General Romulus smacked his lips and frowned. “Mayweather?” he called to his attendant. “Did the poison checker check this coffee?”
“Yes, general,” she replied. “And he’s still very much alive. Is everything to your liking?”
He nodded. “It’s fine. Nevermind.” After Mayweather left the room, he turned to Hypha and said, “I’ve brewed coffee out of trench puddle mud, and this is the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted.” He took another sip. “Want some?”
Hypha sat on the other side of the table. Between them was a pegasus breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, cold-smoked fish on wood boards, and a bowl of exotic fruit placed with great intention at the center of the spread. The smell of the fish made Hypha dizzy again. His first experience with cooked meat hadn’t been a fluke after all. He liked the smell, though he had no interest in finding out if he liked the taste.
“No thanks, sir,” Hypha said.
The general took another sip. “If you want something else, I can have Mayweather whip it up for you. Anything you want.”
Images of lentils and bread danced through Hypha’s mind. The thought made him even more nauseous than the hunger did. Pegasus meals were typically served cold because of the difficulty of maintaining fire at this altitude. What he wouldn’t give for something warm.
He settled on asking for tea instead. It came out iced, with an absurd amount of cream and sugar. Hypha bloated like a bubblefish, but the sugar made it easy to put down and the caffeine quieted his stomach.
“So how is our project going?” Romulus asked.
“We’re trying all sorts of moisture and soil combinations, sir. I want to get an optimal ratio before we throw all our eggs into one basket.”
“Prudent. How many pounds of mushrooms have you harvested so far?”
“Zero, sir.”
Romulus made a little hmm sound into his coffee. “Zero.”
“This is a delicate process. We’re seeing mycelial growth in one plot, but it’ll take some time before the mushrooms themselves start to grow. Then another month or so to resow all the rocks and get a full batch.”
“Okay. That’s fine. We’re under no strict timeline.”
A worrying worm of a thought burrowed through Hypha’s mind. “What about...” All the caffeine and sugar in the world couldn’t keep his stomach from flipping now. “The, uh. The senator. He.” Hypha swallowed a lump in his throat. “He, uh—he—”
“It’s okay,” Romulus cut in. “We don’t have to say his name.”
The spring in Hypha’s gut uncoiled. He sank into his chair, feeling more tired than when he’d just crawled out of bed. “Sorry, sir.”
“It’s okay. The anxiety you’re feeling is a natural response to what you’ve gone through. I see it in my troops sometimes. Stay in the present and keep breathing.”
In. Out. Feel it, receive it, let it go. “Is there a cure?”
“Not that I know of.”
Hypha nodded. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why do you work with him? You’re only making him stronger.”
“Not exactly. Right now, he’s the one making me stronger. I have fame and some flashy treasure, but that can only take me so far. He’s on a different level. He’s manipulated the whole governmental structure so it bends around him. Even if he didn’t have a bit to lend, I’d still have to beg for his help.”
The general’s answer was probably meant to mollify, but all it did was stoke Hypha’s indignation. “If you knew what he did to his own daughter, you wouldn’t be begging for his help.”
“Three daughters.”
Hypha paused. “Three?”
“Yes, three. I told him, if he wanted my loyalty, he’d have to prove he was all in.”
“I don’t—what do you mean?”
Something like a smile crossed the general’s face. “It was a bad miscalculation in hindsight. If I had known he’d be so eager to do it, I would have just asked for more gold.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about value. Everything important needs a buy-in. He could throw around bits until his legs fell off, but bits are cheap to him. I told him I need the ears from one daughter, the eyes from another, and the tongue from a third. That’s how I would know he was committed.”
“Are you serious? That’s horrible.”
“My apologies,” the general scoffed, “I didn’t realize you were a scholar of Derechan history. You don’t understand the way of this place. Senators aren’t chosen by merit. The same connections that put them in the senate can be used to skirt mandatory army service. No living senator has served in the army. I’ve been in the legions since I was six. They haven’t seen what I’ve seen. They don’t understand the ramifications of sending ponies off to battle. They don’t know.” Romulus fell silent for a moment. “But I misjudged what he was capable of. He even pulled out her teeth, too. I didn’t tell him to do that.”
“Maybe not directly.”
Suddenly, all the neutrality vanished from Romulus’s face. He pointed to the stump where his ear used to be. “Don’t you lecture me on ethics.” Hypha fell silent. Romulus continued, “You couldn’t possibly understand the situation I’m in. I’m trying to overthrow a corrupt political system with a fetish for bloodsports. What’s more, I’m doing it in the open. Look outside! They’re still throwing parades for me! I’ve rattled the order. That alone is liable to get me killed.”
“I can’t see outside,” Hypha said. “You won’t let me leave.”
The general deflated like an upturned wineskin. He sank into his chair and picked at a little piece of fish still sitting on his plate.
“It’s strange that for all his extramarital affairs, he’s only ever had daughters.” A soft bone snapped between his teeth as he chewed. “Maybe it’s by design. The gods knew he’d kill his male heirs to secure his power, so they gave him only daughters instead.” He shook his head. “What a mess.”
Hypha’s head was still spinning when he returned to the terrarium. He tried to clear his mind by meditating, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get the general’s words out of his head. Somewhere out there were two other Blues, one with no ears and one with no eyes. More victims of circumstance and politics. He shuddered.
Sometime later, Flannel came in. He froze in the doorway, shook his head, and muttered, “Dangit, that ain’t right.”
Hypha opened his eyes to ask what he was talking about and realized the whole room had tilted to one side. He was floating again. As soon as he noticed, he started to sink.
“So what’d the general say?” Flannel asked.
Hypha forced himself to hover above the rock. He counted to ten, then let himself drop the rest of the way. He rested for a moment, then lifted himself back into the air.
“So?” Flannel said again.
“The meeting went okay.”
“What’d he say?” Flannel’s gaze turned to the test grids. “Was he happy?”
Hypha spun around. Of the one forty eight test plots on the rocks, forty seven were bare. One, a corner plot, more of a concession to Hypha’s desire to extremify the soil than an actual serious contender, was covered with a thin patch of mycelium. The white, weblike substance was the telltale giveaway of mushroom growth. With any luck, they’d see caps by the week’s end.
“I didn’t tell him,” Hypha said.
“You didn’t?” Annoyance crept into Flannel’s voice. “Why?”
Without leaving his lotus position, Hypha leaned his body forward and hovered over to the next rock in the line. Then the third.
“Hello? Hypha? Why didn’t you tell him?”
Hypha made it to a fourth rock. Then a fifth. Then a headache bloomed in the base of his brain, and he set himself down. “It’s not ready.”
“Whaddaya mean it’s not ready? I can see it right there.”
“He’d be more upset if we told him we have something and it dies. We have to be patient.”
Flannel let out a snort of disapproval. He picked up a sponge and a bottle of disinfectant spray and busied himself with disinfecting one of the empty patches of rock in preparation for reseeding.
“I don’t understand something,” Hypha said. Despite the pain in his head, he floated over to the empty rock beside the myceliated plot. “Why would mother sky give these to us now?” He drummed the side of his gnarled front hoof against the floor. The cracks were still there, but new keratin growth was starting to come in. In another year, he might be able to gallop on it normally again. Maybe. “Why now?”
“Maybe cuz we earned it.” The spray bottle wheezed. A little cloud of harsh-smelling mist filled the air. Flannel scrubbed harder. “Maybe the universe realized how much it’s been dumpin’ on us and decided to give us a break.”
“These can’t be for the general.” Hypha sank further into thought. “Couldn’t be.”
“I know you think general Romulus is a bastard an’ all, but he’s been pretty good to me. He’s been good to a lot of ponies, for that matter. Campaignin’ is what it is, and I’m sure he’s made tough calls and got ponies . But sometimes bad ponies can do good things. Doesn’t that at least make ‘em half good?”
Good from bad. A path out. Out of— Hypha emerged from his thoughts like a buoy erupting from the surface of the water. “It’s not for him, Flannel. It’s for you!”
All the anger in Flannel’s eyes turned to thinly-veiled panic. “Me? Nope. These ain’t for me. These are for the general.”
Hypha’s hover turned to full-on flight. “Romulus already gave me thirty pounds of the mushrooms he stole from the monasteries. These—” He gestured wildly at the grow plots. “These are for you.”
“That’s stupid. We were explicitly told—”
“No, you’re not listening. He told us to grow them. But mother sky doesn’t just grow for whoever asks. She only gives herself to ponies who deserve it.” Deserve. This was different than Hypha giving out mushrooms. He had accepted the possibility of being wrong when he initiated the others. This was different. This was given directly from the source. The impossible was sprouting from a clod of dirt suspended in a cloud. Life had a funny way of throwing impossible situations into his lap as of late.
“I don’t know about deserve,” Flannel said. “I think it’s growing cuz I’m a good farmer.”
“You’re a great farmer.” It’s never too late. He grabbed Flannel’s hoof. “But you could be so much more. This is a sign.”
Flannel pulled away. “No it’s not. It’s not.”
“Please believe me. You were meant to be here.”
“Stop it. Seriously.” Flannel’s face was red. “I’m here because the general told me to be here. I’m not like you. Not like that.”
Hypha opened his mouth, and when he spoke it was the voice of elder Cumulus. “But you could be.” He looked over his shoulder, and no one was there. The rush intensified. He had to keep going. “You said it yourself. They look down on you. Here’s your chance to rise above it.”
“I’m serious. Stop it.” Flannel looked like he was about to bolt. His eyes darted around Hypha like dragonflies. “I ain’t good for nothing. Find somepony else.”
“There’s nopony else.”
“Then find someone. I’m not—” He wrenched himself away. “I ain’t whatever you think I am. I ain’t nothing.”
Hypha looked him in the eye. He saw fear, a heart struggling to beat against layers of hate built up like plaque. He saw Walik in his cell. Red and Blue in the mist. Himself on the mountain. He was Flannel.
Hypha said, “You could do so much good.” He held out his hoof to Flannel, in which he held a single mother sky mushroom.
Flannel considered the mushroom for a long time. Then he pulled out his sponge and went back to scrubbing.