Sun & Moon Act II: A Crown Divided

by cursedchords

Chapter 26: The Saboteur

“The most valuable thing in those days was not gold, silver or water. The most valuable thing was trust.”

- Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 1)

The cold winds remained at the orchard for a couple of weeks more, and even then, a chill remained in the air. Here under the Sun, Celestia wondered if maybe the seasons were actually turning, in the way that books said they used to back before Discord had taken control over the country. It hadn’t started snowing yet, though, and thank goodness for it. There were still so many apples left to pick, and so much construction that would be much harder if the ground froze.

As it happened, Hale’s departure from the orchard had not stopped the spate of misfortune plaguing the work effort, in fact it had seemed almost to intensify it. Maybe the saboteur was becoming bolder, but Hale’s broken leg turned out to be only the start of things. One week after, another mishap had snapped the main beams on one of the cranes, and shortly after that one of Fruit’s masons was nearly crushed by a falling stone. Celestia had done her best to keep the schedule on track even if she had to deal with accidents, but even in spite of her instituting a third shift, inevitably the deadlines had started to slip.

Inside her office, Celestia had the personnel records strung up on the wall, names marked with ink whenever they were involved in something untoward. She had been over the list so many times that by now she could see the pages whenever she closed her eyes. Stiff, Quinn, Silky, Saline. Hew, Pine and Windlass. Names, every one of them with at least some suspicion on them, but never enough to make something conclusive. And every time that she thought she had one down, something would happen completely on the other side of the site.

Of course, Trinity, Wickerlock and Capstan were doing their best to help, dropping what tidbits they could, but even with three sets of eyes they couldn’t watch everything at once. And she couldn’t be out there scrutinizing things because she had to keep the project moving forward, ordering new parts to replace the ones that had been damaged, and all the while shuddering about the red ink that she knew would be piling up in the ledgers back in the manor.

Tonight, the whole group was in the tent, ready to receive new staffing arrangements that she had drawn up over the course of the day. So far, Trinity’s idea hadn’t offered any meaningful information, but the logic for it still held up, and Celestia knew that her quarry would slip up one day. She just hoped that day was soon.

“I’ve got the new teams drawn up,” she said, standing by the canvas wall where she had strung up her web of parchments. The three others were packed close together in the cramped space of the tent: Trinity seated on the crate, Capstan on the ground, and Wickerlock standing awkwardly by the flap. “I’ll get to them in a minute, but first we need to talk about a few things.”

“I don’t have anything new to report,” Wickerlock mumbled, scratching idly at the ground. “You only asked me two hours ago.”

“Nor me,” Capstan added.

She gave them a thin smile. “Appreciated, but that’s not what I meant. We’ve come up dry on everything that we’ve tried so far, so now I want to do something different, and it’s something that the three of you can help me with.” Celestia reached down behind her desk and held up a worn hammer, just like all the rest used by the work teams. “Yesterday, we discovered that the new joints had been bent out of shape, necessitating an entire new batch to be ordered. I found this by the supply.”

The realization came to Capstan first. “Somepony borrowed the hammer for their dirty work then, aye?”

“Indeed. Yesterday I counted up all of the tools and compared the numbers to the orders I had put in. This hammer wasn’t the only thing that had been ‘borrowed’. I suspect that we’ve been leaking tools for weeks now, and it would explain a lot of the incidents that we’ve seen.”

“So we’ve got to keep an eye on them,” Capstan said, sounding tired and not crazy about additional work.

“Precisely.” She held up a stack of clipboards. “As team leaders, at the end of every shift I’ll need you to take an inventory of all of the tools your team was assigned. If we find one missing, then that’s one more clue to look after.”

Frustrated, Wickerlock threw his hooves up. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked. “At the end of every shift? That’s time off of lunch, off of the afternoon break, even into the evening!”

“It’s bad enough we have to keep working ourselves while keeping one eye on everypony else!” Capstan chimed in. “Why can’t you have somepony else take care of the work like this?”

“Well, you’re the only three that I trust,” she replied, taken aback at the resistance. “And it won’t be that much of an extra bother. Besides, we have to do something! At this rate, the orchard will be bare by the time we get anything done, and every day that goes by with that saboteur out there is another day that somepony could get hurt!” She looked over at Trinity, who at least didn’t look openly hostile to the idea. “Trinity, surely you see the value in this?”

Her friend tapped her leg on the desk. “Yes and no,” she eventually said, looking guilty for her answer. “The closer we watch and the more things we keep track of, sure, we increase our chances of finding the saboteur. But Wicker and Capstan are right, and I know they’re not the only ponies who feel that way. It’s tense out there, okay?”

“Out there?” Celestia sighed in exasperation. “Maybe they should try being in here, responsible for the whole project! Maybe they should try going before Fastidious and explaining that the schedule is going to have to slip for another week, and we need another load of planks, and no, I still don’t have a clue who the saboteur is!”

“Don’t you think we all can feel it?” Wickerlock shouted from the door. “When everypony who drops a nail gets cross-examined for an hour about why they were five minutes late from lunch? When you’ve got to keep one eye over your shoulder in case someone drops a rock on you by accident? We’re all feeling it, Celestia, and another layer on top isn’t going to make your schedules line up any better!”

“Well, what do you want from me then?” she asked, searching the room for an answer, but seeing only hard eyes. “You know why I’ve got to push harder! This is it for us, our chance to get somewhere better! My chance to give Luna a better life, but only if I can give Fastidious this project on time! And I’ll give it to him, but I need your help for that.” Surely they would see that. The road here had been hard, just as life had always been for them, but the light was just over the horizon now, and all they had to do was endure just a little longer, and they’d be there.

There was a moment of silence in the room, as she looked at each of them in turn. Wickerlock looked pained, maybe caught in the middle of his resistance to the idea. Capstan too looked troubled, scratching in the dirt with his hoof. Trinity got to her hooves, though, and stepped forward, until she was right beside Celestia by the wall. “Celestia,” she said softly, “do you think maybe you should take a break from all of this? Come home, forget about this work for a while.”

She looked sincere, and all of the others nodded along, but Celestia could hardly believe what she had heard. “What? Take a break now? But we’re so close! Soon enough the saboteur will slip up, and we just have to stay on them.” Trinity’s face fell when she heard that, and so Celestia softened her tone a little. “Don’t worry about me. Trust me, I’ll be back when the job is done, and that day there will be a celebration like none we’ve ever had before. And then I’ll be able to give Luna everything that she could ever want.”

“Celestia, you’ve been here for weeks now,” Trinity said, looking her in the eyes, desperation and concern evident. “All that Luna wants right now is to see you again.”

Celestia opened her mouth to answer back, but Trinity was already walking away, tapping Capstan on the shoulder and gathering Wickerlock from the door. “Good night,” she said as she opened up the flap. “We’ll see you tomorrow.” Wickerlock offered a contrite look as he followed her out, and then there was silence. Silence except for Celestia’s heart beating in her ears.

For a moment she stood there, unable to move as her feelings crashed and thundered in her mind. Such nerve they had, walking out like that, without even taking the clipboards that she had ordered for them. She had intended them to take an inventory tonight, to get them ready for tomorrow. Now it looked like she was going to have to do that job herself. Well, so be it. At least the tools would all be stacked nicely in the supply area.

As she was reaching for the top board herself, though, her eyes found the stone that Trinity had brought in for her. It had been weeks now since she had seen Luna last, and of course she knew that her sister was doing okay, or else one of them would have told her about it. Yet still maybe there was an ounce of truth in what Trinity had said. Maybe one night spent back in Eridian wouldn’t matter as much. Luna would be overjoyed to see her again, and they could still tell each other stories and play in the open area of the house, even if she wasn’t done with her work just yet. She’d still count up the tools, but maybe tonight she could in fact spare the time.

Grabbing the top clipboard, Celestia walked to the tent entrance, bracing herself for the cold bite of the evening wind. By now, the Sun had long since gone down, and without its warmth the breeze acquired a whole new set of teeth. The coat Fastidious had made for her helped a little, but even so just one step outside and Celestia was already shivering. Best that she be done with this work quickly.

But just as she was turning the corner to head to the supply, she ran into Trinity coming back the other way, and moving at a solid clip herself. They managed to stop in time to avoid a collision, but just barely. “Trinity? What are you still doing here? Where are Wicker and Capstan?”

The earth pony looked on edge, but that was no surprise, especially given that she wasn’t wearing anything except her usual scarf. “I told them to go on ahead,” she replied quickly. “All that talk of hammers made me remember that I hadn’t put mine back yet either.” She ran a hoof back through her mane. “Anyway, I should be going if I want to catch up to them. Wouldn’t want to be out on the road alone now, would I?”

Celestia chuckled. “Well, that’s for sure. Hey, by the way, I’m sorry for blowing up on you all like that. I think maybe I will come home tonight, after I’m done taking the inventory. We’ll have our party, just not quite as grand as I imagined it.”

Trinity’s laugh sounded a bit nervous. “Sure, that should do. You might miss me though. I won’t be able to stay long at your place tonight. Anyway, like I said, I should be moving along.” She offered Celestia a quick nod of acknowledgment, then set off around her at a brisk canter, back toward the estate entrance.

Celestia watched her go, a puzzled expression on her face. Of course they all were eager to spend as little time as possible out in the cold, but Trinity definitely had been in a hurry, and that wasn’t her style at all. She was a careful worker, methodical. None of the accidents had involved her yet, and she was always painstaking with her tools. A model worker, which was only one reason why Celestia was happy to have her on the project. At least hers was one hammer that Celestia wasn’t going to have to worry about.

She started making her way back along the trail to the supply, but then she stopped. Where had Trinity kept her hammer? She only had the scarf on. Celestia looked over her shoulder, but her friend was already gone. Gala’s words came back to her, playing in her mind as if spoken by a ghost. “The worst are always the ones that you think you shouldn’t have to watch.” Could it really be? Maybe, maybe not. But maybe tonight, her count of the tools could wait.

---

The night was even colder once she got off of the ground, especially once the open skies of Fastidious’s estate were behind her. Whatever enchantment Discord had put upon the air underneath the canopy of his clouds, it had a way of worming itself into Celestia’s mind, an unseen, unexpected uncertainty that niggled at her no matter how much she tried to put it aside.

For what was she doing up here, really? Following after Trinity, sure, but why? If she was to put so much faith in her friend, then perhaps investigating her closely was precisely what she should be doing, exactly as Gala had said.

To be fair, Trinity had never told her exactly where or how she spent the nights when she wasn’t with them in Eridian, but Celestia had assumed that she simply had a place to herself around somewhere. Plus, the logic of why she might be the saboteur still made no sense. She had been the most sincere ally that Celestia could have asked for on this project. If she’d been given trust, she hadn’t squandered it. But then surely checking up on her could do no harm. Either Celestia would confirm that trusting Trinity had been the right call, or else she would see otherwise. That seemed like a good enough argument for carrying on, but even so the doubting whispers of the wind didn’t go away.

She turned north first, toward the dark outline of Eridian high up on the mountainside, flying high until she caught up with Wickerlock and Capstan. Seeing that the two of them were still on their own, and that Trinity wasn’t on her way to catch up to them, she returned to the orchard and flew an arc in the hope of finding her friend. Under the clouds the night was of course very dark, without starlight or moonlight to guide her way, but at least Trinity’s white coat offered her something to watch for.

It took about fifteen minutes, but eventually she caught sight of her friend picking her way quickly over a rough meadow. From this high up, it was difficult to tell much besides her direction of travel, but Celestia didn’t dare fly any lower, for fear that she’d be spotted or heard.

Thankfully, Trinity didn’t go all that far. After only about a mile, as the orchard was beginning to vanish over the horizon, the earth pony stopped at what appeared to be a nondescript mound of earth tufted with a few scraggly thickets, one of which Trinity promptly disappeared into. After a moment of holding her breath, Celestia decided to come down after her.

Stealth was another area that Celestia knew wasn’t exactly on her resume, though, as per usual, life on the streets of Eridian had at least taught her something.

This field in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly the same as a darkened back alley, but even so she was cautious to touch down lightly, and fold her wings back quickly to be sure that they didn’t catch on anything. On the ground, the small stand of stunted trees and bare shrubs looked no more incriminating than they had from the air, though having lost their leaves the branches of the trees did have an ominous appearance, like bare talons thrust up out of the earth, grasping at any who wandered near.

She took a moment to strain her ears for any sounds, for hooves on the ground or the crackle of somepony moving through the brush, but the night was still. The stand of trees wasn’t particularly big, so Celestia just picked a random spot and started making her way in. Here she knew it would be impossible to fully mask her approach; the low branches and brush underhoof was simply too close for that, but even so she kept listening hard. An owl’s hoot gave her pause, cutting through the night as easy as a piercing shriek, but in its fading echoes Celestia heard something else. A voice, or voices rather.

They weren’t clear, muffled by distance, but even so she could follow them, over the logs of trees that had fallen long ago, right up to the point where the slope of the hillside was starting to take hold. By now, the sound had gotten loud enough that she could start to make out words.

“Well, it turned out that there were guards, three of them in fact,” the voice was saying. It sounded like a stallion’s voice, though more than that she couldn’t tell. Definitely not Trinity though. “Not at all what I was expecting, but I did have my knife at least if it came to that.”

“I’ll need to have words with that source,” said a second voice, deeper and slower. “A misremembered detail perhaps, but continue, Quartz, please.”

“Right,” said the now identified Quartz. “I had to watch them for a bit to see if there was going to be a way through, or if I was going to have to take them on.”

“Or go back,” cut in a third voice, this time higher and more distinct. Celestia’s breath caught, as this one sounded much closer to Trinity. “You’re good, Quartz, but three on one is no joke.”

There was a pause, and then Quartz went on. “You can have a look if you want, but I kept my blade clean. Besides, I’d like to see either of you in my position and see what decision you'd make. A chance to hit a load of irons on their way to Eridian does not come often.”

“Everfree will likely be pleased,” the second voice answered, sounding contemplative. “We haven’t been able to disrupt that network for years. Good work, Quartz. And what of you, Trinity? How does the effort at the orchard go?”

Celestia’s heart sank, even before Trinity started going into the details of her exploits. Suddenly everything she thought she had known about her friend seemed cast in a new light. The model worker, always so eager to help out with the investigation. Not a blemish on her own record, and nothing pointing to her as worthy of any suspicion. Except of course for the fact that she had seen something suspect about nearly every other worker on the project. It was all so clear now. How she had manipulated the teams to make sure that she could cast the doubt as wide as possible, and keep Celestia’s eyes always someplace else. Well, at least Celestia had her answer now.

She was about to turn and go, when suddenly another thought came to her mind. If Trinity was the saboteur, then that meant she was probably a member of the “Resistance” that Gala had mentioned. That meant that the two other voices, Quartz and the unknown one, were probably also Resistance operatives. Gala and Fastidious would be happy enough to be given one enemy agent; how much more could she gain by giving them three? But names wouldn’t be good enough. She would have to put a face on those names, and in order to do that she was going to have to find where they were hiding.

The conversation was going on, with Trinity running through the recent events at the estate. Celestia guessed that they were probably underground, likely in a chamber dug out of the hillside, but that meant that the entrance had to be around here somewhere.

Following the voices, she eventually came to a pile of deadwood at the base of a large tree, its roots protruding up from the ground for several yards on either side of the trunk. Inside the deadwood pile, painted dark grey and cleverly disguised, was a small cellar door. Celestia surely would have missed it if not for the thin crack of glowing firelight that was showing from around its edge. Here the voices were much clearer.

“Things are getting tense,” Trinity was saying, bright and carefree now that she was safe at home. “The pony in charge of the construction is digging really deep, but I have her around my hoof. I don’t think that it will be long before she gets taken care of for us.”

“Typical Upper-folk,” Quartz answered. Now that she could hear him clearly, Celestia guessed that he was a younger stallion, perhaps about his mid-twenties, with the same outsider accent as Trinity’s. “They never trust anypony for more than two seconds.”

“So someone else will get brought on?” asked the mystery voice. “Someone you don’t have as much influence over?”

“Likely,” Trinity said, still sounding pleased with herself. “But by then it won’t matter. This project is bleeding Fastidious dry. By the time he decides to cut his losses, there won’t be enough left for him to recover. Score one for us,” she finished. A clink that might have been two cups colliding in a toast followed.

Celestia stood fuming on the other side of the door. So simple Trinity seemed to think it would be! So easily she had taken control over the pony Fastidious had appointed to stop her, just for long enough until the Lord decided to get rid of another poorly performing employee. Well, she would see that this time she had gotten the wrong pony around her hoof.

Celestia itched to throw open the door and confront her former friend with the end that she had brought upon herself, but she couldn’t. By the sounds of their voices the three of them were right on the other side, and Trinity’s admonition from earlier had been right on the money. Three on one was a risk she didn’t want to take, and she didn’t even have a knife. Getting faces on the other two would have been a bonus, but perhaps Gala and Fastidious could get the descriptions, if they knew to ask about them. The best thing that Celestia could do now was get back to the orchard before she was discovered.

Unfortunately, that hope was dashed right away when she heard a knock on the inside of the door. A hoof pushed it just a couple of degrees toward open, and from right behind it Celestia heard the mystery voice from earlier. “Right, that’s fair enough news. I’ll send out the pigeon. You two get things cleaned up. Maybe we can get in a quick game of dice before it’s too late.”

Celestia knew that she had bare seconds to hide, and so without thinking she swooped around to the far side of the tree with one great sweep of her wings, landing on a low bough about ten feet off of the ground. She held her breath as the door creaked open, landing with a crash on the ground.

“Hey! You want to wake up the whole countryside?” came Trinity’s voice from under the ground.

“There’s nopony around for miles,” the unknown pony said back. “Now, go on, friend, fly. Off to Everfree now.” With a rustle of feathers, Celestia knew that the carrier pigeon was gone. She let out her breath in relief. Now hopefully whoever this guy was would just go back in for his game of dice, and leave her be.

“Huh?” he said from the other side of the tree. “I thought I heard something. I’ll check.”

Before Celestia had a chance to curse herself for the mistake, the stallion behind the unknown voice finally made himself known, coming around the side of the trunk with a blazing lantern around his neck. He was a tall fellow, plenty older than her, with a dark mane that had been drawn back into a bunch, hanging over his neck. Exposed as she was up on the branch, Celestia knew that there was no hope in running now. Her only hope left was maybe to knock him out and take off when he was down. At least she had the advantage of height for that.

But even as she was readying herself for the strike, the twigs on the end of her branch brushed up on the top of the stallion’s head, and he looked up, right into her eyes.