Turned out the prince had a small townhouse on Tribeca Parkway in downtown, and Brown rushed ahead to ensure everything was in order. Firefall quipped she'd bet it was to ensure yesterday's riding partner had left.
I said, "Yet, no scandals?"
"Are you planning on visiting The Inquisition to write a tell-all?"
"Maybe?"
She looked unconvinced. "He invited you. Being discreet doesn't mean he's not randy."
Works for me. I shrugged, grinning.
As Singe unlocked the door, I asked Blueblood coquettishly, "Are you inviting me up to see your impressionist paintings?"
He blinked, clearly confused.
I tried, "Etchings...?
"Something exotic to attract a naïve filly into your inner sanctum?" So you can have your way with her?
I put two hooves on his flank and pushed him toward the open door. "It worked the last time I asked a stallion. He'd actually had six different full-sized reproductions from Hay Stacks by Mérens!†" Expectedly, gratefully, distractingly, my future fight coach had turned out to be gentlecolt about other things that night...
Firefall flew past us inside with a "Wait!" dragging my mane in her wake. An infuriated Tan dashed after, yelling a word to add to my dictionary of pony invective.
He said jauntily, "Here's to hoping you'll have a good impression."
I groaned, then realized his bodyguards and mine were inside. We stood outside. Alone.
You read that right.
Alone.
They called the one-room wide four-story tall homes toy townhouses. Manicured hedges or skyscraper cypress separated pocket-sized yards with a lawn that couldn't feed a goat's kid. High-priced, they packed the row houses in, five blocks east of Castle Way Blvd and four blocks north of Alicorn Way. Ancient trees grew in the winding parkway. Heavy branches sported a dense canopy of rustling autumn-colored leaves, throwing flitting shadows from the street lamps they obstructed. The nice quiet secluded street provided too many places to hide in and ambush from.
I shuddered.
Hooves pressing his buttocks, I pushed until he clopped to the stairs. He brushed my nose with his tail as he turned around.
"Shoes," he said, when I made to step past onto the stairs into the living area. He glanced at the carpeted white stairway as he stepped into fluffy white slippers.
I grumbled, dropping my brass with clanks on the black-veined white marble vestibule tile. The insert in my left rear hoof rolled out like an oblong bit. His eyes followed until it flopped over.
"My frog goes numb. Were I to get a stone in my shoe I could bleed to death without realizing it. Only needing an orthotic is a pretty good result considering they replaced the entire postern bone."
"The whole thing?"
"After an assassination attempt I foiled. Who knew bones shatter so easily when you're thrown across a room?"
"I'd never have known."
"Had physical therapy. Months. Citron knows. Sunset, too—I'm living with her. Nopony else yet in Canterlot. Consider yourself privileged. You're learning more about me than most ponies." I followed him.
"Interesting story?"
"You auditioning to be my biographer? Gonna write The Runaway Bodyguard?"
"Something more interesting."
"Yeah. Right." I laughed.
This floor proved to be a business-like conference room, done in carved mahogany set off by red velvet cushions upon a white carpet. Wait— The thick threads were cut and combed upright so it looked like close-cropped albino grass. I rubbed a frog across the shag pile, one that could still feel reliably. I couldn't decide if it tickled or caressed. Nice.
I didn't see more because a thump and a bang echoed from upstairs, followed by furniture sliding to strike a wall accompanied by a sizzle of magic. I jumped as it jangled my high-strung nerves like all the wrong keys of a piano struck simultaneously.
Blueblood jerked into motion, hitting the first steps of the next flight of stairs. "What happened?" he yelled. He turned to me, stating, "Mudflats can be graceless."
Five seconds passed, my limit and I stomped forward to throw the prince out of the way when somepony, Tan by the sound of him, called, "It's nothing—"
Singe added loudly, "It's a bug! We stomped it. We knocked over the icebox."
"Everything's inside now," Brown (Mudflats?) added helpfully.
I...
I didn't like that.
The prince chuckled, sounding embarrassed. "Desert Shield has a cockroach phobia."
I blinked. Why would the prince, this arrogant stallion particularly, apologize for his servants? Or point out he had cockroaches! I got teleport spinning, though I could only guess about the layout of the next two levels, attic, and possibly the widows-walk terrace these houses had. I called, "Firefall?"
I looked right, startled when the prince touched my shoulder with his. His horn glowed. With few lights on, his magic looked faintly greenish.
Two heartbeats. Three. I looked into Blueblood's blue eyes, shook my head, and kissed the wish predicate of Teleport with my guessed vectors.
Sparkles whooshed from my horn like a pyrotechnic; his touch had thrown off my mass calculation. I heard, "Incompetents!" probably from an attic space.
Yep. That could be nopony other than Firefall.
"High-strung much?" asked the prince, sliding me in his magic out to near the center of the room.
"Me, definitely. In the last 48 hours, I was caught in a firefight between the constabulary and a crime boss, then had to beat your aunt away when she wouldn't take no for an answer." I inhaled deeply and, suddenly wrung out, plopped into a thickly upholstered chair. "Twice!"
"Can I get you a seltzer? Something stronger?"
I stuck my tongue out slightly, working to keep a smirk off my face. Trying to get me drunk was a good sign. "A fruity aperitif?"
"I can manage that."
He opened a cabinet with a hundred colored and oddly shaped bottles, with crystal glasses that likely matched the palace pattern.
He said, "A demi-hoof, no more."
"Whatever makes you happy—"
I suppressed a gleeful squirm.
"—Sour plum, bitter orange, apricot—"
"I like apricot!" It brought back a fond memory of a train ride and a more innocent time. I smiled at him, thanking him silently. He got a look not unlike that which had worried me seeing him exit the park—which led to the hug...
I decided that was him reacting to me when I wore my emotions visible for all to see. Getting a cutie mark, acknowledging friendship existed, liking somepony— I was acting weird right now. No better way to say it.
"Follow me," he said, trailing a cordial glass with a golden orange syrup past me in his now properly light-blue aura. "It's where I'm going to impress you."
"So you say." I swiped for the glass but he scooted it out of reach, upstairs, where I heard it clink on an unseen glass-topped table.
I found a study. He swished up magic pebble torchiere lamps, adding to a lantern that lit the stair to the attic level. I saw overstuffed sofas that would be wonderful to lay on, bookshelves lined with tomes, tables with knickknacks, and a low conversation table with pillows strewn around it. My little drink glowed amber in a spotlight. Antiqued brass tastefully accented everything with a masculine flare.
Desert Shield and Mudflats stood in a dark alcove to a further room, startling me when they moved. Singe pranced down from the attic service level, looking pleased. She crossed the landing to continue downstairs, but stopped strategically blocking the way down.
I noticed.
I noticed I stood outnumbered four-to-one, so I lifted my drink in my magic to have a cognate spell spun up while Force queued itself—I instinctively went for that one because that was the one that I freed myself with when I learned how to fight. Notwithstanding, liquor splashed in your eyes reputedly stung.
The prince told Singe, "That's enough for tonight."
The pink unicorn replied, "Your Royal Highness, we agreed—"
"No. You are mistaken." He touched a hoof to his heart. "I can take care of what's necessary." He turned to the earth ponies. "That means you, too." He glared, and pointed with his nose to the stairs.
I told his guard, "I promised Singe I wouldn't kill the fellow. Honest. He's more of a love bug than I'd thought."
Singe sighed. "I've wrapped up the other matter."
The prince said, "I'll wrap up this one."
"Do that," she said rather imperiously, waiting for the earth ponies to scoot past her before she descended.
I asked her, "Where's Firefall?"
"She left off the terrace," she said and was gone.
I whispered Firefall's last word, "Incompetents," and sipped the drink, which instantly sent amazingly complex apricot vapors up my nose. "Singe can act business-like when she wants to. I'm going to do you a favor by training them."
He laughed worriedly.
I sipped from the glass and smiled, letting good associations filter back. I noticed the photos and trotted over.
All were in plain black frames with no mat. It caught my eye that some were photographs of paintings, none of which were Celestia, but one made me think of her. The horn. Pike-like, with eight turns, set in a pink blaze. He wasn't as tall as her, judging by the alabaster desk he stood by and the crystal ball upon it, but proportionally he had the same physique as the princess, which made him look spindly despite defined musculature. His mane and tail were lime green, with streaks of blue and black. Oddly, his fur shared the same sunflower-yellow cast as Blueblood's blond mane and tail, but it was long and bristly enough that the painter had to work the strokes to keep him looking stately and not unkempt. Black wire glasses magnified brown eyes, making him look severe rather than scholarly.
I looked from the picture, to the prince who gave a wan smile from behind me, to the picture again.
"Everypony has parents," he stated, which made me think of my father, maybe alive maybe dead, sharing the same green-streaked purple mane I had. He added, as if sensing my emotions, "Even if they're no longer around."
"Who is that?"
"The Prince of Summer, Archmage Daze."
While it might be his father, it couldn't be Celestia's brother. Nopony other than Celestia had been cursed to live a thousand years in the expectation she'd see everything she'd worked for fail and die. She and I did share something: having lived with having lost everypony we ever knew. A gentle touch of a hoof pressed me left toward the next picture before my mind wandered down a path it would be difficult for me to climb back from.
I shook myself, then glanced at images of stallions and mares obviously in the peerage, one ribbon cutting ceremony with Blueblood genuinely smiling, and a few of him visiting vaguely familiar landmarks anypony of my supposed breeding ought recognize. I didn't. Geography, other than knowing every street in a city I had to work in, was not one of my better subjects. None of the images were captured in the northeast, in any case—
Except one.
I paused on a young mare with a swaddled infant in a lacy pink pram. The streaky red hair of the foal caught my eye, then the darker similar mane of her otherwise palomino mother or governess. I decided mother, recognizing first the carousel in the background of what proved to be an actual photograph, then second realizing this was a scene from Horseshoe Bay near where I was brought up.
I'd visited that carousel, which boasted chariots pulled by carved and brightly painted pegasi and griffons, with snarling dragons you could perch on, and a magically flaming phoenix who held a carriage in its claws that every foal wanted to ride. I recognized the mare's resemblance to Lady Horseshoe Bay, Widow Dowager Duchess Calm Seas. I had likely entertained her at least once at Sire's Hollow—and forgot doing so.
I remembered the Lady's warning, delivered by Moon Dancer: "Celestia's nephew can be surprising and it would behoof you to learn why." The why part was inscrutable; the surprising part seemed true enough.
I said, "I will have to visit there again." Unvoiced, I was asking, Who's that?
"All the prince's memories are precious. That's..."
Into a pause that lengthened uncomfortably, I said, "The Flying Horses Carousel. Near where I was born. I was brought up in Sire's Hollow in the piedmont that's a day's gallop from that beach. I went on an outing at the beginning of each season. I got to ride that once. I even rode the Phoenix Carriage. Though I tried for the brass ring and missed it, I remember crackle and blaze of the cold fire. It me want to learn more magic. I guess I do have a few happy memories hidden in the darkness." I tapped my head.
"No wonder your emotions spiked, looking at that picture."
I turned to him, looking into his earnest blue eyes. On impulse, I shimmied, writhing to the left in a short approximation of our dance earlier.
He mirrored it to the right, causing me to shiver with remembered delight. I pointed out, "We seem to be particularly in-tune tonight."
"I am good at reading emotions."
"Which is what makes you good at your job? Or at bridling the fillies—"
"Ms. Starlight!" he huffed, looking hurt, slightly insulted.
"Sorry." I looked away. "I'm not the most trusting pony."
"I understand. Everything you do strikes me here." He tapped a hoof to his heart. "I want to learn everything about you, to understand enough to become you. You fascinate me."
I fascinate him? "You know how to say the right things," and how to make my heart speed in anticipation.
"I work at it."
"But you're not a good kisser—"
"80% grade isn't good?"
I blinked at him. "Uh, above average?" Did he remember my every word?
"I can do much better," he insisted. "I am very good at learning. Teach me. I'll lay a wager that I can achieve a 100% under your tutelage."
"You are a brazen arrogant son of a dragon, Your Royal Highness. What do you get should you win?"
"Anything you want."
"That's... what?" My heart skipped. "Okay, you sneaky colt. What do I get if I win?"
He surged forward, kissing me before I could react. Not that I planned on running. Quite the opposite.
Ohhh! Good student! My lips tingled, then the rest of me. Were four legs enough to keep a pony standing? Each thing I demonstrated, he mirrored, then tuned it rapidly into something that took my breath away. Conceding he'd won the wager only by my actions, I pushed him toward an overstuffed sofa, but he led me by the lips to an adjacent more practical room.
He wasn't bluffing when he said I could teach him. I learned more about myself than I'd ever thought I'd learn, because he had an uncanny ability to sense what I preferred, even when I tried something different or guessed it might be fun.
He earned that 100% grade.
As far as the wager went, we both won.
†A Mérens is a type of French horse, so Clod Mérens from Prance is a ponyfication of Claude Monet from France, who painted the famous, on topic, Hay Stacks series. From The Runaway Bodyguard, Starlight is a fan of impressionist paintings because, like her, what you see from a distance is not what you see up close.