"What!?" Starlight stepped back, narrowing her eyes. "I mean... really? This is our first day here. Do we really need to go looking for trouble?"
Jamjars ran a hoof over her ears. "Unless you'd rather trouble find us first. Besides, I'm curious."
"Are you sure?" Starlight squinted at her. "We just got back from the concert, and that was suspicious enough. I still don't know what kind of magic was involved or what the bad thing was they keep talking about that happened at the last one. Shouldn't we stay here and think instead?"
"Boo to thinking," Jamjars huffed. "See? You said it yourself that this is suspicious. Their 'tour' conveniently left out the administration building and Percival's house, too. Do you want to guess what's going on and maybe be wrong, or see it with your own eyes?"
Starlight frowned. "If I say no, you're going alone, aren't you?"
Jamjars grinned. "Yup. But you'd be helpful to have along. Wouldn't it be tragic if I got beheaded by a criminal because I didn't have somepony with me who was good at fighting?"
"Beheaded?" Starlight's eyes crossed.
"Or something," Jamjars finished, turning toward the bridge with a flourish. "We just ran into a mugger today, remember? Don't tell me it couldn't happen. Besides, you just said you couldn't sleep."
"This is a bad idea," Starlight warned, following along with her head held low.
Jamjars' teeth gleamed in the dim light. "Hah! I knew you'd see reason. And it's only a bad idea if we don't find anything interesting, which I'm sure won't happen. Come on, let's go check the other buildings."
With a click, Starlight's telekinesis unlocked the door to the administrative building, feeling around for the handle inside while standing on the sky bridge before the entrance. She wasn't sure why it was secured so poorly. Probably just nobody thought it would be broken into.
"This looks closed for the night," Jamjars muttered, wrinkling her nose and taking point. She readied her camouflage spell, peeking around the first corner. "Starlight, if we're spotted, I might not be big enough to hide you without my mane, so you'll have to teleport out or see to yourself. Hmm. Now, if I was an evil dictator, which of these offices would I make mine...?"
Every single one of the tall, plain doors they passed was boring and unornate, bearing plaques with various office names that reminded Starlight of an infinitely-less glamorous version of Skyfreeze. Lots of ambassadors' offices, water utilities, financial departments... Of all the buildings, it felt the most similar to the hospital, complete with waiting rooms spaced throughout the corridor for anyone who had scheduled an appointment.
"Bleh," Jamjars spat, glaring at the doors. "None of these look worth breaking into."
"You're surprised?" Starlight asked, passing by the minister of forestry's office and weaving around a potted plant. "We're up to something right now, and specifically trying not to draw attention to ourselves. Why would they be any different?"
"That's because we're the good guys," Jamjars grumbled. "Villains are supposed to gloat. Oh well. There's the exit to Percival's mansion, and maybe he'll be up to something."
Shrugging, Starlight followed along. "We've only searched a single floor of this building, but okay."
"Hmmph. We'll come back to it," Jamjars assured. "This is where mooks work, anyway. I bet there's a conspiracy only the higher-ups are in on."
Starlight wanted to point out that didn't seem very realistic, but then she remembered everything that had happened in Ironridge and kept her mouth shut. Really, she just wanted to make sure that Jamjars didn't get into more trouble than she had to, so if they were moving on... fine with her.
Before she could try to open Percival's mansion's door, Jamjars stopped her with a hurried hoof. The filly pressed her head to the ground, trying to peer under the doorjamb, and let out an impatient breath. "Light on the other side," she mouthed. "Probably a guard."
Starlight's lip reading wasn't the best, but Jamjars breathed just loudly enough she got the message the second time through and nodded. "Where do we go?" she mouthed back.
Confidently, Jamjars climbed up on one of the bridge's railings. Wobbling only slightly, she tensed her legs and jumped outward, landing on the flat section of a downspout running from the gutter attached to the nearby eaves. She wrapped herself around the final length of pipe, beckoned for Starlight to follow, and hooked her forehooves over the gutter rim, flailing for a second as her hind legs dangled and then pulling herself up onto the roof.
Starlight swallowed, wondering what she had gotten herself into, then pointed her horn at the ground and grew a spur of crystal to form a much neater ramp to the roof. After a several-second climb, she dispelled it, and they were both up.
"Nice," Jamjars whispered appreciatively. "Do that for me next time, too."
"Fine." Starlight clicked her teeth. "So now that we're up here, what do we do?"
The roof of Percival's mansion was shingled and steeply sloped, though in such good repair that Starlight was more worried about falling off than the tiles giving way beneath her hooves. Here and there were railings and perches, probably in case workers needed them, and they couldn't see very far at all due to the sheer number of arches, corners and extra levels where top-story windows had been put in obscuring their vision.
"Danger above," Jamjars whispered, pointing at a lit, open window far overhead where a watchful griffon stood, scanning the skies. "Looks like a guard, but he's only watching for anyone flying in. Dummy. Stay low and under cover, and look into as many windows as you can!"
"Are we looking for anything in particular?" Starlight mouthed back, following her out of sight of the window.
"You're bad at this," Jamjars sighed. "We're looking for anything worth looking at. If you're not going to search, just stay close to me."
Starlight reluctantly did as she was told, walking sideways so her hooves could find better purchase on the heavily-slanted shingles. The first window they passed by was too dark to see through, the second perfectly lit but showing an empty room. Jamjars frowned.
"Stay low," she whispered, pulling Starlight out of sight beneath the windowsill. "There must be someone too close to the window for us to see. We need a proper place to enter..."
"So we're breaking in here, too?" Starlight asked, glancing in the next window. "This one might work."
"Questions, questions," Jamjars sighed, appraising it too. The room was lit with the dim orange light of a single candle, and the window was cracked slightly ajar, meaning they wouldn't have to unlock it with glowing telekinesis.
Suddenly, both fillies froze and ducked out of sight, the sound of voices coming from within. Jamjars glanced at Starlight with an earnest silence, and they both held their breath to hide and listen.
"...Enjoy this very much as well," a voice whispered beyond the window. The wind from earlier was still blowing, and Starlight and Jamjars weren't in the roof's wind shadow, so the conversation was only discernable in bits and snippets between gusts of wind.
"...Not fair that we only get to..." a second voice complained, definitely female.
"I know, Love," the first consoled. "But Garsheeva has no..."
Jamjars' ears rose and her grin widened, showing teeth. "Ooooooh," she whispered, barely audible in the face of the wind. "Sounds like someone's in a relationship. I wonder what they could possibly be up to at a time like this..."
Starlight pulled her away from the window with a tug of telekinesis on her leg. "Stay out of sight! We're trying to stay hidden!"
"Something tells me they're too busy staring into each other's lovey-dovey eyes to watch for us," Jamjars replied, sticking her tongue out. "And I just want to see who it is! That guy sounds like-"
Suddenly, the wind completely died, and the next line was heard perfectly clear: "Please say you'll stay until morning, Percival. I spend day after day on my own, and nights like this are..."
Jamjars' grin grew even wider, and through the window, Percival's voice replied, "Of course I will, my queen."
"Someone's in wuvvvvv," Jamjars giggled beneath the resuming wind, clasping her forehooves to her chest and teetering mildly. "Starlight! Don't you want to see who?"
"Probably not anyone we know," Starlight mouthed back. "Should we really be prying into Percival's love life? Everyone does that. Having a marefriend isn't suspicious."
"Is that so?" Jamjars said smugly, fixing Starlight with a look that meant she'd messed up and said something about to be taken out of context.
"You know what I meant," Starlight hissed.
Jamjars seemed to consider it, then shrugged. "Whatever. I want a peek at mister stuffy's lady friend. Now watch my back."
"Jamjars..."
It was too late. The filly stood up, blinked into the window... and sat back down a second later with a stunned expression that morphed into diabolical joy before Starlight's eyes. "What did you do!?" Starlight gasped.
"Oh, you can see for yourself," Jamjars giggled. "Don't worry. They aren't watching."
Unable to resist, Starlight reached for the window as well, peering inside. It was a bedchamber, and two bundled figures lay side by side, facing and silhouetted by a lamp on the far wall. One had the vaguely-translucent red crest she associated with Percival, but in the darkness the other looked like a perfectly ordinary pony.
"What?" she asked, getting back beneath the windowsill. "It looked normal to me."
"Did you see her ears?" Jamjars asked, raising an eyebrow and patting her own ears with a forehoof. "Pony ears? As in, she's a pony?"
Starlight blinked. "Wait..."
"Isn't that against the law in the Empire?" Jamjars breathed, keeping up her too-wide grin and hurrying Starlight away from Percival's window. "Gerardo was going on and on about it whenever someone asked about those heresies they have here. Sphinxes can do whatever they want, but griffons, ponies and batponies? Nuh-uh. And I couldn't see whether those ears were leafy or not, but there's no way they belonged to a griffon."
They stopped beneath the pitch-black window right before the guard's line of sight, and Starlight felt her heartrate increase as she realized Jamjars was right. "So Percival is... disrespecting Garsheeva?"
"Wouldn't that be tragic if it got out," Jamjars giggled. "Garsheeva would probably smash him in his mansion like a snail in its shell. Starlight! Tell absolutely no one. This is our dirt on all of Izvaldi. If anything bad ever happens to us or anyone on our side, this is what we blackmail them with to get everyone out. Still think there was nothing worth snooping around for?"
"Tell no one? Even Maple? And Valey?" Starlight frowned.
"Eh, they can find out when they need to know." Jamjars shrugged. "Now, let's get out of here. We still want to make sure nobody sees us."
Starlight nodded, though she suddenly had a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. By reflex, she checked the dark window, but if anyone was looking out, they should have been too far to the side to see. Uneasily, she stepped forward, re-forming the crystal spur so they could climb down to the skybridge.
"Hmmph. Well, that was easy," Jamjars commented, leading the way up the staircase inside the docking tower as they returned to the Sky Goat. "No trouble getting there, no trouble getting back. I guess they're not used to anyone sneaking around."
"Or just expecting someone to fly," Starlight remarked, the guard's window probably still open and occupied in the distance. "Maybe they were looking for someone bigger, too."
Jamjars smirked. "Well, their loss. Think you can go to bed now, Starlight?"
Starlight paused. "I-"
"Hey," a new voice interrupted, and Valey stepped out of the shadows, looking thoroughly unhappy. "Were you two sneaking around?"
In a flash, Jamjars adopted an expression of pure innocence. "Why? Were you?"
"No, but I'm thinking about it," Valey sighed, closing her eyes and sniffing. "Something's not right, here."
Some part of her tone made Starlight shiver. "Not right?"
"Yeah." Valey sniffed again, narrowing her eyes. "I didn't notice it as bad down on the lower field, or while we were in town getting dinner, and I had better things to think about while I was laid up, but Wallace and Morena were both going on about how nice the weather was. I think I was poking around in something and thought they were changing the subject, and don't quite remember what it was about... but something smells wrong, and I don't like this one bit."