Chapter 25
Blackened and coughing, Caballus made to help Meister to his hooves. He thought he heard shouts and screams, but his ears were ringing too badly to be sure. A figure emerged from the thick, black smoke: the servitor that had served the pie. When it spotted Meister struggling to stand, its head tilted even further, almost sideways. It was processing its new instructions.
The simple gown it wore fell away in pieces, torn apart by the mechanical limbs hidden beneath, each brandishing sharp blades instead of drink dispensers. Without the gown, the thing’s cybernetics were plain to see. Its hind legs were long and skeletal, bare metal and hinged joints. Most of the hindquarters and ribcage had been hollowed out and replaced by gears, beverage tanks, hoses, and more gears. It lunged at Meister with unnatural speed.
Caballus shoved the white stallion out of its path, narrowly avoiding the attack. The Inquisipony was thrown backward, tumbling into the balcony rail. He looked down with blurry eyes, finding his jacket in tatters, but his body otherwise unscathed.
The servitor prowled around the prone Plutarch, bladed appendages twitching, calculating the best angles to eviscerate him in the most efficient manner possible. Meister gritted his teeth and stood to face the assassin, seeing his own reflection in the shiny ivory mask. On the table beside him, he found an unfinished pumpkin, and flung it at the servitor. It deftly sliced the fruit in twain, both halves flying harmlessly to either side. Mechanical limbs tensed once again to strike.
Caballus leapt on its back, raining blows with his hooves. The servitor hardly noticed, advancing implacably toward the Plutarch, sightless eyes never leaving him. The bladed protrusions twisted and jabbed, trying to dislodge the nuisance, but Caballus managed to dodge them all.
“Guards!” shouted Meister, moments before one scalpel-sharp blade swung down in a high arc. The stallion ducked and rolled under the table, narrowly escaping the servitor’s reach.
Reassessing, the cyborg appeared to decide that Caballus could be tolerated no longer. Like a contortionist, it rotated its entire torso until Caballus found himself underneath it. Bending the wrong way, one hind leg pressed down on him, and succeeded in prying him off. He clung to one limb with his teeth, and with a loud grunt, he managed to deliver a final buck into its back. The arm dislocated in its metal socket, and he wrenched it free.
Unfortunately, the faceless assassin was free of him as well, and had several knives to spare. It jumped up onto the table to reach Meister on the other side. But with its back turned, Caballus plunged the severed blade into the clockwork behind its shoulder. Gears crunched and churned, and the servitor’s steps ground to a tentative halt.
It was then that the guards finally arrived, putting themselves between Meister and the servitor. It was a sitting duck on the table, taking two pies right away in the chest, and a third in the side. Gears slipped as crumbs and whipped cream jammed them. It fell to one knee, still not giving up on its single-minded pursuit.
Another pie struck it in the neck, and the blow knocked off its ivory mask and sent it tumbling off the table. Hanging limply from its body, the head was revealed to be a grotesque, shriveled thing, with eyeless sockets and wire bundles in place of a lower jaw.
It lay on the floor there for a moment, twitching and sparking from the pie filling in its machinery. When Meister stood over it, it swung its blade arms ineffectually at him once more, but he was just out of reach. One of the guards had fetched the Plutarch his sword, which had come loose in the explosion, and he drew it in his mouth. At the flick of some small switch in the hilt, the thin rapier blade hummed to life, a thin blue field of crackling energy enveloping the steel. Deftly, Meister lopped the ugly creature’s head off, and the rest of it finally fell still.
“Clean this up.” He said to his guards, almost casually. In seconds, the servitor’s oily fluids on the energized power sword sizzled to nothing. Meister deactivated and sheathed the immaculate blade. “Are you alright?” he asked Caballus, helping him up.
“I’ve been worse,” the Inquisipony replied. The servitor had been a luxury model after all, smarter and more agile than most, but fragile, not designed to fight. It would take more than a knife to stop the likes of Sniffles, or his big red friend. “You don’t seem… rattled at all yourself.”
“Dodging assassins is something of a hobby of mine,” Meister said wryly. “I must apologize, Swift. It’s a poor host who lets his guest get caught up in an attempt on his life. How did you know I was in danger?”
“The servitor,” said Caballus. “It said ‘my lord.’ All the others had just said ‘lord.’ It… it just caught my attention.”
“Then I thank the Princess it did, and that you have courage as well as intuition. Else my poor Velour would be a widow right now. I confess, I’m not familiar with that variety of pie. Have you ever seen anything like it?
Caballus nodded, picking up a fragment of the pie tin, inspecting the blackened residue. “The servitor was telling the truth; it was a kind of apple. Specifically, it was zap apple. Delicious, but also highly unstable. It’s a very rare type of pie weaponry, and one of the most potent.” He looked back at the older stallion. “Who do you think sent it?”
“Oh, I have my suspicions,” said Meister, “chief among them my own flesh and blood. But it hardly matters. I’ll not be pursuing them, or anypony else.”
Caballus could hardly believe his ears. “But… why not? You were nearly killed. This won’t be the last time they’ll try.”
Meister sat back down in the ruin of his chair, where the seat was largely intact. Caballus slipped the shrapnel into his ragged coat pocket while his back was turned. “And it wasn’t the first time, either. It’s easier to keep the familiar, predictable enemies right where they are than remove them and shift power to somepony new, somepony I might not be able to anticipate. It’s easier to let them plot; plotting keeps them busy. And if someday my offspring can outwit me, then perhaps it will finally prove them worthy to inherit my Warrant after all.”
With a glimmer of mischief in his eye, he added “it’s become something of a family tradition, and every so often I return the favor and put a modest contract out on them as well. Just to keep them on their toes.”
Caballus could only marvel at the sheer dysfunction of this Ver Kaufer family. It almost made him grateful to be an orphan.
A short, plump medicae wearing a nursing cap trotted in with a trauma kit in her mouth. All the damage done had been superficial, so she only needed a few minutes to take care of them both. By then, new shouts arose at the dining hall’s entrance.
“Darling! Darling, where are you?” The voice was no less beautiful when it was filled with concern. “Let me through!”
Meister chuckled and bid his guards allow his wife to pass. She rushed to his side, pushing the medicae out of the way and doting over every cut, scrape and hair out of place. “I was so worried. I heard a loud noise, and then there was such a commotion, and… and… I was so frightened!” She pressed her head into his chest and wrapped her forelegs around him, on the verge of tears.
It took nearly a minute of Meister’s reassurances and consoling before Velour was fit for introductions. “My dear, this is Captain Swift Corsair, a new friend of mine. He saved my life tonight.”
Velour performed a perfect curtsy. “Oh, thank you Captain, thank you so much. I am in your debt.” The brilliant violet eye that wasn’t covered by her mane met his when she rose again. “Meister has mentioned the Corsair name before. The stories of his days with Valorus are among his favorite to tell.”
“Please, it… it was nothing, really,” Caballus said, bowing awkwardly in reply. At a distance, he had thought Meister’s wife might have been a distraction. Up close she was intoxicating, scented with a perfume that made him recall the lilacs that had grown on the Stablea’s grounds all those years ago. It took him a moment to realize that he was had been staring into her deep doe-eye.
“Nonsense,” Meister said, sidling up beside his wife, “The one thing in this city that I value above anything else is also the only thing that can’t be bought here: loyalty.”
Velour ran a hoof under tenderly over a bruise on her husband’s cheek. “It’s supply and demand, darling. There is so little of it in Pferdian that it’s become priceless.”
That made Meister laugh. “Very true, my dear. Swift, I owe you my life, and I repay my debts. Come.”
He walked Caballus out of the dining room, arm-in-arm with his wife. At the bottom of the massive, red-carpet staircase, they waited for the guards to collect the rest of Caballus’s companions. When they arrived, Caballus introduced them all, one by one to the Plutarch and his wife. As expected, Mystic was resigned, Roughshod was stoic, and Fyzzix was friendly and forthcoming with pointless trivia.
“Your performance tonight was excellent, my lady,” the Meq-priest said after kissing her hoof with his hard, metal lips. “That rendition of ‘Of Their Lives, In The Ruins Of Their Stables’ never strayed more than 3.6% standard vocal deviation from the written acoustic frequencies. Accounting for artistic flourishes, of course. Magnificent! Are you sure you still have all your organic vocal chords?”
Caballus feared his friend had made some kind of gaffe until Velour giggled. “You are bold to pry into a lady’s secrets, my good Magosus, but I shall take it as a compliment. And I would thank you to tell that to the ponies who write the reviews of the Royal Opera.”
The Inquisipony was glad for the banter with Fyzzix because it gave him a chance to nudge Hairtrigger out of his slack-jawed stare before it was his turn. Thankfully, he managed to tip his hat and give a polite “Ma’am.”
Names and pleasantries exchanged, Meister sent Velour off with a quick kiss. “I will see you later, my dear. I have a bit of business to discuss before the party is over.” She curtsied again, and made her way to the ballroom, hips swaying as she walked.
Meister ushered them in the opposite direction, down the vaulted hallway. At the other end stood a huge wooden door, ornately carved with scenes of Meister’s ancestors performing heroic deeds, and a great shield bearing the Ver Kaufer crest wrought in gold.
“My office,” Meister said, pressing his hoof onto the shield. A hidden reader scanned his hoofprint, and the door swung open with a heavy clunk. Before anypony could walk inside, Meister paused and turned to Caballus. “This is where I prefer to conduct my more… private affairs.”
It took Caballus a moment to realize what the stallion meant. He glanced back at Hairtrigger. “Oh, I see. Arbitrotter Hairtrigger is a guest of mine, as well as a friend. I promise he’s not here in any official capacity.”
“Yep,” the pegasus chimed in, “my investigation here was a dead end, so I’m not on duty anymore. Right now, I’m just a tourist.”
That seemed to be enough for Meister, who led them into the darkened room. When the lights raised automatically, the room was revealed to be spacious in size and lavish in furnishing. Tall bookshelves lined the walls on either side, filled with countless ancient tomes. More tapestries, paintings, statues, and sculptures hung or stood on every wall and in every nook. The desk in the center of the room was broad and covered with scrolls and parchments, organized in neat rows and stacks. A huge window filled the wall behind the desk, its pane slightly ajar, letting the fresh, cool evening air inside to mingle with the scent of ink and paper.
There was also a pony standing there, in front of the desk.
Though her back was turned to everypony, Caballus recognized the white robes as those of the mare Meister had been seated next to at the banquet, the Admanestratum adept who left just as he had been introduced to the Plutarch.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Admanestrator,” said Meister. “There was an attack, and I’m afraid I forgot all about asking you to wait here.”
If she heard him, she gave no sign.
“Are you alright?” Meister asked, concerned. “Ponderosa?” He placed a hoof on her shoulder, causing the white hood to slide from her head. Beneath it was stone.
Meister took a calm step back and scowled. Immediately, Roughshod stepped in front of Caballus, his eyes darting to the corners of the room. Hairtrigger flew straight to the window and poked his head outside.
“All clear,” the Arbitrotter announced. Roughshod relaxed, though only slightly, and kept a wary eye wandering around the room.
“This is… unfortunate,” said Meister. “Admanestrator Ponderosa was a talented adept. I had just named her my new Seneschal this very evening.” He sighed. “She and Abacus had been good friends; I thought she could pick up where he left off. Instead it seems they’ve shared the same fate. I assume you’ve heard of the infamous ‘Stone Cold Killer’ already, even in your brief time here in Pferdian.”
Caballus’s investigative instincts took over, though he was careful to maintain the tone of a concerned friend, rather than an Inquisipony with his own agenda. “Why her? Why now?”
“At the banquet…” Meister said. “She told me that she had something urgent I needed to know. Something that Abacus had found right before he was killed. I thought it could wait a few minutes…”
“Looks like it’s going to be waiting a while longer,” Roughshod muttered, prompting a stern glare from Caballus.
While Meister took his seat behind the desk to call for House security to secure the crime scene, Caballus began his own sweep of the room.
First he glanced upward. There was no damage to the ceiling, which ruled out the killer making a dramatic entrance from above. The same went for the walls. Assuming they didn’t just waltz through the security scanner, the window seemed the most likely point of entry, as well as the exit. Caballus’s eyes slowly scanned down to the floor. A trap door wasn’t entirely out of the question, though Meister didn’t strike the Inquisipony as the sort of Governor-Mayor to keep an escape tunnel to dive down at the first sign of…
A glint of light caught his attention, a sparkle in the carpeting. Caballus began to bend down to inspect it more closely.
“The Constabulary is sending over its Stone Cold Killer task force,” announced Meister, fresh off his communicator. Caballus promptly stood up straight again and shifted his hoof to cover up the tiny speck. The Plutarch didn’t seem to notice. “Habeas is not going to like this at all,” he said.
Meister opened a drawer of the desk, and procured a bottle. He poured himself a glass of punch that was such a dark shade of red, it appeared almost black. “In light of tonight’s events, I apologize for being demanding earlier about your reasons for coming to Pferdian, Swift,” he said. “However, I would still like to know them.”
Caballus looked Meister in the eye. “At first, I was making a circuit of Segmentum Grassificus, to identify the sectors most ripe for distributing my goods.” He was confident that if pressed, Fyzzix would have a list prepared of what those goods might actually be. “But when I met your son in Hippopolis, he asked me to do him a favor. He wanted me to tell you… to tell you that he was sorry. Sorry that he couldn’t return your ship himself.”
Meister’s reaction was unreadable, as though his own face was carved from stone.
“I didn’t understand it at the time, but I gave him my word,” Caballus lied, “and now I’ve kept it.”
After a long moment of silence, the older stallion walked over to the window and gazed out at the scattered lights of the Palace Quilt, and to the brilliant glow of Pferdian beyond. Macsnacht fireworks had begun over the city, giving his face a faint, colored cast whenever one went off.
Caballus glanced over to Mystic, and pointed his eyes down to his hoof. When she understood, she gave him the slightest nod. At the same instant, he lifted his hoof and she plucked up the object with her magic, silently depositing it into her saddlebag the second before Meister faced Caballus again.
“Swift,” he said, his voice hard, “these most recent slayings… I am accustomed to those around me trying to kill me, as you’ve seen, trying to take what is mine. But this Stone Cold Killer and his benefactors, whoever they are, they mean to hurt me… to hurt Pferdian, to leave it crippled and unstable. This I cannot abide.”
The Plutarch strode across the room, and stood before Caballus, looking down from his few-inch advantage. “You are a stallion who still knows honor in this dark and treacherous age. I have nopony else I can trust. I need your help, to end this threat, so that I might raise Pferdian back to glory again. Do this, and your Trader dynasty will rise alongside mine. Together we can build something great.” He poured a second glass of punch and held it out. “What do you say?”
Caballus glanced down, took the punch, and they clinked their drinks together.
“It would be a pleasure, your Excellency.”