//------------------------------// // Falconry And Petty Larceny // Story: Good Trooper Gilda // by Mitch H //------------------------------// Gilda watched with envy as the great bird tucked into a terrifying dive from far overhead, lancing deep into the crystal-blue waters of Trottingham Harbor. At the very last second, the turul backed her wings, cupping the air in a crushing deceleration as her talons tore through the water, breaking the mirrored surface in a flash of shattered sun-light. The turul struggled back aloft, not so much against the grey wiggling form dangling from her talons, as against her own great bulk, which nature had never intended for flight, let alone like this, hunting the northern waters of a griffish port. ‘Gertie’ bobbed gracelessly over the still, mostly calm waters, slowly making her way to the jetty on the back of the Battery, away from the ocean-side of the fortification. The lee of Battery Garner had proved to be a wonderful place for afternoon fishing, sun-warmed, good breezes, and calm waters. Gilda waved the turul over to the stone batter beyond the jetty. The fish the turul had pulled out of the water was far too heavy for handling on the wooden jetty. The closer she came, the more Gilda realized that the catch wasn’t a fish at all, but some kind of shark. She was vaguely amazed even a bird as large as Lady George could carry such a weight. They had Gleaming Shield’s little library to thank for this. Gilda hadn’t been impressed when the lieutenant had excitedly shown her the unicorn’s ‘find’. It wasn’t Gilda’s idea of a proper library - there were no locks, no armed librarians, no hookbill over the lintel. Just a closet full of dusty books, not even a latch. Just some shelves with a more-or-less complete set the City of Trottingham’s statute-books, and some previous unicorn officer’s magical research cache. Gleaming Shield had monopolized the magic books, which Gilda gathered were somewhat random but ‘tasty’. The bat-hen had amused her tired self by paging through the dry and dusty books of the law while her mistress wasted the night away filling their sleeping quarters with exclamations of interest and unicorn horn-glow too bright to sleep through. The lieutenant hadn’t found anything useful for Lady George’s predicament, yet, but Gilda had discovered something in the dry and involuted pages of the ancient law of Trottingham that promised a great deal, indeed. For their personal advantage, if not the solution to the turul’s woes. And this discovery was what allowed them to turn this bit of exercise for the battalion’s ‘trained roc’ into - well, a really ripping windfall for the turul, the battalion, and if all went well, Gilda herself. But in the present, that shark wasn’t the only thing that the day’s fishing had caught. Gilda kept an eye on the harbor cutter that was closing quickly on their post. It had been tacking across the harbor waters for the past fifteen minutes, against an unseasonable sea breeze. The sun was shining here, but behind Gilda’s back, storm clouds were building. The shark that the turul had caught would feed the great bird - and a good portion of the battalion as well, or at least as many as Gilda could manage.  They already had several buckets full of hundred and two-hundred pounders which represented a respectable feast once the cooks got done with them. That shark was half a ton if it was an ounce. They got to work cleaning the catch, while Gilda awaited the arrival of what looked like the authorities in that boat.  While they did, she thought about the promise and the reality of libraries. Gilda had been careful these past few years to not show a vulnerable interest in the contents of the lending libraries. For one thing, she’d come to the realization that as a bitless fledgling, she couldn’t afford the amusement, nor even the education they represented. Her mother had hid from her little chick just how expensive the subscriptions had been, how much of Gilda’s life-debt was draining into those long days spent hiding in old auntie Gertrude’s massively fortified library in the old neighborhood. Gertrude hadn’t been a blood relative, and sweet Scirocco bless her for that. Gilda looked up from her memories, the knife, and the shark she was helping Gwaine gut. The presumably governmental intruder was gliding up to their small dock. Lady George was daintily picking at one of the two-hundred-pounders, trying not to be too obvious about watching as the drama began to unfold. An overweight earth pony wearing an over-decorated uniform leaped over the gunwale of the cutter, cursing as he came. Another dark-eyed earth pony with a military bearing helped the bureaucrat over the side, and then sat, staring, as the confrontation unfolded. “You! Griffon! What in all that’s harmonic do you think you’re doing! Dive fishing season isn’t for another five months in these waters. You want to go playing fishergriff, go join the fishing fleets!” “Says who, you overdressed popinjay? You stand on EUP territory, not Trottish soil. Civilians can get right out, and keep their wittering to themselves.” “Being a soldier doesn’t exempt you from the laws of the land! Fishing by talon in the offseason is a crime, punishable by fine and, in case of contumely, imprisonment!” The fat stallion seemed incapable of speaking an unexcited sentence. It was becoming quite tiring. And that dark-coated, dark-maned pony was still sitting in the boat, watching, quietly.   Gilda took a deep breath. She had long pretended to be an unlettered Griffonstone guttersnipe, and what she was about to say would break that illusion, at least in front of Gwaine and the bureaucrat and his goons. Here goes… “Yes, yes, city statute 1003.5.e.1.II.  Except subclause .III clearly states an exemption for falconry, baited hunting, and use of nonsapient birds for the purposes of removing predators from protected waters. This is a roc, those are protected waters, and this disgusting great mass of guts and deceased predatory intent is a shark. Not sure what breed, I’m not from around here.” “It’s a porbeagle, Gilda,” said Gwaine, looking up from his gutting and grinning. “Big one, too. Maybe twelve hundred pounds. We may have to figure out how to preserve this beauty. She’ll feed Gertie here for almost a week. Ain’t that so, Bob?” “Four, five days, belike,” agreed ‘Bob’ from around a beakful of the mackerel the porbeagle shark had been stalking before the hunter had become the hunted. “Falconry? Falconry? FALCONRY! That’s for gyrfalcons, and hunting hawks! Not a chimerical monster bigger than my revenue cutter! And you! You’re no noble-hen. If you’re nobility, I’m the ruddy Count of Molting Capon!” “Pleasure to meet you, Count Capon. I have the honor to be the Honorable Gilda de Griffonstone, and of royal enough blood to qualify as noble even by your watered-down Equestrian standards.” The functionary sat back on his haunches, still trapped on the jetty by the filth of the butchery they’d used to block entry. Against ponies with any respect for their finery, that is. “You’re having me on. You’re no royal.” I only wish that was true. “Well,” sighed Gilda instead, “You can’t prove otherwise here on the dock, can you? And you know I’m right about the falconry statute.” And she was. It was right there in faded black and white in those leather-bound statute books, marked down by hand on parchment by some griffish talon in days gone by. Griffish law, under pony authority. A memory of Griffish Trottingham, before it was Trottingham, before the interregnum and the ponies taking the Isles in one of their infamous fits of imperial inattention. The bureaucrat fumed and the bureaucrat raged and spat, but eventually he was bustled off,  half-dragged off the jetty by his sailing-master, who had been eyeing the onrushing stormclouds coming down out of the north to Gilda’s back. The dark stallion had never left the boat, or said a word, just helping the sailing-master capture his charge and aiding her cast off and put up just enough sail to send the boat rushing back into the protection of the inner harbor. “You were joking about bein’ an ‘onorable, weren’t you, Lance Corporal?” asked the other griffon, as they rushed to bag up the day’s catch and run for shelter before the rains reached the battery. Gilda wasn’t used to having rank, it still confused her when griffs addressed her by the proper title of an officer’s bat-hen. “Of course I was, Gwaine. Kidding on the square, we used to call it back on ol’ Stoney. The thing is, all Griffonstonians are royal. Every last one of us has the blood of kings. You know why?” “Royals is a bunch o’ ruttin’ rapin’ savages?” “Well, that too, but mostly because all the peasants died before they could lay their eggs. Only the bastards and the nobles lived to breed. Now let’s get going before these fish get washed back into the harbor.” "What in Boreas's ice-rimmed asshole are you doing, lieutenant ma'am?" “Don't look, don't look!” "It's a bit too late for that. Is that a costume? Why is it so... glittery?" "The books! I found something in them I’ve been wanting for months now, I had to try it out!” “So… wings are they?” “Yeah! But I didn't think they'd come in so... much like butterflies. Please…” Gilda had never seen Gleaming Shield look so vulnerable, with her twitching, glittery new appendages quivering like bits of morning-dew and starlight. “Please don't tell anypony about this." "That'll be hard to do if they don't go away soon. We have drill in a half-hour. Do they work?" "I don't know, I just conjured them.” The lieutenant regained some of her sparkle, and looked up at her enormous butterfly wings. “Let's see!" "Ack! Look out! Stop! Not indoors!" Luckily, the only things damaged belonged to the lieutenant. And of that, mostly her pride. “We can’t be constantly diverting the spare colonel’s gig to ferry the Stinging Needle back and forth from the Batteries to all of these… random factories in the neighborhoods. It isn’t appropriate use of battalion resources, and it isn’t safe! Some of these neighborhoods are deep inside the blue zone.” “Sergeant-Major, it isn’t my decisions that make these things happen.” “You are Gleaming Shield’s bat-hen, you are in effect her adjutant.” “The adjutant’s adjutant?” “Yes! That is the role you accepted when you took the position!” “I didn’t take the position, it took me. Or rather, the lieutenant ma’am gave me a choice between chains and polishing her pauldrons.” “You polish the armor, you take the orders, you take the obligation. Now talk! Why are we stepping and fetching for a fashionista?” “That spelled stone amulet you and the other non-commissioned officers wear now? That can be triggered to hide you from the enemy if we’re in contact?” Hypothetically. Gleaming Shield hadn’t ironed out the bugs in that one yet, but the sergeant-major didn’t need to know that. Carrying on... “That’s Lady Rarity. We got them at below cost. The same with the cockades, and our shuttling her around is going to get us the fineries to match the cockades. We will be the finest-outfitted unit in the Territorial Division.” “And all that will do is put targets on our flanks, when the military police descend upon us and clap us all in irons for abuse of Her Royal Government’s funds. I do not want to go to the stockade for the sake of Gleaming Shield’s vanity, and your - whatever the hades it is you’re up to. Don’t think you’ve fooled me, my fair hen, I know you’ve got something up your wing. I will clip them but good if I catch you out!” “Just as I would expect, Sergeant-Major. We’re not abusing Her Royal Government’s funds. I don’t even have access to those. We are, at worst, redirecting underutilized resources. They have us fly out here to one or another of the batteries, settle in for half a week, and then go flying back to barracks! We see nogriff, we talk to nogriff, we get nothing done, we do nothing but polish the columbiads and rearrange the cannonballs. Do you know how popular Rarity’s escort duties are?” “Yes, and I know that you’ve been sending them out with the supply carriages and loads of poached fish. The carriages are starting to stink! The officers are complaining!” “Well, that’s no good. We’ll have to work harder at scouring out the vehicles after each load. Because this is your share of the last two week’s proceeds.” “Wait, what? Really? What have you been pulling out of the harbor?” A fair amount, but that wasn’t the source of most of the funds. A great deal of contraband could be hid under a load of stinking fish. They’d been putting aside a supply of trash-fish to cook off in the sun for the purpose. “We keep thinking we’ve exhausted the lees, but they keep swimming back in from the open sea. The chains may keep out the ships, but to the fish, it’s nothing more than a lintel. ‘Gertie’ gets tired, eventually, but it’s a good little business. We haven’t figured out how to charge admission to the crowds on the shore that watch, but that’s only a factor when we’re in Fort Gharne. Although I hear tell that somegriff has started offering chartered excursion boats for ponies and griffons wanting to get a closer look at the ‘great roc’ fishing out of Trottingham Harbor.” The sergeant-major really should have asked more closely, because the story didn’t hold up even to the most light-taloned of examination, but Gilda had touched him in the place that mattered, the one place that all griffons harbored, somewhere, to some degree. His cupidity. After she’d found that, it was simply a matter of arguing terms. The sergeant-major would have his cut, and they would continue to distribute Lady George’s fineries to their customers. “Lieutenant ma’am, I have concerns about what Lady Rarity is about in the neighborhoods.” “What, why? And why are you the one coming to me about it?” “Some of the troopers came to me the other day about the places they’ve been taking the Stinging Needle, and so I went out with them today to see for myself.” “I had wondered why Gwaine was the one handing me my lunch while I was working. Be sure to tell the cook that her new chowder is superb, by the way.” “I’ll be sure to do so, lieutenant ma’am.” “Just make sure nogriff tells me or any other officer what’s in it.” “Why would you say that if you know…” “Tell. No. One.” “If you say so, lieutenant ma’am. The factories we’re taking Rarity to, and materials from?” “What about them, Gilda?” “They’re not factories.” “If they’re not factories, how are we getting these uniforms from them? Look at this stitching. As solid as the walls of Battery Garner.” “Indeed. But they still aren’t any sort of sweatshop I’m familiar with.” “You come from Griffonstone, whose sole notable exports are extremists and mad bombers.” “Still, I know a factory when I see one, and these aren’t. They’re guild halls.” “What, like contractors?” “Not quite like, ma’am. More of a sorority sort of situation. Except with laborers and artisans.” “You mean union halls?” “Labor unions were banned in the Griffish Isles in the Fifth CE, 173, lieutenant ma’am.” Gilda had seen the ukase, in a much more recent volume among the Trottingham City statutes, bound pony-style in dull paper and buckram. “And so, they’re ‘guilds’, I see. So they’re aggregating the work of lots of little sweatshops. Fine, I don’t care how the work is done.” “It’s radicalism, lieutenant ma’am.” “Are you saying we’re getting uniforms from rebel artisans?” “Of course not, lieutenant ma’am. If anything, the red guilds seem to hate the rebels more than we do.” “Then I don’t see a problem.” “The problem is that they hate the military government more than the rebels. Great deal of hate, labor radicals.” “You sound admiring.” “I am a connoisseur of hate, lieutenant ma’am.” “I didn’t think you knew that word, Gilda.” “I try to broaden my horizons, lieutenant ma’am.” And she was starting to loosen up on her presentation here among the ponies. Now that she was a proper non-commissioned officer, there was much that Lance Corporal Gilda was allowed to know, that Gilda the guttersnipe had been forbidden. “So, Rarity has been using our largess to encourage the cause of outlawed and banned labor radicalism in a city under siege and awash in rebellion and unrest.” “Yes, lieutenant ma’am.” “You’re concerned our vehicles could become misappropriated?” “More than we already have misappropriated them? Perhaps. More worried about getting caught in any dust-ups if the bosses send in the brute squads.” “We are the brute squads.” “As I said, it could be awkward.” “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. We’re doing too well by the exchange as it is. I’ve just made deals with the whole of our brigade, they’re impressed with the work Rarity’s offering.” “Uniforms for the entire brigade?” “Possibly for the whole Territorial Division if this pans out.” “More than worth a little political trouble, lieutenant ma’am?” “I didn’t say that.” “Of course, lieutenant ma’am.”