//------------------------------// // Or, Luna Attributes to Malice That Which Is Adequately Explained By Stupidity, But Yeah, There's Some Malice Too. // Story: Rarity, Contessa di Mareanello (?) // by JimmySlimmy //------------------------------// Generally, Mulberry Bags, 3rd Viscount of Oxhoof and Minister of the Exchequer, celebrated the arrival of four in the afternoon, and hence a finish to to the work day, with a nice pre-dinner glass of one part iced gin and two parts Dubonneigh. On a particularly stressful day, it might be accompanied by a nice perfecto cigar. Of course, that was made rather more difficult when one had just been thrust through a door into a guestroom by a field of blue magic. He still hadn’t been stabbed, though, nor had a changeling plunged its fangs into a neck vein, so it probably wasn’t a permanent obstacle, but it was an obstacle nonetheless. He looked over his stack of papers – at a measured pace, of course, as not to show to his assailant that he was in any way intimidated – at whoever had waylaid him. He had been expecting one of his junior secretaries: he had just cut their salaries, after all, so it wasn’t totally incomprehensible that one of those useless bureaucrats would take up arms and try for a more direct style of negotiation. More cynically, it was also possible a member of the Trottingham Orangists had finally tired of his incessant campaigning for budget reform and had finally decided to knock him off; a little old-fashioned, mind you, but not inconceivable. But this was no doe-eyed newbie clumsily wielding a knife, nor a professional rogue with horn charged and pockets stuffed with bits. This was a blue alicorn, and she was currently pointing, of all things, a dinner fork directly at his windpipe, eyes narrowed into gun-slits and wings raised in primordial threat display. He broke into a slight bow, legs impressively only quaking a little in fear. “Your majesty! To what do I owe the–” “Silence!” she shouted, thrusting the fork towards the minister and spearing a balance sheet. “Do not take this for a friendly meeting, Viscount Bags; nay, we have come to press our demands!” “Demands, your majesty?” The minister looked around the room; a sparsely furnished bedroom, the furniture draped in protective linens. “Princess, I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about, unless–” The particular attributes of the present location finally hit him. “Oh my! Princess! While I am flattered that you find me worthy of such, er, affection, I am a married stallion, and a very faithful one at that.” Luna squinted. “What? What are you talking about – oh!” She blushed, shaking her head vigorously and letting the fork clatter to the ground. “Nay, nay, minister, we do not desire you for carnal matters.” “Oh, well, that’s a relief.” The minister sighed theatrically. “I must admit I am eased by the knowledge to find out that I am not about to be despoiled by a princess.” “Er, yes, we, ah, suppose it would be.” Luna scratched the back of her head. “Although we must admit that we are a little confused as to why ponies continue to suspect we are attempting to court them.” The minister coughed politely. “Well, you did, er, drag me into a bedroom, which already presents a rather, uh, lurid picture of your intentions, especially in conjunction with the whole demands thing, which really only makes the whole situation all the more worrying.” “We see.” Luna rubbed one foreleg with the other forehoof. “We do apologize for the confusion, as it were.” “Right, right, well, it’s all just a big confusion, no harm done.” The minister sniffed once, pushing up a pair of spectacles. “Now, I believe you were threatening me, yes? Something about demands, right?” “Oh, right!” Luna picked the fork back up, jabbing a few times towards the minister as if to get back in the mood. “Hark! We have come to press our absolutely chaste demands!” “Of course, your majesty.” The minister dipped his head slightly. “What demands would those be?” “Our royal stipend, or lack thereof, is insufficient!” Luna’s horn corona spiked in irritation. “We demand that it be increased!” “Oh.” The minister cocked his head in confusion. “What?” “WE NEED MORE–” Luna coughed, having accidentally slipped into the Royal Canterlot Voice. Those plasterers were rather expensive, after all.“–oh, excuse us, we need, uh, additional funds.” “Right.” The minister furrowed his brow in thought. “How much money do you need exactly? I can’t open the royal vaults, per say, but I should be able to scrounge up a good hundred thousand bits out of various offices, if that is what you wish.” “A hundred thousand bits?” Luna recoiled in shock. “What? No, we only need, er, fifty.” “Fifty thousand bits?” The minister levitated a checkbook out of a vest pocket. “That will be little tight, but I should be able to fit that into the budget if we cut some of the school funding and guard training.” “Er, no, just fifty bits should do.” Luna coughed. “Wouldn’t want to attract unwanted attention from our sister’s legions of bureaucrats. We only want to see a movie, after all.” “Fifty bits?” The minister placed the checkbook back into the pocket. “Princess, you get several thousand bits a week. I fail to see how fifty bits would make any sort of substantial difference." “We most certainly do not receive such a stipend, minister. If we did, we would not be threatening you with a dinner fork.” Luna jabbed again with the fork. “Now, minister, please do summon some sort of document with which to grant us our raise, ye–” The minister had already started walking away, gently waving a levitated sheaf of papers at a confused Luna in dismissal. “Nonsense, princess. I know you receive a stipend, and a fairly sizable one at that; it’s in the weekly budget I present, after all.” Luna scoffed, snorting in amusement. “If you believe that to be the case, minister, we earnestly suggest you have your spectacles adjusted. We fear you are catastrophically misreading your ledgers.” “No, no, hold for a moment, Princess, I will prove it.” With a grunt and a quick flash of his horn, an official looking red box “fwoop’d” into existence above the middle of the bed. He muttered a quick spell under his breath, lighting his horn and disengaging an internal lock somewhere deep under the lid. He flipped the case open with a hoof and levitated out a thick stack of government ledgers, flipping a page near the halfway point of the stack. “See, Princess? Right there.” Luna peered at the paper, head moving in a little closer. “See what, exactly?” The minister’s horn lit, and a line of text glowed a soft yellow. It was an exceedingly useful spell for densely packed documents. He gestured with a hoof, “’Read: An Official Stipend, Which is to be Used for the Benefit Of The Crown’s duly Appointed Regent, Which Shall not be less than Seven Score Bezants or other Weighty Coin per day.’ Regent being you, of course.” Luna frowned. “Regent? We were not aware the realm had a regent, much less that we apparently occupied the position.” “Oh, yes! There’s been an appointed regent for your sister since you, er, a–” “Left her nearly dead?” Luna offered. “Annihilated our home and reduced most of the governing structure to rubble?” “More or less.” So much for trying to avoid stepping on hooves. He coughed politely. “Regardless, there has been one for nigh on a thousand years or so; occasionally one of her consorts or children–” “Children?” Luna furrowed her brow. She hadn't heard anything about children from her sister, although it would explain all of the pearly white unicorns she noticed having seemingly multiplied in the interim. “A few, although all were tragically completely infertile. They made for excellent viceroys, as it were.” He sniffed. “I digress; I am accountant, not a historian, so you’ll have to ask her for details, and besides that, most of the regents were nothing more than dukes or duchesses of various realms who had managed to impress the–” Luna growled. He continued. “–a, excuse me, old habits, you know, a princess with their lower than usual level of incompetence.” “Seems reasonable. And you believe this duty has been transferred to us?” Luna asked. “We don’t believe it, we know it.” He grunted again, “fwoop”–ing in a lengthy parchment. “It’s in the list of titles we, meaning the Chamber, are required to announce if you ever were to appear for a meeting – you ought to, by the way, there are a few members of the Radicals who believe you are just an invention of your sister.” Once again, a paragraph lit up in soft gold. “It’s right after the regal titles and just before the various counties.” Luna peered at the parchment, reading out loud. “Her Immortal, Imperial, and Celestial Majesty, Princess Luna, Queen of the Nocturnal – well that’s rather old fashioned – and High Regent of Equestria, as well as Countess of–” “See?” Luna pulled back, settling onto her haunches. “Huh. We must admit you are correct.” She raised a brow. “Although we fear the point may be moot, as whether or not we are regent the fact remains that we still have no stipend.” “A separate issue, and one which I confess may be nonetheless true.” The minister folded the parchment away into the red box, replacing it in his field with a well-earmarked green notebook. Luna pointed with a hoof at the levitated ledger. “And this?” “A list of the current Royal Purses in distribution across the realm.” “Royal purses?” Luna inquired. “We were not aware there could be a plurality of the royal purse.” The chancellor chuckled. “No, not the royal purse. The, er, quote-unquote Royal Purses.” Luna continued looking on in befuddlement, the distinction obviously not having any sort of significance. “You know, the Royal Purses?” The minister pantomimed the action of pulling open a sack. “The little red velvet bags that magically provide royally appointed salaries?” Luna shook her head, shrugging. “We have seen no such object.” The minister raised an eyebrow. “Really? Then where have you been getting your money from?” “We haven’t, minister, as stated previously. We’ve been living like a vagrant.” She sighed, twirling the fork around in her field. “Hence why we threatened you with a dinner fork and not a jeweled saber.” The minister pushed up his spectacles, idly opening the notebook and leafing through the pages. “I see. And the armory was likewise unavailable to you?” Luna blushed sheepishly. “Uh, no, we can access that as we wish, apparently, but we, er, couldn’t find it. ‘Tis a big castle, and the secretaries are most unfriendly and will not give us directions.” “Mmm, yes, the bureaucrats in the Household’s service truly are a surly bunch, are they not?" The minster rolled his eyes. “Clearly, your sister has a discerning eye for quality help.” “They rebuff you as well? It is not just us, then?” “Heavens no!” The minister chuckled, flipping a page. “No, the staff are all a bunch of outrageous cunts to everypony. The consistency is truly impressive.” Luna tilted her head. "Er, cunts? We are not familiar with the term, minister." "Oh!" The minister blushed. "A rather unkind euphemism for female genitals, your majesty, and a particularly strong insult for the insufferable." That was a sentence he had never expected to say to a princess. Luna chuckled lightly, smirking. "Hah! How inventive." The new millennia was truthfully drastically inferior in many respects, the cessation of executions being paramount among them, but she would readily admit that she much enjoyed the brevity of modern swearing; it does get rather tiring producing lengthy utterances about one’s mother’s bones or something of the sort. She turned her attention back to the matter at hoof. “Well, regardless, have you any idea as to why our sister persists in keeping these, er, cunts around?” Viscount Bags managed to keep himself composed, albeit not without an ungentlemanly snort. “Personally? I would hazard a guess that she doesn't know of their, er, personalities. They generally shape up around her, you know, but even then your average palace staffer rarely sees your sister. Nopony does, really; she’s something of a recluse.” The minister shrugged. “Daily contact? A few maids, a chef maybe. All the rest go through that unsettling attendant, Inkwell, with the blank eyes.” He shivered. “Eugh. I once tried to find her in on the payscale out of cursiosity, you know.” Luna had a long-standing suspicion. “And? What did you uncover?” “She’s not on there, Princess. There is nopony in employ to the crown named Raven Inkwell.” “So she is a construct,” muttered Luna out of earshot. It was a confirmed suspicion now. She raised her voice. “We thought as much. We would advise you to drop the matter, personally, lest you encounter some of Starswirl’s more, er, unpleasant spell-craft.” She coughed to punctuate the statement. “We digress. You were speaking on these Purses, yes?” “We were.” He continued flipping through the pages, brows furrowing as he found himself deeper and deeper into the notebook. Clearly, he had expected to find whatever he was looking for by now. “Considering that you have never seen one, I suppose you will be needing an explanation, yes?” “It would be appreciated. They seem a clever invention, at least when judged by your description.” Luna stuffed the fork into her mane behind her tiara, consciously dampening a bit of the “magic mane wiggle” to firm up that area and make it more secure as a stashing place. It was best not to lose any of the royal silverware; they were all very fine sterling, and the waitstaff were justifiably very observant about missing pieces. “They are. Much too expensive for the average royal servant, of course, but for the very large amounts like noble stipends and pay for quartermasters it keeps the mail service free of what would be an irresistibly large amount of money for a sticky-hooved delivery pony. It greatly simplifies paying ponies away from the cities as well; just open the bag with one’s name on it and grab the bits. You can thank my grandfather for them.” He stopped on a page, pulling the notebook closer to his face and rereading a line. “Verily, your grandfather? Was he their inventor?” “Oh, no.” The minister scoffed, waving a hoof in dismissal. “He was immensely corrupt and skimmed every salary he could, which is how he bought our title. They invented them to keep him away from other ponies’ paychecks.” He gestured to the princess with a hoof. “Come around, would you princess? I believe I have figured out what has gone wrong.” Luna rounded the minister, looking over his head at the notebook. He pointed with a forehoof. “The Purses are all sorted into geographic areas: a section for Canterlot, for Fillydelphia Province, one for the Eastern Marches, so on and so on. This page and–” he flipped the page “–this one are for Canterlot.” He went back to the first one. “I hope you don’t take offense, but I originally assumed that you had simply stuffed the Purse in a drawer out of ignorance and forgotten about it, so I naturally skimmed through the Canterlot section.” “And?” “And you’re not in there.” He ran a hoof along the ledger, moving an impossibly dense list of unfamiliar names. “I am, the rest of the Lords are, your sister is, Inkwell isn’t, but you aren’t. There’s not even an errant bag issued for the stipend itself; there’s nothing assigned to the regency.” “Meaning?” “Meaning that not only are you not receiving your bits, it’s not even going to a pony in the castle.” Luna peered at the notebook, noting, with some distress, that her sister’s stipend was well within five digits. “We see. And where is it going, pray tell? Surely upon the revocation of the current regent’s title with the assignment to us the stipend should have ceased, yes?” “It should have, yes. Nopony alive should be receiving those bits.” “And yet they are?” Luna watched as he flipped through the notebook, catching glimpses of the names of unfamiliar regions as they skidded past. “No, I am quite correct; nopony alive is receiving those bits.” He stopped flipping, the book coming to rest on a section labeled “Northern Bitaly.” His horn lit, casting a single line of the book in a golden glow. “Because the recipient isn’t alive.” Luna read the line. “Purse #3, assigned pres. to The Duke of Marelan, in his role as Duly Appointed Regent.” The minister continued. “The issue, of course, is that there isn’t a Duke of Marelan. There hasn’t been one in sixty odd years.” Luna shrugged. “Should be simple enough to reassign the Purse, then. We fail to see the issue.” “Sorry, Princess, but I cannot.” He shook his head. “It’s illegal for me to transfer a Purse laden with bits, which, as nopony has been collecting for six decades, that Purse is positively stuffed.” Luna scoffed, chuckling. “Oh, minister! Rest assured, we would be more than willing to overlook a petty violation of the laws of the realm. Surely you cannot be worried about us prosecuting you, no?” “Hmph! You are powerful, princess, but even you shouldn’t make a habit of going up against the Revenue Ministry,” he snorted. “And besides, it would be horrific bookmaking to simply discard the–” He formed an ethereal abacus with his magic, sliding beads soundlessly across bars as his eyes shot back and forth, widening once he had found his solution. “–Oh my! Nine million bits! I had forgotten how much those currency debasements had substantially increased the value of those one hundred and forty Bezants.” Luna stumbled a few times, blinking slowly as if to will the blood back into her brain. “Ni–nine million bits?” she squeaked. She put a forehoof on either side of the minister’s withers, pulling herself eye to eye with the viscount. “Minister, are you telling us that there are nine million bits that we are entitled to?” “No.” The minister shucked off Luna’s hooves. “I am not. You cannot access those bits, so long as you are not the Duke of Marelan.” Luna raised a hoof. The minister, alongside his talents for historical currency conversion, apparently also possessed impressive mind reading skills. “No, you can’t name yourself the Duchess of Marelan either. It’s an elected position among the counts and countesses of the area, which, incidentally, is why there hasn’t been once in sixty years, and, hence, is why the purse has never been revoked. Something of a vicious cycle.” “We see.” Luna frowned. “So much for that, then. Any other ideas, minister?” The minister shook his head. “I’m afraid not, princess. The only way to get those bits is for somepony to successfully obtain that ducal title, which, unless you know somepony simultaneously unemployed for a month, ruthless enough to knock off a few counts, and vain enough to be willing to travel to Bitaly for naught but a worthless comital title, isn’t going to happen.” Luna froze. She, as it turned out, might just know somepony who was indeed unoccupied, ruthless, and immensely vain. “Prithee, minister, repeat that?” The minister scoffed. “What? You know somepony you think fits the bill?” Luna smirked. “Yes, minister, we believe we do.” She turned to look out the window, catching a glimpse of one of Equestria’s innumerable trains chugging away from Canterlot Central Station. “Do you know when the express to Ponyville leaves?” “Ponyville?” The minister levitated a pocket watch out of his vest. “In about twenty minutes, your majesty.” “We see.” Luna wheeled around. “Perchance, do you have enough bits to cover the cost of two tickets?” He patted at a different pocket, feeling the lump of coins inside. “I should, yes, although I still haven’t quite–” He found his mouth covered completely with an impossibly dense mass of blue feathers, and then he was gone in a blue flash. Hopefully the dining car stocked Dubonneigh, or this was going to be a permanent obstacle after all.