Chapter 16: Evasion
As the cart above Rarity jostled to a halt, the sudden change in momentum gave her a cold bite from the tough straps securing her barrel and legs to its underside. The pain brought her fully out of an uncomfortable half-sleep of idle tension that she’d lapsed into at some point during the journey. She waited in silence as hoofsteps moved around nearby, making small echoes. Then they moved nearer, and came right up behind her, at the side of the cart.
Four knocks came in a swift, rhythmic pattern. Rarity’s heart fluttered, then she sucked in a large breath.
“If you’ll pardon my reach, ma’am, I’ll get your hind legs and barrel first. Then you can just slip out of the front one at your leisure.” The cart stallion’s voice was rough and low, but it filled Rarity with relief.
“Please, proceed. I take it that we’re close?”
“Aye,” he said, undoing the clasp at her hind legs, which dropped the short distance from the underside of the cart to the cobbled ground. “Just turn right at the junction and head out the alley.” He crawled underneath the cart, moved up beside her, then undid the clasp on her barrel. Most of her weight hit the ground, and she easily slipped her forelegs out from there. The stallion nodded briefly, then finished crawling back out to the other side. “It’s just a block straight down, ma’am, and you’ll come up on its side. Discreet enough?”
Rarity frowned and grunted as she wriggled her way out into the open. She gladly accepted the stallion’s hoof to help her get back upright. Then she lit her horn, picked up a new, embroidered grey cloak off the cart-bed, and threw it around herself.
That done, she took a moment to examine her surroundings. The alley they’d stopped in was quiet and dark, and opened out into a T-junction between taller buildings. Here and there a few windows were set in the sides of the buildings above, but not many lights were on, and there were no obvious silhouettes in them.
“You’ve done well,” she said, reaching into her cloak and producing her billfold.
“Now milady, there’s no need for that…”
“Nonsense. You’ve no idea how much this has eased my mind.”
He blinked at the proffered bits, but then took them, and inclined his head. “Much obliged. Have a good night, ma’am.”
“And you as well.” She trotted slowly to the junction and looked right. The alley there looked empty as well, save for a great deal more trash than might be typical for the Upper City. All at once, something rustled in the breeze, and she startled.… and a series of unwanted memories assailed her: of watching a would-be mugger approach herself and the mysterious cloaked stallion; of seeing a knife flash out, faster than lightning; and then blood, desperation, and the light fading from a pony’s eyes.
Rarity blinked, trying to dispel it all, but her mind’s eye couldn’t look away, no matter how desperately she wanted it to.
“You all right, ma’am?” the cart-pony said from behind her.
She shivered as his words broke her out of the spell. “Yes, of course. Just having a look at things. Good evening.” And with that she forced herself to take one stiff step after another down the dark alley, heedless of the heavy feeling in her heart. Under her breath she cursed the vision of the horrifying pink mare in the window at Filthy’s home, as a night spent in comfort and relative safety would’ve been vastly preferable.
She pulled the cloak tighter as she reached the end of the alley and stepped out onto the sidewalk proper. A finely dressed couple scoffed and turned their noses up as they passed her, but Rarity cared only that the imperious cast to their muzzles looked nothing like what she’d glimpsed in the shadowy stallion’s cloak.
Other passersby took less obvious notice of Rarity, though she studied each of them with nervous tension. In between watching ponies, Rarity’s mind wandered back to the words that Bon Bon had breathed to her: Upper City. Starswirl Fountain. Loose stone. Leave a note—he’s back. The implications of those words, and of the stallion’s house on fire quip, still chilled her even more than the sunless, omnipresent cold.
Rarity continued to force her slow, mechanical steps as she approached the tall, wrought iron gates surrounding the hotel. Within their perimeter lay the dead remains of a once-manicured lawn, as well as a few stands of barren trees. In contrast, the building proper was opulence itself, with a shining white marble exterior visible between thick, gray stone pillars.
Yet Rarity hesitated, and a feeling of unease crept over her, as the mysterious stallion’s exhortations to do something unexpected played back through her mind. She cursed in a quiet but unladylike fashion as she realized she’d been so rattled earlier that she’d failed to make an important connection: assuming that he wanted to keep an eye on her, and assuming that she’d succeeded at giving him the slip, he might instead try looking for her by waiting somewhere she’d be likely to turn up. And the hotel was a logical first place to look, given that both Sassy and their luggage should be waiting for her.
Rarity crossed the street but continued walking parallel to the hotel. She kept moving until she reached the first store whose lights were on. She entered quickly, and found herself enveloped by a lilac-scented showroom filled with fine silks draped upon new-looking ponnequins.
“My goodness,” said a sharp, female voice from next to the door. “Excuse me, but we do not serve vagabonds. You’ll have to… oh! Oh, forgive me, Lady Rar—”
“Hssst!” Rarity raised a hoof to her lips, already regretting her choice of establishment. The eyes of the angularly-faced gray mare before her were positively shining with potential intrigue, and Rarity knew there’d be no way to undo things now. So she gestured to the mare, then stepped back between two racks of fine clothes, hiding herself from view. “Nopony must know that I am here,” she whispered, doing her utmost to play up whatever theatrical element of secrecy that the mare might infer from Rarity’s presence. “I am here in town for a… liaison.”
“Oooh!” The mare drew herself up and winked broadly. “But of course, Lady… ah, madam. Rest assured, you’ve come to the right place. It would be my privilege to show you our more intimate collection in the back…”
“Perhaps. But first, there is a matter that is still more pressing.” Rarity took out her billfold again, this time fetching out a princely sum. “I need somepony to check in at the hotel, to see if my paramour has arrived.” A startled look crossed the mare’s eyes, so Rarity continued: “It would hardly do for me to make this journey in adventurous secrecy only to end up standing around in the lobby while our room’s being prepared, now would it?”
“Of course, madam.” The mare grinned and leaned closer, taking the bits. “If you’d only be so good as to tell me whose name I should ask for?”
Rarity swallowed, again doing her best to make her hesitation look convincing. “S… Sassy Saddles.”
The mare’s jaw veritably dropped. She composed herself a moment later, but it gave Rarity a small thrill to know that she’d succeeded at sowing the seeds of drama. There had been a time during her youth when few things would have given her greater pleasure, though those days were long past.
“Yes, of course, madam! I’ll just lock up; feel free to have a look around the store while I ask after her.”
Rarity held her place as the mare stepped out. The door closed with a jingle from the small bell overhead, followed by the scraping of a key in the lock. Then there was silence, save for Rarity’s own breathing.
Despite her nerves, Rarity found her eyes drawn toward the sleeve of a red dress hanging on a nearby rack. She slid the other dresses on the rack aside, giving herself a clear view of the ruby silk garment and its deep crimson beading. Its neck and sleeves were trimmed with black lace, completing its look as a dress fit for a brash and dangerous mare. Or at least one who might be considered dangerous among hangers-on at court.
She raised a hoof to the dress, touching its bodice, feeling the soft abrasiveness of the beads. The thought occurred to her that it wasn’t of a style that she might’ve made herself, had she continued sewing; and yet, were her circumstances different, she might also hesitate to leave it languishing on the rack.
Her eyes continued roving, and soon found another dress of fine silk with an even more daring cut—this one blue and trimmed in green. She studied it closely before moving onto the next: cream-colored with deep brown accents. A smile crept across her features as she moved farther and farther down the rack, eventually becoming absorbed by the pleasurable array of colors and styles, even as small criticisms of the hoofwork bubbled in the back of her mind.
Rarity had quite lost track of time before she startled at the sound of a key entering the door’s lock again. Her breath caught, and she stepped behind another rack and eyed the entrance as, once more, the bell jingled.
Her breath returned to her as she recognized that it was the gray mare again, looking oddly perturbed as she cast her gaze around the store. “Madam,” she called quietly. “Madam, I fear there’s been some kind of mistake.”
Slowly, nervously, Rarity stepped out from behind the rack. “And what would that be?”
The mare moved closer. “Evidently the hotel had Lady Saddles in a different room than you. And to make things more complicated, it seems your things have already arrived and been unloaded into your room, but hers weren’t left at all, and her reservation's been canceled.”
Rarity’s brow furrowed. “You mean… she hasn’t been here?”
“No madam. I believe there was a note for you, which they refused to release to me, but the gist of what I could get out of them was that the Lady Saddles has gone up to the Governor’s mansion.”
“I don’t know what to say… I’ve never known Sassy to lie to anypony. She wouldn’t lie…”
“You have my sympathies,” the mare said, raising a hoof toward Rarity before stopping herself. “Have no fear, of course I’ll treat this with the utmost discretion; I wouldn’t dream of breathing any word of this to anypony.”
“Of course,” Rarity said mechanically. “I…” She glanced through the window, out at the street, and felt a pang of doubt about her attempt to evade the cloaked stallion. Surely he’d learn about the shopkeeper eventually, and she had little doubt that her new ‘friend’ would be only too happy to gossip. “I suppose there’s nothing for it but to follow her and ask why she’s changed our plans, no?”
The mare nodded, then smiled. “I know, my lady; I’ll call a cart for you!”
“That sounds delightful.” Rarity punctuated her words with an ingratiating smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Perhaps I’ll just have a look around in the back while you do that?”
They parted with what Rarity felt must be false grins. She headed toward the back of the store and pushed through a curtain of beads. Beyond them was a smaller room that was noticeably darker, and lit only with red-tinged light. And as promised, the shelves and racks seemed lined with garments intended more to tantalize than to cover. Modesty had come back into fashion in the ever-present chill of night, but there were still times when ponies wanted to accentuate the contours of their shape, or draw the eye toward one place or another on the body.
A brief pang of interest and thoughts about Filthy overcame her as she regarded a lacy purple negligee on a hanger at the end of a rack, but Rarity didn’t let her eyes linger for long. Instead, she focused on the door at the side of the room—an emergency exit. By appearances, it didn’t have an obvious alarm rigged up to it. But when Rarity lit her horn and delved for any magical residue that might indicate an alarming spell, she felt a vague tingle intrude on her mind, manifesting physically as an itch in her scalp. There had to be something.
She paused a moment while her horn was lit, then changed her spell, instead trying to see if she could unravel the magical alarm. Though it involved a level of magical skill that went beyond what she usually practiced, Rarity found parallels between the knot of magic before her, and the knotty tangles that she’d sometimes found—or caused—when sewing in her earlier days.
Rarity had lived for detangling in those days. And so, soon enough, she let out a sigh of contentment as the magical alarm untangled into nothingness. Then she took a deep breath, undid the door’s bolt, and pushed it open. She stepped through and closed it behind her as silently as she could.
With barely a moment’s hesitation about the luggage she might be abandoning at the hotel, Rarity set off trotting quietly down the alley, heading away from the hotel and deeper into the Upper City.
A nearby sound of breaking glass made her jump with panic. She paused briefly, looking for its source; her eyes moved upward toward an open, lighted window, and to the silhouette of a pony who had bent out over the alley. Her breath caught as she waited for the figure to act again. But soon enough, it simply turned back and slid the window closed. Rarity looked down, seeing faint glimmers of starlight reflect off the broken remains of a bottle.
Her pulse slowed a little, and she quickened her hoofsteps onward. Starswirl Fountain was still a ways away, but with the alleys generally cleaner and safer in the Upper City than those in the Lower City, she allowed herself to be a bit less cautious about moving silently, preferring instead to simply get there as swiftly as was practical.
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As Scott put it "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." I am definitely gonna have popcorn standing by in case NMM gets wind of a rumour that Rarity and Sassy are something other than bitter rivals who would love nothing more than to gut each other, metaphorically speaking, or maybe even for realzies, and asks for an explanation. Which would you recommend with that, Pepsi or Coke?
Wonderfully bittersweet moment of reflection. Ah, for what could (and should) have been...
The continuing presence of dead plants and cold nights serve as reminders that this state just isn't sustainable in the long run. It's not raining liquid oxygen, so the Nightmare clearly has some countermeasures for the usual consequences of sunlessness. Still, I have to wonder how many ponies the current state of affairs can actually feed, even with the Underground Sun. And how long those supplies can last.
And I can only imagine Sassy's face when this new grist inevitably works its way through the rumor mill...
9294940
The biggest one is vitamin D deficiency. Everypony’s skin and bones should just be going to ruin.
9295098
How dare you bring science into this?!
9294933
I’m more of a Pepsi man myself. But I’ll tell ya (and 9294940), it’s been so long since I wrote the fake-out Rarity X Sassy tease that I hadn’t even thought about it as a potentially attention-grabbing aspect of this chapter when I posted it this morning.
It might not be too late to add a callback later on...
9295328
I dunno, let’s see what he has to say:
I won't lie ... I laughed at Rarity's answer as to who she was meeting. As far as who he is that is back... we all know who HE is.
9295098
There's an RPG series called Avernum, where a massive underground cavern network was used as a prison by the overworld. Throughout the series you can instantly recognize residents (and thus non-residents) because people who lived there for a while were pale and pasty-faced as ghosts. Also very thin because their whole diet was mushrooms and lizard meat.
That was not a happy RPG series.
"Clearly the only solution to this situation is pretending that me and Sassy are having a spicy affair, no other way"
Right. To clarity for myself, Rarity smuggled herself to the hotel it an effort to ditch the mysterious stallion. The lie about a liaison with Sassy was an effort to satisfy the receptionist's curiosity over why she's being secretive, and the truth won't work because Rarity doesn't want word of the mysterious stallion getting back to Sassy. Perhaps it also recruits the receptionist to cover for her if the mysterious stallion comes asking for her. When it turns out Sassy isn't there, Rarity slips out the back in case the mysterious stallion is watching the front, which he may know to do because of this hotel's reputation. She sent the receptionist out front because asking to leave through the back might tip her off that she's hiding from somepony rather than just hiding in general, so it's better to mysteriously disappear and not answer questions for now.
If I've got that right, that's rather savvy of Rarity, and she's demonstrated aptitude for intrigue and spycraft. I question the wisdom in seeding these rumors, and I suspect there's a simpler way to achieve all this that isn't coming to me, but this does seem to be pretty savvy given she's making it up on the fly.