Money, Murder, and Marzipan

The door to my cell opened, briefly blinding me by breaking the perfect dark. I raised a leg to shade my eyes, and I was reminded of how short the chains were when the leg abruptly stopped halfway to my face. I don't know why they bothered with such short chains or with chains at all. I was deep in the most secure prison in Equestria, with an entire division of armed guards a stone's throw from me. I couldn't even make it out of here if they afforded me no chains, an open cell door, and my full cache of weapons, not against that many guards. Who did they think I was, some comic book supervillain? I was one lone earth pony mare. Trying to jailbreak would leave me dead without having exited the cell block.

I'd be dead soon, anyway. Executions were rare in Equestria, nearly unheard of, but I knew what sentence my final day in court tomorrow would bring. The only question was how long it would take them to carry it out. Would they drag their hooves over months, or would they do it quickly? I hoped they did it quickly. Waiting was torture.

Something happening, Mama?

I seem to have a visitor. Your doing? I answered back over the telepathic link.

Not anything to do with me. Do they have shinnies?

My eyes adjusted to the new light and saw a tall mare in royal regalia standing at the door, looking sadly at me.

It's Princess Twilight, so lots of shinnies, but good luck getting your talons on them. I informed my closest companion over the link. She's probably here to make some speech about friendship or offer me a deal to spare my life. I'm surprised she's just sat silently through the entire court proceedings.

Ask her if I can have her shinnies.

I figured it would be rude not to acknowledge her presence. Even a killer needed to have manners. Actually, a killer needed more manners than the average pony. People wouldn't let you get close to them if you were rude.

"Hello, your highness. What brings you to my little corner of Equestria?"I asked, smiling.

She closed the door with her magic and silently studied me. Her horn was still glowing, spells at the ready. Was she afraid of me? I should take that as a compliment, but it was a joke.

"If you came to get the true deepest darkest part of the dungeon experience, you really should douse that light. It messes with the ambiance of the place," I informed her.

She sat, still keeping her horn alight, and shook her head. "Still no repentance, even now?"

"Repentance for what, your highness?" I asked as if unsure what she was talking about.

"For the murders, the theft, the racketeering, and all your other crimes," the princess said tersely.

I shrugged. "I still deny all charges. Showing repentance requires some form of confession, and while not confessing to any crime, I do object strongly to being called a thief."

The alicorn sighed. "Why won't you confess? There's no point in keeping things secret anymore. We've gathered enough evidence and witnesses to make an iron-bound case against you. I know you are part of something larger. There's an organized crime syndicate working in the shadow of my realm, and I have no idea how long it has been operating or how far it stretches. You aren't the ringleader, only a cog in the machine. If you disclose information, I assure you your life will be spared. I don't want to see the first execution conducted in centuries."

"Well, I can help you with that last part. The answer is simple– don't show up for it," I suggested.

She studied me coldly for a few more seconds.

"Somepony has leverage over you," she said after careful consideration. "Leverage you care about more than your life. You have a little brother."

I yanked at my chains. "Don't you dare threaten him!"

"I would never do that. You know very little about me or what I stand for if you think I would," she said, sounding offended. She might have been. I wasn't sure how much she cared about all that friendship stuff.

I relaxed. "Well then, you have no leverage over me."

She considered me some more. "That cutie mark, a pie with a plum. It fits your name but not your profession. What's it for?"

"Cooking and baking. I do run a restaurant, and I do enjoy cooking," I summed up. "I'm not lying about those things or hiding any hidden meaning. My mark has nothing to do with the things you accuse me of and wouldn't even if the accusations were true."

She smiled for some reason. "I have an offer for you."

I sighed loudly. "We already went over this. I'm not confessing to anything."

"Hear me out," she said. "You don't have to give me names or places. You can make fake ones if you wish, but I want to know how a cook and baker…in theory…becomes such a hardened killer and criminal. I, in turn, promise to make sure your brother is well protected against whatever dangers might be out there."

I considered it. "My crow wants your shinnies, your regalia."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You really can communicate with that bird with your mind, can't you?"

"Yes," I answered. There was no danger in telling that. "Don't hurt him. He's important to me too."

"I have a good friend who is already taking care of him," she assured me. "Is giving my regalia part of the deal? I'd also like to know how your link was formed."

Feathers, are you being well taken care of by a friend of the princess?

This old yellow wing-horse is nice enough. She gives me lots of treats and sings to me. The mane is too pink.

That was answer enough. "Yeah, your regalia and my brother protected, and I tell you a story. I may be an unreliable narrator, so accept it at your own risk."

"Agreed."

My eyebrows shot up. "I didn't expect you would really give your regalia to my crow."

She looked me in the eyes. "That ponies like you exist means that there is something that has gone terribly wrong with my rule. To find out what and start figuring out how to fix it, I would happily give up much more than some jewelry."

I shrugged again. "Good luck with that. I'm not even being snide. Really, I wish you the best of luck if you're serious. If you make a difference, I'll be sad I didn't get to see it…I'm not admitting there is a large criminal syndicate by saying that, and this story is purely fiction, completely hypothetical how a pony like me could end up becoming a member of this imagined syndicate."

"Of course," she said with a nod. Her horn flared briefly, and a parchment and a quill appeared floating by her head. "I'll be taking notes."

Dork. I rolled my eyes and started my story.

"I was born in Canterlot in the ninth year of your reign. My parents were transplants from your hometown, Ponyville. Their names were Diamond Tiara and Rumble."

"I knew both of them," the princess interrupted. "And my hometown is technically Canterlot; I just have strong ties to Ponyville."

I leveled a flat look at her. "Are you going to interrupt me the entire time I'm speaking?"

"Sorry, I'll be quiet."

I will give you a quick introduction to my early life before getting into the gorier…I mean…made-up details. Do you think a young mare just goes, Hey, you know what would be fun? Killing ponies for money!. I met a few ponies in my life that I wondered if that was exactly how it went, but then again, I assume they must think the same about me. If I found out for sure there was a pony like that, I would find an excuse for them to have an accident. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I was discussing my parents and early life, the prologue to this tragedy you want me to concoct.

My mother had a huge personality and high ambitions. I'm told my grandmother was a highly ambitious mare as well, but my mother never let us spend much time with her. So I only met her twice when I was little. There was some sort of bad blood between them because my grandfather did visit us frequently when I was young, but my grandmother was told she had to stay at home. I never got an explanation for it.

My father, like me, was a cook. He taught me everything I know about cooking. He was also the primary breadwinner, in addition to being the one who baked the bread. They had a restaurant in Ponyville before I was born. My father cooked, and my mother ran the business end of things. Both of them were exceptional at what they did. My father made fantastic meals that could compete with the best cooks in Equestria, and my mother, who was a significant influencer, made sure to market his cooking, and she always managed to secure deals for the best ingredients for him at better prices than the other restaurants. They were a good team.

My mother had an ambition of hobnobbing with the nobility of Equestria. She was a good mare, a kind mare who didn't look down on others, but she still desired to advance up the social ladder. So she arranged for her and my father to move to Canterlot. I was born about a year after they opened their restaurant on Restaurant Row. My parents named me Plum Treat in honor of the first thing my father ever cooked for my mother. How they got together was a sweet story involving a plum, but not the one you're here to hear, so use your imagination.

Things were going well. My father's reputation became well-known among food critics, and business was booming. He would probably have been satisfied staying in Restaurant Row, but it still wasn't enough for my mother. She wanted to get the restaurant moved to the very exclusive Nobles' District. The nobles were all unicorns, and they didn't let anyone live or operate a business in their district but nobles,

I didn't find out until I was much older, but after my mother was repeatedly unsuccessful in negotiating with the primary pony blocking our business permit, she shifted tactics out of desperation and did something regrettable. I can't confirm that it happened; no one can at this point. The unicorn involved is no longer with us. I know I was accused of murdering him, among others, but he is the one murder charge that got me the conspiracy against the crown charge tacted on. However, as I said in court, he merely fell down a flight of stairs and landed on a spear that went through his left eye– such an unfortunate accident. Ponies really should be more careful when walking around their houses at night. I don't know for sure what happened when my mother visited him, whether she was faithful or unfaithful, only what I gathered from the ramblings of a despicable duke near the pointed end of his life.

She went out one night to discuss the permit with the unicorn at his house. She didn't return until the evening of the next day. The day after, the noble in question, a duke, agreed to grant my family a barony within his fief. My parents were now the Baron and Baroness of Silverwater. They never visited there, but it was a little stretch of nothing near a creek just a few leagues south of where the tundra of the Crystal Empire begins that had a total of six families who called it home. I doubt any of those families even know they are part of the Barony of Silverwater, nor did anypony ever feel the need to educate them about it. It was enough for my parents to be called noble, and they were able to open the restaurant and move into the district

Later that year, my brother, a unicorn, was born. My father was not a stupid stallion, but I never heard him ask how his son ended up with a horn, and he gave him as much love as he gave me. Any arguments between him and my mother about the alleged affair never reached my ears nor showed in how they conducted themselves around one another in my presence. Whatever friction the incident brought, my parents' marriage survived it. The duke never visited our restaurant. That was probably for the best.

I was eight and didn't think about what happened between my mother and the duke until I ran into the other foals from the neighborhood. I'm unsure if I need to say this, but foals are cruel, and noble foals take that up several notches. I had a certain level of gullibility concerning the entire matter. I understood my parents loved each other, and they loved my brother and me. I wouldn't accept that the taunts were based on fact, and I found myself defending my mother's honor repeatedly. I came home with many bruises over the years and more than one bloody muzzle. I want to say I gave more than I got, but that isn't true…less true than the rest of this story. However, I did develop a strong dislike of unicorn nobles over that period. To this day, despite being much wiser and less naive, I was never angry at my mother for what she was accused of doing, but I didn't start to believe it until I was an adult, and by then, she was already gone, and I was given details that I have no way of proving that would clear my mother's good name if true– sometimes work gets in the way of your personal life, much as you try to avoid it.

When I was sixteen, my parents took a trip to Manehatten. It was supposed to be a week-long trip. I was not quite a full-grown mare but no longer a filly. They decided I could stay behind, keep the restaurant open in their absence, and watch over my brother. I had been excited about it at the time. I was going to be the mare of the house for a week, and I'd get to show I was capable of operating the restaurant well. It felt like my first big step out into the world, my entrance into true adulthood.

Little did I know, it was my abrupt graduation to adulthood.

My parents' airship went down on the trip there, and neither survived. I never found out why my father didn't at least fly to safety, but that will remain a mystery till the day I die,…soon as that may be. My brother and I were now orphans. My grandparents were old and in too poor of health at that point to care for either of us– in need of some pony changing their diapers instead of changing pony diapers themselves. At my age, I was considered old enough, if just old enough, to take control of the business and my brother for good. I was the new Baroness Silverwater, the new head cook of the restaurant, the new business manager of the restaurant, and the new permanent guardian for my little brother, all while trying to process my grief. As you can imagine, trying to take on all these things at once meant I did none of them well.

I'll spare you the stories about fights between my brother and myself that we inevitably resolved because we loved each other and were both dealing with grief, not to mention I was barely more than a filly trying to fill the roles of a parent and a sister at the same time. The fights and resolutions happened, and they were predictable. Read any sappy story about such things and get a better tearjerker version of it. Let's focus on more pertinent things.

Business was a much more complicated issue to resolve than my sibling relationship. I am a good cook, but I wasn't at the same caliber as my father, and customers knew it. I also wasn't at the time the negotiator my mother was, so the price of ingredients suddenly went up quite a bit. The food industry has very narrow returns on each meal unless you have a name for yourself that lets you charge more for a meal, and I had no such name. Nobles are quick to abandon things that they felt were below them, and while they were willing to eat at our restaurant when one of the best cooks in Equestria was in the kitchen, they quickly stopped coming after I took control. I'd get a trickle of customers for breakfast and lunch– typically workers at other businesses or household staff for some lord or lady– but I rarely saw anypony for dinner.

Luckily, my grandfather was still in good enough health and senility to send us money, so we never went hungry. The store and house were paid off, so we didn't have to worry about payments for those, despite the lack of business, and being a noble, even a noble who never set a hoof on her tiny spec of allotted territory, or even capable of finding it on a map, meant I didn't have to pay taxes on my property. I could even maintain essential ingredients for the restaurant with the money from my grandfather, but not at the same quality. My parents had sold each of our previous restaurants to pay to finance the next in line, but they already had significant amounts of income to go with that, and for some reason, it's surprisingly hard to find a buyer in a district full of ponies who actively discourage new ponies setting up shop. I was trapped with a non-profitable restaurant I couldn't get rid of and unable to set up shop in a less demanding area.

Then one day, at the age of eighteen, I got a surprise by somepony booking a dinner reservation later that week, followed by several others, all at once for the same day. They were odd reservations, not only because I never got any evening business, much less reservations, but because most of those coming weren't unicorns and none anypony I knew who worked nearby. Only the original reservation was from a noble– who I will call Count Pouty Face from here on out; none of the others were from anypony of noble blood.

Ponies came in and looked the place over on and off during the week leading up to the reservation. They never bought anything, and the only things they discussed with me were the sitting layout, asking me about the quality of glass on the windows, checking the weight of my tables and chairs, the lighting, and some details about the layout of the building. They even banged on my door while it was open to check to see how sturdy it was. More than one got lost looking for the restroom and ended up in the kitchen or storeroom. None of them stole anything or caused any trouble other than wandering to where they should not be. I would've been angry at them invading my kitchen and the many ponies who seemed to be suddenly walking around near the front of my business and the alley behind it that I'd never seen before. Still, I was about to get the most business I had gotten since taking over. I wasn't going to scare potential customers away by complaining about the eccentricities of what was going on. This could be my big break to turn things around.

So, the day of that dinner reservation is where this fictitious tale of woe starts in earnest, and I get more detailed in the telling of this story.