//------------------------------// // A Leave Revoked // Story: The Princess's Bit // by Mitch H //------------------------------// "No! Those papers go into that trunk. This one is for my spell components!" "I thought that unicorns didn't need doohickeys and sticks and stuff to do your magic, ma'am?" "You're a bat pony, don't try to understand high-level thaumaturgy! Just keep my work papers out of my workings trunk. You shouldn't be mucking around with this stuff, anyways. Go finish packing up my armor tree and my spare uniforms!" "Yes'm." The harried major turned away from the trooper she'd claimed from the stockade earlier that day, reportedly saying, if Ping had heard the rumor properly, that they didn't have space to spare for useless bats, and she needed another batpony. Almost nopony had gotten the joke until she'd actually pushed Bob into her cluttered quarters and started demanding he help pack it up. Ping had been sort of vaguely aware that something had been going on, but with Gilda missing and allegedly on leave- "There you are, Ping!" the major yelled, her eyes bugging out. "I need you to go retrieve Gilda, we don't have time for her to be goofing off." "Ma'am?" Ping asked, trying not to frown disapprovingly. Somehow, the major's hoofprint had gotten onto the day-leave paperwork that Ping had found on his desk as he'd been working on packing up the files. He had no idea what was going on between the two of them, nor why it required that the hen take off on a sudden overnight leave just as they all were in the midst of Operation Cockatrice With Its Head Turned To Stone. But apparently the major's ill-considered attempt to turn a trooper into an officer's servant while they were packing up to move had put an end to whatever leverage the griffon had exploited to get the night off.  "Don't ma'am, me, Ping. I've been ma'amed by the best. Go get Gilda back. Tell her - buck, don't tell her anything. Just that her leave is revoked and she needs to get back here ASAP." "And where will I find the paragon of bat-hens, that sergeant among sergeants? Ma'am?" "Oh, hayburgers, it's spreading. You remember that big building in Tinker's Alley where your medical squadron had its mess hall and kitchens?" Tinker's Alley? What is she… Oh. "You mean the tinkers' guildmaster's mansion, ma'am?" "Yes, yes, she'll be there, most likely. If not, ask them if they've seen her. Go on, get going, I need to keep an eye on Bob every second, or he'll destroy - no! Bob, put that down before you spill it!" Ping went. Ping remembered the guildmaster's mansion, of course. They'd spent several harried months there, making messes and patching ponies and griffons back together. He'd never thought he'd ever darken the cobblestones of 'Hope Floats Street' again, or the mucky back alleys behind Tinker's Alley.  He'd tried the front door of the mansion, through which he'd passed many a time when the building had been their combined surgical ward and squadron kitchens. A very stiff-beaked and very old griffon servant answered Ping's knock, and frostily informed the batpony that 'trade was seen to around back, in the alley.' Ping kept his temper, as he usually did when things truly didn't matter. A quick flight over the three-storey house put him in front of the rear entrance. It was a strange affectation in such a low-rent district, but Ping supposed that even slums had their class distinctions.  The exact same ancient tom answered the kitchen door, and let Ping into the house. A quick exchange of grumbles left the tom doddering up the stairs that led out of the kitchen upwards into the master chambers overhead.  Ping looked around the kitchen while he waited. Several scullions and a cook were working on something that smelled… rather good to him, actually, but it wasn't quite clear why they were working so late at night. Did griffons get the midnight tummy-rumblings, too? Ping could hear the squawk from down in the kitchen. A series of thumps and heavy-taloned footsteps marked the action above, and he wondered what cowpie he'd stepped into this time. The master sergeant came tumbling down the stairs, looking disheveled and blushing surprisingly red for someone mostly covered in feathers and fur. "She sent you?" Gilda half-squawked, as she tried to settle her undress uniform's various parts into the balanced, layered whole they were supposed to approximate, at least when you hadn't just shrugged into them all in a tearing hurry. "She did, sergeant. Your leave has been revoked, we need you desperately in the garrison." "You must, if she's sending you at one in the morning. If you'd arrived an hour earlier, I'd have carved your eyes out and used them for cocktail olives, Ping. You're lucky I'm in a good mood. I-" A distinguished-looking older griffon had followed the master sergeant down the stairs from the apartment above. Greying, but not from ancestry like Gilda's greys - these greys had been collected the honest way, through suffering and age.  "Were you going to leave without saying goodbye, Gilda?" the distinguished tom inquired in a rich, cultured voice.  "Awk!" the sergeant squawked. "Gar- Guildmaster Garrick, thank you ever so much for the cocktails and the lovely dinner and the conversation-" The tom moved fast for such an aged specimen, and stopped Gilda's beak with a sudden, mortifyingly passionate kiss. Ping turned around to spare the master sergeant's blushes, but it was too late. As he did his best to ignore what was going on behind his back, his wings grew embarrassingly tense, if not actually stiff. Ping managed to keep them firmly clamped to his sides. Eventually, the guildmaster and the sergeant completed their goodbyes, spoken and otherwise, and Gilda appeared beside him, doing her best to keep a straight beak. Ping turned around, acknowledging the other griffon in the room. The servants had long since scurried off, he didn't know where.  Ping bowed his head, "So nice to meet you again, Guildmaster Garrick. And may I extend the thanks of the 93/1st once again for your hospitality over the winter?" "You may!" said the distinguished tom. "I have met you, haven't I? The clerk with that mobile hospital. Ping, wasn't it?" "Yes, sir, thank you for remembering. And I am sorry to be calling like this so late at night." "Can't be helped, can't be helped. And Gilda did say that she could only steal a few hours. And that her major would be regretting having given her the night, before the night was out. Didn't you, Gilda?" "Gar- Guildmaster, I'd love to talk, but if the major ma'am is asking for me-" "Oh, of course, of course. Give my love to your major. And tell her I'd love to see her again, the next time your squadron is in Trottingham. It was such a shame she couldn't come tonight." Ping couldn't help but look at Gilda, to see what this sally evoked. The answer was, apparently, a full-body blush, and wings stiff and straight.  It was sometimes hard to remember that the big griffon hen was barely out of adolescence. She towered over griffons and ponies twice her age, let alone stallions like Ping. Sometimes full-grown didn't mean 'tall'. But at least Ping was capable of controlling his emotions and his reactions. After a bit more of stuttering on the part of the young hen, and teasing by the older gentle-tom, Ping was finally able to extract his charge from the guildmaster's den of respectable iniquity.  After she'd gotten her wings back under control. As they passed out of the mansion, into the darkness of the alley, they didn't say anything for a long moment, trotting along until they found a wider spot where they could take to the air without running into eaves or gables or other architectural obstructions.  "You will say nothing of this, corporal, you hear me?" Gilda said, looking a bit scared and uncertain, despite her bullying words. "I saw nothing, master sergeant," Ping said, trying for coolness and calm. "But you might want to consider that Major Shield knew exactly where to find you." "Well, of course she did. She knows where Garrick's house is. But I don't want rumors circulating in the squadron. I know troopers, and I know troopers' gossip." "I am not," Ping said stiffly, "a common gossip. I can keep a secret. Especially one that I don't know the half of." "Yeah, that's right. T-that's fine. So- so the major's learned her lesson?" "What lesson would that be, master sergeant?" "She said that any idiot could be a bat-hen, an officer's valet." "Oh, I think that might have been overdetermined, master sergeant. Did you have to prove it on the weekend of our move into the Princess's Bit?" "It wasn't my choice! She just blew up at me!" "So instead you went to go see your tom-friend. In the middle of all this chaos." "We're not in that much of a hurry," the hen said, looking mulish. "Master sergeant, if you don't want to be treated like a child, please don't sulk like one. Now can we go back to the garrison before Bob sets the major's belongings on fire and burns the barracks down?" "OK, OK- wait. She chose Bob?" "Apparently she took 'anypony' as a sort of challenge." "We need to get back, now!" And Ping followed the griffon rocketing off into the night air. Gilda looked at her unicorn in the dawn's early light. The unicorn was standing stubbornly on the aftcastle of the Bit, staring off to the east, where the Princess's sun had just broken the horizon. Something smelled rank and wrong, like food gone off, or a dead thing wedged in a corner. Had they skipped the aftcastle in the post-assault cleaning that the major had ordered? Gilda and Ping had returned to the garrison to find the major and her new idiot - er, officer's servant - had reportedly disappeared along with a cart’s worth of the major's stuff, apparently piled quite hap-hazardly. They'd have never found the occasional bit of kit and paperwork left behind the major and Bob if Ping hadn't been along to spot them where they'd blown off the back of the cart in the darkness. It was nearly dawn by the time the two of them had caught the other two wheeling onto the tarmac beside the grounded airship. Gleaming Shield had sniffed at the appearance of her squadron clerk and master sergeant, and walked off stiffly with the cart still unloaded. Gilda and Ping, left with poor, dumb Bob, got to work helping the hapless, overmatched bat-pony unload the major's effects into a heap just inside one of the rear access hatches, in preparation for hauling the boxes and bags and other impedimenta back into the body of the ship, one deck up and back beside the engineering block. If Gilda hadn't seen the major choose that dreadful cabin herself the week before, she'd have assumed that Tailwind or Purse Strings had had it in for their employer. Once they’d gotten all the stuff into the major’s cabin, Ping had wandered off to do whatever it was he did when he wasn't in eyesight, and Gilda had left Bob down below, bouncing off the walls of Gleaming Shield's tiny closet of a cabin. Now, having found where her unicorn was sulking, it was time try and figure out how to deal with the mess the two of them had made, without actually apologizing. Because it wasn't actually her fault, Boreas damn it. Gilda looked at her unicorn, and wondered at how fast the breach had opened. Gleaming Shield was peeping over her shoulder at the griffon hen, who was standing one step from the top of the stairs leading up from the main deck, not quite having invaded the unicorn’s space. "Major, ma'am-" "Gilda, I-" "No, no. Me first," Gleaming Shield said, stiffly. "I didn't mean to imply anything when I said that anypony could deal with my kit and my cabin. I didn't mean to denigrate your service." "Bloody right, you didn't, ma'am," Gilda said, almost eagerly. "And I shouldn't have flounced off like that. I'm sorry, ma'am. I just got so mad when it felt like you were talking about-" "Replacing you? Gilda, you were promoted months ago. You're our squadron NCO. You don't have time to pick up after me. And I've mostly been able to keep things in order on my own hook. We've all been crazy busy. But packing and organizing is a two-pony job, and I just got frustrated. We're… leaving, you know? We're finally doing this." "I know, ma'am. Why do you think I went there? Didn't want to leave town without… I don't know. Getting a little of that confidence. Old birds who know how to deal with surprises." "You just up and leaving like that scared me, Gilda. I said one wrong thing-" "You say wrong things all the time, ma'am. It wasn't that. You know that. You're not the only one getting a little weird. We've been here so long, it felt like it was going to be forever. We'd always be here, working up a squadron that never left-" "Trottingham. Purgatorio aeternium. Well, fitting enough. Life, or something like it." "They say bat-hens are servants for life," Gilda said, laughing. "If their officers stay lieutenants for their entire careers? Yeah. But the good ones, you can't waste on fetching and carrying and running baths. Eventually you have to go on to the next thing." "Or maybe not. Everygriff knows you love your bubble-baths." "Ha! Shiny used to love bubble-baths. Maybe you'll be surprised some sudsy day," Gleaming Shield said, trying to look saucy, and mostly looking like a dork. "Won't Bob be the one surprised?" Being a servant wasn't the only way Gilda could relate to her unicorn. "As if! I'm not getting all wet and hot in front of that idiot." "Speakin' of wet and hot, the guildmaster sends his love." The unicorn blushed as red as the stripe in her mane. "Gilda Grizelda Griffonstone! You shut your filthy beak." "That isn't my name. And he did say he wanted to see you again." "I thought you'd go to him. But he's your tom-friend, Gilda, not mine." "He said he wouldn't mind." "Well, I would. It isn't proper." And now the blush was fading. "You're missing out. Old tom's a great kisser." And there it was again. "Gilda!" "Thanks for letting me see him before we left." "It wasn't exactly my choice! I just didn't refuse to sign the leave." The unicorn turned to look directly into Gilda's eyes, and added, "just tell me you used protection." Well, that got real. "We ain't like you ponies. It'll be fine." "I'd hope not, it'd be damn awkward running this insane asylum with a pregnant senior NCO." "Major. Ma'am. Nothing that would result in an egg happened." "I don't want details!" "Are you suuure?" Hello, my friend magenta-blushes! "Gilda!" "Yes, ma'am. Lovely sunrise. Now, where were we before we got side-tracked?" "Getting everypony on-side and on-ship. What say we go find our underlings? And get this deck washed. It smells like those rats you keep in your desk for afternoon snacks up here. They didn't clean up here like I asked." "I never! I keep them well-wrapped!" "That just means they stink up the whole office after you unwrap them. And everypony knows you were sneaking food…" They wandered off, arguing.