off. "You and me and Trixie and Thorax, I think you mean." She poked him with a hoof. "Funny how their names seem to slip your memory so often."

"Well?" His waved his claws. "If they'd been here, I would've mentioned them! That's the only reason I mentioned you, after all!"

Twilight giggled. "Well, now that we're all here, what're your thoughts on dinner?" Her grin became more than a bit sheepish when she turned it toward me. "We're kind of informal as a rule, Blueblood, but if you'd like, we can put together—"

"A surprise party!" came a full-throated shriek from perhaps half an inch south of my left ear. The force of it sent me toppling sideways, but I found my temper quickly tempered when my topple was arrested by the most delectable batch of pink pony flesh it had ever been my pleasure to fall against. "Careful!" I heard Pinkie Pie exclaim as hooves seized me about the middle and set me upright. "Wouldn't wanna get whiplash before the party even starts, would you?"

I opened my mouth to ask what sort of events might be expected to give one whiplash at a Pinkie party, but she was spinning away without a single double entendre. "'Cause look!" she announced, waving to the hoards of Ponyvillians parading up from the town with baskets and blankets balanced upon their backs. "It's a special picnic dinner to say hooray for Prince Blueblood turning out to be a nice guy after all!"

Whether the crowd did indeed consist of the town's entire populace, I couldn't say, but it was certainly the largest picnic I'd ever attended. Twilight gushed her thanks as we all settled in at the head table—well, the head blanket—and even Discord stretched himself out alongside, a bemused expression on his face as he smeared strawberry jam over the ceramic potsherds Pinkie presented to him. The rest of us had sandwiches, and they were uniformly excellent.

The conversation that swirled around me held nothing unfit for a general audience, and I found myself feeling nostalgic for a childhood I'd never actually had. It was in fact the most pleasant time I'd ever spent sprawled in the dirt, and it wasn't until after the sun had set and the lightning bug lanterns had been unsheathed that it occurred to me to wonder why I'd not had a solitary lascivious thought about the lovely mares eating, chatting, and drinking all around me.

I rubbed my chin. My hostess was seated to my left and laughing at something Applejack had apparently just said, and by focusing an extreme act of will in her direction, I was just able to force myself to see the strong yet gentle curve of her oh-so-nuzzlable neck, her long and shapely legs tucked beneath her curvaceous body, her—

The images had barely begun draping themselves decorously across my mind, however, when Twilight's brow clouded and her head swung toward me like a weathervane coming around to face an oncoming storm. Her gaze met mine, and I felt something I hadn't felt in decades, something I would almost have been willing to bet money I had never felt before.

Shame.

The weird and awful sensation flooded me, and I found myself wondering without a trace of irony how I could be so horribly perverted, thinking such things about Twilight Sparkle.

Fortunately, my brain rejected the concept almost immediately—after everything I'd done, the wonder was that I wasn't more horribly perverted—but the experience put an emphatic end to my experimenting with the phenomenon. Whether Twilight was doing this purposefully or by sheer instinct posed an interesting question, but it wasn't the question I'd been charged with answering. My beloved's former student was in no way, shape, or form ready for anything more than platonic relationships, but she had in Discord a suitor ready, willing, and able to wait for her.

Pushing the matter from my thoughts, I helped myself to another slice of the wonderful chocolate cake. I slept that night in the castle's guest room like I hadn't a care in the world, and bidding farewell to Twilight in the morning while the porters from the station restacked my assembled luggage, I couldn't help but speak the truth: "I've had a simply marvelous visit, Twilight, and I look forward to the next time I can tear myself away from the hustle and bustle of dear old Canterlot and pop in for a longer stay."

She smiled. "Anytime, Blueblood. We'll love to have you."

A sudden stink of boiled cabbage curled my nostrils, and Discord appeared wearing a violently plaid cap, a long and even louder plaid bag slung over his shoulder. "Oh, no!" he cried in obviously mock dismay. "Leaving so soon, Slewslug? I'd been hoping we could shoot a few holes!" He pulled a small cannon from his bag and poked a flaming claw at the rear end of it. Something small, round, and black popped from the cannon's barrel, struck the side of a passing cloud, and with the raspberry sound of a balloon deflating, the cloud dwindled quickly away to nothing.

Twilight covered her eyes with a hoof. "Discord? Even for you, that was a terrible play on words."

He shrugged. "Well, I never really cared much for sports." Pressing his talons to his chest, he gave me a nod. "But I thought it would be gentlecoltish to offer."

"Indeed." I stuck a hoof out at him. "I'll happily take you up on it the next time I'm in town."

"Huh," Twilight said when Discord wrapped my hoof in his lion paw and gave me a firm-but-not-bone-rattling shake. "I was expecting a joy buzzer at the very least."

"'Expecting'?" Discord arched an eyebrow at her. "Since when do I ever do what ponies are expecting?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, then shrugged and turned a much sunnier expression toward me. "Well, now I'll have to insist that you come see us again!"

I once again promised that I would and somehow made my way through the town without attracting another musical number. Fortunately, the train wasn't scheduled to depart for another hour—it took them nearly that long to store all my bags—and it gave me time to begin composing a report for my beloved.

Had I been reporting to anypony else, I would've happily "winged it" as our pegasus cousins so charmingly say. But I'd found over the years that it took a great deal of practice to present the facts to Princess Celestia in a breezy yet erudite style, seemingly "off the cuff" but also wholly accurate in every detail, providing gaps in the narrative in order to elicit questions that would bring my audience of one into the telling of the tale. After all, the most demanding variety of musical piece to compose, I'd always suspected, would be the "impromptu," the way it's carefully crafted to sound as if it's being improvised on the spot.

Or perhaps I was just overthinking things...

Still, by the time the train had wound its way through the countryside and the morning to arrive at a lovely Canterlot evening, I felt myself to be completely prepared. I directed my luggage to be taken to my apartment in Canterlot Tower—though, as I believe I mentioned, I had literally no idea where Princess Celestia had found the bags she'd sent along with me—then made my way toward the palace itself. To judge by the gloaming going on in abundance, my beloved was concluding her daily duties, so perhaps she'd be in the mood to hear about my excursion over a bit of supper.

Rounding a corner, however, I found myself striding directly into the midst of a dozen royal guardsponies, each of them, I wouldn't've been surprised to learn, sturdier and more stalwart than the last. "Prince Blueblood!" one of the two I'd narrowly missed colliding with exclaimed in tones that would've made a herald trumpet proud. "Princess Celestia has commanded that we bring you to her at once!"

"Ah," I said, remembering that I was once again in Canterlot and that I was once again expected to play the role I'd taken on with the Blueblood name. "Have I time to stop off and buy Auntie a box of chocolates before we go?"

They seemed less than amused, herding me into the center of their phalanx and frogmarching me rather hastily the rest of the way to the castle. Two of them accompanied me the entire familiar distance to the hallway outside the princess's chambers, and upon their knock, the door swung open to reveal blackness beyond.

I will admit to a wee bit of trepidation at that point. I'd only been gone for two days, so I couldn't imagine Princess Celestia had reverted to our earliest relationship paradigm and the whole reward/punishment dichotomy we'd explored so thoroughly. And yet we'd definitely moved beyond this sort of "armed guards and darkened rooms" melodrama years ago. Had something untoward happened in my absence?

My outward expression remained carefully placid: I even managed to aim a smile at the glowering guards before stepping inside.

The door slammed shut behind me with a force that made me jump. Something caught me about the middle, and the room blossomed with a burnished golden light as soft and gentle as the setting sun reflecting off a marble wall. Princess Celestia stood before me, her eager and yearning expression like nothing I'd ever seen on her face before.

"Please forgive the dramatics," she said, her words all rushed and tumbled like river water over stones, "but lying here last night and realizing that, for the first time since you'd come into my life, you'd gone away from me in such a way that even I would've been hard-pressed to call you to my side without alarming a fair segment of the population, I fear I became slightly overwrought, especially at the thought that, if something unfortunate were to have happened to you, I would've gone the entire stretch of our relationship without ever treating my lips to the wonderful sensation of saying your actual name."

At this point, she took her first breath since I'd entered the room, but hanging there in front of her, I was fairly certain that I'd stopped breathing as the content of her speech had sunk in past the filmy veil of my confusion. "And so," she said, her voice suddenly wavering, "welcome home, Polaris."

Then her wings were wrapping around my barrel, my forelegs were wrapping around her neck, our lips were meeting in hungry desire, and, well, I didn't get to deliver my carefully prepared remarks.

And, yes, I suppose I could've gone into the whole spiel forty-five minutes later when we finally lay spent and sprawled upon the rumpled landscape of her coverlet, but I felt that the moment had rather passed. "You know," I said instead, my head pressed lazily into the perfect curve of her neck, "I think that's just about enough of that."

"Oh?" The relaxed liquid of her muscles stiffened somewhat. "You're breaking up with me?"

I snorted. "On the contrary, Madame. I'm proposing marriage."

She went completely still, but the way my cutie mark had begun sending fiery sparks throughout the entirety of my fine, ivory frame, I couldn't've stopped if I'd wanted to. "In fact," I plunged on, "I fear I must report that the matter's been taken out of our hooves: Rarity's already agreed to provide our habiliments, so we've no choice but to—"

"You don't know what you're saying," she whispered, though with my face against her throat, I heard her with a thundering clarity.

"On the contrary, Madame," I said again; I pulled away from her warmth and craned my head along the sheets till I met the white-rimmed widths of her eyes. "For you see, I happen to be madly in love with you and have been for quite some time now. I know you don't want to hear it, but you embody the concepts of beautiful, wonderful, flavorful, and most every other positive adjective that end with 'ful.' Which is to say that, no, Madame, you are not hateful or spiteful or vengeful, and if you ever were those things, you've long since purged them from your nature and become delightful and joyful and powerful."

That she hadn't leaped up and dumped my sorry carcass onto the floor, I took as a positive sign. And while her eyes still stared as wide and unblinking as before, they seemed to be shimmering, not the sort of thing that happened when she was descending toward the darker places of her psyche. Pressing on, therefore, I found my front hooves and crooked my pasterns around hers. "You tell me, My Lady, that you felt my absence most acutely last night. Know, then, that I have felt that very same way toward you for as long as it's been my pleasure to serve you."

"Pleasure?" A slight sharpening and narrowing began to occur about her exquisite features. "You can't seriously expect me to believe that the abuse I've heaped upon you—"

"Enough!" The word emerged somewhat more virulently than I'd expected, but I decided that was all for the good. I took an even firmer grip on her hooves. "Consider, if you will, that, with your sister happily at work here among us once again, with your niece happily tending her daughter and her husband and her empire to the north, with your former student happily spreading the actual magic of friendship everywhere she goes, you might very well find yourself also experiencing something that resembles happiness! Consider, perhaps, that my absence last night made you realize that you're happier when I'm around! And consider that you've made me the happiest stallion in Equestria for the last several years running!"

"Hmmm." The smile pulling at her muzzle looked extremely promising. "That's certainly a lot to consider..."

"And the pièce de résistance?" I drew myself up beside her on the bed, stuck out my chest, and gave her the most over-the-top rakish look I could muster. "Consider the ultimate reward anypony could desire after so many tireless centuries helping and serving Equestria!" With a little effort, I pushed the look ever further. "Being married to me!"

For a quarter of an instant, a silence as thick and frozen as a winter midnight filled the room, then she gave the tiniest little snort, and we both collapsed laughing uproariously into each other's embrace. This gave way to a mixture of kissing and giggling that went on for a long, luxuriant time until, cuddled together, we finally eased back into the languorous state we'd shared before all this evening's talking had begun.

Of course, she hadn't said 'yes' yet, but she'd not said 'no,' either. And experience had shown me repeatedly that my beloved was not at all shy about letting me know when I was performing incorrectly.

"So," she said after several moments during which I refused to allow any hint of tension to tighten my muscles. "You honestly think that I deserve you?"

The question had only one possible answer. "In the same way that I deserve you," I said.

She shook gently with a bit more laughter. "On one condition."

My heart wanted to leap singing into my throat, but I'd had a good deal of practice keeping that particular organ from performing that particular stunt. "And that is?"

Her body shifted, rolling her onto her back, her forelegs picking me up easily and settling me upon her chest. Eyes partially closed, she touched her snout to mine and murmured, "Say my name. No titles, no epithets, no terms of endearment. " She swallowed, and things got a little shimmery once again. "Just tell me you love me, Polaris, as much as I'm afraid I love you."

"My darling, my dearest, my joy, and my sweet flower," I said before I could stop myself.

A single arched eyebrow from below made me clear my throat. "Not," I went on, "that I would dare say any such thing as that at a moment like this." I did some swallowing of my own. "Not when I should be saying, 'Celestia, I love you.' Because I am in fact saying, 'Celestia, I love you.' And will, in fact, be saying, 'Celestia, I love you' until my tongue grows tired of forming the words and petitions the crown for redress of grievances. Which petition, I hope, the crown will summarily dismiss so that my tongue can get back to the work for which—"

The kiss that enveloped me then quickly mended any hurt feelings between myself and my tongue, and we both agreed instantly what its proper work was to be from now on.

And it's been that way ever since.

Of course, I eventually got around to telling Celestia about Discord's slow-motion courting of Twilight Sparkle. That she only glowered slightly rather than threatening to disembowel him, I think, showed that I'd been correct all along as to her reaction to the news.

We were married in the spring, though I believe my bachelor party is still going on in some parts of Equestria. And even though some of us seem unable to stop talking for any appreciable length of time, I do hate to overstay my welcome. So I shall bid you all have a lovely life and will bring this narrative to a close.

I - What "Nephew" Really Means, Part One

Slouching over a cream-colored velvet divan in the reception parlor of Prince Blueblood's office, I did my best to appear unconcerned. After all, why should I care about the five other sturdy white unicorn stallions with blonde manes and tails who were lounging indolently across the rest of the room's furniture? They meant nothing to me, and as near as I could tell, they were each trying just as hard as I was to remain outwardly oblivious to their environs.

Still, the pungency of our collective nervousness tickled my nostrils like the aroma of fresh paint. And I do mean fresh: my careful non-looking was quickly leading me to believe that I was the oldest member of our little convocation, and I'd only just passed my twentieth birthday.

Now, a more discerning pony might've begun wondering what a well-known degenerate like Prince Blueblood had in mind for six stallions who looked like he himself must've looked half a century ago. But then if I'd been a more discerning pony, I probably wouldn't've wise-cracked my way out of every home into which the Canterlot foster family system had placed me until I became a legal adult, whereupon my pert and pearly haunches had been punted from the orphan asylum to sprawl bereft upon the street.

All right, that's a bit melodramatic. In truth, the orphanage had arranged for my job as an usher at the Music Center downtown, and my salary there paid for the one room, fifth-floor, walk-up apartment I'd called home for more than two years. Add to that the way many a panting mare had declared her appreciation for certain of the skills other than wise-cracking that I'd honed since puberty, and all in all I couldn't say it was a bad life.

Much like I myself, I suppose: not bad, but not much of anything else, either. More and more of late, I'd taken to glaring at my compass rose cutie mark in the bathroom mirror while I engaged in my deportment exercises after dragging my flanks out of bed at the crack of noon. Yes, I'd studied every book the matrons at the orphanage could procure concerning proper diction, demeanor, and discernment. Yes, I knew which fork to use when. Yes, I'd yet to find a situation I couldn't wriggle, talk, or insult my way out of as the occasion might demand.

But I hadn't clue one as to destiny's design for me: my mark had simply appeared the morning after I'd begun speaking with a false upper-class accent. I'd had paramours inquire about the mark, of course, and had developed quite an effective but alarming piece of fictitious history to describe how, as a callow youth, I'd guided my family's airship safely to dock during a summer squall. But as for any sort of direction that foul compass might've implied for my life, well, I'd yet to stumble across one...

Then two days ago the engraved invitation had arrived. Eleven AM, it had said with this day and this address. It had also enclosed a bank draft for a thousand bits and a promise of another similar bank draft should I show up at the aforementioned time and place bearing the small included card with the number four printed on it. In my non-looking, I'd noticed my associates glancing at their own small cards tucked into shirts, vests, or jackets, and I could only assume that they held the numbers one, two, three, five, and six.

We all continued pretending that we weren't paying close and exacting attention to the studied burps and yawns and stretches of our surrounding doppelgangers until the timepiece over the mantel of the unlit fireplace began chiming. As soon as the eleventh bell had sounded, a door opened among the bookshelves at the far end of the room, and a fully armored member of the Royal Guard stepped out with Prince Blueblood himself close behind.

That the old reprobate's coat was still white, his mane still blonde, and the single gold leaf of his cutie mark still shiny was likely more due to chemistry than anything else. Though I supposed one couldn't rule out magic for the one and only Prince of Equestria, our dear immortal princess's single living relative. Not that anypony had ever quite uncovered when or how the Blueblood family had branched off from Princess Celestia's tree, but if only half the stories I'd heard about his wild and profligate ways were true, then his lack of any jail time alone proved that he had some strong connection to the crown.

Leaving his guard beside the door, His Highness glided forward, everything about him as clean and pressed as a freshly laundered linen napkin. His understated elegance showed clearly that a life of crime paid handsomely if one had enough money, and I found myself thinking that whatever sordid thing he might have in mind for the bunch of us might just be worth it if I could more closely examine his smooth way of moving. Something to do with the coordination between knees and fetlocks, I thought, or—

"Good morning," he said then in the rich baritone I'd heard rolling across the Music Center lobby on multiple occasions—though here and now he didn't appear for once to be drunk. "I'm sure the money's the reason you're all here, so I shan't insult you by thanking you for coming. I shall instead congratulate you on making a wise business decision and shall ask number one to join me in my inner sanctum."

His voice deepened on those last words, and with a waggling of eyebrows, he marched back into the room from which he'd just emerged, his guard following.

One of my stalwart companions gave a shrug that I believe was supposed to look careless but which instead made me think of somepony who'd gotten a bee caught in his jacket. He toddled over, passed through the doorway, and golden armor flashed as the door closed behind him.

No scream rang out as I'd half expected, and in fact, the silence that settled over the remaining five of us I would've judged to be quieter than the silence of the previous few minutes. Not that it was actually silent, of course, with the tick-tick-tick of the clock above the mantelpiece seeming to rattle the whole room. Trying not to let my imagination swoop off into mad conjectures of what might be happening behind that door, I began counting the ticks in my head. Two of my twins started fidgeting, one of them openly sweating, and before I'd reached thirty in my tick tracking, the door opened again.

Mine weren't the only ears that perked, nor were they the only ones that fell when nopony but the guard emerged. "Number two!" he called in a voice that was more a bark than anything else.

The sweating fidgeter leaped to his hooves, wheeled toward the door we'd all entered by, and ran as if every hound of Tartarus was on his tail.

The guard just blinked. "Number three!" he called.

Another of my fellows lurched upward and swaggered through the office door, and I went back to my counting.

A mere twenty seconds elapsed this time, the guard reappearing with a call of "Number four!"

For an instant, I'll admit, I considered following number two's example. But while a part of my brain registered that I'd just been summoned to enter a room into which two ponies of similar size, build, and age had stepped mere instants ago and possibly vanished, well, I'd long ago stopped paying a great deal of attention to that part of my brain. Through this same door, after all, lay the promise of another thousand bits, the first thousand of which I'd already spent on the blue and white silk blazer I was wearing and on a variety of the bejeweled accessories that looked so very pretty when adorning the mares who consented to join me for a delicious bit of a tryst in the lounge I'd set up in a disused janitor's closet down one of the Music Center's back hallways.

Which is to say that I stood, brushed the stray strand of mane from my eyes, flashed the guard my best and most engaging smile, and slipped past him into the room.

A second gleam of armor showed me another guard beside another door in the wall to my left. The first door behind me closed with a barely audible click, and I turned my attention to the prince, reclining at his desk against the back wall a few paces away. Animated by the glow of his horn, a quill pen staggered across an unrolled scroll in front of him, his gaze focused on whatever he was writing. "Straight to it," he said, not looking up from his work. "Morning Star there has your second bank draft for a thousand bits." He waved a hoof vaguely at the second guard. "But there's a third thousand bit draft in it for you if you'll sashay on over here, drop to your knees, and give me a blowjob. Yes or no?"

Several more parts of my brain became very active all at once. The correct answer obviously wasn't "yes," or my predecessors along this route would still be at work down under the desk, and I couldn't believe they'd both said, "no," not with a third thousand bits at stake.

So instead of taking the proffered options, I gave a snort. "Make it ten thousand," I said, "and we might have a basis upon which to begin negotiations."

His quill pen scratched messily to a halt along the parchment, and he looked up with the expression of a stallion who'd heard the sweet call of a meadowlark when he'd been expecting the bray of a donkey. Which is to say he blinked three times and then smiled, but putting it that way lacks a certain panache.

I remained standing with head held high, with eyes partially lidded, and with absolutely no idea what I was going to do if he called my bluff. The best course, I decided, would be to keep raising the bid until, growing either wise or tired, he dismissed me.

Instead of speaking, though, His Highness stepped out from behind his desk and began to circumnavigate me, his gaze so sharp and focused, I swear I could feel it comb across my hide. When he vanished around my south pole, I half expected to hear him command that my tail be switched aside so he could "view the goods" or some equally grotesque sort of cliché. But he completed his circuit in silence, not even the ticking of a clock here to keep me company.

Still, I'd already lasted longer than the others who'd taken this journey so far this morning. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, however, I had no idea.

Standing almost nose-to-nose with me now, Prince Blueblood showed his age. Not that I had any idea what that age was, but he'd been the prince for my entire lifetime, and this close to him, I could plainly see the gray roots at the base of his blonde mane as well as the powder vainly attempting to fill the wrinkles that lined his cheeks and forehead.

The continued sharpness of his gaze, though, made me think of nothing but daggers. "You're the usher from the Music Center," he said after what seemed to me like half-an-hour of him looking at me and me trying not to shiver.

That he knew who I was forced the shiver out onto the surface, but I managed to turn it into a tossing of my mane. "I prefer to think of myself as a willing servant of the arts," I replied, somehow keeping my voice from shivering as well.

His smile broadened, and again, I had no idea what that might portend. "I thought you showed promise," he said, "the way you're so often escorting mares both young and not-so-young back to that little love nest of yours."

That he knew about my mission to make a visit to the Music Center even more pleasant for a select group of our patrons made all sorts of reactions want to break out over, under, around, and through me. But since he seemingly approved—or at least hadn't ratted me out to management—I found it a bit easier to dredge up a smile of my own to show him. "Love," I said with a theatrical sigh. "It makes the world go 'round, I'm led to understand."

One of his eyebrows arched. "If by that you mean round and firm and fully-packed, then I'd say we're in agreement." His horn sprang to life, and I couldn't help tensing.

Nothing alarming happened, however: a drawer sprang open on the other side of his desk and a small piece of paper drifted upward from it. "As I said," he went on, "Morning Star there has the thousand bits you were promised in the letter, but there'll be a draft for five thousand here tomorrow morning at eleven if you'll show up bearing this upon your large and lovely person." The paper wafted toward me, and when I caught it in my magic, I saw that it bore a single golden star. "And don't worry," he was saying. "There'll be a great deal more money awaiting you even if you fail tomorrow's tests. And if you pass?"

This time, his smile not only widened but deepened as well. The perverse leer I'd seen so often while guiding the prince and his various companions to his private box at the Music Center vanished completely, and I could only stare at the expression of actual happiness that appeared on his face.

But then he shook himself, and the leer was back. "Just be here," he said, his words suddenly rough. "But for now, take your thousand and get out of my sight."

I didn't need to be told twice. Scooting past the guard, I snatched the bank draft from the feathers of his wing and trotted along the corridor beyond till I reached the street.

That thousand went quickly toward a large lunch for myself and the other lucky patrons who happened to be dining at Semolina's Bistro downtown, and the remainder bought some lovely trinkets for a few of my favorite companions each of whom squealed in appreciation in their assorted boudoirs during the rest of that long and luscious afternoon. I stopped by my dingy flat long enough to change into my usher's uniform and grab a few brooches, and I managed to make two new friends that evening, one a maiden attending her very first opera and the other a matron whom I'd noticed noticing me all season long.

It was rather a personal best for me, the sheer volume of mutual pleasure I'd been party to that day, and as I clomped, tired but oh so satisfied, up the stairs to the only bed I'd ever used simply for sleeping, I experienced a sensation I couldn't remember ever experiencing before.

For the first time in my life, I knew what my future held.

Rising early the next morning, I washed, combed, and spritzed myself with just the proper amount of the gardenia scent an admirer had gifted to me a few months before. The blazer was still eminently presentable, and with my gold star tucked safely within, I made my way in a leisurely fashion to the west end of the Canterlot Tower district where Prince Blueblood kept his offices. With careful steps, I followed the same path I'd taken the day before, but this time I made sure I was applying my magic to the doorknob just as the clock within was striking eleven.

One mustn't appear too eager, after all. Especially when one had no idea how many bits more than the promised five thousand might be forthcoming.

With a slightly come-hither smile, I stepped into the reception parlor—

And very nearly stumbled over my own hooves to see another of my doubles settled there as if he owned the place.

It took a great deal of effort not to glare—and even more effort to look as if I wasn't making any sort of effort. I stepped in, nodded to the fellow, and draped myself over a sofa as if I hadn't a care in the world. The initial shock was fading quickly, and I could see that the interloper was either number five or number six from yesterday, one of the two I'd left behind when I'd entered His Highness's office.

His jacket was different from the one I'd seen him in then, and while stylish enough, it was nowhere near as au courant as my blazer. He was a bit larger around the barrel than I, I had to admit, but shorter, too, stockier, not as streamlined. I wouldn't've called him handsome, but then I was already taking a dislike to him, and his snow globe cutie mark was so common among ponies with white coats, it was nearly a stereotype. I could only guess that he'd answered the prince's question correctly too and been called back for a second round the same way I had.

A second round of what, exactly, it occurred to me only then to wonder. Tests, the prince had mentioned in passing yesterday, tests that a pony could pass or fail. His Highness was evidently looking for something quite particular, a pony who resembled himself not just physically but also in attitude. So was he looking for an heir? He'd certainly never married, and none of the numerous sex scandals I could recall over the years had mentioned a resulting foal. Perhaps he'd felt the sudden need for some likely youngster to debauch before he died, somepony to keep the name of Blueblood burning like a dumpster fire into the next generation.

I had to stifle a few more shivers. It made as much sense as anything else, and while sixty of the clock's ticks became a minute and another sixty became the minute after that, I entertained myself with fantasies of how I would spend my time were I to become the next Prince Blueblood.

They were surprisingly tame fantasies, I have to admit, especially when I found myself recalling some of the Blueblood-related gossip I'd heard the matrons at the orphanage muttering to each other over the years.

Which led me to wonder what these tests might consist of. Would I be given a whip and told to apply it to the flank of some dew-eyed young mare? Would I have to burn my initials into the side of some priceless piece of Equestrian antiquity?

With the sudden sensation of ants scurrying across my hide, I almost leaped to my hooves. But I forced myself to remain relaxed and lolling in the face of my not-quite-mirror-image's continued impassivity.

It was a near thing, though. For the entirety of my life, Prince Blueblood had been held up as an example of how not to live. If this whole process in which I'd become enmeshed was truly designed to find the pony he wanted as his heir—

Was that something I wanted?

My musings were cut short by the office door opening, the guard tromping out with Prince Blueblood close behind. "Excellent!" he more purred than said, his horn crackling with light. The flap of the guard's saddlebag rose as did two slips of paper. "Five thousands bits, gentlecolts, as you were told." An oily grin oozed over his face. "There are further riches yet to come, of course, but you may take your draft and go right now if you'd like, no questions asked." The pale yellow waver of his magic rustled the slips toward us.

I intercepted mine and tucked it into my inner pocket, and my rival did the same. But other than that, neither of us moved.

After all, His Highness had already paid me seven thousand bits just to stroll into two rooms. Perhaps I could squeeze a few more from the situation before the horror show started and I had to apply my skills at verbal skating to extract myself.

Prince Blueblood's smile flickered the way it had yesterday: for the briefest of instants, it became an actual smile before squirming back into something much more serpentine. "Excellent," he said again, and he turned with a flip of his tail. "Come in, then, the both of you, and we'll get started on today's little exercise."