Lyra was bored.
Well, that wasn't true. Her horn hurt, and her head ached, and she didn't feel up to going and finding something to occupy her somewhat-scattered attention, but she was rapidly getting tired of the back room of the infirmary with its still-stink and silence. The doctor had her on some sort of opiate that stretched out time, or collapsed it, or made time into an accordion.
Whatever, it made time weird, and Lyra was tired of it. She couldn't think, and it was boring her to tears. She didn't think she'd ever turn junkie, if this was what being stoned out of her mind was like.
Lyra was thinking of spitting out the next pill the doctor gave her, or refusing medication, or whatever you did to stop being pumped full of pain meds. Had there been needles involved? She couldn't remember. She'd just overstressed her horn, it wasn't like she was missing a hoof or a leg!
"Oh, look at this, yet another fool. Where do you find them all, priestess?" muttered something in a horrible whisper.
There was someone in Lyra's room. When had they come in?
"What, Lyra? She's nopony important, Auntie," said the somewhat-subdued voice of that pink hippogriff from the batpony troop. She was barely recognizable without the cheerful bubbliness.
Lyra concluded that there were two someones in her room.
"You will let your Auntie Amphitrite determine who is and is not 'important', Eye," the other voice said eerily.
Lyra slowly turned her head towards the voices, and there the pink hippogriff was, lying on the other bed in the room. Cot? Was this a cot or a bed? It seemed too substantial for a cot, but it wasn't what she'd call a 'bed', either.
The hippogriff was staring back at Lyra. Why were they still 'griffs' when they had ponies' rears instead of cats'? Shouldn't they be bird-horses? Wait, no, that was pegasi. Raptorpones?
"What is wrong with her? Why is she staring at us?"
"Uh, I don't know. I can ask. Mistress Lyra? Magus Heartstrings? Oh, I don't know how you address a wizard. Auntie, what form of address do you use for wizards?"
"Fool of a Fish! You address pony wizards with javelin barrages. It is never wise to allow a pony wizard as close as you are now."
Lyra's half-focused eye wandered, searching for the second speaker, and failing to find it. Or her? Lyra's thoughts chased each other like cartoon mice around the feet of an equally stoned cat. Horse. Thing.
Do pink hippogriffs eat cartoon mice?
"Well, we can't do that, she's part of the regiment. Well, a friend of the regiment? Some sort of volunteer? Missus Lyra, what's your actual relationship with the Crystal Guard?"
What? They were asking her something?
"Uh… a bit more than a one-night stand, but not quite engaged yet?" If Lyra was in a relationship with the Guard, why wasn't she getting more sex? Sounded kind of hot, actually, being the darling of a cavalry squadron. Maybe she could talk Sparkle and her big hen into something fun, put on a show for the troops...
"Your wizard seems disoriented, Eye. Perhaps you should get your incompetent sister."
OK, that voice definitely didn't have a body to go with it. Or else it was hiding behind the lance corporal.
"Hey! There's no cause to be so nasty to Hawk Eye!"
Or maybe she had a mouse in her pocket. Maybe it was her lunch? Lyra was glad she was a herbivore, she didn't think she could handle food that talked back to you.
"I rather thought that you were cross with your sister."
It was a particularly evil-sounding mouse, if it was one. Maybe Lyra could eat talking food if it sounded… evil. Wicked.
"That's that, and this's this. I don't want you bad-beaking Hawk in front of others!"
"The wizard is unlikely to remember this conversation in her altered state. I know drugged ponies when I see one. Or rather, when you see one, Eye."
Damn it all… "Would you stop talking around me like I'm not here?" Lyra tried to say. It came out something more like woobya stahp takakhin rund meh laik haim here naught?
She really needed to stop taking whatever Hawk Eye gave her. This stuff wasn't just an opiate, it was some sort of muscle relaxant.
The pink hippogriff got up off of her bed, and came over to loom over Lyra's bed.
"Wizards have become much less impressive since the last time I visited the sunlit world, Eye," she said in a creepy dead-eyed monotone.
Wait. That definitely came out of the hippogriff's beak.
And her eyes, what was wrong with her eyes?
"Perhaps your wizard is defective?"
"Hey! No insulting the major's friend, either!" the hippogriff said, turning her head and looking like what Lyra had remembered of the beaked mare, her eyes back to their usual selves. "Or our volunteer magus. Or whatever it says in the paperwork on file in Corporal Ping's office."
"You are becoming quite assertive for a mere mortal, Priestess Eye. I rather like it. Do go on," the pink hippogriff said, and the eyes were back.
Lyra really wasn't enjoying her first bad trip.
Dogs. Why did it have to be dogs? Master Sergeant Gilda had made the deal, and fixed Purse's mess for him, but why did it result in smelly, stinking, looming dogs all over his ship?
He knew it wasn't actually his ship, but you got attached, you know? Possessive.
The team of rockhopping Perroencian dogs were big, and shaggy, and smelly, and they knew exactly what they were looking for. Purse had gotten his three ratings to lever open each bunker hatch as they went, and the damn dogs went digging into the coal like… he didn't know what metaphor to use. Dolphins porpoising in the open sea was what came first to mind. But dolphins were noble, and beautiful, and strange.
Purse had once watched a pod of dolphins, far, far away, colored powder blue and pink and orange, racing each other towards the sunset, so tiny and graceful in the distance, like darting sea-birds in a flock.
This wasn't that. This was thrashing claws, and fountains of crumbly coal, and clouds of stinking coal-dust, which somehow was drawn down in an unnatural, very un-dust-like fashion, dispersed before they could form a flash-fire threat from any wayward sparks.
A dog head poked up out of the coal, near where Purse Strings was crouching beside the bunker hatch.
"Found it, buck-toothed pony. Here, catch." The older dog pulled something out of the coal, flinging it at Purse's head.
He caught it by reflex, before it caught him in the face. Purse looked down at what the damn dog had tried to put his eye out with.
It was a lump of coal.
"What am I looking at, fellas?" he asked, confused.
"Harriet not a 'fella', pony. And that carbó thauminós."
Purse tried to parse what little dog-speak he knew. Carbo- that was coal, wasn't it?
"Yeah, it's coal. Isn't it supposed to be coal?"
"Cavall ximple! That not antracita, that carbó thauminós. Pony put carbó thauminós in vaixell reactor, pony get un esclat, o un incendi."
A smaller dog head popped out of the coal, next to the larger, incoherent bitch's head. "What my esteemed mentor here is trying to say, my dear stallion, is that you've been feeding thaumically active coal into an engine rated for simple anthracite. Judging from the paperwork. Too much oomph for modern engines, if they're built to burn common coal, like yours are. Where did you get this coal?"
This was bunker number 3. "I think it's from the original load that the old Daddy Longlegs came into the refit yard with. We've been burning through the newer coal. I'd have to check the consumption logs."
"Well, we haven't finished looking yet," said the smaller one. "Oi, senyora?"
"Oi, Reina petita. Seguim buscant. Podria haver-hi torpedes de carbó o alguna cosa així sota tota aquesta merda màgica."
Purse gave up trying to follow the dog's barking, she'd entirely given up on Equish. He looked back to the little black bitch with the big vocabulary.
"Yeah, we not done looking. Could be something worse under all of this magic coal. Either way, you'll have to dump it, this stuff will make your engine blow out. Again. I get you a deal on replacement anthracite. Cheap!"
Purse knew a come-on when he heard it. "We'll see, I want to talk to Boss Mindy first. What did you say your name was, girl?"
"Tia Mindy will tell you the same thing I just did!
"And I'm Reina. You can call me Queenie! Tia Mindy says I'm shipping out with you ponies!"
The little bitch talked like it was a done deal.
Purse was afraid it was.
Storm take it, you know they're gonna saddle me with her, he thought as the toothy bitch grinned up at him, her bangs hiding her doggy eyes.
A queue of collier boats were idling for their turn beside the Princess Bit's port side hatches. The carrier hadn't been designed to dump out the contents of her coal bunkers - coal was supposed to be consumed via the engine boilers, not pitched over the side like a pony vomiting up perfectly good sharkmeat.
A few beats of Giles's wings, and he was over the deck, looking down in the first of the boats, which the port-dogs were anchoring in place, below the mouth of the jury-rig some of the Bit's sailors and the rest of the port-dogs were fussing over.
Didn't want to dump that stuff right into the harbor, after all. It was magic, whatever that meant, and Giles certainly didn't know. Winds only knew what might happen if you left magic coal to steep at the bottom of an active bay. Maybe giant mutant crabs?
Giles looked down at the stove-bed over which Giles' shark had been ruined, a metallic affair the sailors called a camboose. (Giles was still salty about how the cooks had wasted his catch. Stupid ponies, not knowing how to prepare shark. Giles wasn't even a sea-shore griffon, and he knew that you needed to soak the stuff in… he wasn't sure what. But it shouldn't have tasted like it had. And that great shark chowder cookout had started so well…)
The camboose was tipped over, now, its iron and stone lining pointed westward, the hatch upon which it was mounted propped open, exposing the bunker below and Giles' griffons waiting for the signal to feed the improvised bucket-chain-and-sluice rigged to carry up out of the bunker, over the deck, and over the side of the ship.
It was better than a bucket brigade, but not by much.
Some of Giles' griffons were leaning on their coal-shovels, beside the deck-side rig, waiting on the ensign's order to start again. The rest of the squad were down in the bunker, standing on top of the pile of coal, or gathered around the bucket-chain dangling through the hatch. Giles dropped down into the bunker, to make sure the ones out of sight weren't getting into mischief during the delay. The dogs and ponies were still fiddling with the bucket-rig, and its wheels and gearing, and cursing in two languages.
"Lance Corporal, why haint the bluddy bats doin' this dog's work?" demanded Giles' laziest tom, looking down into the hatch and doing absolutely buck-all. "We was the ones pullin' the Bit inta port, and befor' that-"
Giles flew back up through the hatch, and poked a talon in the trooper's face, getting ready to ream out the trooper.
Then the ensign started waving from the huddle by the sluice.
The ponies and dogs were done with their fiddling and the jury rig, it was ready to go.
"Shut your bleedin' beak, Gillie," Giles snarled. "And get down in that bunker. You have time to talk, you have time to dig. We need this bunker for actual coal. Unlike you'd like to 'arness oop again and haul the blessed Bit around for us for the rest of the tour? We could all sit on the forecastle an' cheer you on! No? So get to work, before you get us all on work detail for the rest ov th' month!"
Giles pushed the trooper into the open hatch, grabbed his coal shovel, and followed him down into the coal-blackened mouth of Tartarus that passed for a bunker.
They put their shoulders into it, and made the magic dust fly.
Purse Strings felt like he was going to cough up a lung.
"Queenie! Can't you do something about this dust?" Purse demanded. The bucket-chain creaked and moaned, four ponies and two griffons working the gearing and treadmill that brought the buckets up out of the bunker, another two griffons minding the long funnel taking the spill over the side of the ship. The sound of the griffons down below shuffling was tapering off. They were stuck deeper in the manky mess than the quartermaster or the rest of the laboring troopers, who were standing close enough to catch some of the effect. He was afraid of what might be happening to the troopers at the bottom.
"Oh, per amor a Proserpina, am I to be a dust-setter for the rest of my days? How far the noble get of Casa Negra falls, that she reduced to doing what a decent mister or spritzer rig could do - without any màgia terrestre whatsoever." The arrogant dog bitched, but at the gesture of a paw, the dust fell out of the air, and the griffons down below in the bunker could be seen again. "Why don' they have masks on? You lot! Get some Plouton-damned bandannas over you idiot beaks, before you grow new head, or turn into breezies!"
"I'd like to become a breezie, marm! Nogriff'd be askin' a wee little pony-bug thing to shovel coal wit their delicate leetle hoovesies, wouldae?" smarted off a damned smart-beak from below. Purse guessed it was the one the supervising lance corporal swatted across his back with a coal shovel.
"Laugh it up, you silly birds!" barked the little queen. "See what happen when fool bird get small enough to be swatted like horsefly!"
"Is it likely to actually mutate troopers, or the crew?" Purse asked, quietly.
"What, nah, nah. Just give them the cancer, or the pulmó negre, or Proserpina know what. Where did you ponies get your ship, in box of crackerjacks? Like you never sailed before."
"A lot of them haven't. And I can't be everywhere," Purse said, defensively. He was just the quartermaster, melody take it.
"Yeah? Sounds like ponies need someperro to take charge of this mess of a ship. Good thing Tia Mindy bulldog you into taking Reina on, wasn't it?"
Purse wasn't sure whether he wanted to glare at the little tyrant, or shake his head at her nerve.
"Come on, Queenie. I need to introduce you to the Major. The pony who actually owns this ship. And could turn you inside out with a blink of her eye, 'magia terryestria' or no."
"Yeah? We'll see, pony."
"Call me Quartermaster Strings, Queenie."
"Only if you call me Reina, Oncle Stallion. Queenie's for friends. You want to be Quartermaster Strings, I'm Reina."
Purse snorted. And led the little tyrant back towards the squadron offices.