Noblesse Oblige

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...