Everything in the house was dictated by rules, and it was from this Orion got his first lesson in ruling. Rules ruled, and there was simply no other way it could be done.
On Sunday mornings, the holiest of days because it was named after the Sun, the rules stated everypony in the Blueblood Manor must be up by six o’clock and dressed for breakfast, which started sharply at seven thirty and it was shame unending if you were even a minute late. Some five or ten hundred years ago, they used to dress for Sunday Blessings, where ponies stood out in the sunlight until they baked or fainted. Sunburns were a mark of honor—this was back when they still believed Celestia was a goddess. She put that to rights, and nowadays fancy ponies just ate fancy meals on Sunday. Much of Equestria's high society still clung to these vestiges of ancient worship. Orion himself was named after a venerated demigod of old, who wrestled the constellations and bound them in the sky with his golden harness.
Getting out of bed also had rules. The young master Blueblood, as everypony who was not his parents called him, had to quickly and quietly slip out from under the covers, neatly tidy his bed, brush his teeth forty-seven strokes on the right and forty-nine on the left with time left over for the tongue, wash and rinse his pelt, condition his mane, let it dry for precisely four minutes, comb it with three hundred strokes of the brush, fluff it, airblow it, and then allow servants to place finishing touches on every contour he had missed.
He never questioned the whether and how so of dressing up just to eat breakfast, because if he did he was given a flick on the horn and told not to question. He liked dressing up anyway, because his mother and father dressed up and he liked how it looked. His favorite Sunday dress was the black neckpiece with the red bowtie, because it went well with his white coat and made him look like he wore a fancy white suit without actually wearing one at all.
At breakfast he sat on the third chair down from the head of the table on the right side, to the left of his mother, if she were here, which she wasn’t due to feeling ill, because he was the firstborn son. If he had ever had siblings they would go down his left side all the way to the end, for a full table of children was a sign of good luck. Orion liked to imagine the other chairs filled with ponies of every size and shape, from princely brothers with dash and gallantry, to demure and beautiful sisters who were the picture of grace and charm.
“Ah, some more of that stew, please!” Count Grey Goose chortled, passing the bowl to himself and hitting Orion's horn with it as it flew by.
“And then, he said,” interrupted Earl Sweet Crumble, “well let’s just toss it, good mare, toss it! And she tossed it, she did, right out the ruddy window!”
The entire table, filled with counts, earls, dukes, barons, duchesses, sheriffs, mayors, majordomos, princesses, magistrates, hobnobbers, brown nosers, elbow rubbers, and hangers-on, burst into tightly controlled laughter. It sounded like a chorus of swans trying to honk without disturbing the neighbors.
The young master Blueblood imagined the other chairs filled with different ponies very, very often.
“I say, Duke Blueblood, sir,” said the Baron Goldegg, his bushy mustache all aquiver, “a splendid Sunday bruncheon you’ve gathered up here, and I say, if I may, that I much prefer these early gatherings so business may be done before croquet, what. But I do say, if you’ll permit, it’s rather odd timing given the Big To-Do isn’t until next week.”
The Duke Blueblood, ninth to bear the name, was the young master Blueblood’s father, so the younger said nothing. Orion watched his father scrape butter over a slice of bread, considering Goldegg’s implication. Though he was a unicorn, he held the knife and the bread with his hooves. The Duke preferred to do almost anything with his hooves, and though scurrilous rumors said it was because his magic was weak in his advanced age, Orion knew it was in fact because the Duke simply loved the feel of a thing in his hooves. All the better to keep it under close watch.
It was Orion’s second lesson in ruling: Never let anypony do anything of yours themselves. Only you knew how to do it right.
“The house was quiet,” the Duke said slowly and deliberately, as if he were starting a bedtime story. “I felt that we could stand to use the company.” Scrape scrape went the knife over bread. “The Big To-Do can wait. It’ll be more business than pleasure there anyway.”
Goldegg’s mustache trembled, but Orion found the strength to speak first. “But father, did we not just have a great get-together last Sunday?”
The Duke placed the buttered bread on the empty plate in front of the empty space where Blueblood’s mother would go.
“The house,” he intoned, “was quiet.”
“The Big To-Do!” the Baron puffed like a wisher over a birthday cake.
“Don’t worry,” the Duke said placidly. “You are all invited, of course. Such a day cannot pass without allowing everypony else to witness it. Remember that, my son, what you have done means nothing if you are the only one who sees it.”
“Yes, Father,” said Orion.
“She’s a beautiful ship, the new skiff,” the Duke murmured. “Clean lines, a shallow, narrow keel. The latest engine on the market. Everything a sailor could want.”
“Oh, don’t spoil the surprise too early, my lord Blueblood!” tittered Lady Canterton. “As they say in that rustic pub on Third Street: A mare must leave something to the imagination!”
She threw her head back and whooped scandalously, while the rest of the table chuckled behind their napkins. Orion had no idea what they were talking about, and pushed his broccoli around on his plate. He had already eaten the main course, an entirely too salty dish of steamed lettuce and assorted grasses all the way from Trottingham, and wanted only to dig into dessert. He hoped they brought out apple fritters. They were a favorite of his mother, who sometimes even cooked a few herself.
“May I be excused?” asked Orion.
“No,” said his father.
He waited until one of the guests had told a particularly funny joke before trying again, whispering beneath the laughter.
“I want to go see Mother.”
The Duke stiffened visibly, and his mouth twitched, but not towards a smile. He gave Orion a tight nod and sat up ramrod straight.
Orion hopped off his chair, hooves clattering. In earlier days, before the sickness truly took hold and settled over his mother and the household like a cloak, he would be afraid to even go near her, and had to be coaxed and goaded with the switch. But now he knew and understood that her illness wasn’t catching, nor was it helpful to anyone to show his fear. He was still afraid, but not of the sickness. He was afraid of what it did to her, because it went against everything that a unicorn should be.
He trotted up the stairs in the foyer, leaving the laughter and talking behind. Even with so many guests, the mansion was so big it was easy to miss them. His hoofsteps echoed noisily off the marble finish on the stairs, and soon that was the only noise he heard. The second floor was entirely carpeted, so even the sound of his hooves vanished, and he was just a body moving silently through space, towards Mother’s bedchamber. Her ears had always been quite sensitive, even moreso after the sickness, so the Duke had ordered as many soft things lining the halls and walls as possible, but the silence only made him feel floaty, like it was all a dream every time he visited Mother and she was already gone.
He gently pushed the door open, hearing soft, murmured voices. A servant mare sat at Mother’s bedside, reading quietly from a book, while another replaced the damp cloth on Mother’s forehead. It helped with the ache of her horn, which was ragged and chipped.
Orion recalled the name of the sickness as Crackroot Syndrome, which was a terrible sickness in which a pony’s own magic turned on them after something strange happened to their horn. Orion knew and cared little for it apart from the fact that it was terrible and it was taking his mother away, piece by piece, in cracks and slivers. It had first appeared seven months ago when his mother had a splitting headache. The doctors had used the word hereditary, which Orion only understood because his father used it every other sentence in reference to the name of Blueblood. It left him with the terrible thought that one day his horn would just decide to not work anymore, and tear him apart from the inside out.
“Mother,” he said quietly, hopping up on the bedside.
“Oh, little Orion,” she whispered, because it had come to where her own voice irritated her. “Are you well?”
“Yes, Mother.” He bit back a reproach that he was not well, since he was sitting in a room with his dying mother.
“Getting along with the other foals?”
“Yes, Mother.” He neglected to mention he hardly saw other foals anymore save for when they had the same tutor.
“And…” She smiled, and tried to sit up in bed. The serving mares made a great fuss and set about tutting and walking back and forth in the way panicked ponies do, but she ignored them, managing to settle herself against the headboard.
“And, have you journeyed far and wide, and scoured the ends of the earth, and delved deep into the darkest dungeons?”
“...” Orion cleared his throat, suddenly remembering that this was his favorite part, and he had come unprepared due to the utter mind-numbing boredom of breakfast. He glanced pleadingly at the serving mares, who bustled back and forth and bumped into each other before one finally found the old chest in the corner. It was weathered and beaten, with little handles on the sides for pony teeth to grab it by. Nopony knew where it came from, but Orion liked to think that it had once been the possession of a daring explorer who kept all his swords and treasures inside, and it had passed through the hooves of pirates and marauders before ending up in the mansion’s attic when it fell from a griffon warship.
These days, it was just full of the made-up worlds beyond Equestria’s maps Orion had created.
“Well,” he said, pulling out the latest chart of fictional latitudes and exotic monsters and laying it over Mother’s lap, “I mapped out the whole Tropic of Hippo, and I found a great big island with a Great Green Dragon on it. I called it the Island of Glimmerstone,” he said, pointing out the appropriate scribbles on the map. Many of the lines were still very wobbly, but he explained it away as having not gotten a very good look when he was running from the cannibals of Rotskull Island. The Great Green Dragon was an unhealthily bulbous creature whose eyes were far too big for his head, but Blueblood had done his best to draw him from memory.
“What did the Dragon say, sweetheart?” Mother asked in the sweet, velvety tones of all mothers who indulged their children a little too much.
“He said…” Orion tapped his hooves together fretfully. He hated coming back from his journeys with bad news. “He said that he didn’t know anything but the direction I should go. if I went further east, across the sea…” He drew his hoof over the parchment with a satisfying scrape, to the blank spaces. “He said I might find something better there. It gets more magical the closer you get to the edge of the world. He said those are the rules.”
“Of course,” Mother said, smiling benevolently. “One should always be agreeable to the counsel of dragons, my sweet Orion. They have been around much longer than any of us.”
Orion worried his lower lip. “Another clue might be there,” he said, absently drawing a new line across the vast chalk waves of the endless ocean. “The Dread Pirate Halfhorn sailed over the very very tip of the earth, and they say he buried his treasure in a place where nobody had drawn a map of, that way nobody can find it. So I think if I just go far enough and draw enough maps the treasure will have nowhere to hide! And if I can find that, I can definitely find the next step. Fill in more blank spaces. Something’s gotta be there. And maybe then…” He took a deep, shuddery breath clogged with phlegm and a too-tight chest. “Maybe then…”
Mother reached out and touched his hoof with her own. “You’ll find the cure,” she said with a smile that Orion knew couldn’t be wrong. “And we’ll live forever in a house ten times as big as this one.”
“And Father can fly a ship in the foyer.”
“And every room painted gold with Halfhorn’s treasure.”
“And the Princess will visit!” Blueblood cheered, throwing up his hooves. “And she’ll talk about how even her house isn’t even this big, and we could fit the Sun inside!”
“And you’ll be the most famous and beloved pony who ever lived, just like you deserve. The little pony who sailed beyond the edge of every map because he loved us all too much to turn back.” Mother’s hoof tap-tapped on his. “And don’t forget to name every island you come across after us, hmm?”
“I didn’t forget!” Orion said anxiously, pointing at the maps. “See? Blueblood Island, Blueblood Bay, Blueblood Tower, and Goldspinner Reef, after you Mother!”
“All right, all right,” Mother said in a quiet whisper. “I believe you. I do so like hearing about reefs. A shame I will never get to see one.”
“But you will!” Orion insisted, leaning forward. “I’ll take you to one, after I’ve cured you. And every spot on the map will know your name. Okay?”
Goldspinner took far too long to smile again than Orion liked. But eventually she did, slowly, like the corners of her mouth were dragging her lips upward against their will, and she stroked his mane. “Okay,” she said, and then she asked that she be left alone for a little while for her servants to tend to her, as she was feeling another headache coming on. One of the mares hastily applied a cool cloth to the base of her horn.
“Orion,” she said before he left the room. “How is your father?”
Orion chewed his lip carefully. “He is… well. He hopes that I will find the cure soon too.”
“Would you ask him…” Goldspinner gulped in air, as every word seemed to steal her breath away. “Would you ask him to please come see me, before the day is over? If that old colt won’t listen to the servants then…” She trailed off as she looked at Orion, his eyes so big and hopeful. They shivered in their sockets. There was fear in them.
Goldspinner relented. “Well. I just think he would like if you asked him.”
“Yes, Mother.” Orion left the room and closed the door as quietly as he could, but the tiniest click of the door latch still made him wince in sympathy. It was a long walk back to the dining hall. The hallways never felt so quiet and empty as they did after Orion’s visits, and though there was still an army of servants rushing to serve dessert when he got back downstairs, he saw them only as ill-defined shapes in the corners of his vision, hazy and statuesque.
———
After Sunday came Monday, the first day of the week. Sunday was written first on the calendar, but it was still reserved for Celestia, so the regular week was stuck with Mondays as its beginning, which Orion believed was why Mondays were always so dreary. After the gleaming, dreamy power of yesterday the Sun now hid furtively behind a blanket of cloud that stretched over the whole sky, yet sunlight peeked out now and again, like a sleeper fitfully trying to stay under the covers and peeking out to tell bothersome ponies to let it rest. There was nothing to do and nopony to see, and Orion had to get up early yet again for his tutoring, which he very much despised.
First came math. Orion had specifically asked for math in the mornings not because he liked it, but because he hated math more than anything else and wanted it over and done with. He found it terribly easy and boring, made worse for the fact that Duke Blueblood demanded it take place in a horrid grey room free of distraction or whimsy. The grey room was a simple windowless square space to one side of the living room, lit by fairy lights with desks and chairs and wooden floor. Blank grey walls were lined with dusty bookshelves filled with dull books on subjects nopony cared about like the history of the quadratic equation. The math tutor was always there before Orion no matter how early the colt arrived, giving the horrible impression that he just stood there in the off hours, unmoving, until the Duke told him to begin teaching. There was nothing much to say about math, because Orion did his best to forget the nothing that ever happened in there.
After mathematics came history, which was under the direction of an old grey-maned mare who had a name like Dusty Shelves or something that rhymed with it, and it was one of Orion’s favorite lessons. He enjoyed hearing of the real history of great ponies he hitherto only dreamed of, and especially of the long and distinguished history of the Bluebloods. Dusty Shelves had a voice that crackled like the turning of old pages, and had a particular fondness for sunlight, so it only made sense she taught in the mansion’s solar, where it was sunny all day long. The solar was found on the third floor of the mansion in the northwest corner, and was part of a pavilion that extended out from the house into a tall tower, the very top floor of which was where lessons took place. Though it was exposed to the sun all day long, a few magical spells encouraged the wind to seek the cracks between the stone and keep it comfortably cool. On Orion’s off days it was where he performed most of his magical adventures, where nopony could see him gallivanting as a prince should not.
“Dusty,” Orion said one day, interrupting her lesson about the Battle of Coltatrava, “why is there an edge of the map?”
“Excuse me?” Dusty said, blinking owlishly. “Why, because nopony has been there, young master Blueblood.”
“But we are magical,” said Orion, “and the Princess has been around for thousands of years. Hasn’t she seen what’s past the edges?”
“I’m sure that if the Princess,” Dusty said in a sharp voice to corral any budding heresy, “saw fit to share with us all that she has seen in her long and illustrious life, then she will tell us. But we should be thankful she is not traipsing off every century to go and have an adventure. Otherwise, who would protect Equestria? Who would raise the sun and the moon?”
“I guess,” Orion said, carving a divot into his desk with his hoof. “But I think she should know a lot of things if she’s been around that long.”
“And so she does, young master.”
“Does she know how to cure Mother?”
Dusty fell silent at that. She was a kindly sort, matronly without malice, and she became a teacher because she could not have children yet loved them dearly. She scurried to Orion’s side and scooped him up against her chest, where he lay like a limp rag.
“Now, my little nip,” she said, “I know what’s become of your family is an awful thing, but you must not blame the Princess if things go awry. Your father has sent entreaties to the Princess many times, and her best physicians have come around, you know this. The Crackroot is no malady mere medicine can fix. It is an affliction of the magic, and thus the soul. Even a Princess cannot touch a pony’s soul.”
“But why?” asked Orion. “If somepony went out beyond the edge of the map, they might have found out how to stop it, or other bad things. What’s the point of being a Princess if you can’t help ponies?”
“Perhaps that somepony will be you, young master,” Dusty simpered. “As to the point of being a Princess, I am afraid you must ask her. She is the only one who would know after all this time. Celestia has helped a great many ponies, but she is not a goddess, bless her. She is a pony like the rest of us, and some problems are beyond even her.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” Orion grumbled. “If you are a Princess, you should be able to do anything. If she can tell the Sun and Moon to go up and down, she should be able to fix Mother’s magic. If I ever became a Prince, I would go beyond everything everypony’s ever seen, and I’ll find a cure, and I’ll make a castle ten times as big as Canterlot.”
“Well, when you become a Prince, let nopony say you cannot do a thing,” Dusty told him. “A pony like you deserves great things, young master.”
Orion thought about how sad he was that Mother was going away. He thought long and hard about how he felt so powerless and how everypony at the dinner table ignored him, and how he was always feeling left out whenever the other little ponies did something because his father was telling him to study or keep quiet because of decorum.
Orion believed that Dusty Shelves was very much on point.
He deserved better than this.
He deserved to be a Prince.