Chapter 24
Caballus took a deep breath to steady himself, and straighten his jacket. How he handled this meeting could determine the course of the entire investigation. Oblivious to him, the servitor led him around the edge of the dining room at a brisk pace toward Meister’s table.
The Plutarch was sitting in his throne-like chair, facing away from Caballus, who was approaching him from behind. He was talking to a middle-aged mare who had been at his side the entire meal. By her monastic garb, stiff posture and stern demeanor, it was clear she worked for the either the Heliarchy or the Admanestratum, and from the portable stenotype slung around her neck, he guessed the latter.
“Captain Swift Corsair. As you requested. Lord,” the servitor announced with a bow.
“Ah, there you are, Swift,” Meister said before he had even turned around, rising from his seat, “it’s good to see you.” He dismissed his Admanestratum companion, saying “we can continue this in my office later. Right now, I have a ghost from my past to attend to.”
Meister’s familiar tone gave Caballus pause for a moment. It almost sounded as if the Plutarch knew the real Swift Corsair, but that was impossible. Caballus was very careful when it came to picking disguises, and he knew that the real Rogue Trader Swift Corsair had spent his entire career on the other end of Equestria, often out of contact with civilization for months at a time. Furthermore, he had disappeared almost a year ago, declared Lost in the Woods somewhere beyond the edge of Segmentum Forestus. The glacial pace of Equestrian bureaucracy, and the sheer scale of the land meant that such reports were sometimes lost altogether, or easily buried by those who knew how.
“I’m sorry, your Excellency,” Caballus said, hoping he hadn’t made a critical mistake, “but I don’t believe we’ve met…”
The older stallion shook his head and laughed. “Oh, no no. But I knew your father, Valorus Corsair. We became Rogue Traders at about the same time, he and I, and we had a brief partnership and a few adventures together in our youth. I heard some time ago that he died, and his son had claimed his Warrant, so when I saw that a Corsair had checked into the Grand Pferdian Hotel, on the eve of Macsnacht no less, I had an invitation sent straight away.”
Caballus was nearly dumbfounded by the coincidence. The identity he had borrowed to surveil Meister was a descendant of somepony he actually knew. “My apologies, lord. I had no idea. My… my father… I didn’t know him very well. I never knew you two had history.”
It was probably true enough of the real Captain Corsair. The archives had said that Swift spent his early life in boarding schools and naval academies while his father explored and plundered the sky-lanes beyond the edges of civilization. Fortunately, Meister seemed to buy it.
“I imagine you wouldn’t. Valorus wasn’t the type to stay at home and raise a foal, I’m afraid. My dynasty is ancient, and well-established, but he was a first-generation Trader; he needed to build his own business empire from scratch, and that left little time for family, I’m sure. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was something of a stranger to you. Never father material, that one.”
“And what about your family?” Caballus said, before he could stop himself. It had rubbed him in a surprisingly bad way to hear Meister talk down on another stallion’s parenting—even one he never knew—when Meister’s own son had died a traitor’s death. What little he had heard about the others wasn’t exactly glowing either.
The older pony seemed unperturbed, merely shrugging. “I’ll not deny it. Things… haven’t turned out as I’d have liked. I don’t know what they’ve told you about my children, but it’s likely true.”
Meister’s lip curled as if he had tasted something bitter. “All I wanted was one worthy heir, one child who could run the Trade House when I’m gone. Waffen is strong and ruthless enough to oversee one division, but he’s too much a brute; he lacks the grace and business instincts necessary to manage the House and the city. Juwel is just the opposite; she has tact and keen management skills, but she’s all too often vain, flighty, and refuses to get her hooves dirty. The other guilds and houses know it, too. If either were made Plutarch today, Pferdian would be at civil war within a month.”
“And Tier?” Caballus asked. Maybe if he steered the topic toward the heretical son, he could glean some clue as to whether or not Meister himself were part of the Children’s schemes. He watched for any reaction to the name.
A single twitch of the ear was the only one Meister gave, though it spoke volumes. “Tier’s name has scarcely been spoken here since he left. Why should you bring him up?”
“I met him,” Caballus said, hoping the truth might get him more than a lie, “in Hippopolis. Just over a week ago.”
“Is that so?” The Plutarch’s face was as unreadable as the servitors’ ivory masks. “And what did you think of my son?”
“He… had a thicker accent than you do, your Excellency.” Strangely, it was the first thing that came to the Inquisipony’s mind. Most of the ponies Caballus had met in Pferdian only hinted at the dialect associated with the Lipizzan Sector.
To his surprise, the elder stallion gave the faint wisp of a smile. “In the city, we strive to be more… modern. Tier spent too much time in the lowlands, talking with farmers and skyborn ship ratings. I suspect he did it just to spite me, rebellious colt as he was.”
As quickly as it had appeared, the smile was gone. “When he took one of my best ships and abandoned his family for his own petty wanderlust, I was so furious that I vowed he would never show his face in Pferdian again. When the ship returned without him a few days ago, I found to my sorrow that I had gotten my wish. I see now that he might have succeeded me, if only he had wanted to. He had every trait a Rogue Trader needs except the most important one: ambition.”
Meister fell silent for a moment, eyes staring at the table. Then he sighed, and his focus fell on Caballus again. “Come,” he said, and he led the Inquisipony over to the edge of the balcony. “Tell me, what do you see?”
Caballus wasn’t sure what the old stallion was getting at, but he played his game, and looked out across the ballroom below. “I see… aristocrats, industrialists, merchants…” He thought he saw one couple on the dance floor that looked like Mystic and Hairtrigger, but dismissed the thought as absurd.
Meister swept a hoof over the view. “I see sycophants, indolent fools not fit to rule a shed in the forest. They bicker and they scheme and they eat one another, with no regard for anything but meager scraps of power.” His smile had become a mask as impassive as his robotic servants, but the contempt in his voice was plain to hear. “Worthless, all of them. And I’m the pathetic king of these pathetic subjects.”
Caballus had never thought he would need to come to the upper class’s defense. In fact, he mostly shared Meister’s opinion of their usefulness, but he didn’t want the Plutarch in such a sour mood so soon after meeting him. “Your trade fleets—and others like them—are the mortar that holds Equestria together. Without you, towns would starve on one end of the sector while crops rotted on the other, forges would fall silent for want of materials, and soldiers on the front line would run out of arms and armor. You may not be the strong legs or keen eyes of Equestria, but you’re like its veins, which are just as important.”
“Perhaps…” Meister replied. His eyes softened when he looked at Caballus again. “When I was a colt, you know what I wanted to be one day?” Getting only a shrug from Caballus, he told him: “A pirate.”
“It’s true,” Meister said to the bemused look on the Inquisipony’s face. “A foalish fantasy, I know, but that’s what everypony thinks being a Rogue Trader is all about: discovering new lands and vast treasures, fighting villains over the lawless frontier for the glory of Equestria.”
He sighed, and a bit of the twinkle faded from his eyes once again. “The truth of it is much different than I imagined. With the Warrant came the House, and with the House came many, many obligations. Too many to live the pirate’s life. Besides, there is no frontier left, not in this sector, not for a millennium. Greater ponies than any of us won all the glory there was to win long ago.” The white stallion glanced back at the statue of the Lord Solar.
“You have great reverence for Saint MacIntarius, your Excellency,” Caballus said, not really a question.
Meister faced the shrine across the room. “I do. He is a personal hero of mine, and I owe him all that I have. He was one of signatories of the Ver Kaufer Warrant, after all. And if not for his victories, there would be no Pferdian for me to rule.”
“There was a reason they made him a Saint,” Caballus agreed. “The MacIntarian Crusade was nothing short of a miracle.”
“A thousand towns.” Meister’s tone had almost a foal-like wonder. “Can you imagine? Not since the Golden Age, when the Princess still walked among Her people, had Equestria been so powerful, so prosperous.” The Plutarch paused, as he could see faint glimpses of glorious battle before his own eyes.
“But no longer,” he said, the enthusiasm becoming a frown. “His crusades are long over, and his empire is growing old. All we do now is maintain it, hold it together. That’s why I envied your father, and still envy you, Swift.”
“Me?” Caballus said. “You’re the most wealthy, most powerful pony in the sector. I… I command a single ship.”
Meister waved a servitor over, and had it pour them two glasses of punch. Caballus could tell this was a far finer vintage than what he had been drinking earlier, smooth and sweet and strong. “But on that ship, you speak with the voice of the Princess. You hold your own destiny in your hooves. You can claim new lands, and lay the cornerstones of great cities. You can build something new, something great. Like he did. Mark these words well, Swift: nopony will remember the one who held a thing together; only the one who built it.”
Caballus quietly reflected on the thought, or at least he appeared to while he worked on his psychological profile of Meister. It took him a moment to realize that something had changed; the band had stopped playing and the lights in the ballroom were dimming, until the entire room was dark.
A spotlight somewhere overhead pierced the darkness, falling on the stage, where the band was no longer sitting. In their place, alone in the shaft of light, was a ball of pink feathers.
Somewhere in the darkness, the music began to play. It was a slow, mournful tune, classical in style and heavy on the strings. Caballus was fairly sure he didn’t know it, but he was too focused on the shape on stage to be sure.
Two great, pink wings unfurled from the shape, which was revealed to be a pegasus. Even if not for the color, Caballus could tell at a distance that it was a mare, and as lithe and graceful a mare as he had ever seen. She wore a red sequin cocktail dress that held closely to her figure, and her long, lilac-and-fuchsia-striped mane hung closely over one eye, curling at the ends ever so daintily.
Cradling a microphone in one wing, the mare opened her mouth, and a song unlike any Caballus had ever heard flowed out. Like the accompaniment, it was ponderous and melancholy, slowly dancing from his ears and down his spine in tingles. Though the words were in High Equestrian, Caballus didn’t bother trying to translate most of them; he was much more fixated on the singer.
She walked—though flowed would better describe the motion—around the stage, more smoothly than even the servitors. Every step, every note of the song was accompanied by a sway of her croup and elegant swish of her curvy tail. And when she batted her huge violet eye, it was enough to make the heart race. Though he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t the dress, something about this mare seemed to sparkle and glow in the spotlight.
“Quite lovely, isn’t she?” For a moment, Caballus had forgotten that Meister was still standing right next to him. The Inquisipony only grunted his agreement, too engrossed by the beauty pacing the stage below them.
“Her name is Velour Caress. She’s prima donna of the Pferdian Royal Opera,” the Plutarch continued, “and she does a bit of modeling as well. A mare of many talents, I’m pleased to say, not the least of which was convincing me to marry her.”
Those words managed to pierce Caballus’s reverie. “She-she’s your… ahem… your…” he sputtered.
“Yes, she is my wife.” Caballus could almost hear the smile in Meister’s voice, even if he couldn’t see it in the dark. “Do try to remember that Swift, if you would.”
Caballus nodded, not daring to say anything that might be taken the wrong way. This could complicate things, having this creature in the equation. He could be confident that Fyzzix wouldn’t get distracted, and he trusted Roughshod implicitly with nearly anything, but Hairtrigger was still a wildcard, and truth be told, Caballus wasn’t quite sure of himself in that moment. High-class etiquette was not counted among any of the team’s strong suits. If Meister was the jealous type, one wrong step around his wife could bring their investigation to a swift—and possibly fatal—end.
At the end of her song, as the last few chords dwindled in the ballroom, Velour smiled demurely and bowed. The herd before her almost forgot to applaud, as enrapture by the performance as Caballus had been. But when they did, it was thunderous. She waved to them graciously with hoof and wing, turned, and left the stage.
The lights returned to their normal levels after that, as did the conversation in the ballroom. Meister stepped away from the balcony and returned to the table. “Well, Swift,” he said, taking his seat and beckoning Caballus to do the same, “it seems I have shared much with you already tonight, perhaps more than I should have with somepony I have just met. Now it’s your turn: tell me what it is you are doing here in Pferdian.”
Caballus was about to say something a Rogue Trader might say, something about tapping in to new markets, or looking to spread his name, influence, and brand. But before he could begin, a servitor bearing a pie on a platter interrupted him.
“Dessert is served. My Lord,” it said, and placed the platter in front of Tier. The old pony waved it away. “Dimwitted cyborgs. Always in the way. Now, about your business here-”
“Hold on,” Caballus said. Something here was... awry. The hair on his neck was standing on end. “What kind of pie is that?” he asked the servitor.
“Apple. My Lord,” it replied, expressionless.
“Don’t try to change the subject, Swift,” the Plutarch said testily. “I think my hospitality deserves some answers.”
Ignoring him Caballus stared at the servitor closely. “Cut the pie.”
The ivory-masked cyborg’s stare was unreadable. “Error. Please repeat instruction. My Lord.”
There it was again. “Get a knife, and cut a slice of the pie to serve to the Plutarch,” Caballus said. He was careful to speak clearly and evenly, to leave no room for misinterpretation.
“Captain Corsair,” Meister said, growing angrier, “I am fast approaching the end of my patie-”
Caballus wasn’t listening. He was watching. He saw the servitor tilt its head, ever so slightly.
In an instant, instincts took over. Time seemed to slow. The Inquisipony whirled around and dove, tackling Meister Ver Kaufer from his tall chair. If he was wrong, he could say goodbye to any cooperation from any level of Pferdian authority.
But he wasn’t. The platter holding the pie released its hidden springs, flinging the pastry forward. It struck the back of the chair, where the Plutarch had just been sitting, splattering all over the wood. The second it was free of its container, the gooey filling began to crackle and spark. A second later, it went up in a loud whump! and sent splinters, shredded cushion, and smoke everywhere.