My crystal beacon never sounded during the night. In other words, my spider’s web of channeling wire had not netted me any bugs. So far as I was aware, everyone at the villa, save for Gloria and I, had slept sound as foals all through the night.
On the one hoof, I should have been happy. The changeling was running out of time to make their move. But on the other hoof, so too was I running out of time to catch them.
I wanted to resolve this case on my own. I wanted to tear past the lies and the traps. I wanted to see for myself the good and the evil that truly resided in this changeling’s heart, and in what ratio.
No more sympathy. No more hatred. No more running. No more fighting. No more framing. No more begging. No more weepy-eyed promises of sanctuary that we can’t keep to a creature that we can’t trust.
Was I the only one who still cared about the truth?
On the third and final morning of the investigation, I rose out of bed bright and early. In particular, brighter and earlier than my partner, who I did not bother to wake. An unusual chill hung in the air as I drifted through the corridors of the villa. I saw not a single face on my way to Zorn’s bedroom.
I gave a firm three knocks on his door. After a shuffle from inside, the zebra answered.
“Pesco,” he said flatly, before returning to a seat at his lab desk. It seemed that he, too, was up early with his own work.
I stepped through the door he had left open and closed it behind me. It was a warmer welcome than I was expecting, all things considered. “Good morning, Zorn.”
The zebra took little notice of my existence. He sat with his back to me, grinding a pile of dark purple herbs with a mortar and pestle. At regular intervals he would sprinkle a measured amount of the resulting paste into one beaker among a four-by-four grid, and then repeat his grinding and sprinkling for the next beaker in line. Perhaps he had been at this process for an hour already, before I arrived; just as likely that he would continue for another hour, so long as he could ignore my presence.
“Do you know why I’m here, Zorn?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. But I’m sure you have your ideas.”
“Something to do with the changeling, I would suppose. You have had a singular focus on unraveling them.”
“I’m sorry, though it is my job. You seem to be the only one who begrudges me for it.”
“I notice your partner has his own concerns.” He took a moment to measure and sprinkle some herb paste. “I like your partner.”
“I like him, too. I’ll give him your regards. But tell me, how do you feel about the Royal Guard?” I said. “That’s what has me coming around. The commander called me last night, and he says they’re making spectacular time through the mountains. They’re going to be here at noon.”
This, unlike anything else, gave the zebra pause. He finished sprinkling his current beaker and returned to the pestle and mortar. “And I suppose you expect me to take your word on that. I know what you are here for, now.”
“Believe me or don’t—in a few hours, we’ll see who was right. In the meantime, here’s a question: If I only wanted the changeling to be caught, no matter how or by whom, why would I not just sit on my hooves and wait for the Royal Guard anyway? This isn’t my idea of a vacation. I’m driven by my conscience alone.”
I found myself clacking my hoof in agitation against the floor, waiting for a response that never came.
“After all this time, I still don’t understand you, Zorn. You don’t fully trust either me or the changeling, so in lieu of admitting what you know about them, you sent me on my way with a big needle and told me to discover the truth for myself.” I shook my head. “That’s bizarre enough. What’s even more bizarre, is that now I’m the bad guy for doing exactly what you told me.”
“You held the truth in your hooves with that message of surrender,” he said. “You failed to recognize it. Without any evidence, you preferred to believe that there was malice written inside a scribble.”
Here was where Zorn was mistaken. He had no shortage of eccentricity, but this was the first sign of delusion. He had sent me away last night, thinking that I would have no means of uncovering the aborted message without the help of his scientific apparatuses. He had underestimated just how desperate I was to get at the truth. Like a changeling without love, I would shrivel up and die without the truth.
I trotted over to his desk where he was still hunched over, failing to give me even the courtesy of eye contact. I slid the message in front of him, scribble-side up. “Go ahead and take a look for yourself. Or just ask Grid what we found in his room, courtesy of our would-be whistleblower.”
Zorn put down the pestle, and scrutinized my face for signs of a bluff. He didn’t find what didn’t exist. He proceeded to clear his workspace before withdrawing from a drawer a slew of magnification lenses and light-emitting crystals. After drawing the blinds and shutting off the lights to his room, he began in earnest with his own investigation.
The zebra was deft with his tools, and he zeroed in on the winning wavelength. He put me and Bon to shame. I could see a frown tighten at the corner of his lips as he read the damning four words underneath the scribble:
Searched Grid’s closet yet??
But, so it seemed, he was not yet finished with his analysis. With a stubborn glint in his eye and that same dimple of a frown, he began to twist and turn the paper:
WHAT HAPPENS IF I COME ALONG PEACEFULLY?
over:
Searched Grid’s closet yet??
and back again:
WHAT HAPPENS IF I COME ALONG PEACEFULLY?
Zorn’s frown gave way to a deep and bitter scowl, his severe features illuminated from below by the crystals. I realized, then, what my singular focus had failed to hone in on before now: the handwriting. Both sides weren’t written by the same person.
“I see now what needs to be done,” Zorn declared. “I should not have abided this for as long as I have.”
In that moment, I came to another realization: I was not imagining the chill in the air, the one I had felt on the way to the zebra’s bedroom. Zorn’s breath hung like smoke in the air, and mine along with it.
He alighted from his workspace, and flipped the lights back on before sitting on his bed.
“It is quite cold in here, is it not, Pesco?” he said knowingly, while rubbing his hooves together.
“I’ve noticed.”
“It felt quite the same, one morning about two weeks ago. Later that same morning was when I would come to my first suspicions about the changeling,” he said. “Bon and I presumed a malfunction in the villa’s boilers. We were prepared to investigate the problem, but as it turned out, the problem fixed itself. I, and I alone, was of a curious mind to see this self-repairing boiler for myself.
“Pesco, I do not mean to be cryptic. It will be self-explanatory, if you go to the boiler room for yourself. Once you do, you will know everything I do about our past and present circumstances—and I pray you will have an appreciation for the complexity of our future.”
Earlier, my partner had told me he had investigated the boiler room and reported nothing of interest. I was not particularly surprised to learn that that was a lie. For a long time coming, I had sensed that I was the only one really left on this case. It was not a given that I could count on my partner—or the sledgehammer commander, or any of the kids—to make the right choices in this situation. It was not a given that I could count on myself to make the right choices. Now that I knew the truth, I no longer had faith that there were even any right choices to be made.
Here is what I found, when I visited that boiler room:
Before I’d stepped inside, I did not find it emitting that steady, low-frequency hiss that was so familiar to me by now. That morning, the boiler room, and perhaps the entire villa, was silent.
Once I’d stepped inside, I did not find the sweltering heat known to any functional boiler room. Neither did I find the adequate lighting or organizational principles common to any boiler room that was ever intended to be functional.
Instead, I found only the feeble, flickering glow of a series of dying fluorescent lights that did little to illuminate a morass of electrical cables snaking along the ground. It sufficed to say, it would come as no surprise to me if someone with a history of skulking around in the boiler room just so happened to have tripped over this or that cable, disconnecting this or that vital piece of machinery, and did not realize their mistake until hours later when a safety shut-off mechanism engaged and the villa went cold. And it would come as no surprise to me if this had happened not once, but twice now.
As I made my way into the furthest depths of the boiler room, I found one more source of light besides the fluorescents. A lit lantern on a workbench, far in the distance, beckoned my approach.
As I stumbled toward the workbench, I found three piles of winter gear stowed behind a line of water heaters. The largest among them consisted of an assortment of equipment for three out of the four resident species of the villa. This largest pile was also the most haphazardly assembled, as if cobbled together at random. The fourth species’ equipment was the content of the other two piles, very neatly arranged: They could each comprise the complete wardrobe for an individual hiker intent on a long trek, although one of these two piles included many more insulating baselayers than the other.
That fourth species was griffon.
At last, I reached the lantern and the workbench. And yet, I found myself transfixed not by the peculiar arrangement on the bench, but by the contents of the wastebin just beside it. I had no rational basis as to why I chose to investigate the bin before the bench; perhaps, like with the changeling’s note, it was my lifelong and professional infatuation with what was discarded rather than with what was put up on display.
In the wastebin, I found some papers. Papers with nothing more on them than some names written in cursive, but these were some very telling names, written a very telling amount of times. Here is what a few of them looked like:
Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter Chancellor Cross-Canter
Bridd Bridlebit Roy Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk B B B Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Bridlebit Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridelbi Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk Bridlebit, Royal Clerk
Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget Gorget Gorget Gorget Gorget Gorget Gorget Liaison Griffonstone Liaison Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liason Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorg Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison
Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Gorget, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Gleend Glenda Glenda Glenda Glenda Glenda Glenda Liaison Griffonstone Liaison Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glend Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison Glenda, Griffonstone Liaison
K King King Grayson King Grayson Grayson King Grayson King Gray Grey King Graysn G G G G G K K K K G K G K G King Grayson Kan't fucking Get it King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King King Grayson King Gray Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grays Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson K King King Grayson King Grayson Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson King Grayson
Clearly, someone was a fan of others’ signatures—so much so, that they went to painstaking lengths to learn how to replicate them precisely. If the first few wobbly attempts in any set could be distinguished from one another by the occasional slip-up or variation, then the later attempts could only be compared to the work of an autoquill.
As I rifled deeper through the trash I came across yet more papers, however less interesting than the signature practice; it was merely a backlog of Girard’s high school homework assignments, in various stages of completion. Perhaps they, along with everything else in the wastebin, were deemed to be of no further use to whoever had pitched them.
At the very bottom, underneath all else, I unearthed the last but not the least of the wastebin’s curiosities: a pocket-sized photo album. By all appearances, it was a family photo album, serving to remind its owner—and whoever they might share it with—of the happy family that is the Kralle-Karom royalty. Here is a description of the subjects of several of the photos:
Most of these photos were taken in front of rocky outcrops, caves, and boulders. While one might be led to believe these features were most indicative of the Griffonstone mountains, I couldn’t help but notice that not one photo among the collection actually had a mountain in frame, or contained any geographical feature one couldn’t find in Equestria if one truly wanted to.
I also couldn’t help but notice that none of the photos depicted more than one of Gloria’s supposed family members at a time. Not a single one.
But enough rooting around in the garbage. I moved on to the workbench, which had a host of its own curiosities to showcase.
The very first thing I noticed were the dark red candles, numerous enough to turn the workbench into an altar if they were lit, but none of them were. In fact, none of their fully intact wicks showed signs of ever having been burned. And yet the candles were all melted at their bases anyway, some of them reduced at this point to nothing but waxy stubs.
The means? I had to imagine the nearby hand lighter had something to do with it. The motive? I had to imagine the forged royal seals had something to do with it. They were practiced over and over again on nearby parchment, just like the signatures in the trash.
These practice seals weren’t the only clue. I finally found Gloria’s hidden book on the workbench, and its contents were exactly as she had described (being the honest bird that she was). I also found a number of razors and fine sculpting blades strewn about the workspace, each of them caked with dried red wax. They framed the practice pages, as well as the documents where the final products ended up.
These documents with the final products—that is, the forged royal seals, of Griffonstonian, Equestrian, and Hippogriffian authority—included but were not limited to:
All in all, it was enough. Enough that I could be certain now of the perps responsible, and the bigger picture. All that remained were the details, and the resolution.
That is to say, all that remained was one final interrogation.