Two years on, Janus had grown into a respectable and permanent village. No longer just a harried group of refugees, they were coming into their own with all the institutions and conveniences of a much bigger town. There was even a small museum to our exodus that one could tour for two bits. It mostly contained the weaponry and armor that I'd decried the theft of from it's original home.

A government had been established, disgustingly with Commander Victory at the helm, and I still wondered if he was not a changeling, especially since my own 'wife', Queen Chrysalis was his right hoof mare in civil matters. It made me assume that there was a hive within or below the rapidly coalescing city hall. In this way she could have access anytime, day or night with no suspicion paid to her. When I confronted her, she told me I was paranoid, and that I was reading too much into things, and I'd yet to find any proof to support my suspicions.

As one of their first acts they'd instituted a 'changeling test', which consisted of a charm created by the same healer who'd extorted a cord of wood from me, which goes to show the accuracy of the test. Unsurprisingly, despite impressive flares and sparks of pseudo magic, no changelings were located and we were deemed clean of that infestation. Between that and the fake fertility charms she'd had such a demand for, she'd been cleaning up. It seemed like every mare had one, including Chrysalis. I faulted the stallions for the problem. It seemed they'd gotten rather sickly in the jungle heat and constant toil of building a whole new society.

We'd begun trading with the zebras about the time the first hotel went up, and we adopted their currency, though we're still calling them bits, even though they're not. By the sweat and toil of everypony, a new life had been wrestled from the malarial jungles. Meanwhile, I sat in a dank cave, mostly alone, surrounded by thousands of books shelved in no order I could discern, lit by dim, bioluminescent lighting.

It took me the first year to figure out what I wanted to do and how I wanted it laid out and resign myself to the work. It took half of another to create an outline and start the research in earnest. Now, I joke about the organization of the books, but it was explained to me that they were in chronological order, not by the date they were published or written, but to align with the relevant event alluded to within them. If there was more than one event, it was shelved with the earliest. If it was a generalized history of the changelings it would be at the end, and then organized by relevance in the opinion of whoever arranged them last. Fortunately, I didn't have to keep track. Any I left on the tables would remain untouched, any I left on the floor would be mysteriously reshelved by the next morning, back in their original order.

Some books had histories of whole nations and I was meant to be able to pick out from them the few lines that concerned some changeling activity, and of course I could not. Lucy was of great help in this capacity. She could pick out the oddities and anomalies quick as a whip, even though her knowledge of her own history was vague, at best and I couldn't discern how she could tell what was relevant and what wasn't, despite numerous attempts. She just shrugged it off and said she could feel it when she got to the important bits. Then she would either alert me to it if it fell in my current line of research, or stick a slip of paper in it for later if it did not.

Many of them were fairly ambiguous. A whole book and what was marked would be: A stallion, missing twenty five years returned with no memory of where he'd been. He thinks he'd been asleep the whole time, dreaming of a paradise, but begged to be awoken when he realized that it was a dream and woke to find himself walking towards his childhood home, long since abandoned. Authorities on the matter feel he may be genuine, but is more likely a crank.

Or: A mare aged twenty years old disappeared from a Hambletonian farm in the summer of the great drought. She was searched for and her body eventually discovered at the bottom of a long dry well on the estate, but it's state of decomposition indicated it's long presence there. Moreover, the skeleton was only half grown, where the victim had been an adult at the time of her disappearance. An imposter was at first suspected, but she was well known in town, making her impersonation unlikely and nopony could make sense of it anyhow.

Some were even as vague as a journal that stated: Though I offered a modest reward, my much beloved sheepdog hasn't been located. It's so unlike him to range far from home, though with Hearth Stone gone, I fear he may no longer get so much affection as is proper.

Instances where they had impersonated anypony of note or were found out for what they were was a rare occurrence. Given the numbers of hivelings that must have been supported, there had to have been and exponential number of subtle incursions that went wholly unnoticed.

It's an aberration that we even knew about changelings, or had seen them directly. For most of their history they'd stayed out of sight, with spottings few and far between and direct evidence practically non-existent in most of the land. If it was not for the fact that unicorn wizards were well aware of them and had written on the subject quite extensively, there would be little hope for a book thick enough to answer Chrysalis' desires.

What was helpful was that my fellow unicorns not only wrote volumes on any subject they had a whim for, but they also wrote spells, and early on I'd found the spell of my dreams. It was a changeling revealing spell. Cast in the open it would travel like a wave and strip away the disguises of every changeling within a certain radius, depending on the strength of the caster. As of yet, I was not strong enough to cast it, but I'd been practicing as well as chugging away on a workaround, an individualized spell that would let me feel who was a changeling or not by using my horn like a dowsing rod. I was close to perfecting it, but it was low priority. In truth, knowing how bad things actually were wouldn't help much to fix them. More than that, I felt an obsessive need to finish my work before turning everypony's lives upside down again. Once I did that, I might not have access to this knowledge ever again.

For appearance sake, I'd been staying in Chrysalis' cottage, though I had my own small room. We shared awkward meals with forced small talk and various witty barbs traded back and forth. In truth, I spent the majority of my nights dozing on splayed out books in my own private oubliette. The prime enticement to venture into that cursed house, save to pass through it, was the opportunity to spend time with the quickly growing Squeaky, who's playful company I most enjoyed, though she made me wistfully aware that my own colt was growing without me.

I had poor standing in the community at large since I was rarely seen working to better the city or interacting with it's denizens. It didn't help that the Commander had gossiped about my supposed bout of paranoid insanity and given everypony reason to doubt me. It was a lonely life and it was the case that my only friends were changelings. Were it to come up, they would invariably side with their queen over myself, and were possibly only associating with me on her orders, giving me an actual friend count of approximately zero.

Though I tested my boundaries at every opportunity, I only tried a full fledged escape once more in those two years. Somewhere in the middle of the timeline of books, somepony had found an abandoned hive and made careful drawings of it. Not knowing about it's inhabitants, he made a number of very interesting, but incorrect leaps of logic which cheapened his efforts, but his exacting drawings could not be faulted. They showed a hive with a similar architecture to the one I'd known, but in a less refined form. The layout was the same, however, and the four arches leading to the pods were laid out the same  as this library as well. There was but one feature unaccounted for in my current environs, the method by which the library had been surreptitiously populated with books, a front door.

Once I thought to look for it, the passage was easily located, concealed behind a bookshelf that swung away on hinges. There's no great story to it, really. I had guessed the passage led to the conjectured hidden hive, but after scampering down it I found it simply opened into a small clearing just past the treeline. At the time I gave it no thought, simply taking off to the North. It was just my luck that the rainy season had just started. I miserably trekked through unbroken woodland for four days before my body gave up and I had to hunker in the lee of a great old tree, too exhausted to move. I'd backtracked on my trail, meandered and otherwise wasted my efforts. I couldn't say for certain if I'd even made it much closer to Tanis.

In the peaceful stillness I heard a rustle. Doubtless some apex predator come to do me in and snack on my bones, I thought. Even so, I was too tired to fight, so I hollered out, hoping to drive it off, "You, just get away now, find your prey somewhere else and leave me be!"

A changeling stepped into the clearing, rivulets of water dripping from the natural raincoat of it's carapace. It looked at me uncertainly, then changed to the form of a matronly pegasus, "Oh, ok dearie. You just let me know when you're done escaping and I'll bring you back to Janus." She told me as if I were some wayward foal, having a pout. With a green flash and a few steps she was once again out of view and silent. It was a particularly humiliating form of defeat, and Chrysalis never mentioned it, though the wicked curl of her lip when I'd returned indicated it was of considerable amusement to her, and she's left the passage conspicuously unguarded still, seemingly as a taunt.

After that I hadn't tried to run again, I was a broken stallion, and Chrysalis knew it, even though a severe manic depressive tendency was all that showed on the surface. This, in particular, is the sort of humor that drives Chrysalis wild. Shortly, certain events came to light that promised me the last laugh.

I'd made considerable headway on the book. Once the outline was done it was merely a matter of filling in the facts and drawing conclusions, so the work went quickly. All the disparate reports of changeling activity that had at first seemed useless, instead gave a pattern of tactics and the areas they were being used in throughout the past. From them I could discern the locations of hives and when they were moved with reasonable certainty. I could also say with some certainty, that although satellite hives were established fairly often, they invariably petered out in less than a century. The changeling queens passed on faster than they were replaced, all save one. Though I'd known it obliquely for some time, it became obvious that Chrysalis was immortal, as my own Princesses were.

The unicorn journals had accounts of many events stretching back to antiquity, and it appeared the hive was more reckless in those times. Apparently they waged war and subjugated, for a short time, the sea ponies. Unlikely as it seems, they held dominion over that watery kingdom for several years until the were routed by Neptunia herself. The sea ponies never fully recovered and are now quite in danger of fading into obscurity. The spoils of that conquest kept the changelings fed for a time while they expanded their numbers and marched in several less ostentatious battles, invariably winning each time.

Their success was noticed, however, and they were driven into the shadows by a coalition of the three tribes which, in pre-harmony days, was something to be remarked upon. From then on they used their deceitful natural gifts and various schemes to pilfer love energy in minor and grand situations alike. Though largely unknown, they've had a diverse and successful time of it, skulking about in our nightmares, shamelessly inserting themselves into any situation where love might be harvested, and I'd gleaned a full and rich history with few holes in it.

What it lacked was specific capabilities, limits and extents of powers, and the dramatic take that my eventual interview with Chrysalis would, hopefully, give. Many of the events lacked nuance, but I'd been holding out. In the very top of the library, marking the beginning of the records, was a little black journal, centuries old and penned in Chrysalis' own writing. It was my motivation to continue the otherwise thankless task. When everything else was done, just before I questioned her directly, I planned to read that book. I'd only just cracked it and seen the first few pages which were faded almost beyond comprehension. From it's position and the content of the first page it was obviously the queen's journal. It would take some time to copy it out into a legible form and it wasn't helped that somepony had thought to press wildflowers in it's pages some century or another.

Before I came to that fulfilling point, Lucy left a book for me, marked with a slip of paper that referenced a town that had done a booming business in fertility charms some centuries ago. I thought it very strange that she marked it, and thought for a moment that it was simply in reference to the quack selling them in our own town, but the name of the town, Tapadero, had come up somewhere before. I had to backtrack to find it, but when I did, I found it to be another that had needed further research as I didn't see it's relevance.

"Lucy?" I called to the changeling who was rapidly scanning a thick tome to parse it's relevance.

"Yeah, boss?"

"I think I'd rather like to know everything I can about Tapadero, circa three hundred and fifty years back or so." When I asked this of her, she looked up with a satisfied, knowing grin and nodded.

With the books splayed out around me a familiar story was told. Half the population of Tapadero had been taken, and then shortly reclaimed by military force, routing the kidnappers, but doing little enough harm to them. It was supposed that a curse was put on the town, however, as there was considerable illness among those who'd not been abducted, and no foals were born for over five years afterward. Then all the ones who'd been taken so long ago slipped away one dark night, only to wander back into town, one by one, over the course of a few days. Their memories had been lost from the time they'd been kidnapped to the present. Five years evaporated in one night as did the illnesses. Those who'd been getting progressively weaker were suddenly well again and a veritable baby boom ensued.

So as to get to the bottom of this occurrence, trackers were used to backtrack the victim's trail. When they came to the terminus they found a ghost town. A virtual mirror of their own bustling village, but a hundred miles distant. It was so far beyond what was explicable, they called it cursed and burned it to the ground. A simple minded solution for simpler times.

The interesting part, the thing I was sure had bearing on the current circumstances, was that the denizens of Tapadero were rather amazonian in nature, and all the original kidnappees, were stallions.

With all the preliminaries in place, I simply needed to compile my notes into a single volume, which would have taken years, save that I'd complained about it and Lucy had enlisted her brother's help, along  with a small swarm of other changelings, mostly reverted to drones so that I might not know their assumed identities. The job in capable hooves, I wrote the introduction, which was a frank statement of my situation, and a snarky prologue, which I meant to add in afterward. It detailed my anticipated defeat of the changelings and my triumphant return to my wife and foal. What I lacked was an interview with Chrysalis which should shed light on the many things I'd glossed over for want of information.

I debated the importance of actually finishing my work, for I'd redoubled my efforts towards the changeling revealing spells now that I knew the big secret. I looked over my list of questions, and while they were each something I wanted to know very badly, none of them were so clever or insightful as Chrysalis had seemed to want. I decided to skip it and hid it in the old black book I'd left to read only after I'd victoriously left this place behind me, and I slipped it back into it's spot amongst the others books.

A week beyond that, when the book's draft was done, it was a thousand page monster and had another thousand pages of footnotes in another volume. I packed both volumes in my saddle bags, then headed up the ladders to get that mysterious journal. Lucy and Bub met me halfway, matching sneers on their faces as they appraised my saddlebags.

"Going somewhere?" Bub barred my path. I'd thought myself alone, and having these two see me packed up and ready to make a break was very much a setback.

"No, I was going to show Chrysalis the book, now that it's finished." I lied.

"I was told it wouldn't be complete for a time yet, was there some great breakthrough?" He cocked his head.

"No, no, I just decided that certain parts were extraneous and that it would do just as it is."

Bub scoffed, "This is meant to be the most complete and honest account of changeling history ever produced, it doesn't seem like it could even be complete without an interview with the queen."

"Yeah, from where we're sitting, it almost looks like you're planning on skipping out on us now that your book's done." Lucy looked me dead in the eye and advanced, "It seems like in your haste to be rid of us you've tried to cut corners."

She passed by me, so close as to drag my neck with her wing, then she flopped the flap on my saddlebag open and dropped something into it, "Seems like you're forgetting things too."

I looked back and found that she'd dropped the black journal into my bag. I met her eyes in shock and she winked, "Why are you helping me?"

"Why indeed?" Bub cryptically asked, but I figured I didn't have time to sort it out. There was a town meeting in which Commander Victory was to give a speech. The entire town would be there and I'd finally gotten strong enough to cast my changeling revealing spell, so long as everypony was in relatively close proximity. I brushed by them both and galloped there, a sense of dread overwhelming me. It was my intent to cast the revealing spell, then skip out in the ensuing chaos to work my way back to Connie.

I was seemingly in luck. The Commander was on stage with Chrysalis, in the guise of my wife, by his side, giving me the perfect opportunity to get up on stage myself as if I'd only meant to sidle up beside her. She eyed me suspiciously as I mounted the steps and crossed the low wooden stage. The crowd was gathered as close as that number of ponies could be, covering the lawn before the town hall in a brightly hued sea of ponies, half of which would shortly be revealed as changelings.

Could she tell what I was thinking? I looked at her sidelong only to see her eyes fixed upon me and a sneer drawn on her lips.

"What are you doing?" She hissed at me, and I knew it was now or never.

"...port will usher in a new era of prosperity and a connection back to our homeland besides, and with all your efforts..." The Commander's speech droned on. I crossed to center stage, excused myself for interrupting and cast an amplifying spell.

"Pardon me for interrupting, this really is rather important, however. I've recently come to the end of a rather involved research project, well half of you already knew that, but, anyway, what I've come to discover is that there are changelings amongst us, and a considerable number." The Commander jumped forward to tackle me, but missed, and Chrysalis growled as she strode across the stage, "I will...I will now reveal them to you, and you will see that nearly all the town's stallions have been replaced, so be ready to fight. Here goes."

I cast the spell, even as I was dog piled. A weak shockwave traveled outward and across the crowd. It did next to nothing. The only thing it did do was illuminate each and every one of the fertility charms that the mares had taken to wearing. That's when I recognized the stones. They were smoky, but they were quartz of the sort one would enchant with an anti-magic charm. I'd gotten it backwards, it was the mares that had been replaced, which is obvious in retrospect.

I'd caught on to the trick, that the mares had been replaced by changelings at the battle for the hive, but I'd for some reason assumed I'd been kidnapped away to the other group that was implied, a group where most of the stallions had been replaced and hidden away in the deep jungle. I hadn't even considered the stallions constant low grade illness, it not having been known to me in practical terms how much being drained of vital energies affected one's constitution. Partly it was sexism on my part, fueled by a macho desire to think of all mares as innocents, and partly a want for Commander Victory's actions to be explained by cunning rather than folly. I'd wasted my chance, made myself look paranoid and discredited any in the future who might speculate in the same vein.

I yanked Chrysalis' charm loose and prepared to cast the spell again on just her, but my horn wasn't in it. I'd worn myself out, but it was a very real threat in her eyes, so with supernatural strength she threw me off the stage and into a bush. The saddle bags and books cushioned my fall, somewhat. I think she'd been aiming for something more solid. I scurried to my hooves and took off at a gallop.

"Let him go." I heard her say from behind me, "He'll come home when he gets hungry and we'll have a long talk about what's to be done about his condition." By which she meant that she would hunt me down and drag me in and treat me as if I were a lunatic. As I cleared the treeline I speculated on how to avoid that. I only had one ace up my sleeve, and it was a long shot. With the simpler changeling detection spell I would feel a pull or a pressure in my horn when a changeling was near, and tell from which direction they were coming by turning towards and away from them. If I could feel them coming, maybe I could avoid them. It was my best hope, so I cast it.

It was a long night. I had to keep moving. As soon as I would stop to rest, a pulse in my horn would prod me to my hooves once again. Even with my horn lit, it was dark. I tripped over rocks and roots, branches and spiderwebs assaulted my face, I nearly twisted my ankle in the animal burrows, and the whole time I could feel the changelings searching for me, driving me forward.

When the sun rose I kept moving. I was exhausted, but I was on the right track this time, I thought I had a chance to make it this time. As careful as I'd been about changelings on my trail, I hadn't paid nearly enough attention to the other creatures that might want a bit of pony flesh, and my sweaty musk must have been a beacon to predators looking for a creature in distress.

I stopped only long enough to sip from a beautiful, pebbly stream in a peaceful glade with not even the thought of danger around. When I raised my head, there before me was a rabbit with a single, smooth horn extending half a yard from it's forehead. It looked almost comical, it's little nose twitching, but I'd been warned once about the al-mi'raj. They were vicious, territorial, and they ran in packs. I peeked behind me and confirmed my fear. On their bellies and hind legs, a tiny furry infantry with spears naturally mounted had snuck up behind me. I did not pause, I did not think, I simply ran towards the single adversary with my horn angled for him.

They squealed a cry of a hundred tortured souls as they charged after me. The single adversary had leapt aside, striking a glancing blow to my flank as I passed before joining his brothers in my pursuit. Their sharp teeth chattered as they pumped their little legs, clearing a yard in each bound. I was barely keeping ahead of them and could not do so for long. I saw a stout tree ahead and figured that they couldn't likely climb it. I wasn't sure I could either, but with my longer reach I managed to get up on a low branch and, with difficulty, drag myself to branches far above their reach.

My muscles burned, I'd acquired any number of scrapes and abrasions as I ran, and the foul creatures whorled around the base of the tree in a frenzy, showing no intention of retreating. I felt around and could sense no changelings, and in my state and lacking any better course of action, I settled in to nap in the tree.

I awoke to a throbbing pressure growing in my head, a changeling growing near, I was certain. It didn't explain why the tree was creaking and swaying, however. That wouldn't become evident until the tree groaned in defeat and lazily tilted over. Then I had a clear view of the chewed through trunk below me as I tumbled down to towards the ground, nearly managing to be crushed in the process.

I landed on my right side and the jarring numbed me so much that I swayed badly when I woozily rose. I was half a second from being impaled on those savage horns when my head exploded in pulsing pain and a black blur collided with them, "Run! Run for all you're worth and don't look back!"

I was easily convinced and did so, I did, however, look back. The changeling had dealt with the bulk of the nasty creatures, but half a dozen were still behind me. I momentarily worried for him as he was lost to my view, I hadn't heard his true voice often, but I'm pretty sure my rescuer had been Bub. I outpaced the tiny monsters for a time and thought myself to be home free when I broke through into a clearing and found my forehooves dangling over a precipice. I would like to say that I bravely dove off to escape my pursuers, but in fact momentum carried me over and I freefell for a ways, tumbled through scrubby pines and a field of round stones before I came to an abrupt halt on a small ledge before a gully. I did not pause to assess the damage. Since I still seemed capable of doing so, I rose, made my way across and scrabbled up the opposite side as quickly as I could.

The changeling was far away, but coming towards me now and I was a sitting duck here so I galloped away, pondering just what enhanced senses allowed them to track me so easily. Could they sense me from afar, only to come running when I ran into mortal danger and exuded a stink of fear? Regardless, I had little choice but to keep moving and hope I would travel beyond their range.

Mere hours later I was in a proper town again, or as proper as towns got this far into the southern wilds. It was a Zebra town, a garishly festive barrage of colors and masks hung on huts and hollowed out trees. What it had that gave me some hope, was a small port. In fact, port may be a generous term. It was more like a single dock that had the look of a port due to the barrels, bales, casks and other cargo in the midst of being loaded into the hold of a trireme such as the ones that had graced the Tanisian ports so often.

The vessel's Captain was overseeing the operations as I sprinted down the wide dirt path and came to a halt before her, panting. She was a stout mare, solidly middle aged with a confident bearing. Wearing a knotted scarlet neckerchief over her periwinkle coat somehow seemed quite enough to announce her position amongst the rest of the swarthy crew who labored with the freight in the hot sun.

"Captain," I addressed her with a quick bow, "If I could ask, where might you be headed?"

She appraised me as if weighing the value of a bushel basket of grain, "Tanis is our port of call."

I thought it over. "Is your ship fast?"

She gave me a disdainful look, "She's the fastest ship that ever sailed, I'd lay my life upon it."

Would I, though? It seemed to me that every ship's captain claimed theirs to be the fastest that ever plied the waves, but they'd be no less likely to give that frank appraisal if their vessel had been a washtub toy. I didn't see a great deal of choice. "Could I work as crew for passage there?"

Again she looked me over again, "I don't know, you don't look as if you'd bend to the oar too well. Quite soft about the middle from the look of it. Maybe you'd care to be my own personal entertainment? Hmm? You Canterlotians do have such a refined way about you, I think I should enjoy such company."

I balked, "I...I'm a married stallion, I could never..."

This was met with a hearty laugh, "Aye, you're a good enough fellow. Come aboard as my guest and I'll make no untoward advances, I promise. It seems to me you've few enough desirable maritime skills, and clearly no money, so let me pity you and trade passage for a bit of fresh conversation and I'll come away well enough."

Soon enough I was on my way home, to see what state it had been left in, and in who's hooves it now sat.

It turned out that Brass Belle, the Captain, really had been simply longing for company. She was no manner of refined damsel, but she was far and away more civilized than her loutish crew, from her first officer, right down to the grunting stallions pulling the oars. I remarked that her ship seemed ill suited to cargo and that a great measure of profit seemed destined to evaporate away in keeping her crew paid and fed. She admitted grimly that all but the officers were prisoners and she'd paid a nominal sum to have them serve out their sentences pulling at her oars.

"Still, just feeding them should just about break you, I'd think. You're essentially using the most modern warship of our day to haul freight, and it's hold doesn't seem up to it." I leaned back on the cushion, took up the glass of cognac and swirled it idly. The luxurious cabin seemed out of place given the army of slaves just outside the door. It was a warm and stylishly decorated space, made to look the part of a parlor, and with a similar function. Everywhere I looked was caramel colored wood, crimson cloth and gold painted accents. The library was well stocked with intriguing titles and the pantry was provisioned with mind numbing beverages.

She grinned, "That's very astute, aye. You'd think the miniscule amount of cargo wouldn't answer for the operating costs. In normal circumstances you'd be right, but what with the strange habits and tastes Tanis seems to have picked up, we can cover it and then some."

"Strange, howso?"

"Oh ho, so you haven't heard about it then? Well let me be the first to tell you, the mares have all gone crazy and gotten their stallions so thoroughly whipped that it's shifted the whole balance of trade and made all this possible." She slid a manifest across the chestnut table, I looked at it and found it to be all luxury goods. Silk, diamonds, Zebrican herbal perfume, hazel nuts, exotic fruit and flowers. Stereotypically things mares are said to want. The mares I got along with preferred good books to frivolities, but to each her own.

"How long's this been going on?"

"Couple years now, give or take some. It'd be just fine if it stayed this way, turns a bigger profit than hauling lumber and pitch from down south the way I had been before this all started up, and it's less work besides. At this rate I expect a second ship in my future to keep up. Then I'll be an Admiral, and won't that be a lark?" She grimaced, "Only trouble with the whole thing is, they been doting on their mares so much that they've let that whole city go to rack and ruin. Doesn't seem like anything more industrious or less romantic than planting a rosebush has gone on in a while, and it's starting to show. City's getting worn down, the ponies, too. The mares anyway, it's like they're enjoying the attention, but they all have this kind of glazed look in their eyes. They stumble around in a happy sort of  daze like they'd just finished a marathon or something. It's decidedly troubling."

"Oh, I see. Well...I guess there's something I should tell you." I started, and three hours on I'd confided most of what I knew about the changelings and my suspicions that every stallion in the whole town was a changeling as all the mares were in Janus. I also had my suspicions that the hive I'd sought in Janus was, instead, in Tanis.

"Oh buck." She swore, then remained silent for a time, considering a course of action, I suspected, "This is going to turn the whole exotic gift trade tits up, isn't it?"