Chapter 28: Pushing Forward
Admiral Biscuit
Princess Celestia appeared in the air over Canterlot. While it was not unknown for the elder diarch to teleport in and out, it was hardly a common sight, and a few ponies on the ground pointed up at her.
The guards, of course, knew that she was coming, and despite her repeated orders on the matter, a small band of Royal Pegasi formed up around her, far enough away that their path to the palace could have been coincidence—but Princess Celestia knew it was not. They've been getting edgy lately. No doubt the new training regimens and the uncertainty of contact have been keeping them on their hooves.
When she alighted on her balcony, the guards peeled off one-by-one and went back to their normal patrol positions, with one remaining to make a slow circuit of the tower before he, too, flew off.
She spared a moment to glance down at the greensward. Just around the edge of the tower, she could see a phalanx of guards practicing evening maneuvers, and while their drill instructor was too far away to hear, she could imagine him barking out orders as the lines crisply moved in unison.
Her gaze swept past the training yard and outside the boundaries of the palace, onto the busy streets of Canterlot. Most of the shops were closed for the night, but many of them had ponies gazing through the windows, looking at the merchandise within. This close to the palace, merchants did not draw their shutters at night, for who would dare rob them under the ever-watchful eye of the Princess?
And besides the stores, there were food-wagons up and down the street, run by enterprising ponies who dreamed of having restaurants of their own. Indeed, one of the nearby restaurants so favored by the nobles had had such a humble beginning. Probably none of them remembered the colt who had doggedly pulled a wagon one size too big for him to the street corner every morning; now he was stooped with age and his mane shot with grey. . . .
“Princess?”
Celestia turned to see Raven at her Prench doors, a questioning look on her face. Celestia turned back to take one last look at the street, a small motion catching her eye. It was a lemon-yellow filly, waving a hoof up at the balcony. Celestia waved back, before stepping away from the low stone border. “Dale will do fine,” she said, walking past Raven and into her sitting room. “He and Lyra get along quite well. But I worry about Kate.”
“The reports say she has been given morphine,” Raven reminded Celestia.
“Yes, I know.” Celestia sat on her cushion. “And I believe the doctor is about to attempt to wean her off it.” She sighed. “I am half-tempted to send the Royal Physician to assist, but I feel that Doctor Stable would see it as an insult.”
Raven opened her mouth, and Celestia held up a hoof. “If I thought he knew more than Doctor Stable, I'd send him anyway, but of course he has not seen Kate, nor would he have any better ideas for treatment.”
“Perhaps a letter reminding him that the full resources of the Palace and the School for Gifted Unicorns are at his disposal, should he require them? That could not be seen as an insult.”
“Draft such a letter, if you please.” Celestia said. “I believe that I still have a meeting tonight?”
Raven nodded, but did not speak until she had finished writing a note in her ledger. “With your foreign policy advisers.”
“Very well.” Celestia got back to her hooves. “I am going to enjoy a nice cup of tea before I meet with them, and then I would like for you to sit in on the meeting. In a week, I wish for you to travel to Ponyville and finalize arrangements for the embassy—whatever is needed. I would like for you to stay several days, and get a feel for the place.”
“Are you sure? I don't know anything about that.”
Celestia nodded. “You will after tonight's meeting. Especially if you stay after—they can talk your ears off if you let them.”
Lyra and Minuette walked together through the streets of Ponyville, the dentist carrying most of the conversation. Any other time it would have been annoying, but for once in her life it didn't bother her at all. Minuette was one of the very few ponies who Lyra knew that wouldn't take any offense at anything she said, and so long as she remembered to not say anything which was a secret, she didn't have to consider her words at all.
That was a lot easier than trying to push Dale while at the same time keeping him from getting frustrated, or watching her tongue around everypony else. Her mind slipped back through the years to her school days and the days spent in Canterlot with her friends, and for a moment she was there again, talking about how they were going to change the world and too young and idealistic to realize that talk was easy but doing was hard.
They turned down the street towards her house—the lamps were lit downstairs, which probably meant that Bon Bon was in the kitchen, preparing treats for market tomorrow. Or else she was stretched out on the couch in the living room waiting for the timer to finish counting down so that she could remove one batch from the icebox and then put the next batch in.
They'd talked about getting a better icebox for years, but that was expensive and bits were always a little bit tight. Maybe if they'd been serious about it they could have scrimped and saved a little more and Lyra could busk just a bit longer in the park, and they could skip a treat or two at Sugarcube Corner—it wasn't much, but those bits added up. Then Lyra remembered that she wouldn't have to busk in the park anymore, and she could buy a new icebox for Bonnie and she turned to her house without even thinking about it. Minuette continued down the street unaware that Lyra had stopped.
Both of them realized at the same time and looked at each other then burst out laughing. Lyra opened the door while Minuette trotted back, wiped her hooves clean on the welcome mat, and went through the door.
As soon as Lyra was inside she pushed past Minuette and made a beeline for the kitchen. Bon Bon was leaning over the icebox, a tray of chocolates gripped in her mouth and without any preamble Lyra used her telekinesis to lift them up onto the counter, and drop the lid shut. As soon as they were out of the way, she wrapped her hooves around a befuddled Bon Bon's neck, pulling her into a deep embrace.
Bon Bon leaned down and nuzzled the back of Lyra's neck, then gave Lyra a quick kiss when her head came back up. “How did it go?”
“Not too bad.” Lyra lifted up the next mold and set it in the icebox while Bon Bon picked up an icing tube and started squeezing filling into her candies. “Dale didn't—I forgot to tell him that we were supposed to stay outside for most of the meeting, so Dale went inside and then Diamond Mint had to scramble to get chairs for us.”
“And you in a dress.” Bon Bon set down the icing tube and started ladling warm chocolate over the confections.
“In front of the Princess. Bon Bon, you remember Minuette, right?”
“Yeah, of course I do. She's my dentist, too, and sometimes she comes to market when she's in town.”
“Hi, Bon Bon!” Minuette joined them in the kitchen. “I can't stay all that long: if I get to the hotel too late, Happy is going to have the doors closed and I won't be able to get a room.”
“He does value his punctuality,” Bon Bon said. “Does he really go knocking on doors at sunrise?”
Minuette nodded. “That's why you want the furthest room from his apartment, 'cause it takes him the longest to get there.” She stretched out her neck and nuzzled Lyra on the cheek, then Bon Bon. “Good to see you two girls in a non-professional setting. Let's meet up for lunch next time I'm in town, okay?”
“Isn't that tomorrow?” Bon Bon asked. “Because the train doesn't leave until the afternoon.”
“Why so it is.” Minuette grinned. “I'll see you at the cafe a turn before noon.”
Lyra waved her goodbye while Bon Bon set aside her finished treats and stole a glance at the clockwork timer.
“Do you feel like a late trip to the spa?”
“I've got three more trays of chocolate to finish for tomorrow.”
Lyra sighed. “It might take me that long to get undressed.” She tilted her head down and started unlacing the first of her hoof boots.
Dale leaned back in his chair. There was an inexplicable feeling of power in doing so. He didn’t know why—he was sure it was something that he'd been taught in life, rather than some instinctive human behavior, but he felt like a tycoon.
And why shouldn't he? Based on what Lyra had told him, he had just been visited by the pony versions of the President and Vice President, and they had come to him. He had a house which he had been given, and he had servants and guards.
Indeed, by any Hollywood measure, he was a Very Important Person.
At the same time, he was being led around by the nose.
A part of his brain wanted him to misuse his power. He could order around Starlight and Diamond Mint; there was no telling how far they'd go for him.
The joker in that deck was Lyra. While she'd given him plenty of latitude—possibly more than he deserved—it didn't take very much mental acuity to remember just how she'd gotten him here, and flattened Kate in the hospital. She might very well have a long fuse, but he'd be a fool to light it. It was obvious what would happen; he'd be laid out on the ground, and the ponies might choose to see if Kate proved to be more compliant.
Worse, at this point some of them had learned enough English that he was no longer indispensable. While Princess Celestia had not exactly been fluent, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe that he was irreplaceable as ambassador. Even if Kate proved to be a total wash, what was to stop them from getting another patsy or two?
He shook his head to try and dispel the dark thoughts. His gut told him that they weren't like that; they weren't using him. He'd seen the genuine compassion in Princess Celestia's eyes, and he doubted that could be faked.
Just the same, he would have liked to have known what she'd said to Kate while the two of them were alone. He had a nagging feeling it might have been something that would come back and bite him later.
He rocked forward in his chair and leaned on the desk, dragging a blank sheet of paper over and picking up a pen. He tapped it idly on the top of the paper, trying to gather his thoughts.
Lyra had left shortly after the photographer—Minuette. He hadn't been disappointed; he needed a bit of time to himself to gather his thoughts.
He wrote at the top of the page four simple words: what do they want?
It was apt that the rest of the page was blank. He didn't know. After staring at it for a few minutes, he scribbled that out and tried again. What do I want?
Then he crossed that off, too, because the only thing that came to mind was 'no major screwups.' It was an important point, but one that he couldn't really control.
Dale stared at the paper until his vision blurred. He wasn't coming up with anything helpful or useful.
He covered a yawn and capped the pen. There wasn't anything he was going to get done tonight, so he might as well not try. Instead, he was going to clear his head with a walk outside. Nobody had told him that he couldn't.
The door guard looked up at him as soon as he opened the front door, and for a second he considered pretending that he'd just decided to look out of it briefly, but there was no point in that. He moved into the street, slowly enough to give the guard time to follow.
He didn't know the town all that well, besides the trip that he and Lyra had taken to the market, so he just stood in the street and got his bearings. The banner was still stretched across the street, and the cloying scent of all the new flowers around the embassy was nearly maddening.
Many of the houses around the embassy were already dark, their shutters closed for the night, but a few of them had light streaming from the windows.
Since he knew which way the center of town and the marketplace was, he went off in the opposite direction, figuring that that would be more residential. Of course, that was assuming that the ponies laid out their towns like humans did; for all he knew, the whole place was a hodgepodge of businesses and residences with no rhyme or reason to it.
He felt kind of like a thief, or perhaps a peeping Tom. The ponies mostly didn't put curtains on their windows, and as he walked down the street he caught a few glimpses of them inside their houses: here, several of them sitting around a table for a late dinner, or perhaps a family game night; there, a pale stallion stretched out on a couch behind a mare who was dusting with a rag held in her mouth.
Most of the houses were dark, although he occasionally heard voices from within, and in one there was music playing softly. It sounded vaguely like a pop song, especially since it was too quiet to focus on the words.
Behind him, his constant companion, was the gentle clinking of the armored stallion.
Quite by accident, he came across a little park. There was a break in the houses, and off to the west—or what he assumed was the west, since that was where the sun set—was an expanse of trees and a small pond. A too-short bench overlooked it, and Dale sat down on it, even though it wasn't exactly comfortable.
In the dark, it was not unlike Earth. There was a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of the trees, and he could hear the frogs in the pond croaking out their songs to their mates. He didn't hear any cars, that was one difference, and there was a constant slight smell of horse.
The night sky was perfectly clear. He looked up at the stars, trying to find the one that Lyra had pointed out that was the Sun. Try as he might, though, he couldn't locate it, but the spread of the Milky Way at least looked the same as it did back on Earth. That, at the very least, was a touch of home.
He let his mind drift, moving out of himself into the position of a neutral observer, or perhaps Norman Rockwell trying to visualize the scene for a cover of Life.
Dale was on a bench that was one board too narrow and about a foot too short, leaving his legs bent at an awkward angle. Off to his left, unseen, the guard stood, and he wondered what thoughts might be going through the guard's head. Was he, too, looking up at the stars, or was he cursing his misfortune at being on duty the one night that Dale had decided to go off and wander around town?
Despite his earlier thoughts of grandeur, he felt small and almost completely insignificant. He was a child sitting on the bench, a child in an old man's awkward and ill-fitting body.
He closed his eyes, the picture of himself still perfectly clear. The pond—it reminded him of the pond in his dream, where the naked woman had approached him. Those images were still vivid, and he could picture her coming out of this pond as well. But she did not.
In his mind, he skipped a stone across the water, watching as it splashed off into the darkness, and it felt so real that when he opened his eyes again, he expected to be at the water's edge, but he was still on the bench, and there were no ripples on the water.
He opened his eyes and surveyed the park one last time, his eyes involuntarily resting on the guard. The white coat and golden armor stood out in the night, making it almost appear as if he were illuminated from within. As soon as he stood, the guard's ears both snapped forward and locked on him.
I ought to get to know them. He wondered if President Obama knew his Secret Service agents. Did he talk to them? Did he ask them about their families? Or were they just an interchangeable collection of men in suits with little earpieces?
It would be easier to not know. If the time ever came where they had to put their lives on the line for him, it would be better if he didn't know who they were . . . but he was not a head of state, and while that thought did cross his mind briefly, it was gone as quickly as it had come.
The guard did not move as Dale approached, but he turned his head respectfully—or else he was looking around for potential threats.
“What is your name?” He spoke slowly, not trusting his language.
One of the guard's ears turned in his direction; the other still pointed off towards town. When he didn't answer right away, Dale wondered if they were mute—or had been muted. Spy novels always had Dobermans who had had their larynxes removed so that they couldn't bark, and while it was hard to imagine that the ponies would do that to a guard, there was long history of emperors having eunuchs.
“Winter Gust,” he said, startling Dale.
“I am Dale.”
The guard nodded, and he mentally kicked himself. Of course the guard would know his name.
A thousand other questions suddenly occurred to Dale. Do you have a family? Do you like your job? How did you become a guard? How do you put on your armor? Why do you all look the same? Is that a requirement for becoming a guard? What do you do when you're off duty?
And his words utterly failed him. All the lessons with Cheerilee and Lyra slipped through his mind like sand through his fingers. He was too tired to think straight, but he managed to bring forth one last effort. “Let us go back home.”
Winter Gust nodded again, and fell in beside Dale, not quite leading but not quite following, either.
Luna had been getting less and less sleep lately. Ever since she'd rescued Trixie from the guards, her days had been spent caring for the mental well-being of the unicorn, a task which she was now convinced that she could not delegate. Trixie's attempt at suicide had been too close for comfort for everypony involved. Luna had had to spend the next couple of nights doing damage control in the dream world; Dusk Glimmer had been particularly hard-hit by it, constantly dreaming that she hadn't been fast enough to stop Trixie from plunging off the balcony.
To discover her interest in the books—even it if was quite by accident—had been a great boon. The biggest challenge had been convincing her that she was allowed to read them. Luna had rightly guessed that Trixie would deny touching them, despite the reports her thestrals had given her.
That had actually taken almost a week of subtle hints—which were not exactly Luna's forte—and had accomplished nothing. Finally, Luna gave up on subtlety, figuring that it didn't suit her anyway, and simply floated the astronomy book in front of Trixie's muzzle while asking her to explain what she saw.
It would have been a lie to say that that discussion went as smoothly as Luna had hoped it would, but the magician had slowly come out of her shell.
Interestingly, it had not been any of the fascinating images of the planets which had gotten her attention, but rather one of the lower-quality photographs of the lunar surface. Luna had been studying the book yet again, trying to make sense of it all, when Trixie spoke unbidden. "What's that?"
Luna had snapped her head up, caught completely by surprise. She'd forgotten Trixie was right next to her, feigning disinterest.
"'Tis some sort of cart."
"Trixie can see that. Why is it there? Nopony is pulling it . . . does he live in it?"
Luna examined the photograph carefully. It was odd that it had been included in the book at all; compared to the rest of the photographs which were crisp and clear, this one was grainy and not properly exposed.
Truth be told, that had bothered her from the first time she'd looked through the book. It was totally out of place, yet it must have been included because the author of the book felt it was important. No doubt, if she could have read all the words that accompanied it, she would have had her explanation.
She'd narrowed it down to three possible reasons. One of them was that the man himself was important. There was one other photograph of a man wearing a suit, standing proudly on the lunar landscape in his white suit; none of the rest of the photographs in the book had any people in them. A second reason was that the formation in the picture was significant to Dale's people; the final thought was that the vehicle was significant.
"Many such vehicles exist in Dale's world," Luna said. "He himself dreamt of them. They appeared to be self-propelled."
Trixie's ears perked up. "Self-propelled wagons?"
Luna nodded. "Dost thou not know of them?"
Trixie scoffed. "Of course Trixie knows about self-propelled wagons. They are a curiosity, a toy for unicorns. Practically no range to speak of, and all but the strongest unicorns will wear themselves to exhaustion charging them with enough energy to do much useful work. The only practical wagon would consist of a small steam engine, and the amount of water it would require would be problematic."
"Thou dost claim much."
"Trixie knows about clever little gadgets." She flicked her tail. "Her whole show was based around them." She paused in consideration, but seeing no enmity on Luna's face pressed on. "What the Great and Powerful Trixie promised—and delivered—was a fusion of earth pony gadgetry and unicorn magic. There was no unicorn who could cast spells quite like her, nor was there an earth pony who could make a device that worked like hers did."
"We have seen such devices. Many exist in the castle, as we are sure thou dost know."
"Like the guard's armor." Trixie snorted. "The Crown might employ the best smiths and enchanters in Equestria, but I made all my devices myself." She looked back at the picture in the book. "Do you know what this cart is for?"
"Dale's people rode in them. He saw similar carts in his dreams—open ones which were olive in color, and brightly-colored enclosed ones."
"What do you know of them? From his dreams?"
Luna closed her eyes in thought. At the time she'd gotten into his dream, she'd been more concerned with his mind, and the images were secondary to his emotions. She had never considered taking a forensic approach to analyzing a dream, especially since she knew full well that many featured things which were, quite frankly, utterly impossible.
At the same time, she knew that even those things were somewhat grounded in reality. The mind never made up something from nothing; there were elements of truth in the most fantastic imaginings of the mind.
Since she knew barely anything about Dale's world, it was difficult to know for certain what was possible and what was not, but she had gone over nearly all the books with Celestia before they were sent off so that the university could make copies, and she could say with certainty that similar vehicles were illustrated in the thick picture-dictionary, along with many other elements of his dream.
“Nothing,” Luna admitted. “But we think they are commonplace.” She told Trixie of the ones she'd seen in his dream, along with the walking machines that the little bears were fighting and the flying machines that had zipped around overhead, and Trixie just listened, her ears locked forwards as she drank in every little detail.
“You told Trixie that the university has a book which shows hundreds of human machines.”
Luna nodded.
“Could I see that book? Could you bring it here?” A spark had returned to her eyes which Luna had feared was forever lost.
Such is her strength. Luna leaned down and brushed her nose against Trixie's mane. “We shall.”
Moller was leaned back in his chair, his feet up on his desk. His shift had ended half an hour ago, but he hadn't gone home—he hadn't really felt like moving. The whole day had strangely stretched on, making him feel for a while that it would go on forever, and then he'd looked at the clock and been surprised to see how late it suddenly was. When quitting time had finally rolled around, he'd had to really think to remember what had happened at the beginning of the day: it felt like it had been nine months, not nine hours.
He put his feet down and dragged his keyboard over, telling himself that he was just going to check his e-mail one more time, and then go home.
Moller shook his head as he managed to mistype both his username and password, then tried again.
Much to his surprise, he had a new e-mail. Even knowing that it was only going to be another mystery, he clicked on it anyway and started reading.
The tech who had prepared the report had had the good sense to dumb down the beginning, giving him what they'd assumed was the part he'd be most interested in in simple English, while following that up with a more in-depth report that was suitable for the eventual court case. As if there will be one, he thought darkly.
The weapons, the report had stated, were both hand-made. That he already knew; their weapons expert had said the same thing. What was more interesting was that the two weapons possessed an entirely different skillset when it came to the steel. The spearhead, the report said bluntly, was crap. It was decent enough to do the job for which it had been crafted, but it was loaded with impurities, and it had gotten too hot in the forge.
The curved blade, however, had been made by an expert, although that one, too, had a higher percentage of impurities than would have been expected.
Moller skimmed through the end of the report, his eyes slightly glazing over at mention of microstructure and dendrites. He copied the report—leaving off the analysis at the beginning—and logged into his personal e-mail to send it to Dr. Forsyth, then he shut down his computer, locked up his office, and walked down to his car.
He kept turning the report over in his head, even though he knew he wasn't going to be the one to solve it. Metal analysis was important for historians; they could sometimes tell by the impurities where it had come from.
Moller started the car, his eye drawn as always to the glowing Check Engine light on the dash. Probably just needs a tune-up. I take it to a mechanic, and he's going to charge me a hundred bucks to tell me that. And then it's going to cost another four hundred because I need special platinum or iridium spark plugs and—
Iridium. He reached over and turned the radio off, his mind churning. The report had said that the steel in both weapons had iridium in it, but iridium was rare and valuable. Why would it be in the weapons? Why wouldn't whoever made the steel have taken it out?
It was late for this kind of meeting, but not the latest that such a meeting had been held. Sometimes there were diplomatic crises, and sleep had to be sacrificed. Hickory Hocks, who sat in the seat of honor directly across from her had been present for the last such emergency meeting.
Fortunately, this was not an emergency, and Princess Celestia would have been quite right to put it off until the morning. But she knew her foreign ministers, who were as curious about Dale and Kate as anypony else in Equestria, would have been upset if she had, so the meeting had been scheduled to take place shortly after her return, and there had been no complaints whatsoever about the later hour of the meeting.
There was no need for a role call or any other formalities; her foreign ministers were selected in part because they were able to treat her like a colleague and had no compunctions about telling her when they felt she was wrong.
“Who shall we invite first?” That was the most immediate issue. The embassy, now formally open, would be expected to receive any ambassador who wished to meet with Dale. That the first had been ponies was to be expected: after all, the embassy was on their lands, and they could prove that Dale and Kate did not come from any part of Equestria.
“Minos.” That was from Old Hickory. “Only natural choice, and only neutral choice.”
“The griffons will be mad,” Corduroy said.
“Of course they will. But they'll be mad no matter what you do.” He arched his brows, which made his bushy eyebrows wiggle like a pair of caterpillars engaged in a strange mating dance. “Probably call for somepony's head on a pike. Maybe mine. Haven’t gotten one of those letters in years.” He frowned. “They might think I’m already in the ground.”
Double Talk nodded. “I like it. They're traders, so they're kind of at peace with everypony, most of the time anyway. Everyone wants what everyone's got, and they're the ones to do it. So if Dale or Kate have anything to trade, they'd be the natural choice to set up arrangements.”
“All they've got is the clothes they were wearing,” Celestia said. “And some personal belongings.”
“Sure, of course.” Old Hickory smiled. “And we don't know if they can even speak for their people, on account of how they got here.”
“The paper Dale signed says that he can,” Corduroy countered.
“It's in a language he can barely read, and he has no authorization from whoever his leader is to make treaties.” He wiggled his eyebrows again. “Any reasonable being could see that.”
“But nopony knows that.”
“Exactly.” He flicked his ears this time. “So he has his meeting, says that he can't make a binding treaty, but he can make a provisional one. See, the minotaurs will be happy with that—they're about as pragmatic as zebras—because they've got something. Plus, they gave us half the furniture in the embassy.”
“Strictly speaking, not 'gave,'” Double Talk pointed out. “They were left over from the last remodeling of the Minotaur embassy here in Canterlot, and since we bought them, if anything they're ours to distribute as we wish. If we'd burned them in a bonfire in the middle of Canterlot, nobody could reasonably object.”
“Remember what happened when the old Neighponese Embassy got turned into a tea-house? Or was that before your time? Protests in the street, even though it was their building, and they could do whatever they wanted with it.” He turned back to Princess Celestia. “We'll give them credit for donating the furniture, of course. Part of the reason that we invited them first. And then they'll get their trade agreement—which naturally will be the same nothing that we've got—and they'll be happy with that, too, because their ambassador will know that we didn't shut them out.
“They know that if they've got their horns in the door, all they've got to do is persist until they seal the deal—that's how they think. And they go first, they've got it.”
“All right.” Raven spoke for the first time. “So it's minotaurs first. Who's next?”
“Griffons.” This was from Celestia. Her foreign ministers stared at her, agog. “They won't expect it, especially not after the fiasco with Swiftwing. They'll think that we're going to make them go last, after the breezy ambassador, and—“
“Do the breezies even have an ambassador?”
“Technically, yes.” Old Hickory waggled his eyebrows. “Although the position has never been filled, as far as I know.”
“It hasn't,” Celestia said. “Their home grotto is an independent nation by our laws, and they are entitled to a seat in the League and an embassy, they have no interest in either, and never have.”
It was Double Talk's turn to raise his eyebrows. “Do they have an embassy?”
“It's in the Castle of the Two Sisters,” Corduroy offered. “If my memory is correct.”
Celestia nodded. “It was a long time ago. Perhaps we ought to try to reach out to them again.”
“I doubt you'd be able to find a breezy to update the treaty.” Old Hickory turned to Raven. “How many petitions do we have to meet with Dale?”
“Seven,” she said. “Really, a surprisingly small number. I think the circumstances have kept the number low, so far.”
“Take them in order after the griffons,” he said, “and then after that, we'll go in order of petitioner. Nothing could be fairer than that.”
“Are the Diamond Dogs on that list?”
“No.”
“They've got a warren not too far from Ponyville. Ought to add them, whether they like it or not.” Hickory Hocks leaned his chin onto his hoof. “Maybe midway through, give 'em enough time to prepare, figure out who they're going to send, and then by default they'll have made a peace treaty as long as we make sure that Dale or Kate gets them to sign the right papers. That'll probably save some headaches in the long run.”
“The local warren might not follow it,” Corduroy pointed out.
“If they break the treaty, it'll go hard on them.” He picked up a cookie, examined it, and set it back on the table untouched. “Odds are, they won't even notice that there's an embassy in Ponyville, but I'd feel a lot more comfortable having a treaty in place before we have a problem, rather than having to deal with it later.
“And in that vein, we ought to make sure that King Aspen meets with him, too. Nothing overly formal, but just enough that they know boundaries.”
“He doesn't care about what we do, either.”
“Didn't our report say that Dale's camp had lots of firewood stocked by it?” Old Hickory reached into his satchel and pulled out a report. He set it on the table and brought a set of reading glasses to his face. Celestia sighed—he'd go through the report until he found the passage, and she knew quite well that Dale had been in the woods.
“That's a good suggestion. I'll write the letter myself.” Raven made a note anyway. “I don't think that Dale is likely to want to go out in the woods and chop firewood—he's got more than enough on his plate as it is—but as with the Diamond Dogs, better to avoid a problem, than to wait until one develops and try to fix it afterwards.”
She waited until Hickory Hocks had put the report back in his satchel and take off his reading glasses before continuing. “Now, another important matter: once she's weaned off the morphine, do we make Kate the same offer we gave Dale, or do we offer her something else?”
Twilight awkwardly gripped a pair of tongs in her field, carefully pulling a single thin strand of copper wire out of the braid. She'd been lucky to find it; Green Garnet had some wire that she used for making settings, and had been willing to sell Twilight a spool of stranded wire she'd bought by mistake.
For Twilight, the challenge was that the wire only responded to her field by heating up. It wouldn't budge, and the more energy she put into the spell, the hotter the wire got—just like her book had said it would.
Lacking a set of proper jeweler's tools, she'd had to improvise, and the hardest part had been to get a single strand to fold over to where she could grab onto it.
When it was finally extracted, she examined it critically. It looked about the size of the wire stump she'd seen on the barb. Now it was time to experiment.
Twilight stuck a nail into an apple, and then clumsily wrapped the wire several turns around the head. She trailed the loose wire out along her worktable, all the way to the far end, weighing it down with her half-empty teacup.
Then she touched her horn to the wire, almost going cross-eyed in the process, and teleported herself to White Tail Woods.
She hadn't realized until she arrived that it was night, and it took her a moment to find the apple, but she already knew it had come along. She'd used a bit more power for the teleport than she normally would have.
The apple had arrived about a table-length from her; the wire had not come along for the ride.
She teleported back to the library, apple in tow, and began examining it in earnest. The wire was melted down to just a little stump off the nail, and there was a slightly discolored patch in the flesh of the apple. Of the rest of the wire, there was no trace, but there was a sooty line on her worktable.
Twilight floated a scroll over to the worktable and started to write a letter to Princess Celestia. This was a breakthrough, and while she wasn't sure yet if it would lead to a way to get Dale and Kate back unharmed, it was an avenue to pursue.
Lecol, Nurse Redheart, Doctor Goodall, Doctor Stable, and Zecora were all seated around the table in the doctor's lounge for a late-night meeting. None of them were particularly happy with the lateness of the meeting, but it had been the only time the five of them were all free.
In the center of the table, serving as a lucky totem, was the copy of Gray's Anatomy that the university ponies had brought. It was no longer useful as a reference, and hopefully it would not be needed again, but none of them were in a hurry to send it back. They'd all gone through it in their free time; even though they couldn’t read it, the book was lavishly illustrated.
Unfortunately, the next phase of treatment was going to be totally blind.
“She reacts to morphine the same as a pony,” Nurse Redheart began. “And I expect she will withdraw from it the same way. Nausea, insomnia, restlessness, diarrhea . . . I'm worried about her heart rate. It's already faster than I'd like.”
“It's comparable to Dale's,” Doctor Stable objected. “So it's probably normal.”
“But how high can it go? Her resting heart rate is nearly twice as fast as yours; does that mean that the highest it can go is twice as fast as well?” Redheart frowned. “That's 360—I think that's too fast.”
“Some animals are that high,” Doctor Goodall observed. “But they're small. Mice, voles, rabbits; that kind of thing. Usually, the bigger the animal the slower the heartbeat, so even though her baseline's higher than ours, she weighs about the same, and I wouldn't feel comfortable if it went above a hundred eighty.”
“We don't know what medications she'll respond to,” Lecol said. “Something which lowers the heart rate could kill her.”
“I have potions which might do the trick,” Zecora offered. “Hawthorn, Motherwort, or Garlic.”
“Snake venom could work as well, if it’s carefully applied.” Doctor Goodall tapped her hoof on the table. “She might not know what's happening to her. How well can you communicate with her?”
Redheart waved her hoof in a so-so motion. “That's what I worry about. We're going to have to increase staff, and we might need Dale to help us out.”
“For a week.” Doctor Stable ran a hoof through his mane, bristling it up in crazy spikes. “Even if all of us help out, we're going to be short at the hospital . . . how much do you think Starlight and Diamond Mint will help?”
“Starlight has steadier nerves,” Lecol said. “Diamond Mint, I don't know. It would be safest to assume that she will be no help at all.”
“If we have to be physical, Lyra can help, and perhaps the Guards as well.”
“They're not going to want to clean up if she doesn't make it to the bathroom in time,” Redheart warned him. “So I don't think we can count them.”
“Should we bring her back to the hospital?”
“It would be easier on her, but not on the other patients.”
“And she'll be more comfortable with people she knows.”
“Featherbrain would help—she’d jump at the chance.” Lecol picked up her teacup and took a sip. “Although perhaps she is not the best choice of ponies. She might not be welcome in the embassy.”
“Hmm.” Doctor Stable slid over a sheet of paper and began writing. “If you, Redheart, and Sweetheart each take a third of a day every day, and then Dr. Goodall, Zecora, and I take a third of a day, we can have two ponies with her all the time. That will leave us short at the hospital, so I'll have to ask for some extra help, but it will leave her with ponies she's familiar with.
“We can count on some help from Starlight if we need it, and maybe Lyra as well.”
“If things go bad, Starlight won't have time to cook.” Redheart objected. “We could have Apple Cobbler make extra meals, but Starlight will hate that.”
“She won't say anything, but it will hurt her pride.”
“What about Vigilance?
Doctor Stable brightened. “Yeah—he'd be a good choice.”
“Fluttershy is demure, but may aid the cure.”
Redheart turned to Zecora. “Unfortunately, Dale may not trust her.” She briefly recounted the woodchuck incident, and the zebra winced.
“It's going to be a long couple of weeks.” Lecol drained the rest of her tea. “At least there's an extra bed at the embassy: we could have a pony or two sleep there on their off-time, which would leave us with more help if we needed it. I'd be willing to do that.”
Prince Blueblood sat at his desk, his brows furrowed. In front of him, spread across the oak, was a fan of newspapers—the editorial section of the Baltimare Sun from the last several weeks. And he stared it at with the same sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as a gambler might view a losing set of cards. There was a feeling of inevitability; a knowledge that the next newspaper dealt would just further the loss, and dig him deeper in the hole.
And he couldn't fold. There was no end to the game.
He knew who was behind it, of course. That didn't take any special brilliance on his part. Graphite, mayor of Baltimare, and a pony bound and determined to land the Prench Embassy for himself. He'd surely had a hoof behind the rather odd choice of Noble Voice as a prosecutor in Lyra's trial.
Ambassador Lyra, he reminded himself. And while the trial would undoubtedly go down in the annals of history as—at best—a cautionary tale of what not to do in a courtroom, it had been the perfect setup for wild speculating by Straight Shooter, no doubt under the advice of Mayor Graphite.
If there had been a leak of confidential information, he could have done something. Or if somepony had talked after the trial, that would have been an avenue to pursue. A chink in the armor which could be widened. But Noble Voice had not violated his gag order, so there was nothing there.
It was obvious, just by reading the articles. The few actual facts were buried in wild speculation and pure fantasy. There was an embassy in Ponyville, Lyra was the ambassador . . . pretty much everything else had been made up out of whole cloth. Amazingly, they had been remarkably on the mark with Lyra's salary, but he assumed that was a lucky guess, rather than any inside information.
It was also obvious to his loyalists that this was a blatant smear campaign. Even those nobles who were moderate admitted it . . . but they also said that the articles were circulating further and further, like ripples in a pond, and their constituents were starting to grumble.
Thus far, the grumbles hadn't amounted to much, but each day they built, and sooner rather than later, nobles would start switching sides. Little bites would be taken out of his tenuous consensus. One noble might flip because of pressure, while another might come to believe the fantastic tales the Baltimare Sun was concocting. And then there would be a vote, and like it or not, Blueblood would be on a train to Ponyville, off to fix a mess that never had existed.
And at that point, he was sunk. If he did a good job, or even an average job, Graphite would be sure to bring up how well things were going at every single meeting of the Council. And if he did a bad job? That would be just as good; proof that he couldn't run an embassy in Ponyville, much less Prance.
What frustrated him the most was that Graphite's entire campaign was built upon nothing but feelings, and the very occasional fact which happened to fit the narrative. Not that there were many of those.
The only bit of admiration he held was for the pony who was writing the articles. She seemed bound and determined to see just how far she could stretch over the line without being rebuked, and every day that she got away with it, the more ponies she swayed over to her shining palace of lies and innuendo, and the more difficult it would be to stop her, for to penalize her now would be seen by her sycophants as an attempt at cover-up. Blueblood knew full well how much mileage she’d get out of that editorial. If she was smart—and she probably was—she’d already prepared it, ready for publication the moment she didn’t show up for work for any reason.
He swept the papers together and threw them on the floor, then shoved himself back from his desk hard enough that he almost toppled backwards out of his chair. There was no way out of this moon-damned mess; he might as well just have his maids start packing for an extended posting. A very extended posting, one which would extend exactly one day beyond the filling of the upcoming vacancy at the Prench Embassy.
Blueblood slid out of his chair and picked up the newspapers in his field, then stomped over to the fireplace. While he couldn't really solve his problems with fire, he might feel some satisfaction watching them go up in smoke. Knowing my luck recently, some of them would go up the chimney, and they'd either set the roof on fire, or else land intact enough to convince my groundskeeper to join the chorus protesting Lyra.
Nevertheless, he tossed the papers into the fireplace, since that was as good a place for them as any, and stormed out of his office.
He went to the lounge first, in the hopes that a cup of tea might settle his mood—or at least the hollow feeling in his belly—but when his maid set it before him, it smelled off, and the sip he took left a foul taste in his mouth.
“Is something the matter?” His maid pulled the cup away from him as soon as he set it back on the saucer. “Is the tea not to your liking? It's burdock root, and Coleslaw prepared it as you like it.”
“It's my stomach.” Blueblood absently picked up a biscuit and began nibbling at the edge. That, at least, tasted like it ought to. “I thought that the tea would help, but—“ He sighed. “Perhaps something else tonight. Hot chocolate with crème de menthe.”
“As you wish.” She scurried off to the kitchen to fulfill his demand.
Blueblood picked at his biscuit. Graphite had gotten him so worked up that even his favorite tea tasted bitter.
He glanced around the room, just in case there was a newspaper reporter from the Baltimare Sun ready to take a picture of him drinking a cup of hot chocolate like some schoolcolt. They probably wouldn't print that, though, since it might be interpreted as me not being ready to serve in Ponyville.
When his maid returned, he thankfully took the cup in his field and sipped a little bit, giving the drink a chance to reinvigorate him. It was funny how just changing his normal nighttime drink could improve his mood somewhat.
He'd finished half the mug when inspiration struck, and he set it on the table and then practically galloped back to his office, pulling the newspapers back out of the fireplace and spreading them once more across the table. There was a way to win this game after all, and it was so devious it was brilliant. Graphite had only been identified as 'a top Baltimare official,' just as he’d hoped.
Blueblood could hang him on his own words. He could force him to both win and lose the game, just by changing the rules a tiny little bit.