Nine hundred and fifteen years before, ranks of ponies and officers stood at attention on that same drill field, shivering under their oilskins and heavy parkas. The icy sleet blowing off Manehattan Harbor lashed them, giving lie to the calendars that proclaimed the second day of spring. Only the barest hint of morning sunlight diffused through the clouds.
Gale Glider looked at her new command. Seven hundred ponies waited for her, half from the Navy and half from the Army, along with a sprinkling from the Manehattan Police. They were evenly split between volunteers eager to be a part of something new and unwilling dregs pawned off by previous commanding officers, happy to be rid of them.
She strode to the head of the parade ground, a sailor following at her hooves. She nodded at him and he lit his horn, providing her with an amplification spell. Her valet, Master Steward Proper Place, levitated an umbrella over Gale's head.
Looking at the assembled ranks, she took a few deep breaths, steadying her nerves. The freezing wind burned down her throat. Gale pulled a tightly wrapped scroll from under her own rain slicker, broke its wax seal, and read aloud. The spell let her voice boom over the lash of wind and sleet:
"To, Vice Admiral Her Royal Highness Princess Gale Glider. From, Her Majesty Princess Celestia, Ruler of the Ponies. Admiral: I hereby request and command you to shift your flag to Station Manehattan Harbor and take command of the new service, the Royal Equestrian Coast Guard, authorized by act of Parliament and by my signature. You will make this service ready for active operations in the defense of the lives of ponies and all races who take to the sea in ships and boats before next autumn's storm season."
Gale took a deep breath and hesitated for a moment before reading the final line: "On your sacred honor, fail not at this Royal charge. Celestia."
She rolled up the scroll and tucked it back under her slicker. The ponies stared at her. Across the drill field, two sailors ran a white flag with three red stars up the pole in front of the headquarters building, formalizing her assumption of command.
"I won't waste your time with speeches while there's a sleet storm coming down on us. Weather like this?" She raised a hoof, gesturing to the iron-gray morning sky. "Weather this terrible calls for a drill. Master Chief, sound 'emergency scramble.'"
Seven hundred voices groaned in harmony as the massive bell in the station's belfry began its deep bonging to call the sailors to their ships.
Gale Glider stripped off her slicker and handed it to a sailor, who bowed and disappeared. She and her fifteen officers were in her conference room in the basement of Station Manehattan Harbor's main building. Master Steward Proper Place poured coffee for each of them and then retreated to the door, attentive and waiting.
Her fifteen officers stood at attention, their own rain slickers dripping water and chunks of thawing ice onto the stone floor. She looked at them: Captain Crescent Blue was a huge stocky stallion, overdue for his Commodore's flag; Officer-Cadet Red Sky stood less than half Gale's height, his scrawny teenage body consisting mostly wings and ears, and he was in the middle of a bad molt, shed feathers littering the floor underneath him; the others filled every description and rank in between. Commander Full Larder and Surgeon-Lieutenant Soothing Wave, M.D., had remained ashore and were the only officers who were dry and unrumpled.
She glared at them, one by one, as she stretched her wings and knocked ice from her feathers.
"Remove your rain gear. Be seated and drink some warm coffee."
They did. Their uniforms were all as sweat-stained and rumpled as her own, except for His Lordship the Honorable Officer Cadet's. The lordling appeared to have paid for an expensive—and non-regulation—enchantment to keep his exquisitely tailored uniform pristine.
After a few minutes to let the coffee warm them, Gale declared, "That was pathetic."
"Princess. Your Highness—" started Captain Crescent Blue.
"Military address," she snapped, "not Court courtesies. We're half a continent away from Canterlot."
He nodded, swallowed, and started over. "Admiral, the crews are trying their best. Half of them are soldiers who have never been on a ship before two months ago."
"There are no bad crews," Gale said, "only bad officers."
The officers sucked in a collective breath.
"Admiral, there's no need to insult my ponies. I'll take responsibility."
Gale looked at him and tapped a hoof on the side of her coffee mug. "Fine. Everypony else, dismissed. Get dried off and make sure your ponies hit their bunks early. We're going out again at dawn."
The officers trudged out. Proper Place remained at the door.
"That'll be all, Master Steward," Gale said.
Proper Place frowned. "Admiral..."
"Thank you."
Proper Place bowed and left. Captain Blue and the admiral were alone.
"Admiral—"
"Your previous commander was relieved for cause," she said. "I can see why."
"The commodore tried his best," Crescent Blue said.
"He was a useless fop, foisted on Her Majesty's Nav—Her Majesty's Coast Guard by his mother."
"The Countess does seem to have influence at court, yes," Crescent said cautiously.
"You're thinking to yourself, 'The princesse du sang has a lot of gall, talking about brother officers and nepotism'."
Blue sat up straighter in his chair and clenched his jaw.
Gale smiled. "Thanks for not denying it, because such a blatant lie would have cost you my respect. And yes, I'm here only because I'm Celestia's great-something-niece, but she's been using me as her seagoing troubleshooter" —she gestured to her galleon-under-sail cutie mark— "since I was fourteen. I intend to do the job. I intend to succeed or die trying. The commodore never called a drill in bad weather because he intended to die in bed, many decades from now, surrounded by whores and liquor bottles."
Captain Blue rubbed his chin, and said, very slowly, "Your task group blew the hell out of that squadron of pirates, Admiral. You can handle a line-of-battle."
Her face darkened. "That was an ugly day."
"But, ma'am? If I may speak freely?"
She nodded.
"Admiral, you're the best combat officer the Navy has ever produced, and that's not flattery, that's just a fact. But this—" he waved a hoof around "—is a life-saving and law-enforcement mission. Not combat."
Gale rubbed her face. "I'm really not 'the best.' I had inexplicable luck that day. I judged the weather gauge correctly to force them onto shoals that were on my charts but not theirs, and my gunners and marines were far better drilled."
"Good officers make their own luck, ma'am."
"Then we'd better start making some new luck." She stood and walked to the chalkboard that covered the eastern wall of the conference room. "Let's think of a month-long series of drills, to identify our deficiencies, and to start building teamwork."
Six weeks later, both of the Coast Guard's cutters, Borealis and North Star, fought into the easterly wind, tacking back and forth, their course zigging and zagging far to either side of the straight line toward the reported shipwreck on the Pone Island Shoals.
Captain Blue looked up at the rigging where the admiral, the officer-cadet, and five ponies perched, wings beating to add a tiny fraction more speed to their passage.
How dare the admiral exhaust herself? Her duty was to make decisions, not flap like a common sailor.
But this admiral seemed to be redefining her duties as she went along.
"Wreckage to port!" shouted a lookout. Her magic wiped the lenses of her spyglass, then she put it back to her eye. "Wreckage to p—pony in the water! Pony in the water, port bow, three hundred yards!"
Blue looked at his executive officer, Lieutenant Evening Squall, and nodded.
"Hooves to sheets and braces!" Squall paced the deck, her bellowing voice carrying over the wind. "Bring us two points to port and reduce sail! Crews stand ready to the boats!"
After the disastrous first drill in the ice storm, Captain Blue had sent his previous executive officer home and promoted Evening Squall over the heads of two more senior—but lazy—lieutenants. Borealis's sail drill showed remarkable improvement ever since.
The flapping pegasi, including the admiral and the officer-cadet, dropped from the top boom to the deck.
Captain Blue pointed at the officer-cadet and then at one of the boats. Red Sky saluted and sprinted to it.
As the sails spilled their wind, the ship slowed. Captain Blue stood, forehooves on the rail and a small dome of his magic shielding his eyes from the spray as he stared into the gloom. The admiral approached and stood next to him, a wing shielding her own eyes.
Flotsam decorated the wavetops. A stallion floated facedown in the gray water, a bloody gash across his back.
"We're too late," Gale said, her ears drooping and rain dripping from her gray forelock into her eyes. "The ship broke up. Those bodies will be frozen to death."
"Yes, ma'am. Should I hold the boats back, rather than risk them in water this rough for no purpose?"
Gale narrowed her eyes as she stared at the body. "We will leave no possible survivor behind, and the boat drill will serve the crews well."
Captain Blue nodded and turned to Evening Squall. "Boats away."
Not a single survivor was found from the merchant ship's crew, and five ponies and one petty officer suffered a dangerous chilling when their boat was capsized by a wave. Master Steward Proper Place was forced to grab the Admiral's tail with his teeth and use his aura to truss her wings to prevent her from personally diving into the water to rescue them.
The easterly wind that had stymied their sortie out made their trip back to harbor easy. The admiral and her secretary disappeared to the tiny closet below deck that was her flag office to begin her written report. The crew was solemnly quiet, somber, none of the usual chanties or profanity expected of working sailors.
Master Steward Proper Place stood on deck, near the bowsprit, huddled in his heavy oilskins, sipping a mug of cocoa and levitating a silver tray with a carafe and several empty mugs.
Captain Blue thought for a few moments before walking to the steward.
"Captain," Proper Place said, stiffening slightly.
"At ease." They both stared into the iron-gray clouds. The rain had stopped; wind to their back kept the bow free of spray, so they were standing in the driest spot on the entire deck. "How long have you been with the Admiral, Master Steward?"
"Since she was ten. When she left the Palace creche to attend day school in Canterlot."
Captain Blue nodded. He'd long before decided the 'steward' was actually a bodyguard. "What's your real rank? I won't tell."
"Sergeant Major, Everfree Foresteers."
Blue nodded. One of Celestia's household regiments. The household regiment that provided the Royal family's bodyguards. "You were at the Battle of the North Cape, then?"
Proper Place's ears drooped. "I'm the only one of her original eight who survived."
"I heard rumors."
Proper Place thrashed his tail and the aura holding the mug darkened. "The tide was rising. The pirates' flagship was about to work itself off the mudbank. It would have made a good run, with the wind to its back and its rigging undamaged. It was the pirates' fastest ship, not their biggest. It would have gotten away, and Celestia had decreed that their admiral had a date with the Canterlot gallows. The princess ordered her flag captain to ram. We stove in both ships' bows and drove the pirate over a rock, ripping out its keel."
"Ugly," Captain Blue said. He had seen galleon's keels shattered before. "Very ugly."
"Ugly but effective. The Admiral and I were up in the highest crow's nest, so she could see over the gunsmoke and call down her orders to the flag captain and the signals party. Her other armsponies, her chief of staff, and her flag lieutenant were in the rigging with us. When the pirates swarmed off their sinking ship and met the flagship's crew with cold steel... the admiral yelled, 'Follow me!' and waded in."
"She was about to try that back there, when the boat spilled. Wade right in."
"She's not actually very good with a blade," Proper Place said. "She didn't take after her aunt at all. She very nearly got herself killed and needed one hundred stitches."
"The admiral has a reputation as being very good with a line-of-battle."
Proper Place nodded. "Useless with a blade, but she can play a squadron of galleons like a master violinist."
"Borealis here is a third the size of a war galleon," Blue mused. "One wonders how she'll do with cutters."
"One wonders."
Blue nodded to the tray and carafe. "Have you any spare cocoa, 'Master Steward?'"
"It's the Admiral's private reserve," Proper Place said with a smile, "imported from Zebrica, but I think she won't notice one missing mug."
Admiral Gale sat at her desk, head propped on a hoof, reading reports and sipping at an iced tea. Her windows were open, letting in late-spring sun and a warm breeze.
She glared at the reports. Small-boat drills were getting worse, not better, even though the weather had been calm and almost ideal. What was going to happen come autumn and winter and storm season?
A feather wrapped around a green pencil, she made angry annotations on the margin of the report.
The knock on her door was the double knock, pause, triple knock that meant Proper Place had checked the visitors and was with them. She shuffled the papers into a neat pile and shouted, "Enter."
Commander Full Larder, her chief of staff and the commander of the shore installations, entered and stiffened to attention. Two sailors, both dingy and bloody, followed him. Behind them was Officer-Cadet Red Sky, with a bloody rag shoved in his left nostril. Proper Place took up the rear and glared at the two sailors.
Gale leaned back in her chair, stretched her wings, and folded her forelegs against her chest. "This looks unfortunate."
"Your Highness—" Full Larder began.
Proper Place cleared his throat.
"Admiral," Full Larder began again, "these two sailors had a disagreement about proper small boat drill and it came to blows. Sailor first class East End, here—" he pointed to a short, muscular pegasus "—has had some discipline issues during his previous assignment."
"Which was...?" Gale asked.
"Your Admiralship," the sailor said, "I was in your Aunt's household regiment, a Cloudsale Hussar, I was, but m' sergeant saw the request for warm bodies for the Coast Guard as a chance to be rid of me, he did. Ma'am."
Gale nodded. "I thought I recognized you from around the Palace. What does an ex-trooper know about boats?"
"I was born on the banks of the Thamed river in Trottingham, your Admiralship. Whole family of boat ponies, ten generations back. Ferries and lighters, we do."
"What happened?" Gale asked.
"Well, ma'am, I was showing the petty officer, here—" he nodded to the other bloodied sailor "—the proper knots for the davits, and he told me that wasn't what the book said, and I said to him, I says, doom on the book, I've been on small boats since me momma squeezed me out of her thwat onto the thwarts! And he says we need to do it by the book, and I said the book was wrong, and well, my hoof disagreed with his nose, and so on and so forth. Then Mr. Red Sky tried to stop us disagree'n, and he mighta accidentally gotten a pop in the nose in the general mischief. And I'm sorry."
Gale's chair snapped forward, her wings flared high and her forehooves planted on the desk. "You struck an officer?"
"'Twas an accident, your Admiralship. But I won't be lying none and say I didn't."
Gale's face went pale and Proper Place took a step forward, just behind East End.
"You know I can have you imprisoned for striking an officer," Gale said.
"No offense, your Admiralship," East End said, "but he's a cadet."
"A cadet is an officer," Gale said. "By warrant rather than by Crown's commission, but an officer."
East End stood up straight and nodded. "Momma said my temper would get the best of me, one day."
"I have a worse punishment than prison." Gale looked at Proper Place and nodded. "You're assigned to the Master Steward as his assistant. He's been whining that my entourage is too small."
"I have indeed, Admiral," said Proper Place.
The office went quiet before East End nerved himself up to speak again. "Begging the Admiral's pardon, and not to sound ungrateful that y' won't be sending me to Terra Halter, but how is that a punishment, ma'am?"
"Her previous entourage," Proper Place said, "suffered near-total fatalities at the Battle of the North Cape."
East End swallowed hard. "I guess m' momma was right, after all."
"Everypony but Officer-Cadet Red Sky is dismissed."
The others filed out. Proper Place exited last and closed the door.
The officer-cadet stood at attention. A drop of blood rolled out from under the rag crammed in his nostril and splattered on the hardwood floors of the Admiral's office.
"Officers have no business putting themselves in a position where a sailor could do something that stupid."
"Yes, Admiral."
Her voice slipped from her usual neutral accent to the thick drawl of a blue-blooded Canterlot aristocrat. "I would ha' expected better from the heir to a barony, as well. Were ya not raised with the knowledge you will one day be a Peer o' the Realm?"
"Yes, Your Highness," replied Red Sky, dropping in the same aristocratic accent.
She looked at his uniform. Cut to his growing teenage frame by one of the most exclusive tailors in Manehattan, not by Coast Guard logistics. Drops of his blood beaded up, repelled by the expensive enchantment, refusing to stain the fabric. "Dismissed."
"...and that," Officer-Cadet Red Sky finished, "is what I did wrong."
The briefing room was quiet, all of the other officers sitting around the conference table and looking at Red Sky. Red Sky trembled, his belly roiling and his face cold. He could tell he was ashen. What was he doing here? He wasn't even seventeen yet! He was literally the youngest pony in the entire Coast Guard, and somehow, his status as an officer gave him seniority over master chiefs four times his own age. His cutie mark was a book and quill; hardly nautical. He didn't belong here! (Not that his poetry was any better than his ship handling. In fact, it was arguably worse.)
But, worst of all, he knew that neither his youth nor his status as the only noble in the Coast Guard—other than the Admiral herself, of course—would protect him from the gravity of the sleetshow he had allowed the overnight exercise to degenerate into.
"What was the purpose of this drill?" Admiral Gale Glider asked him.
"Ma'am," Red Sky said, "this was to practice heaving two ships together at night with a current that cut against the weather gauge."
"That's only the most perfunctory aspect of it. What was the real goal? What were you, you specifically, Officer-Cadet his Lordship the Honorable Red Sky, Heir to Barony MacIntosh Hills, et cetera, et cetera, supposed to learn?"
He swallowed. She had never made the slightest comment about his titles in public before. What was she getting at? Having his noble status dragged out in front of the others made his brain skip several beats. "I... Ma'am... I don't know. I don't understand."
"An honest answer, which I appreciate." Gale ruffled her feathers. "Why did I declare every single officer except you a casualty?"
"Ma'am, I don't know. To see if I could do it myself?"
The briefing room was very, very quiet.
"Wrong," the Admiral said. "That is absolutely the opposite of correct. Does your grandfather the Baron run every aspect of his fief himself?"
"You wanted to... to see if I would delegate to the master chiefs' experience or to try to do everything myself?"
"Correct," the Admiral said.
"I fouled up. Ma'am."
"You fucked up by the numbers."
The officers chuckled and Red Sky felt his face go even more pale. Red Sky knew several of the junior officers resented his high birth. They were probably savoring his humiliation.
The Admiral stood. "There are two lessons from this disaster, Officer-Cadet Red Sky. One, any officer can, through sea and storm or by enemy action, find themselves suddenly the senior officer, and must be ready to take command instantly. You froze for twenty whole seconds when I told you all other officers were dead for the exercise. Never freeze up again. A Crown's officer is always ready to assume responsibility. Not merely command; responsibility, something much more sacred and difficult. Second, learn to delegate. We have many experienced petty officers and chiefs. Use them. Adjourned."
The officers all stood and turned for the door, several conversations beginning.
The conversations ended instantly when Gale's voice—slipping into the blue-blooded Canterlot aristocrat accent so thick that the lowborn officers considered it a foreign language—said, "My Lord, w' ye please accompany me to supper in the city?"
Red Sky stood up straighter, eyes narrowing, and let his own voice slip into the same aristocratic cant. "Your Highness, 'twould be my greatest honor."
The other officers—nobles none, not even a sir or dame among them—evacuated the room as fast as decorum allowed.
Officer-Cadet Red Sky hurried back to his small room in the bachelors officer quarters and stripped his sweat- and salt-stinking ship uniform. He tossed it to the sailor assigned as valet to the four junior-most officers and pulled on an expensively cut silk tunic: a tunic that befitted the heir to an impoverished barony that was trying to give the impression it wasn't impoverished.
A glance in his mirror showed that his crew-cut mane and short-cropped tail required no attention. His wings were still in horrible shape, his fifteen-year molt hitting a year late, but there was nothing he could do about that. He double-timed to the center of Coast Guard Station Manehattan and waited for the princess out front of her brick bungalow.
Proper Place stood near the door, ears flicking and hooves scraping the ground nervously. East End and two other rough-and-tumble pegasi impressed onto the princess's guard detail stood with him.
The Princess emerged from her quarters, wearing a casual cotton wrap, light yellow, that befitted the unseasonably warm spring afternoon and complemented her midnight blue coat.
She nodded and Red Sky nodded back. They took to their wings, eschewing the ferry across Manehattan Harbor, and the three sailors made a protective triangle around them. Proper Place shook his head and turned back to the princess's bungalow.
They exchanged no words as they flew, but Red Sky watched her from the corner of his eye. She was more than twice his age, but young for a flag officer. Her wingbeats and breathing betrayed no fatigue despite the pace she set, nearly a sprint. She took physical training alongside the enlisted pegasi every morning, and his own panting told him to do the same, starting tomorrow.
The city loomed before them, the stink of civilization mixing with the salt of the harbor, noise waxing as they crossed the shore and turned to follow Fifth Avenue.
Red Sky frowned. Surely she didn't intend—she was dressed casually, and his own tunic was hardly formal, and they both still smelled of ship and sea—
The princess flared wings and fluttered down in front of the Delmarenico, the most exclusive restaurant in Equestria. (Not the most exclusive in Manehattan—in Equestria.)
Several dozen ponies in fancy eveningwear sat on benches, sipping iced drinks and waiting to be admitted. A sign above the door read:
Current reservation wait is 8 months
The "8" was written in chalk and the rest were brass letters fixed to polished teakwood.
An employee in a tuxedo stood at the podium just outside the door.
"We haven't a reservation," Gale said after she landed, letting her voice slip about halfway between her usual neutral accent and her Canterlot aristocrat drawl. Red Sky and the three sailors fluttered down around her and tucked their wings. Gale continued, "We were hoping you could accommodate us."
The tuxedoed employee looked at them, his face twisting slightly and his head drawing back as if he smelled something foul. Then he reached up and tapped the 8 on the sign. "A table for five will be closer to ten months."
"My fine escorts will not be sitting, just a table for two," Gale said.
Several of the ponies sitting on the benches chuckled and shook their heads.
"I'm sorry, madam, but that shall be most impossible. And... escorts... are generally asked to wait outside, lest they crowd the walkways."
Gale smiled broadly. "Could you pretty-please check your maître d's notes? It's possible we're listed as exceptions."
"The exception list is most exclusive," replied the waiter.
"My young companion here," Gale twitched a wing toward Red Sky, "would be listed under 'Heir-apparent, Barony MacIntosh Hills.'"
The waiter's left ear drooped. Several of the spectators' eyes widened.
"I would be listed under 'Princess of the Blood, Duchess Pone Island Shoals, Countess Cliff Peak, Countess North Cape,' et cetera, et cetera."
The waiter's other ear drooped and his right eyelid began to twitch.
Gale tapped a hoof to her chin. "Or perhaps 'Line of Succession to the Crown of Equestria.' I would be eighth on that list." She leaned in and gave a very loud stage whisper: "Ninth, if you count my Aunty Celly."
He began flipping hurriedly through the reservation book. The spectators were rather silent.
"If that fails," Gale said, "Check for 'Commanding Admiral, Her Majesty's Coast Guard.'"
They were seated quickly after that, more than a few dumbfounded faces in their wake.
A table on the second floor balcony, overlooking the main dining room, was made ready. Waiters pulled out chairs for them as the three sailors formed a defensive triangle, eyes scanning the crowd.
The headwaiter himself hoofed them their menus. "Your Highness. My Lord. I've taken the liberty of selecting a bottle of Chateau neuf du-Maretel, a thirty-three. It'll be here momentarily."
"Be sure to give menus to my three escorts. They'll take whatever they wish in boxes as we leave and eat after we return to Coast Guard Station Manehattan this evening."
"Yes, Princess. Of course, Princess." The waiter disappeared.
"A neuf du-Maretel '33?" Red Sky mused. "Expensive."
Gale chuckled. "They won't charge us, My Lord."
"No?"
"No. By tomorrow evening, the wait list will be eleven months. The restaurant's owner, by now, has sent messengers to every newspapers' style editor. The headlines on the society pages tomorrow: 'Princess-Admiral and Baron's Heir dine at Delmarenico'." She gestured at the menu. "They are not so uncouth as to list the prices, but I guarantee that by tomorrow, they'll be higher."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"How is the Old Baron?"
The menu crumpled, gripped in Red Sky's right flight feathers. "Grandfather is completely senile, Princess. He's been in diapers for a year or two, my cousin tells me, and has to be force-fed soup. I don't expect he'll be much longer. I hope to take leave this summer and see him one last time."
"Your Barony?"
"My cousin sits as steward, and regent in all but name. She's barely older than I, but a skilled bureaucrat and she serves honorably. Uncle sits in the Lords in Canterlot, with Grandfather's proxy. I shall ask them both to continue in their duties when... well, when, so that I need not resign my commission and return home."
"Your Grandfather is the last of the Seventeen. His passing will end that era."
Red Sky nodded grimly. Seventeen commoners had been elevated to peerages on the blood-stinking field after the Battle of Canterlot Bridge. Dark Clouds, then a lieutenant of combat engineers, elevated Baron MacIntosh Hills by Celestia that evening for his valor commanding Celestia's sappers during the battle, was the last still alive.
"As you say, Princess."
"My condolences on the passing of your mother, My Lord," Gale said. "It's been... eight months?"
Red Sky stiffened further. "Yes, Highness."
The sommelier appeared and poured two glasses. The wine bottle was dusty and the liquid was such a deep ruby it appeared black in the restaurant's understated light.
"Does Her Highness or My Lord require anything?" she murmured after pouring the wine.
"No, thank you," Gale said. Red Sky shook his head. The sommelier disappeared.
Red Sky took a cautious sip. "Excellent," he said, then put the glass down.
Gale took a bigger sip. "You don't wish more?"
Red Sky stared at the bloody-black light refracting in the glass, ruby caustics playing across the table. "We held it a deep secret within the Barony Keep, but it was alcohol that killed Mother, not infection. The mare who raised me died five or six years ago, when Grandfather's mind went. She disappeared into the bottom of a bottle and never emerged."
Gale nodded and took another small sip.
He looked up at Gale. "Princess, I am a coward. I took a cadet's appointment to escape Mother. It was better to let the sea kill me than to live in the same keep as her."
"I knew, My Lord," Gale said. "The secret was less closely held than your family hoped. There was relief in court that your mother predeceased the Baron, so that Parliament didn't need to reject her succession and name an underage teen to MacIntosh Hills' seat over her head."
Red Sky's wings drooped.
"Again... my condolences. And I don't think any eleven-year-old who chooses the dangers of sea and storm and enemy fire is a coward. Tell me, My Lord, why did you request transfer from the Navy to the Coast Guard?"
"I... I don't know, Princess, honestly."
"Hmmm," Gale said. She sipped her wine again. "I doubt the truth of that answer. Let us change the subject. Your prospects for marriage?"
His feathers fluffed out in embarrassment. "Betrothals have been offered, but my uncle has found them unsuitable."
Gale looked him up and down. "Alas. My daughter is too young to match with you, and my youngest sister is too old. An alliance between MacIntosh Hills and the Royal House would have benefits. ...Countess Manehattan's third daughter is less than a year older than you."
"Your Highness, she is unbetrothed for... good reason."
"I've met her, yes, My Lord. Her personality is volcanic."
"She reminds me of a rattlesnake with a rotten fang, Princess."
Gale laughed. The headwaiter reappeared and they placed their orders.
After a minute of silence, Gale gestured at the main dining room. "The elite of Manehattan, and more than a few ordinary ponies who have saved their bits and put on their finest clothes to celebrate an anniversary or other event."
"Yes, ma'am."
"It's a safe bet our unanticipated arrival threw off their careful reservations and somepony will be spending an extra hour waiting for a table they booked almost a year ago."
"As you say, ma'am."
"Why do you suppose I dragged you across the harbor and chose this restaurant? I know a New Mexicolt place around the corner, barely wider than the proprietor's shoulders, that makes better food for a fraction of the price. Their green chile, fried potato, and whitefish on frybread is divine."
"I... I don't know, ma'am."
"We are ponies of wealth, power, and privilege, you and I. We don't deserve the aristocracy thrusted on us. At least, I don't. Alicorn blood means nothing, really. Pick one thousand pegasi. I have stronger magic than nine hundred and ninety nine of them, but weaker than the last one, and she has no alicorn ancestor. Why should we be shown immediately to a table and fêted by the headwaiter himself and plied with the finest wines?"
"I... I don't know."
"Neither do I, My Lord, but we must repay the privilege Equestria has given us."
"I don't think I follow you."
"My mother is an invalid, her back broken."
"She was a battalion commander in the Canterlot Fire Department, no?"
"Correct."
"Why was a commander inside a building? Was her duty not outside, to lead? To delegate?"
"Several of her fireponies and their rescued charges were trapped at a high window. Her reinforcements were depleted of pegasi, and the situation moving too fast to bring ladders into play. She and the other three pegasi in her senior staff flew to the window to effect an extraction. She was... hurt, but everypony survived. Two foals and their aunt were rescued."
"Indeed," Red Sky muttered, remembering the Admiral's attempt to join the rescue of the spilled boat crew several weeks before.
"My grandmother died to break the Vanhoover plague. My great-aunt died to hold Canterlot Bridge. My cousin died in Griffonstone, to end a war. Another cousin lost her ears and two hooves to frostbite mapping the Frozen North. And on, and on, and on."
Red Sky leaned back and took another sip of the wine. "There's... much sadness in your family. One wonders how Princess Celestia can bear it."
"One wonders," she said with a sip of her own wine. "Every foal of my family realizes that, one day, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, we are likely to wake up and find ourselves confronting the curse that has stalked us for generations. Or, even worse, wonder if our own foals will face the curse..."
"Curse, ma'am?"
"It bears no name. I call it, 'The Honor of the Crown.' Equestria is young, yet, and fragile. It is held together by Celestia's charisma, but that alone cannot stand against all the chaos in the world."
She raised an eyebrow in question. Red Sky nodded understanding.
Gale continued, "Ponies must see that Celestia loves them before they will love her, too, and those bonds of love are what will make Equestria strong, make Equestria endure. A nation founded on fear will not last a century. Celestia intends a nation founded on love, to last forever. But love must be purchased, and the coin that buys love, so often, is blood. We know, we scions of the lines of the alicorns, we princes and princesses of that blood..."
Gale looked across the restaurant and Red Sky's eyes followed hers. A young couple, uncomfortable in their formal eveningwear, were led to a cramped table in the corner by a junior waiter. Probably a first or second wedding anniversary celebration, bits saved to splurge at the most expensive restaurant in the city.
"...we children of the Sun and Moon, we know that one day, we will have to choose between our own lives and the Honor of the Crown, and that the Honor of the Crown is what binds the ponies of Equestria to Celestia's rule, what gives ponies faith in Celestia's rule, what makes Equestria strong."
Then, she looked back at Red Sky. They stared into each other's eyes. "There are two thousand ponies in your barony, My Lord. Some day, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, perhaps while you sit on the Seat, perhaps for your great-grandfoal, disaster will come to your barony, sneaking on quiet paws to strike when your guard is down and the timing most foul. Flood? Fire? Famine? Plague? Those ponies will look to the Keep on the hill. They will see the banner of MacIntosh Hills blowing in the wind. They will clutch their foals to the chest in terror. Their ears will tremble and their tails will swish. Will they see the banner of a noble house that has shown bravery and virtue, shown fidelity and righteousness? Will they see the banner of a noble house that has placed their fragile flesh and sacred honor between their subjects and danger, or will they see a house that has expected their subjects to shield them?"
Red Sky nodded, once, very slowly.
"Will the ponies of your barony rally to your House's banner and stand shoulder-to-shoulder to face down the disaster together? Or will they look at the Keep and see the house that has taxed them and ignored them and lived in privilege without accepting the obligations that privilege imposes? Your grandfather was, is, a pony of honor and valor. Your mother's cowardice in the face of adversity drove her to escape into a bottle. You are no longer heir to a mere family, but to a noble house. And your House's legacy teeters on the edge of a knife."
Red Sky swallowed, saying nothing.
"You, My Lord, are young and chose the uniform, the Service of the Crown. You chose, of your own free will, to don the Crown's uniform and face danger and death at sea. I have faith in you. But you must show faith in yourself, and you must choose the legacy the Barons of MacIntosh Hills will hold in the history books. Will you choose to make your House noble in fact as well as in name?"
Waiters brought their meals, and they ate in silence.