Death Rides a Pale Mare

by totallynotabrony

Chapter 4

Jolly, Mirror, and Pale were the only ones available. They’d spent the day planning with Piper, trying to account for several twitchers and the complicated situation into which they would be placed.

The Grand Galloping Gala was the biggest party in Equestria. At the Princesses’ invitation, guests came to Canterlot Castle from all around the country. It was bad luck that three twitchers would be in attendance; a bloom by any of them would have catastrophic results. Piper was taking no chances, but more help would have been better.

Coin was at the other end of Equestria after a twitcher and wouldn’t be back for days. Whisper and Shadow were also occupied. Hammer was simply too large. There was no way he could blend in, or even get in the door. Shard was away gathering ingredients for his laboratory, and by his own admission he was ill-suited for field work anyway.

Still, the numbers could have been worse: three twitchers, three assassins. They could have been outnumbered.

Pale, for her part, was secretly delighted at the prospect of going to the legendary Grand Galloping Gala, but that was tempered by the task that lay ahead. She wasn’t comfortable or practiced at working in crowds. Picking three targets out of a packed ballroom and dispatching them covertly was probably even more difficult than it sounded.

Fancy balls were not at all part of Pale’s skill set. Culture had never before been required of her. She wasn’t just rough around the edges, more like rough all the way through. She just never had the time, opportunity, or reason to learn how to be refined and sociable. Needless to say, Pale hadn’t had anything resembling a normal upbringing.

She was glad to be going with Jolly and Mirror. Both of them knew their way around a party, and were probably best suited to this kind of work. Jolly had charisma and a mastery of conversation. Mirror had an easygoing attraction and quick wit. Pale had, well...knives and moxie. She was going to need all the help she could get.

“The easiest way to intercept them would be before they arrive at the castle and mix with the crowd,” said Piper. He spoke to them from the front room of the cave, where planning materials lay scattered over the table. A folder of notes about Canterlot lay open, lit by the charm lights around the cave. “Unfortunately, there’s no telling from which direction they will arrive or at what time. The easiest way to identify them would be when they’re concentrated at the ball.”

“So we’ll have to get them separated,” said Mirror.

“And determine a method of concealing the business,” added Jolly. “One death at or after a party could be mere happenstance. It goes without saying that three would arouse suspicion.”

“If we can identify them, we could follow them home,” suggested Pale.

“That would be safer initially, but would increase the timeline and bring us closer to a potential bloom,” said Piper. “I’ll leave the tradeoff to be decided by you three.”

“Four, if that would be all right,” said Mirror. “Tietack has been just dying to go.”

Piper considered it, and nodded. “As long as he understands business over pleasure.”

Mirror nodded. She smiled. “Well, I suppose we should get started. I don’t have a thing to wear.”

That wasn’t true, though Mirror clearly wasn’t holding back in her preparation. Jolly was content to wear a tuxedo he already owned. Pale didn’t have anything fit for Gala wear.

“Who are you going as?” Mirror asked when Pale came to her with the problem.

Pale shrugged. “Ideas?”

“I was thinking something with veils. Saddle Arabian?”

“Interesting.” Pale considered it. She had rarely used - or needed - a cover identity. Pale’s business was usually conducted directly, without the need to talk or pretend. For her, it was easier that way.

“I can make something with that theme,” said Mirror. She already knew Pale’s measurements.

Pale went to the library to look up Saddle Arabia and put together a fake backstory. It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny from a real Saddle Arabian, but she was planning to talk to as few ponies as possible.

Still, books couldn’t teach everything. After making some notes, she got up and went to Jolly’s quarters. He responded to her knock. “Come in.”

Jolly’s room was probably as luxurious as cave chambers could get. Whenever he’d encountered a particularly fetching item in a twitcher’s home, he’d taken it. His bedspread looked fit for a prince, or at least a duke. Most of the things, however, were recipe books, or loose leaves of improvised directions. Pale wouldn’t be surprised if he’d tried them all.

“I need help with faking an accent,” said Pale. She told him what she was planning.

“I’ve met a share of Saddle Arabians,” acknowledged Jolly. He invited her to sit on the bed, which was made of either feathers or something even softer.

He coached her on pronunciation, seemingly delighted to do so. Jolly was, by far, the most upbeat member of the guild. Pale didn’t know how he did it, being so, well, jolly, while still doing his job. The trophies around the room attested to his work.

Sometimes Pale wondered if it was all an act. Surely nopony could actually be that jovial and simultaneously be a multiple murderer. Nopony normal.

But who was she to judge what was normal?

---

Almost before she knew it, Pale was walking through the gilded front gate of Canterlot Castle with Jolly, Mirror, and Tietack. They’d been passed tickets by a pony who worked at the castle and owed Piper a favor.

They were all dressed up. Mirror wore her fanciest, which was intricate and extravagant enough that she couldn’t have made it in time for the Gala. She’d probably had it waiting for just such an occasion. The veil and robes Pale wore were conservative, especially next to Mirror, and hardly made her stand out among the other Gala-goers.

Fireworks burst in the sky above. No effort had been spared. The Grand Galloping Gala was already living up to its reputation and they weren’t even inside yet.

Tietack couldn’t keep his hooves still, practically vibrating in place. They hadn’t decided on a role for him tonight, but an extra pair of eyes for lookout was always welcome.

Piper’s parasprites followed them to the ticket line and then dispersed. Their tickets checked out and the four of them were let into the castle’s great hall. The marble floor had been polished like glass, overlaid with red carpets that connected like spokes of a wheel to a statue of an alicorn in the center of the room. Huge windows around the walls opened to views of the night sky, the city of Canterlot down below, and the castle gardens. A four-piece band was playing on a raised stage.

The four of them didn’t discuss the targets or the job, not here. They had already studied the layout and the targeted twitchers. Plans could change in an instant, of course, but they could adapt. This wasn’t the first outing for any of them.

Of the three targets, they’d already decided to poison the old stallion, Silver Scale. His death would most appear to be natural causes. Jolly’s expertise would have the twitcher expiring after he was home and to bed. The other two, both younger mares named Cosmograph and Maple Cakes, lived in Trottingham and Manehattan, respectively. It was undecided how they would be handled, but preferably separately and far apart to avoid suspicion.

Pale kept to the edge of the crowd, her back to the wall. The other three dove into the mingling. Tietack engaged on his own, but stayed close to Mirror. Jolly tended to hover near the refreshments.

It took a few minutes, but she eventually picked all three targets out of the crowd. Jolly had already struck up an animated conversation with Silver Scale, the better to find a way to spike his refreshments. Pale kept her eyes on the other two. She could see Mirror and Tietack doing the same.

The band suddenly switched to playing the Pony Pokey. Across the ballroom, heads turned. A pink mare with a loud voice was apparently trying to get their attention.

Cosmograph shook her head and headed for the door to the castle gardens. Pale met Mirror’s eyes and tilted her head, signaling that she would follow.

Pale stepped out into the darkened gardens, following Cosmograph at a distance. There was some sort of commotion at the far end of the maze of hedges, but the area was still much quieter than inside. The air was a lot fresher, too. Pale noticed a few parasprites hanging out near the windows, looking in.

Pale unobtrusively followed her target, keeping just within sight. She tested her reach to the knife sheathed beneath her robe, but didn't plan on using it just yet. There were a few ponies around the gardens, either taking a break from socializing or trying to avoid the music currently blaring in the ballroom.

The target took a stroll around the fountain closest to the castle and headed back. Pale saw Jolly step out the door. Her target conveniently sat down on a bench, so she went over to talk to him.

“Deed’s done, no problems,” said Jolly. “I came out to get away from whatever is going on in there. That’s not a Gala, that’s a...well, I’m not quite sure.”

Pale nodded. “It’s my first Gala, but I thought as much.”

“Did I hear somepony say it’s her first time?” asked a stallion, slipping between the two of them. He flashed a practiced smile at Pale. “Hi there, Duke Domino’s the name. And you are?”

“Talking to somepony else,” said Pale, looking pointedly at Jolly.

“Oh no, don’t mind me,” said Jolly, giving her a mischievous smile. “I’m going to go get some apple pie from that booth over there.”

Duke didn’t even look at him, smiling more broadly at Pale. “That’s an interesting accent you have there. Where are you from, honey?”

For all her experience, Pale had never been in a situation like this before. Knives replacing words was one thing. The other way around was quite another.

“Saddle Arabia,” she said.

“Oh, very nice. A little bit of a unique character around here, aren’t you?” Duke appeared to be slowly circling.

“What is it you want?” Pale asked. She realized he was sliding between her and the lights of the castle.

“You caught my eye, honey. I bet you’re beautiful in the moonlight, if you’d let yourself be seen under that veil.”

“I wore it for a reason.” Pale sized up the area. If Duke was canny enough to be trying to isolate her from everypony else, surely he could hear the annoyance in her voice.

If so, it didn’t seem to deter him. He slid closer. “Did you come here with anypony? Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Ah, what a shame. You seemed like the kind of mare who was as singular as the moon...and just as beautiful.”

Pale stared at him for several seconds. She wasn’t sure whether she should point out that he hadn’t even properly seen her face, not to mention the rest of her, or just go straight to the point that she wasn’t interested.

The silence stretched out, awkwardness building. Duke’s smile grew more and more pained. “Er, here, let me-”

He reached out towards her veil. Pale’s hoof flashed up and wrapped up his foreleg with her own, bending Duke’s joints so that he had to either lean back or get something broken.

“Ah! Okay, maybe we got off on the wrong-!”

There was a sudden cacophony from inside the ballroom. Heavy things were knocked over and voices shouted.

Pale let go of Duke and pushed him over. She ran towards the commotion. Jolly was at the food stand, though the proprietor was nowhere in sight. “Come on,” she said, pulling him away and towards the ballroom. Jolly looked longingly at the pie he would not get.

Inside was chaos. The band was in disarray. A couple of ponies were covered in the remains of a huge cake. The statue in the middle of the room lay broken on the floor and appeared to have taken a line of stone columns around the room with it.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to make sure the twitchers aren’t startled into an early bloom,” Pale said. She spotted Mirror and Tietack across the room and caught their eye. Raising her voice to cover the room, she adopted a commanding tone. “Everypony out! Get some fresh air and wait for the mess to be sorted out.”

Following her lead, Jolly helped her herd the crowd towards the nearest exit. A sudden stampede of animals swarming into the ballroom from the gardens provided unexpected assistance.

The three twitchers seemed to take delight in the commotion, in contrast to the rest of the crowd. They required some extra pressure to exit the ballroom.

Pale was curious what might have gone wrong with the Gala, but at the moment didn’t have time to trouble herself too much about it. She only cared about preventing one very specific kind of disaster.

The ballroom cleared out. It took Pale a moment, but she eventually spotted all three twitchers in the crowd heading out the door.

She and Jolly regrouped with Mirror and Tietack. They stood with the confused crowd in the courtyard outside the ballroom.

It was getting late and some Gala-goers apparently decided it was close enough to the end of the party. When those at the edge of the crowd began to disperse, the rest gradually followed.

The individual members of the crowd broke off to go their separate ways as they exited the castle grounds. Silver Scale headed off to his house in Canterlot, meandering slightly. Cosmograph, Maple Cakes, and a good portion of the crowd from out of town headed for the train station.

Pale glanced up at the departures board as she and the others walked into the station. The train to Manehattan would leave in just a few minutes.

They came to a stop on the platform within sight of Maple Cakes. The area was crowded with others waiting to board. A faint whistle came from up the tracks, the train coming closer.

“I have an idea,” said Mirror, her voice low. “She’s over there at the edge. Tietack, I need you to push her in front of the train. I’ll provide a distraction.”

“W-why me?” Tietack stammered.

“Because you’re still young enough to simply slip through the crowd below eye level,” said Mirror. “Just give her a little nudge, like an accident. I guarantee nopony will be looking when you do it. Now go.”

The train’s headlight came into view. Mirror pulled out a camera and clicked the shutter, the flash washing over the crowd. “Clear the way! Saddle Arabian royalty approaching.”

She turned the camera on Pale. “Lift your head,” Mirror muttered under her breath.

Pale raised her chin, feeling ridiculous but also picking up her hooves as she walked down the platform. Mirror continued to take pictures and loudly commentate as heads turned in their direction.

The train swept into the station, coming closer. Suddenly, there was a scream, a sudden screech of brakes, and a wet thud.

The Saddle Arabian royalty ploy lost attention as quickly as it had gained it. The whole crowd had now turned in horror to where a mare had just vanished in front of the train. Voices clamored and ponies started forward, but pulled up short in futility.

Tietack rejoined them, wide-eyed, but composed. Mirror nodded and ruffled his mane. The group of them headed for the other end of the station as emergency ponies rushed past them.

The train to Trottingham would be leaving in another few minutes. The others watched Cosmograph on the platform while Pale bought a ticket and ducked into a restroom to change into her regular cloak.

It was, by necessity, much plainer than what she wore to the Gala. The dark brown blended into darkness without drawing the attention or showing dirt that black cloth would. The seams were reinforced, as long experience had shown was necessary. It let her move and reach her weapons. Putting it back on after the party was a comfort, and Pale felt more like herself.

She came back to the platform and traded off with the others. Only one twitcher still remained, and it would be best to deal with them elsewhere to avoid raising suspicions. Pale could handle that alone.

“Excellent work tonight,” said Mirror.

“That’s you. I haven’t done anything yet,” said Pale.

“Well, best of luck, then,” said Jolly. He and the others turned to go. Tietack waved to Pale as the three of them walked away, disappearing into the crowd.

Pale turned, glancing at Cosmograph, thoughts already considering how she would dispatch the last twitcher. It would probably be best to follow her back to Trottingham first.

Until the train arrived, Pale allowed her mind to wander. The Gala had been something. Not what she had been expecting, though probably not what anypony had been expecting. In another setting, in a proper ball, Pale could perhaps see herself enjoying it. Maybe someday she would get the opportunity.

Her eyes went back to the twitcher. Someday.

Comments

[BlueNinja]

She just never had the time, opportunity, or reason to learn how to be refined and sociable.

Oh, this is going to turn out delightful.

Pale went to the library to look up Saddle Arabia and put together a fake backstory.

I'm left kind of hoping that the books she "researched" are trashy romance novels bearing absolutely no resemblance to reality.

which was made of either feathers or something even softer.

He defeathers infected griffins and pegasi and sleeps on it? Totally metal.

Jolly’s expertise would have the twitcher expiring after he was home and to bed.

What if he blooms before the poison can take hold?

It was undecided how they would be handled,

Defenestration. Unless they're pegasi.

I bet you’re beautiful in the moonlight, if you’d let yourself be seen under that veil.

*snerk* And now, the entire operation comes crashing down, because of one horny stallion looking to score.

Just give her a little nudge, like an accident. I guarantee nopony will be looking when you do it.

"But make sure you wink, first." "Why?" "I don't know, it's tradition. Wink wink, nudge nudge." "Uh, ok then."

[totallynotabrony]

8133188

Defenestration. Unless they're pegasi.

Just wait.

[BlueNinja]

8133667 Wait, they're going to defenstrate pegasi too? Tell me they're at least bright enough to apply duct tape to the wings, first.