It was a sunny evening in Upper Canterlot, just a few blocks away from the castle. I should have been doing my rounds, looking for passengers. It was my busiest time of day, after all. But I just wasn’t feeling up for it. Not when I had other things on my mind. I let out another sigh as I watched the shop across the street, or, more accurately, as I watched its proprietor.
Cinnamon Chai was chatting with her last customer for the day, a lanky unicorn with a bumblebee cutie mark, who was likely a twenty-year old poet who enjoyed ‘languishing in the darkness of his soul,’ or some such. That, or he was a middle-aged stallion down on his luck. It was hard to tell at this range.
When he left, I decided that the time for me to go had come. I stood up and started trotting down the street, but I hadn’t made it five steps before I heard her voice behind me. “Driver?” I froze, then slowly turned around to see her staring at me.
“Yes?” I answered hesitantly.
“Would you… Would you care to come in?”
“I thought you didn’t want me coming around here?”
“Yes, I did say that.” Chai looked behind her at her shop. “But I think we should talk about that. If you’d like,” she said, turning back to me.
I nodded and followed her into the shop. It was exactly as I remembered it, charmingly decorated walls with a large, well sorted collection of herbs taking over most of the staircase wall in the back. On the right was an oven and baking supplies, while on the left were serving dishes, a stove, and a sink. I started washing the customers’ dishes while she opened up the display case on the right.
“Why did you come today?” she asked.
No beating around the bush then, I thought.
“I was having a talk with a friend of mine, and you came up. She was having a similar fight with her friend.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“That she shouldn’t keep secrets from her closest friends. They have a way of coming back to bite you.”
“Wise advice. I’m sure I’ve heard it before,” she quipped.
“I’m sorry about… you know…” I continued.
“Uh-huh,” Chai said, acting like she was barely listening.
“And I promise I won’t lie to you again.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If you want me to leave, I will.”
“I… I don’t know. This is all a bit complicated,” she said, with a shake of her head.
“I know.”
We worked together in silence for a while, until the shop was ready for the next morning. “I’ve missed you,” Cinnamon Chai admitted.
“As have I,” I agreed.
“If you can be honest moving forward, then… I would be happy to start over,” she offered.
I looked up. “Really? You’d be willing to do that?”
Chai nodded. “I’ve really missed having you around, and I think you know better than to try something like that again.”
“Absolutely.” I paused, and then added, “And I think I should tell you about the club I joined a while back.”
“Oh? What sort of club?” she asked.
“Well, originally I heard of it through my neighbor, Perfect Pace. He wanted me to join him last spring; something about showing up his rival. Officially it’s about time, but mostly I just joined for the atmosphere. They’re generally nice folks, coming from all walks of life. If you’d like, I bet I can bring you to our next meeting.”
“Well, it’s nice that you’re telling me, but what brings this up?”
“Well… Last fall the club started heading in a new direction. It’s perfectly legal… as far as we know.”
Chai frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s relief work in foreign lands,” I elaborated quickly, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. “We’re doing things that are so far outside of the usual that the law doesn’t have a stance on what we’ve been doing. If you want to get the whole story then you’ll have to come to one of our meetings, but you’ll have to promise to keep it a secret.”
“I… I’ll think about it,” she answered, a little shaken.
“No hurry, it’s an open offer.”
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anypony in the tea and cake shop, another late evening meeting was happening downtown.
A bell rang out in the darkened, cluttered shop. A grey earth pony with a braided blue mane stepped out of the shadows in his signature alchemist’s outfit. “Welcome, traveler. It’s always nice to see somepony making a repeat visit.”
“Aye. I’ve got another batch o’ booty fer ye ta peruse,” Emerald answered. While she was still wearing her saddlebags, she now wore a black tricorne hat with gold lace on the edge and a red, yellow, and blue ribbon in a small circle on the front left. She also wore a red and blue dress uniform, trimmed in gold, which showed signs of advanced age. It was also several sizes too big for her, but had been masterfully hemmed in. Behind her levitated a large suitcase.
She set the suitcase on the ground and opened it, revealing a collection of exotic knickknacks from the Southern lands. “I must say, your selection never ceases to astound me,” he said, picking up a long metal case on a strap, with a hemispherical guard and a handle protruding, a large ruby on the end.
“I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. All I could tell was that it’s a sword.
“Indeed it is. And unless I miss my guess…” He unlatched the sword and drew it from its case. It was a moderate length, and somewhat curved. “Yes. This is a cutlass. And high quality, too, as I’ve come to expect from your items. Are you quite sure you can’t tell me how you keep acquiring the best Abyssinian goods anypony’s seen in decades?”
“Sorry, still a trade secret,” Emerald answered. “Think it’ll sell?”
“Well, it’s high quality, but the nobles I see often that like collecting weapons collect historical antiques of Equestrian history. If you had a genuine spear of the Mighty Helm, I could line up a buyer. But the collectors of foreign artifacts prefer paintings and literature, or other less… violent things. It wouldn’t do to be seen stocking weapons without inherent patriotic value.”
“I see. I guess I’ll keep it then. It really completes my costume.”
“This painting could fetch a nice price though. I’d need to get it authenticated, but the royal gallery would love to get their hooves on such a specimen. Unless Puissance wants it…”
“I’ll leave it with you, then,” Emerald interrupted, bringing him back to the task at hoof. “Speaking of, what did you get for the last batch?”