18 - Who Are You
It was 2 AM, and although she tossed and turned, Twilight couldn’t sleep.
Her head swam with apprehension and dismay. She’d almost gotten killed again, and, again, Spike and Livingstone were in the crossfire. This was turning into a fiasco. At this rate, they’d all be dead before she really got a chance to speak with Inkosi. And then what? How would Celestia react? Despair? Anger? What if the culprit was found? What if the culprit wasn’t found? No matter which way Twilight nudged the situation in her head, it always turned out poorly at best.
The sheets felt too warm beneath her. She moved to the other side of the bed to find a colder spot. No luck.
The worst part was that she could do absolutely nothing about it, not even check in with the detectives investigating it. In Equestria, seeing how they were doing would make her look like a micromanager, which… wasn’t that far from the truth, Twilight had to admit. But there, it would be acceptable. Here, where she was an ambassador from a foreign land, it’d probably look downright insulting. Hey. Hey. Have you found them yet? You should have. I’m not saying you should have, but you totally should have. But, no. She just had to sit here in the embassy and wait for them to find an answer.
Her pillow was lumpy. She fluffed it. It was lumpy. She fluffed it. It was even lumpier.
And she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was failing in her duties as ambassador and representative of Equestria. It wasn’t her fault — she’d been targeted well before anybody knew what she was like — but she was the Princess of Friendship, and people trying to kill you wasn’t exactly friendly. She’d tried with Kutengwa, but with the attack breaking them up, Twilight couldn’t see how far she’d gotten through. Maybe she’d done amazingly, maybe she’d done terribly. She just couldn’t know, and that gap in her knowledge gnawed at her like a termite. Unfortunately, unlike a termite, she couldn’t squish it. So it was more like a cockroach. A cockroach-termite hybrid. Ugh.
The mattress wasn’t smooshy enough. She changed positions. It was too smooshy.
It all combined to keep her awake better than several intravenous injections of caffeine. It wasn’t like insomnia, where she felt incredibly tired but couldn’t get to sleep. She felt wide awake, but burned out. Too tired to do much of anything physical, and yet alert enough to form complex thoughts. And it all came back to the same thing: she was the representative of Equestria, and yet here she was, doing absolutely nothing to help her cou-
Wait.
She was the representative of Equestria. But, in a sense, Livingstone was a representative, too. Unofficial, but still. She was the first pony to spend any significant amount of time in Zebrabwe. And just after she’d arrived, travel outside of Zebrabwe’s borders had been “banned”. What if the two were linked? What if it had nothing to do with her, personally, but someone wanting to keep Equestria’s hooves out of Zebrabwe’s pie? Twilight had never considered it before due to everything going down, but the more she considered it, the more the pieces lined up: by the time Livingstone’s travels were becoming known among the right zebras, someone would try to block her from getting back to Equestria, cutting off international interaction again. And then, once Twilight died, relations between Zebrabwe and Equestria would be frosty at best. Equestrians would come over to find out the truth, sure, but ponies and zebras would be looking daggers at each other the whole time and for years, probably decades, afterwards.
Why, though? Barely anyone knew anything about Equestria before Twilight had showed up. It was like just because another country had showed up, they needed to be as unfriendly to Zebrabwe as possible. But who’d want that?
Twilight knew she should just try to get to sleep. But with her mind wide awake and this new avenue presenting itself, there was nothing she could do about it. She rolled off her bed and started pacing to get the blood flowing, and gave her wings slight flaps that did nothing for lift. Exercise helped her sort her mind out, she’d found.
And so, Twilight started doing quite possibly the one thing she did better than friending and lecturing: she thought.
First things first. What did they know about whoever was targeting them? Not much, unfortunately. They kept hiding behind assassins and prox- Wait. Assassins and mercenaries weren’t exactly cheap, right? Twilight had no idea what the suggested wage for an assassin was, for obvious reasons. But she figured they’d be expensive. And if they were expensive, then their mysterious antagonist would probably have money, and lots of it. It wasn’t much, but it gave Twilight an idea: assassins weren’t the only people you could pay; what about the postmares?
Livingstone had said that the “law” forbidding travel had come through right after she’d returned to Zebrabwe. No way that was a coincidence. What if the postmares had been bribed to take a phony letter to Bandari Mji once news of Livingstone’s return reached whoever? That still left the royal seal, though, which had ostensibly been official. But then Twilight’s train of thought jumped onto a new track: a bribed postmare could just as easily stop letters as send them. Hey, burn any letters Livingstone sends out, will you? Here’s ten thousand lijamu. Actually, the more Twilight thought about it, the more likely it seemed. It was just so simple. Postmares: probably bribed.
Twilight went back to the mercenaries. They’d been wearing flame-retardant suits. But who knew Spike could breathe fire? Everyone at the dinner had seen him burn a letter to send to Celestia, but no one else had talked to him before or since then. Which meant that whoever hired the assassins had to have been at the dinner or had an accomplice there. Unfortunately, considering Twilight hadn’t talked to many people there, that didn’t narrow things down for her much. But she could at least go through all the people she’d said more than two words to there and consider them: in order, Uvivi, Mhate, Mtendaji, Inkosi, Kutengwa, Okubi.
Uvivi: not a chance. Not in a million years. She and Livingstone were friends, she’d given Twilight the translation spell, and she’d ground up her own horn to ensure Twilight survived the poison. Definitely not.
Mhate: maybe, maybe not. She’d been all angry at them that first day, but if what Kutengwa had said was true, then it was literally the future of Imayini on the line. That’d make things more than a bit stressful. Besides, she’d visited Twilight in the medical bay the next day and apologized. Still, none of that guaranteed she didn’t try to kill Twilight. Possible, but Twilight was leaning towards unlikely.
Mtendaji: Twilight was split. She’d seemed so nice, but according to Kutengwa, she’d also been lying through her teeth. Who’s to say being nice wasn’t also an act? And what reason would she have to lie before even knowing Twilight except to gather sympathy for herself? She might be trying to deflect suspicion if it went wrong. And she had personally offered Twilight that kashata right before the poison took effect. But then, she’d also taken one, so maybe she knew which ones were and weren’t poisoned. But she’d only taken one after Twilight had taken one; what if Twilight had grabbed the unpoisoned one? So: possible, and it was hard to say whether it was likely or unlikely.
Inkosi: technically possible, but utterly laughable. There were a thousand better ways of going about killing Twilight for her, if only because she was the king. As for keeping Equestria out, there were a million better ways for her to do that. Twilight discarded the idea without a second thought.
Kutengwa: for someone Twilight would’ve bet money on being the one just a few hours ago, there was a fast turnaround to “probably not”. She’d made some good points about what would happen between the two countries if Twilight had died, and she’d acted civilly enough in the theatre, even if she could’ve been faking. Possible — she was probably the one with the best motivation — but very unlikely, considering she’d loathe the results.
Okubi: completely unknown. She looked creepy, sure, but looks weren’t everything. It was how you acted that counted. The problem was that Okubi had also acted creepy. Maybe she was just antisocial, maybe she’d been trying to… do something to Twilight with that stare. Some kind of magic, maybe. Twilight realized, much to her dismay, that she knew almost nothing about zebras’ relation to magic. Askari didn’t have any experience with it, but she was just one zebra among many, many, many. Did zebras have any magic at all? If so, was Okubi an evil enchantress? (Did she do evil dances? But Twilight had looked her in the eyes and hadn’t been put in any trances.) Maybe she’d been trying to curse Twilight. Three years ago, she’d said there was no such thing as curses when talking about a certain zebra and no curses had been involved then, but three years ago, she’d’ve laughed at the idea of becoming an alicorn. Maybe, maybe not.
So the two most likely people (that Twilight had talked to) were Mtendaji and Okubi. Both CEOs in Imayini. Coincidence? Maybe. But it meant that, like most CEOs, they almost certainly had plenty of money. Enough to bribe a postmare and to hire some mercenaries to kill a diplomat, in all likelihood. But if one (or both) of them, why? They were a coal mining company. What could they want with Zebrabwe having poor relations with Equestria?
And if it was at least one of them, Twilight hit a snag: Uvivi’s stake, or if she even had one. None of the ponies knew that abada horn cured poison. If Uvivi wanted Twilight dead, all she had to do was withhold that little fact. So did the fact that she hadn’t withheld it mean anything? If one of the CEOs was involved, would the consul know anything about it? She probably wasn’t; anyone who would cut off their horn to save another wouldn’t hold back information like that. Right?
Twilight’s head was spinning, and she jumped off the speculation train. Now, the timing of the attacks. The first one had occurred the night after she’d arrived, the second one the next night. Was that confident and decisive, or panicky and impulsive? Not to mention the semi-public nature of them. Confidently brave, or recklessly stupid? (Or maybe both. Rainbow Dash was alarmingly fond of proving that the distinction between the two was often meaningless.)
The really weird thing, though, was the assassin waiting in the theatre, whoever they were. Why the theatre? Twilight herself hadn’t known she was going there until a few minutes before she went there. Prepared or a lucky guess? If they were prepared, how could they know? Seeing the future was impossible, right? If it was a lucky guess, why guess the theatre, of all places? Twilight was suddenly struck with an image of the assassin waiting in their box for hours and hours and hours, hoping Twilight would show up, and eventually getting bored by her nonappearance and hanging out at the concession stand, crossbow over her shoulder.
For a moment, Twilight also considered how the assassin had smuggled in a crossbow, a bulky weapon not conducive to hiding, in the first place, but with the involvement of abadas and the zebras’ minimal-at-best usage of magic, that was easy: an abada would hide it with magic in some way. It’d trip a dozen alarms back in Equestria, but the zebras wouldn’t have anything like that. Probably.
And — idea! — that might also explain the seal. Defenses against replicating royal seals with magic were common in Equestria (in particular, the wax had a very specific and top-secret series of enchantments laid on it that even she hadn’t known until she became a princess), but, again, zebras’ inexperience with magic would mean they lacked those defenses, especially if Zebrabwe and Wilayabada were on friendly enough terms to share corporations. It was probably easy for some abada to take the imprint of a seal and stick it on another piece of wax with magic. It wouldn’t do for large-scale manipulation of the system — Inkosi would catch on quickly — but closing trade on a few small port towns far from Kulikulu? Easy.
But even then, faking the seal was a big deal. Whoever was doing this was making absolutely sure that no one would leave Zebrabwe for Equestria. So what co-
Twilight jumped when the door to her room creaked open, but it was just Spike. “Knock knock,” he whispered. “What’s wrong, Twilight?”
“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong,” said Twilight, convincing neither of them. “Totally not-wrong in here. Nope. No wrong. What makes you think something’s wrong?”
“You’ve been up and pacing for almost half an hour, and it’s the middle of the night,” Spike answered. “I have ears, you know.”
Twilight cringed. “Did I wake you up? Sorry. I just…”
“Well, kinda. But I’m fine, don’t worry about it.” His steps slightly unsteady, Spike walked over and hopped onto Twilight’s bed. “Seriously. What’s up?”
Twilight sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Everything,” she muttered. She went back to pacing. “It’s, I feel like I’ve been completely failing this. I’ve almost been killed twice already, and we haven’t even been in Zebrabwe a week. And I almost got you and Livingstone killed because I couldn’t sit still.”
“I’m a dragon. The most they could’ve done is given me a bruise.”
“Well, okay, yeah, but that’s beside the point. I wanted to get out, you came with me, you were attacked. If I could’ve just stayed in here, you’d’ve never been in any danger.” Twilight groaned. “Am I just… completely messing this up? I’ve never had to face anything like this in Equestria, so I don’t know if I’m doing anything wrong. Inkosi looked like she wanted to talk to me, but that’s pretty much the only thing that’s really gone right so far.”
“Twilight, the poison wasn’t your fault. All you did was show up at the dinner.”
Twilight snorted. “I know that, but tell my brain that.” She tapped the side of her head. “It keeps telling me over and over and over that I should’ve done something different, but it’s not nice enough to tell me which something.”
“And it’s gonna keep you up until you figure it out, right?”
“Yeah.” Twilight sighed and crawled onto the bed next to Spike. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what’s up with Applejack and Zecora, and the one actual problem I have here, I can’t do anything about.” She buried her face in her pillow and moaned. “Uh vuff wiff vuh uff vofe wuff guh. Uhhhh!”
A moment of silence. Then Spike said, “Twi, you think Inkosi’s a good king, right? That she can do her job?”
Twilight lifted her head back up. “Sure. Why?”
“Because I’m thinking that whoever’s going after us won’t be able to much longer. I mean, they just arrested three zebras trying to kill Livingstone and me today. Three! There’s gotta be a lead in one of them, right?”
“Maybe.” Twilight clambered off the bed. She didn’t want to warm it up any more. “I mean, it’s possible that none of them will have anything, but…”
“And Inkosi’s putting this at the top of her to-do list.” Spike reached his hand above his head. “I mean, even if she doesn’t like Equestria, just letting this go will make her look like a bad king with a terrible police force. So she’s gonna wanna get it all sorted out as soon as possible. They can’t be hiding that much longer.”
“Okay, yeah,” Twilight replied, “but until she actually finds out whodunit, I can’t leave here, because, well, today.” She started pacing again.
“You can leave the embassy, but you don’t have to leave the palace. There’s too many guards in here for them to try something. Get one of your own guards and do some exploring in here. Maybe talk to the abadas or something. After all…” Spike smiled. “Once we’ve friended Zebrabwe, Wilayabada’s right around the corner, right?”
Twilight smiled back. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Her smile faded, but she was thoughtful, not apprehensive. Her worries briefly vanished as she shifted into Scientist Mode. “Still, knowledge of a new species would be quite the discovery, scientifically speaking, and it’d be a good idea to get as much data as possible.”
And, she realized, if I went to the Imayini consulate, I could get a better handle on Mtendaji or Okubi. Talk with one or the other or both of them a bit. See if either of them slipped up on something. Mtendaji had talked with her, but not for a long time; maybe her acting wasn’t as good if she had to keep it up. (Assuming she was acting.) Okay, now that was an idea. If only they weren’t the ones most likely to try to kill her.
“You’re getting that look,” teased Spike.
Twilight stopped pacing and looked inquisitively at him. “What look?”
“The ‘Spike had a good idea for once’ look. I know it when I see it. It’s one-half confusion that I got a good idea, one-third pleasant surprise that it’s a really good idea, and one-sixth envy that I got it instead of you.”
“Well, it… it is an idea, but…” Twilight rubbed a hoof against the floor. “I did some thinking, and… the Imayini CEOs are the ones most likely to be trying to get me.”
Spike’s eyes widened. “What?” he asked, a bit loudly. “How do you know?”
“Keep it down, Spike,” hissed Twilight. “And I’ll tell you in the morning about it. But if they’re trying to assassinate me, well…” She shrugged. “Although an assassination in a consulate just seems like it’d draw suspicion, so I dunno.”
Spike blinked a few times, then said, “Then I’m coming with you.”
“Spike, you’re-”
“If your magic doesn’t work, that’s it for you. Me? I’m just fine, assuming that arrow can even get through these scales.” Spike pinged one of them with a claw. “I’ve got fire breath, super-sharp claws and teeth, and super-tough scales that don’t need magic for their toughness. …They don’t rely on magic, right?”
“Technically, no. When-”
“Uh-oh. A ‘technically’ from you is never good.”
Twilight ignored him. “When dragon scales are forming in between molts, a dragon’s magic ensures that, instead of keratin, the outer layers of scales are formed by layering atom-thin sheets of carbon to create a substance that is incredibly strong and resistant to damage while also being quite light.”
“…Which means?”
“Which I guess means you’re right. A loss of magic won’t mean much to you. It’d take more than a few hours without magic to make your scales weak, and even then, it'd be the scales after your next molt, not these ones.” Besides, Twilight admitted to herself, although the protector-protectee dynamic was usually reversed, Spike could actually be quite fierce when provoked. It wouldn’t be ideal, but in a pinch, it’d take a lot to stop Spike, even without his fire.
Spike grinned. “You’re getting the look again.”
Twilight chuckled. “You can see more of it if you keep the ideas coming. Because I don’t know what I’ll do if these people aren’t found.”
Spike smiled raised a claw, and said sagely, “Not a clue. But really, I think your plans go better when they go off the rails.”
“Hey! My plans work fine!”
“If your very first plan to find the Elements of Harmony had gone like you wanted it to, you’d’ve never made friends, and… well, who knows? Nothing good, let me tell you. And did you really have that much of a plan when you came to Zebrabwe in the first place?”
“Sure. Get to the ruler of Zebrabwe and…” But Twilight cut herself off. “That’s not really a plan, though, that’s a goal,” she muttered.
“Exactly!” said Spike. “And look at how far we’ve gotten without a plan so far. Except for the guys trying to kill us, I mean, that doesn’t really count.”
Twilight was suddenly struck with a strange image of an ambassador getting stabbed in the middle of negotiations, only for the talks to continue because the ambassador hadn’t died, and so the assassination attempt didn’t really count.
“Really, Twilight, whenever you try to plan for something, it kinda spins out of control. Remember that epic freakout when you forgot to write one of your friendship reports and tried to figure out how to fit it into the day?”
“That didn’t involve Celestia trying to shoot me in the head with a crossbow.”
“Okay, sure. But I’m not saying this is okay, just that it’s not as bad as you think. Which…” Spike rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, that isn’t saying a whole lot. But come on, you can’t have a plan for everything.”
“I know, but there’s a difference between ‘not having a plan’ and being helpless. I mean, that arrow blew through my magic like it was nothing. It’s back and I feel fine, but most of my personal defense relies on magic, so if that’s useless, I…” Twilight rubbed the scab on her cheek, hung her head, and dragged her way back to the bed. “I don’t know,” she muttered. “Even if I had it, I couldn’t examine it properly, because it repels magic, but I need magic to examine it. I, I just don’t know what to do.”
Spike pulled on his claws. “I don’t, either,” he said. “But you’ll figure something out. You always do. You were Celestia’s prized pupil for a reason, after all.” Spike slid onto the floor. “Try and sleep on it. Maybe you’ll wake up with a brilliant idea. Please?”
Rolling onto the place Spike had just vacated, Twilight said, “I’ll try.” Don’t know what good it’ll do, though.
“Great.” Spike stifled a yawn. “Now, if you don’t mind…” Without another word, Spike loped out of the room.
Half a second after the door closed, Twilight lifted her head up. “Spike?”
Spike slipped back into the room. “Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime. But try not to make it in the middle of the night next time, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
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Clearly she needs to compress some carbon layers with her magic and give herself dragon scales. It's the obvious solution!
The underlined word was not originally there.
missing another word
By the logic of crime stories, none Twiight's suspects is the actual culprit.
So, who could be the butler?
This is me!
Wait... Are you a spy?!
Good chapter.
Not much action and more thinking, but that's a nice change of pace.
May had found an error:
Did you mean "who did it"?
Hmm, went looking back at the chapters with the dinner.
This could be why Spike is a target, too, if Mhate and/or Okubi are behind it.
Also Okubi's name is 'Evil' in Zulu according to Google Translate... so I'm not 100% inclined to trust her.
Could the poison have been in the water?
Okay, yeah, I'm throwing my hat into the ring and guessing that it's any combination of Mhate, Okubi and Mtendagi working together.
Something Twilight overlooked in her analysis: Mtendaji was the one who first suggested that Twilight visit the theater.
great work on this chapter.