Stars winked into existence overhead, scattered across the darkening sky. The black sea washed over the crags and pebbles and briefly flared white with froth. On the horizon lurked the shadow of another island, its gulf barely an outline against the twilight.
Against the log-made jetty, the boat tugged on its mooring rope and bobbed with the waves. Four bulging saddlebags twinkled with magic while they were lowered onto the stern bench. Vanilla, now shorn of her trench coat and sunglasses, leaned over the edge and stretched a forelimb to pull the boat closer. Anything to avoid looking at the inky nothingness between it and the logs.
Behind her, Carmine levitated the jar of fireflies and shuffled towards the rising rock ridge that passed for a public trail. Folio was tapping a hoof and had folded her wings across her chest like arms. Everything from the forward lean to the unblinking gaze of the pegasus focused on the unicorn with the intensity of a cannon aimed at a castle wall.
“Here,” Carmine said, and from behind her the glowing black key drifted towards Folio’s face. “I’m a mare of my word.”
Folio’s wing blurred with the snatch. Her face was twitching with the effort of restraint.
“They’re in an abandoned warehouse. Sort District, in Uronychus town. There’s a box museum right next to it. Use any door; the key works on all the padlocks. You got all that?”
This earned her barely a nod. “I’m a postgrad. I’ve got a killer memory.”
“Good,” said Carmine, and she gave a curt nod. “So now you’ll kill that memory of ever seeing us leave, because I’ve got a lot of close friends in the company who I owe money to. They’ll get very upset if I end up in a jail somewhere. Might pop round to make enquiries, if you get my drift.”
Folio’s twitching continued, and in the darkness she was turning pale enough to glow. “But, but I thought you didn’t hurt ponies? Y-You said.”
“I said I don’t kill,” said Carmine. “That still leaves me a lot of options.”
Then the grin bloomed across her face and she reared up to deliver a wide-armed bow. “A rip-roaring pleasure it has been, miss, doing business with you. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you and your family a bright and prosperous future.”
It took a few seconds to sink in, but when it did, Folio was gone. The dust settled, and Carmine fell back onto all fours to shuffle over to Vanilla, who’d been holding the boat steady and watching her. At once, the earth mare spun round and scooped up the oars. She’d gotten as far as bringing them up to her chest, but to her surprise found them tingling and suddenly stuck immobile in midair.
“No no,” said Carmine hastily. “You just get in the boat and relax. I’ll take care of the rowing.”
“But I can do it, I swear!”
“Of course you can. I never said you couldn’t. But let old Carmine have a go, eh? There’s a good mare.”
Vanilla raised her eyebrow suspiciously. She was sure her technique was just as good as Carmine’s, but the unicorn didn’t so much as smile apologetically. Still giving Carmine funny glances, Vanilla guided hoof after hoof onto the boat, stiffening once or twice when the waves threatened to tip her front half out.
The boat dipped alarmingly, and she spun round to see Carmine bouncing off the saddlebags and onto the bench, making the whole thing dip again.
“Right,” said the unicorn, suddenly all business, “that’s one crystal, one lightning sceptre, and whatever else we managed to pinch along the way. There’s enough food and drink in there to last us four days if we ration it. We might have to rough it a bit in the wild, but it’s nothing we haven’t trained long and hard for, despite our best efforts.”
“Do you always leave caches around an island when you visit?” said Vanilla.
“Rule one of the business: always have your escape plan worked out before you start. Saves a lot of embarrassment later on.” Carmine lowered the oars and snapped them into place. “Here, let me sit at the front end.”
“The bow.”
“Yeah, that bit. Excuse me…”
Vanilla grunted and whimpered as the boat rocked under Carmine’s blundering. Then they were sitting on each other’s benches, Carmine stiff-backed like an attentive dog, Vanilla cautiously lowering her body onto the saddlebags with the grace of a lady waiting to be painted.
“And why –?” she began.
“That’s it. You just sit back and enjoy the night.” Carmine opened the jar and shooed the fireflies out before pitching it overboard. “Now…”
The oars twinkled. As one, the giant paddles swept back and then dipped into the inky blackness. Groaning with the strain, Carmine clenched her jaw and tugged. They zipped away from the jetty, and then bounced back. Such was the force that Carmine almost fell off her bench.
“Would you like me,” said Vanilla coldly, cushioned as she was by the saddlebags, “to untie the mooring rope first?”
Opposite her, Carmine grinned. “Ahaha. I was just… testing the oars. Don’t get excited.”
A few seconds later, they were on their way, one strained beat of the oars after the other, the rope and the jar trailing in their wake. Vanilla turned round in her seat to watch the crags and headland drift away. On either side of them stretched a shelf of low rocky outcrop that was so bubbly and holey that it could’ve been a gigantic sponge, while further away were the shadows of mountains. Along the northern side of the coast, a nearby town glowed. Even from here, her ears flickered at the faint notes of a hundred string-based serenades, the humming chatter of a thousand voices, and the laughter that flared as a firework among the campfires of sound.
When she turned back, she realized Carmine had her back to the other island. “I… suppose I could navigate for us?”
“Relax, Vanilla.” Between each strain, Carmine flashed a grin. “You’ve done more than enough. No one’s going to spot us in the dark. Except me. I’ve got amazing night vision. It took me years to get night vision as good as this. I had to practise in a dark room once every two days.”
Vanilla shrugged and leaned back, forelimbs tucked behind her head. Each sway was a gentle rock of the wooden seat. There were no sounds besides the steady dribble and the creak of the oars. Stars filled the sky, puncturing through the void until shapes began to form, the suggestion of edges between nearby stars, the vague clouds of clusters too far away to properly focus on…
“I remember watching the night sky when I was young,” she said in what she hoped was a calming voice. When Carmine simply yanked the oars out again, she continued, “No one let me out after dark – said it was too dangerous at the witching hour, or so they called it – so I slipped out the bedroom window and ran up the hill near our house. We were in the country. The view’s always best from the open fields, they said.”
“Mmm,” said Carmine. It could have meant anything.
“I can navigate by the constellations, you know,” added Vanilla, still staring up at the sky. She recognized them now: Auriga, the chariot; Ursa Minor, the little bear; Draco, the dragon… They stood out as plainly as the faces of old friends. To her shame, she felt a tear begin to pool under her left eye.
The oars creaked and then dribbled water during their arc. Another creak, and she faintly heard them slip into the waves. Sinking under the gentle encouragement of the boat’s up-and-down rhythm, her eyelids began to clench, and half of the sky was shrouded beneath it. Everything began to feel like a minor weight pressed up against her back. She could almost fall into the sky.
“I, uh,” said Carmine, “don’t suppose you could… remind me what the constellations are, by any chance?”
Vanilla raised her head, feeling herself crystallize as she snapped back to real life. Still stiff-backed, Carmine was smirking at her, and only the wince of each yank of the oars betrayed an otherwise icy exterior.
“You know them, do you?” Vanilla said, and despite herself a smirk played on her mouth.
“Yeah, sure. Um…” Carmine tilted her head back and pouted thoughtfully. A hoof shot up. “Ooh, that one! The one shaped like a pan. Ursa Major.”
“Very good, professor.” Vanilla didn’t bother pointing out that there were kindergarten students who knew that one. “And you know Cassiopeia, the W-shaped one over there?”
“Of course, of course. That’s the name. Slipped my mind for a moment.”
Vanilla felt only the slightest twinge of guilt when she added, “And you see that one there? Crux? You see it?”
“Crux! That’s the one. I can make out the jaws now. Crux. Knew it was on the tip of my tongue.”
Vanilla leaned back and tried to relax while a part of her rolled on the deck laughing. “And you might want to make a slight course correction to your left. We’re drifting over.”
Carmine nodded. “You figure that out from the stars? You can read them to some fine detail, then. My, aren’t we clever?”
“Yeah,” said Vanilla with a sigh. Not that she’d needed to do so. Carmine could’ve come to the same conclusion just by turning around.
Idly, she twisted herself round and ferreted in one of the bags with both hooves. For a moment, the book popped out, and then she breathed out with relief and slipped it back inside.
“Stealing a library book, tsk tsk tsk,” said Carmine.
“I wanted a souvenir. Besides, I like legends. It’s a great comfort from… well, it’s just a great comfort.”
“Yeesh. And to think, if only you and that Folio foal had met under different circumstances, eh? The saddest words I ever did hear, are ‘What could have been’.”
Vanilla threw herself back onto the saddlebags. “Carmine?”
“Yeah?”
There was the barest hint of a tremble in her voice before she asked; “What are you thinking about? Right now, I mean.”
“My my, what a funny question.”
“Please?” she added.
At once, she regretted it. Carmine’s voice was a lead block dropped onto concrete when she answered; “Death.”
“Oh.” Vanilla felt the blush try to force its way out of her cheeks. She tried to look as far away from Carmine as possible, which in her current position meant trying to stare up her own scalp. “S-Sorry.”
Carmine waited until another cycle of dribbling and creaking passed.
“Don’t be,” she said matter-of-factly. “I think about my death all the time. It darn well nearly happens all the time, in this job. There’s a lot more to it than just mugging weedy clerk types for the big shiny thing.”
The oars creaked and dribbled on. Vanilla shut out the stars, trying to withdraw into her own mind.
“There’s a lot of novices,” continued Carmine with the air of one prodding a dragon to see if it’s dead, “who never make it past the first job.”
“Mmmm,” said Vanilla, torn between being polite and forcing the unicorn to stop talking.
“We have a memorial in the lobby. Back in the offices, I mean. Whole room full of names. Not just novices’ names, either.”
Vanilla screwed up her face with the effort of keeping herself at bay. Shut up, shut up, shut up…
“And we get no health insurance whatsoever. Premium’s monstrous.”
She opened her eyes to stars. “Carmine…”
“Pension’s good, though. Got that to look forward to.”
“Carmine.”
The oars splashed on their downward curve this time. “Yes, Vanilla?”
Vanilla took a deep breath. “Why are we doing this, Carmine?”
“What, talking?”
“No. The job.” Sweat trickled down her fringe to her ears, but she bit down and then continued, “All this fetching artefacts and getting killed. I mean, what is it for?”
A chuckle heralded Carmine’s response. “Wow. Most of us don’t get to that stage until we’ve got a few more jobs behind us. Trying to save time?”
“I’m serious. When I joined up last year, it all seemed so… well, exciting. I got a kick out of the thought of pulling one over on everybody. The late night work, going outdoors, seeing the sights, doing whatever I wanted, however I wanted… Ha, that’d show ‘em, I thought. Bunch of goody-goodies, bunch of dull-as-ditchwater… erm… ditchwaters…” She shook the confusion off her head. “I thought it was going to be… well, like that all the time. Exciting and everything.”
“Good grief, Vanilla! Getting chased by police isn’t exciting? I wouldn’t like to live where you come from. Hold on, I’m drifting again.”
One oar stuck right up while the other splashed feverishly against the waves. Vanilla pointed her ears for the slightest unexpected sound. Any moment, a light would burst into existence and a booming voice would shout, “Halt! Step away from the oars and put your front hooves up! You are under arrest!”
She shivered and tried to wriggle herself comfortable.
“Having second thoughts?” Carmine grunted at the strain before both oars relaxed. “Wow, you really have had all the cushy stuff so far, haven’t you? Quitting is not a good idea in this job. You don’t get to hand over your notice and waltz out the door.”
As one, the oars plunged back into the waters.
“But what if they’re right?” moaned Vanilla to the stars. “I… I was horrified at what I was doing when I joined up. I mean, most of me was pleased, of course most of me was pleased, but there was this feeling in my head like I couldn’t believe I’d stoop so low… and when I saw that… and then… well, what about all that stuff about criminals and innocent civilians? Justice? Good and evil? All that heady stuff… I mean, what if there’s an actual –”
“Vanilla!”
“An actual spark of goodness in me and I’d just turned my back on it –”
“Vanilla!”
She yanked herself up to her elbows and the nightmare shattered around her. “What? What?”
“Don’t worry so much about it, OK?” said Carmine, and Vanilla was shocked at how soothing her voice had become. “It’s just a game. You don’t have to play it. Not if you don’t want to.”
“A… A game?” she said in between each pant.
“Lots of rules, lots of standards. It’s only natural you fuss over them. It’s complicated. But that’s all they are, when you get down to it. Just keep it together, and then let it go…”
And after several breaths, Vanilla leaned back, and she sighed, and she let it go with another, final sigh.
“Thattagirl.” Carmine grunted with another heave of the oars. “Everybody gets a crisis of conscience in this job. Don’t worry. Get rid of your conscience, crisis over. That’s how I look at it.”
“OK… OK, thanks… thanks Carmine.”
This time, she was met with a snigger. “Of course, there is one way of looking at it that helps put it all into perspective. That crystal we’ve got, for example: what do you think happens when we hand it over?”
Resting on the saddlebags, Vanilla shrugged. She was finding herself drifting off again, and struggling to keep her eyes open.
“Let me put it this way, then. The agency’s been doing this job for years and years and years and years, serving probably dozens of clients. Get this for a superweapon, get that for a mind control device, oh please would you fetch those mystic doo-dahs what’ll release this ancient eldritch evil if you’d kindly just drop ‘em off at this hill on this planetary alignment blahdy blahdy blah. Dozens, remember? So have you ever wondered why we never hear of their schemes again?”
Vanilla nodded. Her dreams were brightening up the starlit sky, but the voice of Carmine droned on.
“And remember, we get paid handsomely for all this malarkey, give or take the occupational hazards. All in all, it’s a good living, right? We get a lot of bits for it, right? And we’re in league with some pretty powerful individuals, wouldn’t you say? And we’re efficient, right, so at least we can claim to proudly and shiningly hold up our end of the bargain in these megalomaniac schemes.”
Now Vanilla’s eyelids were fully closed. A smile slid across her lips. She liked this dream.
“That’s the ticket. Challenging work, romantic excitement, handsome payoffs… and an interestingly steady supply of commissions…” Carmine’s voice was dripping with a smirk that stretched from cheek to cheek. “Think of our job, Vanilla, as the greatest con game anyone ever pulled…”