The orange-lit gates of Blueleaf receded into the distance as Starlight, Maple and Valey's machine-driven cart hummed its way into the Earth District, shadowed by rain thick enough to obscure the ponies' vision. All around them, darkened outlines of trees bent beneath the hammering force, but the round canvas roof over their heads held solid, and they didn't get any wetter.
That wasn't to say that they were dry. Starlight and Valey had fared well thanks to the batpony's speed, but Elise had levitated Maple two seconds slower... and that made all the difference. Maple licked at her coat, shivering, trying to brush the water away, wet but not soaked through. "Brrbrrr..."
Starlight blinked around the cart interior, looking for anything that might help. It was relatively bare: a flat wooden floor smelling of fruit juices, low walls with railings designed to keep crates from sliding away, a crowbar laying in a corner next to a paint can, empty and on its side.
"Don't you have a blanket, or something?" she asked, looking up. "In your cutie mark?"
Maple stopped licking, sheepish. "I... actually don't..." Her ears folded. "I didn't think when we were leaving we wouldn't have a place to stay that would have all that, so I didn't bring food or bedding or anything actually important. All I brought was all my money and a book if I got bored. Sorry, Starlight. I guess I should have asked you how to prepare for an adventure, shouldn't I?"
"You brought a book, huh?" Valey glanced over from where she was lounging against a railing. "That's cool. I like books. They're hilarious."
"Well, this one isn't a comedy..." Maple smiled sadly. "It's a thriller set in a dingy city. Kind of pointless to read about, since we're living one right now, but you can borrow it if you like."
"Oh, nah." Valey shook her head. "I didn't mean for me to read. I just like planting cheesy romance novels in guards' lockers so they fall out when you open the door."
"I do have this, I guess..." Maple hesitated, then dropped Neon Nova's giant trenchcoat to the floor. "It looks kind of warm?"
"Ew, you still have that thing? I told you to get rid of that! It's probably nasty!" Valey flinched back, glaring at it. "Full of knives and stuff, too. Come on, don't wear that. You can totally do better."
"Hold on," Starlight cut in, pointing a hoof. "Aren't you carrying my saddlebags? I had a blanket in there! You even washed it for me, remember?"
Maple's lips pursed, and her eyes widened in remembrance. "You did! I actually forgot your pack wasn't empty..." She paused, and an instant later Starlight's saddlebags tumbled to the ground in front of her. "Do you mind if I use it, then?"
"Umm... no..." Starlight mumbled, rooting through the bags with her nose. The blanket spilled out, alongside a trio of empty water flasks and two objects wrapped in waterproof casing.
She stopped and stared, passing the blanket off to Maple and pulling the objects closer. Her fake cutie mark kit... it seemed lifetimes ago that she had actually used it, even though it had been closer to a week. What had she stamped on her flank, using a paper cut-out and ashes taken from the family hearth? An equals sign, to say that no matter what ponies were given on their flanks, they shouldn't be treated differently? Funny how quickly she had found different things to worry about, there in Ironridge where ponies were oppressed randomly because of where they lived, or because there was someone who could, or for no reason at all.
"Ooh, wha'cha got there?" Valey leaned in, curious.
Suddenly, Starlight remembered the contents of the other wrapped package: it was the world's most boring book, stolen from a desk in the mountains and read through countless times while she was recovering from her cold in a cave. She wasn't entirely sure why she still had it... aside from the obvious; she had forgotten it existed and never left it behind. But the mere memory of its scent was enough to give her flashbacks of laying on stone, coughing and wiping her nose and doing nothing else for hours on end, and that wasn't a thing she was willing to let be used as a conversation starter.
"This is the world's most interesting book," she proudly proclaimed, holding up the book package in one hoof. "I read it at least twenty times in one week. Want to see it?"
"Uhhh..." Valey backed away, skeptical. "Yeah, no. I can smell a prank from miles away."
Shrugging, Starlight stuffed the book, cutie mark kit and water flasks back into her pack. "Okay. Your loss."
Boredom averted. She crawled over, joining Maple under her blanket, the pack at her side. Perhaps some day, she could find a pony who would actually like it to pawn it off on... Arambai, once she got back to Riverfall, maybe. Or she could give it as a prank. But right then, she was content to settle in, let the ride happen and not think about those days crossing the mountains.
"It's nice to be off our hooves for once," Maple murmured beside her, mirroring her thoughts.
"Meh. You guys are just lazy." Valey stretched, hind legs reaching almost parallel to her body. "Of course, I am too, so I shouldn't be talking."
"What were you doing up there, anyway?" Maple asked, draping a foreleg around Starlight's shoulders. "That took a lot longer than I would expect for locking up a villain."
Valey smirked. "You bet it did. Get this: Herman and Selma basically ambushed me in the fort, and Herman was like, 'Hey, you, go do these chores.' It was one hundred percent busywork. He even made it longer than it needed to be, just to bug me. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I've complained about this to you before, but that guy has it out for me, big time. It's like he wants to steal my title of biggest jerk in Ironridge, but still keep up a good reputation."
"Really?" Maple tilted her head. "What is his reputation, even? I don't think I've heard very much about him aside from what you've said..."
"In a nutshell, nobody who isn't super naive likes or fully trusts him, but everyone thinks he's on their side so they don't wanna actually say bad stuff about him." Valey drew a hoof along the wooden floor, thumping slightly as its edge ran across cracks between the thick boards. "It's the kind of thing where everyone wishes they could catch him playing dirty, but no one actually can, and even if they did they'd have to all mutually agree to do something about it for fear he'd just help their opponents to get back at him, so he's pretty much invincible."
Maple nodded, one ear slipping free of the blanket that she used as a hood. "What kinds of things is he doing for them to catch?"
"Honestly?" Valey shrugged. "Not much. That's why nobody can catch him. He lies a bunch, but everyone does that so that's the norm up in Skyfreeze. Puts loopholes in laws and then abuses them. Stores stuff in areas that are technically off-limits. He does a ton of stuff that's unethical, but unless you want to completely change how Skyfreeze works, that's business as usual too. Remember, it's not evil yaks versus heroic ponies here. Everyone on the economic council is just watching their own rears and doing what they think they can get away with, and he's just the best at it."
Her green, slitted eyes scanned the dripping world beyond the canvas roof, the roads dark and gray. "It also doesn't help that it's impossible to trace what he's actually doing at any given moment. See, when he wants something, he doesn't ask for it, or even go get it. He'll give someone something else and act like he's doing them a favor, but he already knows what they'll do with it and that thing winds up getting him what he wants. And if he does say he wants something or actively tries to get it, it means his real goal is something that'll happen as a side effect of that. So he gets all his goals accomplished by doing favors so specific, he doesn't even need to ask, gets everyone dependent on his help, and if there ever are ponies he needs to flat-out extort... say, me... he makes sure we can't do anything about it."
"He sounds like a very pleasant creature," Maple said, swallowing. "I'm glad I've never met him."
"Who else is in Skyfreeze?" Starlight asked when Maple didn't continue.
Valey nodded. "The economic council is basically a bunch of industry representatives from places who want to do business with Ironridge. Not Ironridge itself, mind you, just other places. The kinds of places who own the huge shipping lines that sprung up to replace Sosa when they decided not to do their thing with the airships. The three main factions are Yakyakistan to the west, the Griffon Empire to the east, and a place up north called Varsidel."
"Huh." Maple shuffled, tucking Starlight's saddlebags away. "How come all we've heard about so far is the yaks, then?"
"Because the other two don't do much," Valey said with a shrug. "Varsidel used to be big. They were the ones who started building the skyport, actually, though I think they had a lot of funding and help from the yaks. But a few months ago, they got into a huge war and have been converting most of their cargo ships to military and sending them off to fight. Then there's the griffons, who have a huge amount of buying power but don't have a fleet of their own, so they rely on the other two to ship stuff to them. Last I heard I think they're trying to change that, now that Varsidel's throughput is gone, but haven't deployed anything yet."
"A war?" Maple's eyes widened. "Just how much is going on in the world?"
"Hey, I'm concerned with Ironridge," Valey said. "Everything beyond that is incidental and doesn't really affect me, so I haven't gone out of my way to find out what's happening. If you're really curious, there'll probably be tons of ponies once we reach Grand Acorn who keep close tabs on that kind of stuff, so you could ask around, but I can tell you right now it won't be useful info."
"Huh." Frowning, Maple sat under her blanket... and said nothing.