//------------------------------//
// Part the Last - Curtain 
// Story: The Unicorn and the Crow 
// by Foxmane Vulpequus 
//------------------------------//


*********************************************



Chapter One



Nemesis



*********************************************




Rubyk’s slender frame cut through the crowd of gawping deer like a cool knife. His eyes moved slowly over the scene, but Madeleine could almost hear the quickening thoughts, possibilities half-conceived, and theories upended all jockeying for position in his head. It was all that she could do to focus on him. The alternative was to think about what was sitting right in front of them all – and she wasn’t ready to see that yet.

Despite the uneasy light that filled up even the farthest corners of the room, a shadow seemed to lay upon the office of the Hotel Clavia’s proprietress. The neat shelves of blown-glass ornaments from the old deerish world had been thrown to the floor and lay in jagged shards underhoof, delicate spindles trampled to bright dust. The chairs had been bucked, and gouged, and been violently overthrown.

So, too, had Miss Largo. The seafoam mare was curled in on herself under a cloak of translucent stars, staring up at the world through wide, frightened eyes, breathing impossibly slow breaths. The faces of Dr. Leaf and the other half-dozen and two Clavia bucks and does in cummerbunds, kitchen whites, and scullery-bonnets glistened with sweat beading on their fine whiskers. Their antlers blazed like torches.

The proprietress’ eye seemed to follow Rubyk as he made his careful, high-stepping way over the shattered glass – and into another crime scene. Doctor Leaf’s head rose at the sight of the Aktur of Trotheim, and the physician made a frantic gesture with his hooves at Frond and Mangosteen peering in from between the giant’s spindly legs. The twins gave frantic nods and pushed their way past Rubyk, each touching their antlers to Doctor Leaf. The little twins staggered at the weight of an enormous magical burden was moved onto their shoulders. Their faces quickly settled into the same grim lines of concentration as they struggled at the one thing that mattered just at the moment –

…saving the life of their mistress.

“Earthsbane!” snarled Dr. Leaf at Rubyk’s impassive frame, the Aktur’s jewel-cut eyes glinting with steely-bright anger as they darted over the ruined office. “Earthsbane again, under my own roof! Aktur Rubyk, if you have any answers, if you have any love of justice in you, I beg you – find the pony that had the gall to use poison twice under my roof, and… and… wreck them in the ocean!”

Rubyk’s hard eyes met the doctor’s bloodshot own. “When?” he rumbled. “How?” he added a moment after, in tones less like a thundersnow.

“I don’t know!” Dr. Leaf cried, the buck grinding his forehoof on the ground in frustration. “All I can tell you is that a few minutes ago, Miss Crumpet screamed and came running out of this room for somedeer, anydeer to come quickly – that something terrible had just happened. Java was working on the floor and came first. She put out the call for more Clavia, and I came as soon as I heard what she –” and here the physician pointed his accusing hoof right at the staring eye under the thick cloak of magic – “decided to do to herself! It… it…” Dr. Leaf spat on the ground. “It” was too much a mangle of anger and disgust for the buck to put into words.

Rubyk narrowed his eyes, turning his bulk about to face Madeleine. She shivered and stood, very alone, just beyond the doorway. “Friend Doctor,” said the Aktur of Trotheim without turning about, “how long does your patient have until the poison takes her?”

“One-hundred heartbeats,” answered Dr. Leaf without a moment’s hesitation.

“You have an antidote?”

“Yes, but it will take time and deer-power to prepare. We don’t have much of either.”

“What you do then, do quickly. Call all the staff in this hotel into this room to maintain this spell if you have to, but you will not let this pony die before I have examined her on the stand.” Rubyk’s gaze fixed Madeleine, and one again she felt the pricks of icicles being thrust through her coat. If only there was some way to tell what was going on behind the mask, said the little pony in Madeleine’s brain, while the rest of her gulped audibly.

And then the unthinkable happened.

“One amendment, Aktur,” purred the baritone voice of Jett Black from just beyond the doorway. Madeleine jumped, the hairs of her mane standing on end. It was only then that she realized that Rubyk’s sight-line wasawfully high to be looking at her. “By all means, let the good doctor go, and quickly. But I will be the one examining Proprietress Largo when she awakens from her poor choices.”

A wisp of white curled out of Rubyk’s nostrils. The Aktur of Trotheim visibly fought to control his rising temper. “Jett Black. You will explain yourself. Now.”

The black pegasus nodded his head curtly and lifted one wing. There was an object beneath held close to his body that Madeleine’s eye seized on instantly. A flash of pewter in the shape of a silver crescent surrounded by the duller glint of thirteen delicate stars of black onyx stone gleamed in the unnatural, blazing light of that strange scene. A badge, she realized. Suddenly, the shards and fragments of the pegasus’ strange words and stranger conduct seemed to fit together with a chilling logic.

“I am Corporal Jett Black of Her Majesty Princess Luna’s Shade Corps. I speak in persona regina, as it were. And by the authority vested in me, Canterlot shall now take this investigation under her wing.”

Jett Black smiled thinly. His eyes were mirthless coal. “However, I judge that there is very little need to drag this matter out further.”

Rubyk pressed forward and breathed his frozen breath into the pegasus’ face. “And why is that?”

Jett Black gave a vague shrug. “Is it not obvious, Aktur Rubyk?”

“Humour a poor foal who never drank the mead of wisdom. What is so very obvious to you?” The Aktur of Trotheim’s voice was not a whisper. It was the hiss of a knife being slid from its sheath.

If Jett Black was in the least intimidated by the giant, he made no show of it. “If you prefer to be obtuse, be happy in your own mind. But if you do not find that mare’s actions, even toward you, in the least bit suspicious, there is a different word for that, Rubyk of Trotheim.”

Rubyk of Trotheim tossed his mane, highborn contempt in every inch of his features. “And I will not be goaded by you. Am I such a fool as you think? Do you really believe what you are thinking had not appeared before me, plain as a vision of the wandering drifts? I knew from the first that Largo was likely to have been behind the death of Calvados Apple. It is the privilege of the Pride of Trotheim to have the Sight for such unrighteousness.”

Jett Black cocked his head. The corners of his thin smile twisted upward, just slightly. “And you really think that there is any further need to investigate? I would say that the suicide of the mare lying there is more than proof enough of guilt.”

Before Rubyk could reply, there broke in the thin sound of a tiny hoof grinding on glass. “I remind the most honoured representatives of Trotheim and her Highness the Princess of the Night that this was a near suicide, and that there is a patient of mine in dire need, and I request with all meekness that both will kindly move out of my way or make themselves useful,” said Doctor Leaf, a restrained tightness of deep anger edging his voice. The little buck stepped carefully forward, pushed past Rubyk, and thrust a bag of golden bits into Jett Black’s smirking muzzle.

“Corporal, you have wings. Kindly take these to the mainland and procure for me every drop of tincture of stardew that this will buy. If there is more to buy, pay for it yourself. But get it. Quickly!” Doctor Leaf shoved at Jett Black’s broad chest with his forehoof. It was like shoving a stone mountain for all that the huge pegasus actually moved. Even so, perhaps not quite knowing why he followed the order, Jett Black nodded numbly. The agent of Princess Luna turned and left the rest of them alone in the uncanny blaze.

After he left, Madeleine sucked in a breath. They seemed to come more easily without the pegasus looming in the hallway. Doctor Leaf looked at Rubyk and Madeleine both with an unfathomable expression.

“…I don’t trust him, Aktur,” announced the physician suddenly. He shook his head. “For what it is worth. But there is no time for that now.”

Rubyk made no reply. The Aktur of Trotheim turned back to the office, squinting into the blaze of light, stepping again carefully over the broken shards upon the floor.

“Doctor,” said Madeleine, “what can we do?”

“Let him go on looking,” Doctor Leaf said sharply. “If the Aktur can find some little clue in there to whatever pony is lying behind all this, let him go on. Miss Crumpet, you gather up the staff, every last one that you can find, and meet me in the apothecary. Have Limon bring the pegasus down to us the instant he returns.”

“And then?” said Madeleine. She felt Largo’s imploring eyes directly on her own. Right now, she couldn’t move away from the spot if the whole hotel were burning down around their ears.

“And then we seek the grace of the Ancestors.” Dr. Leaf stepped heavily from the office, leaving Madeleine with Rubyk, the deer, and the dead.

No! she screamed into herself. Not yet! There was still hope. There had to be.

Rubyk peered at the fixtures in the room that had survived where they had been thrown onto the floor. Rubyk stepped behind the desk and began pulling open its drawers, one by one. He blinked his jewel-cut eyes and frowned at the contents of the third. His horn flashed bright even though the white blaze, and he magicked out a large blue gem with large, dull faces. He tapped it with an hoof-tip.

“It’s mage-crystal,” Madeleine said, the words coming out automatically. Rubyk blinked again and looked up at her. She blushed.

“It is not a gem?” he asked.

“No… a gem makes a harder clatter when you strike it. This was done up in an alchemist’s lab somewhere. If you add certain minerals and dyes to molten glass, you can get a kind of ultrastructured glass like this that can act like a poor mule’s version of a gem. It depends on what you need it to do.” Madeleine crossed over to the desk to peer at the crystal.

Might as well make the most of the situation. Madeleine took the crystal up using her horn and held it up to the light cast by nearly an hundred antler-tips, putting her eye to the flat top-face. Her lips moved as she silently counted the internal reflections, noting the way the light curved and warped around a deep-blue something in the middle. Whatever was in there felt substantial to that ineffable intuition unicorns shared. It wasn’t much, but this crystal definitely had a use – probably to store something, some spell or other. And had been used.

“And recently,” Madeleine explained to Rubyk, who said nothing, but nodded his assent to facts. The Aktur of Trotheim turned his attention to the wall behind the desk. He squinted.

“Come here, friend Madeleine,” he said. “Do you see that the panel here has been closed with too much force?”

Madeleine blinked. “What panel?”

In answer, the cube depending from Rubyk’s neck glinted snowy white. Rubyk breathed out a stream of bitterly cold air that sent a frisson up Madeleine’s neck. In a few moments, the bare pine panel on the wall showed a distinct hairline fissure outlined in the white of a quick-melting frost.

But now that she knew what to look for, the splintering where it had been closed at the corner, hard, was plain as tourmaline.

“It looks as if somepony bucked it closed.”

“Precisely,” said Rubyk with a deepening frown. “The proprietress opened the panel by running her hoof along the groove of some mechanism in the wall near the side where you are standing. Friend Madeleine, I fear that my hooves are too coarse and my eyes too weak for this. Would you please?”

“I can… certainly try,” she said. And she did. She ran her hoof along every knobby, rough, piney inch of the wall. Unfortunately, there was no telltale click or other sign that her ministrations had any effect. Rubyk sighed.

“That is a pity,” he said. “What I am about to do is beneath the dignity of ponies, let alone Trotheim. Please stand back, friend Madeleine.” Her eyes widening (and hers were not the only ones doing so), the cube around Rubyk’s neck began to shed its puffy flecks of snow in earnest. A constant stream of the same cold air now flowed from the giant’s mouth, penetrating the hairline cracks and forming thin, drooping icicles around the sides.

“Ah… Mister Rubyk?” said Mangosteen in a strained voice. “That… that belongs to Miss Largo. What are you…?” The little doe did not have a chance to get any more out. In the next moment, quick as a thought, Rubyk stamped his hoof, flared a violent cyan from his horn, and made a sound like distant avalanche from his throat.

The wall exploded. Madeleine and the Clavia threw themselves to the ground, and she felt the shards pass overhead, throwing the office into an even more chaotic disarray. Thank Celestia, the stunt didn’t seem to have affected the Clavia’s focus on their dying mistress! Frond raised his head angrily and even though the strain demanded: “By the fathers, why in Equestria did you do that? That was where Miss Largo kept her private…!”

“I know.” The avalanche had not completely gone from Rubyk’s voice, and the Clavia again shrunk back. Miss Largo’s staring eye seemed to regard him with reproach, and the proud Aktur of Trotheim hung his head slightly. “Forgive the bluntness of my method. Whatever Trotheim has taken, she will recompense, four times over. But for the sake of the truth, I must know.”

Madeleine rose up again, a slight trembling in her knees. “Know what, Mister Rubyk?”

Rubyk turned to the bare nook in the wall where the pinewood panel had been. The wall safe with the combination lock stood ajar. He pried it open.

It was empty.

Rubyk let out a long, long sigh. “I thought so. I had hoped for it not to be the case, but the circumstantial evidence is too damning.” He fell into silence. The Aktur of Trotheim lowered his eyes to the floor and raised his forehoof, holding it close to his chest.

“You still have no right to just rifle through somepony else’s private things!” Frond exclaimed. The buck pointed an accusing hoof at the pensive Rubyk. “And… y-you don’t have jurisdiction here anymore! The… the pegasus does!”

Rubyk turned to the buck in surprise, as if seeing him for the first time. “Oh, of course,” he said, distantly. “When Canterlot speaks, Trotheim must decrease. That has been the arrangement since the world waxed young and the Tribes drank of the same spirit of unity. True, I am Trotheim…” He nodded, almost glibly. “But now I act for the sake of my own conscience. I plan to see my duty through to the end.”

Rubyk stamped his hoof to the ground with a sudden, sharp crack. His whole frame straightened, and his presence seemed to fill the room. “The bitter end. Do you understand me, Largo? You gave me three days to put all to rights. I shall yet succeed, in spite of all your efforts.”

Miss Largo made no answer.

“Friend Madeleine,” Rubyk went on, “you should proceed according to the good Doctor’s instructions. I have but two more inquiries to make before nightfall. Come what may, this farce ends before your Princess raises the sun again.”

Madeleine was troubled at these words. “Where are you going, Mister Rubyk?” she said to Rubyk’s retreating back as he, too, moved to leave the ruined office.

“To see two friends,” he replied. Rubyk stopped and added in a whispery undertone, “and you would do well to keep that… er... crystal close by you, friend Madeleine. Find it an home among your other gems. Give it many friends and lessons in harmony!”

Rubyk left, laughing a forced, insane laugh. It could not hide the fearful creases around his eyes.




*********************************************



Chapter Two



The Thief



*********************************************




The Clavia at the hotel had not taken the news well. Most were still standing glass-eyed and numb where Madeleine had first given them the news. But those of hardier constitutions, once they had overcome their first shock, dutifully went ahead of her to the apothecary. And after sending an half-dozen deer to relieve those keeping their mistress from her hundredth heartbeat and bring her dying body down to the apothecary, now a makeshift hospital, they were ready to begin. Largo lay still as death under the gauzy cloak of starlight that was the only covering between her and the old grey mare with her scythe. Madeleine was never a pony given to idle superstitions, but even she could see the flicking of a shadowy cloak out of the corner of her eye and hear the hiss of a whetstone when her thoughts wandered too far into black worry.

No. Not today. Don’t you dare die on me, Largo.

Dr. Leaf’s face and those of the nearly two-dozen hardy bucks and does in every imaginable state of dress were keen as knives as Jett Black entered, a canvas sack in his mouth and the hint of a sneer on his muzzle.

“Do you have it?” said Dr. Leaf, along with the forty eyes fixed on the black pegasus. Jett Black set the canvas sack in their midst.

“Yes. Every last drop of tincture of stardew from every chemist and druggist and back-alley drubber in this town. All bought dearly with Canterlot’s gold. The Princess shall be sending you her invoice once I submit my report.”

“You are certainly a well-informed pony, Corporal,” observed Dr. Leaf blandly as he wasted not a moment in extracting the bottles of sparkling red, pouring them into every available bottle, vial, and bowl. He glared at the pegasus. “I don’t intend to receive such a bill from your Sovereign. That privilege belongs solely to my patient.”

“I trust that you know your own work, Doctor,” Jett Black said, shrugging and turning to go. “You should trust that I know mine. And in my line, a pony does not go far unless he is willing to muck his hooves in the dregs. I’ve done as you needed. Now, I have a report to complete. And if you are able to save that mare on the table there, I will need to have the proper papers to bring her with me to face judgment in Princess Luna’s own court. You will kindly excuse me.”

The snort that came from Dr. Leaf was anything but kindly.

“Quickly!” he urged the Clavia huddled together in the room. The tension and the body heat were stifling. “We need to get this all concentrated down to a gel as soon as possible. Move the liquid out – you’ll make a mangle out of it if you just manage to magick up some heat! Once you get the alcohol out, the stardew will collapse on itself, so don’t stop until then! And be careful. The mistress needs every last drop we don’t scorch or spill. So don’t you dare screw up.”

None of the other Clavia dared say a word. Madeleine accepted a shallow stone mortar from Doctor Leaf, understanding the unspoken command. She bit her lip, nodded, and got to the tricky spell-work.

It was easier for the Clavia. It had to be easier for them. They had more horn-tips to seize on the intangible, slippery stardew, which threatened to slide out from under Madeleine’s magical grip and out onto the floor – which was not going to happen. Not with Largo an hundred heartbeats from…!

Madeleine took a deep breath and focused every gram-weight of her attention on the red liquid in front of her that shimmered and writhed like a snake trapped underhoof. Driving the liquid from the tincture seemed to take tedious ages. The stardew resisted her magic at every turn, either threatening to skitter like a mercury bead from her horn’s grip, or suddenly and with a mind all its own to flare up in protest with a violent heat at the foreign magic urged upon it. It was slow going, and more than once Madeleine nearly dropped the makeshift vessel when the snake seemed bound and determined to bite. But, being a jewel-wright did come with certain benefits – one of those being a bone-headed patience at tedious tasks with precious materials. That, and the urgency of the task at hand, soon reduced the stardew to a few grains of impossibly red, glossy wax once it had finally given up the fight.

Doctor Leaf glanced in her direction, checking the progress of the work of the Clavia gathered in the room. The apothecary was occasionally peppered by an horrified gasp and groan as the deer fought the stubborn stardew and it broke out from under their glittering magic, striking the wall or floor or sending a spurt of burning red into their faces. Madeleine couldn’t stop the prideful flash of a smile from playing across her muzzle as the physician’s eyes rested on her.

Doctor Leaf took the mortar away from Madeleine without a word.

There’s gratitude for you, she thought in an huff. Then she seemed to feel Largo’s staring eye upon her temples. Her cheeks flushed with a sudden burst of shame at her own naval-gazing. Sorry, Largo.

The rest of the process did not take long. Even with spills (and one poor doe who needed her eyes flushed immediately when her tumbler of stardew erupted violently without warning), Doctor Leaf raised an authoritative hoof.

“That’s enough!” barked the physician. “Save your magic if you’ve bungled it. We need all we can get for this next part.” Working quickly, the buck’s magic took down bottles of white powder, syringes, gauzy bandages, a long glass tube, and so many other things that Madeleine was dizzied as he held them in a whirling cloud of stars above their heads.

“You!” Doctor Leaf barked, pointing at a buck in kitchen whites. “We need these ground to a paste. Now! The rest of you, we won’t have much time once the stasis is lifted. The mistress only has eighty heartbeats left, so this has to be done right the first time. We need to get as much stardew into the mistress as possible – by everymeans possible. If there is anydeer squeamish here, leave. Now. We don’t need you here.”

Doctor Leaf looked into Madeleine’s eyes with the intensity of a jeweler’s drill. She blanched and got the message.

“I’ll be back, Largo…” she whispered, turning her back on the Clavia, some of whom were shifting their hooves uneasily. “You’ll be back too, right?”

Largo’s staring eye blinked at her, just once. Then the Clavia moved into a circle, cutting the sick mare off from Madeleine. She turned, numb, her body putting one hoof in front of another.

That one eyeblink was the only thing in the world. Madeleine watched it once, twice, an hundred times – one for each heartbeat. They seemed to pass by with each clip of her hooves on the cobbles underneath where her hooves had carried her. Counting down.

Blink.

Clip.

Blink.

Clop.

Blink.

Clip-clip-clop.

Madeleine blinked. That was too many hoof-beats.

“Miss Crumpet?” said the voice of Mangosteen, small and timid, breaking into Madeleine’s world like the peal of the town bell tower. Madeleine blinked again.

Where there was one, the other would not be far.

“Are you alright?” queried Frond, close by his sister. The young buck’s voice held a note that showed he did not expect the answer to be a good one. Facing the twins on the outdoor patio by the gardens (how had she gotten there?), Madeleine forced herself to smile.

“Not in the least. But thank you two for coming, anyway.”

“I know,” said Mangosteen, hanging her pretty head. “I can’t believe that somepony could… could do that to Miss Largo. It’s just not right.”

Madeleine regarded the doe with a long, lingering look. “But she did it to herself. There was nopony else who could have forced Largo to take poison. I just wish I understood why.”

Frond shook his head emphatically. “No. Miss Crumpet, that’s just not possible. I know it’s not possible.”

Madeleine looked from brother to sister again, studying their faces with a close intensity. There was something shared between their faces, sparkling just below the surface like the promise of an uncut diamond, that seized her attention and refused to let her look away.

“How?” said Madeleine.

“We did what you asked us to do, Miss Crumpet,” Mangosteen replied, not quite meeting Madeleine’s eyes. “Right from the start.”

“I don’t like the pegasus,” Frond continued, shifting his forehooves. “He’s not like Mister Rubyk. He’s… cold, Miss Crumpet.”

Madeleine shuddered. “I know exactly what you mean,” she mumbled, half to herself. “But what does this have to do with… with L–” Madeleine choked, the words catching in her throat. Mangosteen rested her head on Madeleine’s shoulder.

“We kept our ears open, just like you asked. I didn’t think this was important until now, and it’s just a hunch…” Mangosteen trailed off. Her brother provided the resolution to the thought:

“We saw Papaya on… on that night, Miss Crumpet. She was in an awful state. She was walking around her berth in the staff area just a tail-shake from glass-eyed, like she wasn’t even in her own body. We… we all know what she gets up to, and why, so all of us keep an eye on her when we’re bedding down. But she just wasn’t herself.”

Madeleine chewed the inside of her cheek. She tasted blood. “Papaya not herself? When was this?”

“About two-thirty to four in the morning, she kept pacing up and down the rows of berths, not saying a word to anydeer. She looked… well, she looked like she’d been in one of the old wars. It was only after Rock Skipper came back in from quelling that bad squall that came up of a sudden that she finally gave out pacing and pulled the curtains on her berth. Whether or not she went to sleep I couldn’t say.” Frond said, his muzzle creased into a grave frown.

Somewhere, deep inside her mind, a dim understanding, dark and uneasy, was beginning to well up. She looked again from one twin to the other. “Where is Papaya now?” she asked, realizing that the Clavia doe had not been among those mustered to Doctor Leaf’s side for their grim task. Nor had she been present at the morning’s “trial”, for lack of a better word.

“The mistress has her on a night schedule right now. She usually wakes up around the lunch hour. She’s probably in her berth now,” said Frond.

“…I need to talk to her. Right now.”

The twins cocked their heads. “To Papaya, Miss Crumpet? How come?” queried Mangosteen.

Because I need to get Largo out of my mind, or I’m going to go crazy, Madeleine thought. “Because I think this might be important to what happened on the night of the murder,” she said. “Frond, can you go find Mister Rubyk and tell him exactly what you told me just now? And Mangosteen… could you come with me to the staff area?”

“Yes, Miss Crumpet!” said both twins. “But why?” added Mangosteen.

Rubyk’s nervous laugh and warning echoed in her ears. “I’d just like some assurance, that’s all.”

Frond made for the front gardens, where he said that the Aktur of Trotheim had last been seen by one of the staff. Madeleine meanwhile followed Mangosteen down the many turnings that seemed to be at just-odd angles, past the corners that seemed to shy away if she looked at them too closely, and on past the bead curtain into the silence of the staff berths.

“Which one belongs to Papaya?” she said in an instinctive whisper. Mangosteen pointed it out – the peach-coloured curtains were tight-drawn.

“Thanks,” said Madeleine, trotting over to it. Mangosteen followed, confusion on her muzzle.

“Where is everydeer?” the doe murmured. “There’s always more of the staff in here than this.”

“They all must be with Dr. Leaf. Word must have trickled down even here.” Madeleine’s mane itched in the eerie silence. So why are the curtains of only this berth drawn?

She took a deep breath and drew back the curtains. A pair of staring eyes, wide and bloodshot, set above a snuffling muzzle in a frightened face, peered back at her. Madeleine smiled.

“Hello, Papaya,” she said.

“Hello, Miss Crumpet…” the little doe choked. The hibiscus blossom behind her ear was a tattered wreck. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days.

“Do you know why I came here?” Madeleine said gently, trying to step as carefully as possible. Whatever happened to this poor thing, she’s a wreck. No sense in making things worse.

“Yeah,” sniffed Papaya. But the doe didn’t move. Instead, Papaya stared down at her own hooves, not meeting Madeleine’s eyes.

Madeleine just waited. There was no sense in rushing when rushing might crush her only chance of confirming her suspicions.

“I didn’t mean to do what I did,” Papaya said suddenly. The doe was half-sobbing. “I really didn’t mean for any of it… any of this. I knew what everydeer thought of me before… I suppose I deserved it then. Miss Crumpet, what will they think of me now?”

Madeleine laid a comforting hoof on Papaya’s tear-streaked cheek. She lifted the doe’s chin, gently. “I can’t say for sure. But I know somepony who I know will make sure that you’re treated right if you tell the truth about whatever it was that you did.”

“I don’t know if I can, Miss Crumpet…” Papaya whispered. “I’m afraid that I might be the one who… who killed Miss Largo!”

Madeleine felt her heart starting to force its way out of her chest and up her throat. Willing her hooves and voice not to tremble, she swallowed it down again. “I know that’s not the case. I know that you couldn’t have done that.”

“But I know that I did!” Papaya wailed, and buried her tearing face in the crook of her forelegs. “I just dread… I know that I made the mistress do what she did to herself. I don’t think it, Miss Crumpet… I just know it. And… and when the others find out…”

The rest of her words were choked off by eerily silent sobs that wracked the little doe’s body. Madeleine reached toward her to comfort her by… well, she didn’t quite know what she planned to do. Her own mind was still reeling from Papaya’s words.

Her hoof was stayed by Mangosteen, who took the other doe up in a grip of starlight that burned bright and prickly enough to hurt. Papaya let out a yelp of surprise.

“When the others find out what?” Mangosteen said, a growl edging her voice.

“M-Mango?” stammered Papaya. Her self-pitying sorrow was gone in an instant. She struggled in the other doe’s grip. “Put me down!”

“Not until you tell Miss Crumpet what you meant by that!” Mangosteen shot back, eyes ablaze with the deep-glinting fires of a garnet. Papaya’s muzzle curled into a snarl.

“I was talking to her, browntail, until you stuck your nose in!” Papaya said, buckshot sparks of pale orange ripping from her stumpy antlers. Mangosteen yelped in pain as one of them seared her shoulder and dropped the other doe roughly on the ground. Papaya stumbled onto her four hooves and the two Clavia faced each other, shoulders low, nostrils flaring, pawing at the ground.

This was getting out of control. And fast. Come on girl – do something!

But what could she do? Madeleine wasn’t about to throw herself into the fray of thrashing forelegs and the jagged, unguided lights of Clavia magic whose only intent was to cut, and maim, and hurt. Papaya struck at the side of Mangosteen’s muzzle with the edge of a tiny hoof wrapped in something like old-fashioned hoplite greaves cut from the night sky. Mangosteen yelped in pain and leapt at the other doe, taking her by surprise and knocking her off balance for a moment. That one moment was enough. Mangosteen’s small, sharp antlers glittered like spears and showered her foe with a spray of starry sparks that made Papaya hiss. Papaya shifted her weight and shoved Mangosteen away with her shoulder. The two does glared at each other, ignoring Madeleine and everything else but for the other Clavia in the room. The two does resumed their low crouches and began to paw at the ground again: a prelude to another round.

No – Largo wouldn’t have it, and neither will I. Madeleine searched frantically through her saddlebags. She threw aside pens and pencils, organizers, brooches and bangles, pearls and peridot and bags of golden bits, looking for the one thing on her that might be able to bring this to a quick end without anydeer – or anypony! – getting hurt. Come on! Where are you, you cheeky little…

Meanwhile, Papaya and Mangosteen had gone at each other again. Instead of the mad rush of their first exchange, the Clavia circled each other warily, looking for an opening to vent their pent-up emotions on the other. Their horn-tips sparkled like the edge of a well-whet knife.

Mangosteen moved first. She charged forward suddenly, pushing a curved, glinting shield of a thousand points of light before her. But this time, Papaya was ready and met the blow with a grip that took hold of the other doe’s magic and hurled her little, unresisting body into another berth with the momentum of her charge. Mangosteen yelped at the impact and did not immediately right herself. Papaya conjured her own shield of orange and advanced toward the fallen Clavia, step by inching step. Once she was about two deer-lengths away, Mangosteen suddenly scrambled to her hooves and threw out her curved shield to meet Papaya’s advance. The two combatants braced their legs against the earth, neither giving an inch, their shields and horns giving off stray flecks of crackling starlight. The room was filled with the deep thrum of too much magic in too little space.

There! Madeleine’s little pony yelped in triumph. And while the crass little thing celebrated, Madeleine hurled her missile into the fray. Between the combatants’ grinding shields, there fell a little square-cut aquamarine. For one long moment, the two does stared at it as it hung, falling impossibly slowly through the magic concentrated there, like a pebble through an honeypot. Like stars fading in the morning light, the shields each grew dull, then dim.

Then the room exploded. Madeleine let out a rather undignified grunt as the air was forced from her lungs by the pressure wave that came from the arcane energies in the room suddenly imploding upon themselves. But she at least fared better than the two does, who were knocked to the walls on opposite sides of the room and lay dazed on their sides, glass-eyed. Madeleine went to Mangosteen first and righted her by magic. The Clavia blinked at her.

“Miss… Crumpet? What did you…?”

“Oh, only stopped you from killing yourselves,” Madeleine snapped. “What under Celestia’s burning sun were you thinking?”

“I… I just…” Mangosteen stammered, but Madeleine did not wait for her spluttering to become a real reason. She turned her back on Mangosteen and crossed over to Papaya, setting the other doe on her hooves and offering her a kerchief for her tearing eyes. Papaya leaned against Madeleine’s side and hung her head, sniffing quietly. Madeleine stroked the doe’s neck, just waiting.

“M…maybe it would be best if I went back home. Nodeer is going to want me around, Miss Crumpet. Maybe they already don’t… They all know what I do… what I can’t seem to stop myself from doing. I’ve seen how they all look at me…” Papaya said. Her voice was low and flat; this was a broken doe. Madeleine lifted Papaya’s chin and said tenderly:

“Whatever you do, Papaya, is your choice. But whatever you’ve done, you can’t just run away from. Believe me, I’ve tried to run from my own shadow, too. I know that you couldn’t have made Largo do what she did – just like I know you didn’t kill that horrible stallion. But whatever you did do, I need you to be honest about, right here and now. Can you do that for me? For an old friend?”

Mangosteen’s ears flattened and reddened with a shamefaced flush as Papaya just sniffed and nodded. Madeleine caught Mangosteen’s glance with a look that promised words later in the absence of her mistress’ ability to see to that duty.

“I… I’ve done a terrible thing. I was only trying to follow orders… I never meant for any of it! I shot him, Miss Crumpet!” Papaya fell to the ground, her legs giving way beneath her. The doe wept bitterly at Madeleine’s hooves. As for Madeleine, she was reeling, somewhere far away from her own body. She seemed to watch as her own traitorous mouth demanded:

“With my pistol?”

“Yes!” wailed the doe.

“When did you take it? How did you take it?” Madeleine went on. It was as if the little pony in her head had staged a mutiny.

“I nipped it from your bags when we were in the casino… Miss Largo knew that you always keep it close on you. I’m sorry, Miss Crumpet, but… it really wasn’t very hard. I could have taken more, but the pistol was all that I was told to get. She… the mistress… she said that you wouldn’t need it for the time being. Miss Largo didn’t say why… just that she needed it for something. I never found out what.”

With a minotaur’s force of will, Madeleine clamped down her treacherous lips. She took a long, deep breath. Then, for good measure, she took another.

Largo? Largo was the one who took my pistol? “And what did Largo say when you gave it to her?”

Papaya shook, fighting the glass-eyed terror that was threatening to paralyze her. “I never did.”

“You kept it?” Madeleine’s mouth said before she had a chance to think.

“I told the mistress I couldn’t get to it after all… that you kept your bags too close for me to undo. It was… it’s just such a pretty thing, Miss Crumpet. I couldn’t bear to let anypony else have it. I… I never meant to hurt anyone!”

Madeleine and Mangosteen looked down at the quivering doe with disbelieving faces. Mangosteen’s jaw actually hung open, as if she were unable to even comprehend what she was hearing from the other Clavia. That makes two of us, thought Madeleine.

“Okay,” said Madeleine, choosing her words carefully this time. “I admit, I didn’t expect this. I could forgive you, Papaya. I still might. But there are still two things that I don’t understand.”

“What?” said Papaya.

“Why did you shoot Calvados Apple?” It was another bad move, and Madeleine fought the urge to throttle her own subconscious as Papaya groaned and curled up upon herself like a fawn. Just like that, the Clavia was in no fit state to answer any questions whatever.

“S-She went up to two rooms on special requests that night,” said Mangosteen suddenly. “Once during the storm – it was after that she was so agitated – and once again at 2:30. Frond and I never got the name, but if it was 505…”

Madeleine blinked at Mangosteen and looked down again at Papaya. The doe’s shaking only got worse. Madeleine had a flash of sudden, cold clarity about what happened in that room. If this was what Mister Rubyk felt in the line of just doing his job, the Aktur could keep his title and his city. This… was awful.

“The…” Madeleine cast about for a word strong enough to use for Calvados Apple. “Pig! Mule! Slime-guzzler!” All too, too weak. Frost Pane would have had a fit. She spat on the ground instead.

“Oh, Papaya… I’m so sorry…” Mangosteen said, approaching the other doe and mare on hoof-tips.

“I had to do it, Miss Crumpet…” Papaya croaked out. “He wasn’t like he was in the casino that night before it all happened. He was different… loud, and angry. He seemed just like another way to get a few bits and a nice body for a little while. I went up to 505 when I did because he asked me, personally. It…” Papaya licked her dry lips. “It was clear we wanted different things.”

“And… you shot him,” said Madeleine, trying not to draw the connection between “Calvados Apple” and “a nice body”. That was the last image that she needed right now. Papaya just whimpered and gave a tiny nod of her head.

“And… what happened then?”

“I ran away. It wasn’t safe there.”

“I know…” Madeleine cooed, trying to soothe the doe insofar as she could be soothed. “Believe me, I know. I’ve been there. But that’s not really what we need to know. What did he do… after you did what you had to do?”

“I really don’t know, Miss Crumpet! I didn’t – I couldn’t stay around to find out! All I know is that I… I didn’t miss, but I didn’t really hit him either. He… he looked so angry…” Papaya was wracked by a new round of trembling and needed more soothing than words alone could give. Mangosteen said nothing, but lay down in solidarity beside her herd-mate in a gesture welling up from a deep and primal deerish instinct; the recent unpleasantness between them was but a dim memory. It was some minutes before Papaya was fit to speak again, but when she did, it was in the strained, flat tones of exhaustion.

“I couldn’t believe what I had done at first, so I didn’t. I went back to the casino and served from the bar until I rotated out for the next shift post. Then when I was walking through the foyer, a call came to the front desk for a mineral water. But this was right around the shift change, so nodeer was around to take the request. I was still riding the fear-surge after what I had done, so I volunteered to take it up to the third floor.”

“Is this important, Papaya?” said Madeleine. It was difficult to tell if the poor thing was telling the prosaic truth or just talking just to fill the empty space with words because the alternative was to be left alone with her thoughts.

“I… I think so. Maybe. Now I’m not sure…”

The twins’ words from before were echoing in Madeleine’s ears. She was nervous and agitated after coming down from an errand to a guest’s room. Madeleine thought she knew exactly who that guest might be.

“What pony did you deliver to, Papaya?”

“That… that stallion,” Papaya said, an hitch in her voice.

“The black one?”

“Yes… the pegasus. Miss Crumpet, he… he frightened me.”

Feeling the bile rising in her throat, and fighting the urge to stamp her hoof – oh, hadn’t the poor thing suffered enough? – Madeleine said quietly: “Papaya, what did he do?”

“N-nothing. He was a perfect gentlecolt. He was nothing like… like the other one.”

“Then how were you scared?” Mangosteen broke in.

“It wasn’t anything that he did… he just seemed so huge and powerful and was breathing like he had been exercising – oh, Miss Crumpet, you know how snorty the stallions can get when they start to exert themselves. And his coat was damp, too, and he showed off every muscle, but he wasn’t lathery at all. It should have been a fine body on any stallion, but… but I just couldn’t think that. Not then, and not now. He thanked me for the mineral water and… and he looked right through me. I just knew, somehow, that he knew what I had done. It was a look that… that made my whole body cold. I think I just stood there glass-eyed while he closed the door in my face.” Papaya’s body had ceased to quiver, and she lay eerily still like a fawn in hiding.

“What did you do after that?” Madeleine asked softly.

“I… think I must have gone downstairs back to the staff area. I don’t really remember very well. It’s very strange… I didn’t regret what I had done before I saw that stallion’s face, but ever since then, I haven’t been able to get that look or the gunshot or… or any of it out of my mind. And that’s why… that’s how I just knew that what happened to Miss Largo is my fault! Oh, Miss Crumpet!” Papaya broke down into silent sobs that shook her body, but the little doe made no sound.

Madeleine heaved a sigh of relief. It had all been nothing in the end, and Papaya hadn’t done something unthinkable. Then she frowned.

Something smells off here.

“Papaya, can you remember anything else about the room that you delivered the water to?” Madeleine said suddenly.

“The… room?” Papaya said, raising her head.

“Yes – was there anything that seemed out of place for a hotel guest? Maybe something that was odd for the hour of the night?”

Papaya blinked at her, her eyes both bleared and glassy. “Out of… place? Well… now that you asked…”

“Yes?”

“I couldn’t see into the room, Miss Crumpet. The stallion – the pegasus – he was too big and his wings too wide to get a look around. But… I do remember hearing something strange.”

She heard something? “What was it?”

“Just the wind, Miss Crumpet. But… it was awfully loud.”

“That storm was awfully loud,” Mangosteen agreed.

“No…” said Papaya, shaking her head. “I mean louder than it should have been. I think the pegasus must have opened up the door to his balcony. The hotel would have kept the rain out, but they like to feel the weather on their wings. They’re awfully sensitive there, aren’t they, Miss Crumpet?”

Madeleine started to shake her head knowingly, thinking of a certain Cloudsdale barber she had met on her last trip to Manehattan. Then her head caught in the middle of the motion, and she gasped.

“It can’t be…” she murmured. But there was no other explanation. Ponies only order a mineral water if they come from certain rarefied social circles in the Royal court, or if they have been exercising and need the salts. If he was breathing hard and his coat was damp, then that could only mean…

“Jett Black was out flying in that squall?” Madeleine said aloud.

“He what?” said Papaya and Mangosteen at once. Madeleine bit her lip.

Why was a Canterlot intelligence officer flying in an uncontrolled squall coming off of the sea? Why was there a storm that made a perfect distraction during the murder of Calvados Apple in the first place? And why did the victim have his balcony doors open when he didn’t have wings to enjoy the draft? Madeleine scowled. There were too many unanswered questions!

“Papaya, you poor thing… thank you for all your help. You’ve been through an awful lot and an awful ordeal – one that I wouldn’t wish on anypony. It might be best if you got away from Currycape until you feel fit to return to duty,” said Madeleine.

“T-thank you, Miss Crumpet,” sniffled Papaya. “I will try. Maybe… maybe it’s time I went home to my mum and grandbuck and just forgot about the hotel for a while.”

Madeleine noticed that Mangosteen did not voice an objection.

The mare and the two does said their partings. Madeleine turned to leave, her head starting to fill too full to think clearly.

“D-don’t forget this, Miss Crumpet…” Papaya’s voice called out. In the wobbling grip of her magic, the doe brought the aquamarine into Madeleine’s view, still shining with the inward light of the magic it had absorbed from the scuffle. Mangosteen just stared at the bobbing gem.

“Are you quite sure, Papaya?” Madeleine asked. “Can’t your grandbuck use it?”

Papaya shook her head. “It’s not mine,” she said weakly. “Take it away, Miss Crumpet. I’m not sure I want anything that isn’t mine ever again. Please…”

Madeleine looked at Papaya.

Madeleine smiled.

Madeleine took the gem.




*********************************************



Chapter Three



The Shadow Over Currycape



*********************************************




Back out on the terrace, a little of the day’s gloom seemed to have lifted itself from off their shoulders. Madeleine and Mangosteen trotted in the direction of the front gardens. Whether or not that was the best place to find Frond and Mister Rubyk, it seemed a sensible enough place to start. From there, they could check the front desk to see if anypony from the morning’s trial had gone back to the mainland yet. (The thought that it would be just a tad difficult to keep the details mum from the guests now that the hotel’s proprietress herself had been an apparent victim had crossed her mind – but that was a future Madeleine’s problem, and she had not had the pleasure of acquainting herself with that lovely mare yet.)

“Do you think she means it?” Mangosteen asked abruptly, the clip of their hooves crisp and sharp against the white flagstones.

“Papaya?” Madeleine said.

“Uh huh.”

Madeleine shrugged. She hoped that the little doe’s change of heart from thieving would extend farther than the shock, but there was no way to know for sure.

Ultimately, that wasn’t what mattered now. Largo’s face, filled with fear under that starry shroud, swam up again into her mind’s eye. For a few moments, out of her own body, it was all that she could see as she mechanically placed one hoof in front of another.

Then a familiar (and unwelcome) voice said:

“Miss Madeleine Crumpet, is that correct? Your timing is apt. May I impose upon you for a moment?”

Madeleine could not help the gasp that escaped her as she whirled about to see Jett Black standing only a body’s length from them. Where under all the bright skies had he come from? Although his wings were folded neatly at his sides, he still gave off an oppressive feeling of looming.

“Corporal,” Madeleine said, nodding curtly, hoping to sun and moon and stars that the hitch in her voice wasn’t too apparent. “Of course you may… but may I inquire as to how Largo is doing, if you have any news to give?”

The pegasus smiled without showing any teeth. “Naturally. Allow me to put your fears to rest: the proprietress will live. Word came to me the moment that physician had her stable. She is, as I understand, resting in an unused guest room on the bottom level so that the staff may keep a constant watch over her as she recovers.”

Jett Black’s smile faded. “I hope that you will forgive me that I must interrogate her at the first opportunity that her health will allow. What has happened here is… unfortunate. My duty as Canterlot’s representative, however, is absolute.”

Madeleine took a moment to push the screaming little pony in her head down – far down – before answering. Beside her, Mangosteen eyed the pegasus with an expression that showed her to be on an hair-trigger to bolt, or fall down glass-eyed, or both. “Of course, Corporal. That is wonderful news.”

“I am glad that I have at least one piece of good news to deliver today. This whole affair has been… unfortunate. But I repeat myself. Now, then…” Jett Black cleared his throat and when he continued, his voice was masked by an officiousness that gave an hard bite to each crisp consonant.

“Since the proprietress has been removed from her office, I have returned there to make my official investigation of the most recent crime scene in this case.”

“Horrible, isn’t it?” Madeleine said, turning her head with a showy little shudder.

“Indeed. But there are traces there that an investigating officer can read like a book if he has the experience and the know-how.”

“And what did you read there, Corporal Black?”

“It is not so much what happened before I came that I am concerned with now, but what came after. And in this case, that is as plain as the misdirection you are trying now. I saw that office before its owner was taken away. I also saw its state after you and the Aktur had your way with it.”

Madeleine flicked her tail. “Yes, Mister Rubyk is rather forceful. I admit that. But he was only doing what was necessary, Corporal. After all, would you have known where to look for the secret safe if he had not cleared the way for you?”

Jett Black regarded her silently for a moment. Then he unfurled his wings to their full breadth, covering Madeleine and Mangosteen in shadow. His badge showing the thirteen stars was clearly visible, glinting in the unnatural shadow his body cast. When he spoke again, it was in a troublingly quiet near-whisper that reminded Madeleine only too well of somepony else.

“Tampering with a crime scene is an high felony in the Canterlot courts, Miss Madeleine Crumpet. As one who was merely present on the scene and allowed the alteration unknowingly, of course you are safe from prosecution. But I can extend to you no protections if you knowingly persist in aiding the Aktur of Trotheim. I allowed him to act as he did in this case up to this time so that I would have no need to reveal myself too soon, and your aid to him has been invaluable even to me. But now that I have, under the terms of our treaty with Trotheim, he no longer has investigative rights. As such, what he has done is a crime: one that I will see to in time.”

Madeleine bit her lip to stop her knees from shaking. Jett Black was just a pegasus, she told herself – he was no marauding alicorn bent on cloaking the world in an unending night. But the chill on her neck surely made it feellike the sun had gone away. “Corporal. I must confess that you have lost me. What Mister Rubyk has done is surely his business, and I expect him to own up to it like a stallion should. But what has this to do with me?”

Jett Black’s stare turned to a glare. “Miss Madeleine Crumpet. Did you or did you not remove evidence from that room upon your search?”

Madeleine hesitated. Think!

“Do you have any evidence that I did?” she said, her mouth dry as dust.

“Is the testimony of eight hotel staff who saw you do it sufficient for you? Or will you prefer to submit to a search of your bags and own up to the consequences as a stallion should when I find it in your possession?”

Think, think, THINK! There had to be something, some way that she could –

Oh.

Well, there was that.

Madeleine put on her best pout. It fit her like an old, comfortable negligee. “Oh, Corporal. Why is that you military types have to be so efficient at your jobs? It’s true: I confess. I held on to one thing from Largo’s office for safekeeping. But you saw how things were in there, yes? I only did it to keep anything more of Largo’s from being clod-hooved any more than it already had. You understand, don’t you?”

Jett Black stared at her. Then, perhaps even a bit sheepishly, he blinked. The pegasus folded back his wings, and the feeling of a sudden freak eclipse faded.

“Thank you… for your cooperation,” he said. “You have made the right decision. I shall take it now, and there need be nothing more said about this when we get back to the mainland.”

“Of course. You make everything so clear, Corporal. Just do give me a moment, will you?” Madeleine smiled at Jett Black, who made no reply. She opened up her saddlebags and made a show of searching through its contents with her forehooves… pushing the blue-glass crystal far to the bottom. Then, sitting where she had laid it near the top, she extracted the aquamarine that she had taken from the staff area. The starlight within was still dancing its whirling gavotte; even under the sunlight, you couldn’t possibly miss it.

And the pegasus didn’t. The change that came over Jett Black’s face was a little alarming, maybe even because it was so subdued. It would have been easy to miss for a normal eye and was as subtle as any other social tell – especially in these thick-bodied military types – but the slight upturn at the corners of his muzzle, and the twitch of relaxation in his shoulders, was unmistakable. Relief. So he was after the sounding-gem!

“That seems to be in line with the description provided by the staff. If you will see fit to entrust that to my care, I will cheerfully forget that this chance meeting ever occurred.” Then the Corporal smiled, and Madeleine felt her practiced pout crack. She couldn’t suppress the shivers any longer.

There was something deeply wrong about that smile.

“Y-yes, Corporal. Forgive me; the heat seems to have gotten to me for a moment. One wonders how you get by in your black coat in this awful weather.”

Jett Black took the gem from her magical grip, slipping it into a black pouch worn close to the body under his wing. Then he turned his face back toward Madeleine and regarded her with a strange expression. It took Madeleine a moment to recognize it. It was scorn.

“You forget, Miss Madeleine Crumpet, that this is not the first of our meetings. I am a Shade, in case you have forgotten even that. I have had ample opportunity to observe you and make the proper inquiries since you first began to play the Aktur’s fetching-mare. Do not play your games with me.”

Jett Black did not wait around for a rejoinder. Instead, he spread his wings wide again and beat at the air one, two, three times and began to circle high overhead as if searching for some target on the ground. Then he made a line for the mainland, lofting himself off a sea-thermal until he was just a dark blot against the blue sky.

Naturally, it was only after the pegasus had left that Madeleine’s treacherous mouth thought of all the witty rejoinders to the last word of that last aggravating, irritating, condescending…!

“Chauvinist mule of a cloud-lumping savage! See if I care what you think of my ‘games’ – I bet I’m a grandmistress at them compared to you, you…!”

“Miss Crumpet!” Mangosteen said, covering her ears. Madeleine stopped where she stood, hoof raised to the sky, and laid her ears back.

“Er… sorry,” Madeleine said. She shook out her mane. “Normally, I choose my words better than that. That pegasus just… there’s something just off about him. It only comes off up close, but… well, a girl is entitled to lose her head every once in a while, isn’t she?”

Mangosteen looked back at Madeleine with wide eyes. “But you actually got away with it! How did you know that he didn’t know that the gem wasn’t the same as the one you found in the office?”

Madeleine chuckled and swished her tail playfully. The two began to trot in the direction of the Grand Foyer.

“I once met an intelligence officer in the unicorn auxiliary of the Royal Guard when I was in Canterlot,” said Madeleine. “He was a military type too, and the biggest blabbermouth I’ve ever seen once you gave him a drink and pat behind the ear in just that one spot that every stallion has, somewhere.”

“Huh?” said Mangosteen, the little doe cantering to catch up.

“I mean that the type gets so used to keeping everypony else’s secrets – the Princesses’, the courtiers’, their own families – that more often than not, when they really need to keep one to themselves, they’re so bursting with pent-up secrets that the little gossipy foal in them can’t help himself. Keep too many secrets for too long, and eventually you’re going to tell somepony something.”

“Still in the weeds here,” said Mangosteen, shaking her head as they stepped up to the great double-doors at the front of the hotel. Two bucks and a doe in sweatbands were picking their way through the wreckage of the fountain and talking in low voices about repair and labour costs to put the garden to rights.

“The Corporal made one mistake he couldn’t help but make: he tried to bully me by saying that he had interviewed all of the staff present in the office when he was in there with us,” said Madeleine.

“Oh!” said Mangosteen, eyes going wide. “But… Frond and I were with you and Doctor Leaf the whole time! He never interviewed us!”

“Exactly, but that’s not quite all the point. He’s the sort of stallion that preens himself over him knowing more than anypony else, but he misses the important little details of a thing. If he can even tell a doe and buck apart, let alone eight Clavia out of an whole hotel staff, I’m Princess Luna’s private hoof-scrubber. He got so wrapped up in trying to press his advantage over the poor little traveling businessmare with an eye for the stallions – if I do say so – that he forgot one little thing.”

“What was it, Miss Crumpet?” Mangosteen asked. Madeleine flashed a triumphant smirk.

“How did he know that the gem Mister Rubyk found was blue?” Madeleine pushed on the doors with her magic, and they swung open to let out a torrent of sound.

If the garden outside was in ruin, the Grand Foyer was in bedlam. A queue of guests that could be more accurately called a throng was clustered together in front of the concierge desk, voices raised at poor Limon behind it, who was pressed back against the bell ends of the brass speaking-tubes.

“…outrageous, young lady! No hotel in Canterlot – no, in Equestria, treats its guests this way!” bellowed a chestnut stallion in a business suit that was looking a little rumpled from the heat and crush of so many bodies. His two companions, and their suits, were in as fine a condition and shot shifty eyes at the irate tourist mums and their nickering foals all around them.

“Please… please remain calm. I know that this is much to ask of all of you, but –” Limon was interrupted by the schoolteacher mare with the hoplicure, who had a mouth on her that shocked her foals, her husband, and probably could have turned the heads of a battalion of the Royal Guard.

“…can’t leave? Can’t allow us to leave? I demand to see the owner! Right. Now!” With many other words of a stronger sort added in Mangosteen’s cheeks flushed.

“That… I am afraid that is impossible, ma’am,” Limon said.

“Then make it possible!” exclaimed, of all ponies, Piper Chai, who looked genuinely distressed and not just angry. “If my coffees are not changed, how shall I sell them? I cannot stretch myself catty-on over to that shore, can I? Am I such a pussycat?” Beside her, and equally wretched, was Hodgepodge, who worried at a grimy bit of black felt in his teeth – probably to keep himself from charging, screaming, through a crowd of so many ponies.

“Pardon, excuse me, pardon me good sirs!” Madeleine said, sailing breezily to the front of the mob, flashing a bright-toothed smile at all the stallions in her way. She found it quite easy going. Limon flashed her a look of sheer relief.

“Limon, dear, why don’t you tell me for all the ponies here? Just what in the hay is going on?” Madeleine said. The little doe relaxed, her focus narrowing only to Madeleine and not spread out among the snorting mob beyond her.

“It’s like I’ve been trying to tell everypony this whole time, Miss Crumpet: the hotel is on lockdown! That Corporal from Canterlot took the reins and handed down the order, saying the whole island is under Canterlot’s hoof until further notice, and that nopony was to go over to the mainland until he gave the say-so. And anypony or anydeer that goes over the causeway will be pris… prosse… brought to trial!” Limon said, the words coming out bunched up one against another.

“…what a farce. Do you expect any of us to believe this charade? I demand to speak to the proprietress at once! I’m her personal friend; she’ll see me! I know that she would never put up with this display!” The voice came from an high-sounding mare with a Fillydelphian accent in a broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses. Madeleine turned, saw the blank-mirrored expression of the mare behind her sunglasses, and smiled at her. She walked into the mob, who watched the two mares with the sudden attention paid to street fights and train crashes.

Then Madeleine struck the other mare on the side of the muzzle with the back of her hoof. The sunglasses tumbled off the mare’s face.

“Madam,” said Madeleine, “you are a dunce.”

“How… how dare…” the mare stammered. Her face had been the colour of a perfect raspberry. Apoplexy had darkened it to that of an inedible beet.

“Because the reason you are here is because the proprietress was poisoned, you straw-brained idiot! And for all we know, you might have slipped it into her drink while she wasn’t looking, since you evidently know her so well!”

The colour drained from the Fillydelphian mare’s face. “I… did not know. I’m…”

“Sorry?” quipped Madeleine. She snapped her tail at the ground, stopping just short of snorting in the foolish mare’s face. “Good. Because I am a good friend of the proprietress – my friend who was just poisoned, you see? Now quiet down and do as this young doe tells you if you don’t want the nice Corporal from Canterlot to drag you back to the mainland in a prison-yoke.” Madeleine glared at the mare, who picked up her sunglasses in her teeth and was suddenly struck with the memory of an urgent appointment. Around them, the clamor of the crowd had fallen silent. Madeleine asked Limon:

“I suppose that Doctor Leaf is having no one at all in Largo’s room until he gives his say-so?” Wide-eyed, Limon nodded.

“Y-yes, Miss Crumpet.”

“Well, if that’s the doctor’s orders, who am I to say otherwise? Let me know if you have any other problems, Limon dear,” said Madeleine, shooting a smile behind her at the concierge desk as she turned to leave. Limon returned it gratefully.

Mangosteen trotted anxiously beside Madeleine as the mare made her way to the stairwell and up to the fifth floor. The stone steps, sconced as they were in the same lush blue carpet as the halls, seemed to shake beneath every tromp of her hooves.

“Are you alright, Miss Crumpet?” Mangosteen asked.

“No,” said Madeleine. “Just… tired of a sudden.” The two walked on in silence.

“Is there anything I can do?” Mangosteen said as they came to suite 505.

“Oh, please just tell Mister Rubyk that I need to see him as soon as is convenient. I think I will just lie down for a bit.”

Mangosteen blinked, the doe regarding Madeleine with a perplexed look. “Alright…” she muttered, looking over her shoulder as she went. Madeleine held a thin smile on her face until Mangosteen had rounded the corner. Then she fished her room key out of her bag, opened and stepped through the door, and bucked it shut with a rear hoof. She cantered to the balcony door and all of the windows, checking the locks. They all held. Madeleine nodded to herself, then entered the bedroom.

She laid herself facedown on the silken sheets and buried her face in the pillow.

Madeleine screamed until her throat was raw.




*********************************************



Chapter Four



The Burden



*********************************************




The hoof-beat at the door was hard to hear: soft, low, and timorous, like a child’s knock. Madeleine raised her head up from her tear-stained sheets, slowly. Had she really heard something just then?

The knock came on again, just as quiet as the first. Who in the wide world of Equestria knocked like that? All of the hotel staff were trained to make their presence boldly known when going up to a guest’s room. Then a familiar voice bellowed clear through the closed door:

“Did my son whelp a sculling-filly?! Or does my grandfoal have mince for marrow?! Observe how Trotheim should announce herself!”

Then Frost Pane’s hooves thundered and crashed on the wooden door like a war-hammer of the Northlanders of old. Madeleine scrambled quickly to the floor and made a stumbling rush to the door as something in the hinge made a distinctively unhealthy-sounding crunching sound.

“Jeweler! My grandfoal answers your summons! Open this door at once! – ah, so you have not gone early deaf like the frost-nipped fool who goes out into the night without his hat! Good, good!” Frost Pane said (very loudly) as Madeleine threw the door open, just as quickly as she could get her magic around the handle. The Frei of Trotheim grinned her jagged smile downward, her great forehoof still poised for another hammer-blow of the gods. Madeleine stole a quick glance at the surface of the door. The paint, and a goodly portion of wood, had been gouged away in deep gashes cut by each successive blow. Beside the Frei of Trotheim stood Rubyk, holding a forehoof close to his chest. Behind them both, standing as if he did not want to come too close to Trotheim when she was announcing herself, was Rock Skipper, worrying his weather-worn cap between his forehooves. The pegasus looked up to Madeleine, smiling a sheepish grin, but his face fell quickly at the sight of her.

“Hello, Miss Crumpet. Sorry to bother you like this. Er… are you alright?” said Rock Skipper. Madeleine turned her head away, acutely aware of the puffiness around her eyes and the salt-stains running down her cheeks.

“Quite, Skipper. I will be fine. Really.”

“Miss Crumpet, if you need to talk…” Rock Skipper began, but Madeleine turned to Rubyk and said, cutting him off:

“Have you found out anything, Mister Rubyk?” Rock Skipper shut his mouth, and the Aktur of Trotheim lowered his hoof to the ground. Rubyk took a deep breath.

“Yes, friend Madeleine. The case that I should present before the Never-Melting is beginning to be clear before my eyes. And have you continued your inquiries? – or have you needed some moments to grieve?”

Madeleine snorted and tossed her mane. “Can’t a girl do both, Mister Rubyk?” Rubyk smiled thinly at that, and Frost Pane guffawed… loudly.

“I like this mare still more the more I see her, Rubyk! Come, jeweler! You shall talk with my grandfoal and brood over your plans for the coming war like good generals, and eat, and drink, and make your heart fat before the battle like a mare of Trotheim should!” Madeleine and Rock Skipper both stared at the elder mare.

“Er… I should love to, Frei Frost Pane. Mister Rubyk, what did you have in mind?”

Rubyk cleared his throat. “Come to my rooms, if you would – both you and our friend pegasus. I have found him and the young buck you sent to me invaluable.”

Madeleine nodded, and in the span of moments, she found herself once again gathered around the sitting room of the Trotheim ponies. While the table held no grisly feast this time, a rank note of harbour-reek still hung in the air. Rubyk himself served thick-black coffee and brandy from a massive samovar on the sideboard into cups that were like eggshells to the Northland giants. Madeleine watched the Aktur of Trotheim swallow down hot, steaming coffee, unmixed and undiluted, like a salt-sick pony drinks water. The dark circles and creases around his eyes stood out stark in the blazing light of the sunset streaming through the open balcony door. Frost Pane sprawled herself and consumed the whole of the chaise, the muscles along the length of her whole body animated by coffee and strife. Rock Skipper shifted his hooves nervously where he sat at the table, his eyes flicking from Madeleine to the Trotheim nobles and back again.

“You wanted me here for coffee and what else, chief?” Rock Skipper said after nopony said anything for an uncomfortably long stretch.

“Ah.” Rubyk laid his eggshell down. “I shall need you in time. Things come now to the endgame against this murderer and perjurer. I shall need you, friend, to give testimony so that friend Madeleine and I may spear him to the wall when we confront him.” Rock Skipper flinched at this choice of words, and Rubyk added in his near-whisper, “so to speak.”

“You found something new, Skipper?” said Madeleine, a strange excitement crackling in her voice.

“Yeah – out on the beaches…” murmured Rock Skipper, but Rubyk held up an hoof and said:

“Let us consider things in their proper order. There is one puzzle that has bothered me since the beginning of this misbegotten case, and I now have the solution. May we see with shining eyes where it shall lead. Friend Madeleine, I shall need to ask your aid here.”

“My aid?” Madeleine said.

Rubyk replied by magicking a small, conical stone onto the table with a crackle of frost. Madeleine peered at it. Then she recoiled.

“Mister Rubyk… where did you find this?” Madeleine’s voice was muffled beneath the sound of her own heart thundering away in her ears. Rubyk closed his eyes and said, distantly:

“I have been bothered for some time by one question: why was there no hint of the events in Calvados Apple’s suites coming to the ears of the doe on duty at the concierge desk at the time through the speaking tube?”

“Wait…” said Rock Skipper, looking toward Madeleine. “Miss Crumpet? Just what is that thing?”

“Just look at it, Skipper. Think back to the other night.”

“Not hornbone again?” Rock Skipper groaned. The pegasus moved back from the table.

“Yes, and I’m nearly certain that it came from the same horn. The poor thing…”

Rubyk nodded, his face cast in a thin-lipped frown. “And such could be used by somepony for any such enchantment that he wished.”

“Yes, that’s…” Madeleine closed her mouth. Oh, right. Not a question.

“Will you do me the honour of examining the spell upon this item, friend Madeleine?”

Madeleine shuddered, but nodded. Her eyes traced the bone spurs and long-dead nerves, searching for the higher refractory order of magic imposed from the outside. Turning her eyes from the horrible thing, she shook her head.

“I know that this is hornbone, Mister Rubyk, but black magic is thankfully rather outside of my usual expertise. Beyond what you already know, I don’t know if I can tell you anything further.”

“That is well enough. I said that I found the assistance of the young Frond invaluable. That included gaining access to that which was prohibited to me to investigate. If I cannot go forth as Aktur…” Rubyk smiled. “I can certainly play the chamber-dresser’s assistant.”

Not a picture I thought I’d be imagining today.

“I thought that the reason the speaking-tube did not sound might be due to some obstruction. Had the incidents that took place in Calvados’ suites been heard, especially the gunshot, the staff surely would have been alerted, and the body would have been discovered long before you came across it, friend Madeleine. Thus, when young Frond gave me the privilege of his company, I used it to enter Calvados’ rooms once more. I abstracted that piece of hornbone from the speaking-tube,” Rubyk said in his whispery voice.

“But there was nopony that could have placed it there but a member of the staff!” Rock Skipper protested, the force of a new horror overcoming the one on the table before them. Frost Pane nodded sagely.

“Ah, yes. ‘Frigid waters on bare pelts are the treacheries of friends’… I know this saying well,” said the Frei of Trotheim, sounding uncommonly subdued.

“But… who?” Rock Skipper said. The pegasus looked toward each of the others, but found no answers written on any of their faces.

“Worry not about that for now, friend pegasus. That we have the ‘how’ is enough for the moment. What I am rather more interested in is whether this fragment has the same source as the necklace that… well, ‘showed up’ most fascinatingly the other night.”

“The necklace?” Madeleine shuddered again, remembering all of the circumstances that surrounded thatparticular piece of evidence. “I have it here, Mister Rubyk.” She lifted it onto the table and dropped it like an hot rock. The Aktur and the jeweler peered in close to examine them.

“A perfect match, to my eye,” said Rubyk.

“Then your eyes are better than you let on,” Madeleine said. “I am – unfortunately – certain that these came from the same poor soul.”

“But what does that mean?” Rock Skipper ejaculated loudly. The pegasus rubbed at his temple. “Sorry, chief. Didn’t mean to shout. It’s just… brrr, there’s some things somepony just doesn’t want to think about too hard, you know?”

Rubyk nodded his head. “And so you should not. My forebears were forced to face such evil; the land in the North makes the shadows in equine hearts lengthen just as the ice makes righteousness gleam the brighter. Trotheim shall never again suffer a warlock to live. But that is beside the point. One can gain such baubles in back-alley shops where the light and good ponies fear to tread, where the names of the poor souls sacrificed to the whitepelts’ black gods are traded for mammon and the lust of the eyes. But though we can but say a prayer on behalf of this poor, forgotten one… tell me, friend Madeleine, what does the common source of these trinkets found together suggest to you?”

Madeleine bit the inside of her cheek. “Obviously that they were in the possession of the same pony at the same time. The alternative… thank Celestia… is just too unlikely.”

“Indeed. The question is thus who and where,” said Rubyk. Madeleine tapped a rhythm on the table as she thought.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t from here,” Madeleine said. “Hodgepodge may not have scruples to speak of, but his is the only place to get a thing like that anywhere on the island. And the fact that the Corporal was there with it as relating to his investigation…”

Rubyk held up an hoof. “We cannot yet say as much. Say only for now that he was there with the necklace. That, at least, is fact enough to begin to make a case.”

“Wait…” Madeleine murmured. “Do you suppose that he was lying, Mister Rubyk?”

“Friend Madeleine, I have not the evidence to say. But if you want my opinion…” The Aktur of Trotheim heaved a sigh like a gale scoring the tundra. “Tell me, is it not a natural thought that a skulk of your Princess should find but little difficulty in procuring hornbone and other such things unfit for the light of the day? Would he not find ample means through his position to transport these items through the ports by invoking his name and title, and making little threats, all so that his bags and person are passed over lightly? Yes… it is my theory – no, my conviction! – that this Jett Black is deep at the heart of this whole matter, from the beginning to the end.”

Rubyk frowned, and the dark circles under the Aktur of Trotheim’s eyes made it seem that a shadow was cast over the giant’s face. “But I cannot prove it. I have been backed to the wall. I need more evidence… I need more time… I need more than I have here in this town! Ah! Had I but one logicmaster or mare of the wall-guards, I should not be forced to tie my own hooves and let sin go unpunished under the sun!” Madeleine had never heard the proud stallion sound so mournful. Rubyk hung his head as if the weight of a thousand lives rested on his shoulders.

“Feh!” Frost Pane’s snort was quick and dismissive. “My grandfoal has forgotten his spelling-lessons!”

Rubyk’s manner seemed to go suddenly and wholly vague. “What do you mean, grandmama?”

“Do you see, jeweler? Do you see how he dons his eelskin and slips away when I tell him he is about to put his foot through the ice? Well! If he shall not listen to my counsels, then I shall pour them into your ears, and you may make him drink and drunk on the wisdom of hoary age,” said Frost Pane, the Frei of Trotheim’s neck held high.

“What my grandfoal forgets,” continued the old mare, looking right past Madeleine and Rubyk into the dwindling light of the evening pouring through the balcony door, “is that when your enemy masses his force in his fortress, you must strike at him in the dark, or you must march with the clamor of a thousand armies and drive him from his stronghold by force of fear. He forgets what he learned when he doddered on my knee! The Pride of Trotheim learns these lessons with its milk-sop!” She slammed her hoof on the table before them.

“Do you see what I mean, jeweler?” Frost Pane demanded, though now she was looking directly into the shadows ringing Rubyk’s jewel-cut eyes.

Even if I don’t – and I don’t –someone else does, Madeleine thought as she watched Rubyk’s eyes widen and his forehead contract. He stood for a moment in silent thought. Then, with a thin frost beginning to form on his horn… he smiled.

It was one of the most unnerving things Madeleine had ever seen.

“Yes. I do believe that will work nicely. Thank you, grandmama,” said Rubyk. Then, with upraised voice, he wheeled suddenly on Rock Skipper. “Friend pegasus! We will have your evidence now. Quickly, quickly!”

“Oh! Er… you mean that thing we found on the beaches, chief? I’ve got it here,” said Rock Skipper, who produced from a canvas saddlebag a sort of metal wheel in the early stages of corrosion. Madeleine examined it with a searching glance.

No, not a wheel, she quickly decided. The balance is off. It looks as though it was meant to lie flat like that. There was an indentation in the center surrounded by three prongs. It seemed… incomplete.

Wait…

Madeleine dug through her saddlebags, looking about for the one thing that might fit into that receptacle. If that thing is what I think it is…

The glassy blue gem fit into the notch and prongs like a leg into a silk stocking. The stars dancing a gavotte inside phosphoresced a wan and sickly light on the faces of the ponies gathered around it. A sound came to their ears, thin and dim like a voice speaking through a tube miles in the distance.

“What drip-nosed mewling is it that I am listening to, Rubyk?” grumbled Frost Pane.

“I confess, grandmama, I cannot tell.”

Neither could Madeleine. The sound was, frankly, rather odd. It was not unlike an echo of a mumble heard from all the points of the compass at once, or like the tromping drone of a train engine on a long trip. Rock Skipper let in a short intake of breath.

“Is that…” the pegasus murmured. Madeleine and Rubyk fixed him with a stare as he chewed his lip. Then, breaking the stillness in a voice that was just too loud, Rock Skipper exclaimed:

“Chief! Miss Crumpet! I know what this is! It’s the wind howling from that awful squall the other night!”

“Are you absolutely certain of this?” Rubyk said.

“Positive. I was out in it to try and put things right. You don’t forget a sound like that in a wingclip,” said Rock Skipper.

Rubyk seemed to accept that explanation as evidence enough. The sounds then changed and took on a more distinct shape of equine voices, pushing the wailing of the winds into the distant background. The first definitely had the baritone that could belong only to a barrel-chested stallion, while the second might easily have been a mare. The voices were broken and clamored one over another such that it was impossible to tell the shape of more than a few words at once:

“…came here finally… took your time…” said the baritone voice.

“…sure… know what you want… don’t look so good?” queried the second. In response, the first voice swore a something with sharp edges that the sound of the wind did not drown out.

“…course I don’t… everypony against me… don’t want to… then I’ll just take…” said the first voice, now ridged with a sinister import that came even through the unnatural distance of the recording spell.

“S-stop!” cried the second voice, now distinctly female, in tones of distress that left little room for doubt as to what they were hearing. In the next moment, the report of what could only be a gunshot rang out, louder than seemed possible through the muffled distance and howling winds.

In that moment, Madeleine knew exactly what they were all listening to.

“Dear Celestia, it wasn’t just playing sounds. The gem was recording them!” Madeleine gasped.

Rubyk’s face fell with a leaden gravity. “That is the only sound inference. Meaning that we will soon hear the murder of a pony with our own ears.”

Nopony said anything to that.

The recording continued with a clamor of hooves and the dull slam of a door, followed by pained, gasping breaths. The baritone voice – it could only be Calvados Apple himself – muttered dark, angry things in an undertone, too low for the sounding-gem to pick up. But the one thing he did not do was run or cry out for help.

“Mister Rubyk, don’t you find that strange?” Madeleine said.

“That he does not raise his voice in the rage of pain.” Not a question. So he had noticed too!

“Oh, yeah!” Rock Skipper exclaimed. The pegasus’ voice shook, along with most of the rest of him. Madeleine threw him a sympathetic smile; poor Skipper just wasn’t built for this kind of thing. “Now that you mention it, that is dodgy, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have thought the thick old codger was so tough!”

Madeleine shook her head. “If I’m any judge of a pony’s character – and I am – he wasn’t. Calvados was the type who gets what he wants, where he wants, whenever he wants. Stallions who indulge themselves like that… they don’t take pain well.”

Rock Skipper looked at her with a strange expression. “How do you know for sure, Miss Crumpet?”

“Trust me: I know.”

Rubyk tapped at his chin. “It is as friend Madeleine says, I think. I will spare you the proverb to prove the point. But if he is of the type to cry his pain, and he does not, then the obvious answer to the riddle is that he cannot. Now, soft!”

The Aktur’s warning came with a muffled thump that Madeleine could guess was the sound of Calvados’ body falling to the floor even through the distortion of the gem’s recording. Calvados’ murmurings had gradually lessened in volume and given way to laboured breaths as they talked. Now even those were spaced farther and farther apart.

At least he went quietly, Madeleine thought. The poison must have done him in by then. That she was so unmoved by the fact perhaps should have bothered her more than it did. Then Rubyk’s face sharpened and his ears stood erect, and the attention of everypony in the room fastened upon him. The Aktur of Trotheim shook his head in agitation.

“Not me, not me! Listen!” said Rubyk.

And so they listened. As they did, Madeleine’s ears also rose. What in the name of all nightmares is that? It sounded like an huge inrush of air into the room, followed by soft hoof-falls on the carpet. Confirming this impression, a new voice, soft and low, then came to their ears:

“…been dead already… a long time. Too long…”

“…be alone. How fitting…”

“…done playing games. You won’t ever…”

“…goodbye, old friend.”

And then… there came a sound that Madeleine would never forget, no matter how long she lived. It was surprisingly soft, but impossible to mistake. It was the crunch of hoof against bone. She recoiled and found Frost Pane’s foreleg wrapped protectively around her body, the expression on the old mare’s face hard-set and ashen. Rock Skipper sat down hard and looked ready to be sick. Rubyk simply closed his eyes and moved his mouth silently. There was another rush of air on the recording, and then nothing at all but the unquiet howling of the wind.

Rubyk lifted the glass gem from the stand. “…I have heard all that I need,” said the Aktur of Trotheim.

“Hey, chief?” Rock Skipper said softly. “Was what we heard just now… was that…”

Stamp. “Friend pegasus, you would do well to leave me to my thoughts for a moment.”

“S-sure…” stammered the same, biting down on his tongue.

Sorry, Skipper, but I think I need a moment, too. Frost Pane was keeping Madeleine from crumbling to the floor, but her foreleg was a shaky support. Rubyk’s jaw set itself like iron, and once again cold began to radiate from the giant, billowing over them in shivering waves. Frost Pane pulled Rock Skipper in close like a foal clutching at a stuffed toy.

“Shushby!” the old Mare hissed into their ears. She leered at the two smaller ponies, a strange, swelling pride settling onto her face. “See now what he will do! When Trotheim sees a sin unpunished, we do not relent from it! See! See what hardships my Rubyk sets for himself and tramps down in the streets, like blood in the dust!”

“Frei Frost Pane, I think I can see that well enough for myself…” said Madeleine, her voice weak. What she was seeing before her own eyes looked like nothing less than a pony freezing himself to death. In the space of a minute, steaming icicles drooped from the Aktur’s nose and chin, and his coat darkened to a cyanotic blue beneath a crust of feathery scales of white frost. His breaths slowed as the temperature in the room fell, and still he sat, cold and lifeless as marble. The bite in the air around the giant was nigh-unbearable, and Madeleine felt Rock Skipper’s wing fold around her. She did not push it away.

What ARE you, Mister Rubyk?

And then, with all the sudden shock of a corpse opening up its eyes, the Aktur of Trotheim… laughed. It sounded like the wheezing rasp of the ten-day invalid, it seemed to come from a hole as deep as the sea-bottom, and it was most certainly mad. He looked at them all and smiled, his lips too numb for speaking. But that did not stop him from mouthing words.

“I… understand… all?” Rock Skipper said, reading the giant’s half-dead face. The pegasus rubbed at his cap. “Um… good for you, chief?”

Madeleine pushed him aside. “Mister Rubyk, do you know what happened to Largo?”

Rubyk nodded, slowly, and even that seemed to take a great amount of effort. He was evidently not yet in full command of his muscles. “I… do. From beginning to end… I understand all… that has happened here.”

“Who? Who was it?” Madeleine demanded.

Rubyk fixed her with the same stare that had pierced her right through on the night of Calvados’ death. She met it with a spine of diamond. “Largo… what happened to her, she brought on herself. That which befell her was at her own hooves.”

There came a timid knock at the door. Numb, Madeleine turned toward it. “Skipper, get the door, won’t you?” she said. The pegasus opened his mouth. “Now?”

His mouth hanging open, Rock Skipper nodded and plodded toward the door, moving as numbly as Madeleine felt.

“Largo’s poisoner was… Largo?” Madeleine said, her mind not grasping what she said. “She tried to… it was suicide?”

“At…ath…” the giant slurred. Frustrated, Rubyk tossed his head, shaking off some of the ice that clung to his lips. “Attempted. What a depth of despair that mare has been in… and I did not see it. She has a faithful keeper in that doctor. But, yes. There is no one else.”

“Why?” The word burst out of Madeleine like a gunshot, tearing her throat raw. She looked into Rubyk’s face and said again, more softly, “why her, Mister Rubyk? Why did she do it?”

Somewhat pathetically – his shoulder was frozen in more than one way – Rubyk shrugged. Madeleine had never seen a pony give such a sad or as weary a shrug as that one. “Friend Madeleine, unless I mistake myself, that is what we are all about to find out.” Rubyk looked up over Madeleine’s shoulder toward the doorway.

Frond stood in the doorway, the little buck’s forehoof still upraised. The Clavia had seldom looked so miserable.

“Begging your pardon, Mister Rubyk… and you too, Miss Crumpet… but…”

Rubyk shucked off the white frost from his coat and shook out the ice in his tail. “Where does he want us?” said the Aktur of Trotheim, who staggered forward on spindly knees that had not yet quite begun to work again.

“T-The Corporal… Jett Black… he wants all of you in the casino. ‘As soon as possible,’ he said.” There was a tremor in the young buck’s voice. His eyes were half-glossy and focused on a point far in the distance.

“Then so we shall. Go now, friend Frond, and see to everyone else that you have been sent to fetch also,” said Rubyk.

Frond started. “H-how did you…?”

“Providence,” said Rubyk, showing a smile without teeth to the buck. “Only do me one last favour.”

“What is it, Mister Rubyk?” In reply, the Aktur of Trotheim bent himself down with great effort and whispered something into the Clavia’s ear. Then he straightened himself and Frond nodded with new and sudden vigor. In a moment, the buck’s eyes had lost their glassy look, and in their depths there was the fire of epiphany.

“Yes, I think I can do that, Mister Rubyk!” said Frond.

“Good, good. And once you have it, hide it as you are able and come to the casino at once. I shall need it sooner than later,” said Rubyk. In answer, Frond bobbed his head twice and galloped off, eager to fulfill whatever mission he had been given.

“It is time to end this game the Corporal has been playing all along,” said Rubyk, sounding — and moving – as if he were still half-dead. “Come, friend Madeleine, and bring your pistol! I may have need of you both before this night is through.”

Madeleine could contain herself no longer. “Mister Rubyk, what in Celestia’s name are you thinking of doing?”

“I am thinking of doing justice, friend Madeleine. But more importantly,” said Rubyk, his eyes ablaze with anger cold enough to kill, “I am thinking of how to win.”

“Whatever you say, chief…” murmured Rock Skipper. The pegasus’ teeth were still chattering.





*********************************************



Chapter Five



Verdict



*********************************************




The Aktur of Trotheim half-trotted, half-stumbled into the casino, supported on his left by Madeleine’s shoulder and on the right by Rock Skipper’s outstretched wing. The giant’s steps were slow, stumbling, overlaboured like an old stallion who had lost both his balance and his dignity. But Rubyk simply plodded forward, his jewel-cut eyes dull and filmy.

“Are you sure you can do… this?” Madeleine said, close to the Aktur’s ear. Whatever this turned out to be. Rubyk just sighed.

“Assurance is a luxury, friend Madeleine – and my people are too accustomed to privations to cling to such a fleeting dainty.” Okay, clear as slate. Why should I expect any different?

Eyes. Pairs of eyes – shining, dull, gleaming, glassy, fearful, crying, hating eyes – were on them from the moment they entered the casino, bearing up the Aktur of Trotheim between them. Frost Pane carried herself and her train of white fur in their wake with brash dignity, and Madeleine doubted that the old mare was even aware of the stares. Rubyk, for his part, kept his eyes fixed in front of him, turning neither to the right, nor to the left. His jaw might have been made of iron.

For the second time that day, Madeleine found herself in the middle of an improvised courtroom. The gaming tables had been roughly moved roughly aside to form two counselor’s desks facing an high chair of dark cloud and spiny teakwood on the dais that Madeleine supposed must serve for the judge’s seat – if only that Jett Black himself sat upon it, looming down upon the entire crowd like a grim buzzard. It seemed to Madeleine that every guest and staff Clavia were thronged three-deep on the sides of the casino, waiting in an eerie silence among the crush of bodies. The semicircle of the very Keyrun table at which she had sat only a few nights ago was filled with a cast of familiar faces: from the Oranges, to Pome Apple, to Doctor Leaf and Papaya, and even Hodgepodge (hyperventilating and ready to bolt at the flick of a tail), nearly everyone connected to the case was there. Frost Pane huffed and, without consulting anypony else, took her own place among the witnesses, shoving aside Hodgepodge, who mumbled frail apologies gnawed the grit in his hat between his teeth glinting perversely in the lamplight.

Largo was nowhere to be seen.

Jett Black nodded curtly at Rubyk’s pale face as the Aktur mechanically took his place behind the long baccarat table that served for a prosecutor’s bench. “I am gratified that you are able to join us, Aktur Rubyk. I do not expect these proceedings to take long. They are, as you can see, most irregular.” The Corporal smiled, and Madeleine felt her stomach twist inside her, even though he was looking well up and over her shoulder. “Having Trotheim in our midst will let us see that justice is done all the more swiftly. May I count on your aid?”

Rubyk nodded his head, looking as tired as Madeleine had ever seen him, but said nothing. He met Jett Black’s gaze from the judge’s chair, unflinching. Jett Black’s smile broadened, and the Corporal reared and brought his forehooves down upon the earth, calling down a peal of thunder. There could scarcely have been a more effective gavel. All whispers from the crowds in the gallery, from the worried fussing of the Fillydelphia mare to the wailing filly in the back, died away in an instant.

“Mares and gentlestallions…” crooned the pegasus on the dais. Beside him went the unmistakable scritch-scritchof a dictosprite cast in the unmistakable silvery-white of pure platinum. “The inquest into the murder of Calvados Apple shall now come to order. Let the record note that I, Jett Black, Corporal of Princess Luna’s Shades, sit in persona regina. Three nights ago, a stallion was murdered by Earthsbane poison in this very hotel. Yes, good ponies: under your very noses! However, Canterlot has conducted her own investigation and is ready to present findings to prove the guilt of parties here present on the island.” Jett Black paused and cleared his throat. “The accused is Largo of Currycape. Will any stand to her defence?”

A thick silence followed. Madeleine glanced at Rubyk, but his face was impassive. As the seconds ticked away, it began to light on her that wasn’t his job here.

Then… who?

A timorous voice rose from the other table. “I shall be counsel for the accused,” said Doctor Leaf. The Clavia strode forward, no signs of fear on his face or glassy sheen in his eyes. “I… I intend to present evidence to demonstrate that our mistress could not be responsible for the death of Calvados Apple.”

The Corporal nodded, as if he had been expecting this answer. “Very well. Do any other parties have evidence that they desire to present before Canterlot?”

As if waiting for the right cue, Rubyk slammed his hoof onto the table with a sudden violence that tore the felt overlay and left frosty streaks where it struck. “Trotheim shall present evidence also.” In answer, Jett Black gave the Aktur a look that Madeleine could not at first identify. It was cloaked beneath courtly mask and polish, but there was no mistaking it as it lingered: it was a sneer.

“That there will be a minor problem of procedure with that, Aktur Rubyk,” said Jett Black. “I believe that you voluntarily relinquished your investigative rights to me in the presence of witnesses not twenty-four hours ago. With my being the agent of Canterlot present and on the case, per the rules of the treaty between our people, one marvels that you have evidence that could be anything but grossly illegal. Do you claim that with my presence on the island you, in fact, had such rights as the treaty allows you?”

Rubyk bared his teeth. “No.”

“Do you therefore claim that Trotheim has standing to present evidence in this court?”

“No.”

“Then I applaud your zeal for the law and for justice, even if it is a zeal lacking temperance.” Jett Black cracked his neck. The noise of it in that stillness was deafening. “Unfortunately, as you can see, there is little that I can do in the present circumstances. The law binds my hooves just as tightly as it binds yours. Surely you understand?”

“I understand all. Trotheim has no standing and no rights in this case. It is my duty as Aktur to fall silent where the treaty forbids me speak,” said Rubyk, holding the hoof that had gouged an hole in the table close to his chest, as if for comfort.

“Then it seems, regrettably, there is little more to be said. Let us then begin with the victim –”

Slam. A second hole joined the first. “Then I shall break the treaty. Trotheim shall present evidence.”

Silence fell again, somehow even thicker this time. “Overruled,” said Jett Black, quietly. “Aktur Rubyk, that will do. I sit in the stead of Canterlot, and every word that you speak will reach the eyes of my Princess. Let us simply say that you have been overwrought and overzealous and put this grandstanding behind us. This need go no farther.”

“No. We follow this road to the end,” replied Rubyk, soft and low. “And if Canterlot shall not allow Trotheim to present her evidence, then Trotheim shall make war with Canterlot.”

“Rubyk of Trotheim, you cannot possibly be serious!” A change came over the Corporal’s body, though his face remained as impassive as ever. His muscles seized with a sudden rigid poise, and a quaver of anger like the rumbling of distant thunder lay under his jocular tones.

“I am not of Trotheim, Corporal Black. I am Trotheim,” Rubyk whispered. “You will allow me my rights as Aktur to probe your case and witnesses, or you will shatter the blood-bought peace between the Aurora and the Moon. We will march upon the Sun and bring with us our clouds to blot out the noon-day. Our sons shall bring down the stars in your heavens to the ground, and our daughters shall scatter the stones of your fine houses, and there shall be none to deliver you from the Pride of Trotheim in that day, which Canterlot thought a light thing to scorn. Now, will Canterlot permit Trotheim to present her evidence, or will she not?” At the Keyrun table, Frost Pane beamed a grin that was all teeth and jagged points.

“Out of your own mouth do you condemn yourself,” Jett Black snapped. Rubyk shrugged.

“And out of yours do you condemn your people. That is no concern of mine,” the Aktur of Trotheim rumbled back. The two stallions locked gazes, and Madeleine had the sense of a great battle being fought just out of sight.

Jett Black glanced up and over their heads. “My Princess will hear of this,” the Corporal growled. “I assure you that the Moon does not regard threats with understanding.”

“But you will allow me to present evidence.” It was, Madeleine noted with a grin, not a question.

“Yes!” spat the Corporal. “Now, the both of you, proceed!”

(“You see!” gushed Frost Pane to a bewildered Mrs. Orange. “You see how well my grandfoal has learned his lessons! What a day of glory to these old bones!”)

Doctor Leaf shot an inscrutable glance at Rubyk, then bowed himself low on his forelegs toward the high chair of wood and cloud on the dais. “If it please your honour,” said the physician, “I should like to know for what cause this charge has fastened upon our mistress. The people of these islands have never found fault nor cause for alarm in Largo of Currycape. It is therefore unthinkable to us that she would sully her hooves in this way.”

Jett Black shook his head, making a great show of a reluctant sigh along with it. “I wish that were the case myself, counselor. However, I know for a fact that the proprietress of this hotel has a long history of criminality, even if it were not done in her own name. Perhaps you were not aware?”

Doctor Leaf’s nostrils flared. The little deer pawed at the ground once, then caught himself and stopped. “Your honour, I would request, in the name of a fair hearing, that you explain yourself. What, exactly, are you referring to?”

Not “what are you talking about?” thought Madeleine, stealing a glance at Doctor Leaf, whose face was a blank mask. It was, she thought, a peculiar choice of words. Does he know something he isn’t showing?

“I can at least tell you that. These proceedings are irregular enough that I see no harm in disclosing all,” Jett Black said, his smile as smooth as oil. “I came to this island originally to investigate the thefts of a number of artifacts of deerish antiquity from the Royal  Palace in Canterlot over a decade ago. It was a quite cold case, I assure you, and a long shot that I should actually find them on this expedition. But, to my own great surprise, my mission was a resounding success! Now tell me, Doctor, what do you suppose was stolen, and where do you suppose I found them? You ought to know; you see them each and every day.”

“Speak plainly!” snapped Doctor Leaf. “What does this have to do with the mistress?”

“Those chandeliers in the foyer are quite tasteful, wouldn’t you say?” Jett Black continued, as if the buck had not spoken at all. “Your people have truly fallen from a great height if you could once create such beautiful things that could last through a thousand dark years of war and decay. It is just as well that they have been kept in such a safe place, true?”

A shadow flickered across Doctor Leaf’s face. Jett Black’s slick smile did not waver as the pegasus went on: “And that goes just as well for so many of the little glass trinkets that I found as I wandered the halls of this fine old fortress. All of them in such pristine condition, and all of them true relics of antiquity! I flatter myself that I have an eye for such dainties. How much more amazing, then, that they survived in a place like this backwater of the Sun and Moon’s wide rule!”

Doctor Leaf had gone horribly pale by this point. The buck’s ears drooped, bloodlessly. “I say again: what does this have to do with mistress Largo, Corporal?”

“Such a brave face,” Jett Black patronized. “Mares and gentlestallions, I shall be plain. The mare known to you variously as Largo of Currycape, ‘Largo of the Deer’, or else simply as the proprietress of this world-class hotel, has for many years been a thorn in the side of my Princess by conducting an illicit trade in relics of the Clavia for her own benefit and enrichment. The chandeliers hanging in this very hotel are proof enough of that. They – and all the rest of the pretty trinkets you trot past in these storied halls – once hung in their rightful place in the Royal Palace, where they brought greater glory to the Sun and Moon. I ask the court: is this not the very duty of every citizen of our empire where the Sun touches? But the mare responsible for the bloody crime that has called us all together here tonight felt no such civic duty in her breast.”

“She has been called by many names over the years,” said Jett Black, watching Doctor Leaf with an hawkish glint in his eye. “‘Allegro Vivice’, or ‘Poco Poco’, and perhaps even by her given name some of the time – which I will not give here. Out of respect for such an opponent, I will let the accused keep at least one secret. But the factremains, Doctor, that your mistress is a liar and a thief in the highest degree, and I would have taken her away in irons regardless of the sad events that bring us together here tonight. Is that clear?”

It seemed quite clear to Doctor Leaf. The little physician clenched his jaw, and he made no answer to the pegasus’ accusations. Instead, Rubyk’s quiet reply came from beside Madeleine:

“A moment, Corporal. I do not doubt that what you say of the accused is true. Trotheim had her own suspicions on this matter. But all of this is petty. We are here concerned with the murder of a pony. You know as well as I that the mind of a thief is not often the mind of a murderer. How do you intend to prove your case?”

“I know as well as you that the equine mind is capable of many kinds of evil, Aktur Rubyk. But since you have asked me for proof, I shall give it. Tell me, how did Calvados Apple die?” said Jett Black.

“I-I can answer to that,” said Doctor Leaf, regaining himself just a little. “There is no doubt in my mind that the victim died from a lethal dose of Earthsbane, in spite of the other injuries sustained on his person. Those were either mild compared to the damage from the poison, or else inflicted after death.”

“Ah!” said Jett Black. “Yes – Earthsbane poisoning. A terrible way for anypony to go. How can you be so sure?”

Doctor Leaf drew himself up to his full height. “If I could not tell that, I do not deserve my title. Earthsbane poisoning in the earth pony type presents certain unmistakable signs in terminal cases, namely a cracking of the lips and a withering of the skin as the victim’s magical connection to the earth is severed. The cause of death in such cases is total systemic failure brought on by thaumic rheostasis. Make no mistake: if that stallion was murdered, it was by poison.”

“Thank you. I believe that you would consider this testimony beyond doubt, Aktur Rubyk?”

“Yes.”

“Then the obvious question is: where did the killer get such a dangerous poison, and how was it given to the victim?” said Jett Black. “I credit you with enough diligence to find out through your own investigation that no merchant in the town or in the backwater with the charming name have anything to do with Earthsbane. They at least seem to have sense enough here for that.”

“You are quite right, Corporal,” whispered Rubyk. “There is no possibility that the poison came from any shop on this island. It is so also unlikely that such a quantity of Earthsbane, in such a potent form, could have been brought in from outside.”

“Hmm!” rumbled Jett Black. The pegasus sounded satisfied. “I am glad that you are aware of the port protocols, Aktur. It will save us all here time in the long run.”

“Indeed,” Rubyk replied, nodding his head. “The only pony could have possibly brought in such agents from outside would be you yourself – for so the proverb says, ‘the shade may hide what the light does not wish to know.’”

“Surely you do not believe that I concealed an illegal poison on my person when I came to this island?” quipped Jett Black, sounding rather amused than offended. Rubyk shook his head with an emphasis that bordered on the violent.

“Not at all. It is far the simpler to presume that the poison was here from the very beginning. In truth, if the accused was half so prolific in crime as you claim, it becomes more than plausible. ‘Never presume two evils where one malice is enough.’ Indeed, I intend to prove that it was the same poison, twice applied, that was responsible both for the murder and the attempt on the life of the accused.”

“Indeed?” said Jett Black. The pegasus’ eyebrows rose. “So you say. Then I must credit you with a certain genius, Aktur. It seems that we are of a like mind as to this case after all. Perhaps I was hasty in taking this investigation out of your evidently most capable hooves.”

“Mister Rubyk, what are you doing?” hissed Madeleine in the giant’s ear. “I thought you said that the Corporal was behind all this!”

“And so I did,” said Rubyk, inaudibly to anypony but her. “But truth is truth, and no Aktur is fit for duty if he flinch from the light, no matter how painful the gleam. You must trust me, friend Madeleine.”

Doctor Leaf took an hesitating step forward. “Far be it from me to tread on the tails of the glory of Canterlot or the Pride of Trotheim, but…”

“Yes, counselor?” said Jett Black, his smirk underlining every syllable of the title.

“I keep a record of all medicines containing Earthsbane in even minute quantities that come under my care here on the island. If there was any Earthsbane here, I assure you on my Oath to my art, I would know about it. And not one drop has gone from any of my stores in the days before or since the murder,” said Doctor Leaf. The physician held himself tall, unwavering in the conviction of the expert, and cast a challenging look at the Aktur and the pegasus.

“Is that so?” said Jett Black, who sat back in the high chair. “Aktur, what do you make of the defence’s claim?”

“I find no reason to doubt it.”

“Nor do I. But perhaps you will let the defence know what other possibility exists?”

“Other possibility? What other possibility? Stop talking in riddles!” Doctor Leaf half-screamed. “Whatever it is, please, tell me! What have I overlooked?”

“You overlook the easiest thing to miss: the very tip of your own muzzle,” said Rubyk sadly. “The possibility exists – indeed, it seems beyond all doubt – that the poison used was from a private stock unknown even to the physician of this island. And the only place that stock could exist is with the proprietress herself. If anything in this case seems sure, it is that the Earthsbane was Largo’s own.”

For the second time in as many hours, Madeleine felt the ground falling out from beneath her hooves. The cruelly logical little pony in her head ran down the list of reasons why it couldn’t be! Madeleine threw at her and shook her head at each one. But it was the only explanation that made sense of it all.

Have I been blind? she thought. “How can you be sure?” she said.

“I know it because I did not find it. And I never shall find it. If any yet remains, I expect to find it at the bottom of the sea. But because I did not find it where I knew it must be found, I am firm to stand on my own four hooves and declare to this court that Largo herself was the owner of a quantity of Earthsbane that must by needs have been moved.”

Jett Black merely continued to sit back, amusement curling the corners of his mouth. “Aktur, circumstantial evidence is one thing, but to found a case on a lack of evidence altogether is, I admit, a novelty. Perhaps you will do us all a favour and speak plainly.”

“As your honour wishes,” Rubyk growled, bowing low. “The mystery is not great. Within the proprietress’ own office, there was a safe. It was sealed. I opened it, and I found it empty.”

“As I recall, you did rather more than open it,” Jett Black said. “And that was after you were forbidden to interfere with the investigation. You will answer for this as well as for your threats, Rubyk of Trotheim. But do go on – what is the great significance of the empty safe? Aside from the fact that there was nothing in it?”

Rubyk bowed himself even lower, his knees trembling from lingering weakness. “Oh, Jett Black of Canterlot, you know.”

“I know what, precisely?”

“You know well the meaning of the safe. For it was you that emptied it after you forced the proprietress to die at her own hooves and destroyed her office.”

The choking silence of the makeshift court seemed to bear down like a yoke on every pony gathered there. The Aktur’s words were like a cold breath on the neck that made one shiver before one quite felt their effects. Doctor Leaf looked up at the dais with eyes widening in incredulity, followed by a deep and slow-welling anger. Pome Apple’s face reddened violently, his ears laying flat against his mane. Mrs. Orange fell back and leaned weakly against her own paling husband. Frost Pane laughed and clucked through her teeth, muttering adulations or imprecations under her breath — it was difficult to say which.

And throughout it all, Jett Black just continued to sit back and smile.

“You…?” Madeleine muttered. Her mouth felt utterly dry. Beside her, Rock Skipper glanced at the faces around the room in varying states of disbelief – as if he had to do something under the strain of all the nervous energy. Rubyk stood erect and still as a statue.

“Ah. Aktur Rubyk, I am afraid that I have let you get rather far afield in your reasoning. I but regret that I did not step in to take over this case from the start,” said Jett Black. It was perverse to Madeleine’s ear, but the pegasus actually sounded… pained?

“Do you deny that you ransacked the proprietress’ office?” Rubyk demanded quietly.

“No, of course not. When I assumed my full responsibilities on this island, I took on myself everything that would include. I naturally investigated the proprietress’ office. What more would you have me say? How does that possibly connect me to either of the crimes before this court this night?”

“Do you deny that you knew of the poison in Largo’s office?” Rubyk continued, slow, implacable, like the grinding of a glacier made equine.

“You,” sighed Jett Black, “are fishing. This is… well, frankly rather disappointing. I expect rather more from youthan conjecture and circumstantial evidence. You have a reputation that precedes you. I regret to say that it seems scarcely justified.”

Rubyk shook his head. “I gave you your one chance, Jett Black. The blood of your broken wings be upon your own head.”

Then the Aktur of Trotheim tossed his mane and stamped his hoof and cried out in a loud voice: “Leaf of Currycape! You will approach the witness stand now!”

“What?” spat the little deer, wheeling on Rubyk. After he had said it, the tension in the doctor seemed to snap, and he said: “Yes. Of course, Aktur. Whatever you need of me, I am at your disposal.”

There followed a few brief moments where no one was quite willing to say to the giant pony with the jagged teeth, “what stand?” After glancing about at the silent, staring faces around him, Rubyk snorted and summoned a tall wooden chair from the side gallery (that happened to be underneath the mare from Fillydelphia, who fell like the important and dignified mare that she was). It appeared in their midst in a puddle of melting damp, followed by a small sound like cracking ice. Madeleine saw the Aktur of Trotheim wince. A thin rime of frost clung to his horn.

“Are you alright, chief?” said Rock Skipper, who also saw the movement.

“I will have to be,” replied Rubyk, and there was something in his tone that forbade anypony to say anything further. Doctor Leaf looked at the chair with detachment and mounted it, sitting tall as if he did not feel the hundred eyes on him even at that moment.

“State your name and occupation,” said Rubyk, striding to the center of the courtroom on his listing legs.

“Leaf of Currycape. Physician of the Clavia Hotel, not to speak of the town of Currycape, and many other things besides. But is all this ceremony really necessary? What more do you still want from me?”

“Leaf of Currycape,” Rubyk continued, “I want you to have a look at something. Perhaps you are familiar with it – and perhaps you are not. In either case, we will gain much. Friend Madeleine, if you would?”

He couldn’t mean the gem. That left only one possible thing the Aktur could be referring to. She produced the slug of hornbone from her bag and held it in her magic for the little buck and the rest of the court to view. Doctor Leaf’s face showed no response. Neither, for that matter, did Jett Black.

“What is this, Aktur Rubyk?” Doctor Leaf said at length.

“You do not recognize it.”

“Other than that this is unicorn hornbone showing an unusual degree of decalcification, I do not.”

“Kindly confirm this for the court. Once again: you have never seen this bit of hornbone in your days.”

“Yes! What does this have to do with these cases?”

Rubyk nodded his head. “Doctor, you have at once made all clear. There is now nothing that is unknown to me. Trotheim commends you.”

Doctor Leaf sighed. “This has been an exceedingly long day. Please, spare me the theatrics.”

“Very well. I found this hornbone lodged in the speaking-tube of Calvados Apple’s suite. The enchantment upon it is badly decayed, but is there any doubt in your mind that this hornbone is the reason that no whisper of the events of that bloody night reached the ears of the staff at the front desk?”

Doctor Leaf’s body slumped. The physician wet his lips with the tip of a pink tongue. “That is certainly plausible, Aktur.”

“Witness. Could anyone but a member of the staff have placed this object in the speaking-tube?”

“No… the keys are enchanted to open only for guests and the cleaning staff. So unless the guest had some reason to want privacy that badly…” Doctor Leaf’s voice trailed off, and he shot a glance at Pome Apple, who glared back defiantly at the buck.

“What did y’all think of my uncle?” Pome Apple said, spitting a gob of contempt onto the carpet. “I’d been traveling with him for weeks, and I ain’t ever seen that before in my life. It wasn’t his, and it sure as the day is hot ain’t mine.”

“Order in this court, please,” said Jett Black, sounding bored.

“Thank you, friend Pome. You need not rise up and approach the stand – what you have just said is testimony enough. We know now that only a staff member could have placed this in the speaking tube.”

“But where does that get us?” Doctor Leaf said.

“Someone connected to these events placed this hornbone so that there would be no witnesses to what transpired that night. But they did not succeed. There was one witness that they did not account for. And from what you have said, I have no doubts that they are presently in this court.”

“There was a witness to the murder? Who?” said Doctor Leaf, glancing from one astonished face to another.

Rubyk fixed the physician’s wandering eye with a cold stare that made the blood around Madeleine’s heart run cold. “Leaf of Currycape, I do not like it when ponies twist the truth in my presence. I like it still less when they do so under an helpful mask. You know well what you heard in Calvados Apple’s rooms that night, and you will now testify. What did you hear, and why were you there?”

Doctor Leaf’s eyes slowly traveled the length of the room, and for what might have been the first time since Madeleine had known the buck, words seemed to utterly fail him. He gingerly wet his dry lips several times before he opened his mouth and said in a small voice:

“I cannot tell what I don’t know.”

Rubyk nickered and stamped his hoof, wincing at the impact. A scroll filled with slanted lines of unmistakably regular dictosprite text flashed before them all, held in the grip of the Aktur’s icy magic.

“Why do you deny the truth that you and I know so well? Why do you perjure yourself, doctor? I have your very words. ‘Two of the spells that were cast in Calvados Apple’s suite last night were cast by Clavia… I am as sure of this as I am that the same is dead and lying in stasis in the cellars.’ And again, ‘I think that it was Papaya in that suite… I know this just as surely as I know that there was a Clavia in Calvados’ rooms: Papaya did not kill that pony. I know her. She simply could not have done it.’”

“How did you transcribe that?” Doctor Leaf said, his voice going shrill in alarm. “You swore you would tell no soul!”

“I swore no such thing!” Rubyk growled. “My investigation is over doctor, and your bond has no more claim on me. Now, I happen to know the naked truth: you did your uttermost to protect this little doe from the consequences of her actions. Papaya was the doe who shot Calvados Apple. I have the testimony to prove this, and you shall not deny it! You knew and did not tell me.”

“Fine!” spat Doctor Leaf. The physician glared at the giant of a unicorn looming over him. “I do not deny it. If you had come to me before now, I would have told you that myself without this need to publicly shame me. But you have leapt to false conclusions, Aktur. I told you what I suspected – what I thought by observing the girl with my own eyes. I was not in that room. You cannot prove that I was.”

Rubyk shook his head, a low rumble burbling out of his throat. “No, doctor. I do not think so. Out of your own mouth you spin a web in which you hang your own neck. You have said it yourself: two of the spells cast that night, in that room, were Clavia spells. Friend Madeleine, would you please bring your pistol forward to exhibit to the court?”

Still numb, Madeleine stepped forward. “Here, Mister Rubyk.”

“Thank you. Doctor, you will note that the firing mechanism is internal. Could anyone but a unicorn or a Clavia have used this weapon?”

“I suppose that your Princesses could have, but I am a simple country doctor. Your logic seems sound, but who am I to say?”

Ignoring Doctor Leaf’s commentary, Rubyk continued: “Then the levitation to grip, hold, and fire the pistol was one spell. Pome Apple’s first spell upon his uncle was another, and his bungled attempt to save his uncle’s life was another. Papaya stated in her testimony that she immediately fled the scene, and I will have that girl confirm this if you still wish to squirm out from under my hoof. She had neither the time, the motive, nor the focus to cast another. So tell the court: what was that fourth spell that had to be cast by a Clavia? And how did you know so emphatically that Papaya could not have killed Calvados Apple?”

The two figures’ gazes clashed for a few seconds longer before Doctor Leaf turned his head away. The buck groaned, bitterly.

“I tried to be so careful to cover my tracks, but in the end, I failed. Yes, I admit it. The fourth spell was the invisibility spell of the Clavia. My own spell, to be perfectly clear.”

Rubyk’s eyes glinted with steely fury. His voice was soft with a whipcord tension. “And you maintain that you do not know what happened in Calvados Apple’s suite that night?”

“Yes. I will maintain it because, Aktur, I do not know.”

The Aktur snorted again, his breath turning white in the cloying atmosphere. He put his muzzle nearly against Doctor Leaf’s face. “Explain,” was all that he said. Doctor Leaf’s body trembled and he inhaled deeply.

“I… entered the suite earlier that day when Calvados and Pome Apple returned from the mainland. I simply lay concealed in the hallway under my people’s native glamour and walked in behind them. And I know what you will think – and no, I have no idea who wedged that hornbone in the speaking-tube. That’s nothing at all to do with me.”

“Why?” Rubyk pressed. Doctor Leaf swallowed.

“Miss Largo’s orders. I was told to be present with my medical kit on hand and to be ready for anything. All I knew was that she feared something would be going on in that suite that night – I honestly don’t know how. I got some of the other staff to cover my turns in my regular duties and was in the suite for the whole of the afternoon.”

Rubyk frowned. Clearly, something about the physician’s answers sat ill with him. “So I see…” he murmured. “Then why do you claim to know nothing of what happened there that night?”

A sigh moved the little buck’s frame. “Do the words ‘sheer, blind panic’ mean anything to you ponies? Look at me. Am I one of your race?”

“You are not. What of it?”

“Very well! I am not a pony. I am a deer. Let me ask you a question, Aktur Rubyk: you have observed my people. You have some inkling of our ways. What do you think hearing a gunshot at close quarters, bounding off the walls, does to one of us – even a Clavia of a sturdy constitution?”

Rubyk blinked. “You… were frozen?”

Doctor Leaf nodded. “Your narrative up to that point at the earlier trial was commendably accurate. After that, I am afraid that there is little more that I can tell you. I don’t know precisely how much time passed. When I came to myself, Calvados Apple was already dead and the room in the state that you found it.”

“Exactly as I found it?”

“Yes. I am quite sure of that.”

The Aktur of Trotheim’s frown deepened. “You removed nothing from the room?”

“No. I am a doctor. This is, regrettably, not the first time that I found myself at a crime scene purely by happenstance.”

Then Rubyk sighed. It was a sound both frustrated and mournful. “Doctor, you can tell me nothing more. I have no further questions.”

“One moment, if you please,” said Jett Black’s smooth voice. “I would like to clarify something. You say that you entered the suite on the proprietress’ orders?”

Doctor Leaf turned toward the dais with a small start, as if he had forgotten about the pegasus. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“When did you receive this direction?”

“It was just after the breakfast service. The mistress came to me while I was working in the apothecary and asked me there, in private.”

“How did she look at the time? Was there anything unusual about her bearing?”

“Unusual? No, not at all. Speaking professionally, I should say there was nothing at all amiss about her at the time – physically speaking. Speaking personally…” Doctor Leaf paused.

“Yes?” Jett Black said.

“She seemed… distracted. Detached. Perhaps even a bit cold.” The physician’s words were slow and clipped, as if he spoke them with no small reluctance. Jett Black – if such a thing were possible – smiled gravely.

“Then I believe the shape of the events that day and night are clear. However, I have a very different conclusion than Trotheim. Canterlot shall state her conclusions for the record, and the Aktur may follow the proper channels to the appeals court, if he should be so inclined.”

Jett Black continued: “Let it be recorded clearly that the Aktur’s investigation and cross-examination has conclusively demonstrated that Earthsbane poison was in the possession of the proprietress of the Clavia Hotel, Largo of Currycape, at the time of the murder, and that there were no other sources of such poison available on the island. Let the record also show that Leaf of Currycape was instructed by the proprietress to lie in wait for the victim, and has himself confessed that he was at the site of the murder for the entire afternoon. In other words, he has no alibi for the time of death, which he took great pains to conceal from all investigators. He had every opportunity to slip poison into the victim’s drink or food under the cover of the invisibility spell that he himself confessed to using. I submit to the court that this is damning evidence of collusion to premeditated murder between the accused and the witness currently on the stand.”

“No!” Doctor Leaf cried, jumping to his hooves. The Clavia’s eyes were wide, unfocused, glassy. “That is a lie! The mistress would not… no, no! She did not ask that of me! And I would never… I am a doctor!”

“On the contrary,” said Jett Black, blandly. “Many doctors can, and do.” The pegasus’ smile faded. “Leaf of Currycape, I charge you with the murder of Calvados Apple by Earthsbane toxin. Under Canterlot law, you have the right to an advocate appointed by the Royal Courts, but if you choose to appoint another advocate in your defence…”

Crack. Rubyk’s hoof struck the ground, sending up a plume of white, curling mist. Frost clung to the Aktur’s coat in leprous patches.

“Trotheim demands to cross-examine.”

The silence from the black pegasus in his high chair was cool, and deafening. “Do you think this necessary, Aktur?” Jett Black’s smooth voice said. “If it is only to fill up the formalities of courtly procedure, I do think we have breached that point already.”

“It is most necessary.”

A low rumble like thunder, nearly inaudible, came from where Jett Black sat, deathly still. It seemed to Madeleine that a storm cloud was brooding over the casino, a great glacier rising up like a fist to meet the unquiet heaven. “Then please feel free to proceed. You find some fault in my statement?”

Rubyk nodded. Madeleine could hear his neckbones crack. “Canterlot has, as is her custom, leapt straight to her conclusions without considering all the evidence. It is the gangrene in that which she calls justice.”

For a fraction of a second, Madeleine saw anger, real anger, flicker across Jett Black’s face like light off jagged flint. It was gone in a moment, replaced by the same smooth smile – but she was sure it was there. Whatever you are doing, Mister Rubyk, keep doing it.

“Trotheim has the floor. You may proceed, Aktur.”

“Jett Black. Who placed the hornbone in the speaking tube?”

The pegasus gave an exaggerated shrug of his broad shoulders. “That is immaterial to Canterlot’s case. Trotheim has already proved that a staff member must necessarily have placed that hornbone in the tube due to the exclusive access to the rooms granted by the key system used here. Suppose that it was one of the cleaning staff, or that witness on the stand there. Suppose that it was the proprietress herself, for all the sense that makes. Where does that get us?”

“Does Canterlot then persist in throwing dust into the air with her grimy wings?” said Rubyk, a sneer of contempt curling his muzzle.

“Enough!” shouted Jett Black. The pegasus’ feathers flared, and his hoof ground against the wood of the chair beneath him. “Rubyk of Trotheim, you have reached the end of this court’s patience! Make your point, or I will hold you in contempt – and fie on your armies! You will see just how far the bravado of barbarians can go against the full might of the Sun and the Moon arrayed against them!”

“Very well. Canterlot wishes to argue that a staff member placed the hornbone in the speaking tube? But I beg of this court: why should that be so? What would the collusion that she alleges between the proprietress and the good doctor have to gain from cloaking the events in silence? Is not poison itself the quietest way of blackening a conscience with the sin of murder? Why, then, this need to be unheard?”

“To keep the victim from crying out for help,” Jett Black bit back. Rubyk shook his head emphatically.

“Friend Pome, will you tell Canterlot whether you could do anything but lie quietly and wait to die when you took Earthsbane so many years ago? Could you have called out for help even if you wanted to?”

“No. It ain’t a pretty way to go. And thank you for bringing that up,” Pome grumbled.

“Thank you. Mares and gentlestallions, I ask you to consider: if to place the hornbone would not aid their aim in any way, if it were completely unnecessary, could a Clavia have plugged the speaking-tube? Could the proprietress herself have done it? It defies reason; it stinks in the mind. No! Let us place no such filth before our eyes any longer!”

“Mister Rubyk…” Madeleine said, a dim suspicion in her mind beginning to take a new and very present form. “If it wasn’t a staff member that plugged the speaking tube, and it wasn’t Largo… who did? And in Celestia’s name… why?”

“Order in this court!” Jett Black shouted over a sudden peal of thunder. The pegasus loomed down upon them all, larger than life, with his wings folded tightly at his sides. “Counsel will be silent unless addressed!”

“No!” Rubyk boomed, the Aktur’s voice resounding like an avalanche. “Jett Black, you will be silent before Trotheim, unjust judge! For it was none but your hoof that placed that hornbone, and your threats that forced Miss Largo to give over the poison that she kept for none but herself. Jett Black – you are a murderer, a liar, and a cheating gutter-rat, and I swear by the Lonely God and the Pride of Trotheim that I will bring you low!”

Jett Black glowered – but there was an hint of a smile still on his muzzle. “These are serious charges, Aktur. How do you propose to prove them?”

“Jett Black. Will you kindly tell the court where you found this evidence?” Rubyk stamped his hoof again, repeating the wince that rode along with it. Before them all hung the hornbone necklace that the pegasus had brought to Hodgepodge’s tent in the Withers. The necklace gave off a pulse of cold nausea at the touch of Rubyk’s magic that passed through the gathered ponies with a shudder. Madeleine set her teeth against the sudden sensation of wrongness and watched Jett Black, who may have been a lump of coal for all the effect it had upon him.

“I found it on the beaches when I combed the island on the morning after the murder. It had by then become quite evident to me that there was some manner of ill deed going on in this hotel. I held it close by until I could make my own inquiries,” Jett Black said, unruffled.

“Ah,” Rubyk said, nodding his head with an audible creak of his joints. “The beaches are quite a convenient place to lose things if one needs to. Is that not so?”

“I quite concur. That is why I began there.”

“And what did you conclude about this necklace in connection to this case?”

“That there is no such connection. It is a dark thing in itself, but I saw no way that it could have any relation to the murder of the victim. I gave it over to that mare in your counsel after I made my own deductions. I thereafter focused my efforts on the proprietress herself. As you yourself have proved, I was not wrong.”

“No connection? None? And what of the fact that that hornbone that you found upon the convenient beach and the one in the tube were taken from the same poor soul?” Rubyk’s voice had dropped back down to a whisper, but even so, not even a foal’s cry competed with him for attention in the crowded casino.

“So that is your line?” Jett Black said, seeming to relax just slightly. “I admit that it is interesting, but hardly conclusive evidence of anything. I have no cause to doubt your expert testimony, Aktur, but those might have been bought from the same back-alley curiosity shop or zebra shaman. And unless you can prove that I or anypony else was in possession of both of those black magic artifacts, at the same time, neither you nor I nor anypony else can demonstrate connection to this case.”

Then the pegasus’ face clouded over, and there was new steel in his voice as he said: “I have reached the end of my patience. Threats or no, Aktur, you have wearied this court with your fishing and your baseless accusations, and I will see to it myself that you will stand at the High Court before my Princess to answer for your behaviour. Do you have anything that you wish to say in your defence?”

Rubyk heaved one great, long sigh. “You had every opportunity to confess, Jett Black. I gave you chance after chance to unburden your sins. You chose this weary road; you leave me now no choice.”

The Aktur of Trotheim turned his head sadly. “Friend pegasus? Friend Madeleine? Bring it now.”

Neither Madeleine nor Rock Skipper needed to ask what he meant. They came forward as one, and Rock Skipper set the rusted stand on the ground in front of Rubyk. Madeleine reached into her bag and extracted the blue-glass gem, glinting in the citrine light of her horn.

Jett Black rose. A colour like an ember suddenly unearthed from the ashes began to burn hot in his ear-tips. “Aktur. What is the meaning of this?”

Rubyk shrugged. “The beaches are quite a convenient place to lose things – is that not so? The meaning is on the tip of your tongue. Let us hear it from your mouth, and not another.”

Jett Black stomped to the edge of the dais. Madeleine met the black pegasus’ flinty gaze with the cool defiance of a well-wrought pearl. “Madeleine Crumpet, did I not demand of you your cooperation? You have deliberatelywithheld evidence from the agent of Canterlot. Whatever consequences the Princess brings upon your head, you bring upon yourself.”

Rock Skipper, the tips of his ears burning with the same red heat, pushed past Madeleine and extended his wing in front of her protectively. “We heard what you did! You can’t just stand up there all high and mighty like your wings never needed preening in your life and gibe down on us like that!”

“Enough!” howled Rubyk.

“Order!” thundered Jett Black.

Rock Skipper’s wing snapped obediently to his side. The Aktur and the Corporal were lost to themselves, willing murder at one another as they traded glares.

“Enough" indeed, Madeleine fumed. It was time to end this. She jammed the gem into the holder and, with her horn ablaze to amplify the sound so that a diver in the shipwrecks below the island could hear it, the recording of what happened in 505 echoed off of the walls.

It took a only few moments for Jett Black to recognize the sound assaulting his ears. When he did, a fearful change came over the pegasus. Madeleine looked up from the gem to dais and saw, not a pony, but a demon of Tartarus staring down upon her, naked fury aglint in his eyes in the firelight of her spell. She shuddered and put all of her strength into the conduit of her horn, as if to force the remembrance into his ears by sheer volume.

Jett Black’s body shook as his words, muffled and indistinct, but undeniably his, spoke the last rites over Calvados Apple’s body. A gasp spread throughout the crowd at the awful sound that followed. The schoolteacher mare on holiday with her family covered up the ears of her closest foal – too little, too late. The mare from Fillydelphia made a show of fainting. Pome Apple and Frost Pane stared fixedly at Jett Black – the one in a cold and rising fury, the other with the same contempt one felt for treading on a bit of foal-sick.

Through it all, Rubyk stood immobile as a stone. “You have wings. You entered the victim’s room through the balcony window while he was absent and administered the poison mingled with stardew, likely in the tonic that he took every night for his health. You incited a storm using your native powers mingled with black magic to ensure that nopony should see you as you entered again after Calvados Apple was already as good as dead.”

“Or it might have been a suicide. Perhaps the victim was weary of living his miserable life of drink and mares and decided to spare Equestria the trouble.” Jett Black grated.

“Calvados Apple did not drink.”

“More’s the pity. It might have made the earth able to bear such an excuse for a stallion. Prove that I did this, Aktur. You have no proof that I entered that room with intent to kill a pony.”

Rubyk shook his head and stamped his hoof, and one final time, caked with ice, an empty bottle of red glass tumbled from thin air onto the floor. It rolled and pointed toward the agent of Canterlot like the hoof of the Pale Reaper.

“This was stardew, Jett Black. I have seen more than enough of it of late to know the smell. A very helpful little buck found it in your room. Why was that?”

Jett Black said a stormy nothing.

“Do you have anything to say in your defence?” Rubyk pressed.

Jett Black snarled. “Like hell.”

Rubyk’s jewel-cut eyes were lined by hoary frost, but they were as merciless as a spear as he said in a still, small voice: “So let it be. Jett Black of Canterlot, Trotheim charges you with the willful murder of Calvados Apple, with blackmail and the self-murder of Largo of Currycape, with the possession and willful use of black magic paraphernalia, and with the deliberate obstruction of justice of a lawful criminal investigation. How do you plead? And I urge you, if there is any remorse in your breast, confess your sins, for the Lonely God and the Pride of Trotheim are merciful to those who seek repentance.”

For an infinite moment, Jett Black’s slack form and ashen face made no reply. He seemed not to even have heard the question. Rubyk growled and opened his mouth again as if to repeat himself when Jett Black’s face twisted in an inequine paroxysm of black anger. The pegasus unfurled his wings to their full breadth, eclipsing Madeleine, Rock Skipper, and Rubyk in shadow. At his side, on a silvery chain drawn around his body below where his folded wings had concealed it, hung a third shard of what was unmistakably unicorn hornbone – and Madeleine had seen quite enough of it lately that there was no mistaking it.

The hornbone pulsed with a prickling, nauseous energy. It raked Madeleine’s mane and horn, and she saw the black shadow gathering around it, dark even against the Jett Black’s inky coat, beating harder and faster like a murderous heart.

“Skipper!” she shouted. “Mister Rubyk! Get down!” His eyes wide, Rock Skipper did just that, covering up his head with his forelegs and wings. Groaning his frustration, Rubyk dropped a moment later, and not a moment too soon. The dark pulse that erupted from Jett Black was like a burst of wind, biting down to the marrow, hateful red and mercilessly black. Madeleine, Rock Skipper, Doctor Leaf, Pome Apple, to say nothing of the rest of the crowd, were thrown back as far as the walls by an unseen buck to the chest. Voices cried out all around Madeleine, more from shock than from pain. Madeleine skidded hard on her belly against Rock Skipper, who braced his hooves against the ground and managed to absorb the brunt of the pulse. She heard the grunt of wind knocked out of the poor colt’s lungs by the impact – sorry, Skipper! – but she had bigger problems to think about. Like the second shock wave that followed a few seconds after the first. This time, however, she threw up a glassy shield from her horn in front of herself and Rock Skipper, and the black magic sputtered and died against it, running down in oily streaks like filthy rain against a window pane.

And somehow, somehow, Rubyk was still standing. He looked positively awful, sick with icy patches and streaky magic burns all over his coat. His jewel-cut eyes were speckled with white the same flecks that marred those of the Frei of Trotheim – only these were the garnet-red of arterial blood, violent and fresh. But when Madeleine looked at his face, there was nothing there but ice and steel. There was no more mercy, no more compassion, no more pleas for confession and absolution, no more pony to speak of. The rigid figure before her was the Aktur of Trotheim – nothing more, and nothing less.

Jett Black snarled and drew his wings back. The hornbone held at his side began to pulse again. Nausea stroked Madeleine’s stomach like an unwanted, wandering hoof. Her face hardened into a glare.

Not this time, Corporal.

The gunshot rang out louder than any peal of pegasus-thunder and broke the spell over the room. The evil pulsing and vile feelings stopped, leaving behind a vacuum of unquiet relief. Jett Black stumbled off of the dais, looking around for the source of the shot, at the same time checking himself over by instinct. He turned toward Madeleine, and at the pistol in the grip of her horn pointed toward the ceiling, wearing a mask of sheer surprise.

Rubyk had not even flinched. The Aktur of Trotheim took a threatening step forward. “The accused has pled. Trotheim’s sentence is now passed. Jett Black, you will accompany me to Trotheim. Accept your sentence and you shall find rest within the Never-Melting. Resist Trotheim and die.”

“Damn you!” Jett Black boomed. The pegasus bounded from the dais and covered the space between him and the door with massive strides and wingbeats. He turned and snarled at the courtroom, and there was not a pony there any longer, but only the creature from Tartarus. The hornbone at his side pulsed again, and the great wooden doors slammed shut with the metallic klatch of the lock.

“No!” Rubyk screamed. He galloped to the doors, sloughing frost. The Aktur of Trotheim’s hooves shuddered against the wood and carved deep gashes in the varnish — but the doors held firm.

“Chief!” Rock Skipper yelped, gliding to Rubyk’s side. Rubyk growled, but nodded at the pegasus, and the two stallions together put their shoulders to the doors. However, they still did not shift an inch. Madeleine galloped toward the pair and put her magic to the door, but yelped as a black spark jumped from the metal lock to her horn.

Then the wail of a wildcat shook the walls of the casino.

“Feckless! Gormless! Toothless! Move aside!” Frost Pane’s remonstrance came even as the old mare sprinted toward the door at a full gallop, tearing the carpet beneath her hooves. Rubyk’s eyes widened, and he dove quickly out of his elder’s way. Rock Skipper froze, perhaps in fear, perhaps from the frightful absurdity barreling toward them. Madeleine grabbed the gawping pegasus around the neck and pulled him aside with a sharp jerk.

The Frei of Trotheim cackled with laughter and crackled with frost as she slammed into the doors with the force of a cannonball. The doors burst outward and the lock exploded as black magic was introduced to and had a catastrophically awkward first meeting with the Pride of Trotheim.

“You see, Rubyk? That is how you ought to break down a door!” Frost Pane guffawed, shouting her victory with full throat.

“I will remember it in the future, grandmama. Now, quickly!”

Rubyk ran through the shattered door and over the black-smoking lock, which was evidently still dazed and had not yet had the reality of its situation catch up to it. Madeleine dropped Rock Skipper and set off after him, her four hooves drumming a war-beat under her. Rock Skipper grunted and flapped wobbling after them.

“Friend jeweler!” Rubyk called over behind him. “The foyer!” Not that there was much difficulty in following the trail of frosty, white hoofprints struck into the plush carpets like hammer-blows. Madeleine held her pistol at the ready in her mouth as she ran, ready at a moment to twist its internal mechanisms to fire if it came to that. Rock Skipper brought up the rear, unsteady in the air. Behind them, the quiet patter of Doctor Leaf’s hooves, and the mad, tromping steps of Pome Apple, joined in the chase.

Madeleine heard a feeble little cry. Rubyk’s teeth were bared as he emerged into the Grand Foyer. He howled at what he saw, a sound that chilled the marrow of Madeleine’s bones. “Too far! Too far! You will not add this doe to your sins, Jett Black!”

Jett Black looked up from the fallen form of Limon, his enormous forehoof resting on her head. The chain of starlight that had lashed the great doors shut was quickly fading, and in a few brief moments would die away. He let out a dragon’s rumbling growl and said in calm tones:

“She put herself in my way. You think me a monster, but I am only doing what I must. She is not dead, but stunned.”

The pegasus rolled aside as a jet of pale-blue light clipped his wing where his body had been a moment before. Rubyk whimpered from the effort, but fired another jet from his frosted, cracking horn. Jett Black merely sneered and lifted up his wing. The hornbone chained at his side pulsed darkly, and Rubyk’s spell crumpled to frost.

“Have a little class,” Jett Black snarled. The pegasus rose into the air and beat up a vicious downdraft of wind and black magic with his broad wings. The sickly pulses that came with each beat set Madeleine’s teeth grinding against the pistol’s pommel and sent the Aktur of Trotheim stumbling to the ground on his weakened forelegs. Rock Skipper squawked at the first downdraft, but kept himself aloft by sheer weatherpony grit and flew doggedly at the Corporal’s neck, forehooves outstretched.

It was suicidal. Maybe even brave. But it did the job. With demoniac strength, Jett Black backhanded the smaller pegasus and sent him crashing against a wall, where he lay crumpled in an heap – not moving, but breathing (thank Celestia!). But it gave the window of opportunity that Madeleine needed. She transferred the pistol from her mouth into her grip, held it to her eye, took aim at the Corporal…

…and was shoved roughly down as a battering ram off equine pudge crashed past her and into the foyer. She dropped the pistol as Pome Apple bounded and snorted to the middle of the foyer, waves of raw, untrained magic pouring from the half-unicorn. Jett Black’s eyes widened at the primal scream that ripped from Pome Apple’s throat, and the pegasus dropped to the ground at the sight of the furniture that was rising up in the half-unicorn’s magical grip. He was forced to run pell-mell for the doors in front of the lounges, chairs, crystalline decanters, coffeepots, and glass detritus that were so many missiles under the hoof of the enraged Pome Apple.

“Y’all… killed… my… kin!” Pome Apple bellowed at Jett Black, the pegasus straining his bulk at the doors. Jett Black made no reply, but was through the smallest opening that he could force open in the next instant. Pome Apple dashed at the doors, throwing them open with the sound of a thunderclap.

No.

That wasn’t the sound of the doors.

The storm raging outside had sprung up from the sea without warning. Unlike the storm of three nights ago, this was no small squall that a lone pegasus could hope to control with bit and bridle. This was a wild, untamed monster, blind, angry, and dumb, venting its cruel, stupid rage on anything that stood in its path. It was the kind of storm that nopony had any business to be out in.

Madeleine spat a word she had picked up from a Stalliongrad sailor as the rain lashed at her face. The drops were dark, and heavy, and driven like knives.

“Corporal!” Madeleine’s voice was swept back into her face. “Pome! This is suicide! Come back!”

The shriek of a bolt of feral lightning upon the walk answered her call. Jett Black and Pome were lit up in stark red and black silhouettes for the span of a flash against the ruined fountain, hooves lashing the air in a desperate and bloody combat. Moments later, a crash of stones tumbled blindly in the darkness.

“The fools will kill one another,” Rubyk said, limping out to Madeleine. The raindrops froze as they struck his pelt, forming a shell that lay heavy on his shaking shoulders. “As Aktur, I must subdue them both before the lighting scorches their corpses.”

“In the name of whatever it is you serve… Aktur, you are unfit for duty!” Doctor Leaf snapped, coming to his side. Points of yellow starlight on his antler-tips lit up the ground around the Clavia like so many guttering lampposts. “You can’t not have seen what you are doing to yourself! If two ponies want to add to their crimes this night by killing one another, I will not let a third be on my conscience!”

Lighting flashed again, and so did the Aktur’s eyes. “Friend doctor, this is not the time…”

“I. Said. Stand. Down!” Doctor Leaf rammed a crown of twinkling stars onto the Aktur’s brow. Rubyk’s knees buckled beneath him. He shot a scandalized look at the physician before his eyelids closed in a bespelled sleep, numb to the storm’s bite.

“Doctor…” Madeleine gasped.

“That’s enough out of you, Miss Crumpet. You can’t have failed to notice what was happening to that pony.” Doctor Leaf glared at her in the wan light cast by his own antlers.

“We needed him! The Corporal is going to get away if Mister Rubyk doesn’t…”

“Doesn’t what? Seal him in a block of unmelting ice to drink his own water? Chain him to a glacier for an hundred years?” Doctor Leaf said above the raining hammer-blows and howl of the winds. Somewhere out in the darkness, Jett Black shouted in pain. “Not on my watch. The Aktur is not the only one with an oath to uphold.”

Pome screamed. There was nothing but pure, blind fury in that awful sound. “Fine!” Madeleine said. “You have a few other patients that the Corporal made for you, if I remember rightly. Take care of them, why don’t you? And… give Skipper my best.”

Doctor Leaf moved in front of Madeleine. The Clavia pawed at the ground. “Miss Crumpet…” he growled. “Whatever you are thinking of doing, I suggest that you forget you ever thought of it.”

Madeleine stared at Doctor Leaf’s haggard face, at the lines of too much inscribed into his muzzle: too much emotion, too much worry, too much for any one deer, or pony, or anyone else to bear all at once. She glanced out into the darkness, toward the sounds of the unseen combat.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she said, and sighed. The Clavia’s body relaxed. “But get over yourself.”

The crash of thunder might not have been able to shake the Clavia doctor, but the same could not be said for a gunshot fired skyward at close range. Doctor Leaf’s face froze in glass-eyed shock and Madeleine pushed past him into the stormy gloom. It was like running into a bed of nails.

A pulse of sickly nausea washed over Madeleine, followed by a swell of overwhelming anger. Madeleine pushed through both toward the source, her horn drawing her on through the dark toward the dueling magics. Her hoof struck something hard upon the ground, and Madeleine fell hard upon the walk, the wind knocked from her lungs. Another flash of lightning lit up the area around the fountain. Jett Black’s battle with Pome Apple had not been kind to it. The two combatants stood, bloody and panting, glaring murder at each other across the jagged rubble of the fountain.

Madeleine raised her pistol. “Corporal! Please, stop! It’s over!”

Jett Black and Pome Apple turned to her as one pony. Blood ran from a gash beneath the horn of the half-unicorn and from the nose and mane of the pegasus. “Butt out!” said Pome. “He’s mine – mine, you hear?!”

“I know that it is over. What would you have me do, Madeleine?” wheezed Jett Black, in a voice as dry as dust. The very air around him reeked of nauseous black magic; his face was naked despair. “Let the Aktur have his way with me? Surrender myself to the good pleasure of barbarity?”

Ignoring Pome, Madeleine took a bold step forward. “I don’t know why you did it, Corporal. But I do know that Mister Rubyk doesn’t change his mind. If you just admit your own guilt and… and confess…”

A look of mingled pain and sorrow passed across the pegasus’ face. Then Madeleine felt unclean power grab her by the mane and throw her to the ground. Her chin ground against the shards of stone beneath. She reached out for her pistol with her magic and, with a flush of panic, nothing at all happened. It was as though she tried to move her tail or a leg and the limb was simply not there any longer.

Pome Apple cried out. Madeleine glanced to the half-unicorn and saw that he was struggling to raise himself up from the ground under the same unseen hand. His horn sparked and spat with ineffectual rage. Jett Black actually smiled – thin, forlorn, and mirthless, but a smile nonetheless.

“I chose this path long ago. I have no regrets – none whatever,” said the pegasus.

“Then…why?” Madeleine said, biting her lip not to retch. Pome strained under the weight of magic upon him and pulled himself slowly, inch by unstoppable inch, toward Jett Black. Jett Black shrugged.

“Ask the Aktur. I severely underestimated him – and you.”

“You…” broke in Pome Apple, who stomped the ground with his rear hoof. Cracks spread beneath the blow. “Killed… my… Uncle!”

Madeleine threw herself out of the way of the mad pony’s wild charge. The wake of the magical surge running through Pome Apple knocked her down as he passed. She ground her teeth at the marble shards gashing her pelt. Come on girl — you’ve had worse, her little pony urged.

Jett Black leapt into the air, beating his great wings against the winds to stay aloft. The pegasus passed overhead, landing a blow on Pome’s temple near his eye with his forehoof. Pome cursed and clapped his hoof to the wound. The half-unicorn stared upward in naked fury from his one open eye.

“And I tried to make you see what kind of a pony that miserable creature was!” Jett Black spat, all poise gone. “Whom do you think sent you those letters, you stupid boy? If it weren’t for the sake of your family, your blood would be running in that fountain. You ungrateful bumpkin!”

Pome Apple’s jaw went slack. “What…?” he began. But he had no time to finish before another blow came down upon his head, knocking him out cold. Jett Black’s silhouette loomed over Madeleine, a fearful shadow half-seen in the dark.

“You’ve no right,” Madeleine said, cocking her pistol. It trembled in the grip of her horn.

“I knew that from the beginning. I knew it might come to this in the end. And I have no intent of facing retribution. I will hide away from you, from the Aktur, and from anypony else who might be stupid enough to come find me. Justice is an empty grave of a word. You will see that for yourself soon enough.”

“You were awfully quick to place the blame on poor Doctor Leaf, Corporal. What’s the matter? Guilty conscience?” Madeleine hoped to goad the pegasus into doing something rash. She jumped as she felt his breath upon her neck. When had he even moved?

“No. I deserve to live. Calvados did not. The buck does not. And unless you put down that little toy, neither will you.”

Madeleine swallowed. The pistol fell to the ground. Jett Black’s hoof came down upon it with a crunch of machinery gone ruinously wrong. Madeleine felt hot tears welling up at the corners of her eyes.

“So that’s it? You fly away in the dark, and no one can stop you?”

“That is exactly what is going to happen.”

“He’ll find you. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? There’s nothing you can do to stop him.”

“He can chase me to the ends of Equestria. It will not change what happens here this night.”

“Damn you.” She said it gently, without emotion. She felt rather than saw the nod Jett Black gave in reply.

“If I believed in justice, I might believe in damnation. So be it on my head. Goodbye, Madeleine.”

There were no more words between them. Madeleine felt the rush of air and heard the beat of vulture’s wings, and then there was only her, her tears, and the lonesome wail of the storm.

“I’m sorry, Mister Rubyk,” she whispered, her tears mingling with the cruel rain upon her face. “I’m sorry, Largo. I couldn’t stop him. I’m so sorry…”

The jeweler bowed her head.

And then an arrow from the bow of a god split the sky, and a scream of terror cut the night like a knife. Madeleine’s head snapped up.

“Corporal?” She galloped towards the falling figure, tumbling insensibly toward the black waves billowing over the causeway. In the eerie afterglow of the lightning bolt acting on the magical residue the struggle between Pome and Jett Black had called up, the fear on the demoniac face was the most horrific sight of the past three days. His wings were seared and charred by the surge of untamed power that had ripped through him moments before. He fell as a stone, rigid and unmoving, but his eyes were open and alert, and the pegasus was very, very aware.

“Corporal!” Madeleine reached the end of the island in the span of moments. Beyond her, the bluffs dropped precipitously into the sea. She watched, numb, as the sea seemed to open its mouth and close over Jett Black’s falling form. The storm bellowed its triumph song.

Because she could not stand to look down at the spot where the Corporal had disappeared, she looked up. And there, in the last light of the eldritch afterglow, there seemed to be a face of… something, not quite a pony, looking down upon her, staring into Madeleine with a stern, yet kindly look. It felt strangely familiar.

It was also too much. Much too much. Madeleine was not a mare much given to swooning, but Celestia herself would be forgiven for losing her composure after all that she had just been through. Madeleine found herself grinning madly as the world went fuzzy around the edges. A small figure and a candelabra of little lamp-lights stood above her head. She giggled.

“No justice? No justice? Guess you found out the hard way, didn’t you, Corporal?” Madeleine grinned up at the face staring down at hers in the rain. The figure just shook its head. The last thing she heard before everything went quiet was a soft and familiar voice muttering over and over:

“I have an oath… I have an oath… no matter what, I have an oath…”





*********************************************



Chapter Six



And Then There Were None



*********************************************




Birds.

Birds were singing.

Madeleine listened more closely. It was all that she could do. Her eyes were closed, their lids like lead. So were her limbs.

Birds… what a pretty song they made out here on the islands

No… not birds.

That was Rock Skipper?

“What…?” Madeleine said. Her voice was weak even in her own ears. Slowly, sore and trembling, inch by painful inch, Madeleine pulled herself upright in the bed she had been laid in. By whom?

“Ah, friend Madeleine. It is good to see you are yourself again.” Rubyk’s whispery voice sounded even more faint than usual. With as much effort as it took to move her body, Madeleine opened her eyes.

“Mister Rubyk?” The room came into focus only with an effort.

“Do not trouble yourself with much. The good doctor is zealous that his patients receive rest.” The Aktur of Trotheim grimaced. “He is quite forceful about it.”

Madeleine stared around her. The pair of them, along with many other ponies and deerfolk, lay on beds, sofas, chairs, and whatever other furniture of the hotel could be laid hold of, making an infirmary out of the Grand Foyer. Limon lay to her left on an hard bench covered with chintz cushions, dozing in the tropic morning flowing in from the open doors. The doe’s head was wrapped tightly in bandages. Beyond her lay Rock Skipper, singing a soft but tuneful sea-shanty. (Since when did he have a voice like that?) To her right…

Madeleine couldn’t help a gasp. Rubyk looked awful. Frost Pane had donated her white fur, which was draped over the Aktur’s huge, lanky frame, along with several duvets and comforters. All combined, it still could not keep the giant’s body from a constant shiver. He looked weak – no, he was weak. He looked as if he was the lone survivor of a cruel blizzard only just staggered in to the salvation of a warm fireside. The same black flecks that marred Frost Pane’s eyes were now in full evidence in his. Still, in spite of it all, he smiled.

“The Ice Sickness is not a kind thing. Yet I might also look worse,” said Rubyk.

“How could you possibly look worse?” Madeleine said, returning the smile.

“I might be dead. Corpses are never beautiful.”

Well, that killed the mood.

“Yes, you might be,” agreed Doctor Leaf, annoyance written into his every feature as he strode up to them from the beside of the mare from Fillydelphia (who was taking great pains to let everypony know what she thought of the breakfast service, or lack thereof). The Clavia bore a familiar bottle of sparkling red liquid. He avoided Madeleine’s eye. “And you will be if I can’t get you stable. You’re a fool, Aktur. You pushed yourself beyond what any equine should ever be forced to bear.”

“As you have said,” agreed Rubyk.

“And so I say it again, just so I make myself absolutely clear. Drink that. That’s the absolute last of the stardew on this island, and I have a very special patient that could use it just as well as you.” Doctor Leaf sighed. “But, I do owe you a debt. I at least shall do what I can for you, and if you happen to live through what you’ve contrived to do to yourself, I will give you my proper thanks.”

Rubyk’s jagged smile only widened. “The Pride of Trotheim has borne worse than this. I shall not go just yet, I think.”

“I am… glad to hear it,” Doctor Leaf said, his face scrunched into something that was not quite a smile.

“Doctor?” Madeleine said. “Is that special patient…?” she trailed off, leaving the question to hang in the air. Doctor Leaf turned his back to her.

“Miss Crumpet, you will kindly understand that there is very little I wish to say to you right now, and that I have many ponies who need my help. But… yes. If you wish to see her, she is in her private room being attended by the staff. Now, if you will excuse me.”

“Miss Crumpet?” said Rock Skipper’s voice, back to its bashful prevarications. “Do you want somepony to come with you when you see her?” He winced and grabbed at his bandaged ribs. Evidently, they were still tender.

Madeleine shook her head and rose to her hooves. She tried her knees. Not quite there, but good enough to walk on. It will do.

“No thank you, Skipper. I think I ought to go alone.”


*****


The proprietress of the Clavia Hotel raised her head up from her pillows. She was feeble, and even her smile quavered as Madeleine entered the room. “Crumpet, dear… how good to see you.”

Madeleine moved to the bedside of her friend. With a numbness that should have shocked her, she wondered if that was still the case. Largo – or whoever she was – motioned to the young Clavia buck standing a watchful guard for some privacy. He removed himself from the room with a curt nod, but remained loitering close outside.

“So… just what is your name today?” Madeleine did not mean for the words to sting, but they struck the seafoam mare like a dagger.

“It’s Largo. Largo of Currycape. And I mean it. I may have had some days of ill-discretion in time past, which you evidently know all about now, but those are all behind, well behind us now.”

“Okay, Largo,” said Madeleine. She took a long breath. “I pray to Celestia that you can give me a reason not to knock you in the head right now.” Largo winced. “What in the name of Trotheim did you mean by… by…”

“By letting the Corporal go through with it?”

Madeleine stomped the ground. “And then you had the gall to go and off yourself! Did you think for a moment what that would do to me? To your staff? What about Currycape? What about all of the families that send their little fawns to you so that their villages don’t turn into what the Withers became when it shriveled up died?”

The proprietress trembled and turned her head away. “The deer have long been my one and only love. At the nadir of their society, a doe did not shrink from a death with honour when continuing to walk beneath the sun would bring disgrace. Now my name is dragged through the mud, and I do not have even that.”

“Spare me,” said Madeleine. She fought the urge to slap the mare in front of her. “You have more to worry about than just your name. I want an explanation, not an excuse.”

Largo winced again and laid her head back on the pillows. Even sitting up for such a brief time was too much for her. “If I must, I must. What do you want to know?”

“We know the poison was in your office. Did you… did you plan all of this?” Madeleine demanded.

“Oh, Crumpet,” the proprietress groaned. “Is that really what you think of me, dear? Of course not. I may not hold much fondness for the descendants of the tribes, but I hardly have it in me for that kind of thing.”

“Then why in Celestia’s name did you have Earthsbane in your office?”

Miss Largo frowned through the haze of her fatigue. “Please, Crumpet… you know how I feel about that name. It was for personal use, dear. I knew that Canterlot might come looking for me eventually, and as it happens, I was entirely right. The Sun wanted her bangles back after all.”

“Well,” said the proprietress, a faint flush of colour coming to her cheeks, “she cannot own by right what was once stolen already. I regret nothing. The chandeliers, and all the other fruits of the low-born thievery of the tribes, rightfully belong to the deer. To my people, and not to the mainlander tyrants that lord it over us as if we were foals and not scions of a great empire ground to powder under the iron hoof of Canterlot. Do you think I would have even one kind ear on the mainland, Crumpet? Have you seen what the papers do to dissidents over there? No, no – that would be far too generous to hope for from the like of the spotless Sun in her castle on the mountain. I kept Earthsbane for the one use to which I should ever put it.”

Madeleine let out a breath, feeling some of the tightness in her chest ebb away. “I won’t say I’m pleased to hear it, but it’s better than the alternative. But how did the Corporal get his hooves on the Earthsbane in your office?”

“Oh,” said Largo, waving an hoof vaguely. “He stopped me before I could swallow it.”

The matter-of-fact way that she said it did nothing to ease the stony silence that followed. The proprietress cleared her throat and continued:

“It happened the morning before the… incident. I was in my office going over the accounts when I heard a knock at the door. It was Corporal Black. At the time, I only knew him as just another guest, albeit one about whom I had some reservations. He had the look of not a few guests who come to me personally in order to register some complaint or other. Well, I flatter myself that I am nothing if not a gracious hostess, and I keep a few specialty salt-tablets and other dainties on hand to stroke the hooves of these mainlander tourists in justthe right way. He closed the door behind him and showed me his credentials. At that point, I knew that the game was up. I did not plan for all of this, Crumpet, but I had at least planned for that. I said some pleasantries and intimated that I had some articles that would be of interest to him in a… personal capacity. I believe that the Corporal expected a bribe when I opened up my office safe. I had only just wrested the cork from the vial of Earthsbane toxin I kept for just this situation when the Corporal grasped what I was about to do and threw me to the ground. I struggled to take the vial from him, but… well, you saw for yourself what that stallion was like.”

Too well, Madeleine thought, and shuddered.

“It was at that point that Corporal Black… changed. He took a sniff of the vial’s contents and, even while I was still struggling to reach it, said, ‘I would like to propose a deal.’”

“And so you took him up on it?” Madeleine said, as icy as Rubyk had ever been.

“What choice did I have, dear? While I know that stallion came here with murder in his heart, I do not believe the Corporal had yet worked out in detail just what he would do. Whatever his plan was before the fact, the opportunity that such a poison so close by was too tempting to pass up. We arranged that in return for his silence on my past… indiscretions, and for his promise that not a blade of grass belonging to any Clavia would be harmed, he would take half of the poison, and I would retain the rest. ‘In the event you might need it,’ he said. Now,” added the proprietress, seeing the look of disgust that crossed Madeleine’s face, “don’t think for a moment dear that I intended to let him get away with whatever it was he was planning. I was not about to choose the noble way at that point. The game had changed, don’t you see? I made all my inquiries. I saw for myself how he looked at that poor stallion. I laid my trap for him and made Leaf stay just where he was needed, and I made sure that there would be a record of what transpired. That’s why I left the recorder in the suite, and that is why I personally collected it when everything went so wrong. Crumpet dear, whatever you may think of me, I was not about to let that awful stallion have his way without a fight.”

Madeleine’s head was whirling. “You… you weren’t trying to help the Corporal?”

“No!” Largo said, vehement.

“But I don’t understand,” Madeleine said. It seemed as through the floor was moving beneath her. “Why did you do everything else, then? Why did you make sure that Mister Rubyk and I faced every obstacle that you could throw at us these past three days? I can only assume that those Clavia that Skipper and I faced down in the Withers the other night were your doing as well.”

The proprietress sighed. “Your assumptions are seldom baseless, dear. But again, what choice did I have? In spite of everything that I tried, I could not prevent Calvados Apple’s murder with the poison that I had provided – and how would that look in the eyes of the courts, to say nothing of the press? I had rock-solid evidence against the Corporal, but because I was the only one that knew about it, I could show my hand. He might have caught wind of it and destroyed it. And that very nearly happened. I had to stall. Once Canterlot’s dog left my island and left me in peace, I planned to travel to the mainland personally and gain an audience with the Princess myself — as unpleasant as that might be to me — if I had to in order to make sure that justice was done. I swear it, Crumpet. But you and the Aktur… complicated matters.”

“You made it worse.”

“I am sorry, Crumpet. If I did not make it look as if I was playing along, I feared what would happen to you. I am so, so sorry that you were wrapped up in my folly. I played the only cards that I had. And when I saw at our farce of a trial that nothing, nothing was going to stop Trotheim’s dog from sniffing out the truth, that the Corporal knew there had been a recording gem in the room, I knew that my hand would not be enough to win. That was why I took the part of the poison that was left to me.”

“That doesn’t make this any easier to swallow.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence between them. At the end of it, Madeleine sighed and moved closer to the bedside. She laid the back of her hoof onto the seafoam mare’s clammy forehead.

“After all the dust settles, I am going to be away for a long time, Largo. Maybe even a very long time. What you did is unforgivable.”

The proprietress of the Clavia Hotel closed her eyes. “I know that, too.”

Then Largo opened her eyes again to warm hug around her shoulders and tears on her neck. Madeleine pulled back from the embrace, her lips curved upward in a fragile smile.

“But I expect you to have two bottles of rum in my suite for the next time. And maybe even some handsome flanks for my rooms one night.” Madeleine raised her eyebrows impishly. “I know you know a doe with an eye for the goods.”

Largo of Currycape just stared at Madeleine, as if she did not understand the words. Then she started to laugh. It was soft, it was feeble, but still, it was laughter.

“Oh, dear, dear Crumpet! I think that can be arranged.”





*********************************************



Epilogue



*********************************************




Should I? Madeleine asked herself not for the first time. It was a rude question on the tip of her tongue. It was impertinent. Maybe even impudent. But if she did not ask it now, then when?

“Mister Rubyk… how do you stand that?” Madeleine asked the Aktur of Trotheim. The strange giant wore an haggard, tired expression upon his face and his grandmare’s train of white fur wrapped several times about his shoulders for a mantle. He looked better than he had three nights past, when he had pushed himself closer to the gates of the cold underground than anypony should, but the bite of white frost still clung to his hooves and muzzle and horn-tip.

But to stamp the other hoof, the cold that poured from him made him a refreshing companion under the tropical sun. The Aktur of Trotheim laid down the steaming flagon of coffee grasped between his trembling forehooves and threw Madeleine a wry smile across the wrought-iron table outside of Piper Chai’s café.

“Mainly, friend Madeleine, I ignore it. Coffee is vile; but it is warm, and to be without is viler still,” said Rubyk.

“Well!” said Piper Chai, striding by their table. “I suppose there’s nary no more refill in your future then.”

“Apologies. Please, friend, may I have another? I am so cold.”

“A please? Heart, go on still!” Piper Chai laughed. “One minute, tall, cold, and sultry, and I’ll get you all the vile stuff you want.” Madeleine shook her head.

Oh, honey… you’re trying too hard. Some stallions just aren’t for chasing.

Madeleine watched Piper Chai humming breezily as she went about her own special craft. Vile or not, the coffee that mare made was good. She turned away, watching the other ponies gathered together in the town for one last, lingering recognition of the strange kinship that had brought them together. After the events of the last week, the parting could not help but be bittersweet. Pome Apple had not entirely lost his chronic soured mien, but even with the scars upon his cheek and the patch over his eye, the half-unicorn walked and sat as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. The younger Apple held himself with a gruff dignity, as if he were striving in every way to be the type of pony that Calvados wasn’t. Rock Skipper was healing well from his encounter with the Corporal, but the white gauze bandages that poked out from beneath his newscolt’s cap showed he had a long road to a full recovery still ahead. (“At least I don’t have shuttle-cart duty!” the pegasus said.) Still, the past week had not dimmed his cheery vigor, nor kept him from blushing like clockwork at a nicker. The Oranges were very nearly the same ponies that had come to the island, but the Manehattan veneer seemed to lay rather more thinly upon them both. Madeleine thought that she could just see the ponies beneath coming through when they were not putting on the mask just to speak. And it was not happy ponies that she saw beneath.

Meanwhile, Frost Pane had shucked her cloak of furs and even now was striding about the harbor street, proud and unadorned and unbitten by the cold. The tropical air had done its medicinal work, and there was no longer any rime of the Ice Sickness on her horn and knobbly joints. The old mare thrummed with a vigour that came pouring out of her in yawps and belly-laughs and raucous yarns, each one illustrated by wide gestures and little dancing snow-figures of abominable creatures and hunting parties of ponies carrying spears. Each one seemed to end with the glorious triumph of a pony braver than all the “gutless skag-menders” around her. It was magnetic. The fawns and fillies and colts of Currycape (and their horrified mothers) looked up with the gawping mouths and wide, staring eyes of a crowd captivated by a bank robbery.

To her left, ignoring the spectacle, Bergamot Orange cleared his throat. “I mean no disrespect, Lord Rubyk, but this all appears to be verging toward a repeat of recent events – which events I would as soon forget. I for one have business on the mainland to return to. This has all been… well, an experience to remember, let us say. However, speaking only for myself, I will be very glad to get back to my own work so that I can begin to put Currycape out of my mind.”

“I do not intend to keep you here longer than your will can bear, Bergamot Orange,” said Rubyk. “But insofar as it touches upon your family, I have one more discourse I would make, if you can bear it.”

“My family?” queried Mr. Orange.

“Our family?” grumbled Pome Apple. The two stallions looked at each other with some surprise, as if seeing one another for the first time.

Rubyk nodded his head; Madeleine could hear the joints of his neck creaking. “You perhaps wonder why the… late… Jett Black determined in his heart to sin against you and against Heaven.”

Pome Apple crossed his forelegs. “Should I care?” he asked, but he did not quite manage to sound disaffected. There was a sudden hunger, a thirst to know in his tone.

“Oh, Lord Rubyk, really!” Mrs. Orange said, and sighed. “Is this necessary? I think that I speak for all of us when I say that we have had quite enough of that stallion in our lives to last a lifetime.”

“No you don’t,” Pome said suddenly. “I’ll hear you. I want the closure. Maybe then I can stop hatin’ that black devil as much’s I hated Uncle Calvados toward the end. I got an idea in my head – and maybe it ain’t too far off the mark. What’d you find… Aktur?”

Rubyk looked at and right through Mr. Orange. The greenish stallion shifted his forehooves and cleared his throat. “I think,” he said, glancing toward Pome and away from his wife, “if it regards my family, I have a duty to hear you out.”

“Darn straight,” grumbled Pome approvingly. Rubyk leaned back in his chair.

“The good doctor forbade me to rise from my couch in my convalescence, but as an honourary scullery-stallion, I had friend Frond look into the Corporal’s rooms just one more time. I suspected that I would find some evidence there to confirm my suspicions. I have seen much, too much of the corruption that lies upon the equine races in my time as Aktur, and I know this much: there are not many things in this world that can fuel an hatred like his. The kind of hate that waits for years and decades without dying and plots murder in the heart is the abomination of love rotted out and eaten by worms. I knew that there was some connection between Jett Black and Calvados Apple and your family… yet I had no inkling of what that connection might be. But I was unprepared for what friend Frond found among the Corporal’s personal effects.”

Wincing at the crackle of the tiny ice crystals in his shoulders, Rubyk reached beneath his wrappings with his teeth and pulled out two items from their folds: A tiny notebook bound in canvas, and a tarnished base metal locket on an hempen string.

Abyssinian gold; moulded. Twenty or thirty-odd years old. Worn extensively, the little pony in Madeleine’s brain recited automatically. Madeleine scowled and buttoned the mouthy mare’s muzzle. There were just some times that instinct needed to shut up and dunk its head.

Rubyk opened the locket. Inside, there was a small portrait of a dimpled earth pony mare done in fine horsetail-brush strokes in black ink. The detail work was admirable. Then, as Madeleine peered in for a closer look, the mare started to look startlingly familiar.

Nor was she the only one to notice. Mr. Orange allowed a gasp to slip from his cultured mouth, eyes wide in disbelief. But Pome Apple was even more profoundly moved. The half-unicorn’s jaw hung open, and he looked from Rubyk, to Mr. Orange, to the locket, and back again.

“Is this a joke?” Pome said. He looked as if he very much wished it was.

“I thought that there was a resemblance,” said Rubyk, sadly. “Tell me, who is this mare?”

“My mother!” exclaimed Pome Apple.

“My cousin…” murmured Bergamot Orange.

The two stallions exchanged another look, and something passed between them that Madeleine could almostsee, like the shimmer of a spell glanced out of the corner of the eye.

“Then the last piece of this puzzle falls into place,” said Rubyk, who sighed as if he would give anything to notsee so clearly. He nudged the canvas notebook open. The interior was filled with leaves of pasted letters filled margin-to-margin with crisp block letters of an officious mouth-writing. Other pages held pressed flowers sealed with waxy resin, apple pips, and other little tokens of young affection that held a deep meaning for the mare that kept the book of memory scraps. Still others held doggerel and sonnet-blocks heavily crossed-through in an heavy and affected mouth-script. It was all romantic in the worst senses of the word. Rubyk turned the coarse leaves until he came to one very near the end of the book. On the left-hand face lay one of the crisp letters that seemed to fill up every other page. On the right were words large enough to read even upside-down, carved viciously into the paper and smudged by years-old tears.

It is over. I’m so sorry. These six months have given me a lot of time to think. My brother won’t ever allow this. I was a foolish filly to ever think that we could be together. It would be best if you take all these things back. Forget about me if you can. I will do my best to forget you. It is the only way that I can be happy. I loved you, but I can’t anymore. Goodbye.

Madeleine blinked. What in the world…?

Rubyk began to read the letter on the other page. “My Dear Reinette,” he began:

It has taken so long, but I am finally ready. These months in the cold hinterlands have made me a different pony – one that I hope you will still recognize. But I could almost swear to the faceless abstraction the races of the Northlands call upon in their prayers and their law-courts that these privations of home, of comforts, of soft beds and gentle foods, and most of all the love of a mare I have suffered have made me a better stallion. The brutality and kindness of the pony tribes of the North are deep and given equally in full measure, and one cannot but come away from this life changed in ways that I can scarcely now express, let alone fathom. Even now in my dreams I see reflections of the sky-thing the Northlanders name the Aurora dancing on the black behind my eyes. Call it perversity, or perhaps young-blooded idiocy, but I could not restrain myself from the temptation to look upon the thing that was so sternly forbidden to us Southlanders. The beauty of that moment, of colours I cannot hope to comprehend dancing before the lonesome stars, shall remain with me as long as I draw breath. I know of only one other sight to match it – and I know that she is waiting for me to come for her.

But all of the pain of our long separation has been worth it. My promotion into the Intelligence Corps of the Royal Guard from this mean auxiliary life is all but assured, and I can finally throw the dust of my tail at Manehattan. And while a city-born pegasus from Manehattan is one thing, a Canterlot soldier is quite another. With the money I have earned and the status of a real Guard, not even your family can object to our marriage any longer.

I will return for you soon. Too long have I been away from the comforts of home with only the faint sweet smell of apples on the breath of memory to keep me warm at night. I hunger for the verity of the true article. And you will never again need fear the bite of want. Only just a little longer – and then I can at last make you happy.

Yours Ever,

Jett Black

Even though she had not been the one reading these old words, Madeleine’s mouth was still dry as dust. Pome sat in a stunned silence, no sullen quips coming to his lips. Mrs. Orange’s face was a study in mixed emotions, passing from admiration of the letter’s sentiment to horror at the implications, then back again, and everywhere in between. Mr. Orange looked on his cousin with an expression not unlike pity.

Rubyk quietly turned the leaves of the notebook. “There is much more in this way,” he said softly. “He loved your mother for the long days of a balmy summer. He was poor, huge, and of ‘city ways’ – all of which your uncle disapproved. But Calvados was already head of the family by that time, so they made every effort to keep their passion one for another to themselves. They pledged themselves to one another after weeks of secret meetings in the orchards and dalliances in Manehattan when the family’s cider and spirits would be sold to the brokers.” Rubyk lifted up his head.

“Thus far I can gather,” Rubyk continued. “But I cannot fathom why your uncle would set his heart against something so good and kindly as even this young love – and my heart aches to think of what that stubbornness cost him.”

But it was not Pome Apple that answered. Mr. Orange struck the table in front of them in a fit of sudden temper. “I can tell you that. I swear by the Sun, the Moon, and whatever it is your kind swear to, Lord Rubyk, my cousin was a fool and the captain of a ship of fools. That was his tradition, and the tradition of his father before him, and his father before him, and so on down the line. In his world, earth ponies married earth ponies. It kept the magic in the family strong, or so it was said. In reality –” Mr. Orange trailed off, looking to his kinfellow.

“…the truth was, he was a mean old bastard who kept his family in line with a bullwhip and the threat to cut them out of the will if they didn’t walk the line,” Pome Apple finished, heaving a deep sigh. “Those letters the Corporal sent were absolutely right, once I started looking into the old histories. I don’t need to read what you have there to know that’s true.”

“And eventually it cost him even his family,” Rubyk said. “Far better to endure the slings and arrows of an uncertain world than to dwell in such an house of strife. It must have been when all of his family had already left him ruling his little fiefdom of apples by himself that he called back his sister to be with him.”

Pome nodded savagely. “Obviously, I ain’t got wings on me. Looks like mom couldn’t even stand the sight of Uncle’s hide after she got bullied into turning down… him. The pegasus, I mean. Maybe she just did some running around with any old stallion that turned her way after she got out from under Uncle Calvados’ hoof. I wasn’t very old when we came back to the plantation, so I don’t remember much. But even though he was kind to me and mom, even more to me after mom died, I remember her crying when we stepped across the threshold of the old house. Does that sound like somepony who likes her life choices?”

Mr. Orange shook his head. “This is beastly. Cousin Pome, I assure you that I had no idea of any of this. Had my father the least notion that one of our family was in want in our own city, I know that he would have shifted the sun itself to see that wrong righted! I know that it is rather too little too late, but I want to extend to you an open invitation to my own house in Manehattan if you so desire. You are family, and I do not turn away or turn out family.”

“Oh,” said Pome, spitting a gob onto the ground. “I know it’s too late. Both the old stallion and that pegasus, whatever his connection to me and mom and you might have been, are gone as gone gets. Good riddance to ‘em both, I say. I don’t much take to anypony killing my kin.”

“Ah… indeed?” said Mrs. Orange, trying to fill the strange pause that followed.

“Yeah. Indeed, as you city-ponies say,” said Pome. The half-unicorn smiled suddenly. “But you know what? I think I will take you up on that offer… Cousin Bergamot. I think I’d like to see for myself for once just how the ‘other half’ lives. And we have some unfinished business now that the old fool isn’t around to be himself. I thought your offer of a partnership was a pretty lil’ idea. Maybe I’ll just wait around Manehattan until we can get the details hammered out with your people.”

Mr. Orange’s ears rose up. “That is the first good news I think we have had all this cursed week. It will be our honour. Do you hear that, Mandarin? We have a deal!”

The quiet tears falling from Mrs. Orange’s eyes were confirmation enough. Just how hard up are they? Madeleine wondered. Then the little pony in her head chided her, and Madeleine had to admit that the little hellion was right. It was none of her business.

“You are taking this rather well,” Rubyk noted to Pome Apple as he rose up together from the table with the Oranges. Pome turned his one good eye to Rubyk’s face and smiled even broader.

“Can’t change it, can I? Didn’t do it, did I?”

Rubyk frowned. “You did not… and can not. This is true.”

“Then what’s the point in fussing myself over what the pegasus did with my mom back when? He hated my uncle. So did I. And then I hated him for killing Uncle Calvados. And now he’s dead. So I’ve got nothing left, got it? I ain’t saying it’s perfect for anypony, but it’s a fresh start, isn’t it?”

“There…” Rubyk paused, choosing his words. “…is certainly some wisdom in that.”

“And some tom-fool idiocy, too,” Pome said. “Don’t think I don’t know it. But it’s mine, and I’ll make my own fool decisions, Mister Actor.”

That, Madeleine thought, described the half-unicorn in a nutshell. She watched the three ponies, Pome together with the Oranges as they trotted toward the harbour, bound together by the strong, ineffable bonds of that thing called family.

It made Madeleine a bit wistful. Just a bit.

“So…” said Rock Skipper, broaching the awkward silence. “You’re leaving too, chief?”

Rubyk downed the last of Piper Chai’s good coffee. Wry misery fought with the obvious relief on his face. “Yes, friend pegasus… you will forgive me, but I am tired, most tired. This place holds only bitter times for me.” The Aktur of Trotheim smiled a shark-toothed grin. “Present company excepted, naturally.”

“Is ‘tired’ what you call that, then?” Rock Skipper said, waving an hoof at the giant’s frost-nipped limbs and furs. Rubyk laughed. It sounded like the lonely wind of a winter’s night.

“I call this ‘cold’. We of Trotheim do not feel it much. It is something of a novelty,” said Rubyk.

So are you, Mister Rubyk. So are you. Madeleine shook her head. “It’s been an honour, Mister Rubyk. I hope you will find a quiet patch of sun somewhere to keep warm,” she said, swallowing down the lump that appeared in her throat of all of sudden.

“Ah, friend Madeleine, have no fear of that. I will rest me here on these islands until my bones are fit to carry me back to my home.”

“And… how long will that be?” Madeleine asked. Just one more question. As long as she kept asking questions, “goodbye” was that much farther away.

“Oh, my grandfoal’s flesh is soft, and his bones crush like candy-silk,” Frost Pane cackled, leaping to the tableside with alarming vigour. The cobbles seemed to shake beneath the old mare’s hooves. “It will be long, dreary, and tiresome. It will be time enough to sing all the old songs and sleep all the long day and swill strong drink with sturgeon bread until he grows fat and trumbly. I shall hate every moment of it, jeweler.”

Rubyk sighed and shot Madeleine a longsuffering glance. “And somepony must look after grandmama.”

“Oh, come along you doting delly-foal and leave the jeweler and her poppet-doll. We shall lay sun-kissed on the ferry-deck and drink those fruity punch things with brandy in until we come to another island with these funny little deer on it. And then you can have another murder and return to Trotheim with a prize in chains instead of the fish-story you carry now.”

“That… sounds half-nice, grandmama.” Briefly, Madeleine wondered just which half. “But it is also true that we must go to catch the ferry. Friend Madeleine, I thank you for everything. Trotheim owes you a debt.”

“How much?” Madeleine said, flashing a grin.

“An astute question.” Rubyk flashed his own shark-tooth grin. Strangely, it no longer shocked her. “How about this: the Pride of Trotheim shall swear to Madeleine Crumpet that if she should ever find herself in the Northland, she shall be fêted and sung like one of the Princesses, as only the ponies of the North can do.”

“Can do, Mister Rubyk. You have a deal,” said Madeleine.

“Good. It is all I can do for you now… but I hope that Trotheim shall see you before the long night of winter. And it is I that speak. Do you understand, friend Madeleine?”

“Perfectly, Mister Rubyk,” she said. Her grin was even more strained. “You’d better go if you want to catch your ferry. Captain Nuce waits for no stragglers. Not even Trotheim.”

“Feh!” spat Frost Pane, flicking her tail at the buildings and beginning to stomp her way toward the harbour. Rubyk lingered at the table a few moments longer, his foreleg held close to his fur-swaddled chest.

“Er… the Lonely God watch over you both. May the One who watches Trotheim give you blessed days and quiet rest. May you never know unquiet or want.” The words of this stilted benediction came out tumbling and memorized. Rock Skipper scratched at his neck.

“Thanks, chief. Now I know who to blame when I feel them eyes on the back of my neck late at night,” said the pegasus. Rubyk didn’t seem to know what to make of that; so he made nothing of it. The Aktur of Trotheim cleared his throat and gathered his furs about him and set off after the Frei of Trotheim, two giants parting the sea of dwarves about them.

And Madeleine was left alone with Rock Skipper. The pegasus shuffled his hooves beneath him.

“You’re heading off today, too? Miss Crumpet?” The words seem to tumble over each other out of his mouth, falling to the tabletop with a silent thud.

“It’s work, Skipper. I can’t stay here on the islands forever,” said Madeleine with a shrug. “You know how it goes: clients to see, mares and silly fillies to fleece. It’s a living.”

“Do you think you might be coming back to Currycape soon?” Rock Skipper said. Not “if” but “how soon.” Smooth.He had removed his weathered cap and was turning it slowly over in his forehooves, showing his fine, sandy mane underneath. The pegasus’ wings were ruffled from the tension of everything that Skipper had swallowed down and was not saying.

“Probably not, Skipper. I do have business here in the town, and I had most of my little goslings in a row even before all this nastier business happened.”

“Oh.” Rock Skipper’s ears drooped.

“Yes. ‘Oh’. Don’t be like that, Skipper,” said Madeleine. “I am coming back.”

“Oh… oh!” The pegasus’ ears shot up again. “That’s… good. Very good!”

Oh, indeed. You couldn’t be any more obvious if you tried, silly boy.

Then Rock Skipper smiled. That… wasn’t the usual sort of smile that came from the pegasus. “Say, Miss Crumpet. Before you go, do you remember what you promised me?”

Madeleine blinked. What promise? she thought.

“My condition? For helping out? You accepted it.” Rock Skipper pressed, leaning in closer.

“I think I might just remember,” said Madeleine, straining her brains to just remember. “But it has been a very trying week, Skipper. Maybe you could see fit to reminding –” Then her eyes widened and she pulled away as the pegasus leaned even closer in, aiming a kiss at her cheek. He got the tips of her ears instead.

But he wasn’t put off quite yet. Blushing like a flame, the pegasus announced: “Miss Crumpet, this is my condition. Will you perhaps, please, please consider being my wingmare? Just for a bit. It won’t take much off your time at all!”

Madeleine blinked again. Rapidly. This was Skipper’s condition? “Even though I won’t be back in Currycape for a very long time?”

“Even then, Miss Crumpet. Even if it’s just for when you’re out here on the islands!” Rock Skipper pleaded. “Won’t you please consider it?”

Madeleine opened her mouth, the polite but emphatic no taking shape on her lips. Then, she paused to consider. She thought of Rock Skipper, all alone and out in a storm, taming the weather that the Corporal had drummed up to cover up his crimes. She thought of Rock Skipper charging bravely at the Corporal – reckless, but brave – and of the night in the Withers up near Hodgepodge’s tent. She could still feel the beat of his wings against the heavy night air in their flight down the hill.

And then there was the way that Skipper blushed, his coat going like rosy quartz under unpolished outsides… and his fringe, which was cute in a Rock-Skippery sort of way. Then her mind went to turn the pages of the little black book tucked away in her saddlebags, lists of names of stallions in cities on her circuit off Equestria and their… notable attributes coming to mind. She calculated how long it would take before the pendulum-swing of her travels would bring her back to Currycape. And she looked, really looked at Skipper blushing right before her eyes. It was, to her own surprise, cute. Maybe even a little bit handsome.

Madeleine smiled. “Maybe, Skipper. Give me some more time to think on it.”

Rock Skipper beamed a punch-drunk smile and swished his tail. Madeleine thought of the names on her “A” list.

Granted, it was a pretty big maybe. But there was no harm in giving a stallion something to hope for.