The small library-study flooded with tension. Hailstone shrank down into her blanket cocoon, her eyes narrowed, and her lips parted just enough that her teeth were bared. Nuance’s face went neutral, but something about his eyes suggested some strong emotion. Corbie glomped her brother once more, almost smothering him, and whatever cheerfulness she had departed. Even the guard reacted, becoming extra stiff and rigid.
“Get out,” Corbie commanded, and there was no warmth in her voice, only cold confidence. “Don’t make me thrash you again, Radiance.”
The gleaming white colt struck a regal pose and turned his haughty, somewhat angry gaze upon the pegasus filly protecting Nuance. “You only won because you cheated. Lifting me up into the air and dropping me on my head was dirty pool, sister. You gave me a concussion—”
“You’re a critical hippopotamus!” Corbie’s nostrils flared wide. “You said it many times that a good soldier uses any means available and I used my means to kick your sorry plot. Now get out!”
“Did you just call me a hypocrite?”
Corbie hesitated, her wings twitched, and for a moment, Sundance was certain there was about to be violence. He thought about intervening, but wasn’t sure how the guard might feel about sudden movements during a time like this. Hailstone whimpered and Corbie began to growl, a terrific terror-inducing sound that made all of the hairs on Sundance’s neck stand up. The sweet, chubby pegasus filly apparently had a mean streak, a side of her that he would not have believed existed just a few minutes ago.
“Truce.” Radiance lifted his hoof up and his ears struck a somewhat submissive angle. “I came to help. In times of family crisis, we put our differences aside and work together, remember?”
“You are a family crisis,” Hailstone murmured while she took shelter against Sundance’s side.
“Let’s hear him out.” Nuance’s phlegmatic voice held a surprising depth of fear, but was still somehow insistent, commanding. “Why are you here, brother?” Nuance stroked Corbie’s neck, an affectionate gesture, and then leaned forward to listen to his brother’s response.
“I am here to establish good relations with one of my mother’s vassals, same as you.” Radiance bowed his head, and even in his submissive pose he somehow remained haughty. The colt—enormous for his age—sighed, shook his head, and let out an annoyed snort. “Father had a long talk with me. A very stern talk and he helped me to understand a few things. Nuance, I know what you are doing here. I know what you’ve been tasked with. You’re being groomed to look after Father’s legacy… and I…”—here, Radiance drew in a deep breath and appeared almost disgusted—“I respect that a great deal. You’re becoming a soldier… in your own way, I suppose, and you’ve taken up a noble cause. I do respect that, brother, and I will not impede your efforts.”
“We both want the same thing, brother.” Nuance wiggled free from his sister’s protective embrace. “Mother even said so. But we have a different way of going about it. Father’s legacy means a lot… to both of us. We’ve both given our lives over to it.”
“Yes…” Radiance drew out his response into a lengthy hiss. “I expect to fight and bleed for it, if necessary, and I expect that you will fight and burn the midnight oil with your fretting. Now, can we get some work done?”
“Rad, that might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Nuance remarked and his voice was soft, lacking any kind of snide sarcasm or hidden bile.
“Look, don’t get sentimental and soft.” Radiance’s ears splayed straight out from the sides of his head while he regarded his sibling. “Father made me understand that I was working against my own goals and I saw the foolishness in it. One day, I’ll be an officer, and you, you’ll be a bureaucrat, and it takes both of us working in unison to advance our cause. So again, I say, truce. Father demanded that I use this opportunity with Sundance to learn how to work together. He pulled rank on me.”
“Truce.” Pushing his reluctant sister aside, Nuance extended his hoof towards his brother.
There was a clank of metallic armor from the guard when Radiance moved forward, stepping over a few stuffed animals scattered about the floor. Sundance swallowed, his mouth dry, and his ears were cramping from standing so erect. Corbie had not dropped her guard—she still bristled with every sign of pegasus aggression available—and Sundance had some vague understanding that he was witnessing some long-running family conflict play out.
When the two brothers bumped hooves, Sundance discovered that he could breathe again—he hadn’t even realised that he had been holding his breath. For a second, Radiance seemed less haughty, but as he backed away, his expression of smug superiourity returned in force. Radiance retreated a bit more, sat down upon the floor, and then, like the sun parting the blackest of storm clouds, he smiled.
It was breathtaking.
“What did you have in mind, Radiance?” Nuance began the task of trying to pry his sibling off of him and it took a great deal of reassurance before she began to ease up her protective grip.
“The cadets are in need of a place to bivouac.” Radiance, still smiling, turned his resplendent gaze upon Sundance, who was dazzled by the sheer brilliance of it. “The Canterlot Military Academy and the Guardian’s Guild are in need of land for a cadets’ retreat. We had a spot in the White Tail Woods, but that old agreement was allowed to expire as the local lord wished to redevelop the land to do something else. I approached Princess Twilight about it, but she said no, because she is not keen on soldiers hanging about Ponyville, and I respect that.”
Sundance realised that he had vast, empty spaces of land; he was rich with emptiness.
“The southern reaches of your demesne expand into the Everfree.” Radiance’s smile vanished and was replaced by something hard, something flinty. “The northern Everfree is a truly dangerous section of the wilds. The cadets could use a bit of danger… real danger, mind you. Adding a real threat to our training would be invaluable and having a camp would help to protect your southern border. The cadets’ club is willing to pay rent… one thousand gold bits a month, and we shall pay it directly to you, and not to your demesne account where the banks will have their way with it—”
“Wait, is that allowed?” Sundance’s ears angled over his eyes in alarm.
“Oh, it is allowed,” Radiance replied and his eyes narrowed in a shrewd manner. “Though it is questionable. A bad lord might do something immoral by exploiting this, but a good lord would use this… shall we call it a loophole? Yes, a good lord would take advantage of this loophole to benefit his barony. He could account for every gold bit, every expenditure, and keep away any worried suspicions of a certain nosy white alicorn who might worry that something was amiss.”
“This could work.” Nuance leaned forwards, his head bobbing up and down, and there was an excited gleam in his eye. “I hadn’t thought of you holding a personal account. You are legally two entities, Sundance. You are Sundance, the pony, and Lord Sundance Sunfire, of the Sunfire Barony. You still hold certain legal rights as an individual. You are an I and a We.”
“The last lord abused this to no end,” Radiance said, picking up where his brother left off. “He drained the barony accounts and secured loans under the barony name, while keeping everything in his own private accounts. Mother might be quite alarmed if you did this, which is why you would need to exercise some extraordinary bookkeeping to stay her righteous wrath.”
“I see.” Sundance began to muse on this idea, his eyes darting from one colt to another. “I don’t want soldiers harassing my peasants, scaring my chickens, or chasing my goats. If Princess Twilight didn’t want soldiers in Ponyville, there must’ve been a reason.”
“Ponyville is too densely packed within its borders.” Radiance cleared his throat, grinned a sheepish grin, and offered up a dismissive wave with his hoof. “You would never see us. There would be well over a hundred miles between the central seat of your barony and the location of our camp.”
Sundance was tempted and the sight of the two brothers staring intently at him left behind a peculiar pressure. By agreeing, he could help the two brothers get along, and they would continue working on a common goal. There seemed to be some trouble between them—a great deal of trouble between them—so offering them some common ground might be beneficial in all sorts of ways. His peasants might just reap the rewards of his actions.
Hailstone yawned and this set off a chain of yawns that spread around the room. Steadfast was next and his yawn was a wheezing squeak. Corbie fell prey to the dreaded contagion next, and Nuance squirmed away when his sister’s tongue almost touched the side of his face. Then Nuance covered his mouth with his hoof, turned his head off to one side, and yawned. When Sundance found himself yawning, he wondered how and why Radiance seemed to be immune.
The guard too, somehow resisted.
“I suppose you’ll be arriving by train?” Sundance asked after he had recovered.
Radiance snapped to attention, nodded, and replied, “I had considered that. There is rail access to the area. It was a factor in my determinations.”
“The railway depot is dilapidated and falling apart.” The memory of it was still fresh in Sundance’s mind, and was quite vivid. “Build me a better railway depot and we’ll both benefit. Something military grade. The current depot is more of a stop, and the wood it is made from is all rotten. If you got off the train and tried to unload supplies there, I think you’d have problems, especially if it was raining.”
“That can be done.” Radiance smiled again, a dazzling sight, and he seemed to fill the room with sunshine.
It didn’t fix his biggest issue, and that was getting goods to the depot, but it was a start. Sundance had no idea how he was going to transfer goods overland, but he felt as though some progress was being made. His sense of hopelessness from earlier was fading now, replaced by a sense of accomplishment. A bit of money, a new depot, some new housing, yes, today was a day of achievement.
“For the movement of goods…” Radiance’s words trailed off and the colt began to nibble on his upper lip whilst tapping his hoof against the floor. “It occurs to me that you have a three-legged peasant that needs to be transported and you have no means to move goods back and forth, other than perhaps yourself. The ability to move supplies is paramount.”
“I agree.” Nuance nodded his head while glancing at his brother. “Do you have any ideas, Rad?”
“I do, actually.” Radiance paused again, chewed on his upper lip once more, and scratched his left front leg with right front hoof. This continued for a time, until the colt’s ears stood erect in an excited-but-not-haughty manner. “I am going to requisition a standard-issue cart, I think. They’re not fancy, but they are super light, durable, and capable of hauling two ponies in full armor or one standard-issue crate of rations and supplies.” Reaching up behind himself, Radiance began to rub the back of his neck. “Can you haul a cart? Do you have a license?”
“I can,” Sundance replied, “and I do. When I was hired to be a medical courier, it was a requirement. Most of my jobs were rooftop access only, so a cart or a wagon wasn’t practical, but I know what I’m doing.”
“I pulled Hailstone in a toy cart and we crashed into a chandelier.” Corbie turned away from everypony in the room, let out a sigh, and shook her head. “Daddy was lectured because Mama Luna said that this would happen but he still got the cart for me anyway ‘cause he didn’t care what Mama Luna had said and we were both in trouble together ‘cause pegasuses of a feather flock together. Mama Blue was mad.”
“I got a bump on my head and I saw a flock of alicorns.” Hailstone squirmed a bit, smiled, and her ears rose and fell while her cheeks bulged from her grin. “Daddy’s seen them too.”
“I saw them as well,” Radiance remarked, “right after Corbie dropped me on my head. You were right, Hailstone, they do exist.”
“HAH! I told you so, poo-poo head!” Hailstone hooted in triumph, and this startled Steadfast, who coughed. “I told you so! I told you so!”
Sighing, Radiance nodded. “You were right and I was wrong.”
“Hush, you featherbrains, Steady is trying to say something.” Hailstone parted the blankets a little, ducked her head down, and Steadfast’s ears became somewhat visible.
“Lunch,” the frail colt said in a wispy voice.
“We should totally eat some lunch.” Hailstone’s eyes brightened. “Ayuh! You too,” she said to Sundance. Then, the filly’s head rotated in an owlish manner and her eyes narrowed when she looked at Radiance. Her cheeks bulged even more, her ears formed an aggressive ‘V’ while her eyes narrowed, and she puffed out, increasing her size in the magical, floofy way of pegasus ponies everywhere. “You too, but you’d better be nice, poo-poo head.”
“The truce holds.” Radiance sighed these words and there was something that was almost a smirk on his face.
It seemed as though it was time for lunch…