As it turned out, Eerie was a busy pony with a great number of duties. Something had come up—though Dim had no idea what—and Eerie had gone off in something of a tizzy. Dim had been left in a curious space, though he wasn’t quite sure what this room, this place was. It appeared to be some kind of creative commons; this place was filled with artists, writers, musicians, those of a creative bent. Why had Eerie left him here? What purpose did her actions serve?

About a yard away, an older minotaur cow—a painter—had found a subject in Blackbird, who sat at a table playing poker with bushwoolies. Though he could not say why, Dim knew the painting was going to be a smash success—a fad—and soon the world would be flooded with paintings of a hippogriff playing poker with bushwoolies. It was simply too surreal to resist. Even unfinished, Dim could see the appeal of such a work of art.

The White Hand seemed to be a bastion of refinement, culture, and art. This place was every bit as civilised as Equestria, though probably nowhere near as safe nor secure, but danger held its own appeal for artists. Dim was almost certain that these artists had patronage, and they were free to lounge about in an opulent room within the palace, which was shaped like an enormous white hand reaching for the sky.

Yes, Dim could understand why this place might appeal to artists.

A jasper jackal—Dim had learned the names of the strange looking diamond dogs—made strange faces while writing something in his notebook. What made the dog-creature so curious was the fact that his pen never ceased moving and words seemed to flow like magic. This was fascinating to Dim, who could only be creative in bursts. The writer seemed completely lost in his own thoughts.

There was a smell to creativity, to inspiration. A hint of body odour from those too busy to shower or bathe, the pungent smell of ink, the noxious and often unpleasant scent of paints, many of which no doubt had heavy metals or toxic ingredients for their peculiar pigments. An artist had to suffer for their work. Papier-mâché left behind a wet, musty smell that made Dim want to sneeze. A whittler carving a minotaur marionette filled the air with the aroma of fresh-cut wood and little curlicues of wood shavings fell to the floor around his hooves.

No one seemed to mind the mess.

“Your Majesty…” This was followed by a careful throat clearing and Dim turned his head to look. A minotaur calf stood nearby, looking apologetic. “Prince Dim, there is someone who wishes to speak with you. Captain Melvin awaits in a nearby private room.”

“Oh,” Dim replied, and he wondered how Captain Melvin was doing. “Why thank you. Show me to him at once.”

“As you command, Your Majesty.”

“Dim!” The big captain’s face split open with a wide smile as the door opened and there was a warm twinkle in his eye. “Getting settled in? Do you like Eerie? Are you comfortable? You look well. Do I need to apologise for my subterfuge? Where is Blackbird?”

“She is playing poker with some bushwoolies,” Dim replied, then, much to his own surprise, he felt his cheek muscles tighten and he smiled. The sudden, unexpected action made his face ache and his ear muscles began to twitch from the annoying cramping. He stood in the doorway for moment, looking up at Captain Melvin, but this ended when Dim felt another pair of eyes upon him. Melvin had a companion, a young looking unicorn that appeared to have just entered the gawky, awkward stage, that point where the body just could not decide what it should grow next.

“This is Marlow—”

“What a peculiar name,” Dim said aloud, interrupting without meaning to do so. It was just too interesting not to comment and Dim’s impulse control departed upon a sudden, unannounced vacation. “For a unicorn, I mean.”

The unicorn, Marlow, stepped forwards, and in a creaky voice he introduced himself thusly, “My name is Marlow and I am a monocerus raised by a minotaur.”

“You use the ancient ancestral name for unicorns,” Dim remarked in reply and already, a question surfaced within his mind. “How does a unicorn get raised by a minotaur?”

“Um…” Marlow squirmed a bit and the sounds of Melvin’s heavy breathing filled the room. “Uh… well, you see, Mirabella was a grieving widow in need in comfort and company. She purchased me—”

“She bought you?” Dim’s sudden question was proof that a deadpan could, in fact, sound incredulous and still be a monotonous utterance.

“It’s not like that! I was never a slave to her!” Marlow’s voice cracked and the colt looked panicked. “I wasn’t a pet or a slave to her… she was kind to me… she was already on trial once for her ownership of me and Eerie was merciful when the truth was revealed. Mirabella was sentenced to be my mother for the rest of her days.”

“I see.” Dim’s eyebrow lifted, dropped, and then lifted again as he thought about everything said. So, Eerie had placed citizens on trial for slave ownership. This was interesting, and revealed much. She was also merciful and just in her dealings, which he did find just a tiny bit surprising, because it could be said that the Darks had an allergy to mercy.

“Yes, as I was saying, this is Marlow and he’s an apprentice within the Merchant’s Guild. He came with me to act as their formal emissary. We’ve come bearing gifts, and a payment.” With a broad, sweeping movement of his massive hand, the minotaur gestured at some boxes on the table. “Your Majesty, Prince Dim, the Merchant’s Guild of Istanbull welcomes you.”

As fascinating as all of this was, Dim’s curiousity was piqued. “So Mirabella purchased you as a foal to ease her loneliness? What of your birth-mother?” The colt appeared crestfallen, stricken even, but Dim was so eager to know more that he failed to notice or even care about the colt’s plight. “Most of the time, when somepony is grieving, they buy a cat, or a dog, or even a bird… purchasing a unicorn seems extraordinary by any rational measure.”

“The wealthy and well-to-do purchase unicorns for domestic work and as something of a status symbol.” Captain Melvin reached out and patted Marlow on the head. “Well, they did, at one time, but Eerie, Mars, and Modesto put an end to that practice.” Melvin’s big calloused fingers gave Marlow’s ear a gentle tug and the colt slipped into complete foalishness for a moment, though again, Dim failed to notice.

For a moment, Dim was about to say something, the words were even on his tongue, but then he thought better of it. He understood all too well how a unicorn could be made subservient and turned into a slave. With his eyes hidden behind his goggles, he stood thinking about his own comfortable prison as well as all of the niceties that had kept him shackled. With much care and effort, he had been educated, his horizons had been broadened, and Dim liked to think that he was somewhat enlightened, naive as he had been, but one thing stood out. He had been a slave and his entire existence was to serve the agenda of House Dark.

Was all of Eerie’s kindness just a ruse to leave him indebted to her?

Unsettled, Dim thought of Marlow’s amicable relationship with his purchaser and was filled with far too many dark, uncomfortable questions. This sense of affection, of course it existed, he had been raised by this minotaur cow. Something about Eerie’s acknowledgement of it disturbed him, the very fact that she had embraced it. No doubt, Marlow’s mother was owned by another family, and like a dog having puppies or a cat having kittens, Marlow had come along into the world. Or perhaps she was owned by some slaver guild or similar agency. It didn’t matter to Dim, not really, the end result was the same; a mother and her foal had been separated, with the foal becoming a grieving widow’s distraction. A unicorn, a pony in general, was about the right size for a minotaur’s pet, and they could be oh-so-very-cute when they were young. He thought about Blackbird fawning over him and how cute and tiny he was, and the diminished feeling he had suffered.

The very thought of it caused Dim’s lip to curl back from is teeth in disgust.

“The turbine we recovered was quite valuable,” Captain Melvin said, dispelling the uncomfortable silence that had settled in. “The Merchant’s Guild bought it outright and they were quite excited to get their hands on Black Hand tech. It’s an odd engine, it doesn’t run on coal, but works with methane. Never heard of an engine that works on farts before.”

Marlow, who was still mighty uncomfortable, let out a nervous giggle.

“The guild paid a mind-boggling amount of wealth for it, of course, the kind of payout that cannot be easily counted into coin. Your fair share is mostly diamonds and similar stones of extreme worth. It was valued at a little over twenty-thousand of our local gold coins, and the sheer weight of the payment would have been over a thousand pounds in coin.”

“Oh?” Dim’s attention was now on the captain and one eyebrow arched like a curious inchworm.

“‘Oh,’ you say… for me, that’s about a year’s pay all in one go. And you… you don’t look the least bit excited.” Melvin snorted, rolled his eyes, and then shook his head from side to side, his horns almost—but not quite—touching the ceiling. “They’re all losing their minds… none of them know what to make of it. It is entirely new tech and is years ahead of what we have. Even Equestrian turbines aren’t this advanced… those run on refined coke—”

“This is a big deal,” Marlow said, interrupting the captain after having recovered himself and his composure from the upsetting topic. “We’ve never managed to actually capture one of the newer models of the Black Hand ships before… usually, they self-destruct before they can be taken, and now it makes sense how and why. No doubt, they blow up the methane reservoir… the tank, in event of capture.”

“Just what is it that you do in the guild?” Dim asked and the suddenness of his inquiry caught Marlow off guard. “You are an apprentice, yes?”

“Technological acquisition.” The colt took on a gawky, yet somehow dignified stance. “Mirabella saw to it that I had a fine education and after the liberation of the city, I was able to openly attend a polytechnic school without consequence. Somehow, I caught the eye of somebody within the guild and Mirabella was sent a formal request from the guild… she was very happy… she cried a lot.”

“Fascinating.” There was a surprising lack of sarcasm in Dim’s response, and he was, in fact, quite fascinated. “After you acquire tech, I suppose you reverse engineer it and then begin manufacturing?”

“Something like that, uh-huh.” Marlow’s head bobbed up and down in a dorky adolescent display of agreement. “I’m actually going into negotiations and accounting, so I have to know what the tech is, how it works, and then I have to figure out how to value it for both acquisition and distribution. After the appraisal, I will be responsible for estimating manufacturing costs and determining if something is a worthwhile acquisition.”

Perhaps the most curious thing of all was, this colt had no mark. This puzzled Dim, it intrigued him, this colt was planning out the entirety of his life without even knowing what he was good at, what his purpose was, or what his gifts, his talents might be. It was baffling, disturbing even, as life was something that one planned after one’s mark manifested. The very idea of it both titillated Dim and made his thoughts curdle like milk facing Princess Celestia’s furious noonday sun.

“Tell me more about your guild… I would like to know more about how it operates.” Hearing the sound of his own voice, Dim was struck by the sincerity it held, the actual genuine interest. Under most circumstances, he held little to no interest in the lives of others, mostly because he was too focused on his own thoughts, his own musings, the things that he concentrated upon.

Author's Notes:

This chapter is an odd one. I'm still kinda iffy about the pacing. No action has happened in a while and the overall pacing of the story has become sludgy. This will change, but it does feel off to me. Sorry.