//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: Frost from Fire 
// by The Calm and the Quiet 
//------------------------------//

	Umbertown was still sleeping when Ghostwriter and Sir Cypress arrived at dawn. The mailpony was out, his bag stuffed with letters, and the baker was just now setting out her fresh-from-the-oven muffins and breads, but other than that, you could hear every hoof-fall from the two stallions.
Nothing like Canterlot, Ghost thought. He watched the baker lovingly arrange her cupcakes, bright pink confections that matched her cutie mark. The city was always roaring with life. Even the Tower never calmed. In the middle of the night, on more times than he could count, Ghost had caught two Scribes having a shouting match in the Tower library over some arbitrary number—the amount of wool delivered from Ambleton, the average size of a Balkwood apple, the exact shade of orange that the great dragon Vearon called his hide. There was never this much calm and quiet in a city that had no true night. Not when the Sun Goddess herself called it home.
So it was curious to Ghost when they reached Happy Homes and found the orphaned foals awake and already working, their eyes still bleary with sleep. One unicorn was listlessly pushing a broom. Two earthponies wiped the spotless baseboards. A filly who looked hardly old enough to walk leaned up on her hooves to scrub at the windows with a rag in her mouth.
Happy Homes itself looked like a refurbished stable. There was a wide square window at the very top, below the peak of the roof. It swung open on rusty hinges. The ground was tamped-down dirt, hard-packed from hooves. Inside, from what Ghost could see, it was flat stone floor and rows of bunk beds. Curious eyes peeked out from windows along the side, blinking in the new light of the day.
Ghost stopped, coughing in the dust. “Doesn’t really look Happy, does it?” he asked.
Cypress said nothing. It didn’t bother Ghost now. Two days in the stallion’s company had made him accustomed to the silence.
It didn’t take long for the matron to make her appearance. She was an old purple mare with a white-striped mane. There were wrinkles at her forehead from a lifetime of frowning. “Yes? Can I help you?”
Ghost looked away from the orphans. “I’m a Scribe of Canterlot’s Tower. I have some questions I want to ask you.”
The matron frowned. As he’d suspected, the lines deepened around her mouth and forehead. “What kind of questions?”
“Simple ones. About your establishment and the foals within it.”
“And if I don’t want to answer questions?”
Ghost turned to Cypress for that. The green knight seemed to be having difficulties. His mouth trembled as he looked at a young filly with a pale yellow coat who still didn’t have her cutie mark. “Sir Cypress?” Ghost prompted.
Cypress snapped away. “Yes.”
“Our new friend…” Ghost trailed off, waving a hoof vaguely towards the matron. “What did you say your name was?”
The frown deepened. “Lavender Spice.”
“Our new friend Ms. Spice.” Friend was hardly the word he’d like to use for this sour old mare, but it had to do. “She seems unaware of who you are. Why don’t you tell her?”
Cypress straightened with a clank of his plates. “Sir Cypress Stalwart. Eglantine’s father.”
Lavender balked. “Eglantine’s father? But she was an orphan.”
Sir Cypress’s jaw clenched. “Was?”	
“Why don’t we take this someplace more private?” Ghost suggested. The foals had stopped their work to stare openly. The little unicorn let the broom fall back flat against his horn with a smack. 
Lavender Spice nodded hastily. “Yes. My office. In the back.” She turned to the foals. “My little ponies, why don’t you finish up your work later and have a snack. I have dandelion crunchies in the cupboard. How tasty!”
The earthpony filly Cypress had been looking at piped up, “But you never let us have any treats!”
Lavender’s expression darkened. “Well,” she replied, still in that sickly-sweet voice, “today is your lucky day. Run along now.”
The foals didn’t wait another second. They abandoned their cleaning supplies and darted off, some looking back worriedly.
Lavender Spice laughed stiffly, like it was an unaccustomed pastime. “To my office, then? Would you gentleponies like a drink? Perhaps some tea?”
“No thanks,” Ghost said, before Cypress could answer. Though judging by the look on his face, putting anything into his stomach could prove a bad idea.
Lavender Spice’s office turned out to be little more than a broom closet. There was a small desk, a few wobbly chairs, a portrait of a green unicorn mare with her horn flared up, but most of the tiny space was filled with wall upon wall of files. 
Ghost stopped in place to stare. Wonderful, he thought, feeling himself smile. There was nothing more beautiful than to see physical data laid out so beautifully. Decades were sorted into those metal drawers. Years sorted by careful catalog and numbering. It must have taken years to get it all exactly right. 
While he stood in wonder, Lavender bustled about making tea anyway. The water boiled after a few tense seconds of silence and she poured it. Earthpony hooves were so inefficient, Ghost thought with distaste. She fumbled with everything—the fire, the teapot, the bags—and finally the cups as she set one in front of each of them, saving the final, chipped teacup for herself.
“Now, what kind of questions did you want to ask me?” Lavender’s voice was light, but her eyes were wary. “Scribes rarely find their way into Umbertown.”
Ghost lifted his cup with telekinesis, watching her over the rim. “I can imagine why.” He sipped the tea and nearly gagged. It was bitter and astringent as lemon peel. He set it down. “You live in the shadow of tragedy.”
She laughed that stiff laugh again. “You Scribes really know how to dramatize things. Nightmare Moon has no hold here anymore. The Castle is just an old ruin now.” She drank her tea without reservation. Perhaps she was used to disappointment. “Well, until as of late. Now more soldiers find their way through these streets than Umbertown natives.”
“Which you are?” Ghost asked.
She nodded. “I was born here. I remember when the sisters lived in the castle. I would bring bread to them sometimes in the mornings.”
Interesting. Not. Ghost pulled out his quill and parchment. “And how long have you been matron? Since Juniper Shine was murdered?”
The matron nearly overturned her tea. Ghost looked up with surprise to see a stricken look on her face.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Since…then.”
Ghost narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. A strong reaction. Why would that be? He remembered from his notes that Juniper Shine had been an old mare. The same age as Lavender, if not close. The two were both earthponies. Both lived in Umbertown. Both were matron of the exact same orphanage, one right after the other.
Of course, he thought. Juniper Shine. Lavender Spice. Sisters.
“You are the youngest between you and Juniper?” he asked, scratching down more notes.
Lavender blinked in surprise. Beside him, he felt Cypress stiffen. “Y-yes, that’s right. How did you know?”
“I guessed.” Ghost stopped his pen, setting it orbiting around his head while he thought. “So how long has it been?”
She shook her head. It wasn’t stubbornness, but confusion. “Perhaps a few months. No more than six.”
“And Eglantine Stalwart was in your charge when you took over?”
“She wasn’t Eglantine Stalwart. Just Egg. We called her Egg. A sweet thing, if a little ditzy. I’ve never met an earthpony with her head so in the clouds.”
Now Cypress might as well have been carved from ice. Ghost almost prodded him to make sure he hadn’t paralyzed himself permanently.
“When did she go missing?”
Now Lavender did not hesitate. “Two weeks ago.”
Ghost felt surprised. “You paused before. You didn’t now. Why?”
Lavender looked down at her abandoned tea. Behind her, Ghost noted the dates on the files. They ran weekly, it appeared. Easily updated. “I’d never had an orphan go missing under my watch.”
Under your watch, Ghost thought. That implies that some went missing under your sister’s. His pen scratched somewhere by his left ear. “What happens to foals who aren’t adopted? Are they released into the town with nothing but a name?”
“Princess Celestia offers them a chance to join the Solar Guard. If they refuse, they’re allowed to leave here and find their own way. Most accept the offer.”
It sounded almost sinister. But, in truth, what pony of sound mind wouldn’t join the military rather than face a harsh world of solitude?
“How do you know Eglantine didn’t accept the offer?” 
“Because it happened before her birthday. Foals have until their sixteenth birthday to make up their minds. Egg was only fifteen.” Lavender shook her head. “I had talked to her about it but she never gave me an answer. She seemed to think someone was coming for her. Her father.” She looked up desperately at Cypress. “I didn’t believe her. Many orphans say similar things. Most of them give up. But she never did.”
Cypress made a choking sound. A split-second later, he pushed himself up and left the room. The door banged the wall loudly enough to make Ghost and Lavender jump.
“You’ll have to forgive my companion,” Ghost said, adjusting his glasses. The slam had set his heart to hammering. “He’s usually more reserved.”
Lavender gave him a strange look. “He’s just heard his daughter was kidnapped. He’s a little upset.”
Ghost blinked. “From your care,” he pointed out. “Tell me how that happened.”
She curled her lip. “You’re cold-hearted, aren’t you?”
“Save the insults,” Ghost said, though he did feel a prick of shock. Occasionally ponies had noted that, some in less savory words, but it never failed to strike him. Cold-hearted? What did that even mean? What did it matter what ponies thought of him as long as he delivered the story?
It seemed like Lavender wanted this to be over as quickly as possible. With her eyes on the ceiling, she said, “I came in for the morning wake-up call and she was gone. I asked her bedmates what had happened and they had no memory of her getting up and leaving. One noted that she had been restless that night, tossing and turning, but she didn’t remember Egg getting up.”
Ghost waited until she was fully distracted, then reached out his magic. Casually, he said, “So she disappeared from within the orphanage. What was her bunkmate’s name? Is she still here?”
Lavender shook her head. “She’s gone. She accepted the offer.”
“I see. But her name?”
“Slipstream. A pegasus. I imagine you’ll find her at the Castle. She’s in the Air Strike team.” Lavender pushed her tea away. “If you don’t mind, I’ve had enough for the day. You can see yourself out.”
“Gladly.” Ghost sealed up his parchment and slid it back into his satchel. “Thank you for your time.”
“Be kinder to that knight,” she said. “He’s a gentle heart. You are not.”
“Thank you for your opinion.” Ghost trotted out the door and kicked it closed with a hind leg. It shut with more force than necessary.
He found Sir Cypress around the back, pressed up against the wall. There was sweat beading down his cheeks.
Ghost sighed. “I have a lead,” he said. “She’s at the Castle.” I’ll get this next clue and my brother all in the same move, he thought. Perfect.
Sir Cypress did not seem to share his enthusiasm. He was taking in deep breaths. His chest rose and fell erratically.
Ghost frowned. “Are you well?”
“No.”
“We must go to the Castle and find this pegasus. Don’t you want to do that?”
“Yes.”
Ghost waited. Cypress kept inhaling those heavy breaths. “Shall we go now?” he prompted.
Cypress shot him a look that was almost a glare. It would have worked better, but there was still something raw in his eyes. “Give me time,” he said.
“We have none,” Ghost replied coolly. “Come on, Sir Cypress. Let’s go to the Castle.” Without another word, Ghost walked away. He didn’t look back, even as he heard the knight’s heavy hoof-beats take up stride behind him.
They walked in silence out of the town and up the path towards the Castle. Ghostwriter could see it above the treeline. Sharp claws of stone, torn remnants of banners, the sparkling gleam of ruined stained glass. He saw it in snatches. Even the path underhoof was broken, the cobblestones gouged out in some places by a battle decades old.
Sir Cypress was silent, but that was no surprise. This silence felt markedly different, though. Ghost kept thinking back to the matron’s words: You’re cold-hearted, aren’t you?
But what did that matter? It made Ghost’s teeth grind together. Why was he letting some hag’s words thrash about in his head like sliced hydra heads? He would probably never see Lavender Spice again in his lifetime, but still, her wrinkled face kept coming up in his mind, replacing the underbrush or the beginnings of the Castle’s ramparts, crumbled to ruin around him.
You’re cold-hearted, aren’t you?	
“Sir Cypress,” he said. “I find myself wondering about your daughter.”
Cypress said nothing.
Ghost pressed on, comforted by the sound of his own voice. This quiet was maddening. “How could it be that she disappeared from a crowded orphanage? Did you see inside? It was packed wall-to-wall with beds, and in those beds, foals. How could she have slipped out?”
“Light sleepers,” he suggested, his first words since they’d left. His voice was hoarse.
“Perhaps,” Ghost gave him. “But what would be her goal? What could the world offer a filly of fifteen years? And why would she leave the place she knew her father would return to? She seemed like she’d wait for you, judging by what the matron said. Why leave?”
“Kidnapped.”
“Yes, we’re back to that.” Ghost floated his notes out of his satchel and rifled through them. They weren’t in his handwriting, but Lavender’s.
Cypress, seemingly unable to continue his tight-lipped silence, asked, “What are those?”
Ghost smiled. “The ledgers from the orphanage.”
“You stole them?”
He laughed. “Hardly. I…borrowed them. Magically. I waited until she had her eyes elsewhere and copied them. It had the extra parchment, the ink. All I needed to do was a transposing spell.” He shrugged. “Simple.”
Cypress blinked. “Magic,” he said.
“Magic,” Ghostwriter agreed. He flared the papers, his horn growing warm. It felt good against the cool breeze of the Everfree. “Now then…”
The notes were compiled by name, alphabetically and by body type. The unicorns were unnecessary; Ghost slid them back into his satchel. The earthponies he brought to the front, keeping the pegasi papers on standby.
“Lavender said it had been two weeks,” Ghost muttered, more to himself than to Cypress, who was leaning over his shoulder. “Let’s go back… More than that… Ah, here we go.” He slid that paper to the front. “Egg, like she said. ‘Earthpony, fifteen, pale yellow, brown mane, no cutie mark.’” No wonder Cypress had been staring at that filly, he thought. Sentiment. He continued, “‘Reported missing during morning wake-up. Perimeter searched. No evidence of foul play.’” He looked up at Cypress. “Well, that was succinct. They didn’t even call the Guard.”
Cypress shook his head. “Illegal.”
“Quite.” The Solar Guard were called on any case of criminal activity. A disappeared orphan fell under that category. “She disappears from the ledger after that. Now for this other…”
Cypress leaned close again. “Pegasus?”
“Slipstream,” he said. “If you’d stayed in the office, you would have learned that.” Ghost ran down Slipstream’s list and found the same identification markers: pegasus, white, yellow mane, sixteen, cutie mark is a gray whirlwind with autumn leaves mixed in. “Very identifiable,” Ghost noted.
“At the Castle?”
“Yes. She was your daughter’s bunkmate. She was the last to see Eglantine at the orphanage.” He sighed, folding up the notes and storing them once more. “This seems pretty open-and-shut.”
“How so?”
“Slipstream’s birthday was the very next day after Eglantine disappeared. My guess is that Slipstream took the offer, as they say, and joined the Guard. Eglantine didn’t want to live there without her friend and skipped town.” Ghost gave Cypress a smug smile. “Done and done.”
Cypress did not look so convinced. 
It wiped the smile off Ghost’s face. “What? You think I’m wrong.”
“She wouldn’t,” he said.
“Wouldn’t what?” Ghost was getting very tired of the stallion’s taciturnity.
“Leave,” he said. “Without permission. She follows rules.”
“Maybe friendship made her change her mind. You don’t know for sure.”
Cypress gave him a cold stare. “Neither do you,” he said simply.
Ghost turned back to the path and rolled his eyes.
The Castle of the Two Sisters came into view from around the bend. Scaffolding covered it like ants. Unicorns lifted beams for earthponies, horns steaming in the cold air. Pegasi lowered ropes with plaster and stones, their wings beating heavily, their faces sweaty. Earthponies reared up on their hind legs, forelegs braced with the weight of thousands of pounds of rock and wood.
Ghost watched this all, wishing he could write it down.
The workponies along the way stopped and stared curiously as Ghost and Cypress walked by. It seemed commonplace enough to visit the Castle, Ghost thought. After all, his brother was not high-ranking in the least and he still managed to invite a citizen to the reconstruction site.
But still. It made Ghostwriter’s coat itch to have so many eyes on his back. He wished for half a moment that the ground could swallow him up, or that he could invent an invisibility spell to warp the air around him.
The shadow of the Castle fell upon his back as he reached the front doors. They were massive and oaken, carved with a thousand fine details. Ghost saw Celestia and Luna, ruling together. He saw Nightmare Moon coming to life, her soul corrupted. He saw Celestia strike down the parody of her sister. Moons and suns wound together like chains, linking the two together, as they always had been, as they always would be.
Ghost saw it all and was impressed. And resentful. Sentiment.
“Baby brother!” Ghostwriter lost his footing as something—or someone—barreled into his side. Gravel scraped under his coat as the pony pressed him down, wrapping him in forehooves that were strong as an earthpony’s.
“Hello, Valiant,” Ghost said, his face smashed into the ground.
Valiant was beaming. His eyes were Ghost’s pale green, bright with glowing magic. In everything else, they were opposites. Valiant’s coat was white as a prince’s, his mane black. A seven-pointed blue star was his cutie mark—making him almost unrivaled in magical prowess. War unicorns with seven-pointed stars were bound for greatness, and Valiant was no exception. If only he could focus.
“You’re late. You were supposed to be here yesterday. What delayed you?” Then he fixed on Cypress, and his smile widened. “Cy!” he exclaimed, wrapping a forehoof around his shoulders. “It’s good to see you, old friend!”
Cypress, who had been moody since Happy Homes, smiled the ghost of a smile. “Valiant.”
Ghost wanted none of it. “Your old friend kidnapped me in the Everfree yesterday.” A wave of telekinesis brushed the dust from his coat. Ghost fixed his glasses. “Thanks for the warning.”
Valiant sobered. “Oh, so he’s told you.”
“Right after he treed me like a cat.”
Valiant smiled, but it was tight. Drawn. “I knew you’d be the best for the job, brother. Nobody noses into ponies’ business like you do. You’ll find Eglantine. I know you will.”
Ghost muttered, “Maybe next time you could tell me you needed my help instead of forcibly enlisting me.”
“You never would have come out of the Tower for that. I knew I was the only thing that could lure you from your books.” He nudged Ghost’s chin with a hoof. “And now you’re here. It’s so good to see you, Ghost.”
Ghost relented tiredly. “Finally calling me by my name now?”
“Your penname, anyway.” Valiant rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with your real name.”
Cypress looked curiously at Ghostwriter, but Ghost snapped, “Don’t even think about it. It’s stupid and embarrassing. My mother wasn’t thinking when she named me that.”
Valiant laughed, more freely. Always in good spirits, Ghost thought. Valiant couldn’t be kept down for long. He’d always joked it was the magic in him. “Come on,” he said, already turning around to walk away. “Come and see the Castle. And we can talk about what we’re going to do.”