“Not that it was impossible to live comfortably in Discord’s Equestria. It just required certain… sacrifices.”
- Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 1)
As Trinity had promised, work at the orchard progressed smoothly while everything was working properly, punctuated with stoppages whenever the press equipment decided not to cooperate. Also as promised, the outages were surprisingly common. On the one hoof, Celestia still got her pay regardless of how long she’d had to wait for the mechanic to show up, but at the same time it was frustrating to see so much time wasted. Even with all of the new workers that the orchard took in every morning, she had a sense that the harvest was going far too slowly.
“Well, what would you do to fix it?” Trinity asked. Celestia had taken to working alongside the white earth pony, who could be frighteningly quick at picking apples herself, quick enough to rival any unicorn for the job. She and Celestia could keep up the same cadence in taking their picks to the press, and so she naturally tended to leave Wickerlock behind in the trees. Capstan, of course, she only saw when she was dumping her apples into the press, and could only get in a quick wave and a smile before she was back on her way out to get another load.
“Personally,” Celestia said, nimbly picking her own apples off of the tree. “I think that the division of labour here is all wrong. Why should pegasi, earth ponies and unicorns all be tasked with picking the fruit? Why should they all operate the presses? If the tasks were divided up according to ability, things could move a lot quicker.”
“Well, you know that for all you claim, unicorns aren’t always the best pickers.” Trinity had finished off another full basket, and was standing alongside it proudly, a mote of sweat on her brow.
Celestia didn’t offer an immediate response, filling up her basket with two more apples. In truth, the heat was actually something that she was having a harder time getting used to. Under the clouds of Eridian, conditions always stayed chilly, except whenever it rained and things grew much colder. Under the Sun’s light, the orchard was always pleasantly warm in the morning, but after a shift’s worth of work things started to feel much more uncomfortable.
“Naturally, exceptions must exist to every rule,” she allowed. “What’s most important is to have the tasks divided according to merit. If you were better at picking apples than another unicorn, then certainly you could stay on the picking crew.”
The discussion was put on hold as the two of them picked up their full baskets and started the usual walk back toward the press. They didn’t work the same portion of the field every day, instead rotating around whichever section Celestia felt like trying out on the particular morning.
By now, Celestia had seen most of the estate, though that really wasn’t saying much. There was only so much that could change about a row of apple trees, except for the complex’s southern edge, where a wild marsh grew up out of the grasslands. Based on her knowledge of the area, Celestia had guessed that it must be the source of the Everfree River, and the orchard’s irrigation. This little patch of land had everything that it needed to survive, so long as a pony was happy with nothing but apples to eat and cider to drink. Small wonder then that it was so heavily fortified.
“You know a lot about managing labour for somepony so young,” Trinity said as they walked, eying her curiously. “Is that knowledge that’s easy to come by in Eridian?”
“Oh, heavens, no,” Celestia replied. Sometimes, she forgot that Trinity was an outsider, at least insofar as not having come from Eridian itself. “A pony is lucky to learn much of anything useful growing up in the city, except the important basics: which streets to avoid, when to be out, and where to find food and work. As for all of this, it just sort of makes sense to me. Doesn’t it?”
“Well, of course,” Trinity said matter of factly. “Apparently it’s beyond the range of Fastidious and his underlings, though.”
Fastidious. Despite what Trinity had said about him often strolling about in the orchard, Celestia had yet to catch a sight of the Lord of the manor.
“Perhaps somepony ought to let him know then.”
Trinity coughed. “He’s a noblepony. What makes you think that he’ll listen to you?”
“Nothing, not necessarily at least. But from what you’ve told me he’ll certainly be grateful to have his operational efficiency improved. If there’s a chance that that leads to increased compensation for me, then I think that it’s worth trying out. And the worst thing that can happen is that he just ignores me, right?”
“Well, whatever you say, sister,” Trinity had on something of a sly smile. “Let me know how it goes. But if you can somehow get this place running like clockwork, then I’ll be mightily impressed.”
Celestia didn’t answer, instead just going over everything that she’d thought of in her head. Dividing up the labour properly was only the first of the reforms that she’d thought of for improving the efficiency of the cider operation, though it was certainly the simplest to implement. Trinity was right about the need to convince Fastidious that she was worth listening to, though. Lords and Ladies were a whole different sort of pony to the ones that she was used to. They traveled through Eridian on occasion, in lacquered coaches much like the one that sat in Fastidious’s driveway. Every one of them was always surrounded by fearsome-looking guards, and the citizens of Eridian knew better than to get in their way. She had no reason to believe that when the Lord strolled in his orchard it would be any different. Even so, she had meant what she had said. Any chance to earn the Lord’s favour offered a high possibility of windfall for her. It was simply a matter of acting on it.
When they got to the press building, Celestia wasn’t surprised to see the squad of operators, all big tough earth ponies like Capstan, milling about in the clearing outside. A forepony greeted them on the edge of the clearing.
“Well, good going on the two of you for the baskets,” she said, making a mark on her clipboard. “Unfortunately, we’re having some difficulties with the press here. You can leave your take with the rest and get an early lunch, I guess.” She indicated a little row of other baskets that had been set next to the building on the near side.
Trinity set her basket down neatly in the row, and then gave Celestia a tap on the shoulder. “You go and get your lunch. I’ll catch up. I have a few things to take care of.”
Celestia gave her a quick nod and set off back through the trees. Each day at lunchtime, the workers would all go to one of a few pre-determined spots throughout the orchard, where some of Fastidious’s guards would have bread, barrels of apple juice, and occasionally something better set out. It was first come, first served, which was why it was always a good idea to get your picking done as quickly as possible. Finding a spot cleaned out and having to hoof it to another one was a huge waste of time. This time, the spot nearest to where she and Trinity had been working was the one nearest to the center of the estate, right across the lawn from the manor. Today, the Lord wasn’t in, and that meant that things were quiet at the house, though they were definitely lively in the lunch spot.
Celestia wasted no time in picking out her usual working lunch with a good-sized mug of juice. She didn’t see anypony that she recognized among those gathered, but it was a big orchard after all. Trinity would be along soon enough.
About ten minutes later, there was a scuffle of noise from the direction of the gates, and Celestia looked up to see the Lord’s coach on its way in. The workers having their lunch all stood up as the coach went by, and those who had already finished eating and had been taking a little break started off into the trees at once. Celestia, though, kept her eyes on the wagon as it passed by, pulled by two of the coach-drivers she had seen before, with another guard on its driver’s seat and three more running abreast of it. The curtains of the coach were drawn, and they were all the same scarlet red as the rest of the vehicle, giving the thing a striking similarity to an apple on wheels.
The drivers circled the driveway in front of the manor, pulling up to a gentle stop in front of the doors, where a number of servants from inside the house had already emerged to get the door for the Lord.
From her angle, Celestia couldn’t see much of the manor’s porch, but she kept watching anyway, hoping for at least a glimpse of her boss. She ended up with more than that, though, as Fastidious rounded the corner of his coach to give his estate a long look, a triumphant smile writ large across his face.
The Lord Fastidious was a handsome pony, no two ways about that, a light blue earth pony stallion with a coiffed mane of pale orange. His face was a smooth assortment of hard lines, wide-set eyes looking brightly down over a short muzzle. He had on a scarlet cape, matching the colour of the coach, the curtains and everything else in the estate, tied around his neck with a golden brooch. It was a little difficult to tell at this distance, but Celestia thought that the gold had been worked into the distinct shape of an apple.
What was most surprising about the Lord’s appearance though was undoubtedly his age. Celestia had been expecting a hard-bitten old stallion, perhaps around Capstan’s range. Instead, Fastidious looked only a decade or so older than her, still young by any standard. Things were probably different among the nobility, but even so, to be placed in charge of an operation like this at such a young age must have been a harrowing ordeal for him.
As Fastidious’s gaze eventually settled onto the group of workers having their lunch across his lawn, a scowl appeared on his face. He turned back to the house and gave a shout. Celestia couldn’t hear exactly what he said, but soon enough a familiar pegasus, the chief mechanic, appeared at his side, looking contrite. The two of them disappeared together behind the coach once more, with Fastidious clearly chastising his employee, and the pegasus only meekly nodding whenever there was a pause. Celestia honestly felt a little sorry for him. On the one hoof, he did a rather poor job of fixing up the presses whenever he got called out, but with so much to do and so much distance to travel it wasn’t really his fault that something was always broken.
“Ah, you finally got the chance to give him a look!” Trinity cantered up beside her, face flushed as if she had run over. “What do you think?”
“Hmm,” Celestia said, mentally going over what she’d seen. “Honestly, he looked just like a regular pony to me. Better dressed, better fed, and better attended to, of course, but in the end just somepony else here in this world. I’d even wager that he’s an approachable fellow.”
Trinity held a hoof up to her mouth, snickering. “You may think yourself a good judge of character, Celestia, but that’s a little much for thirty seconds over a distance of a hundred paces. Like I said, if you want to march over there and give him a piece of your mind, be my guest. But when he throws you out and tells you to get back to work, I’ll be happy to say that I told you so.” She started over to the juice barrel. “Why, I expect that I won’t even be finished with my lunch before you’re back here.”
Celestia didn’t respond, instead starting to pick her way across the lawn, casually, but still with a sense of purpose. There was nothing that she’d be able to hide behind for the walk across the space, so the guards on the outside walls would see her for sure. So long as she looked like she knew what she was doing, she hoped that they would assume she did.
Getting past the sentries that would surely be guarding the Manor’s front door was going to be another matter, but Celestia had a plan for them. Admittedly, it wasn’t really much of a plan, more a shot in the dark really, but Trinity had said that things were rather tense within the Lord’s staff. With a little luck, she could turn that uncertainty to her benefit. Once she was inside the Manor, then it would all be down to her persuasiveness where Fastidious was concerned.
Was it possible that the Lord’s youth played a part in his apparent mismanagement of the orchard? From the look of all of the trappings of his position, the stallion certainly held his place as an apple farmer to be something important, but every day on the job Celestia saw another way that she could run the place better than he had. Perhaps there was another angle there that she could use to get in his good graces.
She paused on the outward side of the coach, peering cautiously around it to get a look at precisely who was standing in her way. Two of the usual guards from the outside of the estate were flanking the doorway, bright metal spears clutched in their hooves and scarlet tabards hanging down over their chests. The two of them looked a little bored to be standing there minding the door, and as she watched the one on the left leaned his spear up against the doorway and sat back on his haunches, blowing a long breath out through his lips. His partner gave him a quick look, but didn’t reprimand him for the breach of decorum.
Celestia chose that moment to approach. She walked around the edge of the coach, with her head held up similar to the way that she had always seen the mechanic fly through the orchard. The nerves hiding within her she quickly banished with a stern frown, hoping that it would make her look a lot older than usual.
The guard still standing at attention saw her approach first. “Hold up,” he said, raising his other hoof. “What’s your business with the Lord?”
“I’m the new scrivener,” Celestia answered gruffly, only sparing him the barest of glances. “Here to replace the last one after his unceremonious departure.”
“Quill is out?” the relaxing guard on the left said to his partner. “I thought that I would have heard of something like that.”
His partner narrowed his eyes. “The Lord would have told us if he was expecting a new employee for the orchard.”
“Well, clearly he neglected to mention it this time,” Celestia returned, overall quite surprised that she was able to hold herself steady in spite of her racing heartbeat. “He told me that the accounts were in a state of disarray, in need of an urgent, nay, immediate reorganization. He was quite adamant that I join him as soon as possible. With the harvest coming on, it’s very important that we all be aware of precisely where we stand.”
The guard appeared to chew on that one for a moment, and Celestia realized that things were probably just as uncertain for these two as they would be for any of the workers out there, only their proximity to Fastidious meant that they understood it a little better. Everypony here depended on the Lord’s pay for their survival after all, and if he were to suddenly run out of money, no one would appreciate it. Even so, the stallion didn’t look like he was convinced.
“I’ll check inside,” he said, turning to go into the house. “Keep an eye on her!” he said to his partner, who reluctantly got back to his hooves and gave her a stern glare.
The other guard got no further than putting his hoof on the latch, though, before the door opened from the inside, and an aged earth pony with streaks of white in his green mane appeared there. “What’s all this?” he asked in a jovial tone, offering Celestia a quizzical look before turning his attention back to the guard.
“Merely a guest, Mister Gala,” the guard returned, coming to a stiff attention in this earth pony’s presence. “She claims that she’s Fastidious’s new scrivener.”
Gala gave Celestia a long look, and even though the bright smile on his face never departed, she still felt small under his eyes. “A bit young to be in the scrivener’s trade, aren’t you, my dear?”
Celestia offered him a confident smile. “Give me ten minutes with a ledger and I’ll show you otherwise.”
The guards’ eyebrows rose, but Gala merely chuckled. “Mm, perhaps so. Well, I can hardly say no to a challenge like that. Come in, let us see if you are up to the task.” He opened the door up wider to admit her, and after a moment’s look just to make sure that things were actually happening as she thought they were, and the guards weren’t about to take her into custody, Celestia stepped over the threshold.
The inside of the Manor was simultaneously a world apart from her humble abode in Eridian, and also eerily similar. The staircase leading up from the landing to the house’s second level was fancifully carved just as the stairs of her own home were, and there were the same ornamental hangings, only these were of course bright, clean, and completely intact. Gala led her calmly down the eastern hall away from the door, and as she passed Celestia studied each hanging for the second that she had as she walked by. Most of them looked to be woven pictures of the orchard outside, set in bright green hillsides that surely would have been from before Discord’s reign. The ceiling of the hall was high and paneled with wood everywhere, all in a bright stain that kept the place feeling lit in spite of the relative smallness of the windows.
“I can’t say that I’m surprised to be getting new applicants to this position,” Gala said as he continued walking ahead of her, his steps short but quick. “Quill is a dedicated pony, surely, but there have always been questions about his methods. I know that I wouldn’t be surprised to find a barrel or two to have leaked into the ledgers over the years.”
Celestia decided to keep up the superior act, even though Gala seemed like he might be a member of the household, and thus worthy of a little more respect. “The Lord told me that things were something of a mess in need of some cleaning.”
Despite the attempt at bravado, Gala chuckled again. “You’ll have to see them for yourself before you can make any conclusions in that regard.” He turned aside toward a nondescript door in the hallway, and removed a key from the inside of his shirt. When he had unlocked the door and swung it open, over the threshold Celestia could see a dim room, lit only by the light spilling in through the doorway. Nevertheless, the old pony waved her across.
As she stepped over, Celestia decided to take a little risk, and called up a bit of her magic, only enough to make her horn glow slightly.
The light was enough to reveal the space as about fifteen feet square, the outsides of the room lined with wooden bookshelves that were packed with monstrously thick, dusty tomes. The interior of the space was occupied with a very large and solid writing desk, ledgers strewn about it haphazardly, with a quill and over a dozen inkwells of varying colours stacked up beside it.
“It’s a nice enough appointment,” Gala said from outside the doorway, “if a little dark and lonely sometimes. But that’s why we always hire a unicorn.” He laughed for a moment, then turned to go. “Anyway, I’ll have the Lord check in on you in half an hour or so. You’d best have something to show for the time if you’d like to be hired on for good.” He swung the door closed again as he left, leaving Celestia standing in the relative darkness, save for the small globe of light that her horn was making.
She allowed herself to exhale, a surge of relief flowing through her mind. Somehow, she had gotten in seemingly without any suspicion. Trinity would have to take a very long lunch if she wanted to still be around when Celestia left the house now. And she even had her appointment with Fastidious set up, though not quite in the way that she had been expecting it. Uncertainly, she turned to the table and its mounds of ledgers.
Celestia certainly had never had any formal training in accounting, nor in anything else for that matter, so to say that she found the mess of notations within the pages of the books confusing was a dramatic understatement. The rows and columns of the ledgers were unlabeled, and each of the dozen or so colours of ink were strewn about the page seemingly at random. The fact that the markings had been made by a pony that everyone else seemed to think had been incompetent did not help her hope that she could figure things out in time. But the sand in her hourglass was running out anyway, so Celestia knew that she had no other option but to try.
At random, she pulled one of the books in from the edge of the desk, flipping through its pages in search of clues on its contents. A few of the entries she could see were marked with the tricoin symbol, indicating monetary amounts. Those were all in purple, and generally appeared next to scribbled quantities in red. Cider sales, perhaps? She would expect to see a lot of those somewhere in the accounting, and red was a reasonable colour for it. So this book was probably keeping track of the money earned from cider shipments going out to the rest of the nobility.
Celestia had to try out a few different books until she found another one matching, this time with the purple monetary numbers lined up alongside a grey column and interspersed with other values in green. A quick look at the math revealed the grey to be a running sum, the purple numbers adding and the green taking away. Already here Celestia saw a couple of mistakes in the arithmetic, which gave her some hope. It would be tough to correct the numbers inline, which meant that she would have to copy things over to a new ledger in order to clean it up, but even so it was something of value that she could show Fastidious when he came in. Of course, she still had eight more colours of ink to make sense of first.
The rest of the ledgers she dealt with in much the same way, cross-referencing new columns against things that she had already until it became clear which accounts were being added to or subtracted from. As she worked, the scale of Fastidious’s operation revealed itself in bits and pieces.
Not only were there cider sales to keep track of, but also investments in a variety of other noble enterprises, as well as payments to the royal court and a variety of other miscellaneous charges Celestia could hardly hope to understand. They were numbers though, which was all that mattered to her right now. The book with the grey column she eventually realized was the master account list, and so once she had at least a reasonable guess on everything else, she took to copying that one out right away, double-checking her math every step of the way to be sure that the new copy hadn’t made any mistakes. She was about halfway through the new copy when the door opened up again.
Fastidious came into the room in a rush of wind, the orange hair on his head ruffled, the brooch tying his cape together having shifted off-center. That coupled with his less than pleased expression made it all too clear she’d be caught.
“I don’t know who under the Sun you think you are,” he declared, in a voice that boomed off of the walls of the small room, altogether much deeper than Celestia would have expected from his slight frame, “but unless I get a good answer in fifteen seconds, you’ll be lucky to escape this estate with all of your hooves!” He glared insistently at Celestia.
“It looks like I’m your new scrivener, my Lord,” she answered softly, turning the half-completed ledger around so that he could see it. “Master Quill has left everything in a state of complete disarray. It’s going to be some time before I can even take adequate stock of your holdings, let alone process anything new. But you may appreciate the numbers as they come along.”
Based on her own reckoning, by catching the little mistakes that Quill had made, the ledger showed a few hundred more tricoins in Fastidious’s accounts right now than he would have known previously.
The Lord’s expression did not waver. “I didn’t ask for a new scrivener. Quill has been reliable so far, just as he was for my father. He’s an old friend of the family. Whereas I still don’t even have a clue who you are, why you’re here, and perhaps most importantly who let you in without getting my permission.” That last point seemed to strike him the hardest, enough that he turned around for a moment as if hoping to see the pony who had let her in standing in the doorway.
“The fellow’s name was Gala, I’ve gathered,” Celestia answered, cautiously taking a few steps out from behind the desk. Fastidious looked back at her right away, still filled with suspicion clearly. “I can understand the desire to trust a friend. Nevertheless, Quill’s work was shoddy at best, perhaps even criminal at worst.”
That got Fastidious’s attention. “He was stealing from me?”
Celestia nodded. Of course she didn’t have any evidence of it, but the scrivener for Raspberry’s pub had been fired for exactly the same reason, doctoring the books in order to siphon supplies off for himself. If that was how things worked in Eridian, then why shouldn’t it be the same among the nobility? From Fastidious’s reaction, clearly he didn’t think it too far-fetched of an idea either. Now all she needed was to convince him.
“This pattern of mistakes is simply too noticeable to be anything but.” She pulled the old account ledger up from the table, so that the Lord could view them side-by-side, supported by the real values in the physical account books.
As he processed the information, Celestia watched as the young stallion’s features relaxed, then grew hard again. “My father and I both. That snake! I’ll have his head for this! Thank you for your diligence, er…” He paused, trying to remember her name clearly.
“Celestia,” she finished for him, a sense of relief washing over her.
“Celestia, yes! Congratulations, you’re the new scrivener. Excellent work. I’ll give you the orientation later. Right now I have a former employee to interrogate.” He galloped off right away after finishing, slamming the door shut again on his way out, and leaving the room in silence once again.
Celestia allowed herself another sigh of relief. So far, things were going even better than she could have expected, even though she still hadn’t had the chance to suggest any improvements to the organizational structures of the orchard. True, convincing the Lord just now had almost been a bit too easy. It was almost like he had been looking for a reason to get rid of Quill, which perhaps wasn’t surprising given what everypony else had already said of the old scrivener.
Regardless, the sum of it now seemed to be that she was in, a full-time employee of the Lord’s household. She walked behind the writing desk and pulled the ledgers around so she could get back to copying them out. The enormity of the Manor surrounded her, silent and dark. Yet even so, Celestia felt a brightness in her heart and a growing hope for the future.