The Quiet Equestrian

by Neon Czolgosz


5. Pretty Good It Doesn't Seem

I got out of bed at five AM, kissed Rainchaser’s forehead as she slept, and took two-hundred bits from her purse before slipping out of the room. I checked out at the desk as Gilbert Bundcrest, and walked out of the hotel as Gilda Redbeak. At an all-night bakery I picked up a coffee and a stale donut, drank the coffee as I flew, ate half the donut, tossed the rest. By the time I got to the Summer Breeze, they were already arguing.

“It won’t work. Even if Manehattan doesn’t set itself on fire when House Quicksilver and the Periwinkle family find out they’ve been duped, you’ll leave REDACTED unguarded. The Princess said that no matter how otherwise marvelous a plan of ours is, we can’t risk that.” Trixie had her poison smile on, the one she wore whenever she was one bad tip away from slipping a customer a sleeping draught and getting me to haul them out and steal their wallet.

The rest looked no better. Blueblood hadn’t shaved or showered, with a cigarette between his lips and an ashtray full of stubs in front of him. Flim and Flam were half-listening, hunched over some machine of theirs, smudged with engine oil. Lightning Dust looked like she was about to put her hoof through someone’s skull, more so than usual. The espresso machine in the center of the table was getting a heavy workout. I don’t think any of them had slept.

“That’s simple,” said—growled, more like—Lightning Dust. “Rubyhock of Hockton is the only leader close enough to put REDACTED at risk. We knock him over, nopony touches REDACTED, war ends, we go home as heroes. Boom. You dorks are just overthinking everything.”

Blueblood groaned. “Rubyhock’s force is the only barrier between the Trottingham navy and the River Duckspill, if we lose that, we lose southwestern Equestria. Lightning Dust, I know you weren’t hired for your genius, but do you know anything? Do you know anything at all? About nobility, warfare, strategy? Do you even know where you are right now—”

“I know I’m going to perforate your lungs if you don’t shut your inbred mouth—”

I took a seat between the two of them. “You guys seem cranky. Is this a bad time? Should I come back later?”

Trixie rubbed her nose. “Gilda, don’t.”

Flam looked up from his gears and grinned at me. “Ah, our favorite playbird! How did your night go? That charming diplomat seemed rather taken with you, if I recall.”

“I filched her purse.”

“Bet that’s not all you filched, eh?” said Flim, waggling his eyebrows. “Rainchaser is the kind of gal who sleeps diagonally, if you know what I mean?”

Flam swatted him. “Don’t be crude, brother, you’re distracting us from the problem at hoof.”

“What, engineering a bloodless civil war? It’s impossible, Flam, a pipe dream. I’d forgotten about that problem two hours ago.”

“I know that problem is impossible, Flim, I’m talking about fixing this blasted gearbox.”

There was a soft thump as Trixie planted her face on the table. The central map was covered in hundreds of tiny flags and markers, espresso stains, cigarette ash and sticky notes. On the blackboard behind Trixie, there were the remains of a flowchart.

“When’s the last time any of you guys slept?” I asked.

“No time to sleep,” mumbled Trixie.

Lightning Dust grunted. “Sleep is for foals and slackjaws.”

Blueblood stubbed out his cigarette, downed an espresso, and lit another cigarette. “In two weeks, if we do nothing,” he said between drags, “the civil war will be irreversible. Equestria’s political landscape will be unrecognisable. In a month, Equestria as we know it will no longer exist. Every hour we waste brings us closer to failure, and several of the plans we have made must happen tonight at the latest.”

“Look on the bright side, old bean,” said Flam, “none of the plans we have so far will work, so it’s no great loss if we lose a few.”

The prince laughed hollowly. “There is that, yes. Nevertheless, sleep has not been a high priority.”

I scanned some of the notes they had made. “Hiring minotaur gangs to segregate Hoofington? Declarations of war on accountants? Submarine attacks on Cloudsdale? Look guys, here’s a different idea: get some freaking sleep because you’re all cracked up and your ideas are all terrible.”

Trixie moaned and shook her head, still face-down on the table. “It won’t work,” she said, finally looking up. “Nothing will work because nothing can work. There are too many critical locations to watch, too many idiots and not enough time.”

She pointed to the map. “Just that one corner there, that one stupid corner means none of our plans can work. Why? Because if any one of five different demesnes gains control of the Californeigh water reserves, they will have total control over western Equestria and likely start a war with Cloudsdale. It would take all of our attention to keep the reservoirs neutral, and then, and then—” she pointed to a line of red flags that ran from the southwestern corner to the northeast “—an alliance between Goldbuttle, Snozzencrantz and the entire Patterprance clan will take over the Satin Trail. That’s two-thirds of all ground trade in Equestria, and a third of trade between Equestria and other nations. Equestria would be split into three parts, those who rely on Cloudsdale air, those who rely on the Trottingham navy, and those who swear fealty to the masters of the Trail.

“Even if by some miracle the Satin Trail and the Californeigh reserves stayed neutral without our intervention, there are too many other points of failure. Trottingham industry. REDACTED. The Neighravo crystal mines. Any of the cities.

She slumped down, resting her chin on her hoof. “The problem is that it’s too easy for any idiot noble to raise an army. Stop one noble from doing so, and troops are cheaper for the next noble along. It’s a Gordian knot, except instead of a sword we’ve got a wooden spoon and a bottle of glue.”

“Perhaps we’re overthinking the whole thing,” said Flam. “Try to reduce the problem down to its purest possible form: what is the most straightforward action that would end the civil war, regardless of feasibility?”

“Travel back in time and muzzle Auntie Luna,” said Blueblood.

Trixie cracked a smile. “That would do it. This demesne business wasn’t exactly a successful political experiment on her part.”

“She should hang out in the Griffon Kingdoms for a while,” I said, “we consider anything under twenty-five kilodeaths a successful political experiment.”

Lightning Dust banged a hoof on the table. “Wait a minute, sprockethead over there has a point,” she said, nodding to Flam. “It’s like Trixie said: the problem is that it’s too easy for nobles to buy soldiers. These nobles, they’re not thinking like warriors, they’re thinking like accountants. It’s economics, with these guys. Soldiers are just a way to earn a bunch of money, or keep a bunch of money safe. If we make soldiers too expensive to hire, they won’t be worth the returns. No armies, no war. Boom.” She glared directly at Blueblood, “Heroes.”

Blueblood nodded slowly, tapping ash off his cigarette. “I hate to admit it, but she has a point. It’s not something my aunts could pass with a quill-stroke, but if we focused our efforts on Canterlot, a tax bill to make soldiery prohibitively expensive could work.”

“How long would that take?” I asked.

“Two weeks at the shortest, unfortunately. Still, it could at least limit the scale of the war.”

Trixie sighed, and flicked a switch on the wall of the room with her magic. “I’ll try to contact Princess Twilight. She needs to know what options we have, at least. Maybe she has the other half of our answer.”

“Shame we can’t just take away all the nobles’ money,” I mused. “No money, no soldiers.”

Lightning Dust shook her head. “Nah, couldn’t happen. They’ve got their hooves in too many pies. Equestria’s economy would have to crash through the floor for it to touch them. It’s not like we can just steal all the money in Equestria.”

“Well—”

“Well—”

Well—

Flim, Flam, and Blueblood all spoke at the same time, and then all shut their mouths so quickly you could hear the snap.

Trixie sat bolt upright, and Lightning Dust glared between the three of them. “Nah, nah, that’s crazy,” said the pegasus. “You can’t steal all the money in Equestria.”

“We-ell, Princess Twilight did say,” said Flam, “that she would be happy with almost any conceivable solution as long as there was no bloodshed...”

“No, I mean you can’t do it! It’s impossible, Equestria's money is too big, it’s in too many ponies! We can’t make a world tomorrow where every baker forgets how to bake, every farrier forgets how to farry, and every dentist forgets how to dent! As long as they’re working, they’re earning! You can’t just have some big, great... depression where nobody has a job, it’s not possible! That’s high school economics!”

“Actually...”

“Technically...”

“Theoretically,” said Blueblood, carefully, “you could have a, ah, total unemployment crisis. It’s... it’s hypothetical, in Equestrian economic history, but it’s not unheard of elsewhere.”

“Nah, you couldn’t,” I said, “‘cause of the economics. Me and Trixie tried this scam before; it doesn’t work. Even if everypony decided overnight to just stop buying, I dunno, clocks, and everypony in the clock industry went out of business, ponies would still have the exact same amount of money and they’d spend it on some other crap, like beekeeping or something. We lost four grand before we figured that one out, ain’t that right, Trix?” She nodded.

“There’s an exception,” said Flam.

“It’s a doozy of an exception,” said Flim.

“What if everypony gets scared,” said Blueblood, “that they’re not going to have enough money tomorrow. Or, that the money they have invested isn’t safe. They’ll stop spending it and start squirreling it away. Suddenly, the money that other ponies are relying on—to pay bills, buy goods, meet invoices—isn’t being spent. It’s hidden under a mattress. If it happens on a grand enough scale, the effect would snowball. Businesses would shutter ailing divisions, close factories, stop paying dividends. Investors would look at a wobbling market and panic, and shuffle all of their money into the safest, most inert places possible to protect their fortunes. The Equestrian economy would go into a defensive crouch.”

“Entire families of nobles would lose their fortunes,” said Flim.

“We’d price the buggers right out of the army-ing business!” said Flam.

Trixie rubbed her temples and sighed. “No. Okay? Just no. Even if your plan wasn’t insane and probably impossible, Princess Twilight would never approve it.”

“What wouldn’t I approve?”

Every single one of us jumped damn near a foot out of our chairs, and me and Lightning Dust flapped in the air for a few seconds. Princess Twilight's face had appeared on the projector screen behind Trixie.

Trixie's head snapped round so fast I heard her neck click. "Sparkle!" she blurted, "why are you--oh yes, I requested your presence. Thank you for coming, Princess."

“It’s my pleasure,” said the Princess. She had the irritatingly perky look of a pony who had slept more than four hours that night, and I wanted to slap it right off her face. “What were you saying I wouldn’t approve of?”

Trixie waved her hoof airily. “Oh, a nonsense hypothetical, just a tangent from—”

“A plan to defund all of the nobles in Equestria by intentionally crashing the economy,” said Flim. I could hear the creak of Trixie’s teeth grinding together as she glared at him.

The Princess didn’t glare or scream or pop a monocle or anything. She looked... curious, I guess. “That’s an interesting plan,” she said, slowly. “How would you do it?”

“Manehattan Stock Exchange,” said Flim, so quick and chirpy that you almost missed the bags under his eyes. “Every lord and lady worth their salt has a considerable investment in it, and if they’re buying armies wholesale they’ll be leveraged to the hilt. Kidnap a few stockbrokers, set fire to their records, add a few clever forgeries to the rubble, and fortunes will go tumbling like a drunkard down a steep stairway.”

“That would be a shock, certainly,” added Blueblood, “but if the ponies at the banks keep their heads screwed on straight, they could still recover. They send copies of all of the previous day’s trades to the Canterlot Banking Authority, as well as a medley various guarantees, failsafes and ensurances that are kept at their headquarters. That’s not even counting the trading that also happens there.”

“You’d want to tussle with the Equestrian Retail Banking Conglomerate in Fillydelphia, to boot,” added Flam. “Some real hale and hearty businesses might weather a stock crash, but if retail banking is all but shuttered, but if they can’t even take bits out of the bank to pay their invoices, they’re going to hurt.”

“I know some ponies who work at the Canterlot Banking Authority,” said Princess Twilight with an edge to her voice. “Good ponies, who I would not see harmed.”

“Harmed? Perish the thought,” said Flim, his eyebrows raised, “but surely we could keep these good ponies locked away in a hotel room for a week or three, while everypony else looks at the rubble and wreckage at their places of work and simply... assumes the worst, so to speak.”

The Princess almost seemed satisfied. “I see. What kind of timeline are you thinking of? You realise that as soon as you attack one site, the other two will do everything they can to protect themselves and pick up the slack, right?”

Blueblood puffed on his cigarette and shrugged. “It seems to me that we’ll simply have to raid all three locations at the same time.”

“Right,” said Twilight, a sarcastic edge clear in her voice, “this plan of yours—I’m assuming it’s not one of Trixie’s plans based on her expression, and neither Gilda nor Lightning Dust look particularly taken by it—involves attacking three buildings full of wholly innocent civilians in three different cities, hundreds of miles apart, kidnapping dozens of ponies and detaining them indefinitely, and doing this all within the span of maybe ten hours. You plan to do all that, with five ponies and a griffon.”

“I feel like that’s a very pessimistic spin on it, and I’d reject your characterisation of merchant bankers as ‘wholly innocent’, but yes, broadly speaking, that is the plan,” said Flam.

“I mean, we could do it,” said Lightning Dust, “it’s just crazy.”

Blueblood sat up a little straighter. “Wait, we could?”

“Sure.” Lightning Dust nodded. “That plan we had to raid Baron Huckleberry’s cotton supplies needed basically the same skills and logistics, and that involved way more soldiers. I’m not saying it would be a cakewalk or anything, but with the right tools and enough support, we could do it.”

“Yeah, but we’re not actually going to do it,” I said. “Look, I’m a griffon, and we know what it’s like to do crazy stuff in the name of winning, but this... I just don’t see the point. Half of the country would be out of a job, and if we’re unlucky, there’d be food riots and worse. You’d be setting Equestria on fire in order to save it.”

Twilight Sparkle wasn’t smiling any more. Her face was perfectly still. “Unless someone was standing by, ready with a firehose.” Her brow furrowed. “Wait here, I need to check something.” With that, she walked off the screen. The wall behind her flickered on the projector screen.

We sat around the table in silence. I wanted to ask Blueblood if it was normal for Twilight to do this, but he was already dozing. Lightning Dust slapped at the espresso machine until it poured her another cup. Flim and Flam were back to doodling. Trixie stared straight ahead and blinked slowly, as if sleepwalking.

I sat in awkward silence. Ten minutes later, Blueblood was snoring, Lightning Dust was back from the mare’s room, and Flim and Flam had gone through another half-dozen pages.

“Uh, Trixie?” I said, “do you know—”

“Yes, it is normal for Sparkle to disappear mid-meeting for an indefinite amount of time,” she replied, not moving her head or even looking my way, her eyes completely unfocused.

“Yeah, actually, I kinda wanted to know if we were billing our hours for this whole thing, or if it’s just an end-of-project lump sum, generally, y’know, when we’re getting paid and stuff—”

A dull thump came from the projector and the Princess appeared back on the screen. Blueblood had woken up and there was already a cigarette in his mouth. Everyone else looked at the screen. “Hey! Sorry for the wait, I just had to hash out a few details with Discord.” She paused to clear her throat, and then said, “I’m provisionally approving your plan to disrupt the Equestrian economy. Come to me with the details as soon as you have them confirmed, and I’ll provide you with what resources you need.”

I think all of us were too tired to be shocked.

“Oh, and um, I’d suggest you get some rest,” she added, sheepishly. “You guys have a teensy bit of a ‘triple-all-nighter’ look. Best of luck, and I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

She reached up to the camera, and the screen went blank. I looked around the table.

“Was, uh,” I fumbled, “was any of that normal?”

“No,” said Lightning Dust, “none of that was normal.”

The others were already asleep.