//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10 
// Story: A Shimmering Intellect 
// by DungeonMiner 
//------------------------------//

Newsie wasn’t thrilled to see Night, but she smiled at him, which was almost the same thing. “Well, well, if it isn’t the Royal big shot. He does remember to look out for the little pony.”
“I am supposed to be disguised, you know,” Night said, dressed in his ‘beggar’s best.’ He wore a dirt-gray shawl that once proudly waved blue and hung limply from his shoulders. A crushed felt hat sat awkwardly on his head, hiding his horn, and a thick, grease-stained coat hid the build of his body. Nopony would recognize him in these clothes, mostly because he was a beggar on the streets of Manehatten, and they were practically invisible all their own.
“And you probably would have been fine if you weren’t taking my corner.”
“Oh, don’t be so sour, Miss,” Night said, putting on a voice and everything. “I just need to buy a newspaper to keep warm tonight.”
Newsie rolled her eyes. “Sure.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a fresh set of broadsheets. “You got the coin?”
He did, of course, but she was playing into the role now. He needed to answer and then let her know what he actually needed. “I’ve got one somewhere on me,” he said, patting himself down. “Have you heard of this new gang in town? This Red Hoof? They haven’t been causing you any trouble, have they?” 
“I’m not here to talk, sir. Do you have the money or not?” she asked, reaching into her bag again for a city map. 
“It’s on me somewhere,” Night said. She was dedicating herself to the bit this time around. 
With a frown, she pulled out a thick, black marker and circled an area on the map before folding it in the paper. 
Night finally pulled out a bag of bits—far too many for a beggar to have—and passed it over to the young mare. She handed the newspaper over. 
“Thank you so much, miss.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s good to see you again and all that,” Newsie grumbled. “Now get out of here before you chase off my customers.”
Night tipped the poor, crushed hat and made his way to an alleyway out of sight of the public on the street. Once he knew he was out of the way of prying eyes, and the moment the Spymaster was sure no one was watching him, he pulled the map from the newspaper. 
A bright tourism brochure for a tour met him, highlighting popular locations as stops along this guided tour. Despite the bright colors and commercialism staring him in the face, the map was accurate enough for his work, if a little low in detail. A section of the southeastern coast, a part of the island known for getting griffon trade ships and rough neighborhoods, was circled. All Night would have to cross-reference this circled area with his to-scale city map, and he’d know where to start looking.
He stowed the brochure away and draped the newspaper on his back. With that, he wandered into the back alleys of the Sleepless City and disappeared.


---♦---


The fall air was getting cold, and the temperature dropped quickly. Two beggars sat in an alleyway watching a warehouse by the dock. They clung to their coats and stayed close to the light of their trashcan fire. 
The cold made Night wish he was a pegasus.
“Not exactly how I thought this recon mission would go, sir,” one said to the other.
“How did you think it would go?” The other, Night himself, asked. “And cut out the ‘sir’s. We’re just on the street.”
The first figure was dressed in a long scarf with too many colors and muddled by dirt and grime. “I don’t know, si—” he caught himself and coughed to hide his mistake. “I don’t know. I just knew we would find out how they make their money and where they store it.”
“Exactly,” the second said with a nod.
The first figure, Ardent, pulled his scarf around him and adjusted a ball of crumpled newspaper into his coat. “But I thought we’d do it inside a building, where it’s warm.”
“This building,” Night said, motioning with a nod to the one beside them that had the words’ Talon and Sons Finacial’ written on the front. “Is a shell building for the Griffon embassy. It’s their hideout if they have to abandon the embassy in case of war. If we went there as Inquisitors, we would have caused an international incident.”
“Oh,” Ardent said before glancing behind him. “What about the one that says it’s an orphanage?”
“That one’s actually an orphanage. And I’m not going to show up as a strange stallion that takes up a room in the attic to spy on some criminals across the street. That’s a great way to get a bunch of kids in danger.”
Ardent didn’t respond.
“The good news is,” Night said. “This isn’t a stakeout.”
Ardent’s eyes snapped to the unicorn. “What? We’re not sneaking in there, are we?”
“Not without knowing the exits,” Night said. “We have to make sure we know how we’re getting in and how we’re leaving. After that, we can see if we could figure out the place’s layout with a high-altitude pegasus.”
“And how are we getting a hold of one of them?”
“In the future, you should be able to make a call for one of your colleagues,” Night said. “Which is far more than I ever had, I should point out.”
“Yeah, yeah, old man. You went to school in five feet of snow, going uphill both ways, too.”
“We can hire a pegasus,” Night said. “That’s how I used to do it, but since I’ve got the Spymaster’s authority, I can probably just ask for an out-of-uniform guard to fly over for us. I just need to contact the Princess for the paperwork.” 
“Did you not bring the forms?”
“No. A lot of years of being independent means that sometimes you forget you have an easy answer in your saddlebags.”
“You said it, sir.”
“No, sirs. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Of course not, sir.”
Night glared at the earth pony.
Ardent just smiled.
Night rolled his eyes. “Anyway. We’ll give them another hour, and then we’ll walk the perimeter.”
Ardent nodded.
The hour passed by in an agonizing, frozen eternity. The fall chill bit at them far harsher than it should have, but Night and Ardent endured it quietly. The sea air must have brought in the cold from Griffonia, leaving the city colder than it should have been. Night’s only true comfort was that he wouldn’t need to stay out too long. Just long enough.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and twilight covered the world. Night waited a bit longer until the light started giving way to darkness.
“Alright, let’s go.”
They moved, crossing the street like shadows, and hugged the wall of the warehouse’s shipyard. Night motioned for Ardent to head in one direction while he moved in the other. He moved as quietly as he could manage while keeping up his speed. The first thing he found was the heavy oak doors, wide enough for a pair of wagons to move in abreast. 
He looked at it and instantly knew that the doors were the main entrance, where goods would be loaded and unloaded into the warehouse before heading into the city or the outgoing ships. That was the apparent entrance, but it would also be the most guarded. He had to try and find a side entrance or some other way, both inside and outside, that he could count on. 
He kept moving and found a handful of crates he could climb over, but without a way back out, that would only make the shipyard a trap for Ardent and himself. He’d needed a way out before he even thought about getting in. 
He came to the end of the wall. Only an open ocean before him and a sudden drop into the water. The shipyard’s enclosure ran to the edge and then two feet past it into the water, leaving no room for Night to sneak around or through. 
There was no side entrance. 
Frowning, Night fell back, heading back to his trash fire.
Ardent met back up with him later. “Did you find anything, Ardent?”
“No, sir. You?”
“Just the main entrance. We might need to get that pegasus here faster than I thought.”
“What next?”
Night frowned. “We’ll go. We still need the place’s layout before we think about heading in. We need to talk to the Princess.” 
Ardent nodded, and they both slipped away from the fire and into the city.


---♦---


Night entered the safe house, and Ardent followed behind. Without slowing down, the Spymaster reached into a cabinet and pulled out a jar of emerald fire before pulling out a piece of parchment. “So that you know,” Night said. “All of the safehouses have a supply of dragon fire. Any letter burned by it will be delivered directly to the Princess or me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Taking the paper and the jar to the table, Night got to work writing a letter. It was a standard affair, asking the Princess for a guard to help. He kept it short, sweet, and to the point, before he rolled up the note and threw it into the dragon fire. 
It went up in smoke that flew out the window and toward Canterlot. Night watched it go before he turned to Ardent. “Alright, we should get a response before too long, and when we do—”
The pop of teleportation was the only warning he got. 
High Princess Twilight Sparkle, Keeper of the Skies, The Archmage Ruler, Protector of the Tribes, and Lady of Friendship appeared in the middle of the safehouse, smiling widely and holding the unrolled letter in her magical grasp.
“Did someone ask for help on a little adventure?” she asked, trying to smile even wider than she already was. 
Night blinked. “I asked for a guard to fly over,” he said before looking behind her to Ardent. “You should probably tell him to relax, by the way.”
She followed his gaze to the Inquisitor in training, who stood at perfect attention. “As you were.”
Ardent slowly began to unwind from snapping into place. 
Twilight turned back to him. “You didn’t answer my question, by the way.”
“No, I did. I asked for a guard. I don’t know why—”
“Night,” Twilight said. “You need someone to fly over and get some basic aerial recon. You must do that and ensure your scout doesn’t get noticed and/or shot down. I can do all of that, all myself.”
Night sighed. “Princess, that’s a terrible idea.”
“No, it’s not,” Twilight said. “I can use an invisibility spell, fly over the location, and get you all the information in about as much time as it’ll take to fly there and back.”
“You’re the Princess. We already decided that it’s best if you keep your distance from Inquisitorial work beyond telling us we’ve gone too far. That was the point.”
“And you know that just because I’m the Princess doesn’t mean I stopped being an adventurer.”
Night sighed. 
“Besides,” Twilight said. “You left without talking to me beyond a ‘hey, I’m off to do a job,’ and I feel like I’m owed an explanation.”
Night sighed again.
Twilight stared down at him.
“Fine. So we’re here to—”
“Wait,” Twilight said before turning to Ardent. “I’m going to be taking your Spymaster. We’ll be back, don’t go anywhere.”
“Wait, taking?” Night asked before both of them popped with teleportation again.
Night found himself sitting at a candlelit table set for two. “I know it’s a little bit of a late dinner,” Twilight said in the seat opposite him, “but I think it’s only appropriate.”
Night fidgeted. 
The dinner looked good. Honey-roasted carrots, seared asparagus, a potato salad, and a dish of rice and braised chickpeas sat on the table before him, with a perfectly portioned meal for them and a bottle of rosé to share. 
Looking around, she seemed to set the table in the sunroom, not the main dining room. The food, setting, and placement of everything were specially set up. When did she prepare this? She at least had to get the cooks on this plan.
“I had this ready for a week now,” Twilight said, as though reading his mind, “but every time I brought up the idea, you suggested something else.”
She worded that reasonably softly, but her voice made it clear she was still disappointed. You shot me down every time I asked, she wanted to say. 
Night nodded and poured himself a glass. “It’s very nice,” he said, trying to defuse the situation.
“Nice?” she asked.
Night mentally winced. That was not the right word to use. He fumbled for a bit and used that last defense he had. He ran and changed the subject.
“The Scarlet Hoof has been trying to stand in Gleaming’s horseshoes,” he said. “As far as I can tell, they’re trying to stand where she did and fill the void for some of her success. As far as I know, they don’t know her plan of forging artifacts, which is in our favor, but I need to know for sure.”
The Princess looked at him with eyes that said more of her disappointment than her frown told of her anger, but she motioned for him to continue. 
“We’ve found the Manehatten hideout, and Ardent and I are going to look around and find out how they’re making money and how to stop it. That’s why I needed the guard to fly over. See where the entrances and exits are.”
“I see,” Twilight said. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re avoiding me.”
He’d taken a wrong turn. He needed to escape again. 
“Just been trying to catch up with work.”
“You seemed to have managed well enough to do this on your own.”
She was getting ahead of him again.
“I had to so I could catch up.”
She nodded. “Any other business you want to talk about?”
He hit a dead end. 
“Uh…”
“Then I’d like to talk about what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, trying to climb the walls.
“Night,” she said. “It’s obvious there’s something wrong. You told me that I wasn’t the problem, and that’s fine, but I’m worried about you.”
A spotlight blinded him as it burned into his eyes.
“I’m fine, Twilight. Really.” He didn’t need to see her eyes to know she didn’t buy that. So he gave her a half-truth. “It’s just been a while since I’ve done any groundwork. All the paper-pushing has left me a little restless, is all.”
Twilight stared at him for a moment before relenting. The spotlight turned away, and the dogs he heard barking in the distance quieted. “I get that. I do.”
Night released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. 
“Sometimes the palace gets a little stuffy,” Twilight said. “Going from the freedom of adventuring to responsibility does take time to get used to.”
Night nodded as he felt the pressure release. “It’s true. Being in the castle was…” he trailed off, hoping Twilight would fill in the blank with something better.
She nodded. “Okay. Do you just want to enjoy dinner, then?”
He nodded. “I’d like that.”
Night took a fork and began to eat, chewing quietly as he relaxed. He’d escaped the Princess’s hounds tonight but needed to be careful. Twilight got close tonight, and if she figured him out, more conversations would be in his future.
He’d try to avoid them, of course. She didn’t need to know the issue for her own sake. Twilight had more important things to worry about than…well, himself.
This was his fault, and she didn’t have to worry about it. Night knew where he belonged, and it shouldn’t surprise him that this would happen. 
He’d tried to make it work. Night tried to push forward and create a space for himself, but it didn’t work. 
He ate quietly, appreciating Twilight’s hospitality. When they finished, Twilight teleported him back to Manehatten, and Night slipped quietly into the background as she made her recon plan.