The Unicorn and the Crow

by Foxmane Vulpequus

Part the Second - A Murder is (Not) Announced

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Chapter One

Behind Closed Doors

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Calvados Apple was dead. Very, very dead. That was the one certain thing. Rubyk found this a very uncertain place to rest his hooves, but he did not say so to Madeleine, who was looking upward to him with a face full of fear. Rubyk turned away from the thing on the floor that had once been a pony full of thrumming life, even if it had been wastrel, wicked life, and sighed. A familiar, cold fury had begun to rise up from within the belly of the Aktur of Trotheim, and with every slow beat of his heart it was pushed out through his veins to his hooves and tail and ear-tips, until his whole self was filled with a feeling like a thirst burning to be quenched.

“Why did you come to me, Madeleine Crumpet?” He trotted slowly around her, taking in what had been Calvados and Pome Apple’s suites with eyes glinting and blazing like a noon snowscape. “Why me, and not another? You could have run for one of the Clavia staff. You might instead have run to your friend, dame Largo, and set proper channels of justice in motion. You might have gone to his kinfellow, that Manehattan stallion. But you came to me. Before I take one more hoof-step on this craggy way, I must ask: why?”

The storm outside brayed like a hungry, predatory thing. The winds were vicious, the rain like merciless stones hurled down through the dark, as if the old hotel were still fulfilling its ancient function against invaders from the darkened sky. The old deerish magics built like a mosaic into the sandstone still held, repulsing the battering weather so that it did not venture across the threshold of the open balcony doors of the suite. Madeleine daubed at her forehead with a kerchief embroidered with a citrine “MC”, grateful to look at the perambulating Rubyk instead of the body of Calvados Apple lying prone between the chaise and the open balcony window, or the grim weather outside. “It wasn’t panic, Mister Rubyk, if that is what you are thinking. In truth, I did not know what other pony I could turn to.”

“What do you mean?” Rubyk demanded, fixing her with a corner-eyed glance. He made no apparent effort at harshness, and he did not raise his voice, but there was an insistence behind the words that weighed on Madeleine like a leaden saddle.

“I…” Madeleine swallowed. She closed her eyes; the sight of the body was one thing, but those cold eyes, looking at her like a butterfly under glass, were too much in present circumstances. “I know about what it is that you do. Broadly speaking, I mean. You are some kind of noble in your city – you punish evil ponies, and you investigate everything. You are a just pony, Mister Rubyk, and you were the only one I could think of when I saw… when I saw him like that,” Madeleine said, gesturing in the direction of the body.

Rubyk stopped in his stride and raised an eyebrow. “So you know all of that…” he murmured, sounding distant. But his next word was simple and pointed and altogether present. “Why?”

“Why?” Madeleine repeated the question, flummoxed by its abruptness. Should she understand it? Had she said something amiss? Sweet Celestia, there was a dead pony in the room with them, so why did he now ask this of her? What was he asking? Her mouth was dry as paper. Was there any water around?

“Why did you come to me and not another?”

“Oh!” Madeleine gulped in relief. She opened her eyes. “Because, Mister Rubyk, there wasn’t anyone else who was safe! Surely you must see that any of those ponies you mentioned – why, any of them might have done it!”

“Yes…” said Rubyk in the same distant murmur. He turned his attention back to the body. “But, then again, so might have you.” He wheeled on her with alarming swiftness, his towering body looming over Madeleine, who gasped and backed away slowly from his accusing eyes.

“I… I don’t understand, Mister Rubyk. What are you saying?” Madeleine licked at her lips, which had gone as dry as her mouth.

“Call your friend Largo. Get her up here. Now.” Rubyk’s tone took on a practiced imperiousness that was as frightful a noise as any night-creature’s voice Madeleine had heard in all of her travels.

“Mister Rubyk… I’m happy to help out in any way that I can. By all good magic, a pony is dead! But you surely don’t believe… you can’t think that I would be capable to…” Madeleine’s voice caught in her throat and her knees buckled as Rubyk of Trotheim seemed to be lit from below by a cold and clear and judgmental light that struck chill and fear into the deep marrow of her bones. It threw stark shadows over the sharp angles of his face and left Madeleine feeling utterly naked. And his eyes...! They tore into her like knives. No! Like icicles...!

It could not have lasted longer than an instant, but in that instant, Madeleine felt that the object of her fixity had turned on her and plumbed all her hidden depths and secrets – that all that was in her lay bare to this queer pony of the forbidding North. She gasped and heaved a wracking breath, as if she had just been held underwater and her lungs burned for life-giving air. She wanted to cry, but all her tears felt frozen up inside.

Rubyk regarded her for a moment, the flinty cast of his face softening. He turned his head away, toward the open door of the suite. “What I think or not, Madeleine Crumpet, is in the end irrelevant. All that matters is the facts of the matter, and I shall plumb its depths. If your horn is clean of this pony’s blood, you have nothing to fear from me.” With a gentle wag of his head, Rubyk motioned for Madeleine to leave. “I need some time alone in this room. Summon the proprietress. Don’t bother with the speaking tube. Go in person and bring her to me at once – but give me time to think.”

Madeleine rose to her hooves and gave a last glance of perplexity at the Trotheim pony, but she nodded and did as he bid, moving nearly at a gallop, though she moved with scarcely a sound in the carpeted corridor. With a flash of his horn, Rubyk closed the door behind her. It would not lock without the key, but the fewer eyes that saw him poking about a room with a dead body, the better.

Rubyk took the metal cube depending upon its chain from his neck into his hooves and lifted it into the air, hanging it upon nothing in the middle of the room. The cube began to turn, lazily, borne about on no particular axis. Rubyk raised his horn, and the cube was wrapped in a thin, gauzy veil of light. Then he thrust his horn downward, and the gauzy light burst and flowed outward with a sound like hard-driven snow, filling the suite with a dreamlike mist, white and pure. Rubyk closed his eyes and began to count aloud.

“…two… three… four… four? But what does that mean?” Opening up his eyes, he frowned and moved to the body and knelt on his long forelegs for a closer look. It was, as anypony could see, a truly grotesque sight, and one that would need an expert doctor and an autopsy to make comprehensible; at the moment, the thing that had once been Calvados Apple was just an enormity. Rubyk was no medical pony; yet even so, something did not feel right. What was it?

“What did you die of, old lech?” The unicorn’s frown deepened. There were so many wounds on the body, and all of a different type – a bruise upon the breast from a blow with no small force behind it; a bullet-wound in the left shoulder, with no apparent exit-wound; several long gashes on the face, as if raked by the point of some sharp object; a long streak of the unmistakable, unearthly pink of magic burn in the flesh below the skin running from stomach to throat. The stallion’s head had been struck just once, but hard, very hard, and Rubyk hoped that the poor devil had been dead and gone by then. Whoever had done this had been cruel, if not particularly thorough. The unicorn placed his horn on Calvados’ breast, trying to sense what vital heat yet remained in the body through that sensitive organ. Enough of the inner fire and deep magic of pony life still clung to the body that he guessed that whatever had happened here had only just happened. Rubyk also thought that he could feel the resonating thrum of enchantment coming from the body itself, which time had not yet been able to eradicate. “An enchantment couldn’t be one of the four… could it? It would have to get inside him somehow, and the only real way to do that is by… hmm…”

Rubyk turned to the table in the middle of the suite’s sitting room where three squat, thick-walled glass tumblers sat. Rather than use his magic and disturb them, he craned his neck to smell of their contents. The first two were drained to the dregs and had no especial odour. The third, however, struck Rubyk’s nose with the acrid, raking smell of the young apple brandy poured from a crystal decanter, still open, on the sideboard. Rubyk stared at it for a moment longer, tapping an hoof at the floor in thought. He looked into the bedroom. There was a small brown bottle upon the nightstand. His horn flashed, and he pulled it toward himself, peering at the label. The bottle declared itself as a vitamin tonic containing all of the necessary minerals and magical humours needed for strong and healthy muscles (“Trixie’s Great and Marvelous Miracle Elixer! – You’ll be awed and amazed at the energy you’ll have after only one dose!”). Other than this, the bedroom seemed exactly the same as his own suite, and completely undisturbed. Rubyk frowned and returned to the sitting-room.

His eyes continued to scan the room and found a few papers on the writing desk covered in a neat if not particularly imaginative script, mainly letters, and mostly stricken-through as the author seemed frustrated in finding the words to express himself properly. One other was written in the neat and uniform curling blocks of a Canterlot notary upon official parchment bearing the Royal letterhead – a title deed of some sort, Rubyk saw, but the lettering was so dense and tiny that he squinted and bent in close to read it.

But as he did so, the door of the suite opened, swift and yet deliberately, and the proprietress of the Hotel Clavia stood framed in the doorway, clad in a red silk dressing-gown. Her coral mane hung low and loose, and it had not seen a brush in many hours. In spite of her attire, she seemed utterly unsurprised by the state and contents of the tableau before her, and in the midst of an otherwise calm deportment, her mouth was set in a grim line just tending to a frown. She took in the sight of the unicorn and the body lying prone quite coolly, striding in without even a tremor in her hard-set features.

Behind the proprietress, there entered in what was, even to Rubyk’s experience, a strange train. Two Clavia bucks entered in behind their mistress, these larger and more well-muscled than others he had seen. One was clad in galley-whites with a white cloth band tied about his ears, while the other was wrapped in a dark-blue cloak with the beaded rain still upon it, with an holstered pistol and a length of bright-glowing lampwood hung about his waist. Both had the most massive racks of antlers he had seen on any deer upon the island so far, and the heads of both seemed to droop slightly with the weight of winking starlight that they bore. As they moved into the suites in lock-step, they pulled in their wake the unicorn Pome, looking even more miserable as he had at the bar the night prior, his head hung low. A dark, blotchy bruise was forming upon the left side of his face, just below his eye. He moved slowly, shuffling his hooves moreso than walking, but this was due to the cords or chains wrapped about his legs that seemed to be wrought from no earthly metal, but from the far-off Milk Road in Luna’s night sky up above. A similar cord was wrapped tight around his horn and weighed on the unicorn like a leaden crown. After these, Madeleine followed on behind, cringing as if she were flotsam in the current of events as they flowed about her.

Miss Largo stopped and stood at the false mantelpiece across the sitting room from the writing desk, keeping the body between her and Rubyk. The two bucks and their charge remained close at her side, and their eyes were wide and glassy and alarmed at the sight of Calvados’ remains. But they kept their wits and did not slacken their hold on Pome for even a moment.

“You must have a whopping knack for showing up where you smell out a need for ‘justice’, Lord Rubyk,” Miss Largo said at length, breaking the silence. “Crumpet tells me that you’re quite capable in this sort of thing.”

“I will not deny it,” replied that pony. “I am Aktur of Trotheim. I have seen the blood of many ponies shed, some justly, and mostly not. It is my office to search out and punish all murderers, thieves, mare-stealers, and traitors among my people. My duties inculcate a certain habit of investigation. I intend to assist the local police in their duties in just this wise.”

“Aktur,” repeated Miss Largo, rolling the word about in the velvet of her mouth. “That would mean something quite like ‘high prosecutor’ in our more temperate dialects – correct, Crumpet?”

“Er… I believe so?” said Madeleine, mystified at where all of this talk of abstract justice and job titles was going in the presence of death hard by.

“Good,” said Miss Largo. “It will make this easier to say” As in the Grand Foyer on the day before, the earth pony mare began to perambulate about the sitting room as she spoke. She gesticulated freely as she soliloquized, but she paced a widening circle around the body of Calvados Apple.

“Lord Rubyk, doubtless that thirst for justice has guided you well in the exercise of your duties. But I am afraid to say that Crumpet has been a bit too excitable, and perhaps a bit too hopeful in what help you might be. That odious pony there,” she said, gesturing at the body, “was murdered. Horrifically. This fact is not in dispute. Nor is the fact that there will be no need of your services in the matter of that murder.”

Rubyk blinked. His eyes narrowed. “What?” he demanded in a voice like an avalanche.

“Lord Rubyk,” Miss Largo said levelly, “I meant just what I said. For we have already apprehended the only pony that could have possibly killed Calvados Apple attempting to flee across the causeway. Which, I might add, is presently overswollen. He would have drowned had we not taken matters into our own hooves, and we had already done so when Madeleine stumbled upon the body.”

Rubyk snorted and stomped past Largo and the two Clavia and raised the head of the abjected Pome with his forehoof. “And you determined this how? Upon what evidence did all turn, and what trial did you make of it? Did you test your theories, refine and smelt them, wield them in the day of bitter struggle before the unflinching Bench of Never-Melting Ice? Did you do any of these before you accused this wretched creature of an heartless patrucide?”

“No,” replied Largo coolly. “We had no need for any of that. Let him tell you why, since I’ve not the stomach for it.”

For the second time, Rubyk blinked. “What?” He raised Pome’s head until they locked gazes. “What does she mean?”

Pome Apple mumbled something that caught in his throat. Rubyk leaned his head in closer. “Speak. What do you mean to say?”

“I said, it’s ‘avuncucide’, you pompous ox. Talk to me like I’m standing in front of you or I won’t be telling dungbeans.” Pome Apple glared and jerked his head away from Rubyk’s grasp. Now free, his head again hung low under the weight of magic fetters upon him. “S’ true enough. I wanted to kill Calvados sometimes, even though he was my uncle. Even though I loved him. Sometimes it welled up in me late o’ nights, but I ain’t a killing pony by nature. At least, I thought I wasn’t. I must have just… lost control. Lost my head. Lost everything, I reckon. I don’t remember it, but there he is – a pony don’t get deader than that. I just don’t think I could’ve done that. I know I couldn’t have done. Sweet Celestia… I feel like my guts are dying.”

Silence fell in the sitting room after these words. Rubyk’s anger turned to a deepening frown, his forehead creased in thought. Miss Largo spoke soothingly to the party gathered there.

“Lord Rubyk…” she said, in low and reasonable tones, “consider yourself in my position for just a moment, if you would. I have no great training in the rules of evidence and the stab-and-thrust of the courtroom that the Aktur of Trotheim claims for himself, especially if these are anything like the farce-trials I saw in Canterlot, that den of all miscarried justice. But when I see a pony fleeing in the night from a room in which a dead pony is found – like that – and who had every reason to do such things, I think that swift closure in the matter would be healthiest for everypony involved. Don’t you?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Rubyk nodded. It was a reluctant gesture.

“If what you say is true, then I have no objection. I must of course look into this matter thoroughly for when your own police are ready to arrive. Your Princess grants to the governing house of Trotheim the authority in their own persons for each to fulfill his office while in Equestria as he sees fit; it is the chief article of our treaty. I intend to stand as of Aktur and to prosecute this case personally before I leave this island.”

“Ah. There we come to a problem,” said Miss Largo. She fixed Rubyk with stare that was half gravity, half amusement. “I think you do not quite appreciate my meaning, Lord Rubyk. When you say ‘our own police’, what is that you mean? Constables, commissioners, chiefs and captains and lords, all lined up in ranks and wasted plates of gold? That is how they do things in the Capital, and for all I know that is how you do things in the North, but we have nothing of the kind here.”

Rubyk’s manner grew dangerously cold. “Explain yourself.”

Miss Largo gave a longsuffering sigh and did not quaver to look the Aktur of Trotheim in the eye. “How much more simply can I say it? Currycape has no police. Neither does any other island where the Clavia make their home. They have not learned to do barbarously as the three tribes did, and it is our pride here that we have not the need for such an iron hoof on our necks to civilize us.”

“What?” This time it was Madeleine who spoke. “Do… do you mean to say that there is no jail on the island, Largo dear? No courthouse? Not even a night watch?” The thought filled her with an odd feeling – something like a retrospective anxiety over all the time she had spent traveling in the islands without the familiar safety net of civilization.

“Oh, no dear – only that we have to take care of all that sort of thing ourselves. The Clavia are such a sensiblefolk in how they act for the good of the whole people that the ponies who live on the deerfolk’s islands do likewise.” Miss Largo turned to Rubyk with infinite patience. “Or, let me try another way. It is a week’s journey to the mainland from Currycape by ferry. A pegasus or a griffin can make the trip in half that time if they use every island between us as a waypoint, but she must still cross long stretches of water without a place to roost and rest. Even then, there is the chance of a sudden storm out on the open water because of the ocean diluting the old domineering charms of the three tribes. Do you see now how we are forced to do for ourselves?”

Rubyk’s eyes widened as the implications opened up before him. “Even if you were to call for a battalion of the Royal Guard, it would be weeks before they arrived.”

Miss Largo nodded her head and was about to reply when a wheezing laugh struck their ears. It came from Pome, the unicorn raising up his head by neck muscles that quivered under the strain. In spite of the situation, and in spite of the sweat that beaded on his brow from the effort, his muzzle bore a mirthless grin.

“And… who… plays the tune… that makes… the little deer dance?” Pome said, with laboured breaths. He looked directly at Miss Largo with a wild eyes, pupils shrunk to a crazed pinpoint. A snarl came on the faces of the two Clavia bucks, and the glint of starlight about their antlers grew brighter yet. Pome let out a wheezing cry as new bands fell upon him about the neck and back. His rear legs collapsed to the floor, and his forelegs shook with the effort of just keeping his body from complete abjection.

“Enough!” cried Rubyk with a shout that froze Madeleine’s blood in her chest. The Trotheim pony’s lips were pulled back in a snarl, showing two rows of white, wolfish teeth. “Enough of this! Call them off, Largo – now! You’ve no right to do this!”

In spite of her usual calm composure, Miss Largo staggered backwards at the sight of this… creature from the North that stood before her. She shot a frantic glance to the two Clavia, who saw her distress and, to Madeleine’s surprise, left off of their spell. Then, to the surprise of all, Rubyk offered an hoof to the prone unicorn. Looking at it in mingled confusion and distaste, Pome took it in his own and groaned and rose, wobbling, upon his hooves.

Rubyk wheeled upon Miss Largo, stamping toward her until they were nearly muzzle-to-muzzle. The proprietress had regained herself and met the advance with a calm unconcern. “If what you say is true, and you have no police, nor Royal Guards, nor any way to contact Their Highnesses in Canterlot to request official aid, then you leave me no choice. By the powers invested in me as Aktur of Trotheim, I am taking this investigation into my own hooves. There is something rotten in this murder, something that does not feel right. And while I am not convinced that this unicorn did not murder his uncle, neither yet are you. I am taking him from you and into my care. Is that understood, Miss Proprietress Largo?”

“Is that so?” Miss Largo said, inspecting some minutae on the false mantel as she continued to pace the room. “And how do you propose to go about this… activity, Aktur Rubyk?”

“I intend to do what you and your deer would and should do if you had police like the civilized world. I will question whosoever pony necessary, search wherever necessary, and requisition whatsoever I need. I will take that guilty pony with me back to Trotheim to face the judgment before the Bench of Never-Melting Ice. I will be Inspector, Detective, Constable, and Prosecutor, Largo. Do not impede me and it will go well for you.”

“Oh, my! Really?” Miss Largo smiled thinly. “You mainlanders have your methods, I suppose. Very well! I leave you to act as you see fit. If you do happen to find whatever pony is responsible for Calvados Apple being in that state –” she gesticulated without looking at the body, “then I will aid this search of yours. I will instruct the Clavia to not allow any of the guests to check out until your… activities are all concluded. You have the full disposal of all of my resources, Aktur.”

Madeleine, Rubyk, and even the two Clavia bucks in the room blinked at this sudden reversal.

“That is… very magnanimous. Thank you, Miss Largo,” said Rubyk.

The proprietress nodded primly. “So long as you find this character within three days.”

Another pause. The icy edge returned to Rubyk’s voice. “Come again?”

“Again, I wish that I could do more for you; really, I do. But that is simply impossible. You will consider the reputation of my hotel – of what the Clavia Hotel means and is for this island. This hotel drives the entire tourist industry of Currycape. The other keys and islands send their young fawns here that they can be apprenticed to a deer or pony who can teach them a proper trade to take back to their own villages. The town exists because of this hotel – because of my work, Mister Rubyk. If wind that there had been a murder here, under my care, should get back to the mainland, you would begin to choke the very breath out of us.” Miss Largo met Rubyk’s cut-gem eyes with all the hardness of a diamond. “You have my full blessing to solve this victimless crime according to your ways, Lord Rubyk. You will also do so with the utmost discretion, and you will not breathe a word of this to anypony whom you do not question and whom you do not ‘requisition.’ You will solve this ‘case’ within three days, for I cannot risk our safety beyond that. After that…” Miss Largo shook her head, and when she continued, her voice was softer, more tender.

“After that, all of this will be gone like a memory written in the sand. Those are my conditions.”

For a long while, neither Rubyk, nor anypony else in the room, said a word. The lord Aktur of Trotheim closed his eyes and flattened his ears against his skull, as if wrestling with some demon deep inside. When he opened his eyes, Madeleine saw a new feature in their glinting depths. Something very much like – worry?

“Alright, Largo. I accept your conditions,” Rubyk said.

But he did not sound pleased.

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Chapter Two

Partners in Crime

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“I didn’t ask y’all to help me. I’d appreciate it in future if y’all’d leave me to stew in my own mess.”

Madeleine cocked her head at Pome. Rubyk, true to his word, had taken the other unicorn “into his care,’ and the three of them were seated at a small teakwood table in the hotel’s soft-lit library illumined by the ubiquitous lampwood staves in sconces upon the walls and upright stands upon the tables. A large picture window looked out upon the uninhabited coast toward the north, whose forested hills were black ink-splotches in the blue night. A few hours yet remained until the dawn, and the storm had blown out most of its energy, allowing Luna’s moon to peek through the tattered remnants of the storm clouds onto the waters of the bay. A shadow of a figure winging its way over the waters was visible in the bright streak of moon painted onto the bay. That would be Rock Skipper, Madeleine knew, doing damage control with the remains of another storm that had gotten beyond his control; the pegasus would be treated to a private, perambulating lecture on professionalism and duties to paying guests from the proprietress in the morning, even as full as Largo’s hooves would be with tamping down the awful news. The atmosphere in the library was somber; but the cause of their conference was no happy one, either.

“You don’t wish to be exonerated?” Madeleine asked, sounding doubtful. Pome glared at her.

“You aren’t afraid of talkin’ with a fellow who may have just killed a pony like that?” Pome’s answer was disrespectful, challenging Madeleine with an irrational insolence. He shot a glare at both Rubyk and Madeleine before laying his head on the table, covering his eyes with his forelegs. “Do what y’all want. I need to rest. Just don’t go botherin’ me.”

A little red coming into her cheeks, Madeleine opened her mouth to reply, but Rubyk held up a hoof, shaking his head. Madeleine caught the gesture and, after a moment’s hesitation, swallowed down her pride and turned from the disconsolate unicorn towards Rubyk. The Aktur of Trotheim sat as motionless as a boulder, if a boulder could wear a furrowed brow.

“I suppose you are right, Mister Rubyk. I suspect he will come around to talking eventually.”

“Rubyk will do,” said that same unicorn. “Now, Madeleine Crumpet, I want you to do something for me. Perhaps a great many things, actually.”

“Oh?” For a second time in as many minutes, Madeleine cocked her head in some confusion. “What do you have in mind, ah… Rubyk?” Bare, the name tasted wrong. “And, please, just call me Madeleine.”

“Very well… Madeleine. Can you draw?”

“I should think so! I need to have some ability for making my own designs.”

“What is it that you design? Clothing?”

“Jewelry. I work as a broker for most of the large gemstone mines in Equestria, and I make my own pieces to make some extra bits to supplement my income.” Madeleine explained, touching an hoof to the heart-cut garnet earrings dangling from her ears.

“I see.” The Trotheim unicorn said it with the complete disinterest in finery that came with nobility, as if she were nothing more glamorous than a greengrocer. Perhaps it ought to have been degrading, even withering to her pride; Madeleine actually found it oddly refreshing. “To come to the point: can you describe the contents of Calvados Apple’s suite that were particular to it, rather than the other suites?”

“Oh, I should very much think so. I flatter myself that I do have an eye for detail.”

“Could you make a sketch of it from memory?”

“I… can surely try.” Rubyk nodded and whisked pen and paper to the table. Madeleine took up the pen in her own magic and began to describe the contents of the room as she laid down rough lines upon the sheet.

“There was a very small pool of blood under the head of the body, perhaps an hoofsbreadth and a span, without any evidence of blood spatter on the walls. The table had three tumblers and a bottle of Apple family brandy. One tumbler was about one-third full of brandy, and the other two were empty. There was a bowl of fresh fruit in the kitchen that had just been refreshed that afternoon and a vase of hibiscus on the mantel. I remember a suitcase of towels and ties lying open off to one side. The writing desk had a number of papers set upon it that seemed to have been read recently – oh, they were a bit askance, so I’d just assumed – and it looked as if a few quills had been knocked over onto the floor. Three, I think.”

Rubyk looked over the paper on which Madeleine had drawn her sketch and nodded, seeming satisfied. “Good; everything seems to be in line with the proportions. You do have a good memory, Madeleine. This was the room as I took note of it.” Rubyk removed the sleek, metallic cube that hung from the chain about his neck and placed it in the middle of the table, where it hung firm in place, without any apparent magic on his part. Suddenly, the air around the table became quite inexplicably colder – coldest of all the nearer one got to that cube. The surface of the cube was in a matter of moments covered in snowy flakes of sublimated ice. These drifted downward, hanging in the air like frozen motes of dust. The snowy ice in a few instants formed itself into recognizable structures, and Madeleine saw before her a nearly perfect reconstruction of Calvados Apple’s suite as she herself remembered it: a little diorama-in-frost. Rubyk examined the suspended image, comparing it to Madeleine’s hasty sketch.

“Very good indeed. An eye for detail and an accurate memory are gifts of the Lonely God not often united in the same pony. Now, for another matter…” his voice trailed off as he gave the mare an appraising look.

“Yes?” said Madeleine, feeling as though she ought to say something.

“Tell me how you knew I was a just pony; that I ‘punish evil’; that I ‘investigate things.’”

“I… oh, dear.” Madeleine grimaced. You’ve put your hoof in something foul this time, girl. “I suppose, given the circumstances, having secrets just won’t do. I… had some of the Clavia on staff keep an eye on you and report back to me what they could find out about you. I know them all well, and they’re always such dears to me – er, pun not intended. I did not mean anything sinister by it.”

“Why?” There was no hint of accusation in the question; Rubyk seemed genuinely interested to know.

“Because… stallions interest me, Mister Rubyk.” As long as she was admitting her fixation, the title was not something that could be safely dispensed with. It was one last shield between her and death by embarrassment. “And you and your grandmare – Frost Pane, I believe? – were the most interesting ponies that I have seen in ages. You looked so… foreboding, and dashing, and distant, and the way that you dealt with those silly Oranges on the way to the hotel made you just… interesting. And you are… tall.” Oh, sweet Celestia, the words were ash in her mouth. Madeleine’s stomach turned over as she realized just how shallow all of that had sounded even in her own ears. Nevertheless, Rubyk again nodded, accepting that response as placidly as any other.

“And you could ask these staff to snoop on other ponies besides me?” he inquired.

“Well… I suppose that I co – oh!” Madeleine exclaimed, catching the meaning. “I believe that I see your aim, Mister Rubyk. Whom did you have in mind?”

Rubyk sighed. “Madeleine, I wish that I knew. From all that I can tell, Calvados Apple was loved by few.”

An indistinct guttural grumble came from Pome at that remark, the unicorn’s head still covered by his limbs on the table; but he did not look up. Rubyk ignored the interjection.

“Let us begin by listing all of the ponies with a known connection with the victim. Due to Largo’s…” the Aktur of Trotheim frowned, and the chill coming off of the cube seemed to flash even colder for a fleeting instant. “Call them conditions, I cannot put out the general call for anypony who has evidence to come forward and present himself. I will need to approach them individually for questioning; or I shall need to have them watched in secret if to rouse their suspicions must mean my failure.” Rubyk stamped at the ground in agitation, and a white burst of snow fell from the hanging metal cube onto the table.

“Well,” said Madeleine, searching through her mental dossier of the past two days since arriving in Currycape, “if you would find some use in a nosy busybody’s speculations, I would put my money on the Manehattan stallion to have done it. Perhaps even both he and Mrs. Orange were parties to the affair.”

“Oh?” queried Rubyk. His horn flashed blue, and the scene drawn in ice changed in a dwarf blizzard like the inside of a snowglobe from a view of Calvados’ suite to the busts of two earth ponies, a mare and a stallion, eyes blank and sightless like the white marble statues in the Canterlot palace gardens. It was a quite decent representation of the two Manehattan socialites. However…

Madeleine peered in closer. “Narrow those cheekbones on Mrs. Orange. And Bergamot’s muzzle isn’t quite that prominent.”

“Oh. My apologies.” Rubyk’s horn flashed again, and the image changed accordingly. Madeleine sat back satisfied. Rubyk studied the two figures as they turned this way and that, his face inscrutable. “Perhaps…”

“Two-bit for your thoughts?” Madeleine interjected.

“It is indeed a possibility,” Rubyk conceded. “And while ordinarily I would scorn mere possibility, it is all that I have. There was a vile rancor between them ever since that incident at the gaming-tables the night of our arrival.”

A muffled, defiant tch came from Pome Apple. For a fraction of a second, Rubyk appeared to consider a response. But, finally, the Aktur of Trotheim determined to professionally ignore the slight.

“There seemed to be some bad blood between those three even before then. It most certainly could not hurt to ask them directly,” Madeleine added.

“No, it most certainly could not. Whom else did you have in mind?”

“What about…” Madeleine tried to add more names to the list of suspicious ponies. She had thought that they would come readily to hoof; that they did not was surprising in itself and left her more than a bit tongue-tied.

“Y’all are makin’ everypony waste their time,” grumbled Pome. The red unicorn raised his head, showing eyes full of a welter of anger, anxiety, apathy, and Luna alone what other torments of the friendless night hours. “I told y’all I might have done him in. I even told y’all I wanted to do in my uncle like that. You’d know what I mean if you had no choice but to live with that pickled old stallion. Why do y’all insist on draggin’ this out?”

“Are you saying that you did kill your uncle, Mister Apple?” Madeleine said.

“No. I never said that, and I ain’t going to. This is not Pome Apple’s confession. But I sure as hayseed ain’t sorry, either.”

“If you did it,” Rubyk added, quietly.

“Yeah. If. I ain’t saying anythin’ more than that.” The other stallion nodded, comprehending.

“Pome Apple,” Rubyk began, “I will, according to your wishes, consider you as my prime suspect for the murder of Calvados Apple. We will hear your testimony when we are ready. And…” the unicorn paused.

“Yeah?” Pome spat, still belligerent. “What is it that you want now, Mister Actor Rubyk?” The Aktur of Trotheim sighed, staring down his muzzle at the mess of a pony in front of him.

“For the sake of warmth and life, try to find somewhere to get some sleep, Pome Apple. You are a danger to yourself and everypony around you as you are right now. I will do everything in my power to clear your name if you are innocent of your uncle’s death; but I also will not refrain from putting you away in silence if you get in my way.” Madeleine heard an undertone of something very like… was it compassion in that proud voice?

No, she determined. Not quite. Compassion was only possible between ponies of a similar social standing. This was more like noblesse oblige.

“How magnanimous,,” Pome mumbled acidly. The unicorn made a mock-bow on his forelegs and scraped his way out of the room. Madeleine looked to Rubyk, whose face framed by the shadows cast by the wan light of lampwood looked thin and pinched.

“Is he going to be alright, Mister Rubyk?” Madeleine said. She had meant to ask, “are you going to be alright, Mister Rubyk?” but the words got jumbled somewhere between thought and mouth.

“He will.” The Aktur of Trotheim sounded very tired. “Even if I find that he did murder his uncle, in time this black mood will pass away like a nightmare with the dawn. I but wish that we had more to go on. We have two suspects to interview and precious little else. No constables, no coroner, no courts of evidence…”

“And three days,” Madeleine reminded him. Rubyk let out a low chuckle in spite of his exhaustion.

“Yes. How could I forget?”

“But you did say ‘we,’ Mister Rubyk. Repeatedly, I might add. Am I to take it that you are implying that I –”

“Naturally,” Rubyk said, so quickly that it startled the mare. “Friend Madeleine, you have good eyes and a sound mind; as that is all that I have here in my own person, that is all that my work here can require of anypony. You know the staff of the hotel; you know the town, and you have the way of a mare who knows what she wants and how to get what she is about. Especially, one might say, with those of the stallion persuasion. This is all most useful in our present line. We shall need to employ all of your talents to conquer the conditions that Miss Largo has set for us.”

“Why, Mister Rubyk, I…” Madeleine caught herself. She had been going to say, “I accept”, but there really was no choice in the matter for her, was there? “I shall do my very utmost.”

“Good. Very good, friend Madeleine.” The fatigue had vanished from Rubyk’s tone. He now spoke with the numb resolution a stallion with a long many hours of thankless, antagonized work ahead of him. “How soon do you wish to begin? Do you need some hours to rest like Pome Apple?”

“Is there any reason why we should not begin at once?” Madeleine rejoined, a tingle of excitement running from her horn down to her tail.

“None at all,” said Rubyk with a thin smile. “I leave this matter in your most capable care, friend Madeleine Crumpet. Summon a Clavia – any one will do – and have them fetch the Manehattan Oranges. I need to think.” Once more, Rubyk paused, as if turning over something of great import in his mind. “And have them bring a pot of strong Azteca coffee. This may take some time.”

*****

A pale glow of a lampwood torch caught Rubyk’s attention as he sat, alone, gazing into the shifting patterns of ice cast on the table from the metal cube that still hung motionless above it. The artifact responded to and represented the Aktur’s own thoughts, but at that moment it would have been impossible to say just what those were, other than a maelstrom of jostling abstractions. The glow of the lampwood torch was soon joined by the star-twinkle of deerish magic, and Madeleine re-entered the library with a young doe supporting both the torch and a tray bearing an handsome pewter coffeepot and cups.

Rubyk nodded his thanks and banished the tracings of frost on the table-top with a flash of his horn and a sound like the opening of a bottle of Champcourse, replacing the cube around his neck. “Were you successful in summoning the Oranges as well, friend Madeleine?”

“They should be along presently. I found old Seamoss still at work in the laundry and sent her to fetch them.” The mare chuckled. “So much the worse for the Oranges. She would stand at the door and knock for an hour, right through, just to make sure they’re out of bed.”

The stallion did not respond, but at least he did not seem dissatisfied. He regarded the doe who was setting places at the library table for coffee. “You are Miss Papaya, correct?”

The doe’s starry magic flickered and a silvery coffee cup rattled on the wood of the table-top as she went glass-eyed. Rubyk waved away her fears. She answered him with a stutter. “Y-yes, sir. Papaya is my name.”

“Have you worked here at Miss Largo’s hotel for very long?”

“Not long compared to others, sir. My grandbuck wrote to Miss Largo and got me the job here about three years ago. I’ve stayed here in Currycape ever since.”

“And Miss Largo has no qualms about such a young fawn like yourself working through Luna’s night?”

“Oh…” murmured Papaya, the little doe continuing to fiddle with the silverware. She flashed a nervous, dimpled smile at Rubyk. “You’re not the first pony to say that, sir. But we don’t get so big, so fast here in the islands like you do on the mainland. And most of we deerfolk take to the night like pegasi take the air. We don’t like to be seen, you see… unless we want to be.”

Rubyk piqued an eyebrow. Something else about that response struck him as notable somehow. Yet it seemed to dance just out of his reach.

“I seem to remember you were serving drinks in the casino last night. Are you and the other staff somewhat free in the duties that you take on?” Rubyk queried.

“Oh, yes sir! All the staff are trained in most if not all jobs that need doing in the hotel. Just as long as somedeer is able to cover for somedeer, you can do nearly any job that suits your fancy. Me, I like being up at odd hours; I like to gaze up at the stars in those quiet hours when most of the guests are asleep. Your Princess Luna’s nights only seem to get more and more beautiful since the end of her exile. Don’t you think so, sir?”

“Oh, naturally,” said Rubyk, as if he had been thinking off that all along. “Although they are incomplete without the Jewel of the North to shine Her bands upon the canvas of the Night Princess’ work. But one more thing, Miss Papaya. You are often abroad at night in the hotel and, I presume, upon the grounds when you are about your duties?”

Papaya bit at her lower lip, as if the doe were unsure of where this line of questioning might lead. “Yes, sir. Didn’t I already say?”

“And you would perhaps have seen anything out of the ordinary if, just perhaps, something of that sort might have happened in the hotel during those quiet night hours?”

“That – maybe. I couldn’t say for certain, sir. Maybe if I had a better idea of what you had in mind, sir, I might be able to help, but I can’t say one way or another without knowing what I’m supposed to be remembering.” Papaya’s smiling dimples faded in the lampwood glow, and the little Clavia looked from Rubyk to Madeleine and back again. “Will sir or Miss Crumpet require anything else for the moment?”

Rubyk shook his head and waved an hoof amiably. “No, Miss Papaya; you have been most gracious. Thank you for your time. If I have need of you, I will not hesitate to ask for you, personally.” Rubyk flashed a smile at the doe, who returned it instantly, as if by reflex. It faded like a puff of breath in the chill air. She gave a little curtsy and flicked her tail, then turned and retreated from the room, carrying her torch with her.

Madeleine shot a quizzical look at the other unicorn. “I’m no stranger to a Shadow Spade novel myself, Mister Rubyk, so I do understand the need to ask these searching questions. But do you really think that sweet little doe has anything to do with all this? She doesn’t even seem to know about the murder yet. I suspect Largo will wait until dawn to let all of the staff in on the dirty secret.”

“Friend Madeleine, we do not yet know even enough for me to know what I do not know. Whether or not it comes to anything, we have at least one resource to call upon to sort out our evidence. But the more important thing is to argue the case that the evidence provides, and not an hoof-span farther – no matter what that evidence might show.”

There seemed to be nothing fitting to answer that.

The two unicorns drank their coffee in silence. Madeleine watched the stallion opposite her drink down a cup of scalding, black, bitter jungle-coffee in two gulps, as if he were desperate to feel its heat in his throat. It was, frankly, just a touch unnerving. Madeleine was grateful that the silence between them was soon broken by the sound of approaching hoof-falls and a pair of voices remonstrating with one another. Rubyk’s eyes shot toward the door.

“There they are,” he said, then sighed. “The first of many.”

Bergamot and Mandarin Orange entered the library, the former wearing a nightcap and a blanket draped over his shoulders. Mandarin had evidently taken slightly more time in preparing for this unexpected interview than had her husband, and the mare had donned a practical, good-in-all-situations cream-coloured blouse and a tasteful necklace in carnelian and tourmaline that Madeleine recognized very well, noting with a swell of pride that it was one of her own designs sold in the shoreline stores in Currycape proper. Beside and a bit behind them entered in an arthritic doe carrying a lampwood torch in her mouth. She merely shook her head at the questions posed to her by the couple, not knowing any more about the reason for the summons than they.

“Goodness!” exclaimed Mr. Orange in his usual composed manner, breaking off his stream of inquiries fired off at the mute doe. “I must say, when I heard the knock at our suite door, this was not the sort of conference that I had in mind. Delighted to see you again, Miss Crumpet, and you also – Lord Rubyk of Trotheim, correct? I do remember your exquisite grandmother quite well, but I believe this is the first time we have met.” Indeed it was not, but Rubyk offered no correction. The usual introductions were had all around, and the old doe, Seamoss, her duty completed, smiled at Madeleine around the torch in her mouth and withdrew quietly from the room. The Manehattan couple seated themselves at the table.

“You must be very much a morning pony, Mister Rubyk,” said Mrs. Orange with a tinkling chuckle, gesturing with good humour at the coffee set. “I see you are quite prepared for…” The mare floundered. “Well, for whatever it is that your… companion? Friend? Yes, let’s say friend and leave it there… whatever it is that you two have in mind.”

“Let us say that I rise early by the necessity of habit, Mrs. Orange, and leave it at that,” said Rubyk. His horn gleamed faintly as he took up the coffeepot and offered it to the two Earth Ponies, who both waved it away.

“Yes,” muttered Mr. Orange, absently drumming his hoof on the tabletop. “Miss Crumpet… Mister Rubyk… may we dispense with these preambles and get to the core of the hay-bale? Why did you call us here in the dead of night? I can only presume that you had an excellent reason for doing so.”

Rubyk nodded and laid down the coffeepot. The Aktur of Trotheim sat tall and erect, looking down at the two Earth Ponies with ice in his marrow; Rubyk the pony sighed and looked at the two Oranges with a tired dullness in his jewel-cut eyes.

“Your kinsfellow, Calvados Apple, is dead. He was murdered this same night, and it falls upon me, Bergamot Orange, to find his murderer.” Rubyk’s voice was quiet and level, but the effect of these words was like cannon-shot. Mandarin Orange let out a gasp like a frightened filly and covered her face in horror. Bergamot slumped back in his chair, the blanket slipping from his shoulders as his body seemed to go cold, his eyes becoming dull and dead like obsidian in shadow. Madeleine could not help a small shudder.

Mr. Orange’s mouth opened and closed several times before he managed to choke: “Dead? No... no, it cannot be… he surely could not… not murdered. This is not so. Please, Miss Crumpet… tell us that your friend is jesting. Please tell us that this is an obscene jest on your part. I will press no charge against you if you just… please… tell me this is a joke.” Rubyk shook his head.

“I am sorry that this is the way that you must hear of it. There is a need for secrecy that chains my inquiries – hence my choice of a venue here. Mister Orange, I need for you and your wife to put away your grief for a very little while to answer some questions for me and friend Madeleine. Can you do this now?”

Mrs. Orange nodded, her eyes as wide and glassy as any Clavia deer. Mr. Orange swallowed, licked his lips, and said, “what is it that you need to know?”

Rubyk leaned forward, placing an hoof on the table. “Mister Orange, I believe that your suite is also on the fifth floor. For your own sake, can you provide an account of your movements throughout the day yesterday?”

Bergamot gaped at the taller unicorn, his nightcap dangling numbly from his head. He looked from Rubyk to Madeleine and back again, as if he were searching for some disconfirmation in their manner, some glance or gesture that would put the whole game up and show the prank for what it was. “For my own…? Great spirits, you don’t actually think that I…?”

“That will all depend on what you choose to tell me,” said Rubyk, as silken and quiet as ever. “I understand very well that there was friction between you and your uncle Calvados. It is up to you to demonstrate that while there may have been strife between you two, there is no fire beneath all that smouldering.”

Mr. Orange made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan and buried his head under his forelegs as Pome had done before him. Mrs. Orange took up the cause of her husband and began to speak in a quavering voice: “We can do that for you… Mister Rubyk… Miss Crumpet. There may not be that much to tell. We rose up early that day – though not nearly as early as this – as Calvados had asked us to do in order to meet him in town. The staff at the front desk can confirm that we requested a wake-up call that night after we went up from the casino. That pegasus the hotel employs took us into the town just after Luna lowered the moon and we went to the café near the harbour… I think it was called the ‘Pearl and Spoon,’ or some other such thing like that, if you care to check.”

Chai’s place… I thought it might be. Well, at least Calvados did have some good taste, mused Madeleine. Rubyk motioned for Mrs. Orange to continue and moved to take up pen and paper when a thought struck Madeleine. “Ah! Hold just a moment, Mister Rubyk!” She probed through a saddlebag with the expression of a sudden epiphany, extracting a small pewter ball from its contents. Rubyk’s eyes actually rose at the sight – perhaps it was only a fraction of an inch, but the icy face did move, Madeleine was sure!

“A dictosprite, friend Madeleine? You are indeed a well-prepared mare. Like the wise donkey of the proverb, you save the whole house much trouble by a little prudence.” Despite the gravity of the situation, the corner of Rubyk’s mouth jerked upward, just a little. The Aktur of Trotheim bowed his head at the earth pony couple to continue their testimony.

“Do you need for me to repeat any of that?” Mrs. Orange asked, eyes on the little winged ball as it scritched and scratched its way across the scroll on the table.

“If you would be so kind.” Mrs. Orange was so kind, then continued.

“Well, Bergamot and I waited at that café for nearly four hours after sunrise, I don’t mind telling you, waiting for Pome and that… that uncle of his to arrive. Oh, I don’t blame Cousin Pome for that. Probably he had no end of trouble rousing his uncle after all that tippling in the casino. But we had already gone through a few pots of coffee ourselves, and… well… we were just a bit perturbed.”

“What do you mean by ‘perturbed,’ Mrs. Orange?” Madeleine interjected. Mandarin opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated. Bergamot answered instead, his voice muffled.

“I was a fool; a twice-gelded fool. Did I not say so, Mandarin?” Slowly, Mr. Orange raised his head, showing a face lined with regret writ deep, with eyes full of an indescribable despair. “How much a fool I was; how much of a sharp-tongued foal I have been! I see what this is now about. Let me therefore answer you for myself. I have absolutely nothing to hide.” Rubyk met the gaze of the other stallion, who had over his few short sentences regained something of that immense self-possession that had earlier marked his every word and gesture. When he continued, his voice and deportment were precisely that of the bronzed socialite; only his tone carried the smallest vibrato, like an house founded on the quaking sand.

“Are you quite sure that you are alright, dear?” Mrs. Orange asked, placing an hoof on her husband’s bare shoulders.

“Yes, yes, Mandarin. I’ve got it all out now, you see? I’m fine; no need for a fuss.”

“Mister Orange,” said Rubyk with the same quiet deliberation, “what happened at that café after Pome and Calvados arrived?”

“Well, we talked for a bit before we got down to business. The conversation was mostly incidental, to say nothing of raunchy, and I do not think that I could repeat it if I tried.”

“Nothing at all?” said Madeleine, arching an eyebrow.

“Well…” Mr. Orange paused for a moment, then a flash crossed his face. “Our cousin Pome is a stallion of few words, but I do remember him saying something that struck both Mandarin and myself as odd. Calvados had just made one of those comments of his about one of those does that are so thick on the ground here – which I would rather prefer not be repeated by decent ponies – when Pome spoke up above his usual mumble. He said something quite like, ‘Uncle, if you know what’s good for your health, you’d better cut your tongue short while we’re here.’ And then Cousin Calvados actually did! I never knew the old fool to know when to quit, but I suppose he mellowed in his old age.”

Having just been in communion with “Cousin Pome”, Madeleine suspected that the stallion of few words had enunciated his sentiments rather differently.

“And what time was this?” Rubyk asked.

“It would have been about ten-o-clock when they arrived at the café. I remember that the belltower in the town, that one with all the peeling paint, had just chimed the hour.”

“It does run a bit slow – call it three minutes or so,” whispered Madeleine. No one heard her but the dictosprite, and it took down her words faithfully regardless.

“And after that you say you discussed business?” Rubyk continued. “What did that entail?”

A harder look, something like the glint of the light off the face of a flint knife, came over Mr. Orange’s features, and his answer had a craggy edge to it. “That was simple enough. We met to discuss a contract that I had my secretary prepare some months ago. Suffice it to say here that it regards an arrangement for me to distribute the apple brandy and cider that he ferments on his estate. I spend a considerable amount of time in the South Seas each year due to my investments here, but because of my own efforts, my company has laid the groundwork for a distribution system to move produce from the tropics to any part of Equestria in a matter of days, rather than weeks. Simply as a matter of professional pride, it is a triumph of magical and administrative engineering. I have every right to be proud of my accomplishment. It would mean an enormous profit for Calvados’ branch of the Apple clan to be able to reach any market in the civilized world! I just thought – rather, I hoped that he would be able to see that.”

For a long, pregnant moment, Rubyk made no reply. He regarded Bergamot Orange with an eerily quiet intensity. “But he did not see the generosity of your offer, did he, Mister Orange?” It was not really a question.

“No. No, he did not. I do not mind telling you that I was angry; anypony or any one of those deer who were there could tell you that. Oh, yes. He refused me, and my contract, and all of my good will, just as he always does. He told me, and I quote, ‘I’ll sell to anypony I horsin’ please, Bergie, and I never liked this conglomerating of yours, so’ …ah, say stick your head in the sand and you will get the full effect. I really do not know what I thought would be different this time. Perhaps I just hoped that the tropics and the sea breezes might soften him up a bit; perhaps I was just the thrice-gelded fool that I have been all along. Whatever the case, I lost my temper and said some things that I deeply regret now. Please,” and at this the stallion’s tone softened, and his face lost that sudden flinty glint, “if you do go talk with any of the ponies… or any of the deer… who happened to be there, please do not ask them to… to repeat what I said. Or if you must, please do not ask me to confirm it. Can you promise me that, Mister Rubyk… Miss Crumpet?”

“Of course, Mister Orange,” said Rubyk, making his tone softer still to palliate the Earth pony’s shattered nerves. “I know that this is not easy for you, but what did your kinfellows do after that?”

“What else? They left. Calvados stood up and nearly upended the table when he did. He even threw a cup at my head. I told Mandarin to get down, but Calvados just grumbled and growled at me that he had no complaints against her. I got between them regardless, but Pome put an end to any fight before it got started. Cousin Pome grabbed a cup out of the air and righted the table and put his uncle off to one side. I expect it must have taken some quite strong magic to do all that, but Calvados and I were not the only ones with high tempers at that point. By that point I was… done with saying what needed saying in the moment, and I suggested to Pome that it would be best if they left. They left by a northwise street farther into the town.”

“They did not go back to the hotel?”

“No, at that time, it would have been impossible. The noon-tide had come in, and the Pegasus wasn’t running the shuttle-cart over the causeway.”

“This would have been after the eleven-o-clock bell, I take it?”

“Quite nearly, yes. We could see the corner of the harbour where the causeway joins up to the main island from the café. I remember that the belltower chimed the hour again only a very few minutes after the negotiations… went sour.”

“I see…” muttered Rubyk, a frown beginning to suggest itself on his face. “You killed time in Currycape until the causeway reopened?”

This time, Mrs. Orange nodded and answered. “We walked the harbour district together until the causeway reopened. We did not want to run into Pome and Calvados by accident, as you might imagine. I rather suspect Pome was keeping his uncle occupied so that we could avoid one another.”

“When did you return to the hotel, Mrs. Orange?” said Rubyk, beginning to tap a rhythm on the table-top.

“As soon as we could.” This time it was Mr. Orange who answered. “We caught the first shuttle-cart back and returned to our suite straightaway. I even had one of the deer bring up room service for us so that we did not have to come to the main dining room and risk a full-gallop into those two. I intended for us to leave on the next ferryboat out in the morning. Mandarin and I had planned a little vacation here in Currycape after our business with Calvados was concluded, but circumstances now being what they were, I thought it would be best if the town saw our backs as soon as possible.”

“And…” Rubyk paused again, as if he were reaching for a thought he could not yet quite grasp the shape of. “Did you happen to stop anywhere else in that time when you could not return to the hotel?”

“We – no, not that I can think of, Mister Rubyk.” Was it Madeleine’s imagination, or was there just a hint of a stutter from Mr. Orange just now? She glanced down to the scroll. The dictosprite had not caught it, but…

Rubyk rose and extended an hoof to the Oranges. “My deep condolences for the loss of your kinsfellow, Bergamot Orange, even if you could not call him in any way a bread-mate. Although you must certainly wish to leave this town and this hotel as soon as possible, I must ask for your cooperation in putting off your departure for a few days more. I ask this of you now so that I shall not have need to compel you later.”

Mrs. Orange gaped at this frankness, but her husband took the proffered hoof in his own and shook it with an earnest stoicism. “Of course, Lord Rubyk. You have the full cooperation of me and my wife until this whole ghastly affair is cut and done.” The earth pony hesitated as if he were carefully weighing his next words, then he made a crook of his foreleg and took his wife’s hoof in his own. “Please, sir. Mandarin and I have always tried to make peace with my relations, and Calvados was by far the worst among the lot. Whatever you saw out of me – well, it was shameful. If there is anything, anything that we may do to help you bring this… this… criminal to justice, please tell me.” Rubyk was still for an interminably long moment, in which it became clear that the other stallion expected some token of response. Finally, Rubyk nodded, just once, as solemn a figure as the Reaper. Seeing it, Bergamot bowed to Rubyk, and Rubyk to Bergamot, and the two Oranges left the library, trotting slowly in an heavy silence.

Madeleine glanced to Rubyk, whose own face in the lampwood shadows had taken much of that same flinty cast as lighted upon Bergamot Orange. “What do you think? Was there a lie anywhere in there?”

The Aktur of Trotheim traced at the grain in the table-top with an hoof, leaving a white trail of quick-melting frost where it touched. “Not yet, no, not yet. The lie does not come out in the inquest, but only in the cross-examination. We must have more, friend Madeleine. I must have the evidence in my hooves, and I shall. But for the moment…” Rubyk’s hoof stopped its idle tracing, and he rubbed it back over its path, obscuring any trace of the white frost. Out of the great picture-window in the library, the dark waters of the bay were tinted with the first hints of violet twilight.

“I think, friend Madeleine, before we hear Pome Apple, we should first hear from the good ponies and fine deer of Currycape.

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

Chapter Three

Black Coffee

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

Rubyk and Madeleine trotted with purpose to the great fortress doors of the Grand Foyer, the mare taking two steps to every one of the giant. He spoke distantly, as if orating to an audience while consumed with private worries. “…find the oddities; snoop and sniff for whatever reeks out of its own place. Turn over and scrape under every strange stone, and listen close for every murky whisper. Let your eye glint everywhere and let that pearl of a memory shine a light on every darkened truth.”

A thin line of a smile crept onto Madeleine’s face; she knew perfectly well when she was being put-on. “So in other words, keep an open ear and ask impertinent questions? Oh, if that is all there is to this investigating business, then I shall be qualified for my policemare’s badge before the dinner-bell.” She looked for a response from the taller unicorn – but, there was nothing. Not even the hint of a flicker of a smile. She really could not predict this Rubyk. It looks as though you need to hone your craft, girl.

“I would say… yes. More or less. Do as you see fit, friend Madeleine, but whatever you do, please do it well.” He closed his eyes, cords of tension bulging on his tower of a neck. “We have little time… so very little time for everything.”

Madeleine nodded, the mare’s face turning grave. “I know this town, Mister Rubyk. I know its highlights and lowlifes, each just as well as the others. If there is anypony out there who caught wind of something strange in the usual herds off tourists, I’ll have it out of them… say, one way or another. Personally, I find one way is veryeffective.” That did bring a smile – brief, but real – to the Aktur of Trotheim’s leaden face.

“You have your methods, I suppose; one should never forget, ‘prudence for the harvest, and desperation for desperate times.’ Well, we are desperate, but I am not yet ready to despair. I put my trust in your capable hooves, friend jeweler.” He paused for a moment, as if to consider something. “And I should like to impose on you for one more favour, I think. May I borrow your dictosprite?”

“Most certainly; but whatever for?” said Madeleine even as she reached into her bags to retrieve the same.

“Call it an hunch. I may be wrong in judging such bilious stirrings, but I have learned to take notice when my kidneys lead me along a stream of thought… er, to rather mangle a metaphor.”

“Well, you are welcome to it, Mister Rubyk, if it will help,” said Madeleine, giving over that article into Rubyk’s outstretched hoof. It looked comically small in the grip of the Aktur of Trotheim.

“Well, then…” Madeleine gave a terse little salute that brought another ghostly hint of a smile to the giant’s face and sallied forth in her black saddlebags (was there anything more appropriate for a murder?). She went so intently that the doe attending the doors barely had the opportunity to pry them open. The few staff in the foyer turned from their tasks and watched their old friend exit, surprise written on each face.

Rubyk himself turned away from the doors and began to pace. The Aktur of Trotheim’s eyes were unfocused and half-lidded as he pondered heavy thoughts. Only by measure did he become aware that a feminine voice was calling his name – and rather insistently, as if she had been at it for some time.

“…Lord Rubyk? Excuse me? Lord Rubyk! Can you hear me, sir?”

“Hmm?” said the stallion, glancing up with eyes that seemed half-asleep. The Clavia doe at the concierge’s desk leaned against the counter, propping herself up on her front legs for more height. Relief washed over her face as she saw that she had finally gained the giant’s attention.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I was told that I might be seeing you soon. Miss Largo left a message for you – she said that you ought to receive it as soon as possible.”

“Did she?” Rubyk turned and approached the desk with long strides that gave the impression to the little doe of a stalking thing of the wild North. She flinched backwards toward the array of bell-ended brass tubes descending from the ceiling, but to the credit of her race, she did not look away from the giant.

“Y-yes, sir. I was told that if I saw you to extend to you Miss Largo’s invitation to meet with her in her office. She said that she has something for Lord Rubyk.”

“Did she?” the repetition frightened the Clavia, and she trembled. At this, Rubyk smiled, taking care not to bare his teeth. “Then, thank you very much for letting me know.”

“C-certainly. It is our pleasure, sir,” stammered the doe, uneasiness giving way to the easy groove of professional platitudes. Rubyk kept his smile easy and winsome and his face trained on the doe. She thought that something new glinted in the deep distance behind those gemstone eyes, something pensive and calculating. The Clavia’s teeth chattered. “Is there something that I can do for you, sir?”

“I think perhaps, friend – ah, how rude of me! Tell me, how are you called?”

“You want to know my name?” the doe said. It was evidently not what she expected. “I’m called Limon, sir.”

“What a sweet name!” The pony said it with warmth in his voice, real warmth, and not the false pretences of a stalking predator. The Clavia doe felt herself relax and did not suppress a little giggle. “Have you worked here at the hotel for long, Miss Limon? How do you find it?”

“Me? Why, I have worked for Miss Largo for… I suppose nearly ten years now! I don’t think there is anyone else, pony or deer, who would ever be a better or a kinder mistress.” The Clavia doe began to wave her hoof in what was perhaps an unconscious imitation of her mistress’ own mannerisms. She gestured absently at her own antlers, which bore only four stumpy points. “I’m not much of a sorceress really, so Miss Largo has me work the concierge desk instead. It’s a quiet job most of the time – but you would not believe some of the requests that I get! Why, last week I had a mare ask me if somedeer could come up to her room and peel grapes for her! No, she didn’t want to eat them – she just wanted to feel the way they squelched underhoof. That was one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen, I don’t mind telling you!”

Rubyk blinked. “Er… no doubt. But I do have a question for you, friend Limon.” He leaned in close to the doe and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Unless I mistake myself, you have heard from Miss Largo about the… call it an ‘incident’ last night. Correct?”

The Clavia’s ears drooped, and her face fell. “Oh, yes. Miss Largo told us all personally, or through some of the senior staff. Down here in the foyer, we had the news from Doctor Leaf just before dawn. Just horrible! I pray your Princess gives you all the luck you need in investigating.”

Rubyk winced. “In my experience, friend Limon, there is very little left to luck in justice’s clockwork. It is best that way.” Rubyk shook his head and returned to the same genial, if tight-lipped smile he had worn earlier. “But I do wonder if you could tell me one more thing. Just one would be most helpful!”

“Oh, certainly!” said Limon, brightening instantly. “What is it?”

Rubyk’s eyes went from the doe to the array of brass tubes behind her. “You say that you heard the news in the early morning. Were you here at your post all the night long?”

“Aside from a few short breaks for the lavatory, but I had Tinder take over for me for that and a short dinner down in staff quarters – her rotation ended about an hour ago, so she’ll be resting there now. But it was an awfully quiet night, especially for our bookings being so dense. I suspect that squall we had last night put everypony to bed early.”

“There were no calls for anything from the guest rooms?”

“No, sir. At least not while I – oh!” Limon exclaimed, her eyes suddenly widening. “Beg your pardon, Mister Rubyk sir, but I take that back. I only just remembered there was one request. It didn’t quite seem very important at the time, and I’m not really sure if…”

“Oh?” There was something more to that simple question, though whether it was eagerness or – or something else, some more intense sentiment, the Clavia did not know, and did not care to think. She nodded, feeling every inch of the itchy scrutiny those sleepy-looking eyes were throwing upon her.

“It – it was just after I came back from my dinner break. I took over again and was just setting down to read for a bit when Tinder said to me – just in passing – that there had been one request while I was gone. Some stallion staying on the third floor asked for a bottle of mineral water. Tinder had Papaya take it up to his room, and she said Papaya seemed grateful for something to do.”

Rubyk’s smile faded. “Ah. I see. Thank you for the information, friend Limon. What time might this have been?”

“Not very long ago at all, actually. I would say maybe – call it two? Two-and-a-half hours ago?”

“Thank you,” said Rubyk, the queer intensity of his words having disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Before I leave you and bid you a good and well-deserved rest, can you confirm for me that nopony – that is, no guest of the hotel – left through the front doors there during the night?”

“In that storm?” Limon exclaimed.

“I thought not,” replied Rubyk. “But in my business, surety is always valued over even the best guesswork. My thoughts, friend Limon. You have been most helpful.”

But as he turned and began to trot to meet the proprietress once again, his half-lidded eyes and smile were replaced by furrowed brow and troubled thoughts.

*****

Rock Skipper stood heavy on his hooves at the end of the blue-dappled marble path, which seemed to glow translucent in rose and Tyrian purple in the early dawn. Weary lines were etched beneath his eyes. His grey newscolt’s cap drooped over the pegasus’ eyes in a sodden slouch. He faced toward the rising sun like a garden flower opening its face toward the new day, as if his tired muscles were drinking in the clear light for nourishment like a plant.

“Good morning, Skipper.”

Rock Skipper was suddenly very light indeed as he let out a noise more bird than equine and leaped upward like a shot, beating the air with his wings. Then the pegasus clutched at his chest and gave a nervous laugh.

“Oh!” An embarrassed grin spread itself over his snout. “It’s only you, Miss Crumpet. Sorry for squawking in your ear like that. You caught me faraway, so to speak.”

“I knew that you were good at sleeping on your hooves, Skipper, but come now; your dreams are only as far away as your own head,” Madeleine chided, flashing a coy little smile as he fluttered back to the ground. Then the mare’s expression shifted, and she asked the pegasus in a voice tinged with concern, “you didn’t get a wink last night with that mess of a weather working going on, did you?”

Rock Skipper shook his head and laughed the bone-thin laugh of a pony who has resigned himself to his own exhaustion. “I must really look like something out of Nightmare Night. Behold, the terrifying zombie weather-pony! No, I haven’t seen the inside of my eyelids only for forever. That’s not too long, is it?” He looked from Madeleine back toward the sun, putting its light on his face like a sunflower. “I really have no idea what went wrong! Miss Largo had scheduled a warm rain shower to refresh the grounds and the farms around the town. I did everything that I was supposed to… I called up the clouds from the ocean… I shaped them rightly… I brought them in on a tether so they couldn’t get away from me… and even after I let them go and gave them a buck to start the showers off, everything seemed to be going right this time! I was sure everything was fine!”

“So what happened?” said Madeleine, cocking her head. It was not the question that she really had wanted to ask, but he had piqued her interest.

“Er…” Rock Skipper reflexively rubbed at the back of his damp cap with a forehoof. “After I made sure that the showers were going alright – and I was sure, Miss Crumpet! – I went back down to staff quarters for dinner. I was so hungry, and Mangosteen had made those fried plantains that she does so well, and I didn’t think it could hurt if I took my eye off of such a little weather-working…”

“Oh, Skipper,” sighed Madeleine. But the pegasus only grew more insistent.

“I swear on my grandmare’s pinions, Miss Crumpet: there was no way in Equestria that little shower I brought back from the sea could or should have turned into that typhoon it became! I got a good sense of how much magic those clouds had in them when I was rounding them up, and it was nowhere near chaining into a storm. I had to guide them back out to sea, they were so full of energy! It was like… like somepony else came along after me and gave them a jolt, somehow.” Rock Skipper heaved a ragged sigh and added, “but just try telling that to Miss Largo like I did and see how far it gets you.”

Suddenly, the pegasus froze as he realized just what he had said. “Er… strictly in confidence of course, ma’am. I don’t mean anything by it.” Quickly changing the subject, Rock Skipper lowered his voice, as if wary that somepony might be skulking behind one of the topiaries. “Is it true what Doctor Leaf said, Miss Crumpet? Did somepony really…?”

With a tiny jerk of her head, Madeleine motioned in the affirmative. The young stallion set his teeth in a grimace. “Ruff my downfeathers…” he muttered. “I’m awfully sorry you had to be here for that, Miss Crumpet… ma’am.”

“Oh, stop it, Skipper,” Madeleine said, a bit wearily. “I shall be thinking about that for a long while to come, and I could stand a distraction.” Not that there was call to say why she should be thinking about it. “See here, I’ve got to go into town to see to some business. Won’t you please take me over, Skipper dear, and then join me for a café au lait and a walk about town? Come now; Piper Chai’s place ought to be open at this hour, and you need some time without old Largo’s yoke weighing so heavy on your shoulders.” She smiled just-so at the pegasus and felt that little twinge of pleasure at the instant when he finally just melted. “What do you say?”

“Oh, fine,” Rock Skipper said, with much too much reluctance to be convincing. “You twist my gaskin something awful, but it isn’t like Miss Largo could get her feathers any more rumpled at me. Let me bring the shuttle-cart around and I’ll have you over there in a wingclip, Miss Crumpet.”

Not being a pegasus herself, or any other of Equestria’s residents that were gifted with flight, Madeleine had no real idea just how long a wingclip might be in relation to, say, a smidge, a titch, a jiffy, a few moments, an hoof-stomp, or any number of suchlike expressions. Nevertheless, a wingclip turned out to be not a very long at all. And after the ghastly night she had had, the whip of the air as the shuttle-cart sped across the causeway, Rock Skipper taking to the air so that the wheels did not even clatter on the masonry, was more refreshing than any cup of coffee. The two left the shuttle-cart sitting in the harbour district and began to walk into the town. Rock Skipper cast one last glance back at it, hesitating with a forehoof raised mid-stride.

“Are you coming along, Skipper?” Madeleine sang from up the street. Without even a waver, the pegasus trotted after her at a near-gallop. Oh yes, guests be dashed – he was coming along.

As the pair walked along the waterfront in Currycape’s harbour district, Madeleine cast her eyes all around, drinking in the inimitable sight of a South Seas village in the fiery dawn. Like the rest of the world, Currycape was coming alive as it was touched by the gentle caress of the sun as Celestia guided it on its course fixed in the heavens. Unlike the rest of the world, it did so to a view of the sea waters turned to the red and gold of fine wines by a deep magic that no unicorn ever yet understood. The surrounding hills seemed to rise up in an hymn of blazing praise to the Unconquerable Sun. The terra cotta roof tiles that often looked pallid in the high noon-day, like a blemish in the skin just below the coloured blush of one’s coat, now gleamed in full glory like rough rhodnites. The mood of the scene was infectious, and the ponies and Clavia already about their business in the street brimmed with foalish exuberance. Madeleine had begun to fall into this course herself until a sudden question from Rock Skipper coinciding with the first of her targets here in town coming into view brought her back down to the hard earth.

“So…” The word hung in the air, orphaned and sterile, for so long that Madeleine thought that Rock Skipper had lost his nerve to ask whatever question followed. But the pegasus swallowed and asked with an unreadable expression on his face, “is there any special… I mean really special reason you asked me out here today, Miss Crumpet? Can I call you Madeleine?” The words came out of his mouth so fast in a tumble that it took Madeleine a moment to realize that the one question was really two.

“Not yet, Skipper. Maybe later.” Seeing the look of mingled disappointment and befuddlement on her companion’s face, she sighed. “Look, I really do want to treat you to a spot of coffee. Celestia and Luna both know you deserve it after wrangling that storm. But I do need your help, Skipper. I need a pony that I know I can trust.” With the pegasus more confused than ever, the pair seated themselves at one of the outdoor tables of the Pearl and Spoon, and after sharing an enthusiastic greeting and nose-nuzzle with Piper Chai, an earth pony mare with a coat the colour of milky tea and a talent for making, hooves to the ground, the finest cappuccino in the Equestrian South Seas – or anywhere else for that matter – Madeleine turned to Rock Skipper and ran through a rough account of everything that had happened. As she described the arc of events, from her discovery of the body, to Rubyk’s confrontation with Miss Largo, to the crushings condition the proprietress had laid upon the investigation, the pegasus’ tired eyes grew wider and wider. When she had finished and a bowl of warm coffee and milky froth lay forgotten on the table between them, Rock Skipper… saluted?

“Miss Crumpet,” the pegasus said with swelling chest, “it would be my honour to help you however I can. Just tell me what to do, and I’ll move the skies to see it done.”

Madeleine let out a breath she had been half-holding without being aware. “Thank you, Skipper. For both your help, and your… eagerness. In truth, I am awfully afraid of something that may just be a possibility, but a possibility that I don’t dare mention in earshot of anypony else on the hotel staff.”

“But isn’t Miss Largo the only other – oh!” Comprehension dawned on the pegasus’ features Madeleine gave a small nod, casting eyes around for any Clavia that might be attending to their conversation, if only for seeing Rock Skipper at such an odd time and place. Fortunately, they seemed to be alone but for Piper Chai, who had the minor matter of making the best coffee in Equestria to attend to.

“Skipper. Listen to me carefully. My instincts are screaming at me right now that one of the Clavia staff had something to do with what happened to Calvados Apple. Right now, I don’t have any proof – but that is why I need you. I need for you to keep your eyes open and your ears up for the next three days, and if you see or hear anything that might possibly connect with all this, drop everything and go tell Mister Rubyk. He isn’t a detective, and he doesn’t have the jurisdiction here as long as Largo holds the cards. Miss Largo might let us into staff quarters to ask questions, but we can’t wander freely in there like you can. I need you to be my eyes and ears in there. Please, Skipper!” Madeleine punctuated the last plea with eyes so large and plaintive that the pegasus had about as much chance of refusing as a pat of cold butter surviving the midsummer heat. In a volcano.

“Fine. I’ll do it,” said Rock Skipper, turning his face away from those pleading irises. “But on one condition, Miss Crumpet. Take it or leave it.”

Madeleine’s eyebrow shot up. “You have not given me your condition yet.”

“And I’m not going to.” Rock Skipper smiled – with just a touch of that nervous crinkle around the eyes – and rubbed at the back of his head again. “That’s my condition: accept my one condition. Take it or leave it.”

A gravely sigh came from Madeleine’s throat. If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. “Fine, Skipper. I accept your… condition. Now do you mind telling me what in hay bales and hempseeds this is about?” In reply, Rock Skipper just cheerfully shook his head. Wonderful; her secret lifeline for solving a murder just had to choose this moment to go coy. The pegasus buried his snout in the bowl of milky foam and espresso, pleased with some secret joke. Madeleine watched him for a moment more, then waved to Piper Chai. The mare left her percolating coffeepots on the outdoor gem-burners and trotted over to their table on the terrace.

“Do you have time for a quick chat with a couple of old friends, ‘Chai?” Madeleine said with as much casual innocence as the mare could muster. The earth pony gave a good-natured shrug.

“I don’t see why I couldn’t. The back of the house should be able to handle the bits for a wingclip. It isn’t as though there’s a mad crush of tourists today. ‘Storm last night’ll keep most of the out-crowd in bed ‘til near mid-morning, I should think. And the shakers ‘mong the Clavia’re still hunkered down under theirs. That one really was a right wringer – beggin’ no offence on ye’, Skipper,” Piper Chai drawled, her accent as always unplaceable, but lazy. It was a drawling midge-modge of bits from every which where Celestia’s sun touched, with drooping vowels and uncommonly long “ills” and “ells”.

“None taken,” Rock Skipper gurgled through a mouthful of foam.

“Actually, ‘Chai dear,” Madeleine said, setting herself into the easy groove of comfortable gossip, “have you seensome of those ponies old Largo is putting up in her hotel now? You wouldn’t believe it. I scarcely can, anyway.”

“Oh, I dunno,” said the other mare with a giggle. “Some of the click-clacketing tourists snapping the Summer Sun Celebration’ll give any two-headed trotter you care to gape at a fair gallop at the track any ol’ day. This one’ll take ‘steamed milk with a ‘dop of honey for the little filly, oh no, that’ll be too hot for her little muzzle, ma’am,’ or another’ll take a mocha without the café. Plum foals, the lot of them!”

“But you haven’t seen these ponies,” Madeleine said with the purr of fresh gossip. “Why, let me tell you about a certain stallion I’ve run into over the past few days. He gets two out of three of ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ down better than anypony else I’ve seen – and, dear, you haven’t any idea the things I’ve seen…”

This line of chatter quickly grew monotonous in Rock Skipper’s ears, and he turned his attention back to what he would not like to admit to himself would probably be his only breakfast that day. Licking his lips free of white, milky foam, the pegasus sat back contented, feeling the leaden weights fall away from his shins and wing-joints. He sat, just sat, contented and quiet in the morning sun. It was a nice feeling.

Rock Skipper did not know how long he had sat like a statue; perhaps he had even dozed. Whatever the case, his world snapped back into focus with a feeling of total refreshment. At the same instant, his eye caught a familiar figure trotting down the harbour street. Although it turned off into a side street toward the north just as he swung his head around, Rock Skipper started as the one glance showed a Clavia doe that, even without the hibiscus behind her ear, few could mistake.

“Papaya?” he mouthed silently. What was that fawn doing up and about so early?

“I’ll tell you Maddie, I had some righter oddballs than you’ll have seen up there in Largo’s house down here in my little café just on morning last,” Piper Chai was saying in her unplaceable patter. “A couple – and I do mean a couple, Maddie – of those Manehattan high-snouts come in and sit on the terrace right about where we are now, and they sit there, just shock-still, not ordering anything but one little sip of espresso. Oh, other customers’ll come and go, but this pair sits there for three hours. Couple of cashews, if you ask me.”

“What, without even moving?” quipped Madeleine with a brightsome laugh. Yet a shiver of icy excitement seized the mare as she said it, and her heart leapt up even as her stomach sank low.

“Near as your nose’ll ever get to your face! Then these two stallions, both mama’s colts gone off to Uni with a little too much meat in the shoulders – which is just a rummy sort of look on anypony – they come down from Largo’s pile over on the island and sat themselves down with the nuts. Oh, you had to be there, Maddie! The stuffy-shirted nut would mummer some tail-kissing thing in that full-mouthed way that upper crust’ll give you a platter of pickles and tell you it’s cukes, and the old overstuffed colt’ll answer him back with a quip like as you’d get out of old Bell Bottoms’ bar when we get a tub of sailors docked in port. I tell you, you’d never see a fellow or a filly blush so hard at a little bawd in your life! Funny, though – the wife seemed to roll with the kicks as they’d come along much better than her beau-shackle. Both she and the other stallion, he was a unicorn who looked like a geld – and Celestia knows I’m not usually wrong about these things – they had their mouths on the bit to pull back on their little dogs ‘fore things ever got to bucks and biting.. Imagine it, Maddie! The stuffy one and the overstuffed old foal was like leashed dogs just looking for the moment to zip from master and go at each other. But picture two dogs with prettied-up fur and gussied tails, like those Prance poodles, all smiling at one another and trying to make nice to make business. I nearly burst a rib trying to keep from laughing all over ‘em!”

Madeleine tried to key her voice to the same chipper, gossipy dance they had been playing up to this point, but the mare could not quite stop a little quiver of vibrato excitement from creeping in . “You really do get all types, ‘Chai dear. But I hope at least it all had an happy ending?” At this, Piper Chai’s raucous smile faded, and the barista cleared her throat.

“Wish I could tell you ‘yea’, Maddie, as anypony’ll see it was so funny. But… not exactly.” Piper Chai grimaced and tapped her forehooves together. “In the end the dogs did get loose and get to fighting, and I had to come out and talk harsh with the both. Funny is funny, and I’ll own a little farce never did anypony a fleabite’s harm, but I’m not about to let a bout of hoof-knocks take place right outside my shop. In the bright loving middle of the morning, Maddie! It’s just bad for business. But even before I can open my mouth and say my bit, the other overstuffed colt, the unicorn, gets up with his stumpy little horn a-sparking and just as bold as you’ll please says to the bawdy old stallion he’s been keeping on his tether the whole time, ‘gerroff him, ya’ nunce,’ or something like that. After that, they left, and I’ll be waiting a good long time for customers to make my ribs shake from laughing that hard.”

“Wait, was there not a scuffle of some kind?” Madeleine asked. Piper Chai and Rock Skipper both regarded the unicorn mare quizzically.

“No…” said Piper Chai, perplexed. “Didn’t I say, Maddie? I think I’d ken that before anypony else if there was a fight right on my shop terrace.”

“Ah. Yes, you’re right, ‘Chai dear. I must have gotten mixed up somewhere along the way, I think. But I do believe Skipper and I are keeping you from your work at this point.” Piper Chai made a grumbled agreement at that and leapt spryly onto her hooves.

“Yeah, sad truth. But thank ye’ much for runnin’ out here to catch up, Maddie! Give Leaf my love; we townies scarce ever catch whiff of him these days.” Madeleine promised that she would, and the owner of the Pearl and Spoon bade her and Rock Skipper farewell… but not before pushing a biscotti on both, which Madeleine gratefully accepted.

As she chewed sweet citron and sultanas (oh, sweet Luna, that was good), Madeleine’s mind was racing. Either the Oranges are telling an outright lie or an half-truth somewhere, or Piper Chai can’t remember what happened in her own business just a day ago. Of those two, the latter just doesn’t seem likely. So why the misinformation?

She did not have an answer. But Mister Rubyk would know. He had to.

Didn’t he?

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

Chapter Four

The Dark Lamp

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

The proprietress’ office was a rather spartan, windowless affair tucked away around a corner of the third floor guest rooms past the lifts. Miss Largo had the small room paneled in unvarnished pine, and the walls held very little adornment other than floor plans and a topographical map of the island with the town of Currycape overlaid upon it. A few free-standing shelves stood against the wall behind the proprietress’ desk wrought from that same unlaquered wood as the wall panels holding bits of delicate glass bric-a-brac of deerish make. These were creations of woven spidery strands of glass fine as silk forming knots, then patterns, then likenesses of pony, Clavia, several of the lower animals, and a sort of bipedal creature in crystalline tailory that Rubyk only knew by sight from the old books about the olden ways. The room was lit by a single stick of lampwood fixed upright in a rough clay pot on the proprietress’ desk that should have left the office in a somber murk, but which was surrounded by a grating of triangular shards of glass that caught the light and magnified it throughout the room, making it nearly as bright as a tropical noon, if a bit wan.

His head stooped to fit comfortably within the room, Rubyk said simply: “No shadows.”

The proprietress of the Clavia Hotel arched an eyebrow. “Pardon, Aktur?”

“You had the lamp charmed so that there would be no shadows anywhere in this room.”

Miss Largo’s other eyebrow rose. “Yes. I did. I find that this room is too choking to work in without a brighter illumination than candles or lampwood, or even electric lamps can provide. But you make one wrong assumption, Aktur. As you can tell plainly from my mark, my gifts are twofold: I create order out of a mass of ponies and deer and show the beauty that can come from inside a society. Think of it as a prism scattering the light. Oh, it may be on a small scale here in this hotel, in this town, but when I worked in the capital, I was no less effective in making the Palace run with a most distinctly deerish efficiency it has never enjoyed since. Secondly, I make beautiful glass. It is one talent that I share with the Clavia. You might say the one is the material principle, the other the spiritual. But I have always believed that doing something right means that one must do it by herself – and hang the consequences.” The mare shot Rubyk a mildly annoyed look. Clearly, she had not intended the digression. “Has this anything to do with your investigation, Lord Rubyk? If not, I would like to discuss the reason why I asked you here.”

The Aktur of Trotheim shook his head. “No, likely not. I shall take no more of your time than I must, Miss Largo.” Nor, it seemed, did he intend to say anything else on the matter. With her nose scrunched, and with an immense and conscious decorum, the mare opened an inner drawer of her desk and bent herself down, extracting a scroll. She dropped it on the desk before him and craned her neck upward to look the unicorn directly in the eye.

“That is the reason I sent word to call you in here, Aktur. Take it up and read it if you care to, but I will give you the highlights.” Rubyk cocked an eyebrow. Taking the scroll up in his magic, he unfurled and brought it close to his face, squinting closely at lines of dense, willowy, and small script in silvery lead pencil. The proprietress of the Hotel Clavia cleared her throat and began to speak again. As she could not walk about the room, her hoof traced a walking path in a worn groove on the desktop. Yet instead of the easy, lecturing canter of her words the Aktur of Trotheim had already grown familiar with, the mare now spoke in terse, pizzicato phrases, biting off the straggling ends of her words.

“I had Doctor Leaf examine the body of the victim. That is his report on the time and causes of death. Time of death was between 10:15 and 10:45 PM. Apparent cause of death was complete thaumic kenosis caused by Earthsbane toxin ingested in massive doses, with contributing factors of systemic stress from bruised ribs, massive cranial injury, and a superficial gunshot wound in the left shoulder. All of these injuries occurred shortly before the time of death. Is there anything else you need for your purposes, Aktur Rubyk?”

Rubyk blinked and slowly lowered the scroll in front of him (which the proprietress had more or less encapsulated perfectly), regarding the mare on the other side of the desk with a long, scrutinizing stare. When he said nothing, she added, “do you see that I have done and am doing all that I can in order to aid your ‘investigation,’ Aktur Rubyk? Do you really think that I want an injustice – in my hotel – to go unpunished just because I want this whole affair dealt with in a timely way?”

“Of course not,” said Rubyk. Miss Largo noted with a detached satisfaction that even this cool giant could be shaken, for even he could not totally keep the shorn-tail surprise in his eyes from creeping into his voice. “But when did you –”

“While you were interrogating the Oranges.” Miss Largo smiled thinly. “I do believe you broke dear Bergamot. My Clavia tell me he refuses to get out of his own bed.”

The surprise written on Rubyk’s face turned to bewilderment, and his eyebrows reluctantly rose. “How do you know even that?” he said, laying a subtle stress on the “even.” Miss Largo waved an hoof absently.

“Oh, I make it my business to know what goes on in my hotel, Aktur. That is all,” she replied vaguely, staring at a point on the wall behind the unicorn. Then she leaned forward and added, “and I do have one more piece of… call it concrete information for your use, Aktur Rubyk. I believe in your line you call this sort of thing ‘evidence.’”

Miss Largo turned to the wall behind her desk, running her hoof along a fine, hidden groove in the wall. At her touch, a pane of the wooden paneling opened outward on an hidden hinge, revealing a wall safe with a combination lock. She applied a series of deft turns that clicked and resounded in the otherwise silent office, ending with one decisive clack as the safe opened of itself. She extracted a single object and turned, laying it on the desk before Rubyk with just the hint of a smile.

Rubyk could see the outlines well enough, but he bent down on his hooves to squint closely at the thing. It was a small – really, very small revolver pistol, almost a mousegun, with an handsome ivory-coloured pommel with a mother-of-pearl stripe and a few decorative insets of what he took to be topaz. The barrel was short, chrome, had no sights, and was pristine either from lack of use or diligence of maintenance. It was really a very pretty little thing. But…

“Where did you get this?”

Miss Largo settled back into her chair with a contented expression that just turned the corners of her mouth slightly upward. “Did I not say that I make it my business to know whatever happens in my hotel, Aktur? After I agreed to remit Pome Apple ‘into your care’, as you say – and you may be interested to know that he is stomping all over town right now trying to drown out the memory of it – I had my Clavia perform a sweep of the grounds.” She pointed to the pistol. “Do you know where that was found, Aktur?”

“I suppose that you will tell me presently.”

“Don’t let’s be cheeky, Rubyk – ah, do pardon me – if you please, Aktur.” She paused for a moment and placed her hoof on the piece. “This pistol was found in the bushes of the garden below suite 501. This is the real reason that I called you in here.” Quite suddenly, even the hint of a smile dissolved from Miss Largo’s muzzle.

“Aktur Rubyk, do you recall just whom is staying in suite 501 presently?”

Rubyk frowned and lowered his head for a moment, as if in earnest concentration. Then the Aktur of Trotheim actually started, as if he had been struck by a bullet. “But that is…”

“Quite possible, I assure you. Do you notice anything else odd about this pistol? It has no mouth-grip upon it. A pegasus or an earth pony like me could never use it, because the firing mechanism is on the inside. It needs to be fired by magic.”

Rubyk stared at the firearm, the glint in his jewel-cut eyes all but vanished. “This pistol belongs to friend Madeleine?”

Miss Largo nodded, the mare’s face hard as glass. “Is that good enough ‘evidence’ for your use, Aktur?”

Reluctantly, Rubyk agreed. It was very good evidence.

*****

After nearly ten minutes of Madeleine Crumpet’s meandering heart-to-heart with the third of as many jewelers down by the quay, the back of Rock Skipper’s eyes were beginning to burn. By the third stopover, the pattern of her method was recognizable: a full-orbed greeting, then an affectionate nuzzle, followed by pleasantries about the trip, the weather, eulogizing of the Princesses and “dear old Largo,” and a few feints in the direction of sales quotas (an unusually discordant note in an otherwise mellifluous sonata of banalities). Then, and only then, Madeleine would breach the question about whether whatpony or whodeer was minding the shop had seen any of the four ponies from the scuffle at the Pearl and Spoon on the day prior. It seemed an awfully inefficient way to go about fishing for information, and since Madeleine and the other unicorn mare running the boutique had yet to move to singing the praises of the mare that they would only respectfully call, “the Proprietress,” Rock Skipper was bored.

“Maybe I should go…” the pegasus muttered, heard by nopony at all as he rubbed at the back of his neck. His whole mane itched, and the thought of himself playing horse-hooky was only making it worse. He thought of the shuttle-cart, sitting lone and abandoned in the harbour district by the causeway. He imagined a queue of family tourists, mouth cameras ready to go click-clicking in the town, queued up from the door to the end of the marble walk. He thought of Miss Largo’s hard stare in that too-bright office, and shuddered.

“Miss Crumpet, my head’s going to be where I’d rather it not go if I don’t get back to work.” The sound didn’t travel far enough to cut through the gavotte of words the two mares were dancing, but it thundered in his own ears. With a sigh of resignation, Rock Skipper backed out of the boutique, which was scarcely wide enough for two adult ponies to stand abreast, and out into the open air. Unfurling his wings, as overtaxed as they were, and as overtired as he was, the pegasus took to the air, catching an updraft from the sea and began to make for the harbour district.

…but it would be a shame to waste this opportunity to cut a few loops in the open air…

“Oh, stuff it,” Rock Skipper to the rebellious little voice in his head. “You’ve made a mole’s hill of trouble for me already! I ought to drown you!”

…well, perhaps just a pass over the town…

“If it will make you shut up…” said the pegasus, flying supine into temptation. He banked to the left, tracing the main street of Currycape that led past the tourist shops and bangle-dens, then turned right, gaining altitude as the streets themselves sloped sharply up, and the buildings turned to angular lean-tos and thatch-huts raised like hackles on the steep hillsides. Several figures, both ponies and Clavia, waved to their weatherpony as he sped by overhead, and he returned the gesture with his cap gripped in his fetlock joint. His nose caught the sprightly, slightly rotten tang of the island’s citrus groves on a thermal as he passed by. But then an unusual sight caught the pegasus’ eye.

Eh? There was a familiar figure, feminine and petite, and most distinctly not a pony, making her way down through the hills toward the harbour district by the long way. Could that be…? He dropped altitude, fluttering his wings as he descended that he might get a better look.

It was!

“Papaya!” Rock Skipper called out, hovering his way to a rough landing on the path before the little doe in a cloud of dust. “What in Discord’s black name are you doing out here in the Withers?” The pegasus gave a stern look to the Clavia, who took a step backward at his sudden appearance.

“Nice to see you too, R.S.” the Clavia said, recovering herself quickly enough from her instinctive glass-eyed stupor to give an insolent eye-roll. “Look, it’s morning, okay? I know I’m trotting through the Withers. I’m not blind. That storm you couldn’t control was enough to keep everypony in and up all of the night. Trust me – there’s not some rogue with a truncheon behind every hut ready to pounce on the first waif of a doe walking by. I can take care of myself, Rock Skipper.”

The pegasus ignored this dodge. “You didn’t answer my question. Why are you out here in the Withers at all?”

“That’s none of your business!” snarled Papaya, backing away another step. “What are you doing having a joy-flight over the mainland in the middle of the morning? Enjoy that coffee with Miss Crumpet a little too much, maybe?” Before Rock Skipper’s unbelieving eyes, the doe’s smile curdled, turning her face into a dimpled, poisonous-looking thing. “Maybe Miss Largo would want to know how you spent your morning after anotheraccident with the weather. It wouldn’t take her long to write up a new want-ad for a new weatherpony. Isn’t it the off-season in your ponies’ cloud city, too…?”

“Cut the bluster, Papaya,” Rock Skipper retorted, taking another step forward. The Clavia stumbled backward two steps, like a fawn first finding its legs. He shot a dagger-pointed look at the single canvas saddlebag Papaya had slung over her back and side. “What do you have in there, anyway? What kind of something does a girl like you bring out of the Withers in broad daylight after something like what happened up in the suites last night…?”

“Why’s it your business, then? So what if I have a buck in the town on the side –‘s’not like everydeer with eyes knows where your eyes wander off whenever a certain unicorn comes to town.”

“So you won’t show me? Oh, Papaya, not this again… Never again! You promised me! You promised everyone!”

“Leave me alone!” Papaya shrieked, golden sparks of starlight crackling and spitting even in the brightening morning sun. Shooting a venomous look at the pegasus, the doe willed more and more light to gather around her antler-tips until Rock Skipper shrank several steps back, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare. Then in a flash with sound like a singing wineglass, only the light of the morning sun remained on the pegasus’ eyelids. When he opened his eyes again, there was no trace of the doe on the path but a few hoof-prints in the dirt.

Rock Skipper spat, rubbing at his eyes. “What in haystacks was that about?” he muttered. He shook his head. It might be nothing… no, it was probably nothing, he told himself firmly. But, just to be on the safe side, this might be just the sort of thing Madeleine had wanted him to go to that lanky Mr. Rubyk with.

On his break, that was… whenever that was.

At least his mane had stopped itching so badly.

*****

“Why, thank you Garnet dear. No, no, of course it wasn’t your fault! If nopony like that came this way yesterday, so much the worse for them!” Madeleine said, adding a good-humoured, if sycophantic laugh. “I will just have to try elsewhere. No, no, dear – there’s no need to apologize! Come on, Skipper. It seems we must try again elsewhere… eh?” said Madeleine, casting about for somepony conspicuously absent. “Skipper? Where did you go?”

There was no answer. Just to be sure, she looked again. Then, just to be doubly sure, she looked outside.

There was most definitely no Rock Skipper.

“Bother…” Madeleine grumbled, tugging at her saddlebags. “It really is like Shadow Spade says: ‘the stallions always leave you when you need ‘em most.’”

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

Chapter Five

The Doctor Speaks

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

“Look! There he is!”

“Yeah, Frond. What about it? Miss Largo said he’s to go where he likes.”

Frond gave an hoof-smack to the back of Mangosteen’s head as Rubyk wandered slowly through the hotel gardens, turning his head slowly this and that way as if searching for something. The giant kept looking toward the rear of the hotel, sweeping the backside of the ancient building, murmuring something dark and inaudible.

“Ow! What was that for?” hissed Mangosteen, shooting a glare at her brother-twin.

“Because Miss Largo asked us to keep an eye on him!”

“Yeah? And we did! We told her everything we found out about the lanking stallion yesternoon, in her rooms. In case you’ve forgotten, I happened to be there.”

“Yeah?” said Frond, mimicking his sister-twin’s inflection. “And Miss Crumpet didn’t tell us to stop doing it, now, did she?”

Mangosteen had been glaring daggers at her brother before. Now they were daggers on fire. “Salt the ground, I hate it when you’re right.”

“What is he trying to do?” Frond said as Rubyk continued to walk in the gardens, to any eye looking like a mere loiterer, casting an occasional look back at the hotel as he continued to get farther and farther away, scrutinizing the balconies and Discord knew what else with the vaguest stare that could be imagined. “Bit of nutmeg in that head, if you ask me.”

“Oh, shushba!” Mangosteen whispered as the two Clavia ducked behind an hibiscus bush. “Do you really want to get on the bad side of somepony – or something – with those teeth?”

“Wait… wasn’t one of the suites where that old stallion got done in last night…?”

“He’s going to hear you, dumbtail! Go still, you nattering fawn!”

“Oh, Celestia, he’s coming this way! Get down!” Low to the ground, nearly on their bellies, the Clavia twins saw the ice-blue unicorn trotting slowly, painfully slowly, in their direction. From the long memory of instinct, the two went still as stones. Not even their chests rose and fell with the rush of breath. When the tall unicorn stopped, turned, and stalked toward the two where they lay nearly hidden in the foliage, bending his head within inches, to the credit of their people, their eyelids did not even flicker.

Rubyk smiled, showing off his wolf-grin. “You’ve got some sort of glamour on you. I can’t see you clearly, but I know there is somepony or someone there. Come on – get up.” He said it with coaxing, not as a command, but the Clavia found themselves moving by the same instinct that drove them to lie like dead rocks before they knew what they were about. The twins looked up, sharply up, into the face of the Aktur of Trotheim and flicked their ears in some embarrassment. Neither said a word.

“I believe you two to be those Clavia friend Madeleine set as a skulk-watch over me? Do I err?” For a moment, it seemed that the two Clavia had not heard him. Then, the doe gave the other, a buck – or was it the other way around? – a shove on the shoulder, and he (yes, most definitely he) cleared his throat.

“Um… yes? Yes, sir?” the buck said, a violent blush upon his cheek.

“Good,” said Rubyk, drawing himself up to his full height. “In that case, I have two requests to make of you.”

“W-what did you have in mind?” said the doe, huddling close to her brother.

Rubyk smiled what to anypony but a Clavia would have been considered a genial expression. To the two twins, it was like the rictus-grin of Death. “Firstly, I would be very grateful if you were to show me to where your Doctor Leaf spends his private hours. I wish to speak with him. Now.”

“Doctor Leaf?” Frond quavered. The buck tried to swallow, but found his throat altogether too dry for that. “We… can do that for you, sir. He… he spends the mornings asleep in the staff quarters.”

“Take me to him,” Rubyk said immediately, punctuating the command with the stamp of an hoof. Though it went unnoticed by the two Clavia, the grass underneath that hoof froze, withered, and died in the span of a second. “Wake him if you must. He has much that he must answer for.”

The two Clavia did not move. Rubyk squinted at the two. They had ceased to tremble, or even to move at all. They stood shock-still, posed one against another, eyes a pair of rolling glass marbles. Rubyk heaved a longsuffering sigh and added, “there will be a tip in it for you, too.”

Well, that was a different matter. Monstrous giant of the Northlands or no, bits were bits no matter who was tipping. The two Clavia twins plastered the same toothy grin on their short muzzles.

“Right this way, Mister Rubyk!” said Frond and Mangosteen, darting off. Rubyk sighed again, trotting close behind.

The staff area of the Clavia Hotel perhaps ought to have been well-hidden, out of sight of guests and prying eyes, elusive as a deer gone to earth. It was with a look of trifling disappointment that Rubyk approached a turning in the corridor on the ground floor beyond which stood a curtain of glass beads separating the staff area from the hotel proper. Yes, each and every bead of that curtain winked with its own universe of quiet starlight, and, yes, the corridor reeked of ancient magics scarcely known and ill-tamed, and all of those universes were each their own pocket dimension of stars and shining worlds, and nopony not invited could ever hope to come this way… but it was still only a bead curtain!

Frond pointed an hoof past the curtain to what lay beyond. “Just through there, sir. We’ve all our own assigned den-berths, so just pull on the curtains when you come to Doctor Leaf’s.”

“…you really waste this level of magic on a curtain, of all things?” Rubyk muttered under his breath.

Mangosteen cocked her head. “What was that, sir? I couldn’t hear you well.”

“You heard nothing, Clavia,” Rubyk shot back. The twins exchanged a glance.

“Alright…” said Frond, rolling his eyes when he was reasonably sure that the unicorn would not see. “You said that you had another request for the staff, correct, Mister Rubyk? What else can we help you with?”

“Hmm?” Rubyk replied absently, his voice and manner having gone distant. “Oh, I want you to stalk somepony like you were set to stalk me. I will let you know when I know just whom.” The unicorn stepped through the curtain of starry glass, which did not so much as rattle as he passed, and the sound of his hoof-falls was instantly swallowed up. Mangosteen let out a breath that had been tight-bound in her lungs. The twins said nothing; they had no need to. The look that they shared between themselves was enough to express their thoughts.

Just what in the hay was that all about?

It was not an easy thing to unsettle the Aktur of Trotheim. Young though he may have been in his post compared to his fathers and foremares that dealt with the same theft and graft and murder as he, and who stood before the same Bench of Never-Melting Ice to punish the wrongdoer and to do justice for the widow, the orphan, the wronged, ponies were the same everywhere. He had seen much in books and in deed about ponies and their glorious acts, as well as their secret abominations. There was very little that could surprise Rubyk of Trotheim.

Or so he had thought. For the ponies of Trotheim had not built this place, but deer of the Southerlands. And one thing became absolutely clear after he stepped through the curtain of wastrel magic: this was most definitely not Trotheim.

Nowhere in Trotheim, for example, would anypony think to build the servant’s quarters more opulent than that of the ponies that they served. In Trotheim, nopony would think to swaddle the servants’ living space in dark-green felt and scatter potted ferns and palm fronds about on the floor, nor paper the walls in ivy patterns, so that all in all the chambers resembled a forest more than the inside of a building. Nopony would think (because it was daft) to make such a room without windows or any light but the soft, persistent glow of lampwood staves set not only in sconces along the walls, but also scattered haphazardly upon the floor, like twigs, so that one had to pick carefully to avoid treading on them. It was all daft, all wrong. But, then, nopony had taken thought to make this room in this way.

The sleeping berths were little more than large, circular cushions of green velvet set in a pine frame in ranks along the shadowy chamber, over which were spread a canopy of the same material quite like oversized foal’s carriages. Each berth had its own curtain on brass rings that could be pulled around to shut out the dim light, a number of which were pulled shut, and each had its own low cabinet of alder with a gemstone lock upon the front. A very few Clavia lay belly-down on their own berths, legs folded neatly beneath them, either reading, writing letters by mouth or with the pen gripped in a stardust hand, or, as one doe in the corner was doing, threading the same glassy beads of scarcely describable magics onto necklace-strings.

Doctor Leaf was not laying idle behind his bed-curtains. The Clavia buck was seated on his berth with only his back legs beneath him, tracing neat ranks of print in a thick medical text with one hoof and jagged lines of scrawl in a scroll under the other. His large eyes were magnified behind a pair squarish of spectacles as they flicked from book to notes and back again, and a frown creased his muzzle.

Rubyk approached the buck, who glanced up at the sound of approaching hoof-falls and the sense of a looming, foreign presence. The Clavia’s frown became a scowl.

“I thought that you might come looking for me. I did not think that it might be here, of all places. You might have just sent a message for me and I would have heard it one way or another.”

“Doctor, when I read your report, it was imperative that I see you –” Rubyk began to say, but Doctor Leaf held up a warning hoof.

“Keep your voice down. I know that is not a problem for you, but my people are sleeping.”

“Ah.” Rubyk scowled and brought his head close. “It is well, then, that what I have to say may be said softly. Doctor, explain yourself.”

Perhaps as might be expected, Doctor Leaf looked rather lost. “I am happy to do so as staff of the Clavia Hotel. You must, of course, tell me just what I am to be explaining.” The buck sniffed. “Or did you particularly come here to accost me unawares, Mister Rubyk? Perhaps you wished to pull back the bed-curtains and demand your question to a glass-eyed little Clavia? Maybe you hoped that the element of surprise would be enough to pull out a confession without dragging out the hoof-screws?”

Rubyk’s jaw tensed, his lips curling back to show the bare suggestion of wolfish tooth-points. “I am investigating a murder, Doctor, with my neck under an iron yoke that your mistress has put on me for a reason that I am trying to understand. Spare me the theatrics. You lied in your report on the body of Calvados Apple. All I want to know from you is why.”

For a long moment, Doctor Leaf just looked into the snarl mere inches from his face, unblinking. The Clavia sniffed, closed the text before him, and lay down upon the cushions, folding his forelegs. When he spoke, it was in a detached, professorial voice that could have passed for a Trotheim logicmaster. “You are not the only equine – or deer – to have had a trying night. Who was the deer who was called from the mainland on an house call to sniff at a dead pony’s body? Or who was it who wrote out as good of an autopsy that you will find on this island, Mister Rubyk? I have not slept since the light of yesterday’s morning. I find these insinuations to be utterly beneath a pony of your station.”

“You have not answered my question,” was all that Rubyk said.

The Clavia buck glared pure vitriol at the unicorn. “To answer your question simply, then: I said nothing in my report of which I was not fully assured in my own mind. I left out one thing that I am still trying to confirm. If that makes me a liar, may I say that you have some very strange standards of truth in the Northlands?”

“What did you leave out?”

“That,” hissed Doctor Leaf, thumping the cover of the heavy medical text, “is precisely what I was trying to figure out before you saw fit to invade my people’s sanctuary. There is something that troubles me about the state of Calvados Apple’s body when I found it, but I have not yet been able to get my antlers about it.”

Rubyk raised his head. “To you as well, then…” he murmured, and Doctor Leaf’s ears turned toward him. The physician cocked his head.

“Do you mean to say that Earthsbane poisoning seems just a shade too convenient to you as well?” Doctor Leaf asked, after a moment’s hesitation. Despite the tension that hung in the air, there was a note of… was it hope in his voice?

“A murderer in one of the noble houses of Trotheim took it in his head to kill the head of an opposing faction at a dinner one evening during the fish course. It was done by dressing the pudding with black-ink sauce,” Rubyk said, the unicorn’s snarl vanished from his face. “It is a dreadful thing, too acrid and dank, but strong – very strong.”

“Strong enough to hide the rank coffee taste of an Earthsbane tincture?” Doctor Leaf asked. Rubyk nodded his head, grimacing at a remembered taste.

“Strong enough for that, and then some. It was a weapon poorly-chosen, for his enemy was an earth pony, and his tongue was far sharper for the poison than yours or mine would be. He laid his spoon down and threw fish pudding and plates at the servants and roared at the cook, and only after that did he get the withered lips and crinkling skin Earthsbane brings.”

“Did the victim live? Was the dose mild enough for that?” Doctor Leaf asked, failing to disguise his interest.

“He did. I learned much from the Trotheim doctors about poisons at an hoof-length during of that case. His poisoner… I pursued him for three months and won his conviction before the Never-Melting. I sealed him in the Trotheim glacier with my own horn.”

“For… how long?”

It was Rubyk’s turn to cock his head.

“Attempted murder is but a murder botched, Doctor. The glacier is eternal.”

Doctor Leaf shuddered.

“Whatever the nuances of your justice system may be, I can assure you that what happened last night was not ‘botched,’” Doctor Leaf said – very quickly. The physician took a long breath and added in more normal tones:

“There is no doubt in my mind that the victim expired just as I said. I would stake the honour of my profession that Earthsbane was the one cause of death. But if you are as astute as I believe you must be, Mister Rubyk, you also see the thing that vexes me.”

“To me, you are obscure.”

“Were that I even clear to myself,” Doctor Leaf murmured. He shook his head. “But I cannot but fear that the answer here is not so simple. Earthsbane is a poison that is ordinarily swift, simple, and cruel. It cuts the magical connection of the equine races to the flux of the world. Death is quick, and merciful when it comes. But then why…?” Doctor Leaf trailed off.

Rubyk caught the little doctor’s meaning. “Why the need to make such a mess?”

“Good,” said the Clavia, a note of approval in his voice. “It seems that we understand one another after all.”

“You have a theory.” It was not really a question.

“I have an hunch – that is all. But the movement of one’s gut is nothing to the oaths that we both uphold, Aktur.”

“I would rather have one pony with an honest stomach at my side than a score of skulk-dirk flatterers. Tell me the vision, and let the courts prove it gold or dross in the end.” Rubyk paused and squinted for a moment at Doctor Leaf. The Aktur of Trotheim grimaced. “Is it rather too late to say that I would rather have one such deerat my side, friend doctor?”

“Quite. But your scruples are appreciated,” Doctor Leaf sniffed. “Walk with me.”

Doctor Leaf rose upon his haunches and climbed down from his berth. Rubyk cast his glance around and saw that a number of glinting eyes were fixed upon him, some peering out from folds of hanging curtains. Doctor Leaf jerked his head toward the curtain separating the staff’s grotto hideaway from the rest of the hotel. The outside world asserted itself in sharp focus once they had passed the curtain of bead-universes, and Doctor Leaf led Rubyk into the gardens, and from there into one of the labyrinths. Rubyk raised his eyes and saw a winged equine figure out at sea whirling rapidly over the surface of the waters, coaxing streams of vapour upward, where they suddenly condensed and burst outward, like popcorn, into white, puffy clouds. It was an hypnotic movement, and Rubyk did not realize at once that the buck had broken his silence.

“Mister Rubyk,” said Doctor Leaf, in low tones, “I tell you this in strictest confidence. Do you hear me? What I tell you here, you must breathe to no other pony, nor deer, nor any other creature under the sun until your investigation is over. Possibly not even then. Do you agree to my term?”

Rubyk scowled. “Another shackle. I will accept your bond, Doctor, if only for that I love you for the aid you have given my blood-kin since we arrived in this haunted place. But though I may swear in my own person, yet an Aktur of Trotheim must at times move strong and swift to break all bonds and serve justice to evil. Say what you must with that before your eyes.” Rubyk’s hard eyes softened, and the unicorn added, “I am sorry that it must be so.”

“Harrumph,” sniffed Doctor Leaf, trotting ahead in the labyrinth so that his back was turned to Rubyk. The Clavia remained silent for four revolutions of the labyrinth as they moved closer to the center. As they stepped into the center of the labyrinth, Doctor Leaf stopped and sighed, and the pair stood still by the sundial.

“Answer me this, Rubyk,” said Doctor Leaf. “Does a strong and swift move involve a long slumber in an eternal glacier?” The unicorn looked down upon the petite deer with an expression as though he were staring up from the bottom of a deep well.

“It might, friend Doctor. In truth, it might.”

“I see.” Again, silence fell between them. Doctor Leaf turned his head down to the grass, appearing to wrestle with an Ursa Major within his own conscience. As the Clavia deliberated, pawing at the earth, Rubyk again squinted toward the winged figure in the distance building more and more clouds into a towering thunderhead. Once the figure had gathered past some ineffable threshold of “enough”, it stopped, hovering before the tower of clouds, and for only a moment, a glint like sunlight reflecting from a mirrored surface flashed from the figure, and gradually, Rubyk saw the nascent thunderhead darken and, little by ever so little, begin to swell. The figure began to make its way back toward the mainland when Doctor Leaf’s voice broke the still air.

“I accept your caveat, Aktur,” the Clavia said, moving to exit from the labyrinth’s heart.

“Why?”

“Call me a dazzle-eyed fawn, but I believe a pony who has guile on his mind does not announce that he mightdo a thing if duty compels it. He just does it, and toss the consequences.” A smile flickered across Doctor Leaf’s muzzle, but it was gone again as soon as his next whispered words. “I will tell you what I know, Mister Rubyk, and what I only think that I know.”

“I am listening,” said Rubyk, his voice no louder than another leaf in the breeze.

“I know this much: last night, there was a Clavia in that room with that horrible stallion shortly before he died. Very shortly. It might have even been when the victim… expired.” Doctor Leaf shot a glance backward toward Rubyk, but if he had been expecting a reaction from the unicorn, he was disappointed; the unicorn’s face might have been a sheet of ice for all the expressiveness it held.

“How do you know that, friend doctor?” came the answering rustle of the leaves.

“From the residue of the spells in that room. Did you count them, Aktur?”

“Four. More than that, I could not tell. I am not a seer into the Aurora or a logicmaster with eyes to see such things.”

“But you know your own talents well enough to recognize… let us say… a truthing-charm on a choker that you might put on a pony to loosen his lips?”

Rubyk’s eyebrows rose. “Yes. I would.”

“In the same way, I recognize that telltale feel of the magic of my own people. It has more… ah… ‘horns’ than your kind does, more jagged around the edges. Two of the spells that were cast in Calvados Apple’s suite last night were cast by Clavia, Mister Rubyk. I am as sure of this as I am that the same is dead and lying in stasis in the cellars.”

Rubyk blinked. “Why is he there?”

“I and a few of the other staff who wish to remain nameless took the body to the cellars. I am keeping him there rather than giving him the quiet burial in the bald hills that is all he deserves against hope that someone will be able to see what my bad eyes cannot.”

“I… see,” said Rubyk, looking down to the earth as he frowned deeply. A thin glow surrounded his horn for a moment from the unicorn’s concentration. “That… is indeed very strong evidence, friend Doctor.”

“And I warn you, Aktur, do not make me regret telling you this. As for what I only think that I know…” the Clavia trailed off.

Rubyk nodded encouragingly, casting his eyes around for hungry ears as they approached the exit of the labyrinth. “Say on, Doctor. I value even your suspicions.”

“I think that it was Papaya in that suite… at that time. No, no!” Doctor Leaf hissed, glancing back to the grim expression settling over the Aktur of Trotheim’s face. “Nothing like that. For I know this just as surely as I know that there was a Clavia in Calvados’ rooms: Papaya did not kill that pony. I know her. She simply could not have done it,” he said, laying stress on every word.

Rubyk looked away from the little deer. Doctor Leaf turned about, holding up a foreleg. “You don’t believe me,” he said as Rubyk stopped in place a few steps from the exit to the labyrinth.

“To the contrary, friend Doctor. That I do believe you is what makes me so very perplexed.” Shaking his head, the Aktur of Trotheim stepped over the body of the Clavia, trotting slowly in the direction of the Grand Foyer. Doctor Leaf watched the tall unicorn go, doubt gnawing at his bowels.

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

Chapter Six

The Grotto Spectre

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

By the tenth jeweler she had bothered with impertinent questions – well, that morning – Madeleine Crumpet experienced a bitter and reluctant epiphany. She smiled, showing just a few too many teeth to be really sincere, at the Clavia doe who ran a kiosk in jade and coral gewgaws and said quickly,

“Really, thank you Pawpaw dear, you’ve been of the utmost help. No, dear, I mean it! I’m quite sure that stallion did look a titch suspicious walking down High Street! How excellent to catch up, but I’m afraid I really must be off. Look me up at Largo’s place, will you, while I’m in town? Lovely! Until then, dear, goodbye!”

Madeleine was not sure how fast one had to canter before one got up to a gallop, but she had certainly just expanded the definition.

Wiping her brow with the back of a fetlock under the high (and hot) sun, Madeleine heard the bell tower peal the high crescendo of the Celestine Chimes. She counted each deep gong of the brass bell that followed.

Eleven. Madeleine sighed. The tide would be swelling over the causeway at any minute, if it had not already. Too late to go back to the hotel for lunch.

Ah, well, it was time for a change in tactics anyway. The tourist-mobbed sections of Currycape had proven barren hunting-grounds – metaphorically speaking, of course! she added to herself, thinking of very tall unicorns – and so a visit among Currycape’s unmentionables and ne’er (and ne’er e’er) do-wells might well be in order. Chuckling, the unicorn mare turned down High Street and made her way northward, passing ponies buying and tourists click-clacking and bakeries hawking sugar-dusted tartlets made out of those tiny limes that grew like weeds on the islands. Though her stomach grumbled, Madeleine had too much coffee still running through her veins to bother about that now. How in Celestia’s blazing sun (and how it blazed to-day!) did that Rubyk keep himself so steady with all of the stuff that went down his throat? Perhaps it came with the territory of being – well – a giant, mused Madeleine as she passed an invisible line into another Currycape entirely.

Being a giant would not necessarily make a pony more resistant to the head-kick that was coffee, though. As she mused, tidy rows of bright-painted houses gave way to hunched clusters of thatch-roof shacks, and whitewashed Hippolytan columns seemed to melt into muddy lean-tos of scrap metal and wooden oddments. The well-kept cobbles of Currycape’s streets stopped abruptly at the edge of the flat lands near the shoreline, and only well-trodden dirt paths, dusty in the noon-day and a mire of slime in the rain, ran up the face of the hills until they became too sheer for anyone but a very sure-footed goat to tread on, let alone live there. Tufts of thick-stemmed grasses struggled for a purchase in the thin soil, and bits of refuse – torn receipts, a bottle cap here, half of the rest of the bottle lying not far away – blew and roll and tumbled freely in the stiff breeze blowing in from the sea. Madeleine passed several Clavia bucks on the dirt path who stared at her from dark-lined eyes as she passed, head held high.

“Hello again, Withers,” Madeleine said aloud to nopony in particular. “You’re looking lovely, as usual.” Yet in spite of the Withers being… well… the Withers, Madeleine returned the enthusiastic wave of a colt as she passed an hut where his mother, an unicorn mare named “Canvas Strap” – something like that – sat weaving palm fibers into baskets by careful levitation.

“Hullo, Miss Crumpet!” Canvas Strap – or was it “Sandal” something-or-other? – called out in a sweet, if raggedy voice. Madeleine flashed a bright smile and called back:

“Why, good morning dear! You wouldn’t happen to know if old Hodgepodge is still pitching his tent in the same little cleft in the rock, would you?”

“Thought you might be here for that, ma’am!” said the mare, giving a rasping laugh. “Naw, he’s struck the tent as Miss Largo didn’t want ‘his doings’ so as to be visible from the proper town. All for the clickety-clacks, you know! Hodge’s set up shop now down near the falls. Turn left up at the top of the hill and head into the woods until you see the old geld’s banner flapping in the breeze. And watch out for the bloatflies if you’re going up that way. They’re thick under the sun today.”

“Thank you, Ca – Sa… ah, thank you, dear! And do remind me to pick up one of your baskets on my way back into town,” Madeleine said airily. The colt and his mother – whatever her name actually was – waved an hearty good-bye. As she continued to trot through the Withers to the top of the hill, Madeleine felt the suspicious glances of the Withers ponies and deerfolk that had been upon her ever since she left the cobbles slide away from her like rain off a spellslicked cloak. She had the unspoken imprimatur; she was One of Us.

Of course, if all that failed, there was still the little bit of lead in her saddlebags that could put down any trouble before it really got started.

It did not take long for Madeleine to find the fluttering banner of Hodgepodge’s Pawn and Oddpodge showing its owner’s mark – a cluster of yellow bananas depending from an equally golden bit coin – on a field of black, flapping in the wind. It had been tacked at the edge of the wood to a tree using a nail that had seen better days next to the path that Madeleine knew led down to the river and falls.

“Really, Hodge? You couldn’t spring for a flagpole?” Madeleine muttered as she picked her way down the tree-lined path. Her tail flicked this way and that as the threat of stinging flies encroached in like an hungry cloud. “Don’t,” she warned, her horn aglow. The stinging insects seemed to think better of their plan and contrived to look busy amongst themselves.

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” grumbled the unicorn as she came to the site of Hodgepodge’s “shop.” There was seldom a term ever applied more loosely, thought Madeleine as she approached the black tent with its brass rings strung through any convenient tree branch. It was less a “tent” than a slouching compromise in an argument between forest and fabric. A flicker of magic thrust back what could, with some imagination, be called the tent flap, and the scowling head of a black unicorn stallion with a shaggy grey mane resembling nothing so much as steel wool flecked with rust thrust itself out into the light. Blinking his bleary eyes half at the light and half at the sight of his new customer, the unicorn’s eyes ran up and down Madeleine’s body. When he saw her mark, his whole face brightened

“Tirek caress me in the morning, if it ain’t Maddie Crumpet in flesh and flank!” the stallion cackled over the burble of the nearby river, showing the inside of a mouth that had as much silver and gold as most wallets. Madeleine smiled thinly and pulled her saddlebags just a little tighter around her as she ducked inside.

“Well, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, good sir! Have we met?” she purred, looking around at the “shop’s” interior that, despite the fact that its contents were always changing, never seemed to change. The drooping bookcases groaning under metal scrap were neatly in the center as always; heaps of unsorted glass pieces and refuse stood (or, rather, slouched) along the back “wall” for Clavia glasscasters to buy up and remould. On the west wall sagged a few battered magic tomes and scrolls on a bookshelf actually put to its proper use, while on the east side stood a pegboard on which hung various mouth-tools, cutlery, and even a rusted sword that Madeleine suspected was very recent shipwreck salvage. While some of the tropical sun managed to break into the tent through an unsewn tear or a threadworn patch, Hodgepodge’s store was perennially lit by the guttering light of chipped lampwood staves that had been recharged in the bleaching sunlight a few hundred times too many, throwing grimy shadows on the hoof-trodden earth beneath. To the merchant and his usual customers, the occult air was an aid for the kind of business they got up to in here; for Madeleine, on a different mission, the crowding murk was merely annoying. The tip of her horn flashed, and a citrine light illuminated the tent around her as she walked about the piles of Hodgepodge’s “merchandise.”

“Well, if pretty lady doesn’t remember rummy ‘Podge, maybe he might see to interesting her in some, ah, verylate acquisitions? It’s sure as theft and taxes, I say, what a little glimpse of gold and gems can do for a gel’s memory. There’s some pretty things here, yes indeed, some very pretty bangles indeed, if the lady remembers how to ask proper-like,” Hodgepodge said, throwing a toothy grin toward Madeleine that glinted in the light of her illumination spell. Hodgepodge had set up an oblong table near the tent flap that was covered by a natty green cloth in better condition than most of the unicorn “merchant’s” merchandise to have a full view of the store. The shabby stallion stood behind it with abacus cradled in a foreleg and cash-box open on the table.

“Oh! Well, how about that,” cooed Madeleine with a little mock-exclamation. “I do believe I just remembered something.”

“And what would that be?” said Hodgepodge as Madeleine walked up to his table. She met his own smile with one just as smug.

“That I never ask about important things,” said Madeleine, throwing back the cloth from a corner of the table and showing the glass case that actually lay underneath. Hodgepodge laughed and whisked away both cloth and cash box, and the “pretty things” inside the case glinted in the light from Madeleine’s horn. Rings and bracelets cluttered in unkempt piles, some of which radiated the dull mental pressure of enchantment. Necklaces of pearls or chains or semiprecious stones were tightly wound in snail-shell coils and laid on a rough rectangle of violet silk. Opposite the jewelry was a group of thin-necked vials of variously coloured liquids huddled in conspiracy, each of which wore its own dirty, illegible tag like a necklace.

“Oh, yes,” said Madeleine, the mare’s gaze caressing a tight coil of malachite and lapis lazuli beads. “Very pretty, Hodgepodge. You’ve gotten your fetlocks around some nice little pieces this time. But before that…” Madeleine produced a platinum band from her saddlebag set with four pearls in each of the compass directions, sliding it across the glass toward the black unicorn. An hungry look came into Hodgepodge’s eye, and he took it up in an eager magical grip. As he rubbed each of the pearls across his teeth and made a show of trying the metal with his tongue, Madeleine’s continued the act, adding in a sultry whisper, “I’m not here just for pretty things. There will be time enough for them later. But I need a stallion with his eyes open right now. Can’t you please help out an old friend, ‘Podge?”

Wiping a thin bit of drool from the corner of his mouth, the black unicorn shrugged. “That all depends on what ‘Podge is supposed to have been seeing. Little things, oh, he sees those everywhere – here a spade goes missing, or down in town, an out-townie can’t find his click-clacking camera after he wanders a little too close to the hills up at the north side of town – disreputable sort of place, and all that!” Hodgepodge rasped, adding a phlegmatic chuckle. “But the big things, well… old ‘Podge is getting awful old. Lampwood gets awfully hard on the eyes through years, so many years, and his eyes aren’t what the young Hodge’s used to be…”

“Oh, fine, you old grafter,” snipped Madeleine, producing a brilliant-cut emerald and holding it up in her horn’s grip so that its internal faces reflected the citrine light. Rapine lit the black unicorn’s eyes, and Madeleine had to suppress a shiver of disgust as she felt his steely-grey magic take it from hers. “But it’s an awfully high price to pay for information, I hope you know.”

Hodgepodge’s glinting smile only broadened as the unicorn cheerfully added the platinum band to the others in the glass case, whereas he slipped the emerald into the cash-box and latched it tight, without even turning around to look at the operation. That, Madeleine realized, was a move that must have taken some practice.

“Glory to ginny old Sol Invictus!” Hodgepodge laughed. “It’s a miracle I tell you, pretty lady – these old eyes can see again, clear as the noon-day out there!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Madeleine said, looking not at the other unicorn’s flashing teeth. She turned her eyes down to the piles of rings and fetlock bands in the case. “You haven’t seen any cameras coming up this way lately, have you, ‘Podge?”

Hodgepodge’s smile vanished. Madeleine had, admittedly, as little traffic with the Hodgepodge’s brand of business as possible over the years. But the expression of perplexity on the grimy miser’s muzzle did not seem to be a put-on. “No lying, Maddie, not a one. It’s been just the usual crowd of greasy hooves and families stuck out in the Withers for weeks. Anything in particular I should have been keeping my eyes open for?”

“Huh.” Well, it had been worth a try. “What about anyone from Largo’s pile of rocks?”

“Interesting question,” Hodgepodge rasped, rubbing his chin. “In the event that I had, what would be the point in me telling it to an out-townie without much of a chance to do something about it? Doesn’t quite seem fair to the good deer of Currycape to go wagging tongues without a good cause.” He shot a glance to Madeleine’s saddlebags.

Madeleine made a noise in her throat somewhere between a sigh and a growl. “Do all stallions have such appetites, I wonder? Let me have that one,” she said, pointing out a golden band studded with diamonds and one large, creamy pearl, “and if what you have to say is useful to me, I might – I said might, ‘Podge – let you have your hooves on this as well, as a gift… from me to you.” Madeleine produced, after a moment’s hesitation, a small, clear pebble with flat faces from her bag’s inner pocket. She slid it across the glass top of the case toward the other unicorn, leaving a deep scratch in the surface. Hodgepodge’s jaw actually went slack, and Madeleine saw (though it made her mane itch) saliva pooling around the stallion’s shining teeth. “Couldn’t you see fit to trusting an old friend? I swear by Celestia I won’t tell a soul who isn’t on a strict need-to-know basis.”

“I-I…” stammered Hodgepodge. The unicorn swallowed his spittle and picked up the stone, holding it to one eye. He licked his lips and said, carefully, “I think we just might be able to make a deal, Maddie.”

“So someone from the hotel was here recently. Who was it, and what did they buy?”

“Two Clavia from the hotel. There was one doe, a fine-looking young thing, came to see me twice over the past two days. Couldn’t tell you her name, but she left here not too long ago.”

“As in ‘this morning’, not that long ago?”

“Yeah. First time to buy, second time to sell.”

Madeleine looked hard at Hodgepodge. “And do you mind telling me what went on both of those times?” The black unicorn nodded his head, and in a moment that infuriating grin was back on his snouty face.

“As a matter of fact, I do – client confidentiality and all that. Sorry, Maddie.”

Madeleine’s nostrils flared, and the light from her horn flared bright. Hodgepodge shielded his eyes, and when the light had died down, he regarded the mare with a wary glance out of the corner of his eye. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves.

Two gems and a platinum band is an high a price to pay for information, Madeleine thought. Sorry, Mister Rubyk, but I’m at my limit here.

“Never you mind that, Hodge,” said Madeleine, a touch too loud. “What about the buck?”

“Oh, old ‘Podge recognized him well enough. It was Doctor Leaf. He came up to see me in the wee hours two mornings ago, whispering at the flap there in that Canterlot accent of his. He never sells nothing, but on occasion I do get my hooves around some potions and such he finds convenient for physicking.”

“I see… does he often come at such hours?” Madeleine asked, wishing she had her dictosprite.

“It’s not un-usual to see him at such hours,’” Hodgepodge said, throwing Madeleine a smirk. Madeleine’s ear-tips went red, and she nearly snorted. Sensing the change in the air, Hodgepodge stepped back. “I-I mean, I think he comes whenever Miss Largo lets him off of her leash, what with her not liking her ‘little ones’ seen with the likes of Withers-folk.”

“I see,” Madeleine said again. Then what was the other doe doing out here in full view of everypony’s mother in a town full of tourists?

“I don’t suppose Doctor Leaf picked up anything unusual?” Madeleine said. It was a last shot in the dark. But Hodgepodge only shook his head.

“I told you, Maddie, old Hodge isn’t at liberty to say. All I can tell you is that he has a standing order with me for some certain tinctures and potions and – and I don’t know what else. I never had a head for the stuff.”

“Listen, ‘Podge,” Madeleine said as she reared up and drove her forehooves on the case with a shudder of glass. “A pony by the name of Calvados Apple was murdered at the hotel last night. There are circumstancesthat make it impossible to do this in the usual way. But I’ve seen the pony that is trying to solve this murder, and he will eat you alive if you know something about this and don’t tell me right now. So I ask you again: what did Doctor Leaf buy from you?”

The gleam from Madeleine’s horn seemed to narrow in on Hodgepodge like a spotlight. A bead of sweat ran down the black unicorn’s temple. “Now, when you say murder, Maddie…”

“I mean dead, gone, deceased! As in the mainland police or the Royal Guard will come here and start asking you these impertinent questions instead of me if we find out you’ve been holding out on us.” Madeleine fought to swallow down the snarl clawing up her throat. She succeeded – barely. The walk uphill had been long, and her empty stomach was making her peevish. Perhaps picking up one of those lime tartlets would have been the better course of action after all…

“I’m wouldn’t… I don’t mean no harm. If somepony’s dead, why, old ‘Podge’s door is always open!” Hodgepodge said, forcing a smile. “It’s only that… there’s a… there’s a trust between… between pawnbroker and clients…”

Madeleine slammed a third stone down onto the glass case, which nearly cracked under the impact. This one was red, angular, and dark like blood in the dim light.

“What do you know, ‘Podge?”

“P-poison, Miss Crumpet,” Hodgepodge said. The unicorn’s voice and magic grip shook as he moved the stone on the counter into the cash box. “But there’s some medicines, too. Doctor Leaf has a standing order for some of the stuff what the mainland controls along with some of the commoner stuff like Poison Joke and the downright mundane stuff like poppy-drugs for pain. I get them whenever my own suppliers on the mainland can zip them through the ports – which isn’t often. I don’t ask questions about what he might ever use them for. It’s not my business to know.”

“No, it isn’t,” Madeleine said. The mare was seething at what she had just done – three whole gems done and gone! – and seeing Hodgepodge’s bungled attempt at hoof-wringing was just too much. “It’s your business to keep the Withers running. I know it. I respect that.” She glared at the stallion, who winced and held his abacus out in front of him protectively like a shield.

“However, in the future, Hodgepodge dear,” Madeleine said, imitating Rubyk’s voice gone cold and terrible, “perhaps you won’t make such a mule of yourself when dealing with old friends. Good day.”

Madeleine turned abruptly and stomped out of the tent, flicking her tail at the cowed Hodgepodge and leaving him in darkness.

Outside the tent, Madeleine looked up at the cloud of flies that were beginning to descend on her.

“I do sincerely hope you are having better luck than me, Mister Rubyk.”

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

Chapter Seven

Wasp’s Nest

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

Jett Black approached Rubyk in the Grand Foyer, wings ruffled and halfway extended. Rubyk lay taking up the greater part of a sofa with closed eyes and troubled brow – either thinking, or dozing, or both. “Aktur,” Jett Black said. “Why are you doing this?”

Rubyk half-opened one eye. “This what?” said Rubyk as if he were murmuring through a brass speaking-tube.

“You are a smarter pony than that,” said the pegasus, unfurling his wings fully.

“Ah. You mean my investigation.” Rubyk yawned and so cleared away the foggy sleep that had been starting to fill in the corners of his mind. The Aktur of Trotheim rose up upon his hooves and met the pegasus’ challenging stare with his own. “How did you hear about it, friend Jett?”

“My ears are open,” he said, folding them flat against his skull. “And I know that yours are, too. So why do you go through with this charade?”

“You object, friend Jett?”

“You may praise my Princess that I do. You will commit an atrocity against justice if you go on the way you are doing.” Jett Black glowered and beat his outstretched wings just once, sending a stiff wave of air through the Grand Foyer and mussing manes and loose papers. His wings snapped to his sides with a crisp movement. “What happened to Calvados Apple was no sin against anypony on the earth nor spirit in the heavens. It was justice itself. You will find that out if you keep going in this way.”

“So you say, friend Jett, so you say…” Rubyk said quietly, looking intently at the pegasus he had found to be so companionable not a day before. “Will you answer me but one question?”

Jett Black snorted in Rubyk’s face. “So you do intend to continue. Do not say that I did not warn you.”

“What was your relationship to Calvados Apple before you two came to this island?” Rubyk said, ignoring the remark. He earned a look of pure scorn for his trouble.

“Rubyk,” the pegasus said, slowly, clipping the edges of every word, “I had no relationship with Calvados Apple whatever before I came to this island.”

“I understand.” Rubyk smiled at Jett Black, showing the pointed tip of every tooth in his muzzle. “And I thank you for your advice, friend Jett. I take it in the spirit you intended. But if you get in my way again, I will tear you apart. Personally. Go from me.”

Frost was forming around Jett Black’s hooves. Noticing it, the pegasus tossed his mane and lifted himself into the air with two great wing-beats, looming over Rubyk’s head for a few long moments before dropping to the floor and storming out of the Grand Foyer through the doors of the old fortress. Rubyk watched him go, rubbing at his chin.

“Oh, do excuse me,” sounded Madeleine’s musical voice from the direction of the doors. The unicorn mare had only enough room to edge her way in past the combined girth of Jett Black and Jett Black’s wings as the pegasus blew through the doorway. Jett Black, and Jett Black’s wings, said nothing, but betook themselves both into the open air as soon as they had crossed the threshold. Spotting Rubyk, Madeleine flashed a weary smile and trotted over to the Aktur of Trotheim.

“Luck, friend Madeleine?” Rubyk said in his whispery voice.

“Unfortunately, Grandmare Fortuna had very little to do with it,” Madeleine answered. “I found out some things, but nothing that seemed like the sort of thing to solve a murder plot.”

“You read that serial-plot detective, though – ah… what is her name?”

“Shadow Spade?”

“That mare, yes. Does she not say that the little things, the things that ponies let slip because they really are unimportant become the strongest evidence for the right answer? There are many possibles, but there is always just the one solution that makes a world of sense out of all the truly unimportant details.”

“Something like that.” Madeleine looked up at the unicorn, a quizzical curl to her snout. “You never struck me as the type with the time to read that sort of thing, Mister Rubyk.”

“Just Rubyk – please. And you are quite right. I am not. But I find it helpful to know what other ponies think it takes to solve a crime like murder.”

“And what is that, Mis – er, Rubyk?” Madeleine said. Dropping the honorific still just tasted wrong. Rubyk looked down to her and opened his mouth to answer her when a shriek like a hungry wildcat of the North upon its prey shook the Grand Foyer.

“Ruu-byk!” cried the wildcat as she limped into the foyer, eyes alight with a fury that was scarcely equine. The Clavia behind the concierge’s desk – not Limon, but a Clavia buck Rubyk had not yet seen – crouched low, only the tips of his antlers visible. A few of the hotel staff went-glass-eyed and stood shock-still facing the Freidowager of Trotheim, while others took flight into an adjoining corridor, primal urges taking over. The wildcat snarled her trembling way to Rubyk, trailing a white fur rug behind her like a barbaric bridal gown, and collapsed into the whole of a sofa.

“Rubyk,” said Frost Pane, “I am dying, grandfoal mine. I shall be dead by evening come, and you shall give my bones to the fish for cleaning.”

“What is the matter, grandmama?” Rubyk said.

“I starve, Rubyk!” wailed Frost Pane. The Frei of Trotheim thrust out her back leg, pointing an accusing forehoof at it. “I waste away! You can see the very marrow in my bones for leanness! The food these deer would have us eat is fit for mules and beasts – not the pride of Trotheim!”

Rubyk heaved a sigh so deep it might have ruffled manes as Jett Black’s wings had done. “I will… I will see if the deer have another fish somewhere. I am hungry too, grandmama.”

“See it done! See it done soon! Oh, to have escaped from the Ice Sickness, only to waste away in a palace of delights with food for cows and sows and dogs! Oh, Trotheim, shall I ever again see your summerlong suns?”

Rubyk rolled his eyes and turned his head to Madeleine.

“I apologize for this interruption in our proceedings, friend Madeleine, but my grandmare needs her nourishment. I saw fit to purchase some suitable viands for us the last time I was on the mainland and had them stored away in the kitchens here. Please, if you would, see Frei Frost Pane to my rooms. I will join you both presently, and we may discuss then what to do next.”

Madeleine nodded and offered an hoof to Frost Pane.

A meal and a talk. That’s not so strange. I wonder why the secrecy? Madeleine thought to herself.

She did not need to wait long to find out.

*****

Though her stomach was screaming at her, calling her a daft filly and all manner of vile, unprintable things, Madeleine watched the spectacle of a Trotheim supper with a kind of bland fascination normally reserved for aircart fires and playoff games of buckball. It was beautiful; it was gruesome. As if they were in a foal’s pageant-play exaggerating the stifling table-manners of Canterlot’s courtly circles, Rubyk and the grand dame of Trotheim meticulously clave, piece by shuddering piece, a great silvery beast with an underbite more monster than fish; and like a pair of untamed, lumbering lupines from the far-off Everfree, the noble unicorns of Trotheim gulped down their tepid meal at a lupine pace, with all the dainty graces of Timberwolves set about their feast. Adding to the baroque absurdity of the scene was the thoroughly civilized way each would wipe their mouth of the piscine residuum and sip at their own beverage of choice – Whinniennese sherry for the Freidowager, and still more of his bitter, black coffee for the beleaguered Aktur of Trotheim – before repeating the cycle with a freshly carved piece of the poor half a creature lying on the sitting-room table. At the end, they even split the head (“grandmama” got the half with the eyes). It was revolting; and it was, like everything else about Rubyk and Frost Pane, utterly magnetic.

After… that was over with, Rubyk cleared away their dishes to the sideboard with a bit of distracted levitation and reopened the curtains, which had been drawn during the course of the meal. Frost Pane reclined on the couch, the furs draped over the grand old mare making her seem even more massive than she already was. Rubyk offered Madeleine coffee, or tea – or perhaps she might care for something with a bit more bite?

“No, thank you, Mister Rubyk,” she commented weakly as her insides, with a burst of ingenuity, suddenly invented a litany of fresh-coined abuses. With a look more apologetic than satiated, Rubyk sat himself at the table and cleared his throat. (Of what, Madeleine did not particularly care to think.)

“I thank you, friend Madeleine, for your patience in waiting for us. Not many ponies well understand what years of the subboreal cold beyond the Crystal Mountains have wrought in the generation of Trotheim… or why our ilk are rarely seen where your own Princesses rule.” He smiled at her, then, and - oh by Celestia, those teeth! And the bits that were still in those teeth! Madeleine smiled her own clammy grin in return.

I never want to see that again as long as I live.

“Why do you keep the pretty little thing waiting, Rubyk?” barked Frost Pane with the good humour of a full belly. “You have this killing business to discuss, no? You have lies and duggery to root up, yes?”

“Yes, grandmama.”

“Well, get on with it then, muff-brained boy! I shall sit here and listen and wipe your frostblained nose when you are ready to beat your horn in two from ponder strain.”

“Yes, grandmama,” said Rubyk again with the same mild agreement as one used in speaking of the weather timetables. He turned to Madeleine. “We have now heard the testimony of each pony who might in a sound imagination had anything to do with the murder of Calvados Apple. We have as accurate an autopsy report on that poor body as we are likely to get upon this island. I have heard all from the hotel staff, while you have seen everything that there is to see in the town. Tell me then, friend Madeleine: how much closer do we trot to the end of this road?”

“Frankly? I still hold that it was the cousin – you know, Bergamot. Something about that overwrought state you put him was awfully contrived.” Madeleine fished the scrolls of tight dictosprite script from the early morning on out of her saddlebags and unfurled them onto the table. Rubyk leaned in close, squinting at the text. Madeleine continued as he labored over the day’s evidence, line by nearsighted line. “Of all the ponies here in this hotel, I would say he was the most likely to kill his own cousin. Just look at how much he hated the old lech! What we saw in the casino last night was just the tail-tip of a long line of slights and grievances. I suppose that when Calvados told him to put his ‘city ways’ where he did, Mister Orange just broke. Ponies do for much less than that!”

“But why come here if there was that much rancor between them? Enough hate to kill one’s own kinsfellow…?” Rubyk muttered.

“You don’t think that was enough motive for murder, Mister Rubyk?” Madeleine asked, her voice twisting upward about a fifth in surprise. Rubyk raised his head.

“Hmm? Oh, no. I think he had every motive for murder. Bergamot Orange was full of such goads until just today,” Rubyk said, as if Madeleine had just asked him whether he thought grass was normally that lovely shade of fuchsia. In spite of the indecorum, Madeleine’s mouth hung open. Had she really heard that rightly?

“Did I really hear you rightly?” said Madeleine, the mare’s voice now raised in sheer perplexity. “Do you mean to tell me that you have strung us all along like beads on a line until now?”

“What? Oh, no, nothing of the sort. I said that he had every motive for murder. I am most unsure whether he had the one motive for this murder.”

“And what is the difference?” Madeleine rubbed her temples. “Perhaps I am beginning to flake under the strain, Mister Rubyk, but I cannot follow you. Please explain to an old piece of mica what in Tartarus you mean by that.” Somewhere in the background, Frost Pane suppressed a snicker. Madeleine felt that she had many years ahead of her before she would understand the cogwheels of that old mare’s mind.

“Most certainly,” said Rubyk, and Madeleine had to lift her ears to even hear him, so low had his voice dropped on a full belly. “Think of it in this way: a pony always has a reason for his actions, whether that reason is imbecilic or genius itself. But the action that he takes is always fitted to his ends, or else the end is not his realend.” The tall unicorn began to trace the long lines in the grain of the table-top. It was clearly an habit born out of long abstraction; but, if it helped the Aktur of Trotheim do whatever it was that he did, and did well, Madeleine supposed that she could find it only mildly irritating. “So when a pony decides in himself to make a crime, if he does it for the sake of the crime itself, he does it for an end in himself, and he cannot help but make it a beautiful crime. Oh, yes, Madeleine – a murder can be a beautiful thing, like the cold beauty of the mountain that claims the explorer who assays to try it unprepared. Such a murder is a crime of pride.”

As he talked, Rubyk’s horn began to softly glow with the light of a subtle, almost unconscious magic. The cube on the chain about Rubyk’s neck shone a pale light, and patterns of frosty lace spread out beneath Rubyk’s busy hooves. “If a pony acts for an end outside of himself, the crime of murder becomes a quite different thing. It might be quick, cool, and quite medical in the end. Or it might be a matter of a sudden moment of pounding blood and flushed ears, carried along by the same wild forces as stampedes and avalanches. The first calculates and leaves no evidence if it can be helped; in the second, to think is the same as doing, and it only thinks of how to hide what evidence it leaves behind.”

Madeleine felt a bit like a filly staring up at a sum on the blackboard. It seemed to her that there was a misty shape in the fog behind all of these digressions. If she could only reach out and take hold of it…! Rubyk took no notice of her as he continued to whisper, covering the table in opulent geometries with every word:

“The murder of Calvados Apple is a puzzle. It is like none of these criminal passions, and that is why it makes so very little sense.” Without removing his eyes from the increasingly intricate rings and spreading fractal blooms on the table, Rubyk’s horn grew brighter, and he drew the little scroll containing Dr. Leaf’s tidy mouth-writing out of his own saddlebags, offering it to Madeleine. She took it up and unfurled it, eyes scanning the neat lines. These widened as she realized exactly what she was reading.

“Your most estimable Doctor Leaf tells me that Calvados Apple certainly did not die of any one thing, though there was only one fatal stroke. He was beaten, poisoned, shot in the shoulder, and likely bucked in the head, and if one of these which came first was not enough to do him in, the next ones would surely compensate for whatever was still lacking in their malice. The real question, friend Madeleine, is not what the evidence shows. What we do not yet know, for what I do not yet see, is why all the types should be mixed up in this crime? Who was Calvados Apple? Why was this pony deserving of a beautiful blow upon the head, a cruel and chill-blooded poisoning, and not one, but two blows from a pony carried along by his own passions?”

Rubyk looked up from his tracing fixed Madeleine with a stare as hard as diamonds. “Bergamot Orange had every motive for murder; I firmly believe this. But he could not have had the motive for every murder. What I believe that the evidence demands us to say is strange: but it is true. Many ponies may have hated Calvados Apple; perhaps many ponies entertained the desire to kill him. But only one of them wanted him dead.”

A light came into Madeleine’s eyes, even as the ice beneath Rubyk’s hooves seemed to fall into her gut. “If that is true, Mister Rubyk, then for every kind of crime, there would be at least…”

Rubyk nodded gravely and heaved a great sigh as gloomy and mournful as the north wind. “At least one pony in Calvados Apple’s suites around the time of the murder, yes. It seems as ludicrous as a filly’s parade, but the solution makes more sense than the alternative, which makes a slaughter-muddle of the psychology.”

Madeleine barely heard the last words. Her mind was already leaping like a thief through an unknown darkness like a burglar on the Canterlot house-tops, leaping from roof to lonely spire. “But…” she said, choosing her words with great care, “that would mean we still have no idea who could have done each kind of crime. We are no closer now than when we started – not unless we could know which pony would necessarily commit each type of murder!”

Rubyk sighed again, a fricative growl more bestial than equine lying just below the surface. “There my surety stops. I cannot know which ponies in this hotel would have committed which kind of crime had they the right kind of driving hate hidden away beneath their throats. At best, I can say which type it seems to me least likely that they should commit if given the chance.” He snarled and rose, great agitation written into even that gesture, and Madeleine involuntarily flinched back. Fortunately for her, the Trotheim noble seemed not to notice. “What evidence do I have? What are my weapons here? The lies come out on the stand, but I do not have the means to catch anyone in a lie! What do I have? A pack of testimonies without a chink to even slide a knife through; one deer’s opinions on what made a pony into a body, and only two days. Two days for all the frozen wheels of justice to grind this case to powder – and may it take that miserable mare, Largo, with the rest!”

It was Madeleine’s turn for a frosty word. “I will thank you, Mister Rubyk, not to talk about Miss Largo in that way. She is an old and dear friend of mine.”

In an instant, the fury drained from the monstrous unicorn’s face, and his snout turned from that of a snarling beast to something much more equine. If it was possible in that mien, the Trotheim noble actually looked abashed. “I beg your pardon, friend Madeleine. I forgot myself for a moment. But our difficulties do yet have their root in her will.”

“Be that as it may,” said Madeleine, “and in the present case I don’t deny that Largo has been behaving rather more oddly than usual, surely there must be something we have missed? Where can we possibly go from here?”

“Oh, what impossible foals…” That did not come from Rubyk. Madeleine jerked her head to Frost Pane, the Freiof Trotheim regarding both of them with an half-lidded look of contempt. Frost Pane snorted and went on:

“Rubyk, you disgrace the house! You spend too long looking close at the cracks you miss the glacier about to calve away beneath you! Does grandmama need to chew your meat and spit it up again for you to save you the trouble?”

Madeleine had seen Rubyk take on a number of different expressions during their (very) brief acquaintance – everything from mirthful smiles to a cold and snarling anger. But she did not expect that she would see the one emotion now writ unmistakably upon his muzzle. Was that actually… embarrassment?

“What have I missed, grandmama?” Rubyk said. He sounded like a scolded foal.

Frost Pane slammed an hoof down, tearing into the sofa. “Listen to you! ‘Oh, grandmama, what have I missed?’ As if the pride of Trotheim were still learning his letters and showing his writing slate to his tutor for a candy-sweet. Feh!”

“Grandmama please, peace, peace, you must rest… You do not want another attack…”

“No, I do not, but you are like as the plague-frost to give me one! Fine for you then, and fine for me. I will tell you what my rheumy eyes see that you should and carry my grown grandfoal on my back.” Frost Pane leaned forward and rested her hooves on the table, sketching shaky lines in the middle of Rubyk’s geometries in frost using her hoof-tips.

“When fat and dozy ponies go on holiday, they bring with them all their house and cares and think they will reach back in time to the paradise-gardens, and seize a never-was for themselves by changing place.” Frost Pane drew the rough outlines of a squarish house and the archetypical desert island – an hump in the middle of the ocean with a single palm tree growing upon it. She wiped out the house with the flat of her hoof. “But they are fools and dung-daubers who so think, for they do not think, and they carry on their saddle their own worries as well as their house.” The palm tree remained a palm tree, but now it was surrounded by four walls and a garret roof.

Madeleine blinked. “I must admit, I’m a bit lost. What does this have to do with Calvados Apple’s murder?” she said. Or the price of pomegranates in Prance? – which she did not dare say aloud.

“In time, jeweler,” Frost Pane said, suddenly all sweetness and indulgence. Returning to her drawing, she desecrated a lacy spiral into infinity by setting down several crude equine stick-figures. “The end of the spear is that nopony ever summers or winters ever truly alone. Ponies go about with a thousand million phantoms in their own heads, and though they gallop into the frozen night and drink in the Aurora until they are slack-jawed prophet-dribblers, even then they cannot forget the weight of their own house on their shoulders.” The Frei of Trotheim drew another house, this one supported on the backs of the four ponies. Madeleine was suddenly struck by the image of stallions as pallbearers of a coffin the size and shape of an house.

“I… still do not follow, grandmama,” Rubyk said. The stallion had a nervous sort of smile plastered on his face. Frost Pane looked as though she might spit upon it.

“What a simple grandfoal is my lot…” The Frei of Trotheim shook her head. “Rubyk, the following is not the point – only learn from my long years!” She erased the curious pallbearers and began to draw more equine figures connected by lines drawn in quick, furious strokes that left gashes in the varnish.

“See, see, see!” she urged, pointing at the skewered figures that were already beginning to melt into a vague lack of outlines. “A pony never travels alone. His concern is for his house, and so the other way around by the wrongwise way. If one pony worries and cares, the whole house follows him. That is law; that is nature.”

Rubyk rubbed at his chin. “Do you mean, grandmama…” he said, glacially slow. “Do you mean that if one pony in a house had a motive to commit a crime, they might all have had the same motive?”

Slam! went Frost Pane’s hoof on the table like a gavel. A splinter flew and fell to the ground next to the sideboard on which rested dinner’s grisly remains.

“That is just what I mean to say, Rubyk! Now, now you see all! Oh, how long it took for my grandfoal to unstop his ears of the wax-plugs! Impossible boy!” But though she snorted and scolded, Madeleine saw the grin beneath the bluster.

Rubyk merely sat back, eyes tightly shut, as he digested this information (along with… urgh!). He was still as ice, and Madeleine could not see even that his sides moved with his breath. His lips moved, but no sound came forth that traveled farther than his own ears. But Madeleine could make out the outlines of a few recognizable words: “not alone,” “always two,” “look for pairs.”

“He will do that,” Frost Pane said to Madeleine as the latter stared on. “He is dead to the world until he sees it all at once for himself.”

“For how long?” said Madeleine.

“As long as it takes,” said Frost Pane. The Frei of Trotheim shrugged and settled back onto her couch beneath her furs. Her eyelids fluttered with a sudden wave of fatigue. “He will sit there until he pulls his mind out of whatever drifty place he’s fallen into.”

Rubyk’s eyes shot open, and he gasped with all the suddenness and subtlety of a lightning bolt out of the clear skies. “Can it be… yes. Yes, that might very well be the case. But I must know… I must be certain… And I need open eyes, wide open…”

“Something on your mind, Mister Rubyk?” said Madeleine. He did not answer her. Instead, he rose to his hooves and began to pace the room like a blind pony. He found his coffee cup from the earlier… repast… and poured himself fresh coffee until it overflowed. Lifting up the cup in his magical grip, he tilted his head back and poured the entire lot down his throat. Madeleine winced. Had he even felt that? He poured himself another and repeated this process twice more. Frost Pane merely gave a sleepy snort and closed her eyes.

Rubyk turned to Madeleine, the stallion’s face all alight with… with something. “I think, friend Madeleine, we have given Pome Apple long enough to rise up from the slime. Let us finally hear why he wanted to put away his uncle.”

*****

Finding Pome Apple turned out to be a more trying task than either Rubyk or Madeleine had anticipated. They found him in none of the common areas of the hotel, nor did the unicorn’s surly voice answer when Rubyk’s hoof thundered on the door of suite 505.

“Where under the high skies could he have gone?” Madeleine said as the two trotted once more through the Grand Foyer. In far-off Canterlot, Celestia was just putting the sun to its nightly rest, and outside the sunlight tarried in that uncertain state between daylight and darkness when the Princesses traded the throne of the vault of heaven. Rubyk frowned.

“I have an idea, friend Madeleine,” he said as he spotted Rock Skipper standing with his cap clutched in his hooves near the doors to the dining room. He began to make for the pegasus, but Rock Skipper saw the two as they entered and bounded over to them at a near-gallop.

“Chief! Miss Crumpet! Fluff my down, do I ever need to talk to you…” the pegasus said breathlessly. Madeleine scowled and made a tch tch sound, and with the wave of an hoof, the sound died in Rock Skipper’s throat.

“That’s a fine greeting for an old friend you just abandoned earlier this morning, Skipper. Where were you, hmm? Saw a cute young thing with a bow in her tail you just had to go up and get a better look at?”

The young stallion’s grey face went dirty-pink through and through from his ears to his neck. Rock Skipper slipped his newscolt’s cap back onto his head, pulling the bill down over his eyes.

“I’m… sorry, Miss Crumpet,” he said.

“You’re ‘sorry?’” Madeleine repeated, drawing out the word. “Oh, that I can see. You wouldn’t be that colour if you weren’t. So what was it, Skipper? Duty calling? What about Nature? – no, you know what? I don’t want to know. All I need to know is that you left me tramping through the Withers on my own, with nopony to help me if I were jumped or accosted or Luna only knows what else…”

“But… you’ve been in the Withers a thousand times, Miss Crumpet!” Rock Skipper said. The colour was beginning to drain out of his face, leaving only bafflement behind. “You know it as well as anypony local does!”

“Not the point, Skipper,” Madeleine said, rubbing her temple. “The Withers is still the Withers. The bad side of town is the same anywhere you go in Equestria. Just because I have ways to take care of myself doesn’t mean I couldn’t also stand the presence of a friend in unfriendly places.”

“But I saw…” began the pegasus.

“You saw what? That I was handling myself just fine? That I didn’t need any help? How did you figure?”

Rock Skipper’s wings drooped. “I – actually, never mind. It isn’t important. I will… I’ll see you later, Miss Crumpet.” Madeleine’s eyes followed Rock Skipper as the pegasus trotted slowly in the direction of the staff area. Rock Skipper’s eyes did not lift themselves from the floor.

Rubyk gave Madeleine a burrowing sort of look. “What?” she said.

“It is nothing at all important,” said Rubyk. “Come, friend Madeleine. Pome Apple still lies upcurled under some rock, and we must turn them all by hooves until he is found.”

Such darling imagery.

They finally found Pome Apple in the one place they truly last expected: seated at high table with Miss Largo as her own and solitary guest. Pome sat alone flanked by two empty chairs on either side in full view of the entire dining room. No shackles were placed upon the unicorn’s fetlocks, but judging from the two Clavia that stood like statues behind Miss Largo, clad in eveningwear instead of a guard’s cloak and kitchen whites, he had no need of any physical restraints. Pome stared down at his untouched plate of roasted vegetables, and Miss Largo sipped a mango sirop from a tiny cordial glass as Rubyk and Madeleine seated themselves at the high table.

“You know,” said Miss Largo, wiping her mouth with the corner of a napkin, “most ponies require an invitation to eat here. I do believe that this is the first exception since I came to head this hotel.”

Ignoring the proprietress, Rubyk said to Pome, “we are ready to hear your testimony.”

“And what makes y’all think I’m ready to give it?” Pome was tired. It was unmistakable in the ragged down-beat of his country accent. Still, the unicorn’s eye was defiant, and he sat shock-straight in his chair.

“That is still your story, is it?” Madeleine said, bringing the dictosprite out of her bag and setting it to busy flight. Miss Largo scrunched her muzzle and whispered something to one of the Clavia attendants behind her. The buck nodded and began to walk slowly at the edge of the dais on which the high table rested, his antlers sparking. A curtain like a heat shimmer descended around the table where he walked, and the sight-lines of the ponies dining outside all turned away from the dais. “You are still going to tell us that you ‘probably’ killed your uncle.”

“I still ain’t got a reason to change it,” Pome said. He glared a look that could rot apples. “Leastways of all to ponies who think they know what’s best when all they are is as good as head-bucking mules.”

And if she hadn’t been in the Withers earlier that day, such talk might have offended Madeleine. “I don’t think you are being sincere with us, Pome,” she said. “I think that you’re trying awfully hard to impress somepony. Maybe even that somepony is yourself. My only question is: why?”

Hit a vein there! cheered Madeleine as her words apparently struck home. The unicorn looked as if he had just taken a buck to the chest. Okay, it may have been a very limp sort of kick, but he definitely sat less easy in his own despond.

“Ridiculous,” Pome said. “Why would I need to impress myself? And what with?”

“For starters,” Madeleine said, letting her racing thoughts carry her along, “I don’t think that you always hated your uncle. You couldn’t possibly have hated him enough to come on this trip for… what, exactly? Business? Pleasure?” Like a jewel under a glass, Madeleine turned the unicorn over in her mind’s eye while he sat scowling.

“No,” Madeleine said. “You’re not a stallion that would go traveling for either of those. You’re not the world-trotting type, are you? There was another reason you came to this island with your uncle. What was it?”

“Duty,” spat Pome, the word ripping itself out of his throat. “I came along with him because I was the only one left to care about him. Do y’all understand that? The Apple clan mostly tries to forget about our whole branch of the family tree, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. Uncle Calvados had a way to make just about anypony mad at him – mad enough to spit. Is that clear enough for y’all’s standards?”

“As crystal…” Madeleine muttered.

“I’ve lived on Uncle Calvados’ plantation almost my whole life,” Pome Apple said. “It used to be that other family lived on the farm besides my uncle and me, and a few farmhands when the harvest comes around, but they all left. Uncle was… mean. In more than one way. The way it was told to me, one by one, his sons, his daughters, his brothers and sisters – all of them just up and left of a morning, each in their own time when they couldn’t take it anymore. The family all moved away for greener pastures in Manehattan or to help out on other Apple farms in Equestria.”

Like a burst dam, the torrent of words from Pome Apple continued without any prompting from Madeleine or Rubyk. Pome stared down at the tablecloth, meeting nopony’s eyes as he spoke over the scritch-scritching of the dictosprite.

“My mother was frail. One winter when we lived in Manehattan in a rented room, the radiator went bad. She got sick… and Uncle Calvados was my next-of-kin. So I moved back into that house, and I learned the family business, and I had to learn how to do for uncle what nopony else would or could. Eventually I became his secretary, assistant, companion – call it was y’all want, if it needed doing, I was the pony who pulled that cart. He… reared me like his own foal. I guess he was just lonely. So I loved him. Y’all understand that? I loved my uncle.”

“What changed?” broke in Rubyk. For a long moment, Pome did not answer.

“The letters,” he said finally.

“Come again?” said Madeleine. She looked down to the dictosprite transcript to make sure she had heard correctly. “What letters?”

“About maybe… three months before this trip, around the same time that I started to make arrangements for Uncle Calvados and I to come to the islands for his health and to meet Cousin Orange about his business contract, I started getting… well, letters. Notes, more like. They didn’t come in the normal post, and they would always show up slid through the mail slot alone. For all I know, whoever wrote them either is or hired a unicorn to zap ‘em wherever he wanted them to go.”

“These letters… notes… they were of a threatening nature?” Rubyk asked. Pome Apple shook his head.

“No. Not threatening. But they were honest. Brutally.”

“I don’t understand… what were they being honest about if not being threatening?” Madeleine said.

“About him, of course!” said Pome, as if that were the most evident thing in Equestria. “Uncle had gotten himself enemies, a few of them crazy over the years of him being… well, being Uncle Calvados. I usually just screened the crazy ones out before I gave ‘em to Uncle to read. It’s the crazy ponies that make threats.” Pome shook his head again. “Whoever this pony was, they weren’t crazy. All they really did was put down in black ink what Uncle Calvados had done over years. No accusing, no judging, nothing like that. Just… the truth.”

“Do you mind telling us what some of that truth might be? It might be relevant to your uncle’s murder,” said Madeleine, sounding a little too eager. Pome glared at her.

“Yeah. Matter of fact, I do mind. It ain’t relevant, ‘cause while my uncle may be dead, it weren’t for anypony writin’ a biography of what an awful stallion I got for kin.” Pome’s accent came out more thickly with the unicorn’s agitation.

“How do you know that, Pome Apple?” Rubyk whispered.

“I know it ‘cause one day, those letters, those notes, they changed. Oh, I’d been reading ‘em faithful up ‘til then. They were full of vile and acrimonious slander and lies – less’ that’s what I thought at first. But about the second month off getting’ them, I had to admit to myself they were all true. Somepony wrote them; I don’t know or much care who. But whoever it was, they knew, really knew who Uncle Calvados was. I started to see it for myself, started to see the real pony who had reared me up. And I hated what I saw.”

Pome began to crush an unused dinner fork underhoof. “I hated him. I hated my uncle after I started to see for myself. I’d just had blinkers on before then. It’s amazing what a pony can block out when they’re not willing to see, isn’t it?” Silent and sympathetic, Rubyk nodded his head.

“About a month ago – it would’ve been just a few weeks before we left on this trip – the letters started talking to me. Just… asking questions. Asking what I would do. Whether I wanted to live my whole life under that kind of pony. Whether I had any conscience left. Asking if I wanted to do something about it all. If I’d ever thought about it. I hadn’t thought about it – not up until then. But after that, I haven’t been able to think of almost nothing but.”

“And so you wanted to kill your uncle as of several weeks ago,” Rubyk said, eyes watching the dictosprite add it to the record in black ink.

“That’s right.” Pome gave the most mirthless laugh that Madeleine had ever heard. It sounded empty as a wine barrel. “You see now why y’all are just wasting your time? Take me back to Canterlot and have Celestia give me a royal escort right up to the moon. I’m ready to face up for what I did.”

Silence fell at the table. The soup course was brought by a dapper-dressed buck, but Rubyk, Madeleine, and Pome all ignored their helpings. Miss Largo sipped at her vichyssoise from a tiny sterling spoon, the mare’s eyes intent on the silent tableau on the other side of the table.

“How did you kill your uncle?” Rubyk said, barely audible.

Pome Apple shook his head violently. “I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his forehooves.

“You don’t know?” Madeleine repeated, arching an eyebrow.

“Yeah. I don’t. After a certain point, everything just goes… weird. Fuzzy. I had drank a little bit, a really little bit last night – not more than usual, and not enough to put a pony under the table! But something got into the old donkey, and uncle and I fought. I don’t even remember what it was about – he was being just such a… just being Calvados.” Pome spat the name like an Hydra spewing venom.

“Where did you go after you and your uncle quarreled?”

“I went to the bar,” Pome half-snarled.

“Yes…” said Rubyk. “To put away your sorrows from you. For ‘in wine is truth; in strong drink, sleep.’ Of the pair of you and your uncle, you are the only pony who drinks.”

Pome looked to the Aktur of Trotheim and opened his mouth to answer, but realized that Rubyk had not asked a question. Pome’s mouth twisted into a true snarl, and Miss Largo made a motion to the Clavia standing near the high table. “How could you possibly know that?” Pome said to Rubyk.

“Merely a lucky guess from the evidence at-hoof, Mister Apple. Nothing more.”

Pome Apple made a bitter, animal bark of laughter. “Then Celestia blessed y’all with luck out of Tartarus. Well, I’m just a simple country fellow. Surely y’all have got me figured out right down to my liver. What else do you know about simple Pome Apple?”

“I know that you cast a spell in the room of your uncle’s death shortly before your uncle’s death,” said Rubyk. “Tell me what it was.”

Pome shrugged. “I can’t say.”

“Why not?” said Rubyk, his voice going cold. And not his voice only – the air around the high table began to feel perilously cold like the bite of a midwinter’s gale. The Clavia each took several steps toward the two stallions. Miss Largo cleared her throat and pressed her hooves together on the tablecloth.

“Aktur,” said Miss Largo quietly. “That will do, I think. This interview is quite nearly at an end. I invite you to say your cordial goodbyes to one another and continue your business at some other time.”

Rubyk’s glare might have speared through the stone walls of the hotel. “We are not done here, Largo. I have more that I must ask this pony to fulfill your idiotic conditions.”

Miss Largo only gave the tiniest of sighs and shook her head. “No, Aktur, I think that you are.” She motioned to the two Clavia, and their antlers blazed like stars gone nova. Madeleine fell startled from her seat as glassy chains like woven moonbeams fell upon the two stallions, wrapping tightly around the legs, mouth, and horn of each. Rubyk and Pome each fell from their chairs onto the dais with an heavy thud that went unnoticed by the diners outside of the deerish glamour that surrounded Miss Largo’s table.

The proprietress smiled sweetly at Madeleine. “Sorry, Crumpet dear. But that unicorn was beginning to make a nuisance of himself. I am certain that he will sort himself out before long, though. I will have both Mister Apple and Mister Rubyk taken to a safe place where they may… consider their conduct as befits an establishment like mine.”

And you didn’t say that for me, did you, Largo? thought Madeleine, a feeling like she had swallowed a diamond settling in the pit of her stomach as she looked at the seafoam mare sitting across the table. Clammy sweat beaded on the back of her neck.

“But you will join me for breakfast tomorrow, won’t you dear? Say, oh, 6:30? Here?” Miss Largo flashed a perfectly charming smile at Madeleine.

Madeleine swallowed hard. “Yes, of course,” she heard herself saying. Miss Largo cooed a few more social pleasantries that Madeleine did not hear, then rose to her hooves and led the two Clavia guards out of the room, carrying two bound unicorns in their wake.

And the other diners just kept eating their bananas and daisies.

Madeleine slumped to the earth, her rump hitting the dais hard. She barely felt the impact. Her joints shook, and she felt as though her legs would collapse like tinder beneath her.

“What does it mean?” she whispered. “Why, Largo?”

But there was no answer. The diners continued their happy dinner-chatter, the Clavia danced their silent dance, and the hotel ran on.

p

Comments

[horizon]

What's interesting about this is that I'm thoroughly enjoying it, but not for the reasons I thought I would! The characters continue to be vibrant and intriguing, and peeling back the onion of the multi-layered cast is at least as much fun as piecing together the mystery clues.

If I had to take a guess at the culprit I'd say one of the Clavia. There's been a lot of foreshadowing with Papaya, but I think I believe the doctor when he says she couldn't have done it. On the other hoof, much has been made of their justice system and the cultural divide with the ponies; if one of them (or many of them, what with the Orient Express-like multiple attacks...) took out Calvados to protect her, or in vengeance for something done to her, they could very easily close ranks to sweep the whole thing under the rug. That would also explain Largo's aggressive dismissal of the case, if she knew something and had "her people" to protect. It feels like Pome knows more than he lets on, given how insistent he is on taking the fall, but he's just not acting like someone who actually did it, and while Mr. Orange has all the motive, I really doubt Largo would be going to such lengths to cover for him, not to mention the multiple attacks.

[PresentPerfect]

Hah, I just needed some patience! Go figure!

I'm really loving Frost Pane, especially since she seems to like Madeleine a lot. :D

I am entirely with 8413158's analysis right now. What is Largo hiding? is the big question on my mind. :3 Of course, I'm also wondering what's with those letters at the ends of the acts...