Back in Girard’s bedroom, I sat sideways in a chair in the corner while my partner tried his luck with the bird at his bedside. This time he was upright, and sober enough to understand what was being said to him, and what he was saying—which was nothing.
“Girard?” my partner prompted.
There was no response.
“You’re the changeling.”
Nothing.
“Um, we know that now. It’s not really in question anymore.”
Even from across the room, I could see the shimmering all throughout his form. But beyond the shimmering, I could see the depths of his shame, his fears, his regrets. His hunger.
“Ahah, but that’s all right! We’re on the same page now. You, Gloria, Pesco and I? We’re all on the same team. Okay? Together, we can sort this thing out.”
Something, almost.
“And I know it may not compare but, believe me when I say that changelings aren’t the only creatures that pretend to be something they’re not. And, ahah, they sure aren’t the only creatures that need love! And I think they deserve it as much as anycreature else.”
Nothing, still.
“And, well, I for one think your friends would be on your team, too, if they knew the truth! Heck, I don’t even think this has to be goodbye!”
Please, Bluebird. Don’t be cruel.
“Are you afraid of what they’ll think when they find out?”
“… Y-yes. Yes.”
Bluebird smiled. “Then you and your friends are good company for each other!”
Girard couldn’t resist mirroring the smile. “How do you mean?”
“You wouldn’t believe the things we’ve learned about your friends. Parts of themselves they’re afraid to show, because they’re afraid of what others will think. But for each and every one of them—and that includes you, Girard—I can say their fears were unfounded. I didn’t think any less of them the more I got to know them.”
To put it lightly: Gloria might be an exception.
“And it might sound like I’m just being nice, but I honestly think that of all your friends, you’ve hidden the least. At least, when it comes to what counts. Y’know? And that’s admirable. You’ve got almost a perfect score for honesty, in my book. So I figure, ahah, why not make the almost perfect, perfect?”
Girard rubbed his shoulder and grinned, this time unprompted. However, the grin died just as quickly. “But, Blanche…”
“What about Blanche?”
“Besides Gloria, she’s the only one I’ve ever tried to tell.” He looked down at his hindpaws as he continued, “So, b-besides Gloria… you could say I have a perfect score for being reviled.”
As Girard began to sniffle and shimmer again, and Bluebird’s speech devolved into mere comforting tones and syllables, I could only push a sigh. I reached into my trench coat and unfurled the letter that Blanche had written, and which Girard had given back to me before his great escape, and I walked over to the bed.
I held the paper under his beak. “Can you point out where exactly in this letter you think Blanche reviles you?”
Girard looked up at me, and then down at the instrument of torture I held before him. With his beak, he said nothing; with his eyes, he asked why I was so cruel; with his claw, he pointed on the paper to several acerbic lines in succession.
To all of his claw’s answers at once, I responded, “This isn’t because of what you are. This is because of what you did, all while trying to hide what you are.”
He reread the note more closely. His eyes lit up as he began to see what I wanted him to see, and believe what I wanted him to believe. “Do you mean, d-do you really think, that if only I had… in the first place, been a little more… Do you think it could’ve turned out differently…?”
“It’s very likely,” I lied with compassion.
Girard slouched down and twiddled the fabric of his blazer between his thumb and forefinger. None of us said a word for upwards of a minute, and I began to wonder if my tactic hadn’t done more harm than good to the therapeutic process. Maybe he saw through my lie, and he understood that in my heart of hearts, I had no hope for him, and I only saw shadows in his future. I was lying to him as brazenly as I had lied to Gloria about finding her book. The worst part is, I didn’t even know why I was lying, or why I was so sure it was a lie in the first place.
Girard at last ceased his twiddling, and he made his announcement:
“I think I would like to show them, now. Show my friends what I am,” he said. “And I think, I think I would like to try to explain some things. I would like to tell my side of the story.”
From Girard’s room on the second floor, we deliberately took the scenic route in returning to the foyer. We walked and talked as he started from the very beginning of his tale.
He described his former life as a love farmer, and his distinctions from Queen Chrysalis for his exemplary service.
“Oh, the taste of royal jelly. Sweet, succulent, divine. Rapturous, ambrosial, elysian. I don’t think I’ve ever found the words to properly describe it,” he said, “but it’s the only thing that comes close to how it feels when I think about Blanche.”
He described his betrayal of Queen Chrysalis, by arranging the escape of so many of his and his colleagues’ prisoners.
“To be honest, I think the only reason I got away with it for as long as I did was because I tended to target the least productive of the lovestock—um, that’s to say, the prisoners,” he explained. “The ones who languished in the darkness of their cells, the ones who n-never, never smiled… the ones who had absolutely no love left in them. I think I know how they felt, now.”
He described his own betrayal at the hands of one of his own failed escapees—Sidereal—and his colleague, Clypeus, occasionally known as Windshear.
“I was dragged in chains before Queen Chrysalis herself. My colleagues, my hatchmates, my broodparents, and so many strangers among them, they were all there, clamoring for my death. Their cries reverberated off the walls of the royal caverns. The guards held one hoof over their ear as they escorted me, that was how deafening it was.”
His gait became irregular and halting, as if he were in manacles. He held a hoof halfway up to his ears, but the invisible manacles stopped him. He was awash in a flood of memories.
“But, Chrysalis denied them,” he said. “She extended me her forgiveness, on one condition: That I assist in the recapture of each prisoner I had let go, with Clypeus as my handler. I denied her.”
The floodwaters receded, and he was released from his manacles. He shook his head and chuckled.
“You know, it was only because of the royal jelly that I survived that day. It changes our very bodies when we taste it. It imbues us with a well of magic of last resort. I don’t remember much of what happened after I tapped into it, but I guess even the Queen and all her guards couldn’t stop a thrice-taster after he’d transformed into a rampaging Ursa Minor!”
He described how he trudged for days through the desert wastelands that separated the Hive in the south from the rest of Equestria to the north—and, as it happened, Griffonstone to the east.
“That was where I first met Gloria,” he said. “I thought she was a mirage at first, or a hallucination. In the state I was, I didn’t have the magic left to disguise myself. To tell the truth, with the heat, the exhaustion, the despair, I don’t think I had the magic left to make it another hour. I simply collapsed at the mirage’s feet and hoped for the best.”
Bluebird interrupted, “You mean changelings can literally die if they run out of magic? Or love? How does that work exactly?”
Girard shrugged. “Magic, love, sustenance, it’s pretty much interchangeable for us. I’m not one-hundred percent sure how it works. When I was starting out as a love farmer, I spent much more time reading about the dietary needs of ponies than I ever did my own kind. But, I know that when Gloria hugged me out there in the scorching hot steppe, it felt like… like something close to royal jelly.”
“What was Gloria doing out there?” I pried. It was my first utterance since we had left his bedroom.
“Oh, well, Gloria only ever told me her past once, over the campfire of our very first night together. It was also the only time I’ve ever seen her cry. I didn’t ask about her past then, and I know I couldn’t ask about it now—I don’t know, in some ways I feel she’s changed over the years.
“Anyway, she was out in the wastelands for a similar reason as me: She’s a bit of an exile herself. She wasn’t exactly forced out, but, her father had recently been found guilty as a counterfeiter and executed—it’s a pretty heinous crime in Griffonstone. If she had any other family, she didn’t mention them. I got the impression that she looked up to him, and he taught her everything he knew about his craft. Sadly, I guess her townsfolk got that impression, too, and that was why she had to leave.
“Gloria forged a new life for us both in Canterlot. She was the brains, and I was the body—any body that she could have needed in order to fool a bureaucracy that we were foreign royalty, or to defraud a rich pony or three. She said the world owed us at least this much, that we had done more to earn our keep than any of the Canterlot elite, that people like Bon and Blanche who were simply born into wealth were the perfect example. And if our friends deserved the good life, she would say, then didn’t we?”
He asked this last question with sensitivity. He looked from side to side at each of us, and I realized he was expecting a response. Neither of us had one.
“She told me we would help others once we had finished helping ourselves, but I guess that day never really came, did it?” he asked in a similar tone of voice.
“Let’s fast-forward to the last couple of days,” Bluebird said as he flipped through his notepad. “It sounds like this all started because of mistaken ideas you had after reading Changeling Ringing?”
Girard shivered as he recollected. “Yes… I’m sorry, but that’s all there is to it. All a stupid mistake, one that Gloria specifically warned me not to make,” he said. “Gloria told me to never reveal myself to anyone under any circumstances, while I wanted to go on up and knock on Blanche’s door in the form I was hatched in! I don’t know if I would have had the courage for that, anyway. In the end I decided on a half measure, that I would just leave an anonymous message for her. I just wanted to see if she already knew it was me, if she wasn’t writing that whole book for me.” He tried to shake the past from his head. “Gloria was right. I wasn’t seeing things clearly. Changelings never can, when it comes to love.”
I had in mind to say something flippant about the young master, before thinking better of it.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what was that message exactly? You have to admit it was a little cryptic,” Bluebird said. “Ahah, even the inimitable detective Pesco had his work cut out trying to decipher it!”
“Oh, well, there was a certain reasoning to it. And it seems Blanche figured it out eventually,” he said. “Basically, the main character in Changeling Ringing, he finds himself in jail at one point—well, several points, actually. But the first time is the most important one, and it’s when he’s first visited by this secret admirer of his. And you see, in the prison library, our MC finds this… absolutely beautiful parchment with which to write to her. Well known for its use in love letters, historically.”
“Let me guess,” my partner interrupted, “paper made from willow pulp?”
“Precisely! And when I found that very same paper stocked, of all places, in a dime store at the winter resort down the pass, I suppose I took it as a sign.”
“You seem to have an affinity for anonymous notes,” I said.
Perceptive as always but for his highly peculiar blind spots, Girard picked up on the meaning. “Oh, you mean Gloria’s note?” he replied. “Gloria told me to do three very specific things, whenever you first came around to interrogate me: ask for a cup of tea, as subtly as I could; hug Pesco, and slip that note into his pocket; and keep my beak shut at all other moments.”
He stared at the ceiling for a few paces.
“I never really understood the first order, but from what I could make of the second, it just didn’t sit right with me to get Grid wrapped up in this. Even if only to buy time.” He rubbed his bandaged cheek. “She was pretty angry when she found out what I did. I’ve put her through a lot, and I guess I just keep screwing it up for the both of us.”
Our walking and talking was at its end. The foyer lay just around the corner.
I now had all the details I needed to reconstruct the timeline to the present day and resolve the paradoxes of the past. I now knew how a certain griffon girl could simultaneously have been a prim princess, a crafty scoundrel, a selfless caretaker, and a callous abuser—the answer was that half of these were false pretenses. I now knew why a changeling would expose himself in a staged display of lockpicking—the answer was that it was arranged in such a way that it would indisputably clear a certain griffon girl, who just so happened to have an indisputable alibi for a certain griffon boy. And I now knew why, despite Girard’s partial efforts, there was such a proliferation of odd happenings surrounding the earth pony Grid Iron.
But I also now knew the dilemma that Zorn found himself in, and so chose to recuse himself from. I knew that Girard was still dependent on Gloria to a concerning degree, both psychologically as well as circumstantially. As it stood, theirs was a curious case of mutual, obligate parasitism.
Beyond that, I knew, with increasingly painful clarity over the past forty-eight hours, the dilemma I myself was in. The Royal Guard was on their way to resolve the situation by force, and I had no clear course of action either morally or materially. I had spent so much time looking for the proof that the changeling was the villain; everything would have been so much simpler if I had found it.
And so, once the three of us had finished our journey and stepped into the foyer, the only thing I did not know…
… was how our story would end.
No, Pesco--it actually doesn't have to be goodbye.
Oh, Gloria's definitely an exception.
But Bluebird's probably right. Heck, we know Zorn and Blanche already know (or are at least pretty certain of it) and I'd imagine Grid and Bon by now suspect something's up, so that's, like, three-fourths of the battle right there.
Girard, as I commented last chapter, Blanche could've easily been far more vindictive or hateful in her reaction to her finding out, but she wasn't, and while, yes, she couldn't quite commit to what you would've liked her to at this time, she does still seem willing to give you the benefit of a doubt for the time being, particularly now that she understands what your real intentions behind it all had been. So I don't think things are really as grave between you and Blanche as you think.
But like Bon with Grid, you're also going to have to let her have the space to figure out the rest at her own time and speed, and in the meantime try to not take it personally. The ball's in her court now, so you're going to have to trust her to make the choices necessary.
Hopefully that's less of a lie than one might fear it to be.
See, even you know deep down there has to still be a way to find a light at the end of the tunnel for all of this. And you're a detective, right? If you're really so good at that job, then put it to work finding that light more genuinely...because it's out there, just waiting for y'all to try and grab it.
Well, hey! Way to go, Girard! That's sticking up for yourself, most definitely. I mean, I'm still sorry it had to come to that, but...I'd rather you put up the good fight rather than just giving up and succumbing.
Yeah, I figured that'd be her argument, and maybe she has a point with it, but she's still applying it in a rather selfish point of view, particularly as she is of a criminal family and a criminal background and yet seems to believe that makes her the victim, not the culprit, that she was the one who was in the right, not her accusers. And that's a very worrying sort of mindset.
Hopefully this means my fears about her scheming being far more elaborate than just that were unfounded, but...it occurs to me that, with her being a masterful liar, she may not have told Girard everything or just told him what she figured he'd want to hear, so there may be more to it than that. Further, why pursue specifically the life of a royal, one that would be subject to so very much public scrutiny and require so much work and effort to maintain the ruse on up the political chain, if just to enjoy a more comfy life? It seems to me there'd be easier ways of doing it, so why veer straight for the hardest one? Is she really that greedy for the lifestyle? Or...is there more to it than all that?
Nah, one thing for certain is that the greed definitely got the better of her. Part of the reason why she's fought so hard to avoid being found out--she can't bear the idea of her gains being stripped from her, to loose that comfy life again she had so carefully stolen, but...was it ever really hers to steal in the first place?
Ha! Nailed it in one!
I do! Gloria was the one who moved the protein shake mix (I mean, obviously at this point) and she wanted it found, and that seemed like a good and natural way for it to be so. It's actually rather clever if it wasn't so malicious.
On a related point, I guess this means Grid had always been telling the truth about that time in the kitchen. I think what had happened is that instead of going straight to find Grid like instructed, Gloria instead diverted to find Girard (seeing he was probably looking to regroup with her after the attack), and only went back to looking for Grid after the fact. Her hesitation to explain the delay fetching Grid wasn't because she couldn't find Grid but because she was trying to excuse why she hadn't found him right away. That's probably why she started leaning on the idea of framing Grid for it all afterwards, because it had inadvertently given her an excellent chance to do so (though I don't know what she expected to come of that, because Grid's innocence would've still come to light sooner rather than later in the end and led the authorities to double-down on finding the changeling from the others again, risking additional suspicion on her and Girard, so it was a short term gain, long term loss at best).
Of course, the other implication of all of this is that I don't think Girard quite realizes the full scope of Gloria's plan and all of its implications, so I wonder how he'll react once Gloria's true colors sink in fully...
Sums it up nicely, yes.
...so...how did things go with Zorn and Gloria in the boiler room? I still think letting her go with him, alone, was a bad idea, particularly as I'm pretty sure Gloria hasn't yet realized that the jig is already up, and may still be desperately trying to do anything to save it...
As for how this story will end...I think Girard will get a happy-ish ending in the end, though it's probably going to mean fudging the details of what really has happened here in this villa to the royal guard in order to do it. What will happen to Gloria is probably the better question, because I honestly don't know. It sort of depends on how soon she will give up the fight, and I hope that, for everyone's sake, she does so sooner rather than later.
But we've still got three chapters to go, so...lots of things could still happen moving forward (though I think we're largely finished with the big sudden twists--it's all resolution moving forward now).
Looks like my pet theory was wrong - only one changeling. At least I pegged Gloria as the most suspicious from her first scene.
Well, I was wrong about Grid Iron. A pity, but it shows how talented this author is. Girard was basically at the bottom of my suspect list. Definitely excited to see how this comes to an end.
It's a testament to how off-the-wall this mystery is when the premise's promised revelation of who the changeling is is overshadowed by personal concerns, motivations, how things would end. Scolus has ended up tearing these friendships apart... well, hopefully, the ball he started rolling would be stopped by our intrepid detectives soon, with the concern that now the antagonists won't just be the Royal Guard but also the other friends in the group save for Zorn.
And... well, I could maybe see the lesson/theme coming along already: trust. Friendship and love require trust. While a changeling's biology already taps into that theme quite nicely, there's the truth that perhaps none of the six here are friends at all, just fair-weather pals that won't stand by each other when ugly truths come into light. They don't ask each other, "How can I help you?" when their own darknesses come to light... there's instead a recoil, either actual or perceived.
It's harrowing that it's come down to this, that Scolus's chosen option is to tear the bandage (or cast) off and tell the truth as plainly as possible. There's a tinge of irony that, in the end, the changeling might end up as the most open book.