Chapter Nine
Fallout
"Well," Jigsaw observed dryly, once the changeling had departed. "That's not in the least bit disturbing. Do you think she's just messing with you?"
I rolled Chrysalis's note back up and put it in my saddle bag. "I can't be sure, but I think she's telling the truth."
"So, now what?"
"I think returning to Canterlot would be wise."
Jigsaw sputtered for a second before flattening her ears and shouting, "What? Are you crazy? All this way, to just turn around?"
"I don't have the right to risk your life just to satisfy my curiosity."
"Well, it's my curiosity, too!" She snorted and stamped. "Have you forgotten the bunyips and changelings? I've already been in danger!"
I took a few seconds to work out a decision grid in my head. "Column C is the only responsible choice," I muttered.
"You are crazy, Twilight! What the heck are you talking about?"
I levitated a pebble and used it to draw out the grid in the dust at our hooves. "Two rows for the two possible situations: Row One, the ruins are relatively safe. Row Two, the ruins are dangerous, you see? Now, I make three columns to represent three possible courses of action: A, continue on. B, continue using extreme caution. C, return to Canterlot. In each of the six boxes, I put the most pessimistic outcome of the action matched with the situation."
I filled in the boxes:
A, continue B, caution C, return
1 safe safe waste time safe
2 dangerous death high risk safe
"In this case, I've chosen the C column, not because it has the most desirable outcome, but because it eliminates the possibility of the worst. It's the only logical choice to make." I put the pebble down at the top of column C.
"Oh, yes, of course!" Jigsaw still had her ears pinned back and was showing a lot of teeth. "We will just hot-hoof it back to Canterlot and forget about finding the cornucopia and the weapon! Just leave something that is supposed to be able to defeat Princess Celestia in the territory of the changelings! Brilliant, Twilight, just brilliant!"
I was shocked by her sudden anger. I was—well, hurt by it. I was only thinking of her safety and she had misunderstood me, at that. I had to make myself clear. "Uh... not we, Jigsaw, you. You are going back to Canterlot. I can contact Luna and—"
Jigsaw's ears had been nearly wrapped around the back of her head and her lips drawn up in an absolutely feral snarl—and then, suddenly, she was crying. "I'm sorry, Twilight! I'm really, sorry! I didn't want to make you uncomfortable and I wasn't trying to push you into something you didn't want to do. I swear by the sun and moon, I thought you were returning my little signals! I'll sleep outside the library, or... I'll... I'll do whatever you want, just don't send me back, please!"
Did you ever have one of those moments when you realize that you and another pony are talking about two very, very different things? And that you've been seriously misunderstanding one another for quite some time? It's kind of like cantering into an invisible brick wall, isn't it?
"Look," Jigsaw went on as I tried to get my mental hooves under me again. "I can help keep us safe!" She kicked open the bronze door of the building so hard it bounced off the wall before a hinge gave way and it wrenched to a wobbling halt, half-open. Then she leaped into the dark of the entrance way and stomped on the flagstones of the floor. "See? No traps! No danger! I knew there wouldn't be because of the mark on the door frame! You didn't even notice it, did you?"
"Jigsaw, wait..." I began.
"And who's going to document the exploration? Sure, you can describe things well, but you can't manage to draw a half-way decent stick figure! Look at this..." She pulled her own journal out of her bag, flipped it open, and held it out for me to see. The pages held a very detailed pencil drawing of the library rotunda and precise, close-up sketches of the border of suns with the letters that I had decoded below them.
"Stop, stop!" I tried to interrupted her. "It's my fault—"
"I don't care whose fault it is, I just don't want to be sent home!"
I wanted to calmly explain to her exactly how we had come to this misunderstanding, but it seemed the situation called for something more direct. "Alright! You're staying!" I shouted.
For about three breaths, Jigsaw gasped like she had just galloped five miles and then burst out crying again. "Th—thank you, Twi... I mean, Prin... I..."
What could I do? I wrapped my wings around her and made wordless, soothing sounds until she calmed down. "Let me explain something to you," I said, when she had quieted to the point where I thought she would be willing to listen to me. "I am probably less experienced in social subtleties than a mare half my age. Even when I do pick up on 'signals', half the time I convince myself I'm mistaken, and the other half, I'm too paralyzed by indecision to respond correctly. None of this was your fault, and I would be the biggest hypocrite in Equestria if I held any of it against you!"
She shifted as if she wanted to pull away from me, but I held my embrace just a while longer to make a point. "You don't make me uncomfortable at all![1] I don't mind holding you like this, do I? As long as you understand it doesn't mean I'm promising or wanting anything more..."
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[1] Yup, a teensie white lie, there.
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"I'm getting snot all over your chest."
Oh.
I let her slip out from between my wings so we could both get clean cloths and some water from our supplies.
"You said something about a mark on the door frame?" I asked as I wrung out my wet cloth and picked up one to dry myself with.
"Yes," she nodded, blinking and wiping her eyes one last time. "It's a sign used by expeditions to mark areas that have been examined. Two horseshoe shapes touching at the tips of the toes, with hash marks indicating the level of possible interest or significance. An X means some danger and a zig-zag means deadly danger. The library has three hash marks. There are several other symbols, too."
"I've never heard of them," I said.
"Well, it's not like they're official or anything. They're just something that developed in the field, I guess."
I brought our bags into the building and set out things for lunch. It was a bit early, but we would both benefit from a bit of food and some Canterlot First-Aid.[2] Again, I summoned up some watercress sandwiches and a few cinnamon buns for desert. I didn't like to do that often, because it drove my chef nuts when food disappeared from her kitchen, but dried rations were a world away from what anypony would consider comfort food.
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[2] Tea.
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After lunch, Jigsaw and I were just as excruciatingly polite and careful toward one another as we had been that morning, but it felt ever so much better. The Town Hall turned out to be just as safe and uninteresting as Jigsaw had predicted, based on the one-hash-mark sign on the door frame. It may have held interesting documents and bits of art at one time, but it was bare of even furniture by the time we arrived. There were the ever-present carvings of unicorns strutting around, of course, and they were done with quite a bit of artistic merit, Jigsaw assured me, but I'd gotten tired of them after the first few rooms.
As we left the building, Jigsaw got out the map and made a mark next to the building that was a twin to the one carved on its door frame.
"I wonder why the original expedition didn't do that," I observed. "There's one on the library, but none anywhere else I can see."
"That is odd," Jigsaw agreed. "Usually they mark the map at the same time they mark the buildings. It's not like there aren't other marked buildings. Look there." She pointed at the smaller structure beside the one we had just left.
I spotted the mark easily, now that I knew what to look for: two horseshoes, no hash marks. "Even less interesting than the Town Hall, it seems."
Jigsaw tapped the map thoughtfully and said, "Maybe we should just update the map... Walk around looking for survey signs in the most likely areas. Then we could do a more focused search based on better information, tomorrow."
It was a good plan and how we spent the rest of the day. I kept probing the ruins with little bursts of magic while keeping a nearly-completed matrix for a shield at the back of my mind. I wasn't going to let my guard down for a second. If something happened to Jigsaw after I could have sent her home to safety, I'd never forgive myself.
The wind shifted near sunset and brought smoke and ash from the broken mountain drifting into the city. When we got back to the library, in addition to my double shields, I improvised a filtering spell that kept us from having to breathe the stuff.
Jigsaw and I left our bedrolls where they had been the night before and spread out the map between us. We both agreed to start the next day with the long building that had been marked with four hash marks. We both had wanted to chuck the plan and go in right away when we'd found it, but it would have been foolish to do so with only an hour of daylight left.
We finally settled in and pulled the blankets over ourselves. Just before I fell asleep, I thought I heard Jigsaw say, ever so quietly, "Thank you for letting me stay." But I might have imagined it.
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I half-expected a visit from Luna that night, holding forth in archaic Equuish as she tended to do when she was moody or upset, but I didn't even remember my dreams. I awoke to the smell of breakfast cooking.
"Good morning, Twilight," Jigsaw said very cheerfully as I blinked sleep from my eyes and sat up. "The tea is almost brewed. Would you like raisins and cinnamon in your oatmeal?"
Ah. We were Pretending It Never Happened. That was fine with me. That was a game I was good at. "Yes, thank you. And a teaspoon of honey, please."
"The wind must have changed during the night, because the sky is pretty clear. There's about an inch of dust covering everything, though, so it would be wise for us to wrap all the food carefully before you drop the shields or we'll be eating grit for the rest of the trip. Do you want honey in your tea, too?"
I let her chatter away while I got out my hairbrush and wrestled my rat's nests back into some semblance of a mane and tail.
We were both eager to get to the four-hash-mark building, but I was determined to be extra cautious for the rest of the time we were in the city, so we went slowly and I frequently cast detection spells, even on ground we had already covered. If we traveled any faster than a slow walk, we kicked up a lot of dust, anyway.
As we approached the central plaza, a stone fell off a nearby wall. It was probably unbalanced by the weight of the dust that had settled on it during the night, and was finally toppled by the vibrations from our hooffalls. I snapped my head to the side before I even realized what I was doing, and released a blast from my horn. I not only vaporized the stone, but most of the wall behind it. And the one behind that.
"Roadapples, Twilight!" Jigsaw swore as most of the surrounding masonry collapsed with a rumble and I quickly began flapping my wings to keep the cloud of dust off of us.
"Sorry," I muttered. "I guess I'm a little twitchy."
"You think?" Jigsaw caught herself. "I mean... I guess it's better to over-react than... than whatever—"
"Than to freeze up and maybe get killed? Definitely better." I had certainly learned that lesson the hard way. So many ponies considered me to be something special. Certainly more special than I really was. But I knew how close and how many times I had come to being nopony at all. Only the combination of hard work, good friends, and a lot of luck had gotten me through the dangerous times that had come all too often.
I sighed. I was trying to tell myself how hard I'd had it and instead I was getting nostalgic for all the adventures I'd had with my friends. Which was stupid, because there I was having a brand new adventure with a brand new friend. I swear, sometimes my brain has a mind of its own.
"Sorry for snapping at you, Jigsaw," I told her as we got away from the newly ruined part of the ruins. "But I'm going to keep a few spells on a hair-trigger until we get out of this place and you're safe again."
"Mm... no, that's fine, Twilight. Just try not to do that to any priceless artifacts, okay?"
"I'll try," I said solemnly. "But no promises. If a golden chalice has to die to keep you safe, so be it." That got a chuckle out of her.
The long building was one street away from the plaza, but lined up with it, like the spoke of a wheel. The two big, double doors opened outward and were set high enough that we could open them without disturbing the dust in the street. Just to be extra cautious, we stood well back, and I swung them open with my magic.
The building was empty.
Well, not exactly empty. The floor was made of heavy flagstones that stretched to the other end of the building, where there were two more doors identical to the ones we had just come through. There were two deep grooves worn into the flagstones that were spaced just about right to have been made by the wheels of carts or wagons. Halfway down the narrow enclosure was what appeared to be a half-round space set off to the left side.
The walls held the ubiquitous carvings of unicorns as well as a lot of imagery I normally associated with harvest festivals in more arable lands. The real surprise awaited us when we got close enough to see the curved walls of the demi-tower halfway down the length of the structure. There, the decoration was a mosaic, rather than a bas-relief carved from stone. Even to my unappreciative eye, it was a masterpiece. Jigsaw whipped out her journal and immediately began sketching away.
The mosaic depicted a chaotic mass of fruits, grains, and vegetables, pouring from a huge symbol of magic that topped the wall. The colors were intense, even after a millennium.
Jigsaw paused in her drawing and pointed with a hoof. "Look, Twilight! The highlights on the grapes... and the drops of dew on the apples... I think they're diamonds! And the grains of wheat are citrines! And there's more... I think half that mosaic is gemstones!"
She was right. The art was not only a masterwork, it was worth a rather large fortune in materials alone. But more importantly, it was all about one thing: food.
"Jigsaw," I said quietly, as my eyes tracked downward where the depiction of the food flowed. "I think we've found the cornucopia."
Raised above the floor of the building was a carved pedestal about chest-high on me. The face of the pedestal, too, carried a bejeweled mosaic of produce, but its top was plain granite, polished to a mirror smooth surface. And on it, rested—nothing.
"Or... where the cornucopia used to be," Jigsaw said, her book and pencil slipping from her grasp and plopping to the floor.
It wasn't fair! "I bet this never happens to Daring Do," I grumbled.
"Her adventures get edited." Jigsaw sighed. "Welcome to the real world, princess."
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