Northern Venture

by Chengar Qordath


Lessons Ventured

Spending a couple weeks on a boat meant finding ways to fill the time. The novelty of being out on the open water was good for a day or two, but it ran out pretty quickly. Fortunately, I had an eager young apprentice with a receptive mind just waiting for me to cram it full of knowledge. Kukri certainly wouldn’t complain about having more actual lessons, especially since it meant not being tied down with homework.

In my apprentice’s defense, from what I’d seen of the homework that went along with her usual schooling, a lot of it was the worst sort of busywork. It was almost enough to make me want to take over all her education just to make sure it was done right. If not for the fact that I was far from qualified to teach topics like Freeport history without a lot more studying myself and the fact that it would massively increase the amount of time and effort I needed to spend on her...

Oh well. Once she had the basics down she would be studying with me full-time for her advanced education in any case. And it wasn’t like her future career as a magus would be horribly crippled if she lacked in literary analysis skills or couldn’t perfectly regurgitate all the historical facts her teachers wanted to drill into her. Some of that might matter depending on what discipline she went into, but if that was the case I could always address it then.

For the moment, I had her going through some basic training in evocation and energy manipulation. From what I’d been able to tell so far, it probably wouldn’t be her primary discipline. Evocation was an energy-heavy discipline, and Kukri was in the same boat as most changelings when it came to raw power: unless she’d been eating heavily, she just didn’t have the magical muscle to sling hard-hitting spells around like I could.

Still, just because she would never be a great evoker was no reason to skimp on her training entirely. Celestia had never let me skip lessons in other magical disciplines just because I was better at evocation than I was at illusions or divination. A proper magus was supposed to be proficient at every branch of magic, even the ones they had a hard time with.

I wound up attracting a bit of an audience while setting up for the lesson . Well, mostly just Strumming, who seemed to be watching us while chowing down on a bag of nuts. She spotted my look at her snack and shrugged. “Crisps might be my favorites, but you know what they say about variety. Just because I’m a crisp-fueled super-spying machine doesn’t mean I can’t change it up every once in a while. If nothing else, eating other stuff helps me appreciate just how tasty my favorite crisps are.” She shrugged and added, “Plus, you know, they’re easier to fit lots of into the bag of snacks.”

Kukri shot a curious look her way. “How many snacks do you have anyway? This one would think you would’ve run out by now, given your rate of consumption.”

Strumming smirked and opened up her feed bag, showing a truly incredible variety and quantity of snacks stored within. “Bug boy got me a magic bag. S’bigger on the inside.”

I glanced over and Puzzle, who was relaxing on the deck and enjoying the sun while going over several reports. “Let me get this straight. You bought her an enchanted bag for her snacks?!”

Puzzle glanced up at me, then shrugged. “This one does not know what precisely would happen if the Heartstrings-mare was forced to go without her snacks for an extended period, but it suspects it would not enjoy the results. Especially when we’re all stuck on a relatively small ship with her, potentially several weeks away from port.”

Strumming smirked and stretched out her wings. “My vengeance would be both swift and terrible to behold. Sailors would speak of me in the same breath as krakens and leviathans: beware the Wild Strumming, for she is fierce and merciless when denied her crisps.”

When put like that, Puzzle had made a very wise investment. I had a feeling Strumming without her snacks would become substantially more annoying she already was, which was a frightening prospect to consider.

I put that nightmare scenario out of my mind to focus on training my apprentice. Kukri had been going through some basic exercises, and had so far managed to avoid falling into any of the annoying quirks I’d been trying to train out of her. I wasn’t super-picky about following every single aspect of classical spellcasting protocol, but I didn’t want my apprentice casting spells with her eyes closed and her tongue sticking out. It just wasn’t dignified.

Fortunately, Kukri was keeping her tongue in her mouth as she focused on carefully dispersing the heat radiating from a lit candle. While she was keeping her tongue form poking out, that seemed like it was actually taking effort on her part. Her spellwork wasn’t quite as smooth as it normally was, and her teeth were clenched as if that was the only way to keep her tongue where it belonged. That had the unintended side effect of making it look like she was baring her fangs, but all things considered that wasn’t the worst look for a battle-mage.

Finally, she succeeded in dispersing the heat enough to snuff the flame out. I smiled and nodded approvingly. “Alright, good work Kukri. Now...” I re-lit the candle with a casual mental flick, then set a glass of water down in front of her. She started to reach towards the glass. “Don’t drink it,” I warned her, “it’s salt water. No sense wasting drinkable stuff on exercises.” Not to mention salt water tended to be harder to do magic on than fresh. The extra challenge would be good for her. “Now, I want you to transfer the heat from the fire into the water.”

Kukri nodded along. “Got it.” Her horn lit up, and she started shifting the heat into the water, scowling at the extra resistance she encountered.

That was when Strumming made her move. I could tell she was doing it on purpose; there was a mischievous glint in her eye that gave it away. Right when Kukri was fully concentrating on the spell, she pulled out a fresh bag of crisps, crinkling it as much as possible before opening it with an unusually loud pop.

Kukri jumped at the loud noise, shooting a token glare at Strumming before getting back to her spellwork. However, the distraction had cost her badly in one critical area: her tongue was poking out the side of her mouth.

I let out an exasperated sigh, and repeated an instruction I’d already had to give her far too many times for my liking. “Kukri, tongue.”

Kukri groaned and rolled her eyes, tucking it back into her mouth. “This one knows, Shimmer-mare.”

Strumming let out a loud, bored yawn. “You told her why she’s not supposed to do that, right?”

Kukri let out a groan that reminded me she was right on the cusp of teenager-dom. “Because it looks silly and undignified.” Her voice shifted to a passable imitation of my own. “Unicorns cast spells with grace and dignity, for perfect casting can only come with perfect form. They don’t pull silly faces or make weird sounds, or do anything else like that.” She scowled at the glass of water as if her annoyed glower could make it boil.

“That’s what they say.” Strumming smirked and trotted over to her. “Of course, there’s also a very practical reason for it: if you got your tongue poking out between your teeth in a fight, what happens when someone socks you in the jaw?”

Kukri grimaced, more than capable of following the rest of the reasoning. “That makes sense. This one prefers not to bite off its own tongue.” She shot a faintly sassy grin my way. “Even if that would make the Shimmer-mare happy by keeping it from engaging in certain quirks she disapproves of.”

I rolled my eyes, while Strumming hammered the point home. “You don’t see ponies doing that on the Doo practice ground, right?”

Kukri sighed and shook her head. “No. The trainers break us of that pretty early on.”

“So do the same thing in your training with me,” I concluded. I was actually a bit annoyed she hadn’t worked it out already. Even if Strumming brought up a somewhat more practical reason behind the tongue thing, that didn’t mean my reasons were invalid. Kukri should’ve listened to me and taken care of it instead of needing Strumming to chime in.

Just to make things better, Strumming kept it up. “And having tells like that isn’t great either. If someone can tell whenever you’re concentrating on some really tough spell...”

Kukri sighed and grudgingly conceded the point. “That would make for a short career. Right, starting again...” Her horn lit up once more, and her lips pursed with concentration as she made a point of keeping her tongue exactly where it belonged. After several seconds the candle’s flame started flickering, and I noticed a few bubbles coming up from the bottom of the water glass.

Strumming grinned and nodded. “See, that's better. Of course, you can always go with the classic brow furrowing if that’s your thing. Way less danger of biting off your tongue, and more importantly, your Bacon-Boss won’t complain about you looking silly and undignified.”

I rolled my eyes, but refused to let Strumming get under my skin more than she already had. I was pretty sure she was just poking fun at me, and the worst thing I could do was let her know it was working. Instead, I kept to the lesson. “That’s a good start, Kukri.”

Kukri nodded and kept her attention on her work, exactly like I’d hoped she would. After a couple minutes the candle had dimmed to the point where it was barely staying lit while the glass of salt water was as close to boiling as she could get it with just a candle’s heat. I would’ve liked to give her a bit more to work with, but drawing in ambient background heat was a bit much for a beginner’s lesson, and I didn’t want to chance any fire bigger than a candle while we were on a wooden ship. Not that I couldn’t contain any mistakes Kukri made, but why take the chance in the first place?

Strumming watched my apprentice work, idly munching on her beloved crisps. “So how long before she can throw around fireballs? These exercises are neat and all, but I was expecting something big and flashy outta magic lessons.”

“It’ll be a while yet.” I decided to relate things back to my apprentice’s experience with her clan, since it worked so well when Strumming did it. “It’s just like how they don’t let recruits train with live weapons right away: they get the blunt ones first to be safe. Except that a live fireball is way more dangerous than a sword, especially on a floating tinderbox like this.” I turned my attention fully back to Kukri. “Good work. Now, could you try taking the heat out of the water?”

Kukri nodded confidently. “Right, that’s just an issue of reversing it. It should be easy enough.” She got back to her spellwork, and before long I noticed her tongue poking out the other side of her mouth. However, she quickly sucked it back in before I could call her out on it. That was progress, at least. I wasn’t expecting her to break the bad habit overnight, but at least now she seemed to actually be working on it.

Strumming wasn’t so inclined to give her a pass. “Don't think I didn’t see that.”

Kukri scowled, but tried to keep her attention on her work. However, that quickly lead to another issue I had to speak up about. “No closing your eyes either. I’m sure I don’t even need to explain why that’s a bad thing to do in the middle of a fight.”

Kukri’s eyes snapped open with a faintly annoyed grumble, but she didn’t argue or sass the way she had about her tongue. However, Strumming couldn’t resist getting involved. “Next time you do that I’m gonna do something. And then you won’t see it, and that will be awful. For you, anyways. For us it’ll be hilarious.”

Kukri tried to glare at her, but that just made it substantially harder to concentrate on her spell. “You’re ... not ... helping... Heartstrings...” she grunted as she tried to regain control.

Strumming shrugged. “If you think I’m not helping, wait until you’ve got some warlock trying to make your brain drip out of your ears. Now that is rude. And distracting.”

The world’s most irritating mare had a point, in her own weird indirect way: learning to spellcast under adverse circumstances was part of the standard magus curriculum. I’d needed to keep slinging spells while battered, bruised, exhausted, or dosed with a sleeping potion. I certainly hoped Kukri never wound up in a situation like that, but if she did I wanted her to have the skills to keep going. Learning to put up with an annoying pegasus was a small step along the path.

I gave Kukri a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “I know it's a bit annoying, but we’re trying to break these bad habits for a reason.”

“This one knows,” Kukri sighed. “It’s hard though, especially when these lessons are all new. It’s just trying to get the spell right, but now it also has to worry about what it’s doing with its tongue and eyes and...”

“The sooner you get used to doing it the right way, the easier it’ll get,” I told her. “That’s why we try to break those bad habits as soon as possible. Back when I was a couple years younger than you, I remember Celestia...” I trailed off wistfully, then quickly cancelled that trip down memory lane. Mind in the present, I could reminisce later. “You’re making good progress. I know the lesson is hard, but that’s the point. If it wasn’t hard, you wouldn’t be learning. Tell you what though, since you’re making so much progress, we’ll try something different once you finish up.”

Kukri’s ears perked up. “Ooh, nice! What’s next?”

I grinned at her. “You’ll find out as soon as you finish.” And as soon as I came up with a good special treat lesson for her. Something she’d have fun with that would still teach her something useful that I could come up with on the fly.

Strumming swooped in to fill the gap, finishing the last of her crisps and crumpling up the bag before shoving it into a compartment of her bag that was full of discarded snack wrappers. “Actually, how about I teach her a couple things? Magic lessons are neat and all, but I’m just bursting with knowledge and skills Facon could use.”

I was a bit intrigued to see how a pony as unique as Strumming would handle teaching Kukri, and it saved me the trouble of coming up with a new lesson on the fly. “What'd you have in mind?”

Kukri turned her attention to Strumming, the half-frozen glass of water she’d been working on temporarily forgotten. Her expression was halfway between curious about the lesson and wary of the one who’d be teaching it. “This one’d like to know as well.”

Strumming shrugged. “All kinds of fun things, I’m just gonna be making it up as we go. So, I was thinking it wouldn't hurt to learn how to throw knives and darts.” She smirked and ruffled my apprentice’s head-crest. “Or we could work on your disguises.

That last one got Kukri’s attention. “You want to teach a changeling ... how to disguise itself?”

Strumming grinned and puffed her chest out, looking quite pleased with herself. “I’m sure you’ve heard it before from your dad or sister or Puzzle, but there’s a lot more to a disguise than just looking like something. Just ‘cause I don’t have magic shapeshifting powers doesn’t mean I can’t whip up a good disguise. Just means I need some supplies and a few minutes in the ladies room to cook up something good.”

Puzzle idly glanced up from his paperwork. “Some of her disguises are good enough to fool this one, at least for a few minutes.” He smirked at her. “Mostly because she is quite fond of going to extremes. This one was quite stunned when what looked like an eighty-year-old earth pony stallion slapped it on the rump and made several lewd remarks.”

Strumming smirked, and all of a sudden her body language shifted to something completely different. When she spoke, it came out like the croaky rasp of an old sea dog. “I still say you must be made of jelly, young’un, ‘cuz jam don’t shake like that there rump!”

Kukri groaned and buried her face in her hooves, trying to find a way to cover her ears at the same time. “This one does not need to hear that.”

“I don’t need to hear that either,” I agreed. “In fact, I’m pretty sure nobody needs to hear that.”

“Bah, our love is a pure and beautiful thing,” Strumming shot back, sticking her nose up in the air like a snooty Canterlot noble. “Why do you hate beauty, truth, and love?” She cleared her throat, then pulled off one of the breakneck topic shifts I was getting just a bit too used to from her. “Anyway, back on topic: disguises. I’m good at them, ‘cause I get everything down.”

Kukri was evidently learning from me when it came to ignoring the more blather-y parts of Strumming’s topical whiplash, because she followed along easily enough. “Dad’s said as much. A good disguise is also about mannerisms, pronouns, and gender identification.” She scowled and grumbled. “He said this one still acts like a girl, even when it’s wearing a male disguise.”

Strumming snorted. “Yeppers! And if you screw up even one little detail, like having a really girly walk, it could give away the whole thing. The key to a good disguise is to make it work so nobody questions it, just like how the key to sneaking into a place is looking like you’re just another bored worker vaguely annoyed you have to be there. Once someone thinks you don’t belong and starts really digging, odds are they’ll eventually find a loose thread somewhere.”  She reached over and gave her a pat on the head. “And even if the disguise is perfect everywhere else, suspicion is bad. Makes it a lot harder to get things done if everyone thinks you’re a weirdo they shouldn’t trust. Got me?”

Kukri shot her an annoyed glare and swatted her hoof away. “You would be an expert in what it’s like to be the weirdo nobody likes or trusts, wouldn’t you, Heartstrings-mare?”

“Yup,” Strumming agreed without a moment’s hesitation, taking a seat next to Kukri. “Fun story behind that, actually. See, I’m a crazy unpredictable ball of lunacy, and I’m so good at hiding what’s really going on upstairs that not even bug-boy has me completely figured out, though he’s closer than most. Thing is ... nobody likes unpredictable, except a fun guy like Puzzle. They wanna be able to read body language, tone, and everything else, and think they’ve got you reasonably figured out. Makes ‘em feel safe and comfortable, while we’re all hardwired to treat anything unknown as a potential threat. S’why any flaws in the disguise will screw things up: once you go from ‘safe comfortable thing they trust’ to ‘something’s not right’, you trigger all those instincts that put people on edge—and once someone gets their back up it’s very hard to get ‘em to relax and trust you again.”

Huh. Well, Strumming had just revealed one or two interesting things about herself, assuming it wasn’t all just lies or more of her classic empty blather. I had a feeling it wasn’t though. She wasn’t wrong about her unpredictability being part of why I didn’t like her. Big shock, I didn’t love having a mare around who might just go off and do things on her own while I was trying to present myself as a respectable, in-control magus.

Strumming grinned and moved back to in front of Kukri. “Alright, let’s move to a practical test. Transform into something. Amuse me.”

I spotted the sassy grin on Kukri’s lips and knew I was about to have something amusing to watch. Sure enough, when she was done transforming a miniaturized version of Strumming was standing on the deck. When Kukri opened her mouth, a massively overblown version of Strumming’s accent came out. “Oi there luv, fancy sparin’ a starvin’ mare some crisps?”

“Cheeky little bug,” Strumming muttered, though she couldn’t quite hide the grin on her lips. A moment later she was back in character, playing along. “Why should I give some crisps to a disreputable little scamp like you?”

Kukri’s eyes flicked over to me, and from the way her grin widened I had a pretty good idea what was coming. “‘Coz they’re crunchy, deep-fried, and a bit salty. Just like me boss, ‘cept she innint crunchy or deep-fried. So actually not all the much like ‘er at all.”

Strumming smirked and tossed her a bag. “They do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” She cleared her throat, then got back to the farce. “I like your style, kid. What’s your name, and where’re you from?”

Kukri snagged the bag, but seemed to freeze a bit at the questions. “Um ... me name’s Minty Snacks, and I’m from uh.... Vanhoover, yeah!”

Strumming met that declaration with a raised eyebrow. “Never heard a kid from Vanhoover have an accent like that. What’re your parents names? Maybe I knew ‘em from back in Trottingham?”

“Um...” Kukri froze for a long awkward moment before finally answering. “Razor and Record Snacks.”

“Never heard of ‘em,” Strumming answered smoothly. “So what part of Vanhoover you from?”

“The east part,” Kukri answered vaguely. “Anyway, cheers for the crisps, but this one’s not supposed to talk to strangers.” It took her half a second to figure out what she’d just done, then she buried her face in her hooves as she dropped her disguise. “Ah, feathers.”

“Language, Kukri,” I half-heartedly chided. Sure, I wasn’t the world’s best role model, but I should at least try to be be a semi-responsible adult.

Strumming grinned and sauntered over to her. “And that’s why you gotta be careful about nailing down every single detail. Only takes one slip-up.” She grinned and poked Kukri’s forehead. “When you take a disguise you've gotta commit to it. You’ve gotta know your disguise inside and out. Their history, their likes, dislikes, fears, motivations. You gotta be who you're disguised as, not just pretending. Doesn’t matter if you get a hundred things right when you only need one mistake to blow your cover.”

Kukri grumbled another few things that probably should’ve earned her another rebuke from me, but eventually nodded her understanding. “It takes ‘Know thyself’ to a whole other level, huh?”

“Yep!” Strumming glanced into her snack bag as if she was trying to decide whether she wanted to open up a fresh bag of chips, or whatever else she had in there. “So what you wanna do is create a whole identity to fall back on if you need it. Helps if you have one for lower class, middle class, and upper class to be nice and flexible and get you in anywhere you wanna go. Not to mention that you’ve got a much easier time taking other races. I can cover up the wings to pass as an earth pony or stripe myself up if I wanna look like a zebra, but faking unicorndom falls apart when I have no spells, and something really different like a gryphon...”

Kukri slowly nodded along as she thought it over. “That makes sense. Have all those details figured out ahead of time, so this one doesn’t get tripped up when asked for them. Though getting the supporting facts in place for that...”

Strumming waved a hoof dismissively. “Unless you’re going in deep enough to need to pass a background check, all you have to do is pass a smell test. I mean, have you sat every member of the ship’s crew down and grilled them over their parent’s names and which neighborhood they grew up in?”

“This one did do a few routine checks,” Puzzle commented idly.

“Stop undermining my teaching authority, bug boy,” Strumming grumbled. “Anyway if someone starts trying to pull your birth certificates or whatever, you’ve either gotten mixed up with a super-paranoid changeling who loves prying into everyone’s secrets, or they already think there’s something fishy about you. Best way to keep a good disguise going is to never give them a reason to check you out in the first place.”

“That does make sense.” Kukri hesitated for a long moment, then hesitantly added. “Thanks for the lesson, Heartstrings-mare.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Strumming shot a grin my way. “How about we have her do a little report, and write up a whole persona?” Her smile turned back to Kukri, making her look remarkably like a hungry shark that smelled blood (or crisps) in the water. “Which we’ll review. Thoroughly.”

“More homework?” Kukri whined.

I snickered at my apprentice’s continued suffering. “That does sound like a good assignment to keep her busy during the trip.”

Strumming showed her no more mercy than I did. “Being a spy takes a lot of hard work and training, just like anything else.” She pulled a dagger out of her snack bag, idly tossing it between her wings. “If you wanna have the skills Puzzle and I have, you gotta do the homework and practice. Especially since spying is harder to practice for and a lot less forgiving of failure than magus-ing. If you goof as a magus, Shimmer-mare can save your butt. If you blow another spy’s cover...”

“Right.” She paused, the frowned at Strumming. “But when’s the last time you ever used a disguise? You just go as ... well, you.”

Strumming stopped playing with her dagger to answer. “First off, I don’t have the advantage of a natural disguise like you. When a disguise is more effort, you usually only do it when there’s a specific reason to go to all the trouble. Second, if you know I’m going around in disguise, it kinda defeats the entire point of being in disguise. For all you know, I’ve been all over the place dressed up as someone you wouldn’t even recognize.”

“That is a most disturbing thought,” Kukri murmured.

“More disturbing or less than the idea of me dressing up like an old stallion and hitting on bug boy when he didn’t know it was me?” Strumming asked.

“This one doesn’t want to think about that,” Kukri deadpanned. She gave Strumming a quick once-over, then cautiously smiled at her. “You know, this one thought it’d be getting lessons in how to disguise itself from Dad or Kunai, but you’re not a bad stand-in.”

Strumming grinned and buffed a hoof on her chest. “It’s true, I am awesome in my own ways.” She smirked and gave Kukri another pat on the head, though this one didn’t seem to irritate my apprentice as much as the last one had. “Though seriously, buttering me up isn’t going to save you from homework. Nothing saves you from homework.

“It was worth a shot,” Kukri grumbled under her breath. She made one more try at distracting the mare who usually couldn’t stay on topic for five minutes. “How about a knife trick?”

Strumming smirked. “Pretty sure your mom knows way more of those than I do, given her name. But sure, we can work on throwing. And then once we’re done, homework.”

Kukri let out the melodramatic sigh of an oppressed proto-teenager. “Fiiiiiiine.”

As Strumming got to work showing Kukri the finer points of using a knife, I trotted over to have a chat with Puzzle. He was still feigning disinterest in the proceedings while going over his papers, but I noticed that he only had one eye on those while the other was fixed on Kukri and his girlfriend. I decided to break the ice. “Nice to see them getting along a bit better.”

Puzzle nodded along. “This one encouraged the Heartstrings-mare to reach out to her. Conflict within our group would only cause trouble. Not to mention Kukri was becoming a bit too bitter about the Heartstrings-mare for this one’s comfort.”

“You’re not the only one who noticed.” I looked Strumming’s way as she started carefully demonstrating the proper technique for using the throwing darts she kept hidden in her wings. “I noticed her making a bit of a push to get along better.”

“The effort is clear, even if the Heartstrings-mare sometimes expresses it in unique ways.” A faint grin tugged at his lips. “This one suspects she never quite learned how to play well with others.”

I shrugged helplessly. “I think I’ve just accepted that Strumming is always going to be herself. Getting mad at her over that doesn’t work, so now I’m trying to just figure out how to get along with her.”

“Probably the best way to handle it,” Puzzle agreed. “As this one’s father once advised it, trying to change or fix one’s romantic partners is likely to end in nothing but misery. It’s far wiser to deal with them as they are.” He smirked at me. “Though perhaps that is not quite the same advice the Shimmer-mare needs. In any case, when speaking with the Heartstrings-mare it’s best just to ignore the distracting parts of her conversations, and concentrate on what she’s really saying. If you get this one.”

“I get the theory, though in practice it can be a bit tricky to tell what’s important and what isn’t.” I sighed and settled down next to him. “Probably doesn’t help that despite my best efforts, I’m only just starting to figure out what’s going on in her head. It’s almost enough to make me slightly tempted to magic my way in there, if not for my theory about how part of her weirdness is designed to armor her against mental attacks. And, you know, that it’d be horribly wrong and massively immoral to invade her privacy just to satisfy my curiosity.”

“Both important factors,” Puzzle turned his attention fully on Strumming. “She intentionally obfuscates to a truly impressive degree. This one has been in a relationship with her for a considerable length of time, more than enough to constitute a proper courtship. This one’s parents have asked it when it intended to make an honest mare of her and provide them with grandchildren, though they tend to do that whenever this one has a female companion. And yet, it cannot say that it truly knows her.” He grinned and cocked his head in something like a conceding nod. “Admittedly, that element of mystery does make her more interesting to this one. If you'll forgive the horrible pun, this one is quite fond of solving puzzles. It is no coincidence that this one chose to become an information broker: it likes putting together different bits of information to figure out the truth. And the Heartstrings-mare is an extremely satisfying partner in that regard.”

“I know what you mean,” I’d been tempted to do some digging into Strumming’s background more than once. About the only reason I hadn’t was her reaction when Puzzle got a little too close. For all her talk about how she was unreadable, that had been one time when her feelings had been an open book. Puzzle digging into her past had pissed her off to a truly amazing degree, and she’d gotten equally testy when I pushed her for it.

There was something there. Probably something extremely dangerous, incredibly painful, or some mixture of the two. If I ever wanted to get along with Strumming, I probably needed to let her tell me on her own terms. Forcing the issue or going behind her back would poison the well, and probably leave me with no choice but to use my pull with Celestia or the Council to get her sent away.

Puzzle nudged me. “This one suspect that the Shimmer-mare shares its fondness for unraveling a good mystery. That, and she is understandably wary of who the White Pony might send to replace her.” He thought it over for a moment, then shrugged. “The fact that it can’t understand her isn’t the only reason this one likes her, but it does help keep things from getting boring. And this one does bore easily.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” I was still pretty sure that aside from the obvious benefits of having a friendly magus on call, part of why Puzzle had taken an interest in my career in Freeport was just because being friends with me made his life much more interesting. “Just glad to know there might be one less fault line in our group. We’ll have enough trouble the next time things go crazy without my apprentice and our pet spy getting into a fight.”

Puzzle nodded along. “As the Heartstrings-mare said, many of her mannerisms make it difficult for others to trust her. This one would further elaborate that a pony does not develop the many quirks she exhibits unless they have a deep distrust of others. A group without trust is less of a group and more a collection of individuals.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Still, this is a sort of progress. However flawed it might be, she is at least attempting to get better at teamwork. The simple fact that she is making such an effort is a promising sign.”

I looked over at the two of them as Strumming coached Kukri. My apprentice had once more gone into pegasus form, though this one was much closer to her usual preferred alter-ego—a miniaturized version of me with the colors just different enough to make her look more like my little sister than my clone. Seeing a version of not-quite-me with wings and no horn was strange, but I’d seen odder things. She had a few of Strumming’s throwing darts in her wings and seemed to be trying to copy her method of hiding them between her feathers and flinging them out. And that damned tongue was sticking out again.

Strumming smirked at her. “You tasting the air, Facon? For the record, it’s kinda salty and fishy.”

“Huh?” A second later Kukri realized what she meant, pointedly pulling her tongue back in before resuming her practice.

I watched the two of them keep at it for a bit longer. Strumming actually seemed to be a halfway decent teacher when she actually focused on it. At the very least, she had the skills down and her unique demeanour made her pretty much unflappable. Kukri’s occasional sass and flashes of embryonic teenager-ness either seemed to just bounce right off her or were answered in kind. I found myself smiling at the scene. “I think we’ll be okay.”

“This one thinks so too,” Puzzle agreed, matching my smile with his own. “This one thinks we will have a most enjoyable trip.”