Death Rides a Pale Mare

by totallynotabrony

Chapter 7

The observatory in Trottingham had been empty since Cosmograph’s demise, save for the week Pale had been laid up there. Cosmograph had mostly paid off bank loan, but the last few thousand bits were still on the ledger. With no other buyers in sight, the bank had quickly accepted the guild’s offer to take over the property.

Of course, secret enclaves of assassins were not exactly legitimate buyers. Piper had set up some paperwork that, when traced, apparently pointed to a seemingly-legitimate facade corporation. Pale had been sent to take delivery.

The pony from the bank seemed hurried. Maybe the creditors were more concerned about the sale than they let on. “If you’ll just sign here, the ownership can be transferred,” she said.

Pale wrote down an illegible scribble.

“There, that does it. The deed’s yours.” The bank pony gave Pale the key. “Thanks for doing business with us Miss...ah, I didn’t catch your name.”

“That’s perfectly okay,” said Pale. She turned and looked at the building. After a moment, the bank pony awkwardly left without another word.

It wasn’t a bad place, Pale supposed. It had an unexpectedly good view of the city below. Being an observatory, the view of the night sky above was sure to be excellent.

Strictly speaking, the guild didn’t need an alternate location, but taking ownership was a good opportunity and having the building gave them options. It could be used as a safehouse, a cache, or simply a free place to sleep while traveling on the way to somewhere else.

Or a shower that didn’t just spout cold cave water, thought Pale. She opened the door and went inside.

---

Piper was outside the iron door when Pale arrived back at the cave. It was perhaps the first time she had ever seen him outdoors, and the look didn’t suit him, only highlighting how pallid he had become from a life underground.

Before she could express her surprise, he cut straight to the point. “There’s a symptomatic twitcher in Dodge Junction. We didn’t manage to predict him by connecting him to the site of a bloom, and only realized he was infected when the twitches and destructive behavior began. Time is short. Go now.”

Pale wanted to ask questions, but thought better of it. He’d already told her everything she truly needed to know. Piper gave her a few pieces of paper and she immediately began to canter for Dodge Junction, reading as she went.

The file was sparse and written so quickly as to be barely legible. The twitcher’s name was Golden Valley. He was a farm hand, working the orchards in Dodge Junction. His address was listed.

It would have been nice to have gotten something to eat and a rest at the cave before leaving again, but the task called. At Pale’s pace, she arrived in Dodge Junction late that afternoon. She went straight to Golden Valley’s residence, an austere place with flaking paint and a gable roof. Stalking the windows, she saw it was just as weathered within, not to mention empty.

As she squinted through a murky window, a parasprite fluttered by her nose, doing a little loop to get her attention. It headed off down the street. Pale followed, wondering where it could be leading her.

It wound its way a short while down some of Dodge Junction’s dusty streets before stopping in front of the jail, a brick and mortar affair with thick bars. Pale stopped and stared at the door. She looked at the parasprite. It bobbed up and down.

Pale turned back to the jail, staring blankly and turning over in her mind how she should proceed. There wasn’t time for much planning. She grimaced inwardly and then opened the front door.

The police clerk at the front desk looked up as she entered. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Golden Valley.” Her voice was calm, but there was a careful absence of anything that resembled a question.

“Oh yes. He was just taken in for attempted arson.”

Sounded like a twitcher. Pale asked, “Can I get him out? Bail or something?”

“The bail’s been set at a thousand bits. The judge was not pleased, to put it mildly. It was the courthouse Golden Valley tried to burn, after all.”

It only got worse. Pale asked, “Is there a place to get bail bonds?”

“Just down the street. Can’t miss it.”

Pale headed out, and sure enough, there was a business a few doors down with a large, bright sign advertising bail bonds. She pushed open the door. The proprietor was a fat stallion who wore a lot of jewelry. He lounged with his hooves up, but stood when she came in. The building smelled like him, and he smelled like perspiration.

“I need one thousand bits,” said Pale, to the point.

The bondspony smirked. “What have you got for collateral?”

Pale didn’t have many options. She pulled out the deed. “A house in Trottingham.”

He took it and squinted at the text. “Do you represent the corporation that’s listed as owner?”

“Do you want it or not?”

“All right, take it easy.” He went behind the counter and Pale heard a safe dial being spun. In a few moments, the stallion came back with a large sack of bits, which he presented to Pale. “Here you are. You can pay it back at twenty percent interest, due one month from today.”

“Sure.” Pale snatched the receipt that he offered and headed back to the jail.

The clerk seemed surprised to see her again so soon, but accepted the payment and released Golden Valley to her custody.

Valley didn’t look well. He had visible tics and stared at her suspiciously. Pale beckoned him out the front door.

“Who’re you?” he said, joining her on the sidewalk in front of the jail.

“A concerned friend,” said Pale. “Come on, we need to get back to your place.”

Valley started to follow her, but suddenly bolted in the opposite direction.

Pale hissed in anger and took off after him, her cloak catching the wind as she picked up speed. This task was already difficult enough without chasing a twitcher through the center of town.

As he skidded into the first busy sidestreet their path crossed, Valley glanced back and saw her following. He lunged for somepony’s applecart, knocked it over, and darted around a corner.

Pale held back in her pursuit, unwilling to tackle him in the middle of the street and then have to fight him right there. She dodged around the spilled apples and their indignant owner, rounding the corner. Valley was headed out of town, seemingly the first bit of luck Pale had gotten so far. She lengthened her stride to catch up.

The houses were behind them now, the land rising and gaining feature. Valley knew the terrain better, and went up the foothills like a rocket. Pale temporarily lost sight of him in a thicket of trees.

She stayed light on her hooves, trying to be quiet. When she got to the point she’d last seen Valley, she spotted him further up the hill, running towards what appeared to be a logging operation.

The loggers were gone for the evening. There was nopony to stop Valley as he threw himself at a bundle of a dozen cut logs, yanking loose a binding rope and sending them careening down the hill right towards Pale.

She tore her wings out and got airborne just before being crushed. The logs crashed into their still-standing fellow trees and came to a stop.

Valley ran into the sawmill building. Pale hit the ground and ran after him. Just as she stepped through the door, she had to duck to avoid a sawblade he’d tossed at her. Valley hit a switch on the wall and the whole operation came to life, with pulleys, gears, conveyer belts, and more buzzsaws suddenly whirring.

It was a maze where a wrong turn could get her killed and ambush would be easy. Moving carefully, Pale picked her way past running conveyer belts and saws, emerging out the other side. By that time, Valley was out of sight.

Pale took to the sky again, eyes searching in the growing darkness for Valley. She found him near the top of the hill alongside a large boulder.

As she approached stealthily, she saw that Valley appeared to be trying to tip the boulder over. It was twice as high as he was, and as Pale looked downhill, she could see where it would roll: straight through Dodge Junction. By the time it reached the bottom of the hill, it would have built up tremendous momentum and would crush everything in its path.

Pale dove, but not for Valley. Instead, she slammed into the other side of the boulder, getting her hind legs down for traction and pushing with all her might. Her lungs and legs protested, already burning with exertion, but she poured all her effort into stopping the boulder. Sinew stood out in her legs and back as she willed everything she had into the effort.

Straining, Pale felt the rock begin to move by inches, rolling the other way. She gave it an almighty shove. Valley’s breath hitched; and the barest fraction of a scream echoed through the trees before it was abruptly silenced.

Pale slumped against the boulder, her breath ragged. She stared at one of Valley’s motionless hooves sticking out from under the boulder, and then averted her gaze. Everything would have been easier if he’d cooperated. Perhaps she could have even asked him about where he’d been in an attempt to determine how he’d been infected.

Composing herself, she took off again, gently gliding back down the hill. The sun had fully set now. Pale visited Valley’s house. The door was unlocked and she let herself in, starting to go through his possessions. There wasn’t much of value. He’d been a low-level laborer, after all.

But Pale wasn’t done in Dodge Junction just yet. She remembered the closing time listed on bail bond sign. As it approached, Pale left the house and went downtown, doing her best to stay out of sight and conceal the rips in her cloak.

From the shadows, she watched the bond pony lock up for the night. It would be easy to mug him for the key, but he would surely remember her. Better to stage a break-in.

Pale waited, watching the street traffic die down. When she felt confident in her approach, she walked up to the front door and smashed the glass out with a quick hoof strike, unlocking the door and stepping inside. Then, she paused to clear the broken shards from the frame with the hard edge of her hoof, sweeping them across the floor away from the door. In the darkness, a casual observer might not realize there was no longer a pane in it.

Behind the counter, the safe was bolted to the floor. Pale was experienced with picks, but cracking combinations was quite another matter.

Some safe dials were more difficult to predict and crack than others. Pale sat there, squinting in the moonlight at the dial as she worked it back and forth. Slowly, she went through all the tricks she knew, trying to shorten the list of possible numbers the combination could be.

It took just over two hours, but she finally got the safe open. A couple of times, she’d stopped and hid behind the counter when somepony passed close by, but her luck held and nopony noticed the break-in. The whole time, her senses were on edge, mindful that a police station was only a few blocks away.

Inside the safe, she found the deed, as well as quite a bit of money. Pale sighed and got up, working a crick out of her back.

When Golden Valley couldn’t be found after posting bail, the police would come looking. Pale couldn’t allow there to be any evidence to tie his disappearance to the guild, so the deed had to be recovered. It couldn’t be the only thing taken from the safe, or that would be a red flag as to who might have done it. This had to look like a robbery of anything valuable.

Pale also took the time to go through the bond pony’s notes and scatter them messily across the floor, carefully destroying the page with information about her.

Then, it was time to load up and get out of there. Pale put the deed away in a pocket and hoisted the heavy golden bits.

Stealing from anypony besides a dead twitcher gave her pause. Twitchers didn’t need it anymore. However, Pale reasoned, a proper businesspony would be insured. Plus, she estimated, the four thousand bits taken from the safe would keep the guild running for quite a while.

It helped to seek out the good points among everything else.

Comments

[BlueNinja]

Or a shower that didn’t just spout cold cave water

This is extremely important and worth every bit they paid for the property.

TIme is short.

Double capital

Pale turned back to the jail, staring blankly and turning over in her mind how she should proceed.

If he's alone (or nearly alone) in a jail cell, this would seem a rather optimal solution. He can't get out and infect a crowd, so bribe a guard to keep him locked up until he blooms.

“Can I get him out? Bail or something?”

Bad call.

It was a maze where a wrong turn could get her killed and ambush would be easy.

Also seems like the perfect place to stage an accidental death.

This had to look like a robbery of anything valuable.

Well, emptying a safe full of bits will do that. And for added dodge, plant some of the bondpony's papers at Valley's house before you leave town.