The Unicorn and the Crow

by Foxmane Vulpequus

Part the First - The Jeweler and the Jurist

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Chapter One

Evil Under the Sun

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“And that,” said Frost Pane, Frei dowager of Trotheim, “is the dozy, trumbly sort of town where nothing happens and the high houses are proud. They sleep all the day and sing all the night. I shall hate it, Rubyk.”

Rubyk, Lord Aktur of Trotheim, said nothing. It was a very full silence. His eyes followed the forehoof pointed in accusation toward the shoreline of the little town of Currycape, drinking in the sight as his nostrils drunk deep of the salt spray of Equestria’s South Seas. The white fur of his choker hedging a large onyx stone blowing in the wind was as eloquent an answer to the old mare’s protests as they warranted. It was not as though they had not been given voice by tens and clink-scale dozens, like the desperate merchants of the Jeweler’s District crying out their wares. Why did they do it? And why cheat the common folk with shaven weight and tilted scale? Why but that it was in the nature of things, just as surely as Celestia in her castle must raise the sun anew each day? – So it was with the old mare. She complained because she must, because it was the only song she knew.

And yet her eyes told a different story. They were full of the little dark dots of the Ice Sickness, where blood had pooled around the persistent black ice that entered into a unicorn’s body like a shadow and froze whatever it touched, killing off where and whatever she could not any longer keep warm under her own power. But the Freiof Trotheim’s eyes were fuller yet of relief. Her foreleg quavered, unsteady from the cold-shakes even as Frost Pane held it out to condemn the decadent little town of the decadent ponies of the decadent Southerlands. It was all a ritual, repeated like the first frost after the harvest, because it was just to be done. And, now done, Frost Pane, proud Frei of Trotheim, sank with a sigh of pleasure and an unsteady, rheumatic shake into a deck chair to await the docking of the ferryboat Merdoe in the harbour.

Rubyk still continued to say nothing and let the sea-breezes sweep his mane and choker with an air of aloof, highborn detachment. It was an habit of long years. Frost Pane snorted at it.

“Oh, frost your fetlocks, boy, and come away from there. Whom are you trying to impress?” the Frei said with a sneer. “It is a far many miles between you and the bench of Never-Melting Ice. Glowering at that coast will not bring it to you any faster.”

Rubyk’s ears and eyebrows raised up slightly, and he turned back to face the old mare. “Impress?” he said in a voice without much of the habit of personal warmth. It carried a timbre of the courtroom, the medical office, the morgue, but which was surprisingly soft coming from one of the tall frames of the noble unicorn clans of Trotheim. “No, grandmama; I am not trying to impress anypony.”

“And what do you mean to call it, boy of my daughter’s flesh, when you look ready to stamp your hoof and order all those rows of vain little houses on yon shore to appear in your dock?”

“I call it brooding.”

“By all Celestia’s undying spite! Not that sooth-scryer’s babblings again!” Frost Pane grumbled, sinking back into her deck chair with a sigh.

“Yes. By that same. Shinedeep does not See into the Aurora often, but I have never yet known an oracle of him to lead me astray. You remember that he was the pony who Saw the hiding-hole of that rat of a Chancellor who despoiled Papa of his gold. I could not have pleaded that low-born thief’s goal before the Never-Melting without that insight – it is a power beyond the ken of any unicorn. I suspect it is a gift of the Lonely God himself who did not see fit to make another alicorn.”

“You drive yourself to sickness!” Frost Pane snapped, the scolding coming from her mouth with all the vicious suddenness of a sleet-storm. “You turn your horn in and pierce through your own brain over this crock of rack and ruin and naught-sense! Tell grandmama, then: what does it mean, this Aurora-touched raving that tosses my grandfoal’s head like the thrashing of a fish?”

Rubyk closed his eyes and began slowly, deliberately, to recite.

Blood is spilt beneath Luna’s light

Seven to spill, but six to hide

Five cunning looks, four keep their nerve

Three coals in the cloak,

Two to smoulder

One to burn bright –

Quenched in blood not blameless

“Belly gas from a frost-touched earth pony dirt-scrabbler! That was no Seeing! It is as vain as an horoscopist’s scribblings and a twitch-augur’s ramblings! Words that mean nothing could just as well be a foal’s poem. And you, boy, you know that better than anypony. You disgust me!”

“Maybe,” said Rubyk, and shrugged.

“And you cannot know that babbling was meant for you!” accused Frost Pane, bringing her forehoof down upon the deck chair. The light and weathered pine cracked beneath it, and a thin rime formed upon it where her hoof had struck for only a moment before it was wicked away by the summer sun.

“Perhaps not,” agreed Rubyk, turning back to the shoreline.

“It has nothing to do with you or now or here! Impossible boy!”

“That is possible,” was all that Rubyk said. Frost Pane gave a cry of fury and stood, shaking, on her four hooves – but not from weakness. With a scream like that of a wild thing from Equestria’s untrod glaciers, the Frei of Trotheim took up the deck chair in her power and, horn aglow with crackling violence, hurled it into the ice-blue waters below.

“I go to drink before we land!” the Frei announced, regally. “Rubyk, you take care of that!”

“Yes, grandmama.” But the tall, very tall pony from Trotheim only frowned deeper in thought as sound of the old mare’s trot faded into the lapping of the waves.

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Chapter Two

The Hotel of the Shattered Past

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From the moment she had laid eye on the Trotheim ponies aboard the Merdoe, Madeleine Crumpet knew that this trip to the South Seas would be… call it more lively than her others. Among the tourists and socialites aboard the little luxury liner doing ferryboat duty, they stood out like carbuncle amidst chalcedony. She resolved then and there not to let them escape her – not for anything.

Not, she mused, that this was particularly difficult, so far as resolutions went. Towering over everypony else on the ferry as one of the Princesses might have done had the royal sisters taken a shine for a tropical vacation, one would be hard-put to miss them if she tried. The industrious little pony in Madeleine’s head had already set about categorizing them into the mental dossier (rarely used) marked “Interesting”:

Mare, unicorn pony. Pale-green coat, platinum mane. Obviously moneyed. Huge. Not entirely unattractive for a nag, but ill. But overall effect is… grotesque.

As for the other:

Stallion. Very MUCH a stallion. Unicorn pony. Tall, TALL specimen, with a singular icy blue-grey and cobalt mane. “Streaked through with the rich purple of darkling twilight.” I say, that’s not half-bad. She was proud of her little pony for that one. And both had the Northland eyes shot right through with gleam and facets of a well-cut sapphire. They were rich, they were handsome, they were terrifying, and they were the most likely customers she was likely to see for a while. The stallion even seemed to be one for jewelry himself, what with the onyx-stone choker about his trunk of a neck and the strange metal cube that depended from that same neck on a chain whose silvery links were each as fine and finely-wrought as a snowflake. She would just need to wait for the most… call it an opportune moment to make her introductions. Her mind whirled with the possibilities.

What were such ponies doing in the South Seas? What did the Equestrian tropics offer that the high-spired palaces cut out of the long-silent glaciers and gloomy mountains and ancient pine forests did not?

A scandal: surely a scandal drove them off! – those were the gossipy whispers, but nopony ever approached them to ask. The stallion’s cold air kept even the most gregarious socialite at an healthy distance.

But that only made them more fascinating.

And so as the Trotheim ponies exited on the gangway of the Merdoe, standing horn, head, and withers above the common crowd, Madeleine kept a fascinated eye upon them without trouble. The captain of the key-hopping schooner, a buck of the tiny Clavia deer that made their home in Currycape and the surrounding islands, raised his shrill voice at the two giants, gesticulating wildly. Little sparks like stars visible in the daylight crackled at the tips of his antlers, and he stamped at the floor to punctuate whatever demand he was making, which Madeleine could not hear for the hum and clamor of too many bodies in too small a space. The stallion sighed and magicked something out of his rich, greyhide saddlebags and hung it on the irate little seabuck’s antlers. Her ears raising, Madeleine saw that it was a ring – and what a ring! An unalloyed gold band holding a Marquese-cut emerald glinted deliciously in the light. It was obviously a piece of no small value. And, with just a hint of the dry tang of coveting in her mouth, Madeleine saw that the captain knew it too. The deer captain stuttered just a few words, frowned, and waved them on their way with an impatient hoof – mollified, but evidently no less annoyed.

How queer! Madeleine mused. So, they were the jewelry sort of ponies after all! One would do well to keep an eye on such ponyfolk. She might well see much more interesting things.

And so, one did. With a smile at the captain, toting her saddlebags and a train of suitcases a few inches above the ground by her magic, Madeleine Crumpet kept at a comfortable distance behind the pair, who moved through the usual harbour bustle with the ease of sheer intimidation. The crowd of milling tourist ponies and deerish dock-workers parted before them like waters before the prow of a ship, and Madeleine Crumpet (and Madeleine Crumpet’s bags) walked easily in their wake. The old mare’s pace was slow, and grumbling with every hard-fought inch, she occasionally had to lean on the younger stallion due to a stumble brought about by one of her spindly knee-joints not working quite as it ought on the downstep of her trot. Each time this happened, she would cover up her thanks with snap and fuss, but each time she gratefully accepted the stallion’s helping shoulder to right herself. They repeated this cycle as they made their way along the dock and past the hawking market-stalls, ignoring the beaded kitch foisted on a new herd of mainlanders fresh from the ferryboat, whose mouth-cameras were already click-clicking with tasteless avidity. The two giants would have none of it as they moved with purpose eastward down the waterfront street, past the close-built structures with Hippolytan columns covered in chalky whitewash and walls of blinding solid colours, all topped by the quaint terra-cotta roof panels sloped to drive the rain from the odd scheduled storm back into the ocean.

They passed the Currycape government offices (which were really only another house, this one in an awful, emphatic magenta), then the dragonfire post to the mainland, then the town hall and its ricketed clapboard belltower, until at last it became obvious that they were making for the long causeway running east into the ocean waters. A dull-grey pegasus in a wind-weathered newscolt’s cap and a close-cropped mane and tail the colour of sandstone raised his voice over the din of the hoof-traffic of ponies and the petite Clavia deer upon the cobblestones.

“Last call! Last call for a cart to Hotel Clavia ‘ore the tide comes in! Last call – repeat, last call!” he bellowed, without a break, and with scarcely a pause for breath. The locals on the streets simply ignored the pegasus’ urgent clamor with neither a nod nor a glance or folded their ears and walked by with a grimace at the volume. Several of the earth pony tourists fresh off of the ferryboat came at a gallop down the waterfront, camera straps flying, saddlebags flapping. But the two tall and stately unicorns approached the pegasus crier deliberately and in no great hurry. Madeleine followed close behind, stifling a snort of a laugh at the contrast between the types they represented.

“-last call! Repeat, last call for those bound for the Hotel!” the grey pegasus continued, eyes going wide as he appeared to count the number of ponies stampeding toward him.

“We are going to the Hotel Clavia,” said the stallion in a voice barely above a whisper. “I will see to grandmama’s bags myself; do not trouble yourself.”

The pegasus jerked his head toward the giant, startled into a choked garble of sounds that were almost words. Whether this was more due to the sudden appearance of the two in his field of vision, or their actualappearance was difficult to say. “Er – yes – please… of course… happy to aid in your convenience in any way, uh… chief!”

The stallion nodded and the old mare snorted their thanks, and the stallion lifted their few bags into the rear of the cart while the old mare climbed in, drawing her legs onto the thin cushions on the wooden bench. She amply filled the space that would normally seat three adult ponies or a married couple with a cadre of tight-packed foals. The stallion did likewise, filling another such space even more thoroughly – almost comically.

That left only one row for the last lucky ponies of the last call. Madeleine, ever the fortunate mare, smiled the smile that she knew worked so well on this particular pegasus and turned her hips in just this way to catch his roving eye. The pegasus flushed a rosy quartz right below his eyes and, after he removed his hat with a respectful doff, his ear-tips as well.

“Delighted to see you again, Rock Skipper! Still in dear old Largo’s harness, I see,” said Madeleine, her melodious voice coloured by a hint of silvery laughter tastefully suppressed.

“M-Miss Crumpet!” stammered the pegasus called Rock Skipper. “G-glad to… that is… you’re on business here in Currycape again? None of the staff told me!”

“Now what kind of a greeting is that, Skipper? I thought I taught you better than that. But see to my bags first, if you’d be so dear, and we’ll see to your education later.”

More blushes and bungles followed, and Madeleine smiled as she entered the rear of the cart, studying her newfound interests in the front. As Rock Skipper hefted and fumbled her bags, voices among the clamoring ponies behind her, winded and desperate, called out:

“Stop! Stop for me! I’ve a very important appointment…”

“But I was to have lunch at the hotel with…”

“Wait, wait for me –”

“One side, one side! I’m already late!” By the sheer inertia of two earth ponies carrying heavy saddlebags, a mare and a stallion wearing identical citrine cabochons as wedding earrings pushed their way to the fore like tumbling boulders. The mare dropped her saddlebags in one smooth motion and staked their claim to the final bench with a leap and a graceful landing. Her husband flung their baggage into the rear before a gallery of judging, glaring eyes, while she smiled that smile of a socialite forced into a minor embarrassment, but who would bear it with philosophic grace. Madeleine thought that it looked about as genuine as a pyrite.

Rock Skipper rubbed at the back of his head with an hoof. “Er – last call… I mean – uh… carriage is full, folks! The Hotel Clavia apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause you. And… um… we will be running the shuttle-cart again after the tideswell passes over and the Princess starts the afternoon proper. Thank you once again for choosing the Hotel Clavia for your stay in Currycape, and I… uh… I’ll see you again shortly.”

Amid a cloud of complaints and the odd slander against his parentage, the husband vaulted into the cart and sat down beside his wife. Madeleine took in the couple with a glance, setting the little pony in her head to sorting and categorizing them into the rather broader categories of “Potential Customers” or “Not Very Interesting”.

Mare, earth pony. Age, early-middle, maybe 35 years at the outside. Cream-orange coat, teal mane, bob cut, worn short – obvious city lifestyle. Celery stalk cutie mark. Agricultural talent? Maybe ashamed of talent? – Flatter looks, status before skills. Easy sale if you watch carefully.

Madeleine turned her attention next to the husband. Stallion, earth pony. Also early-middle age, about five years older than the wife. Dark green coat with a… yellow undertone? Not unlike bile, really – pine-green mane in that slick Manehattan pomade of the business classes. Mark is… some sort of green citrus? Also agricultural? Muscles lithe but well-developed under coat – at least part of trade is physical. – Not a likely sale. Don’t waste your breath on this one, girl.

And so, like a marskmare raising a scope to her eye, Madeleine donned her most winsome smile and fell into the easy patter of talk about little things with the couple, never quite removing her eye from the more interesting travelers in the first carriage benches.

Rock Skipper finished the last knot tying down the baggage in the carriage rear, cinching the rope tight in his teeth. The pegasus folded his ears at the imprecations coming from the tourists and travelers too tardy and too timid to force their way, and he hurriedly yoked himself into the harness at the cart’s front.

“And we’re off, good ponyfolk! Thank you again for choosing the Hotel Clavia for all your luxury experiences on beautiful Currycape!” Rock Skipper said with a cheeky tilt of the hat. Then he shot off like a slingstone over the long causeway connecting the main island to the small one from which a single building rose, lone and glittering rosy in the tropic noon. With a flash of green, the smooth-polished emeralds in the yoke and cart harness were suddenly kindled to a gleam that pierced even through the high sun, and the rear carriage rose up an inch or so off of the ground. The ride was smooth for the passengers, and soon the only sounds aside from their voices that they could hear were the wind at their backs, the lap of the waves at their sides, and the clip of Rock Skipper’s hooves upon the stone..

“Rubyk, what is that stone there? Down there?” the great old mare in the front said suddenly, gesturing suspiciously at the causeway coursing beneath them. The stallion, apparently called “Rubyk” (what an exotic name! thought Madeleine with a twinge of glee) contrived to shrug while sprawled across a bench.

“Driver, what is that stone beneath your hooves?” the stallion repeated to Rock Skipper, who now moved at an easy trot. For a moment, the only answer came from the click-clock of hoof on masonry and the lapping of seawater just beginning to crest the top of the causeway. Only after a pause just long enough to make one wonder if she ought to cough to make herself heard did the pegasus answer with a small start.

“Sorry! Didn’t know that was you rightway, chief!” said Rock Skipper. “You mean, why is the causeway built like it is?”

“That is exactly what I mean.”

“Glad to tell it! It’s part of the history of Currycape here, which I figure most ponies out of these islands like as much don’t know much about. It was built by the native folk of these keys and islands in those days before the good Sun and Moon started to rule all the kinds of ponyfolk you’ve got up North.” (“Hmph!” the old mare huffed.)

“Anyhow,” continued the pegasus, “the deerfolk that lived here in those days were small, and they still are, but they could use magic sure as you and your grandmarm can, chief, and they were right geniuses working with what they had! Look close at those stones down there or just about any building on the islands built in the old days and you’ll see they’re really just a sort of conglomerated mish-mosh of whatever the old deer could get their hooves on. This road we’re on here is really just all the bits of pots and jars and rubble from the sea raids that they had to deal with.”

“Why is it built so low?” the old mare demanded. “Why am I getting wet?”

“Oh – erm… sorry,” said Rock Skipper. He unfolded his wings partly, and the rear of the carriage rose several more inches above the lapping of the incoming tide. The pegasus quickened his pace, the tide soaking his fetlocks with each fresh wave. He began again with just an hint of recitation. “Back when Equestria was not so peaceful, all of the tribes competed for resources. The earth ponies living on the south coasts of the mainland were longboat sailors and eventually started raiding down south here in the islands when the lean months came on. The Clavia got wind of the raids coming down from the coats and built traps for the ships around natural harbours to scuttle the Equestrians’ longboats. If the boats saw it, they would go around to the far side of the island and give the Clavia time to muster the militia. If not… well, there’s more than few wrecks down below here.”

“Clever!” the old mare said, approvingly.

“Oh, they’re a brilliant people, ma’am, if you live here and get to know them! I’ve heard so much of their history from our hotel’s proprietress. The Clavia tend to just call her ‘the mistress’ as she tends to know more about them than they do! You would hardly believe some of the stories –“

“Beg your pardon,” said the socialite husband, coughing once. “But you wouldn’t have happened to carry a certain pony today – earth pony stallion, big-boned, old, dirty coat? If not today, then perhaps yesterday?”

“Oh! Er… no, sir. I don’t think… I can’t say I remember anypony like that. I’ve seen plenty of ponies coming to the hotel, but it’s been all young couples and families so far as I remember,” Rock Skipper stammered. The pegasus panted, raising the cart height as high as he could without taking to the air himself. His hooves splashed noisily in the rising tide.

“Oh. Well, it is hardly the first time. How very usual for a pony like him,” said the socialite. There was a bitter edge to the word that made Madeleine turn her head and give him a re-appraising glance. Interestingly, the tall Rubyk did so also.

“Perhaps he may yet arrive on the island before the end of the day?” added his wife.

“Today, tomorrow, or perhaps the next week? Maybe he’s taken his money for a cruise to Griffinstone with a fresh bag of arm-candy for all I care.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case,” she added, soothingly.

“I am not.” The stallion lapsed into a terse silence and the mare drew back, a little hurt crease etched beside her comely eyes.

Perhaps madame might benefit from a bit of mare-to-mare time away from monsieur later. It may prove profitable for the both of us, mused Madeleine.

His coat just glistening with the first hint of lather, Rock Skipper began to beat his wings to raise both himself and the cart above the rising waves the cover the last span of the causeway. Madeleine looked to him with a touch of concern.

“Are you quite alright, Skipper?” she called out.

“…I’ll have you at the hotel in a moment, Miss Crumpet,” was all that the pegasus managed to gasp out. After perhaps a minute more, Rock Skipper had brought them out of the rising waters and up the final slope to the Hotel Clavia, and to her glorious front walk and gardens.

The Hotel Clavia… her proprietress surely ran a tidy ship. In all of her travels, Madeleine Crumpet had stayed in finer hotels fit for old nobles and the ostentations of the neauvelles riches, but none that were so honest as the old shell-and-sand brick fortress converted long ago into a place for tourists to rest their hooves and wash the sea-spray from their manes. Like their forebears, the Clavia of the present day took a swelling, family sort of pride in their own hoofwork standing lone and fearless like a watchman with face set firm toward the sea. Thus, no scars from battles in deep history were allowed to mar its handsome sandstone masonry. But now where gate-charms and wary sentries had once stood to greet the weary messenger of war, there faced gardens of palms and luxuriating orchids, hedges fine topiary, of Hippolyta and her train of mermares, of noble deer bucks and dainty does, all lining a polished walk of white marble streaked with veins of stark azure running up to the doors. Enchanted water-channels flowed at its sides, running cold and impossibly clear like a mountain spring from the fountain of marble and sparkling glass fantastically commingled like the truth and pretty lies of a fairy-story standing in the middle of the marble path, watering both the gardens and the thirsty traveler.

No traveler was so thirsty as Rock Skipper. As soon as the pegasus had loosed himself from the carriage and left Madeleine and the company sitting haphazardly on the gleaming walk, he fluttered weakly to the water-course and dipped his muzzle in up to his eyes and drank desperately.

“Driver!” said the society mare. “What on earth do you mean by –”

But Rubyk, the silent giant in the front, rose with enormous dignity, cutting off the protest. “He thirsts,” he said in the same whispery voice. The reproof was like a slap to the mare, and she glowered at him – but, perhaps wisely, said nothing more to the unicorn, whose very presence asserted an unspoken authority.

“Well!” said the mare. Then, as if throwing out a cutting retort, she repeated herself (“Well! One supposes that one must make allowances…”) and dismounted from the skelter-parked carriage, her line of sight never quitelooking in the direction of Rubyk. Her husband gave a sigh, and followed after her up the marble walk. He paused, then turned to Rock Skipper, who only just was raising his head from the water-channel and added, “driver, you will see to my wife’s bags, won’t you? And mine? I will see to your tip then.”

“Y-yes, sir!” the Rock Skipper stammered, lifting up his head.

“And our bags, we will see ourselves! This fellow, I like him. He has done more than enough to draw us and give us a silly war-song. Silly ponies like him deserve their reward!” The old giantess barked each word like a Captain of the Royal Guard issuing orders to a new recruit, with all the tender foundation of a belly-laugh. “Rubyk! You get our bags!” She stepped down from the carriage without even a bit of a drop.

“Yes, grandmama,” said the younger. Rubyk’s eyes and horn were surrounded with an icy light that cut even through the tropical sun and the white marble gleam, and he picked up the entire contents of the luggage cart in his magic. He began to follow after the old mare when Rock Skipper raised an hoof and choked and stammered to “wait, hold just a moment, please!” With eyes gleaming like a grand mage in tales of the old sorcery, Rubyk turned and said simply:

“Yes?” The voice was like the thunderclap of a calving glacier.

“I… uh… um… that’s my job!” muttered Rock Skipper. Rubyk regarded him for a moment, eyes ablaze with the inner fire of a snowdrift… and smiled.

It was a genuinely warm smile that came from this proud giant, a thing that should have seemed odd on the face of it (or, rather, on him). But Madeleine saw that this was a bit of presumption that came perhaps more from craning her neck to look up at the pony than any cause in himself. In spite of the obvious pride of bearing about Rubyk and his “grandmama”, there was no guile or meanness in this stallion – no vulgarly proud pony smiled that way.

Just who are you, my dear tall Rubyk?

“You are a funny fellow, friend pegasus,” Rubyk announced, letting his magic lower the various baggage to the ground. “When one stronger than you, who already owes you a debt, offers you help when you are much spent, you still refuse him. You refuse to let your own duties that which can truly be called a pony’s own, pass from your hoof into that of another. I call that noble.” Rubyk trotted until he stood towering over Rock Skipper. The pegasus rubbed at the back of his cap with a forehoof.

“Well, thanks chief. I can’t say I’ve ever really thought about it that way.”

“Consider it certain. Now, friend pegasus…” Still wearing that smile, Rubyk began to pile suitcases upon Rock Skipper, binding them tight with magic until his knees trembled. Yet this still did not amount to even half of the bags. “Now, see! You have all your duties laid on you, and more besides. And what is it to you if a friendly guest should take on himself that which is not laid upon you? Up! Up, and see to your duty!”

“Sure thing, chief…” said Rock Skipper, with a bit of a wheeze, and the two made their own way up the marble walk. Not quite containing her laughter, Madeleine followed.

Passing through the great door that was more like the portal of a Canterlot palace than of an hotel, Madeleine was greeted by the familiar scent of the native tiny limes muddled with sea spray and a dark, wood resin base note. It was another creation of the proprietress, a sort of olfactory signature for a breathing work of art such as the Hotel Clavia was. And she never tired of telling about that art and passion of hers that was this old hotel – as she was even now doing to a captive audience consisting of the socialite couple and Rubyk’s “grandmama.” The unicorn stallion stood aloof from the group, listening to Rock Skipper chatter on about island trivialities as the pegasus checked and sorted the bags. About the huge foyer that once served as a grand meeting hall and a place for the olden Clavia to make their last stand against their warlike foes (for Madeleine had already heard this speech and its explanations and praises and digressions many times), modern deerfolk in the employ of the hotel moved with quiet grace, changing carafes of iced lime-water, refreshing the pots of hot coffee and lemongrass tea for arriving guests, moving carts and bags wrapped in glinting, starry magic that defied the eye to look upon it, and upon them.

Madeleine was one of the few who knew the trick of it, and so she was the only pony – well, other than the hotel’s proprietress, who missed nothing, and saw everything – that took note of the tiny Clavia buck in a tuxedo who spilled a pitcher of water and began a wide-eyed search for a towel like a sight-gag in the background of some maudlin serial play. She smiled.

Oh, Doctor. Don’t you ever change, you hear?

All the while, the proprietress, a petite earth pony mare with a seafoam coat, coral mane, and a sort of triangular prism for a mark named Miss Largo, for she was one of those ponies with an honorific irrevocably bound to her person, continued her patter of historical facta. The misdirection was flawless. In spite of themselves, the Manehatten couple could not entirely dull the glint of genuine interest in their eyes, and “grandmama” drank in the passion of the speech like a traveler in Saddle Arabia coming on a desert oasis.

“…the Clavia were and still are such a clever folk, such a brilliant people, you must know. If ever one visitor to my establishment and our island ever comes to realize that, why, I will consider my life’s work here and all of Equestria’s debt to the deerfolk paid in full. Practically nopony on the mainland will ever tell you that something as mundane as glassblowing probably wasn’t developed by the Earth pony tribes, as we should all expect from our textbooks with the Royal imprimatur. …Ah! I see that you know the ones that I mean. The tribes only ever bungled the art, like everything else we ever stole from the deerfolk in those dim days at the dawn of the world.” The proprietress paused for effect and looked toward her audience with a conspiratorial glance.

“Why, Miss Largo!” exclaimed the socialite wife, in perfect rhythm. “Do you really mean to insinuate that Princess Celestia would allow a lie about the history of our people to be taught to all the foals of Equestria? I am stunned that you could be so bold to a guest coming under your own roof! Haven’t you any pride in Her who makes the sun to shine?” Although she put on a good show of being scandalized by the proprietress’ words, this rejoinder struck Madeleine’s ear as decidedly flat, without any real heat beneath it. It was something like the difference between a trombone played by a living pony and one synthesized out of magic pulses by a unicorn DJ.

Miss Largo shrugged. “Maybe when she sends back the chandelier in her private dining rooms at the Palace – and believe you me, I had a good, long look at it when I was on the house staff there in another life – I’ll learn to blush, but not until then. Take a good look around here,” she said, sweeping a forehoof toward the ceiling to indicate the light fixtures depending from the high ceiling by glossy threads, fine as gossamer-silk. They resembled nothing so much as clear or frosted-glass deerfolk antlers in soft hues of every conceivable colour, fused at the roots by a master glasswright. Their ends came to fine points on which glittered a single point of starlight, dancing like a joyful angel. Madeleine chuckled; oh, she knew this bit of the presentation well. Those chandeliers tended to take a pony’s breath away if she allowed herself to really see them for any length of time, and they did not fail now. Even “grandmama” raised a single eyebrow in begrudged approval.

“These are originals,” Miss Largo went on. “All of them, from the days before the war. Where are the artifacts from earth pony hooves, the art of a golden age long past? – dust, all dust, or a rotted-out stump of a spear, or an helmet nopony can now wear, or a thing that with a little imagination might have once been a sword or an hoof-axe. All that is left of our past is in boxes and under glass in museums run by unicorns, and I say let it moulder! For while we were fawnnapping among the deerfolk and pioneering the art of making war, this peaceful folk were building this –” she turned a circle and swept her hoof now to indicate the whole of the Grand Foyer – “and making those –” she indicated the chandeliers with a proud flourish – “and all they wanted was to be rid of the violence that came from us. We owe them a debt, Mrs. Orange, one that I have spent my whole adult life trying to repay.” (Ah! thought Madeleine. She filed the name away in her orderly mental dossier; thinking of them as “the socialites” had been getting tiresome.)

Miss Largo lowered her hoof and paused again, then gave a little laugh in her musical contralto. “Ah, do forgive my nerve. I only try to let the truth about history be known, as… unpleasant as it can be at times. Mr. and Mrs. Orange, Frei Frost Pane, Aktur Rubyk of Trotheim, please enjoy your stay and the hospitality of the Clavia to the uttermost, and if you should find yourself in need of anything, I will move the stars to see it done.”

“Rubyk!” barked “grandmama,” whom Madeleine realized had both a name and a proper title as Frei Frost Pane of Trotheim. Like a window shattered by an errant snowball, it suited her. “I like this mare! We do not see ponies with such long memories so often. Ask her something!”

“Yes, grandmama,” said Rubyk, who stepped toward the group, looming like a tower over the Clavia about their work. He cast his eyes up as if in faraway thought for a moment, then said slowly and precisely, “what of jurisprudence, Miss Largo? How did the bygone Clavia deal with the criminals of peace and war among them, whether of their own or those held captive as spoil?”

“My, my… it is not often that one hears such a perceptive question,” said Miss Largo. The proprietress smiled, instantly warming to the topic.

“You ask about deerish justice,” Miss Largo went on, beginning to ambulate about the chairs and tables of polished teak, seemingly moved as much bodily as in her words by her passion for the subject. “I tell you truly that in this they have excelled us as much as in any other way. Consider how the legal system of Equestria became fat and corrupt even as early as the generation that first penned the Tri-Pony Compact. Today when somepony has a case to appeal, he writes a long letter to the Princesses, who may or may not ever read it, then spends months waiting for a trial date, then he pays aircart or train fare to travel to the capital, then he waits at the end of a docket of petty nobles’ cares and squabbles for his own three minutes to have the Princess’ ear. That’s all – three minutes’ worth of seconds and as many heartbeats to make himself heard in the halls of justice. And then it is all over, all he is told to pay the clerk to fill up the Royal coffers on his way out, and he leaves as hollow as the whole process.”

The eyes of the gathered pony guests, and even some of the Clavia in the foyer, were magnetically drawn to the seafoam mare as she paced about, almost singing her velvety, impassioned panegyrics. She came to rest beside the Clavia buck who had upset the pitcher and laid an hoof on his back. All of the other ponies but for Madeleine started a bit as the little deer seemed to snap into sharp focus for the first time.

“The justice of my Clavia is not – and never has been – anything like pony ‘justice.’ We inherited a broken system from our foremares. But the deerfolk of the world do and have always done better than us in doing justly. They have no system, but a people to uphold. When one rejoices, all rejoice; when one suffers, all suffer, together. So, too, with deerish justice. When one is wronged, all take swift revenge so that no more have to suffer. No one to blame, no one to be resented – just the deerfolk against the world, as it has ever been. At least, Doctor Leaf, I think that is what you would say?” Miss Largo asked, addressing the last remark to the little tuxedo-clad deer at her shoulder-height, whose eyes flicked from pony to pony, clearly uncomfortable at the sudden scrutiny.

“I should say ‘yes’ in the main, Miss Largo,” he mumbled.

“There!” Miss Largo exclaimed, triumphantly. “You have it straight from the white-tail’s mouth, Mister Rubyk. Consider well that my Clavia have no crime among them. Would you not agree that this exceeds any pony ‘justice’?”

“How can I?” said Rubyk, sounding distant. “It seems that they have had too little practice.”

Miss Largo stopped still, a forehoof raised in mid-stride. The mare lowered it slowly to the ground, looking toward Rubyk with a curious expression on her muzzle. Then she chuckled.

“Perhaps, Mister Rubyk, there are some things that ponies do that are not improved by much practice.” She pronounced the sentence with the finality of a verdict, and the taciturn Rubyk did not answer her. She turned herself toward the variously assembled group of ponies and included all of them in her next words by a grand sweep of her foreleg. “But here you are in my dear Clavia’s shining jewel of the sea, and I have kept you all from your leisure long enough! Please, ladies and gentlecolts, lose yourself in your pleasures! I shall have your bags taken up to your rooms at once. Might I also offer you a salt tablet for your refreshment?” The proprietress punctuated the last with the flash of an oblong glass case containing number of small, round, white tablets flecked with orange and red.

“I like this mare still more!” laughed Frost Pane, taking the offered gift in hoof. Then she frowned, peering at it closely with an appraising stare. The old mare sniffed at the tablet, her brows drawn together with dark suspicion.

“What? What? What is this, Rubyk? They have done something to the salt!” Frost Pane accused, shooting a pleading look to her grandfoal.

“Is there a problem, grandmama?” said Rubyk.

“Ah, yes,” said Miss Largo, smiling knowingly. “I do find that they can be a bit… austere without some augmentation. I have my Clavia compound them for me and my guests. I like orange and hibiscus myself, which is what you have there. Is it to your liking, Frei Frost Pane?”

Madeleine was not sure if Frei Frost Pane knew herself. The old mare just continued to stare at the tiny tablet held in her shaking forehoof. Her frown only deepened at she placed it under her tongue and Rubyk led her as a support toward the stairwells. (She vocally, and very loudly, protested at the use of the lifts.)

“Oh, and Crumpet?” said Miss Largo after the other guests had turned to their own ways, their bags disappearing discreetly with deer porters down the corridors. Madeleine Crumpet faced the proprietress of the Clavia Hotel directly, whose face had lost all the caricatures of social pageantry and now bore the comfortable, unfeigned softness of meeting with an old friend. “You will of course join me at high table for dinner tonight? Say about 7:00?”

“Of course,” said Madeleine, taking the proprietress’ hoof in her own. “Did you expect anything else, you old show-off?”

“Well,” said Miss Largo, with a throaty little laugh, “frankly, it’s my hotel, and I’ll do as I please, as you well know. But we can catch up later, Crumpet dear. I’ve had Limon check all of you in already, so there’s no need to worry your head over that.” The earth pony nodded toward the little buck who had spilled the pitcher, whose face flushed again. But he nodded in return, comprehending her meaning. “Doctor Leaf will see you to your room. Until we sup, then?”

Madeleine agreed, and the two parted warmly. As she followed the deer known to all and various simply as “Doctor” Leaf down a corridor branching off the side of the Grand Foyer, she heard Miss Largo murmur in low tones to Rock Skipper, “there should have been two others on that cart… be at the town as soon as the tide relents… we can’t afford to cause any offense…” To all of which the Pegasus saluted apologetically, wiping his brow.

“I see that Skipper still has to grow a backbone toward ‘the boss’. He could do so much better for himself than just being relegated to Largo’s errand boy and personal weatherpony season after season,” Madeleine said to Doctor Leaf once they were out of earshot down the corridor. The deep, plush carpet on the floor was pleasant on her hooves, and it swallowed up their voices almost absolutely so that they did not carry either into the rooms or the Grand Foyer just without. Madeleine had long expected that there may have been some enchantment involved from her many times in the islands, but it seemed rather gauche to just ask. Whatever the case, the Clavia Hotel kept its secrets well. As they passed polished oaken doors and paintings of does in elegant evening dress from balls of yesteryear, Doctor Leaf sighed and nodded a sad assent. His voice was crisp and detached, with just an hint of an acquired Canterlot accent.

“It is not as though we on the staff have told him any differently, Miss Crumpet. I myself have been at him for years to go to the mainland to make something of himself. While I may not in the end have been able to escape the gravity of this place, he has a whole life ahead of him. We should all like to see him find a pretty little mare and get some real pony culture instead of what trickles down to these islands. I should like to see him live up in the clouds where he belongs, and I myself have been bold enough to tell that to his face. You see for yourself what came of it. I think that some great shock will be necessary to make him budge from this hotel and this town.” The Clavia buck shook his head as they came to an elevator. Unlike other hotels in Equestria, the panel of controls were doubled – one at pony height, the other at deerish and foal’s height. (Madeleine realized with some amusement that the renovators of the old deer fortress had not reckoned on a Rubyk or a Frost Pane when putting in the elevators.)

“I hope that it doesn’t quite come to that, Doctor,” said Madeleine as a glitter of starlight flashed on the panels and on Doctor Leaf’s horns. The smooth, polished doors of the same gem-streaked white marble as the walk outside slid noiselessly open, and Madeleine smiled a bit at the odd pair they cut – pony and tiny deer followed by a train of magicked baggage – in the mirror on the far side as they entered. Flameless torches shone cool lampwood-light down on the two from copper sconces on the walls. “But you’re quick enough to say ‘we’. How are the rest of the ‘family’ doing?”

“Oh,” said Doctor Leaf, waving an hoof. The elevator doors closed behind them without a sound. With a single arcing point of light from one of the Clavia’s horn-tips, the fifth floor button was illumined “Well enough, or poor enough as you please; take your pick. “Little Papaya isn’t so little anymore since the last time you saw her, though her voice grows sweeter along with her. Miss Largo has taken to putting her up on the grand stage in the dining room as the musical entertainment some evenings to sing and dance or play on the marimba. But in my opinion, somedeer could stand to take that doe down a peg.”

“Or two?” Madeleine asked, searchingly. She had a feeling from her last tour through the islands that Papaya might one day tend in that direction.

“Or three,” agreed Doctor Leaf. Madeleine expected at least a smirk from the little buck, but his face was as mirthless as granite. “She’s grown into rather a flirt. That girl is going to come to grief one day, and I just hope she doesn’t get herself hurt too badly when it does happen. Sorrell and Frond are just the same, happy puttering in the dirt. They do as good a job as ever with the grounds, as you can see. Seamoss’ rheumatism bothers her whenever Miss Largo has Rock Skipper gather up a storm for the town – and, of course, it’s far worse when that pony can’t keep a tight rein on it. I would not be surprised if Miss Largo will move her off of laundry duties soon for that reason. I, for one, will be glad of it when the staff can afford to put her up in a bungalow in town to give her rest from the work.”

“I’ll have a word with Largo,” Madeleine said as the doors slid open. Seeing nopony else in the corridor (this one carpeted in a lush aquamarine, patterned with conch and clam and every kind of shell), she added, “if anyone can get that old fraud to listen to reason, it will be dear old ‘Crumpie from Canterlot’.” Doctor Leaf allowed himself just the faintest suggestion of a smirk.

“And if the ‘old fraud’ ever heard you say that, I’m not sure how much ‘reason’ would be involved in the result.” The buck stepped out of the elevator, leading the way down the corridor. “But you see that things are still much the same as they stand as ever. The staff neither grows nor shrinks; like the town she only grows older, and, thank your Princesses, nothing ever happens. And we pray to the Ancestors that nothing ever will.” Doctor Leaf stopped before a door very near the end of the corridor, beyond which a window opened up toward the lovely, gaudy box-houses on the Currycape harbour, and lowered the train of Madeleine’s bags to the floor. He reached into his breast pocket and produced a narrow ivory-coloured shaft without teeth and without any feature but for a small sapphire stone cut like a smooth bead at one end held in his fetlock-joint.

“Your room key, Miss Crumpet, and your suite – 501, as always. I remind you that the keys are enchanted so that they cannot be taken beyond the causeway, nor can anypony handle them by hoof or mouth or magicking after you take it in your hoof.”

Madeleine took the key in her hoof.

“So if you are thinking of entertaining any gentlestallions in Luna’s night while you are on the island…” Doctor Leaf continued.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Madeleine said firmly. “I know that you are but doing your job, but I know my own mind well enough, to say nothing of how things are done here.”

Doctor Leaf was silent, but an inner tension played itself out in folds of irritation around the little deer’s eyes. “Yes, Miss Crumpet. Forgive me my brashness,” he said. Another brief silence fell, wherein Madeleine opened the door to her suite, sliding the narrow key into the hole. The tiny gem in the outer end, almost invisible, flashed a soft blue invitation, and Madeleine nearly flung open the door in nervy excitement.

“Ah!” Madeleine exclaimed. It was perfect. As always. She cantered over the threshold, into the suite bedroom off from the central living quarters, and threw herself onto a silken duvet the indigo colour of a hastening dusk, moving her four legs in luxuriant circles to feel the smooth fabric against her coat. Nice, she thought.

“Very nice,” she said, and threw her head back against the many, so many delightful pillows.

Doctor Leaf remained in the corridor. The Clavia cleared his throat. “Will Miss Crumpet be desiring her bags brought in by the staff, or will she prefer to handle them herself?” The buck emphasized the word staff only just above his steady, reedy tenor, but it was enough that Madeleine’s ears caught it and turned of themselves toward him. She sat up with a little grunt of effort, the covers being deep, and pouted in the buck’s general direction.

“Oh, Doctor, is that what you really think of an old friend? Come on in and bring my bags and let me make it up to you so that you won’t let an idle comment ruin my stay. Hurry up, Doctor Leaf! I give you my word that I will make it worth your while. I don’t bite – hard!” Madeleine laughed, the sound being swallowed up in the carpet and walls by the same warm, languid silence of the corridors. Doctor Leaf’s face was unreadable, his muzzle as expressive as a stone as he entered, pulling Madeleine’s train of bags in his starry magic grip, though he held his head high and proud. Well, thought Madeleine, as high and proud as anydeer could when their horns only come up to your withers. Even so, her eyes caught the flushing tips of his ears that all of the stoic professionalism in Equestria could not quite hide.

“Will Madeleine require anything else of me before I attend to my other duties?” he said, notably forgetting the honorific.

“So you do remember my name! I had been afraid that you’d forgotten it, dear Doctor. Just set the cases anywhere and give me my little black saddlebag. It’s hanging there on the case at the end.” The Clavia cocked an eyebrow but whisked the bag to Madeleine with a turn of the head, couched in a bed of winking stars. Madeleine touched her horn to the clasp, which only then opened with an obliging click.

“Come closer, Doctor Leaf,” the unicorn purred. “I have something for you.”

“What did… Miss Crumpet have in mind?” The little deer swallowed, audibly.

“Only this,” said Madeleine, and grinned a feline grin. Out of the depths of the small, black saddlebag, she magicked a gold ring studded with diamonds, bearing a brilliant pink pearl in the center, and hung it on one of the little deer’s antler-tips… just like somepony else she had seen recently. Doctor Leaf’s mouth dropped open.

“Consider that a contribution to Seamoss’ retirement fund. The old girl has had a hard life, and she deserves whatever rest you folk can find. What?” Madeleine said, laughing, as she slunk back upon her belly upon the bed, folding her legs beneath her. “Whatever did you think I had in mind, Doctor?”

Madeleine decided that the flush of flustered red that came on Doctor Leaf’s face might just have been the most adorable thing she had ever seen.

*********************************************

Chapter Three

Clouds of Witnesses

*********************************************

“Rubyk, you are sulking again. You would snuff out the Aurora when you sulk if nature would let you!”

“No, grandmama.”

“No?” snapped Frost Pane’s voice like the crack of a whip. “No, you are not sulking? Feh!” Frost Pane slammed her hoof on the well-lacquered coffee table that lay before the chaise sofa in the middle of their suite’s living area. A few splinters of wood exploded outward under the blow, along with a number of flakes of willowy ice that hung momentarily in the air before melting in flittering drops. The old mare length-wise took up the whole of the furnishing that was ordinarily meant for two adult ponies, with perhaps room to spare for a foal between them. In spite of the warmth and humidity of the outside air that flowed in from the picture window that opened up onto a balcony overlooking the hotel’s vegetable gardens and labyrinths of decorative tropical plants luxuriating in the beams of Celestia’s sun, Frost Pane lay with a tight-knit woolen throw in the deep aqua and green and reds of the Northern Aurora thrown over her body.

“I know what sulking looks like when I see it, Rubyk!” Frost Pane said to Rubyk’s back, the younger unicorn staring out of the open picture window. “You are not to sulk on this trip, and you are not to do it in front of me, and you are especially not to go bloodying up your horn with case nonsense while we are trapped here in these drumble-eyed islands! Is that clear? That is an order from the Frei of Trotheim!”

“Yes, grandmama.”

“‘Yes,’ you say. ‘Yes, of course,’ he says! So put away whatever that is or you will make yourself sick!” Frost Pane pointed an accusing hoof at the paper that Rubyk had gripped in his hoof and was reading with a hint of a near-sighted squint, rather than looking out over the scenery as he so wished to seem. With a tiny sigh, Rubyk folded the paper and magicked it into a small bear-leather saddlebag he had slung over his shoulder after their bags had been brought in by those tiny deerfolk.

“I cannot promise you that I will be able to abstain entirely from court matters, Frei grandmama. Duty only stretches so far.” Rubyk did not turn about as he said this. His eyes were scanning the horizon as he spoke, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of motion coming from the direction of the town. Curious, he stepped out onto the balcony. The cart was again en route to the hotel from across the causeway, this time bearing only two ponies. He could tell that they were both stallions from this distance, but little apart from that. One of them, the larger, was waving his forehooves about in evident agitation at that pegasus driver, who hung his head low and apparently made no reply. The other threw his gaze out toward the sea, apparently not wanting to look upon either. Curiously, another figure, this one airborne, and quite black against the sunlight, kept even pace with the cart below, as if in no particular hurry to reach the Hotel Clavia, or as if all its attention were upon the cart, and not upon its own destination.

“What duty could you possibly have in this dozy place?” Frost Pane herself only grew more agitated at the younger unicorn’s behaviour. She raised herself up on her forehooves and glared out of the door. “What do you think that you will be able to accomplish so far from the bench and from your precious Wall-Guards to do all the running-about and looking-into for you?”

“There is still Shinedeep’s prophecy. It befrets me. I must know what it means.”

An indignant light flashed deep in Frost Pane’s eyes. She raised her hoof again to speak, and a dull red glow began to gather around her horn. A number of small furnishings like lamps and decorative pictures and the menagerie of glass deer and animal knick-knacks belonging to the hotel all began to shake and rattle, threatening a sudden paroxysm of magical fury. Then the old mare gasped as her horn was suddenly seized in an icy grip. Lacy crystals of frost gathered on her horn like a metal shaft left out in the winter night with a cracklike splintering bone. The rattling in the room stopped in an instant, and Frost Pane’s head fell limp upon the sofa. Rubyk whirled about at the sound and took in the scene with quick, darting eyes. He was already moving toward the suite’s brass speaking-tube to summon the hotel’s physician with long-legged strides when Frost Pane feebly raised her voice again, now barely more than a whisper.

“Rubyk, do you see with what spear such worry will strike you through? You see what I am become? This sickness will come into your bones also if you do not leave off your brooding.” Frost Pane smiled thinly. Rubyk made no reply, but he met his elder’s eyes and twisted one side of his mouth upward in what was meant as a reassuring gesture.

“This is suite 503.” Rubyk spoke clearly and deliberately down the speaking tube. “A pony here is sick. Send your best doctor. Send him immediately. Send him with blankets and hot tea and tincture of stardew. Please. My grandmother is very ill.” A voice, gabbled and confused, burbled up from the other end of the tube located behind the concierge desk in the Grand Foyer.

“What was that, sir? We could not get all of that.”

Nostrils flaring, Rubyk repeated himself. His tone made it clear to the doe at the other end that he did not like having to repeat himself.

“Oh… oh, my! Yes, of course! We will send Doctor Leaf at once!”

“Bah…” said Frost Pane, sounding farther away than the voices coming up the tube. “You see how they slept like foals filled up with love and the season’s first icewine when you called? Was I not right as might about this town?”

“You were right, grandmama,” Rubyk said quietly. He knelt next to the chaise sofa. “You of course were right about the town. Don’t speak. That’s an order from the Aktur of Trotheim.” Rubyk breathed a warm breath onto the shivering old mare that pulsed with life and blood-heat and the stern, strange magic of the North. Frost Pane’s body seemed to suck up the heat like snow tramped before the hearth, and the violence of her shakes fell to a mild tremor.

He shivered.

A minute later, the hotel’s “Doctor Leaf” rapped on the door with an urgent staccato. Rubyk rose up and threw the door open with magic, and Doctor Leaf at once entered in. He was, Rubyk saw, another of the tiny deerfolk of the islands who wore the same darting eyes and high nerves that all his kind seemed to share. He carried a small brown valise in his mouth and was panting heavily as he came in, then froze. For a moment, he stood as though paralyzed, craning his neck to look up at the tall tower of pony and white fur before him, eyes wide and glassy. Then he seemed to recover himself and shook his head as though to clear it of some sudden drowse.

“I believe that you sent for a doctor… Mister Rubyk?”

“For her,” Rubyk said, and gestured toward Frost Pane. “My grandmare, Doctor.” His eyes narrowed. “And I told them to send blankets and tea, as well as medicines. I see that I was not obeyed.”

“On the contrary,” replied the Clavia. “I can answer to all of that.” The Clavia undid the clasp of his valise, which was hardly larger than a coin purse to the Trotheim ponies, and his antlers glittered as he drew out a downy white duvet and a silken sheet, followed by a silver tea set with handsome teak handles, the pot still steaming, and a tall, thin bottle of a dark liquid that seemed to contain, somehow, far-off flashes of a dull red light deeper in than the bottle would allow. It was an impossible feat, and therefore strong magic indeed. Even Frost Pane’s eyebrows rose in begrudging approval.

“Harummm…” mumbled Doctor Leaf, having taken Frost Pane’s temperature and vitals. He touched the tender part of his leg to her horn to feel the sharp cold coming off of it and took note of the dark spots and veins in her eyes. He pressed his muzzle to her neck, feeling the greater warmth of her core coming off of there and moved his cheek close to her back, feeling the heat from her flesh and the thin line of cold emanating from the Frei’s spine like an icy river cutting a channel through warm flesh. Finally, he wrapped the old mare in the blankets he had brought with him and poured two cups of steaming-hot tea, all in a graceful magic like the quiet glint of starlight. He put a cup to the old mare’s lips, and she drew on it greedily, as if her very life depended on that warmth running down her throat.

“I… believe that I know of this disease, although it is unheard of this far to the south of the Crystal Mountains,” Doctor Leaf said, sounding somewhat tentative, although no more than any other physician in uncharted waters. “Your grandmother suffers from the Maneheim Ice Sickness, correct? And just before you called me, she was trying to cast some great magic, and the energy flowed right up her spine and froze her horn, just like that?”

“Something like that,” Rubyk agreed. He quickly changed the subject. “Do you notice anything amiss? Was there any damage from the attack?”

“What damage? What stomach-belch are you blathering, Rubyk?” Frost Pane grumbled. “I will be fine and fit enough to put your blood on my horn after I rest for a bit.”

“I… think not,” Doctor Leaf answered after a moment’s pause. He turned his head to Frost Pane, and looked the tall mare directly in the eye. “But you, madam, are not to take up any magic as long as you are a guest of the Hotel Clavia until I give you my blessing. The black ice persists by incorporating itself into living creature’s magical loci. For most creatures, that principally means along the spine, the nape of the neck, and in and through the eyes. But for bone-horned creatures like unicorns, the horn is connected bodily with the other loci. So whenever a unicorn channels magic up through their loci in a spell, it all funnels toward their horn as the apex of that energy, and all of the black ice follows. The only way to heal the Ice Sickness is to starve it; that means, madam, no spells, no magic, and as much rest as you can possibly take.”

“Do you hear this impudence, Rubyk?” said Frost Pane, barely above a mumble. She sounded weak, on the very verge of sleep. “He talks to us like foals. As if… we of Noble Trotheim… know not what the Ice Sickness is. As we do not by years see it take… our sons… our daughters… our noble stallions and sages…”

“Shhh…” soothed Rubyk, touching the tip of his horn to Frost Pane’s forehead. “I know, grandmama. I know. It is time to rest now.” A cool aura surrounded his horn and flowed down like falling snow onto Frost Pane’s half-lidded eyes. In only a moment, the elder unicorn was deep asleep and breathing to match.

“Your grandmother is a very willful mare, Mister Rubyk,” Doctor Leaf observed. Rubyk looked down on him, searchingly; but there was no guile in the little deer. He nodded toward the Clavia, sadly.

“I know, Doctor. I know. It is why I am here at her side, and not another.” Rubyk paused, standing tall, looming over on the little deer. Then he bowed, just once, short and shallow.

“Thank you. Perhaps now she may listen to reason that you have said to her the things that I and my house cannot say clear or loud enough.”

Doctor Leaf shook his head. “Please do not thank me if the cure has not yet taken. You clearly know about this sickness much more intimately than I do, Mister Rubyk. I only know it from books in my student days. You asked for all the right remedies. As long as you can make… or convince… your grandmother to take tincture of stardew thrice daily, and as long as she abstains from all magic, the climate here should take care of the rest of the healing.” He fixed Rubyk with a knowing stare and smirked. “But I suspect that I am telling you things that you already know.”

Rubyk laughed – just once. “You are a suspicious deer, doctor. Now, get out of our rooms before grandmama wakes. I might just join you while she naps.” The two pressed their hooves one to another and shook – just once. Then Doctor Leaf gathered up his little valise in his mouth and cantered like a silent ghost out of the suite. Closing the door with a feather-soft click behind him, Rubyk followed.

*****

Madeleine Crumpet decided, not for the first time, and not for the last, that life was sweet. The warm breezes blowing in from the ocean, the smell of fresh-cut hibiscus in the crystal vase on the false mantel, the smooth caress of silk sheets as she drifted off into a noonday siesta were all sensations delicious enough to drown in.

They also got old. Really, really fast. The little pony in her head had served her well in keeping all of her appointments out on the road without a need for a planner, but she was an antsy thing. Madeleine felt the drumming of tiny hoof-beats on the inside of her skull. Her mane began to itch and crawl with the uncomfortable ennui of the overworked. She could almost hear the little minx whispering those chocolate-smooth words that were so useful out on the road, but not when she was trying to enjoy the sea-breezes and silk sheets of an holiday: Don’t you think there’s something you should be doing?

“All right. I said all right, you hateful thing!” Madeleine groaned to nopony in particular. She rose to her hooves and began to pace the suite.

Bother it all. If she couldn’t let herself rest, she could at least let herself wander and engage in some pony-watching. Such jaunts were seldom unfruitful in the long run in her line. Maybe even with one of those lime and rum drinks from the pool bar with one of those deer-sized umbrellas – whatever the name is. That, thought Madeleine with a smirk, was one of the best ideas her little pony had come up with in a while. She donned her sleek black saddlebag, making sure that she had all the accoutrements as she trotted down to the Grand Foyer:

Sketchbook? – check. My little beauties? – good, everyone here and accounted for! Don’t you worry. Madeleine will find you all a nice home soon enough. Contingency plan? – well, we wouldn’t want to have a need for you, but check under the just-in-case heading. Madeleine smirked as she reentered the cavernous foyer. By happy chance, she came just in time to see the hotel’s proprietress greeting a fresh cart-load of arrivals from the mainland.

“…lovely to see you again, Calvados. I trust that your trip was uneventful?” Miss Largo said it in a voice that was as bright and comely as ever a guest heard, but there was a certain flat guardedness in the undertones that struck Madeleine’s ear as important. The Clavia Hotel’s proprietress had seen it all; it took a lot to put her off from a perfect semblance of perfect hospitality. It made Madeleine take a good, close look at the new arrivals.

The little pony in her head stood poised and ready to set down the details, but the pen seemed to slip from her mouth as Madeleine took in the first of the arriving party. He was an earth pony and a stallion of an obvious venerable age, but built thick and solid with a muscular vigor undimmed by age that he was proud to show rippling beneath his uncovered coat the colour of apple flesh – that is, apple flesh bitten into and left to sit in the open air for too long. His mane and tail were cut in a pagecolt style that was not only out of date, but also gave him a bizarre look like a foal grown too big for his mind. His mark was striking; it was a green apple fading and merging upwards into a brown, squat bottle with rounded shoulders. He was grinning broadly at the proprietress, but it struck Madeleine as a bit too toothy and more than a touch insincere. And he had a leering, hungry look in his eyes as his gaze swept over the Grand Foyer, resting for a few moments on each mare (and some of the does) as it passed. Madeleine decided that she did not care for it. Her little pony did not care for him; and the two of them were unanimous in that assessment.

Most definitely not a pony for jewels, girl.

The second was similar enough to the first in some to be startling at a first glance. He was about the same size and similar build, but was far younger, perhaps in his mid-twenties, and he had nothing like the coiled springs in his muscles possessed by the other. Rather, he tended to a slight pudge that clung to all of his features like a well-fitted jumpsuit (which, Madeleine thought, would have suited him very poorly). He wore the same style of mane and tail as the elder in a muddy brown, which contrasted his coat of warm, mottled red. Yet in him the effect was endearing, rather than uncanny. But the striking difference between the two lay in the fact that this one was a unicorn, although his horn was squat compared to most. His eyes did not share in the awful, hungry look of the other. His head hung low and he kept his eye upon the wandering gaze of the elder stallion.

That elder’s eyes lighted upon the proprietress and evidently liked what they saw there. “Well, how d’you do! If it ain’t ol’ slow-sales herself! How’s the ol’ Sun’s tricks treating ya’ these days?” guffawed the pony that Largo had, Madeleine realized with treacle-quick deduction, referred to as “Calvados”, sending up a belly laugh that shook the chandeliers. He spoke with a thick brogue that was similar to that of the farming provinces south of Canterlot, but with a sharper texture that made Madeleine think that was probably not his real provenance.

“Oh,” said the proprietress, waving an hoof with flawless vagueness, “how does that line from the Bard run? ‘The Sun may be a strumpet yet, but we, true fools, consent to be her drubbéd knaves?’ It sings as true today as ever.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” laughed Calvados, planting a kiss and a nuzzle on both of the proprietress’ cheeks in a soggy imitation of the quaint greeting-custom of the islands. By what Madeleine knew must have constituted an heroic force of will, Miss Largo returned the gesture with a smile that was a positively masterful performance. Behind them, the younger unicorn with the stumpy horn glowered a venomous look that jolted Madeleine from her vague feelings of distaste. It was the sort of look that one wears only when he is quite sure – and invariably quite mistaken – that nopony else is looking at him. And just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared from the unicorn’s face, replaced by the same indrawn sulk as before.

Miss Largo turned toward Madeleine and threw her a desperate look. Madeleine understood her role completely. She donned a feather-light smile and stepped forward into the Grand Foyer to give Largo some relief from the odious stallion. Then the proprietress looked up and over her shoulder and… nodded?

“Well, good afternoon to you both,” drolled the proprietress with just an hint of an undertone of sheer, sweet, thank not-Celestia RELIEF! “Crumpet… Lord Rubyk… your timing is quite apt. May I have the pleasure of making introductions?”

“Naturally,” said that selfsame giant in a glissing whisper from somewhere altogether too close to Madeleine’s right ear. She jumped. Where had he come from? Something that big shouldn’t be allowed to move that quietly!

“Calvados, Pome, Mister Black, may I introduce the Lord Aktur of Trotheim and Madeleine Crumpet? They’ve also only just arrived, and both from such a long journey… no, no, Crumpet dear, you put more road-dust on your hooves in a year than most equines do in a lifetime, so don’t make a fuss…” cooed Miss Largo at Madeleine’s token show of denial. “Crumpet, Lord Rubyk, may I present Calvados and Pome Apple. Calvados is an old acquaintance of mine. He owns the plantation and runs the operation that makes that most scrumptious apple brandy from the mainland. I always seek to have the best for my guests, and what better way than to go to the source, as it were? And I must say what a profitable arrangement it has been for all parties concerned?”

“Y’all got that right!” said Calvados Apple, his mirth rebounding off of the walls. “Crummy hemp-balls, they grow ‘em big where you come from, don’t they?” he said to the quiet Rubyk. “What kind of hips the mares there got, anyway?”

“Uncle, please…” grumbled the younger. Pome Apple lifted his head, the tips of his ears flushing even more red.

“But I do! Never saw the point in doing less for m’sef,” Calvados Apple said. Although he was mainly interested in the novelty of the spectacle that was the strange Rubyk, Madeleine felt the sweep of his gaze light on the nape of her neck for just a moment. It was a singularly unpleasant sensation.

Perhaps he should have been enraged. But the huge, strange, fascinating thing that was Rubyk just blinked for a moment, not realizing the question that had been put to him (after a fashion).

“I believe that they are adequate to our needs,” Rubyk said as if the words tasted strange in his mouth. The giant was more puzzled than enraged. Calvados Apple clicked his tongue against his teeth and turned away as if, suddenly, the towering unicorn did not seem half so interesting. (And, really, what could a filthy mind do with a reply like that? Perhaps the giant was more canny than his puzzlement let on.)

“Well, it’s awful fine to go around gussying up to the slicked-up set, but you got one thing right, Largo: I amplum tuckered. That driver of yours could use some lessons on how to hustle, if you get my drift – and I hatehavin’ to wait. It was nice meetin’ y’all, but I think I’d rather lay me down and lay me out for a while.”

“I will have a word with him,” said Miss Largo, dry as sun-bleached sand. “Is there anything that I could see to for your comforts, Calvados?”

“Oh,” nickered the old stallion, “how about one o’ them sweet little does with the salt and the sashay when they walk? I say, that would be nice and comfortable, in-deed.”

“Uncle, they’re young enough to be your granddaughters…” hissed Pome Apple in the drawn and weary tones of a pony who had been habitually stretched beyond the breaking point. “Give it rest. It ain’t like you haven’t enjoyed yourself pretty well on this trip so far.”

“Aww, listen to that, y’all. Cute kid, ain’t he?” Calvados chuckled. “Well in that case, let’s just see what sort o’ tricks this place’s got for mares this time ‘round a’fore we meet up with the old lime fussbudget later. C’mon, boy!”

Pome Apple said nothing, but Madeleine could feel the storm cloud that hung over him unseen as he passed her by with heavy hoof-steps. Rubyk’s head turned alongside hers, watching the pair with a curious expression on his face. On another pony, one not so very strange, it might have been worry. On him, it seemed to be a wordless judgment with all the force of strong authority behind it. It made the back of Madeleine’s eyes itch.

A third stallion stepped forward to greet the proprietress. He extended a forehoof. Madeleine stared at him for a moment. So, too, for that matter, did Largo. He was a pegasus, built thick and broad-shouldered and easily as impressive for girth of muscle as Lord Rubyk was tall. His wings, even folded, were clearly as ample a match in breadth for his physical prowess as his coat was black. His coat was black as ink, black as coal, black as a thunderhead. The slate-grey tones of his close-cropped mane and tail only drew the eye to the absolute darkness of his coat. He was a negative presence in the room, a void where a pony might have been, and he made one’s eyes flicker over him rather than look at him too directly. Even his mark was indistinct. A… moon? A star? A wing? Madeleine’s little pony was at a loss.

The pegasus smiled. Madeleine knew that smile. It was the bland and unassuming smile of a comfortably-off civil servant in a comfortable job used to the creature comforts of hearth and home a bit too well. It was, she thought, decidedly off upon his features, as if it had been plagiarized from the commonest stallion in the street of any city in Equestria and the author of the theft had made no effort to conceal his misdeed by adapting it to the local topography.

“Proprietress Largo? How do you do?” said the pegasus with military precision.

“Oh, quite well indeed. You are?” queried Largo, taking the preferred hoof in hers.

“Jett Black, madame. I am an athletic instructor from Cloudsdale. Very pleased to make your acquaintance. No, Madeleine decided, he was not. There was something, or even everything, which made that statement a lie from the first to the last. Perhaps it was the way he held his hoof and himself with all the genial softness of a lumberyard, or maybe it was the plain fact that there was no way in a bramble-bush the owner of that voice had been within an hundred miles of the pegasus cloud-city for years. (And unless her ear had gone tinny on her, the voice had no colour or accent at all — and it was no small feat to intone such perfectly ordinary speech.)

“Delighted to make yours,” bandied Miss Largo, with an undertone that suggested she was as little taken in by the pegasus’ act as if he had worn a false mustache. “And what brings you to our islands, Mister Black? Business, perhaps?”

“You have said. I was commissioned to come here by one of my clients for some flight training during the off-season. I had hoped to avail myself of some of the famed local hospitality before my contract got underway,” said Jett Black, withdrawing his hoof to himself and bowing once to the proprietress. And that was no Cloudsdale mannerism, either. Just whom was this stallion trying to fool?

Then, abruptly, the mountain beside her shifted, and the pony called Rubyk stepped forward and said coolly, “I am Rubyk of Trotheim, and I, too, am here for the sake of another. Tell me, Jett Black of Cloudsdale: is it an happy affair that has brought you here?”

Madeleine thought that she saw the black stallion’s mask crack, just a bit. He turned toward the giant with an unfathomable expression. “I cannot say that it is happy, Rubyk of Trotheim, but it is work that I am bound to. There are also some certain matters that I must see to here on this island before I leave for brighter waters.”

Rubyk nodded his head. “Then would you consent to walk with me a while, friend Jett? Yours is a strong spirit, and mine is weary.”

“For such a request, I might just. Come, Rubyk of Trotheim, and let us have out what is in your heart.” It was a brief, strange, terse exchange, and to Madeleine’s bewildered eyes, the two stallions locked an embattled stare and set off in lock-step. They talked as they walked, the pegasus taking two brusque steps to every languid stride of his companion, speaking instantly with the ease of like-minded comrades. Each word was equal to its weight in lead. Madeleine and the proprietress watched them pass through the open doors. The two mares exchanged a glance.

“Well!” said Miss Largo. “What do you make of that, Crumpet?”

“Other than that pegasus is about as sincere as a cotton bridle? Not a thing.”

“I have to agree. Something about him rubs my coat the wrong way. And how those two got on together after knowing each other for — oh, call it ten seconds? I call it suspicious, dear.” Miss Largo waved her hoof absently in the air a few times and flashed a sparkling smile. “Oh, but don’t worry your head about them. That’s my job, and I have more than enough hooves to head off any funny business before it starts.”

“Hmm? Oh, yes,” Madeleine said absently.

After all, letting Largo have all of the fun would just be dull.

The two mares, having seen each other again only lately, said their goodbyes. Largo trotted off one of her daily constitutionals across the grounds, while Madeleine made for the poolside. There was just a chance she might run into the right Clavia to keep a little sneaking on the down-low, the little pony in her head rationalized. And a nice drink with a nip of salt on the rim sounded quite decent, too.

As she emerged into the south-side Solarium, Madeleine was greeted by the caress of sea-breezes and the assault of filly-shrieks and splashing upon her poor ears. But as she squinted, willing her eyes to adjust to the light, two more voices, more familiar, greeted her with quite nearly as much excitement.

“Miss Crumpet!” cried Mangosteen and Frond, doe and buck twins, nearly dropping their laden trays of iced cocktails as they rushed to her side. “Doctor Leaf told us that you’d arrived? When did you get in?” “How was your passage on the ocean, Miss Crumpet?” “May we get you any drinks? On the house!” “What pretty earrings! Can I try them on?”

“Miss Crumpet” laughed delightedly and bent her neck to kiss the two Clavia on the muzzle. “Slow down, you two! I can’t say ‘hello’ to every deer all at once, but I fully intend to not say ‘good-bye’ without at least a sit-down and a chat with all my old friends. Now take those to their rightful owners,” she said, gesturing toward the glasses filled with ice and every hue of the rainbow (including one that seemed to be nothing but rainbow), “and, if you please, bring me a soda with lime. Make that with just a splash of gin and a touch of salt on the rim. And then…” Madeleine bent low, leaning in close to the two Clavia and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “and then come and find me when you two trade off with your next relief. I’ve got a job for you both, effective at once.”

The two little deer’s wide eyes went even wider. They shot excited glances to one another.

“Does this mean you need somepony… watched, Miss Crumpet?” said Mangosteen with the quiver of a shared secret.

“Just maybe,” replied Madeleine with a wink. “But let’s have that drink first, you two, and then we will get around to talking shop. And if it helps…” Madeleine’s horn shimmered, and she lifted the flap of her saddlebag, drawing out a sleek coral pendant strung with handsome glass beads. Not too much, and not too little, and (she thought, lifting out another), they were cheap enough to come in pairs.

“Let’s just say that I intend to tip well,” she finished.

Frond touched his forehoof to the tips of his antlers in a jerky salute. “Yes Miss Crumpet! Ma’am! Sir!”

*****

Madeleine’s little pony was a mouthy little thing. She had been muttering something about letters — the mention of which stirred a dim memory in Madeleine’s mind. Then the vicious little thing seemed to go and bite her on the ear, and Madeleine had remembered.

The letters! She had forgotten to post them before she left from the mainland! Vacation or no, if she didn’t get those to the dragonfire post today… she gulped down the rest of her drink and bolted from the Solarium. If she got a start now, there was still a chance to get at least most of them done before she met with Largo and not be behind an entire week.

Madeleine’s horn blazed as she galloped, panting, into suite 505. With the concentration brought on by blind panic, she threw open her suitcases and lifted out dresses and blouses, neatly folded, and banished them into dresser drawers. There is, she thought, no gain in being messy. Then, at the bottom of one of her cases, she found the object of her search: a small, pewter ball with two raised circles that seemed to stare at her like blind, unblinking eyes. A dictosprite.

“There you are, my lovely,” she said, half-breathless. The ball, of course, made no answer. Madeleine trotted over to the writing desk and took up a quill, placing it into a small indent on the bottom of the thing. As she did so, two misty wings emerged from the other side as the enchantment upon the little pewter ball came to life, lifting it off of the desk so that it looked to all eyes like a living creature.

“Hello, you old pest! You’re looking well,” Madeleine half-gasped, still getting her breath back. The bobbing ball of metal, of course, said nothing. Instead, it scratched out her words in a flowing, perhaps only a little too-perfect script on the sheet of blotting paper beneath.

Hello you old pest. You are looking well.

“And I always forget that you never do inflections right,” said Madeleine, shaking her head. The dictosprite scratched that out, too, and with a sigh Madeleine changed out the blotting paper and brought a small bundle of scrolls of her personal stationery to the writing desk.

“My Dear Coralstone,” she began, and so passed a productive, if not precisely stimulating hour of arranging appointments, expressing her heartfelt thanks for this or that personal favor some-such-or-other stallion had shown her last year on her island tour (oh, she did hope that she remembered all of their names right; the dears had a tendency to get mixed up in her head sometimes) — and, most importantly, responding personallyto the hoof-wringing of the under-performing jewelry outlets. It’s just bad practice for the business, she thought acidly, trying to think of the best way to make the words of those letters bite in the kindest way possible. One should either accept failure and bow gracefully out of gem-mongery, or else she should learn from her mistakes and stop trying to sell tawdry kitch to tourists because they don’t know any better.

That didn’t nip too hard, Madeleine thought. Just enough to get those who could be coaxed back into line to shape up.

The staccato rapping of hooves at the lower door of Madeleine’s suite came too fast to be strictly decorous. Moreover, they played havoc with the silent dictosprite that hung suspended, winged and flapping and yet lifeless, over Madeleine’s writing desk. The eyeless, bobbing ball scratched a few confused, jagged lines onto the scroll Madeleine had been dictating. (She was finally onto thank-you notes, which while still a drudgery flowed so much more smoothly after a soda with lime and a splash of gin and a touch of salt on the rim.) She clicked her tongue against her teeth and made for the door.

“Yes?” she demanded, throwing open the upper door.

Nopony was there.

“Down here, Miss Crumpet!” a pair of excited voices shouted up at her. She looked down.

“That was fast!” she said, throwing open the lower door to admit Frond and Mangosteen. In one moment, the promise of fresh gossip had shredded her terse mood.

“Well,” said Frond, the little buck pointing to his short, velvety antlers meaningfully.

“…we’re the right kind of folk to come to if you want results,” finished Mangosteen. The doe eyed Madeleine’s saddlebags, which she had yet to remove. Madeleine caught the hint and magicked out the promised fee, hanging them around the twins’ slender necks. Brother and sister glanced each other over approvingly, then fell to laughing.

“You look ridiculous!” said Mangosteen, with tears in her eyes.

“Same goes for you! Like you’d ever wear jewelry in public!” quipped Frond.

Madeleine chuckled and waved the twins over to the chaise. They sat, poised on pins and still shooting insults at one another with their eyes.

“Okay! Dish,” said Madeleine, rapping her hoof on the sitting-room table. “You’ve found out something about that Rubyk character?”

Mangosteen nodded her head vigorously. “Oh, more than that, Miss Crumpet. Not just him, either.”

“That pegasus, too?”

“Jett Black? Yep, him too,” said Frond, beaming. Madeleine clipped her hopes together. Trust the twins to get a job done right!

“Well, then? Don’t keep me in suspense, you two.”

“It was like this…” Mangosteen began. “Frond and I found the pegasus and your Rubyk walking together in the gardens in one of those hedge-maze labyrinths…”

“It wasn’t exactly hard,” murmured Frond.

“Who’s telling this story, fuzzhorns?”

“Maybe I should be the one telling! Whose spell was it that got us up right behind those two so we could hear every word that tall one whispered? I don’t see your antlers all snuffed!”

“All right, all right…” soothed Madeleine. “One at a time, you two. You found the two stallions together in the garden.” That must have been an awfully long conversation. Whatever about, one wonders? “Then what happened?”

“Here,” said Frond. “I’ll be the tall one, and you can be that bulky black pony.”

“What, just like that?”

“Yep! Just like that. It was hard to hear, so I’m not entirely sure I got all the words…”

Mangosteen sighed and finished her brother’s sentence: “…but when we got up behind them close enough to hear, that pegasus was saying something like…”

*****

“…justice is rare even among the best. If you expect only virtue, either in them or in yourself, ponies will always find the means to turn truth into a lie.” Jett Black’s voice was deep and resonant even among the hedge-rows of sculpted hibiscus with blossoms in purple and scarlet and wine-hearted white.

“The truth is the Rock, and hooves are harder than stone,” replied Rubyk, quoting a well-worn proverb with the weight of a sledge-iron. The pegasus nodded his approval as Frond and Mangosteen crept closer under the cover of deerish magic, cocking their ears to hear the Trotheim giant’s low tones.

“So you see what I mean?”

“Not at all,” said Rubyk, voice smooth and dripping scorn. “If you had heard the cries for bread from the foals and widows whose fathers and husbands had been lost to the whitepelts, and seen the sin of their blood uncovered and unavenged upon the ice, you would know the voice crying out for justice. Like calls like, and ponies do not cry out for justice without a just thirst being in them.”

“You are naïve, friend. Your words are those of a foal,” said Jett Black to the unicorn who stood more than an head above him. “What you saw, you only thought you saw. I will tell you what is in a pony…”

Then the two abruptly turned, and Frond and Mangosteen cursed each other with acrid looks as the twins scrambled to keep out from under hoof. The twins dove under a bush, laying flat and absolutely still as the two stallions passed by. The two Clavia remained that way until the pair turned a bend and their voices faded. When they came around again toward the rear, it was Rubyk’s sad report that first reached their ears.

“…cannot be such a cynic as you,” said the tall unicorn, shaking his head. “I do not have the option.”

“The option?” Jett Black asked with a booming laugh. “Are you saying that you know the real truth about ponies, the truth beneath the truth, but for your birth or some other fleshly weakness you refuse to embrace it?”

“And now which of us is the foal?” Rubyk replied. His voice was melancholy, distant. “You speak of chains of duty and birthright that crush one to the earth, but I have a far lighter yoke on my neck. The truth beneath the truth is the justice and righteousness that governs all things, and which does so through us. That it should do so through ponies is not a burden on those born high into the world like the Princesses and my house, but a source of every joy to those who know and love it.” Jett Black nickered.

“I once thought that way myself. But you forget that even one of our Princesses once disabused herself once of that truth — and just consider the results. And as for myself… I found out that I was wrong. I believe in none of that rot any longer.”

“Then I’m sorry to hear that…” And then the two were again making their slow walk away, too distant to hear clearly over the rustle of the leaves. Mangosteen nudged her way out from under the hedges and gestured frantically at Frond to follow. Blinking, the buck rose and crept behind the doe, inch by inch, as the two stallions approached the exit of the labyrinth of flowers into the gardens.

“…you lead a life beaker than I can imagine, Jett Black. I pray to the Lonely God that you will reconsider your foal-headed stubbornness.” Rubyk’s tone was measured, and he betrayed no emotion as he walked bestride the pegasus stallion.

“That is because you imagine only a physical bleakness, like your glaciers and tundras, Rubyk.” Jett Black was equally stoical as the two stepped out into the open gardens and out of the silent privacy of the confessional. “But, like these flowers, that is only a mask for the deep truth that beneath are only worms. The real bleakness is the pony soul itself. You will see the worms one day if you look with honest eyes.”

“Then let me see the worms and sing for them an hymn of praise as unto Celestia Herself,” said Rubyk, and that seemed to bring the whole matter to a close. The two ponies exited the labyrinth and shot each other a look of what was perhaps begrudging respect, then turned from each other and began to go their separate ways — the pegasus back into the hotel through the conservatory doors, and Rubyk deeper into the gardens.

Yet even after Jett Black had made his exit, Rubyk turned and stared into the labyrinth. It took Frond and Mangosteen several moments to realize that he was staring right in their direction. The Clavia froze and willed more magic into the glamour that covered them, antlers glinting dimly in the searching light of the noonday sun. Surely he couldn’t have seen them while they were in the labyrinth? There was no way! He couldn’t have had a chance to see them?

Could he?

After a long, glacial instant, Rubyk turned his head and seemed to change his mind about his destination. He instead turned back toward the hotel himself. In a moment, he, too, was lost to sight.

The twins rose and exchanged a glance. The two were shaking, though neither could quite say why.

*****

“Well!” Madeleine said. It seemed the only appropriate thing one could say. She said it again.

One didn’t get to eavesdrop on a conversation like that very often. Behind her, the dictosprite was dutifully taking down every word of the twins’ report in one long, unpunctuated scrawl.

“Did… you hear what you wanted, Miss Crumpet?” Mangosteen asked, cocking her head.

“Hmm? Oh, yes.”

“Should we… keep on watching them?” Frond asked, looking to his sister, somewhat lost.

“Very good… keep on if you like,” Madeleine said, sounding a thousand miles away. Brother and sister exchanged another glance, then turned to leave.

“Al…right, then?” Frond said. “Enjoy your stay… Miss Crumpet?”

“I will dears. Thank you.” The twins shrugged and left. Madeleine stared out of the window at the gardens, tracing their winding labyrinths with her eyes.

“Just who are you, my dear Rubyk? How is a pony like you made?” she mused, dreamily. The dictosprite continued its dumb scritching, setting down her words faithfully. Annoyed, Madeleine grabbed it in her magic and held it to her body. Its squirm felt oddly satisfying before she jerked the quill out of its grip, leaving it once more lifeless metal. She sighed.

No more letters tonight, her little pony told her firmly.

Well, obviously not after hearing something like that.

*********************************************

Chapter Four

Cards on the Table

*********************************************

“Crumpet dear!” exclaimed Miss Largo, rising up to her hooves from the high table in the hotel’s dining room. She threw her forelegs around Madeleine’s neck, embracing her and giving her a quick kiss upon each cheek. “I’m ever so glad that you could join us! You remember the Manehattan Oranges, I presume?” Miss Largo pointed out her dining companions already seated with her, who were the very same earth pony couple from the shuttle-cart ride and Miss Largo’s treat of the grand sweep of Equestrian history, now garbed in evening dress that they wore with a practiced ease. Both he and she rose, he offering her an hoof, she curtsying low in a sleek little red thing of a dress with sequins.

“Mandarin Orange,” she said, with all the smoothness of an accomplished social climber. “How do you do?”

“Oh, quite well, quite well.”

“Bergamot Orange,” he said, announcing himself with a pride that struck Madeleine’s ear as a bit too high for one high-born. That was the sort of upright up-puffedness one only found in the self-made stallion. He smiled, showing no apparent recollection of the events of the morning. “If you were wondering, I’m only a distant relation to my cousin Mosely, if you’ve ever been to one of his house parties in the Manehattan uptown.”

Madeleine had not been wondering. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Orange, although I can’t honestly say if I have had the honour of your cousin’s acquaintance or not. One meets so many ponies in her travels that she often forgets whom she oughtn’t. And is it Mrs. Orange?” she asked, going through the societal motions for the sake of it. There was no doubt from their manner that this was very much Mrs. Orange.

“Why, yes!” said Mrs. Mandarin Orange, and laughed the reflexive laugh of one who does so because it is the done thing. Madeleine shot a searching look toward Miss Largo, and the proprietress caught her meaning.

“Mr. and Mrs. Orange, may I present a good friend of mine and my dear little Clavia, Madeleine Crumpet?” Miss Largo said. Madeleine made a curtsy just low enough to show off the dangling necklace of diamond and hematite in platinum wire she had chosen to go with her onyx-stone earrings and seated herself at the table. “I hope that you won’t mind my taking the liberty of inviting them to sup with me tonight, Crumpet. The gentlepony had been expecting to dine with a business partner and his associate tonight, but Babaco – oh, yes dear, he’s made maitre d’hotel now, didn’t I mention? Babaco received a message from their suite with regrets, but that he would be unable to attend in-person.”

“I believe the exact phrase was, ‘I’m plum tuckered, so you all can go and do whatever you all like, for all I care.’” Although he said it with a good-humoured smile, and with an elocution that bordered on the unnatural, Bergamot pronounced the words with a certain edge that struck Madeleine’s ear like a well-hidden dissonance. It was a trifle jarring.

“Yes,” said Miss Largo, waving an hoof vaguely. “Whatever the content of the note, it was certainly most unfortunate. When I saw the Oranges standing alone without a friend or a dining companion, I said to myself, ‘that is not how the Hotel Clavia treats her guests.’ And so I brought them up to high table with me tonight, dear!”

“And what exemplary treatment!” exclaimed Mrs. Orange. “Why, I feel positively like a Princess under this good mare’s care.” She said this as a pair of whisper-quiet does came and set out water glasses and silverware before them. The Oranges seemed to only notice the after-effects with a slight start, but quickly accepted this competent, if silent service.

“Mr. Orange is a most respectable businesspony, Crumpet dear,” said Miss Largo, continuing by way of introduction. “I understand that he owns the souls of not a few greengrocers on the mainland.”

“Miss Largo certainly has a – ah – unique way of putting her perspective into words,” said Mr. Orange. “But that is more or less the shape of it. I am an importer of fresh and dried produce and spices from the South Seas, Griffinstone, and the zebra lands, and a wholesaler to the major Equestrian markets. It wouldn’t be immodest to say that, oh, ninety, ninety-five percent of all your bananas and oranges and suchlike pass under my hooves at some point.” It might not have been immodest to say so, but Bergamot Orange was clearly not a pony much given to modesty.

“How fascinating!” cried Madeleine on-cue. Did her voice crack just then? That had sounded a bit flat.

“Miss Crumpet, what is it that you do, exactly?” queried Mrs. Orange.

Safer ground! “I confess that I am in much the same line, actually. Only my work is in jewels. I make my own pieces and broker contracts between the miners in the Crystal Mountains and client jewelers throughout Equestria. It takes a mare’s touch and a bit of personal attention to see such things done right, so I do spend quite a bit of time on the road. As you might imagine, one’s business in this line picks up quite a bit now that the Crystal Empire is now on the maps again.”

“How absolutely fascinating! Quelle jolie!” Mrs. Orange’s timing was impeccable. Madeleine wondered if she had been a musician in another life. “Miss Crumpet, you absolutely must tell us more about your line. I insist!”

Madeleine smiled. Mandarin Orange was, as she intuited, very much a mare suited to jewels. “Let me tell you about my time with the Duchess of Baltimare on my last tour…”

*****

“Rubyk… what is this?” Frost Pane’s voice was tentative, leery, suspicious. She poked an hoof at the long, starchy crescents on her plate that were crusted in a fried coat redolent of honey and the sweet spices of the islands, frowning deeply at the unaccustomed texture.

“Plaintains. A local specialty.” Rubyk didn’t sound any happier about the matter of his plate. He took a dubious bite with teeth like knives. He chewed and swallowed, face showing only a stoical resignation. “Starchy. Good brown bread would be better.”

“What weak, flipsome meats! Bread fit only for foals and dungeoned jackanapes!” Frost Pane ejaculated, but weakly. The mare was seated on her haunches, being together with Rubyk altogether too tall for ordinary chairs, wrapped in a coarse white fur and a woolen mantle. She had recovered a bit since her collapse owing to her sleep and the little deer doctor’s medicines, but the quaver in her voice told more of her condition than any outward signs. The old mare scowled. “Haven’t they any strong meats? No fishes? None of those gull-birds that pester on the harbour?”

“I believe not, grandmama.”

“Bah!” said Frost Pane, the despond on the old mare’s face deepening. She lowered her head and tasted of the local specialty. Real worry came into her eyes, then.

“Rubyk, we shall starve! I shall be dust, and you will carry my cold bones back to Trotheim!”

“I… will see what I can do to buy real meats in the morning. Perhaps the town will have some creatures living in it with heartier stomachs than these deerfolk.” He did not sound entirely hopeful. Raising an hoof, Rubyk called for hot coffee and glasses of good apple brandy. As their dinnerware was whisked away by apron-clad Clavia grasped in their starlight magic, Rubyk cast his eyes around the dining room, idly noting the groups of ponies supping happily in the fading light of the dusk pouring in through the great window built to face the setting of Celestia’s sun, augmented by the dim light of lampwood made into trim that ran about the perimeter of the walls. Torches of lampwood set into wall-sconces began to come to iridescent life as they were touched by the first harbingers of Luna’s night. The shadows lengthening outside and the soft light brightening within were accompanied by the soft sounds of a young doe playing with mallets on a massive instrument of wooden planks and pipes on a raised stage at the side of the dining room. Rubyk listened for only a moment before he sighed and turned his face away. Some things were simply not worth the attention of the Pride of Trotheim.

The unicorn mare and the braggart earth married couple from the shuttle-cart ride were seated at the table on the dais by the northern wall, apparently as guests of the proprietress. From their words that he could catch from across the crowd and bustle, they were speaking pleasant social nothings at one another. There was nothing there for him.

Jett Black was seated alone at a table along the south wall, cradling a cup of coffee and watching the door with half-lidded eyes, lost in a faraway thought. The stallion was an heavy presence, and after they had met in the Grand Foyer, and seen each in the other a sparring-partner, and had walked together and said all that was to be said, they had parted ways, the decision final. He did not stir, although his glance showed that he felt the unicorn’s eyes upon him. Rubyk shook his head at the memory of the exchange with the recalcitrant Pegasus and continued to scan the room.

A stallion with his sweetheart over in the corner-nook by the window, each enjoying a glass of Champcourse… a family with many foals at the banquet-table babbling childish wonder, mummering parental banalities… a trio of stallions in business suits and ties over near the doors talking in low tones of bits and the crimes they would commit to take them (only they called them “marketing strategies”). All dull, all crushingly dull. Rubyk looked down into the dark coffee that was whisked before him with infinite resignation to weeks, or even months, of more of the same.

And then Calvados Apple happened.

*****

Madeleine was mid-stride through the telling of an amusing anecdote of one of her tours involving her, the Diamond Dogs of Rock Ridge, the new Sheriff there, and a can of turtle wax when she realized that neither of the Manehattanites was attending to her. Bergamot Orange’s ears were folded unconsciously flat against his skull as he fixed the doors of the dining room with a stare that could have cut glass.

“Why? What is he doing here now? Is he just trying to make me angry? Is he hoping that will make me stupid?” Mr. Orange did not even sound angry. He seemed genuinely perplexed.

“Dear, I’m sure there must have been some good reason –” Mrs. Orange began to say, trying to soothe her husband. She only succeeded in provoking him.

“Oh, you’re sure of that, Mandarin?” Mr. Orange snorted back. Mrs. Orange flinched. “I wonder how you could be so sure of that. He’s my kin, not yours. And I’m sure as apples rot that would be perfectly in character for Calvados.” Mandarin Orange wore an expression as though she had been struck by Bergamot’s hoof, rather than his words. She turned her eyes down to the fruit soup in front of them all, not really seeing it or much of anything else.

Miss Largo shot a warning glance to the maitre d’hotel, a Clavia buck who nodded and gestured for the wait staff to be alert for potential trouble. She threw a quick, apologetic smile to Madeleine that seemed to say, “I rather bungled it tonight, didn’t I, dear?”

“He’s coming this way. Bungle it all, he’s coming this way right now, isn’t he?” Mr. Orange gritted through his teeth. It seemed so. Calvados Apple walked with a brash swagger of his shoulders, and he did not fain to flick his tail like a whip as he walked. He was a mocking figure, ungarbed and unadorned among a sea of dinner jackets, and Madeleine could hear his low whistle and clicking tongue as he passed the mares among the dining room. Some returned a tut-tutting glare, while others… well, there was no accounting for taste, Madeleine supposed, but she had every right to call some of the looks that the lecherous old stallion received an affront to good taste in stallions everywhere. Pome Apple followed in his uncle’s wake, moving with the leaden steps of a carter long overdue for a break as if lashed to his elder’s side by an invisible tether.

The two coltish stallions stopped at the foot of the dais on which Miss Largo’s high table was set. Bergamot Orange glared downward from his seat, but said nothing, folding his forelegs tight across his chest. Miss Largo made a small motion with her head, and six or so Clavia clad in aprons stood discreetly along the far wall, aloof and unseen to the other diners, but ready.

Calvados Apple beamed and raised himself up on his hind legs. “Hey, you old sour Orange!” he said, and guffawed with a belly laugh that nearly shook the plates. “How in Tirek’s hind-ends are ya’?”

“Calvados, I admire your gall. Really, I do. But where in a rotten hay-cart were you today when you told me that you would meet us at the dock, or the week before that when you said that you would be on San Cheval until the Summer Sun Celebration was ended? And, pray, why did you even bother to come down to dinner if you felt so shagged out from your trip?” Mr. Orange controlled himself well. He might have been exchanging pleasantries with an old friend had she not noticed the unnatural monotone of his voice that never seemed to move more than an half-step. Generally, she found ponies who took up that kind of tone only ever did so when they had no other option for reining in a rage that would otherwise control them. Madeleine unconsciously pressed herself back from the table, but the tension seemed to flow entirely in one direction.

“Can’t a feller’ change his mind every once in a while, Bergie? ‘Sides, then I’d miss seeing all the pretty fillies all dolled up and bangled. And y’all know how much I hate missing out.” Madeleine felt his eyes on her body and jewels like the rake of cat claws. She shuddered.

“Yes, Cousin. I am quite sure that everypony eventually learns that you are not one for self-deprivation in your ‘hobbies.’” Mr. Orange’s voice increased in volume. “Did you come down to talk business, or is all this merely a social call? Now that you have finally decided to be in the same room as your cousin instead of wandering the seas like the Winged Friesian, perhaps you would be in the mood to discuss the shipping contract I sent to your estate three months ago over cocktails?”

“And miss out on dicin’ in the casino? Nah!” replied Calvados, dismissing the idea with the wave of an hoof. “We’ve got plenty of time in the morning for that. Ain’t like there’s anything better to do ‘round that hour here anyway. I found me a nice little coffee-place for our chit-chat in town over yonder. They’ve got more of these cute deer that’re easy on the eyes and a prim little gel with twistiest tongue you ever heard serving there. I find myself getting distracted if I don’t have something nice and pretty to set eyes on when talking shop.” Miss Largo let out a disapproving hiss through clenched teeth that was nearly inaudible.

“Ye-yes, of course. We’ve put it off for so long. What’s but one more day?” Mr. Orange tried to laugh, but it came out loud – loud, and hollow. Some ponies from nearby tables had begun to stare, including some mares throwing filthy looks at Calvados and the quiet Pome, who had yet to open his mouth to speak. Even the mysterious Rubyk and the old Frei of Trotheim were looking this way with rapt interest, a queer and frosty glint in their eyes.

“Slick as snot, Bergie boy! I’ll see you then and we’ll put the last spit on that contract, and then we’ll both go home richer’n one of your Manehattan street-mares in a slit-cut dress on a Moons-day night!” Calvados gave one last plate-rattling laugh and put his foreleg around his morose companion, grinning a drunk-apple grin. “Pome and I’ll head out there, eh, sometime in the morning. Sooner we can get this done, the better, right? And you and your lovely little Mandy’ll be at the dicing tables tonight, I reckon?”

“It… it would…” Mr. Orange swallowed, hard, and avoided making eye contact with the pony at the foot of the dais. “It would be our pleasure, Cousin Calvados.”

“Darn right! And I wouldn’t mind seeing some of you other ladies down there too, if you don’t mind my saying.” Pome looked as if he wanted to bury his face in an hat he did not have. Calvados waved his hearty farewell and turned to leave the dining room, but Pome remained behind for a moment. He shuffled an hoof on the ground, looking down to avoid the accusing eyes of the diners. He raised his head and said in an apologetic voice:

“I’m sorry.” After a moment, he added to clarify, “I’m very, very sorry, y’all. Uncle’s just… like that. Beggin’ your pardon, ma’ams.” The red unicorn did not wait for a reply, but turned and trotted quickly after the departing Calvados, as if he wanted to escape out from under all the staring eyes as quickly as possible.

It was Miss Largo who broke the silence that followed. “I see that fortune dealt you a troublesome hand in your kinfellows, Mr. Orange. My condolences.”

Bergamot orange let out a long breath that he did not know that he had been holding. “You are a very gracious, and a very frank hostess, Miss Largo. I apologize for the undiplomatic nature of my relations.”

“Oh, think nothing of it,” replied Miss Largo, and motioned to the Clavia on alert to be about their business – and to clear away the dishes and bring in coffee and nuts. “I do but regret that there seems to be some factor beyond my control to disturb the stay of one of my hotel’s guests. Although Calvados and I have our own… well, business arrangements, he is rather… brash. It bothers me whensoever I cannot be a perfect hostess.” Miss Largo turned toward Madeleine. “Crumpet, dear, you’ve been rather quiet. Tell us for a laugh: what did you think of our visitors just now?”

Madeleine tapped at her face with a well-hoplicured hoof, as though in deep thought. “I think ‘boor’ would be insulting to the pigs.”

A belly laugh just reserved enough for polite society went up from the high table. Really, what more could be said than that?

*****

“Rubyk, do you hear?” said Frost Pane in the loudest whisper that the nearby diners had ever heard. “Dicing tables! Dicing through the night instead of to lay silent and starve! We shall go, both you and I, and play for the great glory of Trotheim!”

Rubyk sighed and resigned himself to doing battle with dice and cards for the great glory of Trotheim. “Yes, grandmama.”

*****

“Bid two stars, double on hold!”

“Oh, do let me see… Two spades with Princess high, double on the run.”

“Ten bits, four moons, and exactly seven on the run.”

“That’s an awful gutsy move, Bergie. Twenty bits on your four moons, and twenty bits if the old nag’s got less than three stars up her garter. Call it and run ‘em.”

Rubyk watched the game taking place at one of the long tables felted in crimson in the Hotel Clavia’s lampwood-lit casino with no small measure of interest. Frost Pane had joined a table with a playing group already formed and a “quill” already in process and had watched the game with an intense scrutiny until their play was complete. Called “Keyrun”, the game seemed to be a mish-mash of the adversarial trick-taking card games known in Trotheim with a chance element of the dicing-games most common among the soldiery of every land appended by force. There was a Clavia doe dressed in a prim jacket and red bow tie acting as a dealer from a common deck, and it was she who passed the dice along to the winning bidder upon each hand, and so on to each pony in his turn. At any time, the winner could freeze the dice roll for the remainder of the hand and force its total onto his own under-bidders, paying in an amount equal to his original bet. It was a complicated, unintuitive hodgepodge that he seemed to understand no better now than when he had started watching. And the doe dealing seemed to take in most of the bits on the table into a clinking brass pot, so he supposed that few of the players understood it well either.

Naturally, Frost Pane took to it at once like a filly receiving her first spear. Rubyk was content to sit upon his haunches at the bar, and watch, and listen. Beside him sat Jett Black, who did not play games, but had an excellent reason for sitting and watching them played.

“Ponies fascinate me,” he had said upon meeting Rubyk’s questioning glance. And that was all that need be said.

The unicorn Pome also sat at the bar, tippling cider and looking like he wanted to crawl inside the bottle. Doctor Leaf, oddly, was working the bar, and he kept a professional eye on the red unicorn even as he seemed content to take his bits.

“Will Mister Rubyk like anything from the bar?” Doctor Leaf asked, in persona servum officium. The Clavia regarded the unicorn for an instant, noting the hungry look in his eye, and made a leap of studied intuition. “Or is it, perhaps, that the Hotel is unable to provide him with what he needs, and not what he likes?”

“Mister Rubyk” smirked a mouth full of teeth at the little doctor playing bartender. “You really are a most suspicious deer, Doctor. Something to warm my grandmare’s bones if you have it, and something to keep eyes open for me.”

“I can see to that. By the by…” Doctor Leaf undoubtedly would have leaned over to whisper in the unicorn’s ear, but their heights made that an impossibility. He motioned discreetly for Rubyk to lean in, and the unicorn drew his head down close. “Unless I very much mistake your needs, I think that you will be able to find what you seek at a stall on the harbour that opens and shutters in the early hours of the morning, before all the other vendors. It is run by one of my brethren who sees to it that the tastes of those… like you… are able to be nourished without alarming other ponies as long as they remain under our care.”

“You are… truly a remarkable fellow, friend doctor. You have my double thanks.”

The Clavia shook his head. “I am a doctor. It is my job to care for the body, whatever that might look like. I will get Rock Skipper to meet you before dawn in the Grand Foyer. The pegasus should know where the stall is, and he should doubly know how to be discreet.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll have your drinks out in just a moment, Mister Rubyk,” Doctor Leaf said, a bit more loudly. “One coffee and one hot toddy, coming up.” The Clavia’s gaze remained on Rubyk for a long moment. The little deer cleared his throat. “A-hem.”

Rubyk blinked for a moment, then sighed and magicked a small stack of bits from inside his saddlebags. Doctor Leaf quickly counted them and rapped his hoof, twice, on the counter.

Rubyk added two more of the gilded coins to the stack.

“Thank you, Mister Rubyk.”

Disgusted at his own largesse, Rubyk turned his attention back to the game. Some of the ponies originally seated to play Keyrun had run short on either luck or patience and so had left, and a group familiar to him by sight, if not by acquaintance, was now seated at the dicing-table. Frost Pane sat on the far left of the dealer, her size and cloaks still wrapped about her giving a wide berth of space between her and the other players. The coquette of a mare with a jade-and-pearl brooch mark from the shuttle-cart, and who had supped at the high table with the opinionated proprietress of the hotel, was seated to Frost Pane’s own left, directly in Rubyk’s own line of sight. Every now and again, her eyes would dart up from the gaming-table when the dice were passed to her on the run and regarded Rubyk with a glance that was deadly curious. It was never more than a moment, and he never quite caught her in the act. Benign enough for now, but Rubyk would make an end of it, personally, if she persisted; the honour of Trotheim was not a thing to be so lightly regarded.

To the left of the orange unicorn sat the stallion from Manehattan, his wife standing close behind him as a non-combatant in the little war of dice and cards. His muzzle bore a deep scowl; his forehead was furrowed in lines of consternation. Both seemed to run deeper than this game, even though the run had not been kind to him since he had seated himself. Rather, the events of the game seemed to be excavating the lines that had already existed when he had walked through the door.

At the right sat Calvados Apple, who was enough of a presence that he commanded no other descriptor. He had called for a cranberry juice from the bar twice already since the start of the game and had added to it from the contents of a narrow metallic flask worn on his inner thigh. The old stallion had grown only louder and more boisterous since the game’s beginning. It did not take a Trotheim logicmaster to connect cause and effect. Pome had only shaken his head each time the flask had made an appearance, returning to his cider with deepening sighs.

Calvados called for a third juice. “And make sure it’s brought out by some young thing with some glam!” he added, hollering over the nervy tension and faintly smoky atmosphere. He turned his eyes, rheumy and unfocused, to his cards dealt face-down and made an humming show of indecision. “Heh-hrm. Heh-hrm…”

“Is something the matter, Cousin?” Bergamot quipped. “You do not usually take this long to make a play. Haven’t you perhaps had enough for one night?”

“Enough of what?” Calvados challenged, voice slurring and vowels going long.

“Cards and dice and losing!” said Frost Pane with a frown as she peered at her own face-downs under her hooves.

“One could well think it,” Madeleine said in a whisper to the Trotheim mare that Rubyk saw upon her lips more than heard through the haze of noise. “He was just as dreadful at this game as any of us when we came in, but whatever decoction he’s been drinking clearly has done him no favours.”

“And such bids he makes!” Frost Pane eagerly bandied back to Madeleine, to whom she had taken a fast liking as a co-conspirator over the course of the game. “The Cousin makes such naked-bluster bluffs that it makes me itch. Soon he will not be bluffing and will move to take us all for fools. The Frei of Trotheim is not so easy a snare as that!”

“Are you going to make a bid, Calvados, or will you vault this hand?” Bergamot Orange sounded very nearly at the end of his patience with the old stallion.

“Are y’all saying I ain’t fit to play no more? Griffins’ groinfeathers, and I thought you had more brains in your head than that, Bergie!” Calvados erupted into bone-rattling laughter at his own private humour. A Clavia doe with white freckles under her eyes and horns with silvery gilding, the same who had been plinking and caterwailing on the dining room stage, gingerly approached the noisome stallion. She carried a glass of red juice on an enameled tray in a grasp of starlight more orange than yellow. He wheeled around and grinned broadly as he looked down and saw her.

“I see this place has some fine service!” Calvados announced to nopony in particular. “I asked for some glam, and buck my hide off if they didn’t find some pretty young thing to deliver the goods! How d’ya call yourself, honey?”

At the bar, Pome groaned. “Discord take the throne, not again…” Rubyk raised an eyebrow at that. Behind the bar, Doctor Leaf had arrested all of his other efforts and raised himself up on his hind legs, leaning against the counter to get a clear view of events. The physician was looking right at Calvados with wide, unblinking eyes, a frown creasing the corners of his short muzzle.

“Cousin, we’re still waiting for you to –”

“M-my name is Papaya,” the Clavia said with just a hint of a stammer. Her eyes went glassy in the moment, and it seemed that this momentary hesitation was more due to her heredity than any inborn shyness, for when she spoke again, her voice was velvety smooth with a purring curl. “And just who is the gentlestallion that wants to know, hmm?”

“Little sugarcube, if that ain’t the sweetest ol’ name I ever heard, I’m Princess Celestia! How’s my mane?” Calvavdos said, miming the shimmering wave of the Princess’ astral coiffure. Papaya laughed, and Madeleine shook her head.

“Should we… warn her, do you think?” Madeleine hissed to Frost Pane. The old mare shook her head emphatically.

“No. Little ponies and littler deer need to know the braying of the wolf before they can avoid him. Leave her be!”

“But what if she gets herself hurt?” Madeleine insisted, not looking at all convinced to Rubyk, who watched all of the proceedings with a calm eye – but stood ready to intervene if things went south.

“Do you warn the foal not to touch the flame, or do you forbid him to use the stove?” Frost Pane whispered back.

Madeleine had to admit, she had no idea of the right answer there.

“Cousin… really, I’ve been more than patient. Make your bid, or I won’t hesitate to get up and leave this quill,” said Bergamot, whose right eye was half-lidded, as though he were developing a severe headache on the one side. The Clavia dealer shot him a look of gratitude, and Calvados waved an hoof dismissively.

“One hundred bits, bid three Princesses, double on the run. Now, you little sugarcube, where’d you get this love bite from?”

“What are you talking about?” gasped Papaya, feigning an horrified expression. “Where is it? Oh, how could I have been so careless?”

“Why, girl, it’s right… huh?” Calvados said, running his fetlock over her neck “Aww, looks like I was wrong, sugarcube. That weren’t no love bite, but it sure as Celestia looked there ought to be one there – right there!” he emphasized, rubbing the doe under her chin. She giggled; Madeleine, Mandarin, and Bergamot all bore the same expression of abject disgust; Doctor Leaf snorted and glared at the stallion with eyes that could smelt steel. Motes of an unearthly light glinted threateningly on his antler-tips. Rubyk caught a sidelong glance from Jett Black and nodded. The Aktur of Trotheim stood, raising himself up to his full height..

And Calvados just laughed. In an instant, the tension was shattered. The old fool was just playing out what had been put into his own system.

Madeleine rose to her hooves. “I think with a bid like that, I’d better bow out of the quill,” she said, turning a plaintive glance to her companion for the evening. “Frei Frost Pane, will you join me?”

The proud mare of Trotheim looked to her stack of bits on the gaming-table, which was about half of its original size from the start of the game. “Ja. This is a crooked contest. What good is spearing the dragon when his hide is so hard?”

“Well, I, for one, intend to stay.” Mr. Orange’s voice had a venomous bite. Madeleine unconsciously moved herself behind the Frei of Trotheim, still gathering up her bits without the use of her magic, as a protective shield between her and the two stallions. “This is a pox-blighted bluff, Calvados, and I’m not about to let you canter out of here with some deer who looks like she could be your granddaughter and all those bits in the bargain.”

“Bergamot, what are you doing?” hissed Mrs. Orange, the socialite raising her voice for the first time since they had sat down at the gaming-tables.

“I’m doing what we would all like to see done, Mandarin. It’s another bluff. Our cousin can barely see or speak straight anymore. It has to be another bluff.” Bergamot rammed his hoof on the table, pushing several stacks of gold coins. “I match your one-hundred bits and bid three hearts, Princess high. Single on the run. I will win this hand.”

“Your funeral, Bergie. Ma’am?” Calvados said to the dealer. The doe drew a large pile of coins toward her with starry grip and stony face. She placed the pair of dice into Bergamot’s waiting hoof.

Bergamot took a breath.

Bergamot threw the dice.

The dice bounced, once, twice against the far side of the table and fell, showing faces of four and six. Bergamot smiled, viciously.

“Aww, give that here,” Calvados slurred. The dealer again took the dice in her magic and whisked them to the old stallion. He made a great show of shaking the dice and threw them with gusto and a knowing smirk. They skittered, bounced, rebounded, and fell again in front of the stallions, showing a three and a four. Calvados’ smirk grew wider, and colder.

“Seven. I do believe that means I can take my double now. Dealer?” The dice were again placed in Calvados’ hooves.

Calvados laughed.

Calvados threw the dice.

“Well, Bergie. That’s also a ten. I do believe it comes down to hands now. So show ‘em, boy, and prove you’ve got a spine to go with all them hoity-ways. Show them cards!”

Mr. Orange was actually shaking with anger – a sight that Madeleine had heard of, but never actuallyencountered in all her wide travels throughout Equestria. She backed away another unconscious step. But Mr. Orange kept his tongue and his silence, and he turned his cards and shot a defiant glare at his kinfellow. His cards showed three showing fields of hearts, a single black gem, and the unmistakable, smiling face of Princess Twilight Sparkle of Ponyville.

“Did I exaggerate, cousin? Did I stutter?” Bergamot growled out. “Let’s see your three Princesses. As you say, show ‘em.”

Calvados turned his cards. Bergamot slumped back, his muzzle gone suddenly pale.

“You… you weren’t bluffing.”

“No, I weren’t,” Calvados confirmed, showing the faces of Celestia, Luna, and Cadence with a leer of triumph. “And I’d keep a civil tongue in my snout if I were you, Bergie, seeing as I’ve got an awful lot you need. Y’all can just consider this practice. I’ll see you and Mandy in that pretty old town with the sun and the chickens, won’t I?”

Mr. Orange did not answer. He seemed to Madeleine like a gem in which all the inner fire was suddenly snuffed out like a candle. Mrs. Orange answered instead. “It… it would be our pleasure, Calvados. We… we both… look forward to a most fruitful discussion.”

“Oh, I’ll bet,” sneered a gloating Calvados, all the slur in his manner replaced by needle acuity. “I look forward to doing business – real business. Pleasure doing business with you tonight, though! For now…” Calvados raised his voice over the bassline thrum of the casino. “Pome! Git up! C’mon, we’re leaving – I’ve had enough of filly games!”

With a start, the unicorn half jumped, half fell off of his stool at the bar and cantered over to his uncle, listing as he went. The pair exited the casino in silence – one with head held high, the other staggering with his eyes fixed firmly on the floor.

Frost Pane trotted to Rubyk, her furs and cloaks making her seem to glide across the floor like a spirit of the ice. There was something different in the old mare’s black-spotted eyes; something very like worry. “Rubyk, it is strange and all of a muddle. I feel the cold on me like knives.”

“Let us return to our rooms, grandmama. I will have the deer draw you a hot bath.”

“Not that kind of cold, toothing-foal! You feel it too, do you not? It is the same as when the whitepelts would go out and stalk the glaciers; as when the Windigoes beat at the walls of Ponnibi and your father brought them loving-kind into Trotheim and we began to bite and devour one another. The kind of cold that comes from outside and makes a pony cold down through his liver and up through his heart! Can you not feel it, Rubyk?”

“I can,” said Jett Black, pointing with an hoof. Rubyk followed his gesture and watched Bergamot and Mandarin Orange walking slowly out of the casino. The stallion was a turbid shadow of his former self, his ears flat against his skull, his tail lashing at the air. Mrs. Orange put an hoof to his shoulder but he angrily pushed it aside and stomped away with punching steps that could crack an hoof.

For just a moment, Rubyk did feel that cold. A shiver like the Ice Sickness itself ran down his spine. “I think I do feel it, grandmama. And I am afraid for one of those ponies.”

But whom?

e

Comments

[Feather Book]

I haven't read all of chapter 1 yet, but I've got to say that I'm impressed with what I have read so far.

While personally I find it a bit difficult to read (but it makes for a great audio-book thanks the the text to speech feature), it really does capture the feeling of classic murder misery stories. The wording and style is, to my mind, a bit outdated, but that just adds to the overall theme. I haven't noticed a single spelling or grammar mistake either.

The OCs are interesting and each of them feels unique and not at all 2-dimensional, from what I've seen so far that is. And while the conflict and drama hasn't started as of the point which I am writing this, the descriptions of the locations have been both detailed and vivid.

It's just a shame that I don't think something as well written as this will get that many views, unless you really push it hard in groups. I wouldn't have spotted this if you hadn't put it in Authors Helping Authors. (There's no need to think of this as an official AHA review, but I can do one if you want. And of course, I wouldn't mind if you reviewed my story as per the group rules. ) Perhaps if you had split up the chapters into smaller, more manageable chunks and released them over a period of time then you would have received more attention.

Still, I really like what I have seen so far, and I'm certainly interested in reading more when I have the time.

[Foxmane Vulpequus]

8327197

Dear Feather Book,

Thank you very much for your kind comment. I am certainly not averse to a bit of quid pro quo based on the AHA group rules. Please PM me the name of the story and I shall be happy to review whatever you like.

As to the length of the chapters: each of the "parts" I did not conceive of as a chapter, but rather perceived after the writing was complete as natural divisions of the story that impressed themselves on the reader. They are intended to be taken as a unit by design (in that ineffable way that characters and stories seem to design themselves). Whether or not I would have gotten more views by publishing as a serial, the internal logic would not allow it without disrupting each of the individual "movements". I had considered doing just that, in fact, but like most of what I wanted to do with the characters in this novel, the blessed thing just wouldn't let me!

Sincerely Yours,

-Foxmane

[Ponypalaver]

[Ponypalaver]

An entertaining and absorbing homage to the Golden Age of British mysteries with a dash of Downton Abbey thrown in. Diamonds, dowagers, drunken ponies and mysterious poisons! Add a plucky heroine named Madeleine with an equally keen eye for a sapphire and a stallion, plus a noble and selfless unicorn who stops at nothing to seek justice. Like all the best ponies, this author has staying power. I forsee spending many happy hours in the world he's created.
🐴🦄📚🔍

[David Silver]

Review: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/212612/hidden-gems/thread/327942/the-unicorn-and-the-crow

Keep up the writing!

[horizon]

Certainly intrigued by this so far! I'm a sucker for a good mystery, but what surprised me here was how engaging the slow build-up and character work has been, when we haven't even gotten to the murder yet. The gilded writing style (as others have noted) seems an acquired taste, but one I found myself easily acquiring as I turned the pages.

I do have to complain about a grammatical error that keeps hitting me in the face, though: your incorrect use of "an" before H words. Words starting with a consonant use "a".
While there is an exception for unsounded Hs, such as "honor" or "honest" (because the rule is about phonetic consonants rather than orthographic consonants), it's just silly to leave the consonant sound off of the beginning of "hoof"; and justifying "an healthy"/"an habit"/"an hint"/etc requires that the entire story be read in a Cockney accent thicker than Marmite.

(This is especially bewildering since you correctly follow the sounded/unsounded distinction in other circumstances: e.g. multiple instances of "a unicorn" due to its initial 'y' sound.)

Other than that nitpick, though, looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Best,
(a) horizon

[PresentPerfect]

End of part one and no body? You tease! Don't keep us waiting!

I have to say, I rather wish you'd started with chapter II here. The style is dense and takes getting used to, and I got a much better first impression of Madeleine (named for the pastry, I should think?) than I did Rubyk and his grandmother. Oh, but everyone in this story is a hoot!