//------------------------------// // 6. This Cream-Faced Business Bird // Story: The Quiet Equestrian // by Neon Czolgosz //------------------------------// Blueblood was waiting for me in a boxy steam room at the San Pescador Baths, a public swimming pool in Canterlot’s Western Quarter. He’d dyed or spelled himself a lime-green coat, an electric-blue mane, and a big ugly walrus ‘tache, the kind of mismatched technicolor combo that meant he’d blend in perfectly with any crowd of ponies. “Be a good fellow and give the rocks a splash,” he said, pointing at a cast-iron ladle. “Sure.” I ladled water from a bucket onto the heated stones in the middle of the room. A plume of steam went up, smelling of rubber lemons and ersatzkaffee. My nostrils twitched. “Jeez. You branching out into aromatherapy or something? Stick to Princing.” The corners of his mouth turned up. “It’s a little bit of alchemy, actually. A few oils and unguents that are sensitive to probing magics. If there are eavesdroppers, we will know about them. Please, sit.” I sat on the wooden benches, already starting to sweat from the heat. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take sunny Equestria over chilly Griffonstone any day of the week, but steaming like a dumpling isn’t my idea of a good time. Blueblood slouched in his seat like a boneless chicken, and spoke at the wall. “Your name is Grendel Gronkhürt—” “I like ops better when my cover name doesn’t sound like I made it up on the spot.” A smug little noise came from deep in his throat. “Grendel is a real griffon, actually, she’s—” “Tell her I’m sorry.” “—she’s a vice president of sales for Vaahn Ironmongery. I happen to know that she’s off the grid at the moment, so you’re going to impersonate her. Your job is to suss out the Royal Guard posting schedule for the Equestrian Public Archives for the next month, street level and interior. You’ll be working with Illusionist, she’s arranged a meeting between Gronkhürt, herself, and a Royal Guard quartermaster, at RGHQ for two-thirty on-the-dot this afternoon. There’s—” “RGHQ?” “Yes, the Royal Guard Head—” “—Quarters, yeah, I know, I just wanted to check that you’re sending me into a building full of soldiers, cops, and soldiercops with five hours notice.” The sauna wasn’t helping my tense muscles. “I was worried, see, that you might be sending me to do something that isn’t crazy and dumb.” “You’ll be fine, I’m sure. Now, you—and by you, I mean Grendel—are going there to make an offer for barding materials. Vaahn Ironmongery does interesting work with arcane weaving. You’ll be offering uniforms woven with mithril, cold iron, sternsblut and the like.” “Marking and masking.” Blueblood pulled his head forward to beam at me. “Ah! I forgot you were a military mare. Or molly, as the case may be.” “Hah, nah. Ain’t from scout days, it’s from hunting. Infravision tabards aren’t cheap, but it’s worth the price to not get a crossbow bolt in your butt because you looked like a quarry eel in the underbrush.” “You’ll find yourself in like-minded company, then. The Royal Guard wish to acquire uniforms that will make it possible for a pegasus to overlook a riot scene from a thousand yards in the air and immediately pick out the guards from the rioters, and a different set of uniforms that make trying to find a guardspony by magic like trying to find a mosquito by taste.” Blueblood sipped from a bottle of spring water. “Illusionist will provide the distractions and directions, but the quartermaster’s office is directly across the hall from the scheduling lieutenant’s. You will break into the office, make facsimiles of the schedules, and return to Illusionist without being detected. Needless to say, you may not so much as pluck a hair from any member of the Royal Guard; you’ll be burned and disavowed if any of them come to serious harm.” I took a glug from his bottle. “You want me to be half-burglar, half-secretary.” “Well now, that’s the spirit of espionage really, isn’t it? It’s a straightforward job, and drinks are on me afterwards.” “I dunno, buddy, it doesn’t seem that straightforward to me. Our boss’s big bro is the former Guard Captain. She could walk in, grab the stuff, and they’d hold the doors open for her since she’s, y’know, a Princess.” I leaned forward and levelled a talon at him. “So I gotta be suspicious when you’ve got a longer, trickier, risky plan where it’s my ovaries on the line if things go wrong.” Blueblood sat up, shaking the tension from his muscles. “You’ve got a very good point, and I’ve got a very good reason.” “And what’s that?” “Our boss does not know about this plan. She has not been read in, she knows none of the details, and it does not have her knowledge or approval.” I blinked. “Did I miss the part where we went rogue?” He paused for a second, then said, “This is a delicate operation, most of it rather illegal. Up until this moment, we have only broken laws that affect Equestrian citizens, and if her role in this operation was compromised, our boss would only be accountable to the Equestrian public. She is, however, a sovereign, and our mission requires several actions with... international implications. If she could be tied directly to these actions, it would not reflect private citizens committing illegal acts, it would be considered a military action by the state itself. As I have no official power or role within the Equestrian government, I direct all sub-operations that our boss has asked to have no knowledge of.” He pulled over his water with telekinesis, took another sip, and moved the towel next to him. There was a manilla folder on the bench underneath. He passed it to me. “This is your briefing pack. It contains details of your cover, your identity documents, blueprints for RGHQ, as well as background on Vaahn Ironmongery, the technology you’re selling, the details of your bids, the workings of Royal Guard acquisition, and your competitors,” he said. “Illusionist will meet you in the pool cafe in three hours, you have until then to familiarize yourself with the details. We’ll RV back at the airship at, oh, six-ish.” He stood up, finished the last of the water, and prepared to leave. I peeked at the thick wad of papers inside the folder, and looked back up at him. “Yeah? And what are you doing till then?” “Why, I’m going for a swim.” I snorted. “What, in a public pool? You?” Blueblood smiled from under his ugly mustache. “Everypony has to make a few sacrifices. Enjoy your time with the Guards, Gilda...” * * * Sometimes you can run into somebird you haven’t seen in a while, and without them saying a single word you can tell right away that they’re up to their beak in cack. You see the cigarette stains on their paws, the way their wings bunch up at the back, the bags under their eyes, the preening foam stuck behind their ears, and you just know that something is up, that they’ve lost their job, or their boss has his talons so far up their butt that they’ve become a claw puppet, or they’re either going through or in desperate need of a heavy breakup. RGHQ was that but for a whole building. Trixie and me got searched three times on the way in, a peek in-and-under for our taxi at the gates, then they patted us down and took our bags before they let us into the lobby, and in the lobby they scryed both us and our stuff for hidden enchantments, concealed weapons, and hostile intent. After a disturbingly intimate final patdown, a constable moved us aside. “The scrying spells came up positive for deception, underhoofedness, and unethical monetary gain.” She scowled at us. “Anything you two gentlemares would like to tell me?” “We’re in sales,” said Trixie. The constable nodded, but remained scowling. “The quartermaster will be informed of your arrival. In the meantime, I advise you both to consult these complimentary pamphlets explaining Equestrian law on trading standards and fraudulent conduct, violations of which are punished with both civil and criminal sanctions.” She whipped two booklets from a rack next to the scrying circle, passed us our bags, the booklets, and our visitor identity lanyards, and stomped away. Now, if you’ve never had to wear body armor and a sidearm all day long at work, you might not know that it freakin’ blows. It’s like walking around with hardback books stuffed up your shirt, and the better the armor is the more annoying it is to wear. The more powerful a weapon is, the less you want it dangling off your hip while you’re filing reports and sending out invoices. Equestrian Guards barely wear their reinforced barding on the beat, let alone behind the desk, and why would they? Violent crime ain’t really a big thing in Equestria, and definitely not in Canterlot. Add in unicorn magic, pegasus agility, and general pony scrappiness, and I don’t think I could even tell you what the official peacekeeping sidearm for guards on policing duties was. Until now. Now I know it’s a Coke & Speckles L1A2 Threaded Baton, with arcane charging and whip capability. I found that out because every single stallion and mare in RGHQ had one sheathed on the webbing of their Level 2 Personal Protective Barding. “Huleew, are yew tew with Varn?” I snapped my head round to see an apple-cheeked, middle-aged Guardstallion smiling at us. “What?” “Are yew the reeps from Varn Eernmerngrey?” I honestly didn’t realise he was speaking Equestrian until Trixie said, “Yes, we’re with Vaahn. I’m Star Nimbus, Director of Exports, and my colleague is Grendel Gronkhürt.” “Eh pleesure, eem Rooner Bean, der Quoortymerster. Would yew leek to fellow me?” I stood up, blinking, wondering if this guy had a really bad speech impediment or if he was some kind of deaf. “Are you a Chicken Choker?” asked Trixie. My eyes went wide, and... “Rooner Bean?” gave her a fixed smile. “Been a weel since eev heard dat term...” “You’re from Stilltree Lakes, aren’t you?” Trixie beamed at him. “All my dad’s side of the family live there, proud Chicken Chokers for generations.” He relaxed straight away, and laughed. “Eh, ey leafed der herf mey leaf. Sooch a preedy pleece.” “Do you visit often?” “Ween ey get leave, doh mey hoosbund and keeds all leaf in Keenterloot so eets noot as ooften as eed leek.” He beckoned us and we started walking through the offices, while Trixie and... Runner Bean, that’s it! talked about his hometown, and vacation plans, and how was the journey from the Vaahn offices in Cowbec and stuff like that. After a few minutes I started to get used to his freaky accent. Ponies are weird. The ground-floor offices at RGHQ were long and open, rows of desks either side of the hoofpath down the middle, organized in that weird government style that can’t decide if it’s a bank or a school. It was weirdly empty. It wasn’t like, unused, or abandoned, all the desks had nameplates and scattered paperwork and personal effects, but there were sixty desks in a single room and a dozen ponies sat at them. At half-two in the afternoon! I saw whole crowds of guards in the courtyards outside, training and drilling and milling about, but the offices were a ghost town. Just before we passed into the next hall, in one corner of the office I saw the emergency armory, a well-oiled cabinet where they kept plate armor, halberds, and starfire lances in case of a full-bore attack on the building. I also saw a giant pile of paperwork, banker’s boxes, stationery, and office detritus on the floor to the left, a pile that had clearly been sat on and around the armory until somepony recently decided that it had to be kept clear. In the next office, I saw the exact same thing. We got to a stairwell, and Runner Bean asked us to stay put while he sorted out the meeting room. As soon as he was out of earshot, I turned to Trixie. “Okay, what the crap is a Chicken Choker? And what’s wrong with that guy’s voice?” Trixie smiled, and adjusted her collar and tie. “He’s from Stillwater Lakes, in the northwest. Most of the ponies who live there came from Scandineighvia and Hayre, giving them a... distinctive accent, and ‘Chicken Choker’ is a semi-affectionate epithet based on the tale that centuries ago, the dedicated but not-particularly-bright locals mistook a rare chicken for a griffon spy, and then tried, judged, and hanged it.” “Ponies are weird.” I saw a corkboard on the nearest wall. No birthday reminders or staff party details or employee-of-the-month certificates, just signup sheets for different courses, filling up every spare inch of the board and a few sheets pinned into the drywall next to it. Riot training, magical concealment, long-range scouting, counter-demolition training, close-quarter battle training, advanced first-aid, counterintelligence, signups for selection for the various elite units of the Royal Guard. Four-fifths of the sheets had “FULL” stamped on them in big red letters. I looked away when Runner Bean returned. “[Follow me up the stairs,]” is what he said, probably. We went up a flight of stairs, through a corridor, and into a meeting room, with glass walls, fluorescent lighting, and a chipped wood-laminate table big enough to seat eight. The hard-backed chairs scruffed against the thin carpet as we sat down. I shot Trixie a worried look, and she shot one back. “[I’m afraid my own office is being used for temporary storage this week, so we’ll have to use this interview room instead. Can I offer you a drink?]” I guess Runner Bean said. “I’ll have a coffee, thanks.” Trixie leaned forward and looked slyly at him. “Have you got any... Yonge?” He froze, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “[We don’t keep it on hoof, but I have a private stash. Would you like a cup?]” “Oh, I’d love one, thank you.” He left to fetch the drinks. Trixie turned to me, panicked. “This is the wrong room!” “Yeah,” I muttered. “It’s the wrong floor. Also, what’s ‘Yonge’?” “A fermented yeast drink, it’s very popular up north.” “Oh, like Tarmite.” “Yes. Any ideas?” “There’s a bathroom two floors up. If I can get in there, I can get into the right room. How’s that sound?” “Hmm. Tricky.” Her horn glowed for a half-second. “The building is possessed by a spirit of sympathetic magic, making the Guards more powerful and damping everypony else. The place has its own nervous system. If I start forming illusions, every unicorn in this wing of the building will know about it.” I held up my lanyard. The card glowed pale green, and had my name and reasons for being here written on it. “And if I stray off path or take it off, this thing will throw a tantrum?” “Yes, but you’re prepared for that. How long do you need?” “Twenty to thirty minutes, depending on the lock.” She winced. “I’ll see what I can do...” Runner Bean came back in with a tray of drinks, and before he could get a word out I said, “Sorry, can you show me where the bathroom is? I’m not feeling so hot.” “[Oh dear, it’s just at the end of the corridor.]” “Thanks. Star Nimbus has all the details, I’m just here for troubleshooting, please, start without me,” I said, high-tailing it out of there with a pained look on my face. I locked the door behind me as soon as I got into the bathroom, and checked my watch. Two fifty-one P.M. already. At three twenty, they’ll start looking for me. Had to move fast. First, the lanyard. If I go anywhere the building senses I’m not supposed to be, it’ll flash red and start yelping that I’m in a restricted area and should ask a guard to escort me out of it. If I take it off, it’ll sense that it’s not attached to me and start screeching like a hatchling. We’d come prepared, though. I took a three-ring binder out of my messenger bag. There were dozens of punched plastic pockets inside. One of them had a sample of concealment weave fabric from Vaahn’s catalogue. I took off the card and wrapped it in the special fabric, then stuffed it back in the pocket. The building was now completely blind to the card. Then I took out a glossy, card-backed piece of marketing copy for Vaahn Ironmongery, with high-quality pictures of our best-selling product lines. I pinched a tiny tab off at the top corner and pulled, tearing a strip of card off, and then unsealing it along the other three edges. The two pieces of card came apart, and on the back of each piece there was a copy of a RGHQ identity card. I punched both pieces out, glued them back-to-back with the contact adhesive in my makeup kit, and fastened the fake card to my lanyard. It didn’t have the magic glow, and anypony who got a close look would see it was fake, but at least it wouldn’t tell everyone in earshot that I was trespassing. I left the bathroom, and locked the door from the outside with a half-bit piece. Usually, magic makes it easier to do criminal stuff. Sure, it can be used against you, but when the thieves and the thieved-from both have magic tricks, it’s easier for the thief to find a weak spot and exploit it than it is for the thieved to find and protect every single weak spot that can be exploited. Cracking tools, calming powder, shrinking potions, all that stuff makes my job a whole lot easier, so I try to make sure I’ve got it at my clawtips. When you’re robbing a place where they search you three times to make sure you’re not carrying any sneaky crap like that, and where the building’s own magic will turn your firecrackers into squibs, you’ve gotta go low-tech. Like this perfume bottle. If I’d filled it with Lethe water so that anyone who took a sniff without the prophylactic would forget what they were supposed to be doing, the scryers at the gates would have sent the whole building into red alert and I’d be cooling my paws in a cell. But if I fill it with a completely non-magical and non-harmful substance, a mixture of esters, phenols, extracts, and seven herbs and spices that the unicorn twins blended together, one that just happened to smell exactly like a margherita pizza fresh from the oven, nopony will give it a second glance. Smells do strange things to the mind. Specifically, they do things to Royal Guard minds so that when they walk out into the hallway and see a griffon civilian they don’t recognise, their first thought isn’t “Who is that handsome bird and what are they doing here,” it’s “Who has the pizza and where can I find it.” I spritzed it every few yards as I walked to the stairwell. I got up one flight of stairs, and stopped dead when I saw the ponies coming down from above. I didn’t see his face, but I saw enough of the shiny purple barding to know it was the Captain of the Guard. I ducked into the hallway, blind, saw two guards at the far end talking to each other, slipped through an open door and shut it behind me. It was a break room. A radio next to the sink played pop songs. There were two vending machines and a pool table, with a half-finished game on top of it. Overhead there were big ugly fluorescent lights and big ugly ceiling tiles. I tried to remember the building blueprints. This room should work. I climbed onto the counter, looked down, and grinned. Some dumbass had left their wallet on the side. “—I’ll be right with you, I think I left my wallet on the side—” Crap. I shot upwards a second before the door-handle turned. I pushed up the ceiling tile, wormed into the ceiling space, and scrambled to slide the tile back into place before the idiot decided to look up. My grip slipped, and left me pinching a corner of the tile between two talons, balanced on the edge of the slot, straining to hold it so it wouldn’t fall through. The guard’s hooves clopped on the carpet for approximately eight years before he reached the counter, where he stood still, grunted in a very dumb and stupid way, and stood still some more. A bead of sweat dropped from my forehead onto the dusty tiles. He rifled through his wallet. Then he stood still. He started to walk away. He walked over to the vending machines, and said ‘Hmmm.” He actually made that noise. Like some kind of moron. I turned my head just enough to glance at my watch. Twenty four minutes left. He took two entire minutes to decide what to buy. It clunked to the bottom of the machine, and when I heard the sound of him standing still while unwrapping his candy bar, I truly wished that everyone in this building would choke on their own spit. My whole body was overextended and my outstretched claw shook from the strain of holding the tile in place. Half a lifetime later, chewing loudly, he started to walk out of the room. I heard his hoof on the handle. My breath hitched. The tile snapped. I have never heard a louder noise than the one that fibreglass ceiling tile made as it crashed down to the floor. The guard roared. “STEELHEART—” Fuck. Fuck! Compromised. No good options. Escape or bluff? Quiet or fast? Don’t know— “—STEELHEART, THE CEILING RATS ARE BACK!” He groaned, and stomped his hoof. “You serious?” “Yeah, they’re chewing at the tiles again, just like last time. How many dang times have I told the greenies to not leave food out on the side?” “Greenies, mare. They got no brains.” He sighed. “Right. Darn it. Okay, I’m coming, we’ll tell Animal Control later...” The relief I felt when he walked out of that door was the closest I’ve ever got to religious ecstasy. Ceiling spaces are hot, dusty and cramped, so I try not to spend much time in them. I crawled forward between beams, concrete, and fluffy, itchy insulation until I was over a different room. Maybe some unicorn would trot over to throw a scanning spell at the ceiling to see how big the rats were in the break room, and I didn’t want to be there if and when they did. I couldn’t just go straight up. It’s not like you’re in the ceiling, you’re between the ‘drop’ ceiling, and the real ceiling. The real ceiling, crazily enough, becomes the floor for the next level, and for some wacky reason they’re made of stuff like concrete. I’m not busting upwards without a jackhammer. I have to come out of the drop ceiling, either down through the tiles, or out through the sides. ‘But Gilda,’ I hear, ‘aren’t the sides made of concrete too?’ No. They’re made of bricks. I can’t punch through those either, but there’s also vents that go out of the building, too small to crawl through—I ain’t a microwave dinner—but just big enough to squeeze through. There’s not much use in kicking a vent out of the way, unscrewing the grate, and wriggling out to the outside of the building. Lucky for me, I didn’t need to. If you’re an architectural historian, or you spent the morning looking over the blueprints, you’ll know that RGHQ used to be two buildings, with six yards between them. Fifty years ago they got joined up, but the gap is still there. There’s channels running through it where hallways link the buildings up, but there’s wriggle room. It took a lifetime of slow, dusty crawling to get there. Twenty-one minutes left. Hole in the brick where an air grate used to be, stuffed with insulation. Punch through it and it falls down into the void. Lucky they hadn’t filled the whole thing with that stuff. The way up wasn’t comfy either. The space wasn’t exactly empty. Wooden support beams, metal vents, and hallway extensions crossed every which way. I could hear things skittering around, above and below. They really weren’t kidding about ceiling rats. Also, it was pitch black. Griffons have good night sight, but that just means we can make a little light go a long way. When there’s nothing, not even a pinprick coming through the gaps in the ceiling tiles, we’re as blind as a pony. I propped myself up against an old beam and rooted around in the makeup kit. Tube, bumpy rubber cap. Flim and Flam’s Miraculous Claw Polish. I twisted the lid twice to the right, once to the left, and shook the whole thing up. A cherry-red glow flooded the gap. Dim light bounced off the cobwebs and shot rays though the dust clouds. Damn, those were some big rats. Hauled myself up a floor, crawled back into the drop-ceiling. Twenty yards ahead, eight yards right, straight down. More crawling. Heard snips of talking below. “—messed himself. Sergeant Sentry chewed him out for fifteen solid in front of the whole platoon, and that was just a warm-up for the carpet parade with the Captain. Peeled the paint off the walls.” “I almost feel sorry for the stupid sod.” “I don’t, he’s an idiot. Talking about getting an early discharge at a time like this to go into private security? Minotaurs would hang you for less.” “Well, I said ‘almost’ didn’t I?” Eighteen minutes, ten yards. As long as I’m on my way back when they start looking, I might be okay. ”—lucky, in a way.” “How’s he lucky? Two demotions, a month of punishment duties, and he’s still crying.” “If Captain Armor was still here, he’d have pulled Brassie’s soul out through his mouth.” “Hah, you’re not wrong.” I slowly, carefully, lifted up a ceiling tile to peek down below. Two-pony shared office. Nopony there. Blinds all closed. Peered at the name tag on the desk. Cart Right on one desk, Right Way on the other. Bingo. First thing I did when I got down there was take out the tube of false-eyelash glue from the makeup kit. It’s glue, alright—contact glue. I checked that the door to the office was locked, then fed the glue into the locking mechanism. I looked on Cart Right’s desk. It was a mess. This guy freakin’ loved butter popcorn. Half a dozen mugs, pens and pencils everywhere. Eight different jobs going on in the paperwork, and half a memo in his typewriter. His day planner was open. Back from lunch in ten minutes. Damn it. His desk drawers had labels. I only cared about one. ‘Schedule.’ The drawer had a three-pin tumbler lock. Not high security, not intended to be. It’s a lock for keeping your co-workers from getting into your candy stash. With the right tools, it’s a doddle to pick. I didn’t have the right tools. I had whatever bits and pieces Flim and Flam could make resemble a manicure kit. The picks were too thick and the wrenches were too thin, and they handled like greased garbage. If you watch action serials at the cinema, you’d think that picking locks is as smooth and quick as a shot of nineteen-year old whisky. You think wrong, pal. It’s as smooth as trying to get a cranky and very dumb receptionist give you a replacement key for a room not in your name, and you can say one word every five seconds. You know what ‘high security’ means in lockpicking terms? It means a lock that takes ten or more minutes to pick. An ‘easy’ lock takes a professional locksmith a minute or two, and it takes me about four. Four minutes. Not normal minutes, lockpicking minutes. Lockpicking minutes are like dog years: everything is longer, and if you’re counting in them you’ve probably got a below-average life expectancy. I slid in the first pick aside the torque wrench, and wrangled the first pin into place. Then I snapped the second pick in half when somepony body-slammed the door to the office. My head shot up to look over the table and my heart shot up to about 200bpm. I saw a silhouette through the door blinds. “Hey Whetstone, it’s locked!” “Ech, typical. I got a key for this floor, gimme a minute.” Oh, frickin’ shit it. Half of the broken pick dangled out of the lock, thank Hoelun. This wouldn’t have been a good time to bust out my tweezers. I put my head down and got to extracting it. “Got it?” “Yeah I—wait, nah, that’s for the conference rooms, that’s the spare for the toilets, this is—” A bead of sweat dripped into my eye as I slid the second lockpick number two in beside the wrench and the first pick. I focused on the drawer and tried to drown out the sound of their voices. Took a deep breath. “Is it the red one?” “No, that was the old—here it is, lemme just... huh...” Lockpicking isn’t like shucking oysters. You don’t just stick your tool in there, wrestle it down, and assert your dominance. Gotta be sensitive. Feel every click and squeak, keep testing it, knocking down pin after pin until you can curl that torque wrench and just make it roll over for you. “That’s the wrong key, buddy.” “No, it’s—I’m sure it’s the right key, it’s just stiff.” “Let me try it.” A third voice. “Hey, are you two trying to get into Cart Right’s digs?” “The Captain sent us, he wants—” “Whet’s using the wrong key.” “I’m not using the wrong key, it’s just—” Gotta be real calm for lockpicking, gotta just tune everything else out, not think of arrests or interrogations or uncomfortable tricks to play with threaded batons. If that big wave of adrenaline washes over me, if I get the shakes, if I can’t feel the clicks of the pins over the pulse in my claws, it’s not getting picked. “—jammed it.” “I haven’t jammed it.” Too freakin’ right you haven’t. Enjoy the contact glue, ya dweeb. “Have you tried turning it?” “Yes, I have tried turning it. That’s the first thing I tried. I’m trying it right now, as you can see, in front of your eyes.” “Sorry. I could try—” “It’s a lock, not Cobblestone’s wife. Everypony does not need a turn, alright?” “It looks jammed, Whetstone.” “Are you sure that’s the right key?” “Well, which key do you think it is?” “It’s the red one, isn’t it?” “No, it’s not the red one.” “Give it a try, just in case.” “Fine, I—huh.” “We should hurry up, Whetstone. The Captain’s in a rush.” “It’s stuck!” “Yeah, we know, you’ve been fiddling it for a minute.” “No, it’s stuck. It won’t come back out!” “I told you it was the wrong key.” “Cobblestone, I swear to—” Second pin down. A little more twist on the wrench. Just enough turn in the lock to keep the first two pins trapped in place at the shear line. Take one pick out, move the other to pin number three. “This is embarrassing, guys, just let me—” “Don’t—oh, fine.” “Huh, yeah, this is the right key, it’s just...” “Oh, I’m sorry, is it stuck?” “Pfft, it’s just stiff—” “That’s what she said.” “—a spot of finesse and it’ll—” I grinned as I heard the snap. “Aw, nuts.” “Brilliant.” “Well done, idiot, you just broke the key. Inside the lock, no less.” “Laugh it up, it’s a bum key and you know it.” “Tell that to Cart Right and Right Way.” “What do you even need from in there?” “Cart Right has a key for the Guests and Dignitaries cache in the mess freezer. All the officers on second floor want pizza. They say somepony has it and isn’t sharing it, so the Captain tells us dig out the former captain’s personal pizza stash so they’ll stop bellyaching.” “I think he’s craving it too, if I’m honest.” “...I just got back from a refresher course on breaching tools. There is a pry-bar under my desk.” “The Rights won’t be too happy if you pull their door off.” “They won’t be happy if I break their lock either, and since I’ve done that already...” “Also, the Captain won’t be happy if he waits much longer, and if he ain’t happy...” “Nopony’s happy, I know. Fine, get the tools.” “Hah, it’s funny if you think about it. Cart Right’s got all his keys on his desk under that ugly clay pot, and we’re stuck outside this door...” His words clicked just as the last pin fell into place, and the lock turned with the torque wrench. Energy bubbled through my whole body as the drawer opened. Before I grabbed the files, I peeked at the desk, lifted a really ugly clay pot, and saw a big bunch of keys. One was labeled “Schedule Drawer.” I held in my scream and yanked the drawer open. A dozen sets of schedules, neatly filed by area of operations. Didn’t take me long to find the ones we needed. A folder with nine pages inside. Opened it up to confirm it before— Wait, what? ...A single street patrol and a uniformed auxiliary for the Securities Commission office in the building? That was wrong, totally wrong. A building that size, that important, should have three-dozen Royal Guard members stationed there in uniform, and another two-dozen plaincoat officers alongside them. Blueblood’s files said he wouldn’t be surprised if there was a triple-digit number of guards in the Public Archives. I grabbed a few other folders at random and compared them. They were all normal, with uniform and non-uniform postings right there on the page. Heck, the one for the Peak District was a almost a copy of the example schedule from the briefing files, even some of the names were the same. I checked the postings for the areas surrounding the Archives just in case it they’d shoved it somewhere weird. Nothing. “Cack,” I muttered. I took the ‘facial masques’ out of the makeup kit, stretched them out, and pressed them onto the pages of the schedule, again and again, and then did a few other schedules just in case, and stopped when the guards came back. I slid up into the drop-ceiling as they started to batter the door. I scrambled through the ceiling. Didn’t look at my watch, knew I was outta time anyway. Practically crashed into the beams inside the void on my way down. Think I riled up the ceiling rats, too. I went two floors straight down this time. Just had to get to that bathroom. Twenty yards. Over the hallway now. “—in there? Ma’am, if you don’t respond I’m going to have to break this door down!” There’s my cue. Right over the bathroom. Hooves rapping on the door. He’s about to start kicking. I take the tile off and slip down. Covered in dust and cobwebs. Tile back in place, brushing myself down. Gonna have to bluff it. The door swung open. * * * Trixie pulled the elevator level, and we started to rise. “I’m genuinely shocked they bought it,” she said. “‘Bugborne Sleeping Sickness?’ Is that even real?” “Yeah, it’s Lyme Disease’s shy cousin.” “Big mean Gilda, dozing off on a toilet. A perfect disguise, I think, or a lucky one at least.” I grit my beak. “Don’t mention today and lucky in the same sentence, please. It was a shit-show.” Trixie quirked an eyebrow. “Wait, did you actually—” “Figure of speech, you dork.” She snorted and the doors slid open. We trudged over the airship platform to where the Summer Breeze was waiting. Flam doffed his hat when we got into the bar, and Flim raised a glass. “Good day, my chimeral companion, how did the—” “Thanks for the toys, broke your lockpicks, where’s Blondie?” “Right behind you,” said Blueblood. He walked into the room with Lightning Dust in tow, and we all took a seat around a cramped table. Blueblood glanced at the face masque packet. “You have the schedule?” I slid it over to him. “It’s garbage.” He blinked. “What?” “Take a look,” said Trixie. “It’s not as... useful as we’d hoped it would be.” Flim’s horn flared up and sent a beam of green energy onto the extracted rubber masque. A ghostly stack of papers shimmered into place in the middle of the table. Blueblood rifled through them, his brow furrowing and his frown getting deeper. “I was worried you’d find something like this,” he muttered. “This is... clearly not an accurate accounting of the security at the Archives.” “We’ve been removed from liquor stores with more guards,” said Flam. Blueblood rubbed his chin. “This isn’t the right folder.” I crossed my arms. “It’s the one you sent me for, pal, down to the reference number.” “And it’s the one I asked for.” He looked up at me. “Still, there are two possibilities. The first is that for some reason, the Equestrian Public Archives are run through the Royal Palace detachment. Infiltration is out of the question, but I could retrieve it myself. I’d would almost certainly be implicated afterwards, but it should be there. Unfortunately, it could just as easily be in the other place.” Everyone glanced around the table uneasily, except Lightning Dust, who took out a stick of gum and chewed it loudly. Trixie coughed. “Erm, dare I ask what the less-fortunate possibility is?” Blueblood looked over the documents again, and sighed. “That it is guarded entirely by undercover officers. Assigned to individual handlers and offices, working under assumed names, not on a schedule. Any details on their assignments will be confidential, and any documents will be in code. Their supervising officers might not even be in Canterlot.” “How many more guard stations am I gonna have to break into?” I asked. “It would be pointless,” said Flim. “Like playing catch with a hoof-full of itching powder.” “Why, it would be a big white cloud of pain and frustration.” “Coughing, wheezing, irritated skin.” “Terrible irritation. Swelling, redness...” “Oozing, even.” Trixie held up a hoof and shushed them. “Antics later.” “Flim and Flam are right. There would be no point in any other break ins,” said Blueblood. “We could do manual surveillance of the public areas, but other than that...” “We’d be flying blind,” I said. “Yes. I realize this isn’t the best—” Lightning Dust sighed loudly enough to drown the rest of his sentence out, rolling her eyes and slumping back in her chair. She took out her blob of chewing gum and placed it in the middle of the table. “Don’t touch that.” She got up and walked out, in a hurry. Blueblood blinked. “Is she—” “Shut up, Blueblood,” she said, bustling back in with a big rolled-up sheet of paper. She spread the paper out on the table, using her gum to pin it in place. It was a blown-up page of an educational book, one of those ones filled with cross-section illustrations of famous buildings and big stuff—inside an ocean liner, inside an Grand Aerie, inside an airship, that kind of thing. This one was a cross-section of the Equestrian Public Archives. Lightning Dust took a pencil in her mouth, circled three spots on the drawing, and spat it back out. “Here, here and here. Sixteen-pony detachment in each room, forty-eight total, plus your Royal Guard auxiliary in the Securities Commission office.” Everyone stared at her. She bristled. “Well? You ain’t gonna thank me?” I pointed a claw at her. “Did you know this shit all along and send me into a building full of cops with a fake name and a bag full of spy toys just so you could show up Blondie?” She waved a hoof. “Nah, nah, that was just a funny accident. I thought this might be right, but you just made me sure.” Blueblood straightened up, eyes wide. “You think the Smiss are stationed—” “Shut up Blueblood,” she snapped. He gave a long-suffering sigh, sat back, and mimed zipping-his-mouth-shut to her. She stopped glaring at him, and turned back to look at the rest of us. “The Smiss are stationed there.” Flim and Flam and Trixie looked confused. “Erm,” said Flam, “sorry to broadcast my lack of worldliness in this setting, but what exactly is a ‘Smiss’?” “Special Magical Service,” I said. “Part of the Equestrian military’s Peculiar Operations Group. They’re the most elite unicorn soldiers in the world.” “I thought the Firecasters were the elite troops,” said Trixie. Lightning Dust shook her head. “You can sign up to the Firecasters the day you turn twenty, and if you pass the physical and get through the six-month training, you’re in. The Smiss will only take unicorns who’ve been in either the military or the Royal Guard for three years already. They let a hundred-fifty soldiers go through selection each season, and a hundred-twenty get returned-to-unit.” Trixie nodded. “How do you know it’s them, and how do you know where they are?” Lightning Dust popped another stick of gum into her mouth, chewed, and then said, “I know they’ve got units on permanent standby in Canterlot. The Aerial Scouts did a lot of joint missions with them, and soldiers talk, even really freakin’ good ones. I know the classes of buildings they’d be stationed in—ones vital to state integrity, with high-magic environments, that don’t contain immortal alicorns. I know they don’t work well with plods, so there ain’t gonna be a whole bunch of Royal Guards in the building. From the locations of possible high-value hostages, defensive channels, ease of breaching, and proximity to pool tables and vending machines, I can say with about ninety-percent confidence that our mares and stallions are in these locations.” She folded her forelegs, sat back, and looked at Blueblood expectantly. “Thank you, Miss Dust,” he said. “Is there anything else you can tell us?” She chuckled, and then her expression turned serious. “Yeah. They don’t put a Smiss detachment in place just because somewhere is valuable or high-security. All the money in the country flows through the Royal Mint, and they’ve got a gross of Royal Guards. They put the Smiss in places where any attack, break-in, or infiltration would amount to an attack on Equestria itself. There’s four units under the House of Lords for that reason. They’re A-rank spellcasters, they are all trained in hoof-to-hoof and close-quarters combat, and each and every one of them is itching for a fight.” She picked up the pencil again, and drew a line on the drawing where the public area of the archives ended. “Any funny business past this point,” she drawled, “and these guys come at us like it's World War Twelve...”