Love, Sugar, and Sails

by DSNesmith


1. The City of Zyre

The Golden Isles

The docks of Zyre bustled with activity. Ships flying colors from every nation of the world rocked gently in the harbor, their stowed sails a quiet bastion of calm in a sea of movement. The decks and piers were swarming with sailors of every species and nationality, from Equestrian pegasi, to Dromedarian camels, to griffons from the Saladi desert, but by far the most common were the zebras who populated the Golden Isles and nearby southern Zebrica. The chaos was impenetrable to an outsider, but an experienced eye could see methods in the madness—hauled barrels of sugar and rum found their way onto ships, nets full of fish slowly emptied into wheelbarrows to be trundled off to the city’s innumerable carnivore-serving restaurants, and weary dock workers groaned under enormous crates filled with gold and silk from distant continents, brought across the sea to the world’s greatest trading city. It all moved with purpose, each merchant and ship owner driving their workers to meet their deadlines.

Personally, Tyria thought it was a lost cause. Nothing in this city ran on time.

She adjusted the front of her beige Equestrian Navy fatigues, feeling a nervous twinge at the size of the crowds today. The docks were always busy, but never more so than at noon on a Saturday. Ambassador Milliden couldn’t have picked a more dangerous time for this meeting if he’d tried; she was going to have a difficult time even keeping track of him, let alone do her duties as a bodyguard.

At least he’s easy to spot, she reflected, glancing over her shoulder at the earth pony ambassador, who looked sour as ever in his bright, canary-yellow robes. Tyria had seen a lot of ambassadorial uniforms in her three years on assignment to the Equestrian embassy here in Zyre, and she still considered the Equestrian one to be the worst. It was impossible to look dignified when you were dressed like a block of cheese.

She pressed on through the sea of stripes, nudging aside zebras with polite insistence. Most spared only a glance at her, but Tyria still felt flashes of self-consciousness. A light blue earth pony with a long brown mane stuck out like a firecracker in this mass of black and white equines. All were welcome in Zyre, but that didn’t mean she belonged here.

Ambassador Milliden grunted irritably behind her. “Do you see the ship yet, Ensign Metrel?”

Tyria craned her head above the crowd of zebras, most of whom were shorter than an average pony. “The Albatross, yes? I think that’s it over there on the left, with the Equestrian flag. The one between the two camel ships. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes to reach it.”

“Let’s pick up the pace,” said Milliden, brusquely shoving past her into the press of zebras. “It’s important I see Captain Zahakis as soon as possible.”

Tyria followed, suppressing annoyance. Milliden hadn’t told her what this meeting was about, and frankly she hadn’t cared enough to pry. Their working relationship was unpleasant enough already. The ambassador had a short fuse and a hot temper, and being stuck as his bodyguard on so many occasions left Tyria as the most frequent target of his ire. She spent most of her days at the embassy finding ways to avoid him.

They reached the Albatross’s pier at last, pausing at the bottom of the ramp as a pair of zebras carted down a crate labeled EQUESTRIAN WHEAT GRAIN 115KG. Tyria felt an unexpected surge of homesickness. It had been a long, long time since she’d been home to her family’s little manor in the Whitetail province.

Scarcely had the zebras left the ramp when Milliden raced up. Tyria followed, her eyes flicking between the dozens of sailors on the deck, scanning for potential threats. It was doubtful that anything would go wrong on an Equestrian-licensed trading vessel, but that was no excuse for slacking off in her duties.

The captain, a zebra wearing a cream-colored jacket with a timepiece pinned to it, was deep in discussion with one of his crew as they approached. The two zebras spoke in quick, muttered zebrillic to each other, the captain gesturing sharply. The second zebra, wearing only a green shemagh around his neck, nodded and turned to head for the steps leading belowdecks to the cargo hold.

Tyria’s eyes narrowed, focusing on the zebra’s garment. Green cloth had taken on a new meaning in recent times. A regional group of pirates had banded together over the last year, calling themselves the “Pit Vipers”. Their members identified themselves with green clothing matching their flag, a crude pictogram of a serpent winding through an equine skull. No one knew where they were based, except that it had to be somewhere in the islands. No one knew how they had become outfitted well enough to attack Equestrian, Gryphan, even Zyran ships, with seeming impunity. No one knew much of anything about them, it seemed, except the name of their enigmatic leader “Viridian”. Whether a he or she, whether a pony, zebra, or antelope, they were as elusive as their hiding place. Some thought Viridian was a myth, spread by the pirates to make them seem more organized than they were.

Tyria had a friend in the city watch, Zanaya, who had talked about little else in the past few months. She eyed the olive-clad zebra suspiciously as he descended into the hold. Not everyone with a bit of green clothing was a pirate, of course, but it was hard to believe that the sailor didn’t know what he looked like.

Captain Zahakis cleared his throat, drawing Tyria’s attention. “Greetings, Ambassador Milliden.”

“Captain.” Milliden nodded. “How was your voyage?” His concern sounded polite and disinterested.

“No pirates, if that’s what you’re asking.” Zahakis checked his timepiece. “But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. When did this ridiculous inspection business begin? I’ve never been stopped at the harbor entrance by navy ships before.”

Tyria shrugged. “The Marquis is trying to clamp down on the Pit Vipers. They’ve been getting into the city with distressing ease.”

“Quiet, Metrel,” snapped Milliden, cowing her, but Zahakis barked an angry laugh.

“A likely story,” he said. “Marquis Zahira’s just using them as an excuse to rummage through our cargo. It’s insulting. Since when are our manifests untrustworthy?”

Tyria resisted the urge to snicker as the captain and ambassador exchanged complaints about the heightened security. Zyre’s black market was legendary. If there was a single merchant captain in this port who wasn’t up to his ears in it somehow, she’d eat her horseshoes. But Zyre’s ruling Marquis had never seemed to care about small time smugglers, as long as they didn’t get bold enough to start eating into the sugar trade that was Zyre’s lifeblood.

Sugarcane was the most valuable crop in the entire world, worth more in its unprocessed forms pound-for-pound than tobacco, cotton, and even gold ore. Due to an incredibly fortunate—for Zyre, at any rate—quirk of geography, none of the major continents had arable land around the equator, the only place where sugarcane thrived. The Golden Isles, with their fertile soil and tropical climate, gave its ruling city a near monopoly on the production and sale of sugar and its innumerable byproducts, all of which were in perpetually high demand around the world. Combined with the Isles’ location near the center of the vast Ceracen Ocean and they became a natural trade nexus for the entire western hemisphere.

This nexus was owned by Zyre, the largest permanent settlement in the Isles, a former Gryphan slave city that had revolted and gained its freedom in the dying days of the old empire. Now ruled by the zebras whose ancestors had built the city in chains, Zyre had risen to economic supremacy, squeezing out all rivals to dominate the entire Ceracen. Her navy was unmatched, her political reach unparalleled, her wealth unimaginable. She was not omnipotent, however, as the Vipers had been consistently proving for months.

As Zahakis and Milliden’s conversation continued on to current events in Equestria, Tyria turned her head again, eyeing the open cargo hold as pulleys hauled up barrels of fine red wine from Trottingham. Zahakis would be replacing all of it with crates upon crates of raw sugar to bring back northeast to sell in Equestria’s Delta City and Grypha’s Port Talshan. A tempting target for the pirates, no doubt. Was that green-clothed zebra an inside stallion of some sort?

Zahakis was saying something about the wine. “Six more barrels than last month. We’ve got to be close to the quota now.”

“Nearly. But not yet.” Milliden glanced aside at Tyria. “Let’s go to your cabin to discuss it in detail.”

“As you wish.” Zahakis gestured with a hoof, and the two walked toward the ship’s stern. Tyria trailed behind, coming to a halt at the cabin door. Zahakis entered immediately, but Milliden paused and held up a hoof. “Wait outside, Ensign.”

Hiding frustration, Tyria nodded. She didn’t particularly care about what they had to say to each other, but she wished Milliden wouldn’t treat her like a dog being told to sit. She took up a position beside the door as the ambassador closed it behind him. Muffled voices began speaking on the other side.

She watched the zebras wrestle the wine barrels from the lift onto the deck. One of them was different than the others, splashed with red paint and a sigil she couldn’t make out from her position. It must have been a particularly expensive vintage, perhaps destined for the Marquis herself in her manor atop the hill rising in the center of the city.

Tyria looked out at the horizon, visible between the two rising cliffs on either side of the harbor entrance. The water glittered in the midday sun, tiny ships bobbing in the distance like little white dots. She wished she had a canvas and an easel.

Sighing, she looked back at the paintbrush emblazoned on her flank. She hadn’t painted anything in a week or so. It was getting harder and harder to find the energy, though she never felt more alive than when she was bringing the jungles and cityscapes of Karran Island to life. If only she hadn’t listened to her father—

She closed her eyes and lowered her head. No good going down that road of what-ifs again. He was right, anyway, she’d never have made it as an artist. The navy was a respectable career, something she could support herself with, something her family could be proud of… the familiar demands couched as encouragements sounded bitter in her thoughts. Too late to wonder if he’d been wrong. Too late to change. She was stuck here, now, half a world away from home and babysitting the most pompous and bad-tempered noblepony in Zyre.

Her depressing reverie was broken by movement on the pier below. She peered curiously down at a pair of zebras dressed in the deep cerulean blue of the Zyran Navy, who reached the bottom of the ramp and began stomping up. Perhaps the inspectors Zahakis complained about had decided his ship needed another pass.

Trouble was brewing. Tyria’s muscles tensed, and she bit her lip. The navy sailors pulled aside one of the zebras on deck and began speaking to him. Behind them, the zebra with the green scarf was coming up the steps from the hold. He spotted the navy zebras first, and froze. Tyria paused, wondering if she should get the ambassador off the ship.

One of the navy sailors saw him and shouted. The green-clad zebra dashed back down into the hold. The navy zebras shoved the crewman they’d been speaking to aside and raced after him. Yells echoed from below, and a shattering crash as some item of cargo was knocked over.

Tyria cautiously approached the open hold, looking down over the edge. The navy zebras had their quarry pinned to the ground, and were attempting to fasten a pair of manacles onto his forelegs. The zebra was resisting fiercely, swearing at them both in zebrillic. Tyria watched uneasily, wary of involving herself in a Zyran arrest. The zebras seemed to have it under control without her assistance.

The suspected pirate suddenly slipped a hoof free, punching one of his assailants in the face. The navy sailor fell back, and the green-clad zebra jerked up to his hooves, beating his forelegs against the other. He whipped around and ran for the stairs.

Tyria galloped toward the top of the steps to stop him, but the zebra below was not heading up. He vanished deeper into the hold. Tyria paused for a moment, wondering if there was some secret hatch below, but the zebra reappeared with a burning lantern hanging from a metal ring clutched in his mouth. He swung the lantern at the heap of cargo still in the bay, shattering it and raining flaming oil all over the rope and wood.

Tyria’s eyebrows shot up in panic. “Fire!” she shouted, echoed by dozens of alarmed zebras in the hold.

“Lai! Lai!” screamed one of the ponies on deck, putting a hoof to his mouth, screaming the zebrillic word for fire toward the harbor.

Below, the flames were spreading rapidly. The wood had been sitting in the sunlight all morning, and the dry timber was burning swiftly. One of the wine barrels suddenly erupted in a fiery blast, raining cinders across the deck. More screams rang out below.

Tyria ran back for the cabin, her heart pounding. She slammed the cabin door repeatedly. “Ambassador! Ambassador!”

Milliden ripped the door open, anger and alarm on his face. “What’s going on? What was that sound?”

“There’s a fire belowdecks,” said Tyria, out of breath. “We have to get off the ship. Right now.”

The ambassador drew his robes together at the neck. “A fire? How?”

“We can discuss it later but now we need to go,” she said, pulling him out of the cabin.

Milliden gave an angry yelp. “Metrel! Release me at once!”

Ahead, the green-scarved zebra ran down the ramp and pressed his hooves to the side of it. The plank, not actually attached to the ship deck, slid easily sideways and fell down into the water with a splash. The zebra ran back up the pier, past the panicking sailors down below. Captain Zahakis ran past the Equestrians, shouting orders to his crew in zebrillic.

Tyria hauled Milliden over toward the railing, ignoring his protests. They needed to get some distance from this ship before the rest of that wine went up. Zebras on the deck were pulling up buckets of seawater from the bay and pouring it down into the hold, but the frightened yells from below told her that it wasn’t working.

Reaching the starboard rail, Tyria looked at Milliden, who was spluttering with indignation. “We’ve got to jump, ambassador.”

“Jump?! Are you mad? Let go of me, you—”

Tyria snarled and embraced him with both forelegs. She heaved backward, hauling the ambassador over the railing and down into the water below, where he landed in an undignified flop. She braced her forelegs and dived after him, plunging into the warm waters of the harbor.

She came back up, taking a gulp of air and blinking the stinging seawater out of her eyes. Milliden was floundering beside her, spitting curses at her. Tyria grabbed his robes in her mouth and started paddling toward the shore.

“Ensign Metrel! I’ll have your job for this!” Milliden swatted at her with a furious hoof. “Just because you’re the daughter of some puffed-up war hero—”

He was cut off by a massive roar. Tyria’s head whipped around to take in the sight of a massive column of flame bursting up from the deck of the Albatross. A deafening noise blasted over them, and the wood shattered and splintered, sending dozens of zebras flying into the water. Captain Zahakis vanished in the flaming pillar, followed soon after by the sides of his ship as they exploded outward. Tyria squinted into the blinding flare, breathless.

The fire died down, leaving a massive cloud of choking smoke in its wake. The sails above burned merrily as the ship began listing to port, sinking into the water. The mass of dock workers on shore had paused, gaping at the scene.

Tyria reached the shore, dragging the stunned-silent ambassador behind her into the soft sand. She pulled him under the framework of the docks, taking a moment to catch her breath, casting a glance back at the flaming ruin of the Albatross.

“Sisters preserve us… what… what happened?” asked Milliden, shakily.

The few zebras who’d gotten off the ship alive were swimming away in all directions. Tyria felt a rumble in the ground as the ship’s hull came to rest at the bottom of the shallows. One of the sails’ ropes finished burning through, sending the flaming sail fluttering down, an incendiary tombstone for the smouldering wreck.

“We’ve got to get you back to the embassy,” breathed Tyria. She pulled the ambassador to his feet.

“Where’s Zahakis? Did he make it out?”

“He’s gone,” said Tyria, swallowing as she remembered that all-consuming blast of flame. “I’ve never seen wine explode like that before. Every barrel in that hold must have gone up at once.”

Milliden was staring, wide-eyed, at the scuttled hunk of wood and smoke. “Yes… the wine…” He sounded half in shock.

Tyria shook him lightly, looking up toward the pier above. Firefighting teams were rushing up to the wreck with buckets of water. A unicorn wearing the silver circlet of the Zyran City Watch around his ankle was heading up the effort, his horn glowing as he brought waves of water washing up against the sides of the Albatross.

Tyria scanned the crowd, looking for an opening to get through and back toward the embassy district. The ambassador was still limp in her forelegs. “Hey, snap out of it. We’d better get out of here before—”

Her voice caught in her throat. The zebra with the green scarf was standing at the edge of the crowd, watching the fire crews rush past. The two Zyran Navy zebras hadn’t made it out of the ship in time, they were probably among those bodies floating in the water. She might be the only one who knew that this zebra was responsible for the fire.

“Ambassador, wait here.” Tyria began moving under the pier toward the steps leading up to the street above.

Milliden finally regained his focus. “Wait a minute, you can’t just leave me—”

But leave him she did. Tyria trotted up the steps, merging with the crowd. She weaved through the slack-jawed onlookers, her eyes focused on the green-scarfed zebra as she approached from behind. No hoofcuffs, no rope, no real way to restrain him… walking in without a plan wasn’t a smart idea, but she couldn’t just let him get away. If she got close enough to grab him, maybe she could hold him down until the City Watch diverted from the ship to help her capture the perpetrator.

She bumped into a griffon holding a basket of crabs, spilling several to the ground. The griffon snarled “Hey! Watch it, you oaf!”

The pirate heard the commotion and looked back over his shoulder. His eyes locked with Tyria’s and they both froze. The griffon muttered to himself, picking up one of his fallen crabs. “Damn Equestrians, think they can walk all over us now…”

Tyria held her breath for a moment. The zebra moved first. He broke and ran, shoving his way through the crowd. Tyria pursued, but she had to fight through the angry zebras who’d already been pushed aside once. “Stop him!” she shouted. “He’s a pirate! He set the fire! Stop him!”

Confusion reigned. Her cries for aid went unheeded as the crowd milled around in chaos, still torn between the spectacle of the tower of smoke and the evolving commotion in the street. Tyria forced her way through the press of Zyrans, trying to keep her eyes on that green scarf.

The zebra had nearly reached the edge of the main crowd, a point where the mass of Zyrans thinned enough that he would be able to run deeper into the city. Tyria wasn’t going to make it to him in time. She looked left and right, hoping for something she could use to bypass the crowd, and then she saw the ladder. A warehouse on the left side of the street was under repairs, though all the construction workers had stopped to watch the show in the harbor. A steep ladder was leaning against the side of the building, whose roof was low enough to jump down from without breaking a leg.

Tyria pushed through, reaching the ladder in moments. She raced up the rungs, ignoring the belated protests of the workers, galloping along the roof. Below her, the pirate was emerging from the crowd, finally free of the crushing mass of Zyrans. He paused for one crucial moment, looking behind to see if she was still following him.

She hit him from above. Leaping down from the roof, Tyria collided with the pirate, and both of them rolled down into the dirt. She struggled to get a grip on him, taking a flailing hoof to the chest, feeling the wind woosh from her lungs. Tyria wrapped a hoof in the green shemagh, yanking it toward herself. The zebra gagged, fumbling with the knot.

“Stop,” she gasped, “resisting arrest!”

The zebra jerked his head back, taking her in the face with a violent headbutt. Tyria reeled backward, her nose bloodied, and toppled to the ground. The green scarf came with her, knot undone, as the zebra staggered to his hooves. Before Tyria could regain her footing, the pirate had taken off once again.

She stood woozily, seeing double. The striped coats of a hundred zebras filled her vision. Tyria tried to focus, but without the green scarf singling him out, the pirate was hopelessly lost in the endless zebras filling the Zyran streets.

Tyria spat blood onto the ground, holding her snout. It didn’t feel broken, just bruised. Small mercies. She looked down at the green cloth still wrapped around her hoof. Not much to go on. Still, she’d bring it to Zanaya at the Watch headquarters. Maybe her inquisitive friend could make something of it. After she’d brought Milliden back to the embassy, of course.

Milliden! Tyria swore quietly. The ambassador wasn’t going to forget her throwing him overboard and then abandoning him at the scene of a crime. If she got back quickly enough she might still be able to extract him from the docks before they got pulled in for questioning, which would be sure to piss in his coffee for the next month. And Captain Petalbloom was going to be furious with her as well.

Tyria gave a weary sigh. Best to get it over with. She pushed the green cloth into her breast pocket, slowly making her way back into the crowd to find the ambassador.