The morning air at the Golden Stirrup Air-Yacht Club was cold and sweet, the warmth of the pastry stalls and coffee stands drowned out even as the smell of sugar and donuts reached us. Thick, dimly-lit clouds rested on the horizon looking like swirls of ice-cream hanging in the sky. Above us a hundred giant dirigibles hung in the sky, like jelly-beans dropped by the gods.
What I’m trying to say is that ponies are all candy-asses and that I have not had a decent steak sandwich in two years.
Goldenrose popped back into view carrying two cardboard cups of coffee in his magic field. I took a sip. I’ve lived in Equestria for ten years and I’m still not used to normal milk in my coffee. I know it’s the real thing and all, but it tastes too damn thin. Condensed milk is the way to go. I like coffee that you can paint your walls with.
I took another sip. Not bad, for pony coffee. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure,” he replied. “Our tickets have been stamped and the Summer Breeze will soon come in to dock. We should make our way to the western landing pad. It pays to be on time; there are rather stiff penalties for overstaying your docking slot.”
“Huh. Can’t put ‘airship fines’ on the expense report?”
“Fines? Oh heavens, nothing so plebeian. If you accrue too many penalty points, you have to volunteer your craft for public tours. Do you know that common ponies will actually bring their foals to that sort of thing? Horrible creatures...”
“Right.”
There were four landing pads that loomed above us like giant chanterelle mushrooms, the ‘stems’ as thick as four houses strapped together and a hundred meters high, with a hoofball-pitch sized landing zone spreading out high on top. The northern pad was thickest of all, and had a kind of novelty shopping center housed within the stem. The western pad was a few dozen meters shorter than the others. One elevator trip later, and we were at the top.
We stepped out onto the landing zone just as the Summer Breeze was touching down. Classic design, an early Equestrian military communications craft long-since converted into a luxury cruiser. The balloon had been painted like a starry evening, and the house-sized gondola’s white frame was covered in baroque, golden patterning.
“Not bad,” I said. “Our boss likes to travel in style?”
“Actually, it’s mine. A birthday present from an aunt.”
“Wow. Some aunt.”
“Indeed.”
The boarding ramp came down and two unicorn soldiers—no uniforms, but you can tell—came out. They saluted Goldenrose and let us on board. Goldenrose led me straight down a corridor into a bar-type room, with plush seats and a big window view over the rest of the yacht club.
“I’m going to report in, I’ll be back shortly,” he said. “Make yourself at home, there’s food in the minibar.”
He left, and I took a look around. The bar top was pretty well-worn, and the rack of spirits and liqueurs behind it were partially drained, and had spares tucked away in a cabinet below. This room had seen a lot of use. Goldenrose—or whoever it was who really owned this airship—was a real playcolt, apparently.
I looked through the minibar. Two cases of blueberry yoghurt—yick. Lots of fruit salads. Lots of smoothies. A random block of parmesan. A—wait, a prawn cocktail? Must have some pegasi on board. I started to dig in when Goldenrose came in. He grabbed a smoothie from the fridge and sat down next to me.
“Sorry for the wait, we’ve been rather keen to get our hooves on the documents you and I recovered last night,” he said. “By the by, exactly how familiar are you with this operation of ours? I understand that the Princess left to meet you yesterday, and apparently you didn’t have time for a full induction...”
“Hah, you could say that. We didn’t even sort out what she’s paying me, though she helped me out of a tight spot, so I figure I can give her a few hours grace on that. As for the mission, blah blah Equestria in crisis blah stop civil war blah blah special skills blah etcetera. That about right?”
Goldenrose smiled. “Yes, that’s about the long and short of it. Hmm.” He paused, and looked halfway-thoughtful for a second. “Well, since I’ve seen your personnel file, I might as well begin by dispensing with this disguise of mine.” His horn shimmered and his coat and mane faded, leaving only the hints of magic-triggered dye remaining. “You see, my real name is—”
“Blueblood, you puffed-up, micturating turd!” The speaker was a turquoise pegasus with a golden lion’s mane and pure equicide written over her face. She strode into the room and got an inch from Goldenrose—or Blueblood’s?—face.
He didn’t look too comfortable. “Ah, ahem, Lighting Dust. I’m sure you’ve seen the records we retrieved—”
The pegasus’s face twisted into a freakishly cheerful grin. “Oh, you brought back some documents? That’s cool, y’know I heard about those. I heard you went into the office with the griffon and ‘helped’ steal them, just like I’d explicitly ordered you not to, you ceruse-shellacked husk. Now, tell me why you decided to ignore that order and don’t try and lie to me.”
“W-well, there were some complications with regards to locating the correct set of papers, and, uh, I only improvised as a last—”
“Improvised? Improvised? Blueblood, you princely scoop of dock-cheese, if you improvise your way around another order of mine ever again, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to improvise you into a filing machine by balling them up your precious documents and stuffing them down your throat,” she said, miming the action, “then I’m going to sort through them by shoving a hoof up your rump and wiggling it around. And then, every time I see a document I don’t like the look of—which will be all of them—I’ll make you cough up another by punching you in the sheath with my other hoof! Do you understand where I’m coming from?”
“Um—”
“Get out of my sight,” she spat. Gold— Blueblood scurried off, and the pegasus suddenly noticed me. “Hey!”
“Uh,” I said. “Hey.”
Her rage-rictus faded, and she gave me an easy grin. “Sorry about that mess. Our mutual colleague, he don’t really get the intricacies of this business yet, y’know? Name’s Lightning Dust. You’re Gilda, right?”
“The one and only.”
“You were friends with Rainbow Dash, huh? She told me about you.”
I tensed up. “Yeah. Friends, I guess. What she say?”
“She said you were a thieving bully with ‘attachment issues’,” said Lightning Dust, laughing. “Hay, ‘attachment issues,’ she actually said that, can you believe it? Anypony she whines about is cool in my books.”
I broke into a grin. “Yeah. She’s got her good points, but...”
“It’s balanced out by the stick up her ass,” she said. “Anyway, I hear you got thrown straight in the deep end last night. Walk with me, I’ll fill you in.”
Lightning Dust turned around and walked into the hallway. I followed behind. I could see where the airship was being converted from a luxury pleasure boat into something leaner and meaner. Plush carpet stripped away and rubber mats in their place. Fire extinguishers everywhere. Cases full of crossbow bolts, boarding bats, and smokers placed in easy reach. Lightning Dust glanced over her shoulder as she talked.
“We all got recruited the same way. Purple princess shows up, save Equestria, big reward at the end, yada yada. She might check in but she’s not running the nitty-gritty, that’s Illusionist’s job. Oh, we have call signs, always use them off the ship. Basic OPSEC. You’re Prowler, I’m Soldier, that moron Blueblood is Charmer. You’ll meet Illusionist, Tinker, and Caster in a minute.”
We went down a cramped set of stairs, into another corridor, and through a steel door. It led to a well-lit room with a huge round table in the middle, covered in a giant map of Equestria. The map had dozens of tiny plastic figures on top, as well as a bunch of papers. In one corner of the room there was an analytical engine, and in another a strange metal machine I’d never seen before. There were more tables at the side of the room, buried in papers, and every inch of wall surface had a corkboard on it, pinned thick with maps, papers, photos, financial returns, and a maze of red string connecting it all.
Four ponies were already in the room. There were two unicorns I didn’t know feeding documents into the analytical engine. Blueblood was reading a file. The other—
“Trixie?” I said. “You’re working here too?”
Lightning Dust laughed and slapped me on the back. “Working here? That’s Illusionist. She’s the one who recommended you.”
A year back or so I was bouncing at the Yin-Yang Bar in Fillydelphia—they wanted a cook but wussed out when they found out I was a griffon—and this unicorn called Trixie was tending bar. I wouldn’t say I liked her, but I respected her for two reasons: first, she was the only pony there who was surlier than me, and second, she was the only pony there stealing more than I was. Buybacks, pickpocketing, counterfeit change, topping up 90-bit bottles of Ascot Reserve with 9-bit bottles of Ole Crow Sippin’ Whisky, fake cloakroom scams, you name it and she had a hoof in it. She was in a real hurry to get bits. We worked together on a few hustles, and in the end held a rigged poker game together on pay day with the entire bar crew and a few choice customers. We both skipped town that night a few large richer. She was alright. Kinda tight-wound, but she had her head screwed on straight.
Also, Fillydelphia is a dump. I hope this war gets rolling just long enough to burn the place down.
Trixie raised her head from the documents she was reading and smiled at me. That was weird. She looked pretty much the same as last I’d seen her—blue coat, silver mane hanging down her neck and withers, silly purple cape—but I’d never really seen her smile before. Most of the time she looked like she wanted to stab whoever she was talking to right in the mouth, and the closest she’d come to smiling was a poison smirk.
“Gilda,” she said. “It’s so good to have you join our magnificent team!”
“Nice to see you too, Trix. Didn’t think I’d see you again after Fillydelphia.”
She laughed, and it was definitely not her usual laugh. Way less world-domination in there. “You almost didn’t, but my fortunes as of late have been matched only by my tremendous talents. How have things been for you?”
I grinned. “I’m an ex-pat griffon in Equestria. Money’s great and food’s terrible. Same as ever.” I looked over the round table. “So what do you do here? You’re ‘Illusionist,’ right?”
“You are correct. Trixie’s roles here are many and multifaceted. Aside from my unparalleled—” there was a cough from one of the other two unicorns that she totally ignored “—magical skills, I handle strategic planning, resource requisition, and assign tasks. I’m also the one who liaises with Doctor Princess Twilight Sparkle to ensure our plans have approval and to receive any additional orders.”
It took me a second to read between the lines. “...She put you in charge.”
Trixie’s smirk could melt steel. “Yes.”
“Has she met you?”
Something crept over that smirk—embarrassment?—and she coughed. “More than once. Our dear leader gave Trixie this role because I, ahem, have the most hooves-on experience with hostile takeovers of entire territories...”
I raised a brow. “You never told me that story.”
“It hadn’t happened yet,” she huffed. “I might deign to tell you later, after we have both been fed an intimidating quantity of gin. Anyway, enough of this! Ponies and griffons, gather round, we have much to discuss!”
I took a seat at the round table. Blueblood, Lightning Dust, and the two unicorns did the same. I twigged that the two unicorns were twins—a pair of stallions with off-yellow coats and white-and-red manes, both wearing striped waistcoats. One had an ugly mustache.
Trixie said, “Flim, Flam, our new arrival is Gilda, call sign Prowler, and the final member of our team. Gilda, the stallion on the left is Flim,” she pointed to the clean-shaven one, “call sign Caster, our other magic specialist. His handsome brother is Flam, call sign Tinker, our resident technomancer.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Gilda,” said the mustachioed one, “Isn’t it just, brother?”
“I’m elated!” said the unmustachioed one.
“Excited!”
“Indubitably delighted!”
Trixie coughed, and continued. “You’ve already met Lightning Dust and Prince Blueblood, so—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, “he’s actually Prince Blueblood? The Prince-Prince, from Canterlot? Not like, his brother or something?”
“Yes, I am Polaris Blueblood, Prince of Canterlot,” he said, looking miffed. “No, I am not my brother Procyon. He has no role in this endeavor, and every mare, stallion and foal in Equestria should sleep easier for that one fact.”
I looked at him. “How come you’re part of this? Shouldn’t you be out there grabbing more land for your demesne like every other noble?”
He was about to respond, but Lightning Dust cut in. “Because somepony didn’t get a demesne,” she cackled.
“The demesne of Canterlot belongs jointly to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, sad to say,” said Flim, not looking sad at all.
“When the demesnes were passed around, poor Blueblood the elder was passed over like chopped endives at Hearth’s Warming!” said Flam.
“Yes, the tragedy of it,” said Blueblood, sardonically. “Nevertheless, I still volunteered to be part of this operation. Some of it is boredom, some of it is a surely-misplaced sense of noblesse-oblige, but for the most part I’ve simply decided that if I can’t have a demesne and a pet war to go along with it, I’ll be damned to Tartarus if any of my chums at the country club can.” He took out a silver cigar case, pulled a slim cigar out, and silently offered it around the table before clipping and lighting it. “As delightful as this digression is, we doubtless have more important things to discuss.”
Trixie nodded. She seemed to glow a little every time the attention turned back to her. Her horn lit up and the papers and mess disappeared from the table, leaving only the giant map and the plastic markers. She said, “As you all know, Equestria stands on the brink of civil war. Every noble in control of a demesne now has the legal right to invade and conquer any neighboring territories. These conflicts might not begin with bloodshed, but we can’t expect them to continue cleanly.
Her horn lit up, and a hundred wriggling, snake-like lines popped up all over the map of Equestria. “There are one-hundred and fifteen demesnes in Equestria. Of these, forty-one have no military or economic capacity—” several lined-off areas glowed red, and faded into larger areas “—and can already be said to be absorbed into larger demesnes. This leaves seventy-four ‘true’ demesnes.
A couple dozen areas flashed blue. “Of the remaining seventy-one demesnes, between twenty and thirty either lack critical resources and must rely on their neighbors, or lack the economic and military strength of neighboring demesnes. We predict that they will form alliances with stronger nobles almost immediately, both to avoid conquest and to join in the possible spoils.
Nine areas flashed red. “Nine demesnes are immediate, serious threats. Either their economic power, their military might, or their proximity to critical locations mean they could snowball, expanding their area of conquest before anypony could stop them. If any one of these demesnes get lucky and don’t get embroiled in a stalemate with another party, they could essentially split Equestria in half. With sufficient territory they could become independent states who negotiate with the Royal Pony Sisters, not answer to them.
“There are dozens of potentially critical locations—the Satin Trail, the Californeigh Reservoirs, Site Redacted to name a few—that could cause chaos if captured, but we don’t know enough about the nobles and their forces to see who could take advantage yet. Prowler and Charmer retrieved a set of financial and legal information for many of them. Flam, has the analytical engine finished cross-referencing them with the information the Princess gave us?”
A ‘ding’ rang out from across the room, and Flam said, “It has now, my dear!” A crystal popped out of the analytical engine. Flam levitated it across the room, and plugged it into a hole at the base of the map table.
The table shimmered, and the images rose off it. Each demesne now had a hovering set of words and numbers above it. They listed the noble houses and heads of houses, the total wealth of each demesne, the current military capacity, lists of probabilities, closest known critical locations, and a dozen other bits of trivia.
All over the map, more information popped up. Weather patterns, magic lines, points of interest. Shipping lines over the Southern Seas. Wind currents over the Western Ocean. Towns I’d never heard of over the Giant’s Tears Lakes to the west, just before Californeigh and Neighvada and Las Pegasus. Thick, dense text over Baltimare, Manehattan and Fillydelphia to the east, Trottingham and Hoofington to the south, Stalliongrad, Highfrench and the Moon River Delta to the north. The boxes of text were even color coded: the closer to grey each hovering box was, the less reliable the information.
There were a lot of grey boxes.
“As I’m sure you can all see, there are some hinky bits with our current map,” said Flam.
“What my brother is trying to say is, it’s a hot mess,” said Flim.
“Not perhaps the nicest way of putting it, brother, but—”
“—unfortunately—”
“—correct. It seems that our previous information was far too simple. Now it looks like half of all demesnes could be serious, immediate, threatening and all that. And that’s before we get into who is friends with who.”
“We’re better off than you think in that regard,” said Blueblood. “Give me an hour with this map and I can figure out half of the who’s who problems. Give me ten minutes at a party in Canterlot and I’ll figure out the rest. My noble peers will be dying to spill their guts to anypony who has the class to know what they’re talking about but demesnes to be a threat. I’m a budding generalissimo’s dream confidant.”
Lightning Dust shook her head and muttered darkly. “It’s a strategist’s worst nightmare. Even if Celestia and Luna roused the Canterlot Guard and conscripted every mare and stallion in Canterlot, they could maybe take a third of Equestria before the other two-thirds split off.”
“We’re here to make that unnecessary,” said Trixie. “If we stop the nobles from getting their war on immediately, they can be dealt with one at a time until Celestia and Luna cut away enough of the legalities to stop the war outright. Our plan stays the same: First, cut off funding for as many nobles as possible to stop them from raising armies. Second, stop well-prepared nobles from deploying their armies through threats and blackmail. Third, cripple and sabotage the forces of any nobles who cannot be dissuaded.”
I waved a claw and said, “Wait, wait, sorry, but this don't make sense. Ever since I heard about the civil war thing, there's something I just don't get about what we're doing.”
“How so?”
“All the sneaking around. I mean, nothing wrong with it but I don’t get why you need it. You’ve got two rulers who are almost gods. They’re monarchs, like, I get that you’ve got a parliament and local councils and a house of lords, but they’re basically running stuff because Celestia and Luna let them. Why not just come on down from the sky in all that golden shiny crap and tell each and every noble that they’re been stripped of their title and that if they try to raise so much as an erection they’ll get punted straight moonwards?” I asked.
“I believe I can answer that,” said Blueblood. “The short answer is that it will cause more chaos and destruction than letting a civil war happen. Do you know what a ‘currency run’ is?”
I looked at him dubiously. “Never did economics. Only did home economics. I flunked it.”
“Well, do you know what a bank run is?”
I wracked my brains for a moment, then snapped my talons. “Yes! Somebird starts a rumor that a bank has no money and is going to close, so everybird wings it over there to take their money out. All the money gets taken out, and now even if they could pay their debts, now they can’t. The bank fails, and everypony betting against the bank gets rich.”
“That’s right. Everypony is convinced that the bank can’t honor their debts, so they rush to grab whatever they can before the whole edifice falls over.”
“Still not getting it, dude. Even if that happened to like, the entire Equestrian Bit, that can’t be as bad as a civil war.”
Blueblood smiled wanly. “Bits aren’t the only currency that my aunts have issued, I’m afraid. For example, you’re from the Kingdoms, correct?”
“Yeah, Griffhala.”
“And over there you have a somewhat tense relationship with the Canine’s Independent Democratic Republican Free Parliamentary Definitely-Not-A-Junta Dog State, yes?”
“Who? Oh, you mean those punk-ass diamond dogs in the foothills. Screw those dweebs. Nah, we don’t get along. Every once in a while we send scouting parties over to mess with them, especially when they send over some malachite-sucking dorks to steal our stuff.”
“Why isn’t there a full-scale war?”
“If there was, we’d win it. Most of the time, anyway. Also, there’s treaties and stuff. If things get too hot, a bunch of minotaurs, ponies and camels would step in.”
“Yes, the security council for the Southern Alliance. What would happen if the dogs launched a full invasion say, this weekend during the Spring Hunt, and the camels—who don’t get along particularly well with the Kingdoms these days—voted against intervening?”
“Hmm. The minotaurs are cool, and Equestria would kick off about it. They’d both vote for intervention and win, two-to-one.”
“Correct. Now, imagine a world where the camels point out that Equestria has just broken contracts based on the exact same powers and exact same vows as their relationship with the Southern Alliance. They then claim that Equestria must recuse themselves from the vote, and that if the minotaurs move without majority backing—which without Equestria, they do not have—that all contracts between the minotaurs and the camels are also void.”
“...Yeah I think we’d have a problem.”
“Every one of the hundreds and hundreds of nobilities that my aunts have commended over the past two millennia rests on the same legal foundation. Princess Celestia gelded the nobility in other fashions, but Princess Luna’s recent actions caused a flare-up, as it were. Nobilities were always reciprocal, always gifted in exchange for something, gold, knowledge, bravery, something of value, never given freely. The prospect of war between demesnes was never such a problem in the past because Equestria had adapted to constant, low-level infighting. Now we do not have that dubious luxury
He continued, “Worse yet, nine-tenths of all the international agreements that Equestria has a part in are based on that same foundation. Trade laws. Anti-piracy agreements. Banking regulations. Peace treaties that stop half the world’s population from conquering the other half. Everything based on Equestria being a viable mediator. The worst case scenario would no longer be a civil war. It would be a world war.”
“Huh,” I said, nodding. “Well damn. You’re kinda screwed whatever we do then, aren't you? ‘Cause six of us and one demesne might be able to slow down a war, but we’ll never stop it completely if the others want it bad enough. And if the Princesses can’t order the nobles to stand down, it’s just a matter of time.”
Blueblood genuinely smiled for the first time since the meeting had started. “Not exactly. See, the nobilities are legal constructs, and so simply ignoring them would open the proverbial Gates of Tartarus. However, laws can be changed and reinterpreted. My aunties will have their work cut out for them and many lawyers in Canterlot will be sleeping on giant beds of money, but they can strip the nobility of their ‘the-time-is-right-for-a-great-big-fight’ privileges. They have more power in the courts than even the warriest and lawwyest of my noble peers do. Still, this will take time. In six months they will have made major strides, but in six months, Equestria could be three different countries.”
“Unless we step in.”
He beamed. “Precisely.”
“In any case,” said Trixie, “this new information is disturbing. We have eight days to initiate Operation Show Stopper at the limit. We should prepare immediately. Blueblood, the Cherryblossom Ball is tomorrow, yes?”
Blueblood grinned, puffing away on his cigar. “Indeed. Lightning Dust, Gilda, dig out your tuxedos and gilded feathers. We have a party to crash.”