Chapter 8
Piper often pondered over a large map of Equestria etched on the wall of the cave in the front room. A simple paper map would have a hard time of it in the dampness. Whenever an update was required to the stone map, Piper would scratch it in. New cities and routes had appeared in the time since the map had been originally made. None of them knew how long ago that had been.
The map stretched from floor to ceiling in height and several pony lengths wide. There was room for prodigious detail. It was not a map of twitchers - the guild had dealt with far too many to record them, of course - but etched in the wall were likely more features and information than just about any other map of Equestria.
Something had troubled Piper, and he’d brought in Coin for her analysis skills. The two of them had reached a conclusion and called the whole group together in front of the map to announce their findings.
Coin spoke. “There’s been a slow rise in the number of twitchers. We don’t have hard numbers - I’ve only been keeping track for a few months - but Piper estimates it began a few years ago.” She indicated the map. “Most of the activity has been in the northeast.”
Pale considered it. Now that Coin mentioned the statistic, it did seem as if there had been more and more tasks than before.
Piper said, “I’ve only just realized this because I’m starting to discover twitchers through behavior, not from blooms. In fact, blooms have not risen much, if at all.”
“So, more twitchers infected, but not more blooms,” said Tietack. “How does that work?”
“Right,” said Shard. “The Blight isn’t becoming more infectious, not from any of the samples I’ve taken. As I said before, it’s not like any disease I’ve ever seen. Heck, it’s almost more like a self-replicating curse than anything.”
Coin said, “In going over a few recent cases, we couldn’t tie new twitchers to a bloom at all. That seems a little strange, doesn’t it?”
It did, thought Pale. But how could that be? She waited for the answer. Coin seldom asked rhetorical questions.
“It’s going to take more observation and data,” said Coin. “But I hypothesize that we’re dealing with a new method of infection. Somehow, the Blight is being passed without blooms.”
At this revelation, a concerned ring of murmuring echoed around the room. Piper spoke over it. “But we don’t think twitchers, at least all twitchers, are becoming infectious pre-bloom. If so, there would be a lot more infection being spread.”
“What about somepony being infected but they show no other symptoms?” asked Shard.
“Like a, whatchacallit, a carrier?” said Hammer.
“Could be,” Coin allowed. She chewed her lip at the possibility. “That would explain a few things.”
“Wait,” said Shard. “Remember that theory I put together that the Blight is a manufactured disease? What if whoever did it is still out there?”
“Spreading it manually?” asked Jolly, incredulous. “How do they themselves keep from being infected?”
There was a moment of silence in the room.
“We might just have to find them and ask them,” said Piper.
Troubling as the possibility was of a malicious effort being behind the Blight, business still had to proceed as usual to deal with twitchers as they appeared. It would have to stay that way until the guild determined a way to stop the Blight at its source.
With her next assignment to Griffonstone, Pale stopped by Shadow’s room before leaving. Her knock produced a faint squawk of surprise, but a moment later Shadow opened the door. “Oh, hey Pale. What’s up?”
“I’m going to Griffonstone. Not my first time, but I wanted to keep up on the news.”
“Sure.” Shadow turned away, leaving the door open. Pale took it as an invitation to enter.
Shadow’s quarters were less a bedroom and more a nest. The bed was not a bed at all, but a pile of blankets and her own feathers. The walls were covered with colorful, happy pictures, many of cats, all arranged in slightly crooked rows.
“Have you heard anything recently of Griffonstone?” Pale asked, pulling her eyes away from the decor.
“No, nothing new,” said Shadow. She turned around a couple of times before settling onto her bed. Without Whisper, she seemed smaller in stature, more aimless, less sure. In her quarters was perhaps the only place Whisper was not constantly with her. Pale had never been inside his room - it was the size of a breadbox.
“Any tips on where to stay? Places to avoid?” Pale asked.
“Uh, well, I haven’t been there in a while.” Shadow seemed to find the pictures on the wall very interesting.
Patiently, Pale asked, “They haven’t gotten any new police or anything else? Nothing else I need to watch for?”
“None of that.” Shadow shrugged again. “It’s just not a very great place. That’s why I left.”
With that in mind, Pale packed her things and left the cave, heading for Griffonstone. The Blight seemed able to infect all sapient creatures, though there seemed to be remarkably fewer griffons affected. Perhaps because they came in contact with ponies less.
The capital city was also called Griffonstone, and like most big cities outside the well-groomed lands of ponies, it glowered menacingly from a distance, its stone houses barely enjoying lit windows or streetlights against the evening sky. As per usual, Pale arrived after dark. It was doubly important to stay concealed in a place where ponies weren’t even the majority species.
The target was a fairly well-to-do griffon named Gail whose house resembled a miniature castle rather than the nestlike structures where many of the other griffons lived. It took time to search, but Pale finally located her sleeping in the bedroom at the top of the turret, surrounded by windows. The bed was a fancy four-poster with a canopy.
Pale found a high branch in a nearby tree to perch, a place to watch the house and ensure she was alone. She concealed herself among the leaves. It seemed a quiet night. The windows below her were either open or didn’t have glass in them at all. It would be easy to swoop through and cut the twitcher’s throat.
Pale took out her knife, but frowned. She shouldn’t take the easy way out. Just because she didn’t come to Griffonstone very often didn’t mean she could get lazy. She paused to take another look around, reevaluating the situation.
It was good that she did. That was when she saw another griffon, this one perched but well hidden in a tree across from the house. He had a knife in his talons. Their eyes met.
It was hard to tell who was more surprised. The two of them stared at each other for several seconds. Pale put away her knife. So did he. He then tilted his head questioningly. After a moment, Pale nodded.
The two of them met in a different tree, though still within sight of the house. Both hung back, picking different branches. Up close, the griffon was a fairly standard brown and white, though he wore a tunic that left his limbs loose while still providing concealment for weapons. Pale kept her eyes on his talons.
“So…” he said, speaking just loudly enough that his voice would carry across the short distance between them. “Nice night, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” said Pale. “Who are you?”
“A rather personal question, isn’t it?”
“Fair enough.”
The two of them lapsed into silence for several seconds.
“Are you an acquaintance of Ms. Gail?” he asked.
“No. Are you?”
“No.”
More silence.
“Interesting meeting you like this,” said Pale.
“I know what you mean.” He paused, and then ventured, “It has to be done though, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
The griffon nodded, as if her answer satisfied something he’d suspected. “Shame, though.”
“Yes.”
“How were you going to do it?”
“I was still considering it,” Pale replied. Was this really happening? Who was this? Did he actually know about the Blight? “What about you?”
“I do my best to avoid wetwork. These manicures aren’t cheap.” He wiggled his talons, which were indeed manicured nicely. Pale wouldn’t know. She didn’t care what her hooves looked like.
The griffon went on. “I was thinking about cutting down the canopy over her bed, wrapping her up so she couldn’t fly, and throwing her out the window. Maybe it would look like she got tangled and fell to her death, a tragic accident.”
“Not bad,” Pale allowed. “Though somepony might be suspicious of the cut in the fabric.”
“Just testing you,” he chuckled. “Take it slower and untie it, then. But that’s more of a risk that she’ll wake up.”
“A punch to the face to stun. Nopony would notice extra blunt force trauma after a fall from so far.”
He nodded. “So you want to do it that way? Together?”
“Together?” Pale considered it, but then shook her head. “No.”
He looked slightly hurt, but appeared to understand her misgivings. “Well, I’ll do it, if you want to leave.”
“I need to make sure with my own eyes that it gets done. I’ll do it.”
“Well, I need to make sure it gets done.”
Funny thing about not trusting each other: they were going to have to trust each other to work together because neither trusted the other to do it alone.
“Together, then?” said Pale.
He nodded. “All right.”
The two of them took off, flying parallel but not close. They descended on Gail’s house, entering separate windows.
Pale took the head of the bed and he took the foot. That was two knots to untie each. When the canopy was free, they held either end, and in silent coordination gently draped it over the sleeping twitcher.
She didn’t react, so Pale and the other assassin next moved to the sheets and untucked them from around the bed. He jerked his head in signal and the two of them flipped the whole bedspread over, rolling it like a tortilla.
That brought the twitcher awake instantly, but before she could struggle, she was already going out the window. There was a shriek, and then a thud.
Pale and the griffon both leaned out the windows, observing their handiwork. Both realized at the same time that their attention was distracted and abruptly pulled back to face the other.
“Nice work,” he said.
“You too,” she replied.
“Do you do this often?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
He nodded, though seemingly to himself. A few seconds passed while the two of them stared at each other in the darkened room. “Pity about the conversation, isn’t it?”
“You could say that,” Pale allowed. “I still don’t trust you.”
“I know that feeling. Trying to figure out if we’re on the same side, but unwilling to betray anything we know to figure it out.”
“Sounds about right.”
The silence stretched out again.
“So do you have a name?” he asked.
“Do you?”
“Touché.”
“How about names we actually trust each other with?” Pale proposed.
After a moment of thought, he said, “Call me Gilderoy. And you?”
There was nothing she could think of, no public records or otherwise, that could betray her, especially with a moniker the guild had bestowed. “Pale.”
He looked her up and down, peering intently with his eagle eyes. Only Pale’s face showed, and that was shadowed by her cloak. “A little bit of a rare specimen, aren’t you?”
“I can’t tell if that was a pickup line,” Pale deadpanned.
Gilderoy laughed. “I don’t think either of us is quite ready for that.”
“You’re right.”
“Well, it was nice meeting you. I wonder if we’ll run into each other again someday?”
“Good question.” It was, too.
The two of them hesitated, as if a parting shake was appropriate. Neither of them moved forward, however, and after a moment that was salutation enough.
The two of them backed towards opposite windows and exited the house at the same time, still watching each other. They flew off in opposite directions.
It wasn’t until she was out of sight of the house that the tension came out of Pale’s shoulders. Maybe Gilderoy was a paid assassin. Maybe some other plot was at work.
Or maybe the guild wasn’t alone. If Piper didn’t know already, she had to tell him.
This was huge. The possibility that they weren’t solo in the fight was simultaneously heartening and troubling. It was always good to have company, but perhaps another guild eliminating twitchers had deceived them into thinking there were fewer infected than there really were.
Pale had gotten the impression that Gilderoy wasn’t operating alone. He seemed too confident and knowledgeable to have figured everything out by himself. A guild operating in Griffonstone could explain why there seemed to be fewer twitchers there than expected. However, as Gilderoy had noted, it would be devilishly difficult to gain enough trust to actually work together. After literally hundreds of years protecting their secrets, opening up would be near impossible.
Pale frowned. And who was to say that Gilderoy and his cohorts had the same values and intentions? Could they even be the theorized group who had been spreading the Blight?
Identifying a twitcher was easy. Identifying somepony who might be intentionally spreading the disease was like trying to find a single poisonous weed in an entire country.
Pale arrived back at the cave. She’d noted a parasprite or two around, and figured that Piper knew at least a little of what had transpired in Griffonstone. She still made a point to tell him as soon as she saw him.
He was in the front room when she came through the door. Pale started straight off. “I met somepony who was also there for the twitcher. Somepony else knows about the Blight.”
“I had speculated,” Piper replied, “But you met somepony? This is the first solid evidence we’ve ever had.”
“All it took was two assassins awkwardly meeting over one target,” Pale muttered.
“We can talk about this later, once we’ve both had time to collect our thoughts,” said Piper. “We’ll tell the rest.”
He turned and picked up a newspaper from the table. “I’m afraid I have some news of my own. This is something you should see. I haven’t mentioned it to the others yet because I think that should be your decision.”
He showed her the newspaper. Pale stared, slowly reaching out to take it from him. The headline read:
Canterlot Attacked!
Queen Chrysalis and army defeated at royal wedding!
The rest of the page was taken up by the sneering face of Pale’s mother.
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I was expecting additional alliteration after the opening words.
Called it!
Given this is a griffin, I can't help but picture these as kitty pinup posters.
My paranoia is pinging. For starters, how does this featherhead know about the target and the blight?
I kind of hope so. If only because the two of them dancing around each other like this on the first date would be hilarious.
Yes, well, we knew that much already.
8155965 It was less calling it and more "Hey, that's a good line."
8155996 Potato, potato. ... that doesn't work so well in text.