//------------------------------//
// 2 - The Case of the Stolen Tarts 
// Story: The Casebook of Currycombs 
// by AugieDog 
//------------------------------//

The phrase "moving day" had always conjured to my mind a pair of conflicting emotions: excitement on the one hoof, and tedium on the other. For in my youth, the romance of leaving behind the old and the familiar while embracing the new and the fresh, it had seemed to me, would clash rather dissonantly with the commonplace but necessary tasks of packing, lugging, unpacking, and arranging.

Of course, having grown up in one of Her Majesty's orphan asylums, I had no personal experience with such matters. After all, upon my eighteenth birthday, I'd gone from the care of the nuns directly into the army as a newly minted medical mare with no chattels to speak of. And when the griffin-induced injuries I'd sustained on the frontier saw me mustered out after a decade in harness, the entirety of my personal possessions fit quite neatly into the pair of panniers slung across my back.

Therefore, with nothing of the commonplace clinging to my current circumstances, I allowed myself to toss my mane a bit as I trotted along the cobbled streets of Ehwazton. For not only was I moving into a room to which—novelty of novelties—I alone would retain a key, but the aardhorse who would occupy the apartment's other bedroom and with whom I would share the large sitting and dining area was indeed one of the most extraordinary equines I'd ever met.

Granted, I'd only been introduced to Currycombs the day before, but to say that she had made an impression upon me would be a great understatement. Assisting her and the detectives of Shetland Yard had rekindled a spark in me that I'd not felt since leaving my regiment, and when I'd learned at the conclusion of the case that Currycombs was in search of someone to share rooming expenses, we'd formed a partnership on the spot. Last night, the two of us had visited an apartment upstairs from her current digs along Bakery Row, and I was now unable to keep from high-stepping a bit as I inhaled the aroma of fresh bread that was to provide the atmosphere for my new life.

Bakery Row was an aardhorse neighborhood, and the flanks of those who shared the street with me all sported pies and cakes, carts and ovens, muffins and baguettes, eigensigils that symbolized the tasks from which the area had taken its name. Nonetheless, I received hardly a glance: other unicorns strode about patronizing the shops; pegasi wheeled down from the crisp blue autumn morning to deliver and carry away packages; and I'd carefully draped my shoulders in the longest of my sturdy green blankets to mask the foul scars puckering the hide along my left foreleg.

At the base of the stairs leading up to number 21, sandwiched between Trencher's Panini Emporium on the left and a tea house called 'Twas Brillig on the right, I stopped, took another breath—and had to cough at a sudden acrid tinge to the air. Motion pulled my attention upward, and my ears tightened against my head to see black smoke trickling from around the windows of my new apartment. Activating my magic, I wrenched the key from its spot in my panniers, but one of the windows flying open and a familiar ash-gray head lunging partway out arrested any further action on my part. "Ah!" Currycombs called down, seemingly oblivious to the billows pouring past her. "Good morning, Doctor! Might I ask your assistance in a small matter?"

"Fire!" somebody shouted across the street.

"Not at all!" Currycombs shouted back. "Contrary to the popular aphorism, this smoke"—she gestured dismissively with a hoof—"instead indicates my most successful experiment yet in detecting chemical reagents in ash particulates!"

"Fire, I say again!" came the same voice.

Currycombs rolled her eyes, then returned her gaze to mine. "If you'd kindly join me, Scalpel? Before I once again have to explain science to the clydesdales of the fire brigade?" And she drew her head back into the miasma.

Bounding up the steps, I stabbed my key into the lock and pulled the door open with a quick spell. Any further forward progress on my part, however, was impeded by Mr. Trencher, our landlord as well as the owner and chief baker of the panini shop above which our rooms were located. When I'd first met him the previous evening, he'd seemed a jovial stallion, heavy-set and a slightly darker dun color than the equilateral triangle of baguettes that formed his eigensigil. Now, however, not a trace of that joviality remained. "Dr. Scalpel," he said, his voice more a rumble than anything else, "I've made a point during the decades of my life not to form a lasting opinion of any equine I've known for fewer than twelve hours. But you, having enabled that damned Currycombs not only to remain under my roof but to move into a larger space..." He shook his head. "You are testing my resolve, Madam."

I forced my ears to perk. "My apologies, Mr. Trencher." I slipped past him to the stairway on the left side of the corridor. "I shall most decidedly speak to Currycombs about this." As quickly as I could gallop, I reached the upper floor, unlocked the door marked "B", and burst through into such a stinging cloud of smoke, tears welled up around the edges of my vision. A levitation spell raised all the remaining windows, and I summoned up several bits of magic I'd learned during my stint abroad that I'd found useful for sterilizing areas before performing emergency surgery; these and a carefully directed breeze forced the remainder of the smoke outside while simultaneously freshening the air.

My clearing eyes beheld Currycombs nodding in the center of the expansive room. "Excellently done, Doctor!" She trotted to a table set up in a small alcove along the wall to my left, bent down, and peered into a microscope settled there among a plethora of flasks, bottles, and tubes, none of which had been there the night before. "Ha!" Touching a hoof to the instrument's focusing wheel, she stepped back and gestured me forward. "Observe, Scalpel, and consider how beneficial this will prove in arson investigations!"

"Arson?" I squinted into the microscope and saw nothing but smudges. "Then you did start a fire?"

Had I been of a more fanciful turn of mind, I might've imagined that I could hear her eyes rolling this time. "A very small and controlled one."

With a clearing of throat, I glanced from the selection of flammable chemicals lined up upon the table to the large metal bin filled with charred wood chips that sat on the floor. "Small?" I asked.

Blowing a breath through her lips, Currycombs spun past a sofa sitting near the fireplace and collapsed onto a padded chaise lounge, also new arrivals since I'd last been in the room some twelve hours ago: I imagined she must've hauled them up from her former place downstairs during the night. "I must make myself indispensable to those fools at Shetland Yard, don't you understand? Otherwise, I'll have nothing whatsoever to occupy my mind!" She flailed a hoof at the Ehwazton Times spread across the low table between the sofa and the lounge. "Furlong's the only detective there with a modicum of imagination, and it's become obvious that his sole purpose in calling me in to consult is to discredit me and my methods! Even when I solve the biggest case in two generations, well, see for yourself how they represent things to the press!"

She draped a foreleg over her eyes, and settling upon the sofa, I glanced at the newspaper, folded open to display an article entitled "Another Triumph for Shetland Yard". And while it reported a fair proportion of yesterday's events, it omitted all but the barest mention of my friend: "Currycombs, a local skipchaser," I read aloud, "provided detectives with some assistance in locating Mr. Hope Springs after Ms. Peony had accused him of committing the crime."

"Skipchaser!" Currycombs spat the word. "And yes, I have indeed hired myself out to pursue bail jumpers in the past when desperate for some puzzle to solve, but still!" Leaping to her hooves, she stomped along the open windows, her shoes crunching the stiff, new carpet. "I present the constabulary with the entirety of their case, and this is how they repay me!"

I nodded. "We should put together an account of the event as it actually occurred and deliver that to the papers."

"Feh!" Her snort stirred the curtains as she turned at the far wall and made her way back to her table of experiments. "I've no time to dwell in the past! You may do as you like!"

So I did.

The next morning, I purchased a ream of writing paper, a quill pen, and a bottle of ink. I repositioned the desk in my bedroom to look out upon the street below—fortunately, my room had come equipped with its own furniture—and there I spent a week writing out the details of the case as I'd experienced it. Titling this account A Study in Sorrel, I sent the pages to the attention of Ink Slinger, the editor of the Times.

During the period of my article's composition and while then awaiting Ink Slinger's response, I began to accustom myself to the apartment, the neighborhood, and my new friend's habits. Currycombs kept no set schedule, I quickly learned: I would occasionally emerge from my room at my usual half an hour after sunrise to find her already well into her breakfast at the large dining table, but more often she would emerge bleary-eyed and disheveled from her chamber while I was engaged in one of the splendid lunches Mr. Trencher provided. I usually dined alone in the evenings, and it wasn't at all uncommon for the sound of her key in the flat's front door to rouse me drowsily from slumber in the after midnight darkness.

In certain matters, her demonstrated knowledge made me doubt I'd ever met an equine more accomplished.  Fields ranging from chemistry and botany to logic and criminal psychology seemed to hold no mystery for her. And yet, when I remarked one morning that Queen Nimbus had begun the dawn a bit earlier than the time printed in the paper, I received a look of blinking confusion and the astonishing query, "Why would Queen Nimbus have anything to do with the dawn?"

I hesitated a moment, but Currycombs wore no trace of a grin. So I stammered out an explanation of something that every schoolfoal knows—that ever since the Age of Cacophony more than a thousand years ago, the Queens of Hevosenvalta have wielded the Solara Sceptre each morning and evening to start the sun and moon moving upon their proper courses.

Currycombs merely shrugged. "Yet another useless fact that I now must do my utmost to forget."

"What?" Even during my decade of military service, I had rarely experienced the sensation that the cheaper genres of fiction describe as 'blood boiling.' But I felt it now unmistakably. "The winged unicorns of Firebird House are the greatest treasure Hevosenvalta possesses! Without the guidance of each successive queen, we equines would still be herds of wandering nomads, laboring the entirety of our wretched lives without the comforting touch of civilization! How can you possibly denigrate the—"

"Please, Doctor." She waved a hoof from where she lay across her chaise lounge. "I merely meant that the mind has but a finite capacity for the retention of information. I must focus myself, therefore, solely upon whatever will help me unravel those skeins of crime to which my eigensigil calls me to attend." My gaze darted to the blank hide of her flank, still disconcerting to me after the two-and-a-half weeks of our acquaintance. "The invisible, omnipresent truth," she went on, her voice low and husky. "Anything not serving my pursuit of that goal must be left to the side of the road like so much unwanted baggage. Including the knowledge of who or what is responsible for making the sun rise."

Her moods vacillated just as variously, I'd quickly come to notice, expansive and entertaining one day, sullen and withdrawn the next, and while she never made any effort to hide her clients or her cases from me, neither did she show any sign that she wished my assistance with them. We chatted together amiably enough when we happened to meet in our shared space, but I must admit that I found the arrangement somewhat less than satisfactory.

In fact, a certain resentment began rankling at me. Had I been mistaken in thinking we'd felt some kinship, this odd mare and I? Or was our only true connection the larger rooms my monthly pension allowed her to occupy?

My outlook continued to darken as day followed day with no word from the Times. Wandering the streets and observing others at their daily employment made my hooves itch—idleness simply didn't suit me—but it also made my scars itch, my stomach fluttering at the mere thought of the work I'd spent my whole life pursuing. Lying sleepless in bed more and more frequently, I was unable to keep from dwelling upon the question: what could possibly be left for a medical mare whose nerves seemingly disallowed her to practice medicine any longer?

Currycombs as well grew more dour, her complaints about the caliber of the jobs she was forced to accept becoming a regular feature of our conversations. "One month!" she announced one late morning as she emerged from her rooms to throw herself down at the table where Mr. Trencher had just laid out our lunch. "And nothing but the smallest and meanest of cases have come my way! Undoubtedly that miserable Furlong has blackballed me from any further consultation at Shetland Yard, and I shall be doomed to descend into madness and squalor!"

A knock at the door interrupted her further lament, and when I used my magic to undo the lock from where I sat, I blinked to see Mr. Trencher there with quite the arresting figure behind him: a honey-gold pegasus stallion in a carefully curled wig, his crisp white doublet bearing the Firebird Crest. I found myself climbing to my hooves at the sight of the royal emblem, and I was fairly certain that the wide-eyed incredulity I saw upon Mr. Trencher's face was echoed upon my own. "Ms. Currycombs," Mr. Trencher said, licking his lips. "You and Dr. Scalpel have a, uhh, a visitor."

"It's a summons, actually," said the liveried stallion, stepping forward and brandishing a card with the forefeathers of one wing. "Prime Minister Gears requests the immediate presence of you both at the Royal Palace."

I stared at him some more, none of the words making any sense. Me? To the Palace?

Swiveling my head, I stared at Currycombs. Her ears stood erect in a way I'd not seen them for weeks, her mane practically bristling along her neck. "Of course," she said as easily as if we'd been invited to tea at the bistro downstairs. She nodded to me, her eyes aglow. "Perhaps we'd best get our wraps, Doctor?"

Our ride through the streets of Ehwazton in the back of an open royal coach caused my self-consciousness to blossom into full blushing flower, but the blanket I'd grabbed covered enough of my scars to keep me from attempting to melt away completely. Currycombs, on the other hoof, gave the impression of never having traveled in any other fashion, her demeanor nothing but calm as the four armored destriers drew us from the tangle of the city's west end to the stately mansions upon the riverbank and at last to Windsoar Palace, the great and ancient edifice that formed the center of our beloved Hevosenvalta.

The gates drew open at our approach, and we passed through into the Grand Courtyard, a place I'd seen hundreds of times in photographs without ever dreaming I would enter there. The carriage came to a halt at one of the smaller marble staircases leading up into the magnificently crenulated buildings all around us, and the liveried pegasus alit upon the lowest step. "This way, please," he said, the first words he'd offered our entire trip.

Moving to Currycombs's side as we ascended the stairs after the stallion, I couldn't help murmuring, "I'm rather surprised you didn't pepper our guide with questions about all this."

Her mouth pulled sideways. "To what end? This fellow's given us all the information he'd been instructed to give. To ask him for anything more would've only proven an exercise in frustration for us all."

I blinked at her, and we entered corridors freighted with history: suits of armor, paintings, sculptures, vases, a display of every imaginable accouterment to the prime ministerial wing of the royal palace. With effort, I managed to keep from tripping too often, my attention seized by some artifact or other with nearly every step, while Currycombs walked along as if our surroundings interested her not in the least; it wasn't until the pegasus stopped at an unassuming door halfway along a hallway that her ears sprang to alertness.

The stallion knocked on the door, pushed it open, and said, "Prime Minister Gears."

Derailleur Gears rose from his desk, his shirt impeccably tailored to his narrow shoulders, his dark coat peppered with gray, the mane around his spiraling horn stylishly cropped. "Dr. Silver Scalpel!" He came across the room and extended a front hoof in my direction. "After reading your account, I feel I would know you anywhere!"

"Account?" My mind became even more of a complete and utter blank than it had been .

"Scalpel!" Currycombs cocked a smile at me. "You've surprised me! I never thought for a moment that you'd actually write it up!"

Light began to dawn. "You mean A Study in Sorrel?" I looked from Currycombs to the prime minister. "But however did you read—?"

Currycombs gave a snort. "Ink Slinger is Mr. Gears's sister-in-law! I'm not at all surprised that she shared her knowledge of me with him considering the present difficult situation."

Mr. Gears had gone pale looking at my friend. "How did you know about—?"

"Please, Mr. Prime Minister." Currycombs gestured to the office around us. "If the situation were not difficult, we would not all be here."

"Yes, I...I suppose that's true." The flash of Mr. Gears's smile vanished almost at once. "For you see, we...we've had some tarts stolen."

Never before or since have I seen a blanker look cross a mare's face. "Tarts?" Currycombs asked.

"Tarts." Mr. Gears started for his desk but still managed to wave a hoof in the air. "And little Princess Ephemera was nearly kidnapped as well, but as she's now safe and the tarts still aren't, you can see why I'm more concerned about the one than the other."

I opened my mouth to inform the prime minister that I in truth couldn't see that at all, but Currycombs touched my shoulder, shook her head quickly, and said, "Perhaps, sir, you could begin at the beginning."

"Of course." He slumped behind his desk, the glow from his horn plucking a kerchief from his pocket and dabbing it at his forehead. "In two days, we'll be marking the first anniversary of Queen Marigold's death. Along with the public commemoratory events, it's become customary for the current queen to honor her mother's memory by baking a batch of tarts and setting them out in the rotunda that serves as an antechamber to the family wing of the palace for the five days prior to the anniversary. Queen Nimbus indeed did this three days ago, but that same night—"

His voice caught, and he swallowed. "That same night, the tarts vanished! Guards heard a clatter from the rotunda and entered to investigate, but while they found Princess Ephemera wrapped in her blankets upon the floor, of the tarts, there was no sign! With the princess barely a month old, she certainly couldn't have reached the rotunda from the nursery on her own, but the family wing of the palace has been the most secure spot in all Hevosenvalta for a thousand years!" He smacked a hoof against his desk. "It's inconceivable that an outsider could've broken in, but it's even more inconceivable that anyone on staff could've attempted to kidnap the princess while succeeding in desecrating Queen Marigold's memorial!"

Covering his face with his hooves, Mr. Gears fell silent for several seconds before continuing: "Her Majesty told me not to concern myself as she would have her private guard investigate, but I served Queen Marigold for four decades, and I...I've been unable to sleep since all this occurred. Last night at dinner when Ink Slinger began telling us about this extraordinary account of detective prowess she'd received, I—" He lowered his hooves. "I would consider it a personal favor, Ms. Currycombs and Dr. Scalpel, if you would look into the matter."

As a foal, I'd attempted ice skating several times on the pond behind the orphanage, and yet, the slipping, sliding, crashing sensation I'd felt then was nothing compared to what was happening inside my head at that very moment. I couldn't begin to pick which was the more improbable: the whole peculiar tale he'd just unveiled to us, or that the prime minister knew my name.

Fortunately, Currycombs seemed as imperturbable as an afternoon cloud. "If we might see the family rotunda, sir?" she asked.

Which is how I came to be traipsing along musty corridors that had undoubtedly felt naught but the shoes of royalty and those in their direct employ for more than a millennium. Names I'd learned as a filly clattered about in my skull, and I couldn't help wondering if Queen Epona, shod in the black armor that now stood in the foyer of the Ehwazton History Museum, had once trod these floors, or if one of Queen Lanolin's many lovers had perhaps used the window we were passing to gain entry to the royal suite. It didn't help my suddenly surging imagination that the walls fairly bristled with portraits of queens and princesses, their consorts and courtiers, stretching back to the founding of Hevosenvalta and all seeming to regard with suspicion this daughter of no pedigree who trespassed in their domain.

At length, however, the spaces became more modern, the scents less dusty, and Mr. Gears slackened his pace, drawing to a halt a few steps from another nondescript door. "I shall ask the two of you to remain here a moment," he murmured, his eyes rimmed ever so slightly with white. "I shall advance into the family rotunda and make certain that Her Majesty is not within."

Currycombs merely nodded, but all four of my knees threatened to buckle at the thought of encountering Cumulo Nimbus, the great white winged unicorn who'd succeeded her mother Marigold as queen about the time that the crossed scalpels of my eigensigil had first appeared upon my flanks. Queen Marigold's death last year, though long expected, had shaken the realm to its core, but Queen Nimbus had proven herself a true daughter of House Firebird when she and Prince Feldspar had presented Princess Ephemera to a jubilant Hevosenvalta before the first anniversary of the late queen's passing.

Mr. Gears's horn seemed to sputter slightly, but the glow of his magic enveloped the doorknob. He pulled the door open, stepped through, and shut it behind himself, the silence suddenly as thick as custard, the air almost solid as I sucked it into my lungs.

"Scalpel?" For a change, Currycombs seemed just as affected as I, her voice so quiet and shivery, it snapped me from my own state. Focusing on her, I beheld folded ears and a downturned face. "I...I..." She swallowed.

My medical training kicked in, and I moved to her side. "Steady on, now, Currycombs. No matter the setting, never doubt that your abilities will carry the day." I touched a hoof to her shoulder.

She started back as if I'd stung her. "Doubt my abilities?" She blew a breath noisily through her lips. "Doctor, I was merely finding it difficult to admit that I—" She sucked the breath just as noisily back in. "That I owe you an apology."

The only answer I could manage to this admission was, "I beg your pardon?"

"As I beg yours!" She spun and waved at the corridor we'd traversed, paintings of royalty adorning every section of wall. "I once told you that the knowledge of who made the sun rise and set was useless to me, but the portraits in these halls prove me wrong! For every white-coated monarch for more than a thousand years has taken a black-coated stallion as her prince and borne a single black-coated winged unicorn for her daughter! While every black-coated sovereign has taken a white-coated stallion and borne a single, white, winged unicorn filly!"

I couldn't help pursing my lips. "Music hall comedians have been commenting on the subject since time immemorial, Currycombs. Powerful magic lies within Firebird House's family tree, that's all."

"Indeed." Currycombs's eyes shimmered. "And I had almost allowed myself to forget that."

My confused blinking was cut short when the door opened and Mr. Gears beckoned us through. Steeling myself, I followed Currycombs into as perfectly constructed a rotunda as one could possibly have imagined, the air cool and crisp and clean. Noontime sunlight streamed through windows of both clear and stained glass that took up most of the walls, the colors they cast so vibrant, the plush white carpeting almost seemed to swirl.

The clench in my stomach began relaxing at once, the place warm and inviting after the hallways we'd been marching through. In another contrast, the entire space was largely free of ornament: a small, plain, round table sat against the windows of the far wall and displayed a single decades-old photograph of the late Queen Marigold in her prime, her black hide glossy with youth. Sprigs of funereal cypress draped the upper corners of the photograph, and an empty platter sat before it.

"Here," Mr. Gears said, leading us across the room to the table, and there I saw that the platter wasn't entirely empty, a few crumbs scattered over the white porcelain. "As you can see, Ms. Currycombs," the prime minister was going on, "the tarts were—"

"Yes, of course, sir." Currycombs was looking at the floor. "And where was Princess Ephemera discovered?"

"She—" Mr. Gears began.

But a contralto voice as gentle as a summer evening interrupted him: "She was huddled just there, Ms.—Currycombs, was it?"

Startled, I spun to see Queen Nimbus herself, white as a snowbank and a head taller than Mr. Gears. Her wings lay tucked against her sides, and her horn glowed silver, her magic levitating a bassinet out of which peered the wide eyes of a filly whose midnight blue wings and horn proclaimed her to be the Princess Ephemera.

My reaction could only be described as instinctual: my throat closed up, my front legs bent, and I bowed myself to the floor. I straightened to see Currycombs rising from a similar bow, but she, as usual, had no difficulty speaking: "Pray forgive us, Your Majesty. With your assistance, however, I believe I will be able to reassure Prime Minister Gears that all is well in the palace."

"Your Majesty!" Mr. Gears recovered enough at that point to cry out. "This is Currycombs, an investigator who has consulted with Shetland Yard on some of their more tangled cases. I thought perhaps—"

"Investigator?" Her Majesty smiled and shook her head. "Derailleur, I told you there was no need to worry."

"Indeed," Currycombs cut in. "Especially as there's been no crime committed."

I wasn't the only one in the room to snap a shocked expression in her direction, but it was Mr. Gears who sputtered, "No crime? How can you possibly say that?"

Currycombs shrugged. "By a careful study of the facts, sir."

"Study?" Mr. Gears waved a hoof. "You've not been in this room for thirty seconds! Do you truly wish me to believe—?"

"Your Majesty?" Currycombs bowed again toward our sovereign. "Would it be possible to show the prime minister just how precocious the young princess is?"

"What?" Tendons stood out on Mr. Gears's neck; I half expected foam to begin flecking his nostrils. "The foal's not yet four weeks old! Are you saying she was somehow able to—?"

"Mama?" a tiny voice asked, and the princess rose upon dusky wings from her bassinet to settle on the carpet beside her mother. I couldn't keep from gaping: a month old, and not only was she nearly the size of a yearling, but her flanks already showed a simple version of the Royal Firebird eigensigil.

But if I was astonished, the reaction from Mr. Gears verged on the apoplectic, his face twitching, mere fragments of words dropping from his lips.

At this display, the princess leaped into a hover and clapped her front hooves together. "Funny!" she cooed, drifting forward to touch the prime minister's snout with her own. "Funny!"

"Ephemera," Queen Nimbus said in tones that even an orphan such as myself recognized as being parentally admonitory. "What have you to say to Mr. Gears?"

"Umm..." The princess cocked her head and piped cheerfully, "How'dja do, Mr. Ears?"

"Mera?" The barest rumble of thunder lurked at the edges of Her Majesty's voice.

Princess Ephemera's hooves and gaze settled to the floor. "Sorry 'bout the tarts." A grin wrinkled her snout, and she glanced up through a flutter of eyelashes. "Pretty tasty, though."

The briefest of pauses ensued, then Mr. Gears gave a guffaw so large, I was surprised the gust didn't knock the princess over. "Your Highness," he said, bowing to the foal, his eyes shimmering, "someday, I must tell you how much your grandmother relished a well-made tart."

Her Majesty smiled like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, and my throat tightened. Currycombs, however, barked a laugh. "Oh, she knows, Mr. Gears."

The prime minister swung a confused look toward Currycombs, but my attention was drawn to the royal equines behind him, their eyes widening, their ears dipping, and their wings springing partway out.

Currycombs shrugged. "I'm certain that Her Majesty has already begun chronicling Queen Marigold's astonishing life for the young princess." She dipped her head toward our monarch and her daughter. "But now that Dr. Scalpel and I are no longer needed here—"

"Yes." Queen Nimbus's display of alarm had passed so quickly, I began wondering if I'd imagined it. "Still, we thank you, Ms. Currycombs, for giving us the opportunity to ease our dear prime minister's mind concerning this matter." She nodded to Mr. Gears. "Perhaps, Derailleur, you could ask a coach to be sent around to the family entrance here?"

"Of course, Your Majesty." The corner of Mr. Gears's mouth gave a slight tick when he turned toward Currycombs and myself. "And I apologize for—"

"Tut, tut." Currycombs seemed to vibrate where she stood. "I've not thought deeply about Firebird House until today, but now that I have, I must admit that I've found the experience to be most gratifying." She clicked her rear hooves together and gave as formal a bow as any I'd seen during my days with the regiment. "I've never been prouder to be a citizen of Hevosenvalta and have never been prouder of the equines under whose wings and horns we've flourished."

That I wasn't the only one to find this speech odd showed in the prime minister's face. "Well," he said into the sudden silence, "I'll, uhh, get that coach."

The silence grew even thornier after Mr. Gears's departure, but then Currycombs said, "Rest assured, Your Majesties, that you may speak as freely before Dr. Scalpel as you can before me. She has my trust entirely, and so should she have yours."

Queen Nimbus's gaze wavered between the two of us, then settled at least upon Currycombs. "How?" Her Majesty asked, and the strange mixture of yearning and desperation I heard in that single word made the fine hairs at the base of my mane stand up.

Currycombs waved a hoof. "It was a number of small details that I'd never considered in juxtaposition before: the genetic unlikelihood that every White Queen would bear a Black Queen and vice versa every generation for so many centuries, for instance, and the way your eigensigils develop at such an early age." She cocked her head at Her Majesty. "Might I assume the two of you are born with them?"

"Impossible!" I blurted, then immediately covered my mouth with a hoof.

"And yet?" Currycombs gestured toward the frowning Princess Ephemera, the simple silver and blue firebird outline of her eigensigil unmistakable. "Furthermore, while no known magic can affect an equine's eigensigil, perhaps you'll notice how a few carefully applied daubs of dye could transform Princess Ephemera's sigil into the late Queen Marigold's? Indeed, with care, one could turn the princess's sigil into that of every black coated monarch who's served Hevosenvalta for the past thousand years, could one not?" She gestured to Queen Nimbus. "Her Majesty's sigil as well could be viewed as a lightly highlighted version of the same red and gold firebird every white coated queen in our history has possessed." Currycombs's voice got very quiet in the airy chamber. "Or perhaps one should say 'phoenix' rather than 'firebird?'"

"Enough," said Princess Ephemera, and while her voice was still youthful and chirping, nothing about her tone or her expression was. "Tread carefully, madam, for such thoughts have sent many an equine to their death."

"Sister?" Queen Nimbus stroked a hoof along the princess's back. "Who wears the crown at the moment?"

The princess pouted in what would likely have been an adorable fashion if I hadn't been so wracked with confusion. "You do, Sister," she said.

"And I choose to trust." Her Majesty fixed a kindly yet penetrating gaze first upon my friend, then upon me. "Ms. Currycombs? Dr. Scalpel? You have just joined a very select company." That gaze sharpened like a misaligned nail in my hoof. "Pray that my sister and I don't find cause to revoke your membership."

"Impossible!" I blurted again, the implications of everything beginning to trickle through my stupor. "Are you saying you continually give birth to one another?"

Princess Ephemera rolled her eyes, but Queen Nimbus smiled. "Whether it's a blessing or a curse," she said, "is a conversation we have every few centuries."

"And that," Currycombs said from somewhere behind me, "is why there's been no crime committed here. For how could Princess Ephemera have stolen tarts that were baked to honor Queen Marigold when they are both the same equine?"

Undoubtedly, I would've stood there gaping for the rest of the day if Mr. Gears hadn't returned then to tell us the coach was waiting. I retained just enough presence of mind to bow to our sovereigns and to notice the exchange between Princess Ephemera and Currycombs—the princess glared, Currycombs stuck out her tongue, and the princess broke into a giggle—before we were ushered down a corridor to an exterior door where a carriage sat.

Mr. Gears thanked us profusely, the glow of his magic drifting an envelope into Currycombs's jacket. Currycombs thanked him, and I found myself swept into the coach; it wasn't until we'd passed beneath the archway of the Grand Courtyard's entrance that I found my tongue again, and even then, I could only repeat, "Impossible."

Currycombs laughed. "If there's one thing I've learned in my profession, Doctor, it's that, once you've eliminated six impossible explanations, the seventh, no matter how impossible it might also be, must be the truth."

"But—!" I waved a frantic hoof at the palace slowly shrinking behind us, but aware of the destriers pulling our coach, I tried to temper my statements. "This knowledge! The questions it raises! It...it changes everything!"

"I hardly see how." Waving her own hoof more sedately, Currycombs brought my attention back to the city rising up ahead of us. "Ehwazton and Hevosenvalta remain secure, and with our help, our queen and princess will continue guiding them on to ever greater glories." She patted my foreleg. "Is that not answer enough for now?"

My mind still awhirl, I nonetheless nodded, and we rode in silence through the winding streets back to Bakery Row.