Chapter 6
Twilight sat in court, listening to the pony in front of her as he complained.
“And that, Your Majesty, is why you should allow an extra hour of darkness at the end of the day. This would allow ponies like me to walk home without being blinded by the setting sun.”
Twilight sighed. “So in review, you want me to speed up the sun as it goes through the day so that there is typically at least one more hour of night than sunlight, affecting the growth of plants, seasonal patterns, and general climate of the northern and southern hemispheres. All of that, just so that you don’t need to stare at the sun as you walk you home after a meal out?”
“Yes,” the pony said.
“Buy a hat,” Twilight said, before dismissing him.
The stallion blinked as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him, before the guards escorted him from the throne room. Twilight sighed and slumped into her throne for a bit. Requests like that left her exhausted, and she needed a rest to ready herself for the next pony to appeal to her.
“Don’t worry, Twilight,” Spike said, sitting next to her. “We’ll get through this.”
Twilight sighed. “I know…”
“Having fun, Princess?”
Twilight snapped to her left to face the speaker and instantly narrowed her eyes as she saw Night. “Back already?” she asked.
“It’s been two days,” he said in his defense.
“Two days is not enough time to recover from having to see you,” Twilight said.
“Glad to know I’ve had such a strong effect on you, Princess,” Night said.
“For the record, ew,” Spike said, before giving a non-committal wave. “Hello again, Night.”
“Hello, Master Spike,” Night said with a smirk before dropping a small gold statue of Celestia into Twilight’s lap. “That one’s a nice piece, made by a goldsmith that gifted to Celestia back before I got here. Solid gold, did you know?”
Twilight sighed before waving a guard over. He obeyed, and Twilight handed him the statue. “Find where this belongs and return it.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” he replied before running off.
“Also I’m upset with you,” Night said.
“Oh, really?” Twilight asked, a smile growing on her face.
“Yes, really.”
“Well, why on earth is that?”
Night pointed to the poster of his face stuck to the wall, with the words “has open invitation during normal business hours,” written beneath him. “Why do you think? You’re ruining my fun.”
“Ah,” Twilight said. “Well, I guess you’ll have to sneak in at night if you want to get the guards chasing you now. Instead of, say now, when I’m supposed to be holding court.”
Night frowned. “Well, maybe Celestia did teach you a thing or two,” he said.
Twilight raised an eyebrow at the comment but turned to focus on the matter at hoof. “Why are you here, Night?”
“I came with another report,” he said.
“Well that was fast,” Twilight said.
“Well, you see, I was heading to my Canterlot hideout when I saw something last night…”
---$---
Night glanced up at the night sky, enjoying the full moon that Princess Twilight gave them that night as he walked through the streets of Canterlot. He began walking toward the poorer side of town to sleep in his Canterlot hideout when he caught sight of something.
A single figure leaped across the street, trailing a split cloak behind him as he crossed over the moon in a dark silhouette.
Night smiled.
There was only one kind of pony that would wear a cloak like that while jumping between buildings. Night might get some business tonight, after all.
He ducked down an alleyway, rushing up to the roofs after the pony with the cloak split down the middle. He only knew a handful of ponies that wore that stupid piece of uniform, and each belonged to Moon Light’s pack.
The jumping they performed was a more advanced permutation of “Control Matter,” the form and technique that every unicorn knew intrinsically. Instead of using the magic to telekinetically hold a thing, Moon’s pack managed to perfect a catapulting method or pushing themselves off the ground to cover great distances. Night still hadn’t figured that one out, but he knew he was getting close.
For now, though, he had to deal with dropping back down to the street to try and cover the same jumps or moving laterally to find smaller ones to leap across. It meant his progress was slowed slightly, but he’d still follow the thief as he made his way to the more affluent part of town.
Night rushed behind him, trying to keep up before he lost sight of the unicorn. Night, breathing heavily, cursed quietly to himself as he tried to find any sign of the stallion until his eyes landed on an open window.
Night smiled.
He prepared his old hook, and using his own telekinesis to lift it to the edge of the building’s roof, Night quickly climbed up beside the window and glanced in.
The curtains inside wafted through the air, billowing in the soft breeze. Night slipped in, his hooves not even making a sound as he touched the ground. This definitely had all the marks of a target of Moon Light’s victims. Someplace rich, with several smaller nicknacks to be stolen, all of which could be stuck into a curio shop without anypony thinking twice about it.
Night slipped down the hallway, keeping his eyes and ears open, paying careful attention to every possible sound or sight in the manor. The long hallway came to a t-intersection, and Night poked his head down the left and right wings.
A pony stood at the end of the left hall, filling a bag with small porcelain figurines. Night had a passing knowledge of the collection and knew that the thief’s bag was quickly going to start racking up cash with every one of the little pony-shaped figures he added.
The thief would take just less than a thousand bits worth of new “merchandise” to sell, but he could still get out with just bail until he hit that thousand-bit mark. That’s what Moon Light counted on, hundreds of smaller crimes to build up business with only a minimal legal risk.
Night backed away slightly, prepared to transpose his image before the thief began to move on. Just as the thief began moving past him, Night moved his appearance behind the other thief and pressed himself against the wall.
Made virtually invisible, the thief didn’t notice as he walked past Night and began heading down the right hall, where a set of stairs waited for him. Night dropped the spell and began to follow behind, keeping another spell matrix for another transposition ready to go, until he needed it.
The two made their way down the stairs, neither making a sound as they moved. They quickly moved down to the ground floor, where the thief took a few plates off the wall. Shortly after that, the pony paused and glanced down at the bag, casting a silent spell.
---$---
“And what spell was it?” Twilight asked.
“You know, for the longest time, I never knew,” Night said. “Then, one night, I snuck in and listened on one of their meetings, and found out it’s a spell to appraise the value of goods. A “Perceive Matter” spell, I think.”
“Pennypincher’s Pricetag,” Twilight muttered. “One of the few spells to come out of the commercial sector.”
“Twilight, you’re interrupting his story,” Spike said.
Twilight sighed. “Fine, continue.”
---$---
The thief nodded to himself and began to look around for something else to steal. He must have been very close to his limit for this trip. Night, meanwhile, was checking over his pockets. He didn’t bring a knife with him tonight, so he needed to come up with something to try and make his plan work.
The thief continued to prowl along the ground floor, occasionally glancing about to look out for ponies trying to go for a midnight snack.
Night followed closely behind, using his transposing spell to move his image out of eyesight whenever he needed to. By only using his magic in short bursts, he was able to keep going while only draining his magical reserves in the smallest amounts possible. He was basically invisible to the thief, as he continued to move his image’s position back and forth across the house, whenever he might get caught.
Following behind, Night watched as the pony kept glancing at every little nicknack, and presumably casting the appraisal spell whenever he needed to check on an item. A plan was already starting to form in Night’s mind, and he smiled at the thought of unleashing chaos just as the stallion thought he was going to get away.
Finally, the stallion found his target and plucked another small porcelain figurine off a shelf, and slipped it into the bag.
Night glanced around as he looked for a blade once more. He had to choose carefully, though, once he started focusing on his telekinesis, he wouldn’t be able to cast a different spell at the same time. It would take far more power than he had to do that, and he heard only a select few mages could pull that off.
He slipped into a side passage as Moon’s thief began to turn around and begin to climb back up the stairs to the window where he came in. Night crouched by the door and mentally cursed that he didn’t bring his knife with him that night, until he glanced around and realized that he stood in the kitchen, with several carving knives sitting in a block waiting for him.
Night smiled and grabbed one before following the thief as quickly and quietly as he could.
The thief had already made his way to the window, and he began carefully tying his bag to his back so that he could cast his catapulting spell without losing concentration on his haul. That’s when Night struck.
The knife shot forward, slashing at the rope which secured the bag and grabbed it in his telekinesis, splitting his focus between the two objects, a feat much more manageable than casting a second spell.
The next second passed by like an eon, as a dozen things happened at once. The bag lifted off the thief, and the thief turned to see a knife at his throat. Night carried the sack back behind him, placing a relatively great distance between the haul and the thief who had stolen it. The thief glanced up, staring at Night, who smiled at him with the smuggest look he could gather before he pulled the knife back, till it sat perfectly between them.
“You,” the thief whispered.
Night kept smiling before he pointed the knife point-down and dropped it. Switching spells in a blink, he cast another Control Image spell, targeting the sound that would soon echo off the knife. It struck the tiled floor, clattering against the stone, but ringing like a church bell and waking every pony in the house.
The muffled shouts of now-awake ponies began to sound in the room, and both thieves knew that they had seconds to get out before they were caught.
So Night moved first.
He rushed forward, throwing his shoulder into the rival thief, and slamming him against the wall. With Moon’s thief dazed, Night turned to the window, jumping out of it, and pulling his rope to his hoof. He swung out and around, hitting the building wall before quickly scaling it to the roof. The other thief leaped out of the window just behind him, and Night took a second to look back and smiled when he saw that the pony did not have the bag with him.
---$---
“After that, I sat on the roof until the guard came by, and then made my escape.”
“I see,” Twilight said. “And do you have any proof of anything you said you did?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Night said, before pulling something from a bag at his belt. “I brought the thief’s cloak.”
Sure enough, he produced a dark grey cloak, split down the middle, almost as if to form a pair of wings. He laid it out for the Princess’s approval and revealed the massive, frayed slash from where Night had cut through it and the rope that secured the thief’s bag.
“And what am I supposed to do with a cloak?” Twilight asked.
“Well, I can say for certain that I am not a seamster, so unless you have a different explanation as to how I came about such a specific piece of clothing, I’m willing to hear it. Besides, you do have a guard report you can check which will report a break-in, but nothing missing, even though a few hundred bits worth of their belongings were sitting in the middle of their hallway in a bag.”
“Sure, but a cloak like this could come from anyp—”
“Princess,” Night said with a sigh. “I don’t need to remind you that you’re a very powerful mage. I’m positive you have a spell that could trace it back to the real owner. In fact, I know you do, because of this letter you sent to your Captain asking about the legality of such a spell for the ledger I got you.” He produced said letter with a flourish, pulling it from his bag and holding it up for the Princess to see the broken, golden wax seal.
She bristled as she grabbed the letter back. “That is highly classified information, that is not for you to read.”
“Then, with all due respect, Princess, why did you write it out? Letters are easy to steal, words less so. If you have a chance to speak with somepony, that’s probably what you should go with.”
Twilight’s face nearly turned red as she glared at him.
“You know, Twilight, he does have a point,” Spike said.
Twilight, face still red, turned to face the dragon.
He weathered the glare as only someone who had seen it so often could, and continued. “Captain Azure does live here; you didn’t need to write him a letter for a private conversation, especially one you didn’t want to leave a record of.”
Twilight continued to glare at the dragon before she took a deep breath and exhaled. “Sure, that’s fair. But that is not something you’re supposed to be reading,” she said, turning back to face Night.
“In my defense, Princess,” Night said, “‘supposed to’ had never stopped a thief before.”
Twilight sighed. “Fine. I suppose this is what you’ve called your counter-thieving?”
“Exactly,” Night said. “I keep them from stealing, while also trying to make sure that they get caught, though that is secondary to stopping them.”
“Is that enough, though? Just stopping them? If what you’ve said is true, and these ponies just pay their way out of jail, then surely making them pay would be the better result. It would drain their resources more to jail them and fine them.”
“Sure,” Night said. “But I can’t guarantee that someone gets arrested each time. The best I can do, every single time, is to make sure they don’t get away with it. Of course, corrupt nobles is just going to be one of those problems that we’ll be dealing with forever.”
Twilight shook her head, and Spike stood up before walking off. “I’ll let you deal with that, Twilight. I’m going to talk to Azure about matters of national security.”
“Fine,” Twilight said, barely acknowledging the dragon before she quickly descended into another debate with Night.
---$---
Spike made his way down to the Castle’s outer wall, to the barracks. He entered to the guards’ usual cheer, the ones he knew at least, and gave his customary smile and jokes in return. “Hey, guys! How’s it going!”
“Oh, you know, Spear’s cheating at cards again,” one of the guards said.
“I’m not cheating!” Spear insisted.
“Sure, you’re not, Spear,” Spike said.
“Hey, Spike!” another guard said. “Do you have any more room at your Thursday O&O game?”
“I already have like, seven players, man. Maybe next campaign.”
“Sure, sure,” came the disappointed reply.
“Hey, is the Captain in?” Spike asked the six guards there.
“Yeah, he’s in the office, like normal,” Spear said, before laying out a straight flush.
“You are so cheating!”
“No, I’m not! I’m telling you, if I weren’t good at polearms, my Cutie Mark would be cards!”
Spike left them to bicker with some good-natured ribbing and walked into the back office, where the large, navy-blue coated earth pony worked. “Hey, Azure.”
The Captain looked up. “Master Spike, what can I do for you?”
“Not call me Master Spike, but you’re not going to change your mind on that one now,” the dragon said before he flew up to the desk. “I do have a few things I need to talk to you about, though. Do you have the time for that?”
Azure looked down at the papers that Spike was standing on. “It doesn’t seem that you’re giving me a choice, Master Spike.”
“You’re right on that one, but you’re all business, so I’ll cut to the chase,” Spike said, leaning forward to look the massive stallion in the eye. “What’s up with you not wanting Twilight to know about Night?” he asked.
“He’s beneath her notice,” the Captain.
“Now, you say that, but he wasn’t beneath Celestia’s attention, was he?”
Azure looked up at the dragon with a raised eyebrow. “Celestia discovered him. She had to know. But even then, he was beneath her notice.”
“And breaking up trafficking rings was beneath her notice as well?” Spike asked.
Azure didn’t answer that.
“What’s really going on?”
Azure glanced up at the dragon. “Master Spike, I have a lot to take care of right now. I have guards I need to post, I have records I need to go through, and I have a country to protect. If you would be so kind as to allow me to get back to my work, I would appreciate it. And I would much rather not have to have you escorted out of my office.”
Spike stared down at him. “Alright, you don’t want to tell me right now, fine. But we’re not done with this conversation.”
As Spike flew off his desk and walked out, leaving the Captain to watch him as he went. “No, I believe we are.”
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So... Is Night Silk pulling a "Trixie" and telling his story to Twilight in in the third person...?
I love it~ Don't get me wrong.
Spike plays dumn, but he is smarter than he looks.
Or a pair of sunglasses.
Well, I would hope so. They didn't spend all that time they spent together just playing checkers after all.
And you are stalling, good sir.
And that's a threat, a needless one given the situation too. You, sir, are definitely hiding something. No ifs, ands, or buts about that now.
How often do they have "the day of darkness"? Presumably should be "an extra hour of darkness at the end of the day".
Typo for "affecting". "effecting" would mean "causing".
Needs a comma before "before", otherwise the whole sentence is about the timing of the idea.
"telekinetically", or "the telekinetic magic".
Should be "breathing heavily".
"until" is better than "before", otherwise the sentence suggests the urgency of finding the sign before seeing the window. Also you used "before" in the immediately preceding sentence.
"paying attention to", since you can't listen to a sight.
Typo for "poked".
Why "new"? Is there a third thief now?
Two typoes for "his" and "reserves".
Typo for "passed".
Presumably "Spike left them to bicker" since he's leaving.
10464378
Thank you for taking the time to nit-pick. To see these comments makes me even more sure that reading this story is worth my time, since it's good enough for other readers to try to improve it.