//------------------------------// // 16. Arthouse // Story: Banishment Decree // by Neon Czolgosz //------------------------------// Getting into the upper levels of Van Hay’s Gallery is a piece of piss. It’s not surprising, art thieves are hacks who steal the closest thing to the door and wait until the next day’s newspaper tells them how much it was worth. A griffon in a boilersuit with a toolbag on one side of her saddle and half a toilet on the other doesn’t get a second glance. I needed to get onto the roof, and that was trickier. An estimated twenty-six million bits worth of art in this place, and the one decent lock is to maintenance access on the roof. It takes me half an hour to get through that door, ten minutes trying to pick the lock, nineteen minutes talking to an old security guard about hoofball, and one minute getting him to unlock the door for me. He seems alright. Hope he knows when to duck. Any building in Fillydelphia with more than four stories has a thaum relay on the roof. Too much unicorn traffic in an unvented building and you’ll get magical discoloration and crystal buildup in the plaster from residual magic. Too many walls and rooms without a pole, and stuff like radios and projectors and fire alarms will stop working. Thaum relays are useful things. I get into the maintenance shed on the roof and hook up a walkie-talkie to it. The rest is simple trig and transmission codes. I say, “Dash, pick up,” and tap a few buttons. That message will loop until somebird picks up the receiver at the other end. It doesn’t take long to get a response. “Gilda? Where the hay are you, mare? We were about to send Trix and Pinkie out to your safehouse.” I breathe a sigh of relief. “I’m fine, RD, but I need help and quick. I’ve been roped into Griffon Intelligence business and I need you to get to Van Hay’s Gallery on the Upper West Side. I need my number four bag, Trixie will know where it is, and a half-litre pain gas bomb. Meet me at the mares bathroom on the third floor of the gallery. Oh, and don’t bring Trixie, they know I’m working with her. You got all that?” There’s a pause and a scratching sound. “...Just written it down now. Pain gas, bag four, mares bathroom third floor Van Hay’s, no Trixie. You okay, Gilda? Do me and Pinkie need to bust some skulls to get you outta there?” “I’m cool, yo. I just need the equipment, fast. I’ll fill you in when I get here.” “Okay. Okay, I get you. Just one thing.” “Yeah?” “Stay safe, dweeb.” “Yeah.” * * * I slap an ‘Out of Order’ sign on the bathroom door, then slip inside one of the stalls and wait. I feel like my brain is sweeping through rapids at a mile a minute. Everything about Weams screams ‘do not trust me under any circumstances!’ but ironically, I do trust Goodflank here. If Goodflank thinks Weams is Griffon Intelligence, Weams is probably Griffon Intelligence. Still, everything Weams did stinks. High-pressure sales, no-info jobs, getting acquianted with my files—he’s not recruiting me, he’s prodding me. He wants to see where my weak spots are, what I can be bullied into doing, what motivates me. Don’t know why he needs that much leverage if he can plausibly promise my banishment decree rescinded. Maybe he thinks even I’ll balk at the work he’s got for me, and needs a stick to match the carrot. Maybe he’s just a micromanaging control freak, the kinda guy who’d make factory workers clock out to take a piss. Either way, I don’t think he’ll be getting a ‘No. 1 Boss!’ mug for his desk any time soon. Even without all that, he’d still be four pints of sleaze in a two-pint bedpan. I mean, Chingis, he’s a pony, an Equestrian, working for Griffon Intelligence. I could get hating your own country so much that you spy for her enemies, but spying for her allies? He’s either more corrupt than me or a total headcase. That griffon he was with—Ronald? Roald?—he’s the first to check out. I might have to work through Dash, but if he was banished and now isn’t, I can confirm that, get all the facts, and see what stands after the next tide of bullshit from Weams. Four hours to prepare for a job, fuck, and he thinks I’m going to use a bomb he just gave me? Honestly, that bit must be a test, he can’t even think I’d do that. I might as well go freebasing paint thinner for all the good that would do me. The bathroom door opens on hinges so smooth that the only noise is from the air pushing inwards. I know it’s Dash, but I wait until there are three, slow knocks on the stall door, then a pause, then two quick taps. I breathe a sigh of relief and open the door. “Figured you’d still use that knock, Moneyshot.” “Trevor you fuck!” My old not-quite-dead squadmate is stood in front of me, not so much as a singed eyebrow from blowing up that factory. He nearly got me killed, then got me beaten half to death, and now he’s got the sheer brass to not even look smug about it. “Gilda, you need to listen to me. For the good of the Kingdoms and for your own safety, you must leave.” I sigh. “Look, I know I’m a spy and all and so this is pretty much all par for the course, but can I just go one hour without being asked to swallow a bunch of cryptic horseshit? If you could tell me how the Kingdoms are in danger and why I need to leave and when you turned into a brain injured one-bird demolitions team, well, that would be just great.” “There will be a trade here, soon. An old knife, from the Kingdoms, once old junk. It must remain old junk, and kept far away from those who can understand it. Those who can understand it must not be allowed to pursue it at any cost.” “...You’re messing with me now, ain’t you?” He glares at me. At least he’s not having fun either. “It is a knife once touched by Zephyrous and Young Zephyr and it bears their strange signatures.” I pause. I don’t know if I believe him yet, but anything involving the Four Heroes needs a little caution. “Right. And I suppose it’s a new superweapon that’ll doom the whole world if we don’t bring it home?” “Nothing so drastic. With the right insight, it’s a map. A map to places left best unexplored.” His expression hardens. “It’s also a symbol. If this knife can be traded in the open by scum and pawed at by twisted minds, so can other items of interest. Everypony involved in this trade will leave or lose their lives. Perhaps after four or five similar trades, ponies will understand the message.” I sigh. “Look, even if I felt like helping you after you screwed me over at the factory, I can’t. This guy Weams—” “—Might very well be working for Griffon Intelligence, but lacks the knowledge, resources and will to handle an item like this. He must not possess it either.” I wave him off and shake my head. “Alright, alright. Look, Trev, before you do anything crazy, you need to see the bomb that Weams gave me.” I take the bag off my saddle, unzip it, and slide it along the ground to him. He peers inside. “A pain gas bomb. I take it—” I sock him just above the eye. It glances upwards and he only grunts in shock, but he’s not ready for the cross to the beak I follow with. His legs turn to jelly a split-second before I slam through a stall partition. He recovers, tries to reach over and grab a clump of feathers to take my wings out—shitty military claw-on-claw training coming back—but he’s already done. I underhook one of his fores and start pummelling his liver with my free claw. He slumps to the ground, retching, before I even feel the stinging in my secondaries. I take a knife out and press it to his throat, pressing hard enough to get a hint of red on the tip. “The only reason you’re not dead right now is cause I don’t have time to hide your carcass,” I growl, “Get outta here. I see you again on a job, and I’ll fuckin’ slot you.” I grab him by the neck, haul him up, and push him towards the door. He turns back to look at me, and coughs before he speaks. “You’re making a mistake, Gilda. I pray to Zephyrous you make it out in once piece.” The door swings silently, and he’s gone. My tail is shaking. I zone out for a minute or at least I think I do because the next thing I realize there’s a pony knocking at the door. Three slow knocks, pause, two taps. I open the door, this time keeping the knife in easy reach. “G?” It’s Dash. Four Winds, it’s Dash. “Quick, get inside,” I whisper. She slips through the door and looks at the wrecked bathroom. “Whoa. You do this?” “No. Uh, yeah, actually. Doesn’t matter. You’ve got the stuff?” Rainbow Dash nods. “Number four bag and a pain gas bomb. Gilda, what happened? You went to go check out a safehouse and then went totally dark. Trixie was about to freak.” I fill her in. Puddinghead, Weams, unbanishment, the job, and Trevor. She frowns. “Huh. You don’t know this Weams guy at all, then?” “I knew he ran with the Macaronis. Only heard he was Griffon Intelligence in the last few hours.” “I’ll be honest with you, G: he does not sound like a trustworthy pony.” I laugh. “No, not really. I ain’t using any tools he gave me, that’s for sure. I need you to take the gas-mask and bomb he gave me, somewhere that isn’t a hideout, and have Pinks and Twilight take a look at it. If they’re both full of cyanide and tracking crystals, I’d like to know.” She gathers up the stuff into her own saddle, nodding. “I gotcha. Hey, you want me to stick around and give you a second set of hooves for the job?” I shake my head. “I can’t risk drawing more attention. There is something, though.” “Name it.” “Stick around the neighborhood. If everything turns to midden, bail me out before the cops get me, or worse.” “Got it,” she says, a glint in her eyes. “There’s a walkie-talkie in the bag, the other’s in my saddle. I’ll be at the tapas bar down the block. If things go alligator-shaped, hit me up. Hey.” She looks straight at me and puts a hoof out. I clasp it tight in a claw and shake. “Good luck,” she finishes. I grin. “I don’t even need it.” * * * You find yourself wanting strange things as a spy. You’d like it if ponies had worse peripheral vision. It’d be great if your appetite didn’t turn into a bottomless pit on stakeouts. And you wish that ponies would clean out ceiling subspace more often. Seriously, I’m crawling through an inch of dust. It’s like the aftermath of a lich orgy. I’m above a reception area adjacent to the meeting room, screwing in and glueing on pitons and supports into the maze of metal beams and concrete. Fibreboard ceiling tiles aren’t exactly made to support a full-grown griffon’s bodyweight, so moving through the ceiling space is slow going. If I need to get out quick I’ll either a) make more noise than a grenade in a drumkit or b) make more noise than a grenade in a drumkit and then fall through the ceiling. ‘Course, ‘getting out quick’ is a pretty high priority when you’re setting up a pain gas bomb, so I’ve got some preparations to make. A few lines of rope running through the ceiling subspace will let me haul ass outta here as soon as the countdown starts. The job’s almost done. The rope and pulleys are running through into meeting room, through the reception area, and into my exit point, a locked cleaning cupboard. I pull the last knot tight a second before three ponies walk into the room below. “I don’t trust these mooks,” says a voice like cigar ash and gym sweat. “Ain’t got a lick of self-preservation between ‘em. Ponies like that, they’s guaranteed to do somethin’ stupid. Ballpoint, am I right?” “Huh.” “Settle down, wiseguys.” I recognise the voice. It’s that Macaroni lunatic, Nicker Cavallo, and her two cronies. “You both know the plan if things go south, so quit tawkin’ so loud. I personally guarantee that this place is bugged-up tighter than a changeling bordello. If you’re gonna talk, talk about lunch.” I hear clips snapping loose, clingfilm peeling and paper rustling, followed by the sounds of ponies eating. “‘Ey, this mook packed cannoli for lunch!” says the rough voice, “They’re the real deal too, from Gnocci’s place. I almost feel bad for the guy.” Nicker snorts. “If he didn’t want two legs broken, he shoulda just hoofed his lunchbox over. ‘Sides, there’s too many construction workers in Filly as it is.” “Huh.” I start to think. If Nicker Cavallo is cubsitting for this deal, then it can’t be important for the whole Macaroni family. She dropped the ball guarding the book of names, so her higher-ups wouldn’t be eager to send her out to fuck up another important deal. Either Nicker sorted this deal herself, or a splinter of the family where she still has a lot of clout came up with it. That lines up with what Weams said about dealings between Trotsky’s lot and the Macaronis—the Macaroni leadership wouldn’t piss on Trotsky if she was on fire. Nicker must be running with a splinter group. Still don’t have a clue what they’re trading. Probably art, but ponies blur the line between ‘magical artifacts of terrifying power’ and ‘pretty pictures and sculptures’ because they’re all fucking silly in the head. Also too, at a 3000-bit suit and two-personal-assistants-per-pony place like the Van Hay’s Gallery meeting rooms, there are other goodies that might be on the auction block. Company books, stolen prototypes, maybe just enough high-quality salts to keep the next company picnic swinging along nicely. If anything Trevor said can be trusted—right now he’s almost as trustworthy as that shithole Weams—then the goods are probably somewhere in the ‘dangerous magic’ area. Who knows, though? Trevor went into the next world and returned with a sack full of crazy. Hoofsteps go clippering on tile floors underneath me. There’s more ponies in the room, all talking and moving. I look at my watch. I just lost ten minutes. Four Winds, I need to get my head on straight. I scramble along the rope lines into the next room, safely hidden in the ceiling above. There’s a hole in one of the tiles, barely bigger than a pea, but big enough for my needs. I press my eye against it and look down at the room below. Eleven ponies. Nicker Cavallo and her two friends. The seller for the Macaronis, wearing half-moon spectacles on his brow and clutching a briefcase tight. Four Kurierzy goons, with dark brown coats under pure white blazers. The buyer, bouncing on her hooftips, salts still dripping off her nostrils. The gallery curator and her personal assistant. There’s a table. Nopony sits. The seller recognises the buyer. They shake hooves, hug, chat animatedly. I’m half-expecting the buyer to pull out a snuffbox and a salts-spoon to share the fun. The seller pushes his glasses up his nose, puts the briefcase on the table, and snaps it open. The buyer bounces with delight, blocking my view for a second. She finally moves and I take a look. It’s a knife. Score one point to Trevor. I think it’s carved warthulk tusk, ivory with that weird metallic sheen from all the rocks they eat. The handle wrapped with leather and bound with two silver bands. I can’t see any obvious magic, but hey, there’s a reason I’m a banished spy and not a scientist at Condorcorum University. I glance over the room. Knacker is lifting his head, and slapping a hoof against his neck at the Kurierzy. If I know my Neighples slang, that is not a friendly gesture. Two of the Kurierzy are holding back a third from getting up and starting something. I look around for the curator and her assistant, but they’ve already gone. Smart move. The meeting room has three walls and one glass sliding door/wall combo to the reception area. No outside windows. The back wall and right-of-the-door wall are solid, pace-long, cinderblock-filled things. The left-of-the-door wall was added later, and is just paper stretched over a fibreboard frame. Twenty bits says that’s the thieve’s entry point. Nopony is stabbing anypony yet, so the guards start to relax. The meeting is underway, it’s on schedule, the thief should be in place. If they’re not, that’s Weams’ damn problem. Time for the party favor. I slip the mask on. The smell of old rubber and month-old bedding almost makes me nostalgic. I’m glad I’ve got my own mask. Even if Weams hadn’t filled the one he’d given me with nerve gas and bad intentions, my mask fits like a glove and the goggles don’t mist up. Would Weams use the toothpaste trick on a mask he’s loaning to his assets? Like fuck would he. I reach up and slip one of the lenses over the goggles. Darkvision activates. Setting off a pain gas bomb by accident won’t kill me directly, but the ponies in the room below damn well would. Smart bombers like to see what they’re doing. The bomb itself is simple. It’s on a remote detonator with two arming switches, one on the bomb and one on the remote. The tricky part is delivery, since its a gas bomb and not an actual blow-stuff-up bomb. If I just set it off, it’ll make lots of noise and fill the subceiling with pain gas. Not something I want, believe me. The gas needs to be released into the room below, preferably at face level. Step one is rope, tied around a hook on top of the gas canisters at one end and tied to a steel support pole at the other. If the ceiling tile below the bomb disappeared, the bomb would drop down on the rope and stop at face height. Step two is making that ceiling tile disappear. Duct tape and det-cord are my friends here. There’s a small detonator inside the gas bomb, just enough to make the gas release quickly. I slip a length of cord into it, then stick it around the edges of the ceiling tile with the tape. Bomb goes off, ceiling tile gets blasted, gas pours out directly into the faces, eyes and noses of everypony in the room below. Weapon, delivery system, and targeting device all in one. Cheese would be proud. I only catch snippets of the conversations below as I work. The buyer gushes, apologises for her low offer. Seller consoles her, worth more in the hooves of a pony who can appreciate it, not simply pay for it. Stony silence from the Kurierzy. Nicker Cavallo talking about the extra guards on the floors above and below. Zephyrous, glad I missed them. I’m a second away from flicking the ‘arm’ switch on the bomb when something catches my eye. A light, dull in the green glow of the darkvision. I flick the lens away. It’s a blinking red light, a meter away. A bomb. A damned bomb. A fiery, explodey, kill-everything-in-fifty-paces-and-bring-the-room-down-around-them bomb. With a big, unsubtle, blinking red light. Nobird puts a damn light on their bomb except in bad movies and cheap pulps. Generally speaking, the bomb goes off, and then everybody knows about it. I put the darkvision lens back in place and crawl over. It’s big enough to bring down the room, and has five or six strands of det-cord leading in all directions. There’s no timer, and no antenna. There’s only a note on the top. I know who its from before I read it. “Gilda, please leave. You have ninety seconds to leave the kill radius. There are three bombs and two detonators. You do not have time to disarm them so please do not try, for both of our sakes. Yours in Zephyrous, Trevor.” Well fuck. I flick down a second lens on the gas mask. Everything with bound magic now glows slightly. I can see the lightbulbs in the room below, the tips of the unicorns’ horns, and det-cord burning through my vision like sparklers on New Year’s Eve. Seven lengths of det-cord. Three are false trails and lead nowhere. Two lead to the same detonator. One splits off and leads to two other bombs. The last splits off and leads to both detonators. I grab one of Pinkie’s little freeze-capsules and spray it directly into the charge. I prepare to hate her even more for saving my life again. The bomb shatters. I think they heard a noise below. Doesn’t matter. I grab the det-cords in a claw and yank them away. One bomb down. A minute left, maybe? They’re standing up below, pulling weapons. Time to go. I’m above the reception room before they even start poking at the ceiling. The second bomb is in the maintenance close. I know what Trevor was aiming for. The first bomb in the ceiling above, packed with shrapnel, hopefully killing everypony in the room outright. Second bomb filled with incendiaries near the closest exit, stops any survivors getting out, stops anybird coming in to rescue them. The third bomb will be structural, pure explosives. If anyone survives the first blast and protects themselves from the fire and smoke, the final charge will bring a section of the building down on top of them. Shredded, burned, and crushed. Just like our old field rations. They’re heard me. They’re panicking now, shooting bolts of magic and metal up through the ceiling tiles. They’re not hitting me, but soon one of the unicorns will wise up and fill the room with enough lumens to silhouette my damn skeleton against the concrete floor above me. The buyer’s screams are muffled, as if she’s being dogpiled by her ‘bodyguards’. I set the pain-gas bomb off. Bang, thud, hiss. Lots of screaming. Lots of coughing. Bit of vomiting. Pain-gas is a mixture of capsaicin (the stuff that makes peppers hot), rubbing alcohol, and magical flame retardant. It makes your eyes, nose, throat, tongue and lungs feel like they’re on fire. Nasty stuff. Doesn’t usually kill you. I slip down into the maintenance cupboard. Trevor hid the bomb under the floorboards and disguised the det-cord as another power cable. TGNB and cyoctene. I stop it cold with another of Pinkie’s little miracles. I hear hooves running about in the hallway, crossbows being cocked, adrenaline-rush voices. I toss a pair of smoke grenades out into the hallway and feel around the sides of the wall. Bam, fire alarm. I smash it in. Bells go off. Magical lighting glows along the floor and walls, visible even through law-enforcement-grade smoke. It should give everypony with a lick of sense a fighting chance to get out. Only one more bomb— *crump* Face slams into the ground and I taste blood thick on my tongue as the whole building feels like its shaking. The lights shake and blink and sprinklers spray and wash smoke into my coat. I get up and I sway from side to side or maybe the floor does. Ponies are running past me. Fires, not big ones. Four ponies scramble in the other direction, slicked back mane, sinews and a twisted face, Nicker Cavallo and company dragging the seller to safety. One Kurierzy limps past. Building hasn’t collapsed yet. Probably needed force of other bombs. I stumble into the reception area, grabbing a fire extinguisher, spraying anything that glows. The glass wall to the meeting room is half-shattered, shards on the carpet like ice on a spring lake. Four ponies in the room. Three Kurierzy. Dead, I think. Not many ponies can survive a ballpoint pen shoved three-inches deep in their jugular. Buyer is alive, trying to breathe through a scarf. Bleeding from the nose, eyes swollen shut. Whatever the bomb did, it’s working. The far side of the room looks like it’s melting inwards, and I can feel heat radiating off it. I grab the mare by the scruff of her neck and drag her out into the hallway. There’s a bottle of curative on my belt—it’s milk, caffeine, antihistamines, some magic stuff. I pour it over her face and slap her until she’s standing upright. I tell her to run and slowly, haltingly, she does. There’s another low sound. Something falls on me.