Good Trooper Gilda

by Mitch H

First published 8th of October, 2018

Gilda just wanted to find herself. Instead, she found herself a soldier's life.

Gilda only wanted the humble things in life. Cheap rent, copious bits, the respect of her peers, the occasional juicy field-mouse.

Being captured by the Equestrians and dragooned into the Territorials wasn't quite what she'd dreamed of, but at least the rent was free.

And the rats were nice and plump.

A Fledgeling Of Griffonstone

It wasn't as if Gilda grew up dreaming of becoming a trooper of The Princess's Own Griffish Rangers.

"Gilda! Where is my brass-handled swagger-stick?"

Her kithood hadn’t been filled with tales of that mighty, legendary sisterhood of noble-born griffon soldiers, who patrolled the borders of golden, impossibly rich Equestria, of the realm of the forever pony princess.

"How should I know, lieutenant ma’am? You never let me touch it!"

Gilda hadn't even grown up Equestrian, not like her squadmates had.

"Of course I don’t, you mangy alley-cat! That doesn’t mean you don't know exactly where it is!"

No, not like either the starry-eyed youthful fledgelings eager to earn their spurs in the provincial battalions, nor the bitter old birds condemned to waste their time under arms for the preservation and defense of the pony domination of the occupied Griffish Isles.

"Have you tried your personal effects trunk? The one with the broken magical lock?"

There were more than a few rebel sympathizers among the latter sort in the ranks, but their attempts to talk up the equally bitter young fledgeling hen from storied, imperial Griffonstone had earned them nothing but brutal put-downs and the occasional clawed beak-sheath.

"What? When did that lock break?"

Gilda wasn't an Equestrian loyalist, but she had had her crop's-full of Griffonstonian daydreams.

"About the same time you started demanding I find your personal effects, when you know damn well I can’t unlock a magic lock, lieutenant ma’am."

Treacherous piffle talked of the glories of Golden Grover and his knighthood of the feathered air.

"Gilda! Did you break the lock on my personal trunk?"

It was hard not growing up a cynic in the roosts and alleyways of old Griffonstone.

"No, lieutenant ma’am! It must have been coincidentally broken by breezies the last time you demanded a fresh cravat forty-five seconds before the brigadier was due in the barracks for inspection!"

As far as Gilda was concerned, the only thing golden about Griffonstone was the occasional sunset, and she gathered from loose talk in the barracks-room that this, too, was the possession of the Equestrian princess.

"A likely story! Did you find the damn swagger-stick?"

That saintly princess’s benediction upon a fallen griffish world, the light that lit up the filth and squalor.

"Yes, lieutenant ma’am. Right here. Owch!"

Dreams were something that came with possibilities.

"That’s what you get for touching my swagger-stick. When did its head get dented like this?"

Gilda’s youth had been nothing but a series of reminders.

"Certainly not when I used it to break the lock on your personal effects trunk, lieutenant ma’am!"

Reminders that possibilities were for other people.

"Gilda! I’m going to pluck you bald when I get ahold of you!"

No, the only dream a young Gilda had grown up with was the dream of escaping the roost without her mother successfully tying a life-debt of a kithood's worth of back-rent to her tail.

It was a Griffonstonian tradition to present the fledgeling with that brutal bill as they left the nest, and a secondary tradition for the fledgeling to decamp in the dead of night so as to skip out on the bill. Gilda wished she had been able to pull that one off. Ten thousand, three hundred and fifteen bits. Plus another five hundred thirty bits for the midwife's bill for the laying of Gilda's egg. Her eagle-eyed mother had laid in wait for Gilda on their roost's roof, all night long as far as Gilda could tell, just waiting for her to slip out of the window and flee for the territories.

"Thought you could skip out of town without the reckoning, Gilda my hen?" The old hen squatted on the half-rotted thatch, picking idly at the vermin crawling in the weave. She held the Brutal Bill in her left foreclaw, tapping it against her folded-up wing.

"Mom! Hey. Fancy seeing you up here. On… the roof. At four in the morning. How’s your lumbago?" Gilda had eyed her chosen escape route. The old hen could easily cut her off before she got into the open air.

"No use in buttering me up, Gilda. I’m not a field mouse to be dipped in spiced rum. Here, you faithless child. Your bill."

"My what?"

Her mother rolled her eyes in disgust. "Don’t act like you didn’t know it was coming. It’s tradition."

"It’s daft is what it is," objected Gilda. "I can’t afford to pay you over a decade’s back-rent! When and where have I been making bits?"

"That’s your fault, not mine. I told you to prepare. I told you, didn’t I?"

"Fine!" Gilda snatched the Brutal Bill from her mother’s talons. "Don’t be surprised if we bury you in a cardboard box."

Her mother stood up and let Gilda past, sneering in contempt. "You’ll have to find one, first. Ain’t been too many since the Equestians closed the ports. Remember, it starts accruing interest in six months."

Gilda had torn up the parchment as soon as she'd slipped her tail out of her mother's sharp claws, but she hadn't been able yet to tear up her memory of those sums. Griffons weren't great at learning their letters, but every bird knew from the egg how to do their sums. How else would you know your debts and those who owed you?

Almost nogriff owed Gilda anything.

If the world and the times had been other than they were, Gilda would have shaken the filth of dung-lined old Griffonstone from her feet, flown off to see the open skies, and forgotten that anygriff had any claims on her time and her bits. But the times and the world were as they were, and the borders were locked down tight, with flights of humorless pegasi turning back any bird foolish enough to fly west, and terrifying dragons willing and able to devour a feckless cat-bird if she was to fly south or east.

Which is how Gilda found herself joining a flight of radical young birds who had grown up dreaming of King Grover and his golden-winged knights. Who had grown up dreaming of Greater Griffonia, of a day when to be a griffon was to be warrior and predator, lord of the skies, rich, prosperous, respected by prey and fellow-flier alike. Her friend Gerta had told her about the group of young griffons who were planning to slip over the sea, and sneak onto the isle of Skye in the Griffish Isles.

"Look, the Isles is where things are happening, Gilda my hen! They are making things happen. The revival of the throne will start on Skye!"

"Gerta, they’re under the iron hooves of the ponies. Everygriff on the Isles are slaves to the equines."

"What do you know? You’ve never laid eyes on a pony. They’re creampuffs, wimps."

"Dweebs, you mean?"

"Exactly! Dweebs!"

It had been good enough for Gilda, and so she went.

She found herself flying with Gerta, three dozen fledglings, and a scatter of young griffons as they tried to fly nape of the sea across the narrows. They managed to dodge several Equestrian patrols in the air and below, and Gilda found herself enjoying the chase, despite the danger. A generation earlier, Gilda might have simply flown west, and found her way to Cloudsdale, to see the great cloud-city, almost as legendary as Golden Grover himself, but this was a lot more fun, a lot more challenging. Wasn’t it?

But the days when you could just flit across the borders with a pony song in your heart were over. Those feathered fools in far distant Canterlot had ended those days of free trade, free flight, free hearts. They’d managed to enrage the ponies with some sort of terrorist attack, blown up something important in the ponies’ capital. Before that outrage by the Greater Griffonian monarchists, the ponies had, as far as Gilda could figure out, regarded Griffonstone with a proper spirit of complacent contempt, which, in her opinion, her disgusting, worthless home honestly sort of deserved. But, after the ponies’ ‘Bloody Thirteenth’, they weren’t in a complacent mood anymore.

Ironically, the same bombings that had completely shut down the Equestrians' commerce with impoverished, immiserated Griffonstone, also revived the spirit of rebellion in the Isles. So said rebellion was fierce, recruiting, and apparently the only game in town, at least from the mainland side of things. Especially when the government in Griffonia proper was nothing but seventy-five would-be monarchs of all Griffonia busy trying to assassinate each other in the crowded, filthy alleys and roosts of the old capital.

It had made sense at the time, to join a band of would-be rebels, and to find the fight overseas, where they weren’t all just killing everybody who had some sort of claim on the throne, endless intercene warfare with no payoff and no goal and no end to it. And, most importantly - no bits. Rumor had it the rebels in the Isles had bits, and payrolls.

Unfortunately, her new compatriots proved to be a pack of imbeciles, as Gilda discovered far, far too late. The flock-leader flew them all right in front of an Equestrian sea-cutter, swarming with territorial griffons and their pony officers. Gilda had never seen it coming, but more damningly, neither had the big idiot that was supposed to lead them safe to roost.

In all the chaos, Gilda didn't see what happened to the rest of her flight, mostly because she’d gotten caught in a weighted net along with two other scrawny fledglings. She'd been the only one of the three with an edged weapon, and so it fell to her to saw away at their trap as a bunch of much larger, well-armed and armored blue-feathered griffons pulled them back and forth, flight-magic against flight-magic, with the Griffonstonian fledglings entangled in the net and fatally disoriented.

Gilda herself somehow managed to fall out of the bottom of the now-ruined net. Sadly, she’d also managed to lose her grip on the kitchen-knife she'd stolen from her mother, and was bare-pawed when one of the large Isles griffons followed in pursuit as she fled.

The air around the on-rushing pony boat was full of struggling griffons as Gilda plummeted downwards, desperate, and she nearly was caught a second time in the billowing white trap of what she later learned was the top-sail of the naval corvette Fleur de Lis. All she knew at the time was that the skies were as terrible a tangle as the jungle-wreckage of the old eastern hunting ranges back home, and she found herself flipping tail for beak as her left wing clipped a taut sheet and she spun out into what was all of a sudden the cold, drenching salted embrace of the shivering sea.

It might have ended right then and there, if some freakish miracle hadn't reached into the slate-grey chilly tartarus which was the Gulf of Griffonstone. A magenta glow lit up Gilda's drowning existence, and pulled her out of that evil soaking element and back into the glorious lung-preserving breathing world.

Gilda's brief moment in rebellion against an imperium she'd never known came to an end there, hanging powerless over the deck of a pony ship, in the impossible magic of a grim-looking young horned pony in half-armor.

"Do you yield, rebel scum?" demanded the scowling purple-coated filly, looking adorably fierce. The heavy-bladed claymore she held at the ready in her magic field was somewhat less adorable.

What would you have had of battered, soaked, chilled young Gilda? She'd lost the one possession she'd stolen from her harridan of a mother, her flock was scattering or as captured as she was, and this unicorn's magic was a tighter trap than a dozen hunting-nets.

"Your worship," said Gilda the Griffon, "I will never yield a bit, so if you were wise, you wouldn't buy my bonds. But I'll shine your shoes with my tongue if there's food in it for me."

And that was how Gilda joined the Fifth Griffish Territorial Battalion, and how she met her master, commander and chief torturer, Ensign Gleaming Shield of the Canterlot Sparkles.

Fetch And Carry

Gilda was disappointed to find that the Griffish Isles were almost as sere and grey as Griffonstone herself. There were far fewer trees on the Isles - or at least, on Skye and the other islands she saw in her first season away from the mainland. The grass was somewhat green, but the combination of the endless rains and the bitter cold winds off the Gulf of Griffonstone meant that being out and about in the elements was even more miserable than it had been back home.

The rolling green hills were full of livestock, though. The ranchers of the islands tended to endless teeming herds of swine, and goats, and sheep. The griffons of the Isles were all huge by Griffonstone standards, and a big part of that was the fat diet of these Equestrian compared to that of their cousins among the free griffons.

(It was only much later that someone explained to Gilda why it was so important that the specific breeds of sheep and goats they ranched on the Isles were not the speaking sort. She never quite understood the explanation, but gathered that attempting to eat something that could volubly express its opinions on its presence on the menu tended to be more than a little awkward.)

But by and large, despite the significant improvements in diet, being a semi-voluntary recruit in the Territorials wasn't all that different from being a fledgeling in Griffonstone. You got wing-slapped if you pissed off someone bigger than you, you did what you were told, and if you were lucky, your daily meal didn't cost you more than you could pay.

Gilda was lucky that most of her hurts from her kithood hadn't left their marks, but the corporals' wings were a good deal sharper and heavier due to the sheathed wingblades and armor they wore as a sign of their authority. More than a few of the griffons in the ranks bore scars from the heavy wing of military discipline. But still, the food was a lot better than anything available in Griffonstone, and more often than not, you didn't have to go hunting it down yourself.

Gilda never misbehaved so badly that the corporals felt the need to take the sheaths off of their wingblades. And, having had to clean up the remnants of her former rebel flightmates in the aftermath of the Fleur de Lis's ambush, she was glad enough of that. There had been surprisingly few survivors captured in that action aside from Gilda, but a good many malnourished corpses that had to be recovered from the sea. Didn't want to accustom the sharks to a griffon diet, after all.

Gilda wasn't sure to be pleased or perplexed that Gerta hadn't been among the eviscerated dead.

They didn't trust the Griffonstonian fledgeling with weapons or armor, of course. Gilda spent her first season among the Territorials as a sort of glorified servant, fetching and carrying, doing errands for the officers and the corporals, and cleaning and doing laundry.

So, so much laundry. She didn't understand how ponies and griffons that rarely wore clothing could generate so much dirty laundry, and yet there it all was, cauldron after cauldron of stinking towels, armor-padding gambesons, and cleaning-rags which no longer deserved the name 'towel'. All the work reminded Gilda of how her mother had made her take care of her crippled old grandfather in his last days after that assassin had missed her stroke. She remembered the old bird and his stories of the open-hooved ponies of his youth, and sometimes, she drifted off, reminiscing.

Ensign Gleaming Shield somehow always knew when Gilda was dreaming at her work, and was always there with a swiftly-swung swagger-stick to wake the recruit up. Better the stick than the heavy wings of an incensed corporal, Gilda figured.

The Fifth Territorial was not, as it turned out, assigned to the corvette which they'd used to ambush Gilda's flock. The battalions floated from posting to posting as high command directed, where ever they were needed. Part of this was that there were never enough griffons to fill the gaps in the Equestrian defenses, but most of it was that they didn't want the territorials to get too, well, territorial. A battalion which developed relationships with the locals was a battalion which was ripe for corruption, cooperation with smugglers, or outright rebellion.

In the end, griffons were griffons, ponies were ponies, and the predatory cat-birds simply did not herd. Your average griffon, Isle or Griffonstone, was out for themselves.

Or so the ensign told Gilda, often, emphatically, angrily. Gilda did many things for the battalion, but somehow, more and more of them seemed to rotate around satisfying the impossible to satisfy Gleaming Shield. Her weapons were never sufficiently sharpened, her armor never sufficiently polished, her small officer's cabin never properly organized, no matter how many hours Gilda wasted following the young unicorn's impossible check-lists.

"Why did you get me a skinning knife?" demanded Gilda's purple-coated tormenter.

"You wanted to skin bears?"

"What? Where in my instructions did I say anything about bears?"

"Right there, third item," Gilda helpfully pointed the instruction out on the roll of cheap paper.

"Collect bearings, trimming knife, and replacement tyre for cart?"

"Yeah, that. Bear trimmin' knife, and a spare tire. Figured we was goin' hunting."

"Bearings, you featherbrain. We needed to replace the bearings on the axle for that supply truck."

"Well, that's boring. And it looked more like bear-huntin' equipment on the list. I can't make out in your talon-writing, anyways. Anygriff ever tell you, you can’t write for piss? Ow!"

"Yes, I think that will remind you who is the recruit here, and who is the ensign. Are you going to talk back again?"

"No, missus."

"Don’t call me that."

"OK, governor."

"Gah! Corporal! Take this useless treebilly away, and get some work out of her, I surely cannot!"

Gilda turned around to find one of the omnipresent corporals scowling and tapping his rear paw.

"Hi, there, Corporal Guillaume," chirped Gilda. "Got anything you need polished?"

"Why do you do this to me, Recruit? She’s so easy to make happy."

"Coulda fooled me."

Gilda didn't escape a wing-beating that day.

As she struggled with the uniform-buckles and armor and the beak-stinging mixture they used for polishing in the battalion, Gilda thought about how that old Grandpa Gruff must never have had to deal with a pony like Gleaming Shield, or else the old bird must have been a more clever trading-griff than she'd thought he was. Although she had to admit, he'd been a griffon of substance before the closing of the Isles had wrecked his business. It had torn the owlish old buzzard's heart out, losing the business. He'd never been the same afterwards.

"Gilda my dear, we can't afford to send you abroad this season," he'd apologized. "The bits just aren't there this year, not with the ships not sailing. Maybe next year."

The ships hadn't sailed the next year, either, and the year after that, Gruff was dead, murdered by one of his relatives, or so Gilda and her mother had always believed. It was death, in those days, to admit to being related to Gruff's cousins and siblings, or any of their ancestors. That was about the time that they'd moved into the back alleys, and Gilda's mother had started muttering about the rent, and the Brutal Bill.

Sometimes Gilda thought she should blame the ponies for ending the trade with Griffonia. And sometimes she blamed the mad Equestrian griffons who set off the bombs. And sometimes she blamed the Griffonstonians for being such a squalid bunch of fratricidal vultures.

At least the ponies fed their troops well, even a half-prisoner like Gilda. And when the corporals ordered her to join the exercises and the evolutions, she found herself having more fun than she'd ever admit. They slotted Gilda into the last rank, last file, so when she missed her cues, the whole formation wasn't thrown into confusion. More often than not she just stumbled along at the back where her mis-steps couldn't trip up anygriff else. This was, they told her, how the Territorials taught. Example.

Example was the school of griffkind, so saith the corporals.

The battalion eventually moved out of the barracks beside the home-port of the corvette, cleverly called 'Harbor City'. A short march brought the column to the gates of a small fort on the west side of Skye, and they settled in for what looked at first like a long stay.

But as soon as Gilda started feeling like she had found a roost there, the Fifth picked up stakes again, and flew out to one of the lesser islands, a flyspeck out towards Bugbear territory called 'Seafoam'. Ensign Gleaming Shield fitted Gilda into a harness, and ordered the corporals to show her how to haul her share of the battalion's baggage. Gilda couldn't exactly kick about becoming a cat-bird of burden, because the rest of the battalion were similarly burdened or sent flitting about. The Territorials carried more baggage with them than Gilda had seen among all of her mother's neighbors and enemies put together. The Territorial griffons complained about how spartan and impoverished the princess's service was, but to the ex-Griffonstonian hen's eyes, they were impossibly rich, impossibly blessed with possessions and… stuff.

Even the supposedly austere Gleaming Shield's kit resembled that of a golden-saddled Saddle Arabian pasha in Gilda's wealth-dazzled eyes. And weighed as much as Gibralt's Rock.

While they were packing for Seafoam, Gilda noticed the little purple unicorn lingering over a sepia-tone portrait of two unicorns. The ponies had invented some magical process for taking the living likeness of a person or persons, to the very life. For some reason it was only in shades of brown, but Gilda had heard rumors of improvements coming down the line which would render the pictures - the 'photographs' - in living color.

Gilda almost asked her mistress who the uniformed stallion with the two-toned mane and his tall, lanky filly-friend cosplaying as an alicorn princess were, but the deep sadness with which Gleaming Shield stroked the picture-frame, and the near-murderous rage that replaced that emotion when she noticed the griffon hen looking at her 'photograph', told Gilda well enough to leave well enough alone.

They packed the portrait in a trunk, and it didn't come back out when they unpacked on Seafoam.

While the work detail were setting up the kit and canteen in the fort above the little port of Seafoam, Gilda asked one of the corporals about the ensign and her don't-even-touch-it-with-your-dirty-griffish-talons 'photograph'.

"Hen, you keep your fool beak out of matters that will get it flash-fried right off of your face. That was the hero of Firefly Memorial Square. Everygriff knows that!"

"How would I know, Corporal Gustav?" asked Gilda. "I've never heard of Firefly Memorial Square. What is it?" She knew more than she would admit, but it was always good to let the corporals talk. It made them feel important, and gave them the impression that she was open to instruction and more information.

More information was always good.

"There were four big bombings on the Thirteenth, Gilda my hen. But there were only three big slaughters in Canterlot, because a unicorn threw himself at the fourth, caught the bomber who was planning to slaughter an entire celebratory gathering in that square, nearby the western palace gates. A brave, impossibly strong lieutenant with the Royal Guard, off-duty and attending the events with his family. Grabbed the griffon in the act, placing the bomb. He enveloped the both of them in an impermeable barrier-spell, contained the explosion, kept it from killing dozens. Only two died in Firefly Memorial Square, the hero and the mad bomber.

"They put a statue of Shining Armor three times life size in that square, right where her brother died to save a crowd."

Gilda, mesmerized, blinked in confusion. "Wait, what? Whose brother?"

"Ensign Shield’s brother, you ninny," said the corporal. "Did you think I was telling you this for my own amusement? Her brother was killed by an Isles rebel, damn them all.

"They say that the ensign was standing in the crowd that the bomber planned on blowing up, that she was within earshot when the explosion obliterated her brother and the bomber, for all I know she might have even seen it when Shining Armor was swept from existence as thoroughly as a gobbled-up fledgeling disappearing down the gullet of Nightmare Moon.

"You ask me, if I were Ensign Shield… let's just say that every day she doesn't go on a griffon-murdering rampage of revenge is a good day. Now help me get this pantry door re-hung properly. This fortress is a disgrace to the service."

Between Waves On Seafoam

Gleaming Shield was a different person in Gilda's eyes after that. Somehow it made her more… selfish, more predatory - more griffish. The angry little martinet wasn't mad at Gilda for defacing the morning reports with a light sprinkling of Corporal Guillaume's mis-delivered coffee, or any other such petty slight, she just wanted Gilda dead because she was a griffon.

Gilda could respect that.

There wasn't much to do on Seafoam. The battalion outnumbered the inhabitants of the port, if not the swarming crews of the fishing fleets which used the harbor as a foul-weather haven when the bad storms came. When those unguided black clouds swept down out of the glacier-tormented Bugbear Passage, nogriff could stop them, and all anyone could do, griffon or pony, was beat for harbor, and take shelter. Seafoam was well-placed for said shelter, lying downwind from the richest and best fishing banks.

The fishing fleets definitely outnumbered the thin scattering of ranching families whose scrawny herds picked over the few scraggly fields that grew among the rocky outcrops that was Seafoam's main land-form, main landscape. The ranchers were only there to maintain the hamlet, and to feed the fishergriffs something other than fish. Well, the fishergriffs and fisherponies.

The absent fleet was as much a part of Seafoam as any griffon you could actually lay eyes or talons upon. They were a constant presence in their absence, and their existence - somewhere out there, riding the currents, sweeping the schools of haddock, flounder and herring for the hungry towngriffs of Trottingham and her sisters - formed the reality of the little seaport more than anygriff who actually lived there.

For good and for worse. The fishing fleets were nogriff's idea of stable or sweet-tempered. The seasons were hard on the fishers, and the fish could be elusive. Sea-fights between rival pony and griffish flotillas broke out constantly, tribal animosities and desperation for catches causing skiffs full of ponies and skiffs full of griffons to fight over their trawling-rigs whenever they got too close to each other. Although the quarrels rarely rose to full-fledged ship to ship battles, they weren't completely unknown, and the resulting sharp-clawed clashes didn't always subside after the schools reappeared.

Or always stay on the waves where they belonged. Sometimes, the fishing fleets took their squabbles ashore, even onto to Seafoam, which should have been a safe harbor.

It had been more than a problem in the past. The entire town had been burned to the water-line in the course of fleet-wide shore-leave riots at least once in the recent past, a decade or two before the closing of the Griffonian ports. They'd come close on a number of other occasions, their homes and shops only saved by fire-brigades formed from the garrison and the townsfolk and whatever nominally-sober sailors they were able to dragoon into putting out the fires their fellows had started.

Shore leave on Seafoam was more often than not a rolling riot of debauchery and barely-restrained bloodshed. Every structure on the island were converted to pubs or bawdy-houses while the fleet was in port, and the sleepy little town became Satyricon on the seashore for those wild, mad days until the winds turned sweet and the captains could tow their hades-bound crews back out to sea.

Gilda saw two shore weeks in her time on Seafoam. The first had been merely debauched and rum-soaked. That was the first time she’d actually met any mud-ponies and featherheads, as the officers with the Fifth Territorial were exclusively unicorns. It was rather peculiar, seeing wings on a pony body, but the mud-ponies were even stranger to Gilda’s uneducated eyes. As far as Gilda was concerned, a pony’s head didn’t look right without a horn growing out of it.

"Recruit! Put down that tankard!"

"But corporal, she offered me a drink!" Gilda eyed the leering pegasus’s smug expression. It had been freely offered. How often did someone just give a griffon something like that?

"Of course she did, you numpty chick! You’re on duty, you are, you pillock! No drinkin’ on duty, ever!"

The corporals had a settled policy of refusing Gilda her grog ration, something about her being too young for it. She had no idea how they knew how old she was, she’d been careful before leaving her mother’s hovel to dye her feathers so nobody knew she was technically too young to be out on her own. But somehow the corporals had figured it out.

"She just wants to get a Territorial in trouble, that’s trouble right there, mark you, you foolish recruit! Stay away from cutie marks like hers!"

"What, the butt tattoo?"

"Those aren’t tattoos, they’re magical expressions of their innermost selves. And that mare’s got a troublemaker’s cutie mark if I ever saw one. Now that I think about it, come with us, Miss - what is your name?"

"Sheet Slicer, your worship. And I wasn’t gonna do anything to th’ fledgeling. Just a bit of grog."

The corporal tested the tankard, and reeled back, alarmed.

"This is half a bottle of rum! You were trying to kill my recruit!"

"Aw, you griffons can hold your booze, she’d have lived."

"Bollocks! I’m putting you in stockade on general principles!"

That shore week had been otherwise uneventful, but the second one - that had started with a running fight between two smacks as they raced into port, fish-heads and belaying pins flying in filthy arcs from ship to ship as they vied to get to the docks ahead of each other. The squabbling just spread from there. That had been a long week, with the dark and brooding storm overhead keeping griffons and pegasi alike from flying off their frustrations, and the storm in-doors keeping the Territorials' truncheons warm and their tails clamped down tight. By Gilda's half-educated estimate, a full half the sailors of the fleets had to be marched straight out of the stockade down to the docks when the time came for them all to ship out, when the skies cleared and it was time for the Fifth Territorial to shepard their unwanted guests back seaward. The captive sailors passed from the shore patrol's custody straight into the hooves and talons of their smug, villianous ship-captains, who were not much of an improvement on their lawless crews, if by and large better at keeping out of the Territorials' stockade.

Even the chaos of shore leave in the port wouldn't have been justification for the posting of an entire territorial battalion someplace like Seafoam, if it weren't for its proximity to the Griffonstone shore. Seafoam was closer to the Grand Tree than it was to Trottingham, and their snug little harbor and accompanying swarm of blind coves and hidden caves were an open invitation to smugglers and griffish traffickers.

Or, rather, it would be if Griffonstone had anything worth smuggling out other than griffons. As it was, Gilda quickly came to the realization she had been a fool. She could have simply sold herself into pony servitude the easy way, without opening herself up to the possibility of being chopped in half by an enraged Territorial griff in full battle-rage. Even with a battalion ensconced in the Seafoam harbor-fort, the locals and some of the sketchier fishing-boat skippers kept a trickle of skiffs flitting in and out of the even dozen coves you couldn't see from the high look-out towers atop the fort.

Everygriff knew it was going on, but even daily patrols barely sufficed to capture one shipment in twenty.

One in twenty was enough to keep the stockade at the fort full of scrawny Griffonstone emigres, and one or two well-beaten griffish sailors. Most of the time, the owners of the skiffs escaped free and clear, leaving the semi-worthless boats and their griffish cargos to the mercy of the Territorials.

They were damn lucky the Territorials had little reason to be vengeful. They were even more lucky that Gleaming Shield had no wings, and couldn't join the aerial patrols. Gilda was pretty sure her ensign would have 'killed while resisting arrest' every single boat's-master she came across actually smuggling griffons. One of the things that Gilda had teased out of her fellows was exactly how the terrorists had slipped into Equestria, the ones who had blown up Gleaming Shield's beloved brother.

Smuggled across a route like here at Seafoam, that's how. Being posted in Seafoam left the unicorn a fuming, ill-tempered brute, and even the corporals avoided her when the patrols came in out of the coves towing a skiff full of captives.

Gilda looked into her ensign's eyes whenever the new captives were processed into the stockades, and wondered if Gleaming Shield dreamed of executing all of the captives, right then and there in front of the stockade gates. Luckily for everyone involved, the ensign was simply the most junior officer in the battalion, and didn't have the authority to commit or order hypothetical atrocities.

Honestly, Gilda wouldn't blame the ensign if she offed the smugglers, they were incredibly smarmy. And weren't above trying to get under the tail of every hen they came across. They had to keep the one or two they might have on talon at any given time in solitary confinement, because if they left the smugglers with their cargo, the cargo would stomp them to death.

The griffish traffic trade wasn't a happy way of life for those who were trafficked, it would appear. And they seemed inclined to hold a grudge.

But aside from the patrols, and guarding the stockade, there wasn't much else for the rest of the battalion to do on Seafoam.

So they trained.

They let Gilda have a stick, so she wasn't sticking out in the endless marching drills, empty-taloned with a dumb expression on her beak. One day about halfway through the Seafoam deployment, she managed to convince a couple of the veterans to give her some training in spear-work.

Or rather, talked her way into a series of brutal beatings under the color of 'spear-training'.

"What did you think you were doing, Gilda?" The unicorn's horn-magic had a firm grasp of Gilda's head, and turned it gingerly one way and the other, as Gleaming Shield examined the damage.

"T-trainin’!"

"It looks like you went three rounds with a water grist-mill. How did you manage to get bruising on both sides of your beak? I didn’t think that beaks bruised, they just break."

"I’m toughar than I loook, enthen mam. An’ youn enouf they sa’ m’ beak ithin’t so’s muth ‘ard ‘as ith is spongy."

"Well, you’re swelling up, and I can’t hardly understand a word you’re saying. Go see the surgeon, and stay in the stockade infirmary until you’re functional again. You owe us a week for permitting damage to battalion equipment."

"E’quipmnt, mam?"

"Yourself, Gilda. You are valuable battalion equipment, and it is expected that you will take proper care of the equipment issued to you in the course of your service. Even something as filthy and second-hoof as, well, you."

Gilda had plenty of time to listen to the other prisoners who were waiting on the next prison transport, since she couldn’t talk with her beak bound with poultices.

She didn't know any of the captured contraband personally - Griffonstone wasn't that small of a place - but she found one who was a cousin of a cousin of someone her mother had known. Gunter seemed happy enough to be in chains. Claimed that being captured was fine, so long as it was on pony soil. The Equestrians rarely repatriated their captives to Griffonstone - there wasn't anygriff to turn them over to, after all. He expected to be settled in indentured servitude to some earth-pony in one of the southern colonies, work his pinions off, and maybe find work as a hunter or something like that in the deep south.

Gilda didn't waste much time on might-have-beens. She hadn't been that hurt, after all.

And Gleaming Shield showed up soon enough to reclaim her pet fledgeling, telling her that her five days were up, and to stop goldbricking. There was work to do, after all.

The next day, the unicorn gave Gilda back her stick, and started teaching her how to push a spear pony-style. Gilda would have thought that the unicorn style of spear-fighting would have been full of magical flourishes, but Gleaming Shield’s style was down to earth, all legs and hooves, and never let the shaft escape her grasp. It was a style suited to any suitably blood-thirsty quadruped.

Gilda took to it like a - well, like a griffon to stick-fighting. She liked to think she was good at it, but the ensign was a damn sight better. Gilda counted her blessings that Gleaming Shield pulled her strikes early on, or else she’d have spent another week or two in the infirmary, for sure.

And life went on, as they marked time on Seafoam, waiting for the fishing fleets to blow in on the next storm-wracked wave.

Rats, Spats, And Crab-backs

"What are you doing?"

"Stalkin'."

"What?" The unicorn shuffled into Gilda's peripheral vision.

"Look at 'er. Juicy little bit."

The lieutenant frowned at her, moving more deeply into Gilda's field of vision. "It's a field mouse."

"Damn straight it is. Look at me, I'm drooling, your worship."

"Don't be disgusting.” The lieutenant was trying to make eye contact. “And don't call me that."

"If you say so, your dark majesty. And why not? That there is breakfast."

"We give you perfectly edible breakfast in this mare's army. And don't call me that either."

Gilda sat, stubbornly refusing to let the lieutenant break her stalk. "They sure do, but they don't serve live rations. She'll struggle, it'll be glorious, mum."

"Don't call me that, either. Look, we don't have time for this. There's an inspection next Thursday. We have at least two checklist cycles to go through before the formation is presentable."

Gilda sighed, and gave up, turning to look at Gleaming Shield. "Why not? All the old birds call you that."

"All the old birds are Trottish and we make allowances. You are not Trottish, you aren't even Isles. It sounds silly coming out of your beak."

"Missus? Lady Ensign? Dame Screwhead? Milady Madmare?"

"Eat your damn rat, and find my clean cravat."

"Too late, lieutenant ma'am, it got away while you were yellin' at me."

The lazy days on Seafoam didn't last, of course. Six months of productive time-wasting passed by without Gilda even noting it. She rose one dark morning to find Gleaming Shield furiously scribbling down new checklists, a packet of orders by her hoof. The irate battalion-major had gotten the stuffy young unicorn out of his mane by dumping all of the battalion's paperwork on her, hoping to crush her into submission. Instead, Gleaming Shield had taken to it like a pig to slop, and gloried in her non-promotion to adjutant.

"Don't just stand there like a filthy cancerous knot on a log, Gilda. We have work to do!"

"So I see, lieutenant ma'am. Might one ask what work that would be?"

"Trottingham, Gilda! Trottingham! We're out of this blasted salt-stained speck of rotted fish guts. Back to civilization!"

"I thought you said the Trottish were a pack of feral sheep-buggerers that couldn't be trusted with a bit or a foal or a clean load of laundry?"

"Compared to Seafoam, Hades itself would be a desirable posting, Gilda. Get the inventory lists, we need to start planning the Packing."

"Yes, ma'am."

Trottingham was on the main island, Sandstone. It was one of the few islands large enough to contain multiple districts, and Sandstone had a good half-dozen other market-towns in addition to the provincial capital. Trottingham herself was the heart of the Griffish Isles, and the brutal military core of the Equestrian occupation of said isles. It housed most of the permanent bases and permanent fortifications from which the military government operated.

Trottingham the city was to Seafoam or Skye as Griffonstone had been to the horrible little hamlet Gilda's horrible mother had come from. She'd only been back to that filthy dung-heap which had been to blame for her mother's existence the once, but had been impressed at how many vile little cousins could hide in wait in such ancient hayricks, looking to hand out beatings to their city-slicker big cousins. It took a lot of them, but get enough pint-size cat-birds together, and even they could pull down bigger prey.

All those little postings before Trottingham were as to Trottingham as those evil little kits had been to Gilda. The outlying islands and back country districts sent their swarms of underemployed griffons and ponies to crawl all over the big, bad city, and said hicks regularly tore that old heap of stones to pieces. The countryside was full of rebellious griffons, but they preferred to export their troubles to Trottingham, where the resulting messes couldn't get their friends and family caught up in the back-lash, the retribution.

Incidentally, this predilection for the country-griffons to bring their problems to the big city resulted in a certain loathing for the country-griffons among the battered, abused city-folk. There were a lot of ponies in Trottingham, but even the Trottingham griffons loathed their fellow griffs, sometimes moreso than the ponies themselves.

The Trottish and Isle ponies no doubt had their own opinions, and they had their own Territorial battalions, but in the Isles ponies were ponies and griffons were griffons and the twain generally didn't mix, at least not in Gilda's limited experience. All the ponies she knew by name were mainlanders like Gleaming Shield and the other officers. The Trottish earth ponies who dominated the pony districts were nothing but indistinct mobs, something seen in the distance, never interacted with.

Due to the 'export problem' the city had with Sandstone's rural districts, pony and griffon, Trottingham was the unwilling heart of the rebellion. Naturally, that meant that it was where the pony regiments were posted. Real pony regiments, not the slap-dash pony Territorials, either, which the mainlanders seemed to trust but little more than the griffish battalions.

The garrison fortresses encircling sullen Trottingham were bristling with barracks full of hard-hoofed, mean-eyed veteran ponies with distinctly Equestrian accents, whose tours were long and bloody and relentless in their violence and conflict. Van Hooverans and Tall Talers from the rumored far west; dusty, squint-eyed pegasi from the San Palamino deserts of the southwest; fast-talking, ruthless city ponies from the Equestrian seaboard cities, Manehattan and Baltimare and Fillydelphia. All volunteers, of course, or so was the party line. Gilda had little opportunity to talk up the soldiers of the EUP regiments, they were quartered separately, and had their own brigades, entirely distinct from the Territorial command structure.

High command by policy only assigned enough griffish territorial battalions to Trottingham fill out the numbers and to put a griffish face on the war, one beyond the Princess's Own Griffish Rangers, who didn't number nearly enough for the public to see much of them.

The Pony Territorials were in garrison as well, but rigorously segregated from the Griffish Territorials. Nogriff would tell Gilda if there'd been any history of the battalions coming to blows with each other. Everything had always been organized so that they never came into contact with each other. Everypony in the general staff was convinced that battalions from the two tribes would naturally quarrel if put in quarters together, and had never been willing to make the experiment.

And so, the city garrison consisted these four elements: the 'real' regiments from the EUP, a clawful of squadrons from the Princess's Own Griffish Rangers, the griffish territorial battalions, and the pony territorial battalions. The general staff were careful to not post so many Territorial battalions in the garrison as to invite a crisis if the rebels corrupted the griffish regiments and lured them into mutiny, but they needed to make up their numbers. Pony Territorials' sole purpose might have been as a stop-gap or an insurance policy just in case the Griffish Territorials mutinied, Gilda wasn't sure.

Not that a mutiny was particularly likely, as far as she could tell. Many if not most of the Territorials were recruited from the gutter-scum and ghetto-trash of the big city herself, and enough of them shared the city-griffons' hatred for the rebellious countryside that their ire was generally aimed at the rebels, not at the ponies in their own, distant, neatly turned-out neighborhoods. Which high command piously kept the Griffish Territorials away from; patrolling those quiet, inoffensive blocks were was what the Pony Territorials were for.

Well, when the labour unions weren't on the war-path. The rebellion had depressed the union radicals' pretensions, though, and the old birds told Gilda that there hadn't been a general strike since the Bloody Thirteenth.

What this all meant in practice was that the Griffish Territorials weren't trusted in the stews and mews, as the rank and file called the streets they had come from once upon a time. They were brigaded together in an administrative Territorial Division while they were assigned to garrison, but they generally answered to the brigadiers' staff, and the clerks of Division were nothing but a rumor, an idle subject for gossip. Instead, it was the officers of the Brigades who polished up their battalions and sent them off in daily parade through the main thoroughfares of the griffish two-thirds of the city. This was officially known as 'suppressive marching', but in practice it was nothing more than an opportunity for swagger and show.

The neighborhood bosses and birds of means encouraged their workers, their clients, and their neighbors to come out and enjoy the pageantry as their beloved 'crab-backs' marched through their respective districts. The work-day in the bustling city was organized around the daily parades, and the Territorials, as they tromped their way from barracks to post, and from post to barracks, enjoyed the attention. Meanwhile, as the city was occupied watching the battalions march and eating their breakfasts or dinners in the open air, strike-forces drawn from the regiments of the EUP and the Rangers would sweep the back alleys and crowded ghettos. As crowds cheered the Crab-backs and ate their chowder with their co-workers, friends, and family, the other regiments accomplished the day's work of suppressing rebels, capturing fugitives, and generally scouring the usually, otherwise crowded griffish districts - those factories, the shops, and the neighborhoods where the workers lived.

The Griffish Territorials knew what was expected of them, and competed accordingly. After all, their cousins and childhood friends were watching! The more elaborate the march-steps, the more flamboyant the display, the better their rations, the more kindly the pony higher-ups looked on their proud-feathered pet griffish battalions - and the more the city-griffons puffed up in pride over their proud troopers, their Crab-backs. And so, the 'Crab-back Marches' had a tendency to evolve over time, becoming ever more elaborate, ever more blatantly a matter of pride, display and a celebration of the city herself.

As the Fifth Territorial Battalion and Gilda arrived in Trottingham, the 'marches' were still done in standard field uniform, but the actual movements were by no means still by the manual of arms. Only a hallucinating dope-fiend could have possibly written such a hypothetical manual of arms, could have conjured the prose which might have done justice to way the battalions got from point A to point B and all the showboating in between.

The real show was only just beginning as Gilda and the old birds of the Fifth arrived to make their debut.

The big, showy 'marches' emptied out the ghettos, and as everyone involved was aware, it was intentional. The ponies and city-griffons got a free show, and the soldiers got mostly-empty tenements that weren't full of noncombatants, orphans, waifs and alleged innocents. The bosses and the birds of means left their representatives to observe the raids, and to make sure that nothing important was looted or burned down in the process. Everygriff other than the rebels won. And as the rebels were mostly not locals, and were continually replaced from the countryside, nogriff clued them in on the scam.

They weren't welcome, anyways.

The only thing that pissed off the old birds in the Territorials was that they didn't get in on the looting of whatever the rebels brought with them into the city. Gilda got an earful from more than one irate old birds about how the damn ponies got most of the gilt, and left the dross for the griffons whose neighborhoods were getting rearranged by the fighting. And the Griffish Territorials, the pride and joy of the city? All they got was the opportunity to peacock, and to enjoy the cheers and jeers of their beloved crowds.

The 'marches' brought out something in now-Lieutenant Gleaming Shield that Gilda hadn't thought was in her. Every time the Territorials brushed off and tarted up for their performances, the purple unicorn's magenta eyes lit up with something unholy, something evil. It was clear that something deep in the new lieutenant's soul was stoked by the prospect of fine marching, worshipful attention, and the cheers of the crowd.

Unfortunately, that something often resulted in Gleaming Shield insisting on regular baths for Gilda. It was infuriating, it was.

“I said, I think I -awk!” The soap poured over the sputtering griffon, as a magenta horn-field held the bucket over her head.

“Keep soaping up, Gilda. I don't know how you manage to find so much mud in a city with cobblestoned streets.”

A glowing brush ran through her belly-fur, as a pick dug into the claw-bed of her left paw.

“They say when you've drawn blood, you've exfoliated, lieutenant ma'am!”

“Nonsense, you're not bleeding. That's mud dripping out of your tail. You have to learn to keep it high when we're moving along, you know that!”

A curry-comb tugged through Gilda's tail-fur, while a soaped-up feather-pick did a jagged dance through her left wing as the griffon grimaced at the unwanted attention.

“Griffons weren't made for marching, we were made for flying. Ow! Keep your horn-field to yourself, lieutenant ma'am! And this is not proper preening technique!”

“Oh, stop sniveling, sooner I'm done, sooner you can towel off. And then go and wash these out in the laundry.”

“Ack! Ack! Not the crest, not the crest! What - you aren't even looking, what is that?”

“Uniform manual. Checking to see what the parameters are.”

“The what?”

“What we can get away with, in terms of uniform standards. The Eleventh and the Twenty-Third are just too athletic, Gilda. We won't be able to outshine them, not with their time in garrison, they've had too much practice. We need… enhancements.”

“What, like herbal remedies?”

“No, you oxygen-deprived alley-cat. I swear all of you spend too much time in the shell, it leaves you hen-witted and full of baffle. I'm talking improvements to the parade uniform.”

“Sounds like it would cost bits.”

“Everything costs bits, Gilda. Your impossibly large breakfasts, for instance, cost the Peytral a mint.”

“I'm a growing bird.”

“You're a fat quail, is what you are. But no, I have resources. And, I think, leeway. Some foal mis-wrote this manual, it only specifies minimum standards. Says nothing about sumptuary limitations on uniforms. That's a loophole I can fly the entire battalion through, you wait and see.”

“You can't fly at all, lieutenant ma'am. No wings.”

“Just you wait, I'm working on that too.”

This unfortunate conversation led, eventually, to Shield haunting the garment district just on the pony side of the city on her off hours. Said district was impressively large by Gilda's standards, consisting of a number of blocks along the east side of the centre city, right next to the 'Blue Line' dividing the griffish neighborhoods from the government and commercial core.

Gilda's officer brought with her a contingent of conscripted guards from the ranks, plus Gilda herself. Nominally Gleaming Shield's guards, their purpose was only revealed when they were forced into service as ponyquins for the use of those clothiers, hatters, milliners, cordwainers and bootmakers into whose hooves their lieutenant delivered her victims. Gilda noticed a lot of side-eye from the ponies on the street as Gleaming Shield marched her little contingent of griffquins to and from the shops, but the new-minted lieutenant didn't seem to give her fellow ponies a second glance.

What the unicorn did eventually find among the clothing-ponies was a willing co-conspirator, another mad unicorn from somewhere deep in the pony interior. This white-coated monster was bound and determined to wrap her griffon victims in leather, brocade, and strangely-dyed linens, and seemed to take an evil delight in the challenge the 'Crab-backs' presented. The shop the white-coated monster worked out of didn't seem to actually be owned by her, but she dominated it with the strength of her personality. As the white unicorn worked over the new contingent of 'griffquins' that Gleaming Shield had brought her, she directed a swarm of pony and griffon assistants, who together with the thoroughly cowed pony who actually owned the shop, apparently serviced the griffon trade from the other side of the 'Blue Line', just beyond the check-point outside.

This was how Gilda first met that white-coated monster, Rarity the Unicorn, or, as the other Territorials eventually came to call her, the Stinging Needle.

A Streak Of Yellow

"Why is everything you show me dyed yellow?" The two unicorns sat in a somewhat dingy back-room that Gilda suspected was an employees' break-room, but which Rarity the Unicorn insisted on calling her atelier.

"Gold, darling. This is goldenrod. That over there is saffron. This piece is lemon." The white unicorn's accent wavered uncertainly. Half the time she sounded like a less brutish Trots speaker, and the rest of the time, she trilled unpredictably in various half-accents. Gilda could swear she could hear the fashionista shifting her vowels in imitation of Gleaming Shield's flat, clipped tones, especially after she'd found out that the young lieutenant hailed from the beloved capital.

"Whatever, those are all shades of yellow. Yellow, yellow, yellow - whether you call it after a fruit or a flower or the stripe running down Blueblood's back, it's all yellow." Gleaming Shield's eyes lost all their residual good humor as the hated officer's name escaped her pursed lips. Blueblood's presence in the garrison had been an unwelcome surprise to her, and Gilda had heard several such slurs in the weeks since that particular revelation.

"Careful, darling, you don't want ponies hearing you talk about the Prince-Colonel that way." Gilda couldn’t fit in the room itself without crowding the two unicorns and their captive griffquin, who was standing awkwardly in the open space in front of a table overflowing with swatches of cloth and whole bolts of fabric.

"Everypony knows that clown is only courtesy royalty. One mare births one lackwit foal under color of matrimony a thousand years ago and ponies until the end of eternity or Celestia's dotage - whichever comes first - will insist on calling the by-blows 'royalty'. My descent is as royal as his. Hay, your descent is probably bluer blooded than that thin-gored loose-boweled coward. Just on the other side of the blanket."

"Miss Shield, I will not stand here and have my ancestry impugned by anypony! Not even you."

"Why? It isn't an insult in Canterlot. To be descended from royal bastards is the very peak of respectability. A bastard with a bit of Platinum in her is worth a hundred common ponies boasting family trees hung with nothing but eons of impeccable decency. Bastardy is the perfect preparation for a life in politics."

"Whatever happened to you to turn a fresh-faced, beautiful young filly into such a hopeless cynic, Gleaming Shield?"

"Half your family blown to gibblets by griffon terrorists will do the trick. Now, why yellow?"

"Your troopers are blue-feathered, darling. It's simple color coordination." The griffquin currently suffering the slings and needles of Rarity’s art rolled his eyes under the cascade of yellow fabric. While Grant the Griffquin happened to be blue-crested and blue-winged, it wasn’t necessarily true of the entire battalion. Not all of them. Well, yes, a majority of the battalion were blue-feathered, and the corporals in particular Gilda had difficulty telling apart when they weren't yelling at her. But Gilda wasn't the only brown or grey-feathered bird in the Territorials, not by a long shot. She looked around at the other griffquin guards Gleaming Shield had brought with them, kicking their paws in the corridor outside Rarity’s atelier. Gustav and his second, on the other talon, were all classic crab-back blue griffons. Perhaps a mistake on the lieutenant’s part?

"The Princess's Own are all in crimson." It was true. Gilda had just seen a talons' worth the other day, dragging their day's catch out of the stews just as the Fifth Territorial had arrived at the garrison's Porta Gryphonia from the day's crab-back march.

"And ruby, and primrose. It makes them look like a fruit arrangement gone terribly wrong, my dear lieutenant. Our griffons are to be pattern-cards of good taste, not terrifying 'beefeaters'." This, too was true. But if the Princess's Own Griffish Rangers were a fruit arrangement, they were one that had passed through a massacre, blood-splattered and bristling with blades. The 'beefeaters' had been well-carved, carrying at least one of their own, wounded terribly. The rebels didn't give up their own without vicious fights, and every single one of the Princess's Rangers had been scarred and battered from a decade spent at the sharp end of the spear.

"You know that's a myth, cattle are full citizens of the kingdom these days. Nopony would feed them to our griffish soldiery to make them more vicious than they already are."

"Gleaming Shield! Your bat-hen is right behind you, should you be insulting the entire tribe like that in front of her?" Gilda looked up, confused to be suddenly part of the conversation. Why wasn’t Grant the Griffquin the victim of this sudden attention?

"Gilda, what do I think about you griffons?" She stood straighter, determined to hold up her end of the interrogation.

"You believe us to be bloody-beaked cannibals and irredeemable monsters, lieutenant ma'am." True again.

"Quite right! And are you?" What a question!

"You forget we're also greedy, sadly unharmonic, and prone to pointless squabbling, lieutenant ma'am." Gilda relaxed a little at Gleaming Shield's approving sneer.

"You see, Rarity?"

"Hrm. Well, if you're going to be that way… irrelevant. Yellow! Goldenrod, at least. It's a style imperative."

"Would prefer something not associated with cowardice." Gilda couldn't imagine how badly the others would take it if the crowds' love turned to mockery.

"See? Even the rocks cry out against your yellows, Rarity!"

"Not a roc, lieutenant ma'am. Not that it wouldn't be a good idea to recruit out east. Not sure if they're talky birds, though, lieutenant ma'am."

"We are not travelling into the Undiscovered East so that you could collect a pet monster, Gilda."

"Bet it would wow 'em during parade, lieutenant ma'am."

"She's not wrong, Lieutenant Shield. I happen to know where I can get you roc feathers."

"Cheaply?" Gilda's attention drifted as the conversation left her behind, but kept her ears open, interested as always in the possibility of bits somehow making their way her way.

"Pfft! Of course not. But I've seen your credit check, Lieutenant. You could afford it, easily." True enough. The mare never spent any of it on herself or anything to make her life any easier, though.

"Not when I look at the prices you're offering on gemstone matrixes."

"I'm giving you those broaches at half of the local wholesale price, Lieutenant Shield! And much of that is the cost of the setting. You're getting the stones themselves essentially free. Not that I couldn't find them on a simple amble up the shoreline any time I chose, but it's a matter of opportunity costs, don't you know!"

"Yes, and I'll be doing the uniformity spellwork myself. Simple enough cantrips, I don't know why the other battalions don't do it. Nevertheless, I prefer my bits where they can make friends. The fact that they produce munitions and equipment as a side-effect is merely gravy." The lieutenant didn't allow Gilda anywhere near her ledgers, but they took up an entire locked casket that had trailed her other baggage like the greyest and least joyful of camp-followers from posting to posting.

"You have to spend bits to make bits." Heresy! Gilda fumed at this pony nonsense.

"I have no financial interest in the Fifth Territorial outshining the other Griffish battalions."

"Oh, but you certainly have an egotistical interest, don't you? And, one might say, a career interest."

"You, on the other hand, very much have a financial interest in getting me to waste my ancestors' bits on impossibly expensive fripperies."

"Why else would you come to me, Lieutenant Gleaming Shield, if you weren't bent on impossibly expensive fripperies?" Gilda didn't see how this followed. The white mare didn't operate in one of the half-dozen high-fashion, high-ticket shops that catered to the rich and powerful of Trottingham. They'd passed through half of those before an assistant had passed one of the guards a note directing them to the decidedly middle-class store that Rarity's patron Sweat Shirt operated. They had discovered that Rarity could offer them the same quality as the expensive shops, at a fraction of the price. Gilda hadn't figured that one out just yet.

"Now, mind you, I can only get you one full outfit on such short notice. I am, and I say this with with all due modesty, the fastest and best seamstress you will ever encounter, but I am only a single mare, and I don't do sweatshop labor. Talk to Sweat Shirt about mass production plans."

The mousy little earth pony in the corner (who apparently was the eponymous Sweat Shirt, and could, demonstratively, disappear in plain sight) barely managed to get out an "I think that-" before Rarity interrupted her.

"She's the best I've worked with so far. But we still need to work up a piecework process. We can't get you good uniforms on this proposal, overnight. There are ponies who could do that for you, but they're devils, every one of them. They'd take your bits at twice the markup, and the shoddy woolen yarn will rot off the stitches inside of a month. Put yourselves in our hooves, and we will dress your griffons to the nines. In a month."

The lieutenant frowned, displeased. "I need something this week, I think."

"As I said, I can get you one outfit, done bespoke, and we'll need to adjust the patterns for the mass production anyways. But if you want something splashy and impressive, on overnight demand? I'm definitely thinking jaunty little hats, with big flashy feather fascinators well-stitched and supported so they don't fall off halfway through a march."

"Have you seen the marches? They tend towards the strenuous. That's a lot of stress."

"Darling, please, I'm a professional. These will stay in place come tartarus or high water. My guarantee."

"Fine. Who's this roc feather supplier? And do they have them in anything other than yellow?"

The Stinging Needle's feather dealer wasn't in the garment district, or really, anywhere respectable at all. Even Gilda could tell that when the paving-stones ran out, you were in the filthy end of the city. And the muck quickly turned to mire once they left the pavement behind.

Gilda could tell this, because Rarity filled the air around her with a never-ending stream of complaints and regrets about having to dirty her hooves in this depraved district. Well, the mud itself was kind of a clue, but mud had been a part of Gilda's life long before she'd been captured into the Territorials. The lieutenant had complained once that Gilda could find a patch of mud in the princess's throne room.

The Territorial guard-griffons were on their paws, looking around alertly as the stone buildings of the inner city transitioned into more traditional Griffish wattle-and-daub shacks and hovels. Every other block, the residential row-houses were separated by modest warehouses with large sky-docks. A few along the way were burnt and ruined, sign of a rebel nest burnt out by the strike-forces.

This was not the safe part of the city.

"Lieutenant ma'am," Gilda muttered to her superior, trying not to eye the back of the other unicorn picking her dainty way around a puddle in the middle of the road. "Are we absolutely positive about this mare? This smells like we're being the stupid sort of dangerous."

"Pfft. I could only be that lucky, Gilda. You realize your idiot friends' attempt to attack Skye was the only real combat the Fifth has seen in a year?" The other griffons moved in a practiced formation, the corporal and an old salt on point, the other two trailing as a rear guard.

"Glad to be of service, lieutenant ma'am. I regret to inform you they won't be obliging again, on account of being dead. Or me."

"Lady Rarity! My bat-hen thinks you're leading us into a rebel ambush. Could I be so fortunate?"

"Oh, heavens, no, no. The bumpkins are far too dull, I couldn't possibly work with griffons who think that everything must be in a shade of stone or wattle. If one must be a brute, you should be a brute with panache, I say!" And as she said, they came into sight of yet another undistinguished stone-walled warehouse, larger than the average, towering over the squats and sad little rowhouses that made up the quiet griffish neighborhood Rarity had led the Territorials into.

Inside the warehouse was a deep darkness, barely relieved by a few inadequate firefly-lamps scattered far overhead, including a cluster around the surprisingly large skydock in the center of the building. A skydock which was closed and well-barred, against what, Gilda had no idea.

"Lady George! I have visitors for you, your eminence!" Rarity could project when she wanted to, in Gilda's startled opinion. The warehouse was emptier than she'd expected, only containing the occasional rolled-up carpet, piles of bales lining the back walls, and some enormous item beside the entrance they'd come through, covered in heavy cloth like somegriff was trying to hide a hovel inside the warehouse itself.

"Miss Rarity," said somegriff far overhead, in a deep, heavy, feminine voice that fell like rocks. Gilda looked upwards, trying to spot the speaker.

"Darling! Could you come down? We may have a customer for your feather supply."

"I thought you said it wasn't safe to sell into the local market."

"Darling, I said it wasn't worth it to sell into this market. They'd just break them up in the sweatshops and make a tenfold profit on the fashion atrocity thereby. I have a practical use for your great feathers, one which will result in everygriff cheering at your… your product's magnificence!"

Gilda heard a heavy tread, like an elephant moving. Griff saw something in the darkness shifting, and then looked up, astonished, as she realized that the shrouded 'hovel' was moving beside them. It bent down into the feeble glow of the nearest firefly lamp, and Gilda nearly lost control of her bowels as she saw a beaked head as big as the lieutenant appear out of the darkness.

A crown small only by the scale of the head wearing it glinted in the firefly light, and the eyes stared at the delegation which had entered its lair.

"You have my attention," the crowned monstrosity rumbled, in still somehow feminine tones.

"Uniform headgear, Lady George! I want to use your feathers to bring out the joy of these good griffons' performances. It will be marvellous, I can see it now!"

"Interesting. I was beginning to think that my time in this uncomfortable place had been wasted. All of my other meetings have been sad disappointments. You wouldn't disappoint me yet again, would you, Miss Rarity?"

"Perish the thought, Lady George! Oh, my stars, I have forgotten all my manners. Lieutenant Gleaming Shield, may I present the Lady George, merchant, adventurer and explorer of the heretofore undiscovered East! She's brought with her the most marvellous Abyssinian carpets, jadestone, and, most importantly, these glorious roc feathers!"

"Of course she brought roc feathers, you silly bitch," squawked Gilda. "You've brought us into a roc's lair! You've killed us all!"

A Roc In A Hard Place

Everyone stood still for a heartbeat, the bristling griffon guards spread out in a loose diamond around the two unicorns and the corporal. Then Gilda strode several paces forward, holding her bladeless spear in both talons, shaking with tension as she stared - well, as she stared up at the monster.

"Well, I never!" The great shadowy bird reared up to her full height, looking insulted. It was lucky for her that the warehouse was so high-ceilinged. Or - was that the point?

"Lieutenant! You cannot allow your soldiers to insult my suppliers like this." The Stinging Needle looked like she was about to get out her needles and puncture the offending bat-hen.

"Gilda! Shut up and sit down. You're on report starting now! Put down that stick! Corporal, you will take that weapon from her and brain her with it if she makes another move against this fine griffon."

"Griffon! What griffon? Look at her, she's five yards tall!" Gilda waved a wing at the great beast. Now that the monster was erect, she realized her height estimates had been… insufficient.

"Private - Gilda was it?" said Rarity. "How could you be so cruel as to mention a lady's weight! Poor Lady George has always been so sensitive about her size! Do kindly shut up and stop making problems for us all!"

The entire warehouse was now alight with unicorn hornglow from both the lieutenant and the clothier. The great mass which Gilda had first mistaken for a cloth-swathed shack or pile of crates was now standing in the open, a great-winged grey and beige bird taller than Gilda's mother's house - the old one, not the shameful half-rotting one they'd moved into after the family's fortunes turned. The roc's great blue beak moved just like a griffon's as she squawked in offended tones.

"Miss Rarity, is this how my patronage is rewarded? Bizarre accusations of monsterhood, and racial taunts about my eastern origins? Just because I'm not from the Isles or Griffonstone, does not mean it is acceptable to call me a barbarian, and a savage, and a - a - roc!"

"Pardon your terrifying ladyship," said Gilda, definitely neither standing down, nor sitting down. "But I know Altiplano griffons, and if you're an easterner, I'm the Duchess of Treetop Roost!"

"And you would know such things by - wait a minute, are those crest-feathers stained? Are you cream colored under that hideous dye job?"

"No! Of course they're not! I just - look, I'm technically too young for the service, or to be out on my own. They're a light blue."

"They are not!" objected Corporal Gustav, who would know. "Don't lie to the nice lady, recruit. I caught you dying your crest, as white as month-old fish bones."

"But that would mean that…" mused the great roc, looking down in bemused thought, as she feathered the enormous tiara on her vast head with the leading edge of one of her wings. Gilda really didn't want anygriff - or anybirdy - pursuing that particular train of thought. She'd run this far from Griffonstone to get away from that look of realization. Griffons realizing what her coloration meant almost always resulted in attention from her distant relatives, which is to say - knives in dark alleys. And worse. Did she have to flee even further?

"Look, my coloring isn't the issue here. The issue is that this George is hiding in the middle of the provincial capital! How many griffons has she eaten? Rocs eat like, two hundred, four hundred pounds of meat a day! Or was that a week? Look, point is, it's a lot. This place must be full of pony and griffon bones!"

"I am not a binge-eater! And I've never eaten a thinking being in my entire life! Can you say the same?"

"YES! We're not savages in Griffonstone, whatever the damn ponies may say!"

"The point is, I am not what you say I am!"

"So you're not six yards tall and at least two tons of enormous impossible mythic bird?"

"A lady never addresses insults to her weight or her body-type!"

"You're not a lady, you're a roc!"

"I am not! Rocs are mindless beasts! I clearly can talk."

"I don't know, I've never had an argument with one before. Actually, I've never met one before. I hear that those who do, generally don't survive the conversation."

"You are distinctly not gobbled up, my little griffon."

"AHA! You clearly see me as tiny! You are an enormous monstrous beast!"

"There's no talking with you, is there?"

"So if you're not eating fledgelings on a daily basis, what are you doing to maintain that enormous bulk?"

"Caw! I've never been insulted so much in my life!"

"You clearly don't get out much. And now that I look at you closer, you clearly don't get out much. Do you even leave this warehouse?"

"N-no? Not during the day. And I buy fish from the fleets. Do you have any idea how much tuna the fleets bring in?"

"Nah, the princess's service doesn't serve tuna. Too bad, that sounds good. I haven't had tuna in - well, way too long."

"I wish I could hunt them myself, but you know how it is out there. Ponies everywhere. Can't just stoop on a school and pull a wriggler out of the waves."

"I don't see why not. Look at 'em all. They still think you're a catastrophically obese griffon. How would such a cat-bird go adventuring like you say you do, I have no idea."

"You think they're just not telling me they think I'm a great big liar, too?"

"Well, maybe they think you'll eat them."

"I do not eat ponies!"

"Who ever heard of a roc that didn't eat ponies?"

"I AM NOT A ROC!"

"Well what the hades are you?"

"I AM THE GREAT TURUL, RULER OF ALL THE WINGED BEASTS, BLESSED AMONG BIRDS!"

"Oh, hey, I think I've heard of him. He's some sort of bandit king out in the mountains beyond the Altiplano."

"AND THAT EVIL LITTLE FRAUD IS NOT THE-"

George looked down at the staring witnesses to this little meltdown, and her eyes went wide with some emotion Gilda didn't quite understand.

"Didn't mean to say all that in front of others, did you, Your Majesty?" Gilda grinned.

Gleaming Shield had wandered off in the middle of the argument, bored to tears by Gilda and George's little tiff, Gilda feared. She’d be getting an earful once they got back to barracks. The lieutenant was staring at a pile of rugs against the far wall.

"Lieutenant ma'am, my apologies for making such a fuss." Time to do damage-control.

"Hmm-hmm. Uh-huh." The purple unicorn was unrolling one of the rugs, and looking closely at the patterns in the light of her horn-glow.

"I surrender myself to the corporal's discipline. Corporal Gustav?" It was at this point that Gilda noticed that the corporal wasn't really attending. He was still staring at the spot where his subordinate and the great bird had been arguing. Said great bird was pacing in the open space under the sky-port, muttering to herself.

Everygriff else were still standing where they were, equally glassy-eyed, including Rarity the Unicorn. Who looked like she was beginning to drool.

Just a bit.

"Corporal? Givens? Grant? Gwaine? Lieutenant ma'am, they're not responding, something's wrong!"

"Hrm. Probably something to do with that heavy Somepony Else's Problem spell attached to the feather-merchant, Gilda.” There was a bit of horn-glow around the purple unicorn’s head, sort of like a helmet or a - sphere? “I'm shielding as tightly as I can, but I can't look at her, or I'll start forgetting things again. Where did she find these? I've seen their like, but only in the Princess's receiving chambers!"

"It's the damned heir's coronet!" squawked the great bird - Lady George. "If I force too much cognitive dissonance through a bird's mind, it - it sort of overwhelms their reason? For a while, at least."

"For a while?” squawked Gilda. “How long is a while? Are they brain-damaged?"

"If you have broken my corporal, I will be quite wroth, Lady George. I will be expecting quite a discount on your feathers. Which I have yet to lay eyes on, mind you. Although if they are as fine as these Abyssinian carpets, I almost think that Gustav's mind would be worth the exchange."

"Lieutenant ma'am!"

"Oh, come on now, Gilda. Gustav was not exactly using it, was he? It's not as if a corporal's job is one for intellectuals. Mostly bawling, wing-beating and other muscle memory feats. It might make him a better NCO, who knows?"

"Miss - Lieutenant was it?"

"Hrm. Lieutenant Gleaming Shield, at your service - I gather 'lady' isn't the right form of address? Is George your actual name?"

"Any more appropriate address would just increase the mental stress on you and your attendants, Lieutenant Shield. And George is as good a name as any. I would take a regnant name when I wore the Queen's Crown, and leave my nest-name to be forgotten."

"So you are not, indeed, the 'Great Turul', then?" The unicorn grimaced in pain, her horn burning brightly. "Oh, my aching horn, that does sting, you're right. Let's just call it… your inheritance. Yes, that reduces the pressure."

"The heir's coronet is the problem. It - hides my essence, my nature to all whom I meet. It's a protection, and a curse. I cannot reveal my existence to anybird who isn't of royal blood."

"Huh! Interesting. I wonder how the magic codes for that. Genetics? Right to the throne? Right to any throne? Clearly I'm not close enough for it to exempt me, or I wouldn't be fighting this monster of a headache. You can't just take it off?"

"I cannot. The magic prevents me from uncrowning myself, keeps me from circumventing the curse."

"Sounds like a perfect tool for an ambitious thief," observed Gilda, interrupting her betters' awkward discussion, neither one able to make eye contact with the other. Gleaming Shield was now facing a corner, grimacing, while the Great Turul was staring up at the closed and barred skyport. "Is that how you got all of this stuff?"

"I got all of this stuff, as you so baldly put it, by fair and honest dealing. It's not my fault that half the time the other merchants forget my debts, and never press for payment. And it's definitely not my fault that the other half of the time, they forget the payments due me. I learned the hard way never to accept cheques on accounts payable, let me tell you that."

"So," said Gleaming Shield, "The curse - it's designed to keep your royal heir from building up a rival faction or clique, and overthrow your sire?"

"Mother, overthrow my mother. We turul are matriarchal, like you ponies."

"You keep saying that - and damn it hurts when you say that. What's the difference between a roc and a turul, and why should I care?"

"A turul is a thinking bird, the right and proper expression of our race. Rocs are what happens when there's an interregnum. Or the queen doesn't do her proper brooding duties. Every clutch must be brooded upon by a rightly crowned mother of the nation, our sovereign queen. Elsewise, they come out of the egg mentally deformed, mad and animalistic. Every season I am not there to brood on my people's eggs, another flight of cannibalistic monsters are let loose upon the world. It is a catastrophe!"

"Where's your mother, then?"

"Dead, and I can't be sure it wasn't at the talons of my idiot half-brother. He always insisted he could be as good of a mother-hen as I, that he could be queen. Nonsense! But whatever happened - and I wasn't there - he was there, and I wasn't. And now that mincing fop is wearing the Queen's Crown as if he had an oviduct. It won't work!. I need to get back east!"

"Why are you here in Trottingham, if things are so urgent back - where is your nation?"

"The peaks beyond the Griffish Altiplano, all those uplands are our rightful inheritance."

"What, the Cawdelliera Real?"

"Ugh, what an unmusical name. No, we call them the Cathartidaeids, and our nation, Carthartidaea. Once, a long time ago, before your blasted aerial equines seized control of the imagination of all the colleges and universities, this continent was known as Accipitriformia, and we, the Great Turul, were sovereign and lady of all the great birds of Accipitriformia."

"Yeah," said Gilda, "But Beakland's a heck of a lot easier to say, which is why we started using the pony names. And we aren't on the continent, these are the Isles. What are you doing here, instead of a thousand miles to the east, claiming your alleged rightful throne?"

"Well… there are the current pretender's supporters. Who are, well…"

"Pissed off your mother's guard, did you?"

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to rally support while wearing this blasted inconvenience? I think they saw me as a roc. Or some other great vulture or chimera."

"There's enough of them in the wastelands, even in the Altiplano. There's a reason the griffs of the Altiplano don't sweep in and displace all the Groverlings and their squabbling. Los Hidalgos dela Altiplano, for all of their pride, are far too busy murdering anygriff impure. The limpieza de pluma occupies all of their attention. Which is just as well, after all this time, they probably would say we're not pure-feathered, either."

Gilda by this point was just babbling and distracting the great bird. The other griffons' eyes were clearing, and she noticed out of the corner of her eye the white-coated clothier looking mortified and dabbing at the drool that had stained the side of her muzzle.

"Yes, well, there's a reason that we trade by the Gizzard and not overland. And I'm here trying to - I don't know. Find a pony way around this blasted coronet. The stories say it came from the west originally, given as tribute by some pony wizard or other. But every time I talk to a pony - oh, blast, hello, Miss Rarity. How are you feeling? Did you find the restroom?"

"Oh! Oh, yes, it was lovely, I adore your bath-towels," Rarity lied smoothly, accepting her host's gracious falsehood, it being far more dignified than - Gilda had no idea how the unicorn was interpreting the results of her little fugue state. "But we were talking about…"

"Feather pricing, in bulk rates," said Lieutenant Shield, still refusing to look directly at the turul in the middle of the warehouse. The other griffons had settled down from their confused alarm into more of a bored confusion. "But really, what I want to talk about is terms for the purchase of this marvellous trained roc Lady George has here. It would be just the thing to make our battalion stand out!"

"It- it would?" asked the turul, now equally confused and alarmed, looking down at herself. "I- I mean, importing the bird was an enormous expense, and the training itself was such that I couldn't possibly let it go. I was going to offer it to the Princess's menagerie when I got that far west!"

"Trust me, the princess doesn't dabble in such dangerous exoticisms," the lieutenant assured the great bird, still not making eye contact. "She generally just chucks the great chimerae straight into Tartarus. Especially ones ponies can't talk to!"

"But you think," said Rarity, cautiously, "That such a dangerous creature would belong with a military formation, parading through the heart of this city?" She was now looking at the 'roc' as if it was what the three of them were discussing the sale thereof. Now that the magic had a rational expectation for what she was looking at, it let her see the great bird as, well, a great bird.

Just not, Gilda realized, the actual turul itself. The others were now seeing a 'tamed roc' in the place of the trader princess.

"Now, I suppose I could lend you the roc on a medium-term lease," said the turul, sounding intrigued. "And allow it as a sort of advertising for my prospective sale to the princess's court. If you can keep it under control, and civil, and safe among the griffons and equines, I suppose that would get around the whole 'Tartarus' problem, wouldn't it?"

Gilda looked up at the great beak, moving as the turul spoke. She wondered where the rest of the party thought the voice was coming from? Did they imagine a griffon somewhere nearby, speaking the words coming out of the roc's mouth?

"Capital idea! Write up the proposal, if it's within our budget, I say let's do this!" The lieutenant was strangely enthusiastic about the sudden windfall that'd fallen onto their backs.

"You'll have to include some sort of handler," Gilda piped up, alarmed at the prospect of what the magic might do, straining to invent reasons why the roc continued to speak after they 'left' the 'griffon adventure-trader' behind. "Do you have somegriff who can manage the lease?"

"Oh! Of course. Bob! Come on out here, Bob!" boomed the great bird.

"Yes, yes mum? What is it now?" The turul's approximation of a male voice was… well, Gilda thought it was about as good a job as she could expect of an eighteen-foot-tall royal princess trying to fake a male Trottish accent. "Why is Gertie out of her corner? Have you gone and let griffons off the street come and pester her again?"

Gilda listened to the turul argue with herself as the unicorns and other griffons looked back and forth between two empty bits of air, presumably where the heir's coronet had conjured forth speakers for the voices falling down from overhead.

She wondered how far the magic could be pushed. The turul royal heir might have a future in vaudeville.

Prototype, Princesses and Peculation

The first 'roc' parade was… not the most graceful performance Gilda had ever been a part of, but on the other talon, by no means the worst, either. The great turul sort of… crab-walked behind the battalion with their bobbing feathered cockades, and occasionally waved a wing in lame imitation of the gyrations of the griffish soldiers as they rose and fell on graceful wing-beats, transitioning from all fours to aerial display, and then settling once more to the cobblestones below, to take back up the slow-step march.

As this rippling carpet of armed and armored griffons was the standard for demonstrative marches as they had evolved over the years, the Fifth's performance was objectively speaking rather lame. But that was strictly Gilda's opinion, and if she was not particularly proud to have been a part of such a shambles, the novelty of an enormous beast participating in the march was sufficient to wring enthusiastic cheering from the onlooking masses, who clearly weren't as exacting as an opinionated tyro like the exiled Griffonstonian.

Novelty beat excellence, it would appear. Gilda would have to remember that.

But nevertheless, the march was a success, and proof that the lieutenant's cockamamie plan, concocted on the fly in the middle of a poorly lit warehouse in the griffish quarter, had been exactly the right decision, the right choice. The unicorns had come to a rapid agreement with 'Lady George', right then and there in that poorly lit warehouse. They'd left with 'Bob', his great tamed roc, a lockbox full of coin and drafts of dubious authenticity, and enough bales full of 'roc' feathers to supply fascinators for the fancy new cockades Rarity's mystery seamstresses managed to turn out overnight. Gilda had looked up at the great turul, wondering how long the bird had been collecting her own molt, had been carrying these bales with her like - what? Mementos?

As that shambles of a march came to a conclusion, the crowds came to an end, too, clustered in a plaza just outside the working port, a bit of open ground where battalions could maneuver in support of and behind the fortifications that held the outer walls along the exterior of the harbor. The Eleventh peeled off to relieve a battalion holding the great masonry fortress right there between the outer wards of the city and the open sea. The Twenty-First and the Fifth took to the air, two entire battalions flapping their wings in something approaching unison, as they took flight for their own postings around the mouth of the harbor.

Gleaming Shield bumped along in a supply carriage, drawn by Grant and Corporal Gustav. The rest of the pony officers were likewise carried aloft by their own matched teams of griffon troopers, as they would if the battalion ever actually moved into the field or to battle. The Fifth's flight was short, barely a hop, and they curved in a somewhat graceful arc into the marshalling-yard of the great stone and brick mass known as Battery Garner.

The battalion major - who was the only commander the Fifth had at the moment, their titular colonel being a five-year-old filly, and the lieutenant colonel being on sick leave - greeted the colonel of the battalion they were relieving, whose troopers were themselves drawn up in formation. They took off over the heads of the Fifth, looking far more fine than Gilda's fellows had in the air, and flew off for their part in the daily 'crab-back march'. The Fifth broke ranks, to take charge of their 'post'.

At loose ends, Gilda stood awkwardly in her finery beside the great turul, looking through the great sally-port over a heavy-walled bastion. It held the mechanism and the storage-bay of the great chain that closed this particular harbor outlet when the city was under attack. This chain and the battey which protected it was part of the network of fortifications which made Trottingham one of the best-defended cities in the world. Gilda had heard that Trottingham was a tougher nut than any of the richer, wealthy pony ports of the Equestrian coast.

Rarity the Unicorn emerged from her hiding-place in the back of Gleaming Shield's supply carriage, and proceeded to fuss over Gilda and the remnants of the 'prototype' Gilda was wearing. This had been the only complete outfit that the unicorn had gotten anything near to completed in time for that first crab-back march. Gilda had felt rather foolish and overdressed, flailing about her wings and kicking her booted paws and talons at the back of the formation, while just overhead bobbed the chin of a spastic turul likewise making a fool of herself. Not all of the fabric had survived the athletic spasms which were the current march-step in vogue among the battalions.

"How could you have torn out this seam in a single day? It was double-stitched, with heavy, coarse nylon thread!"

"I do not know, Miss Rarity. We don't generally do this in clothing, let alone this sort of fabric. Perhaps something a bit sturdier? More… I don't know. Architectural?"

"Are you a griffon, or a basilica? No, no, I should have known. You aren't troopers at all, you're troupers. That was more like a ballet performance than a military movement. I clearly will need to redesign entirely, this will have to be like a ballerina's costume. With armor! Ha! I think have some measurements of the stress tolerances, and I think, ideas. Maybe something more extensively ensorceled?"

"The enchantments seem to have worked," said Gleaming Shield, who was looking on, wearing a neutral, inscrutable expression. "We need more gemstones, though." The lieutenant was still neatly turned-out in her Territorials semi-formals. Gilda didn't know how the purple unicorn managed a march through the whole of the city without getting a pinch of dust on her gambeson, not even a smudge on her gorget or pauldrons. The whole ensemble was far too shiny and elaborate for combat purposes, of course. But that wasn't their purpose, their purpose was display.

But Gilda couldn't get over how clean Gleaming Shield still was. She might have credited the lieutenant having ridden during the march, but for the fact that the officers had only mounted their carriages in the last evolution before the leap over the harbor waters. The lieutenant had stolidly trod along behind her dancing troopers like an implacable paragon of virtue, matching the slow beat of the drums, ignoring the wild skirling cry of the pipes that directed the wilder gyrations of the troopers in their procession.

The Fifth's lackluster and incredibly amateur fife and drum corps was perhaps part of their failure to shine. Pipers were expensive, rare, and, Gilda had been told, massive prima donnas. And a craze for griffish pipers was in the course of raging among the pony regiments, who were hiring away every experienced piper they could get their hooves on, leaving only the punters and the squeakers for the lowly Territorial battalions.

Gilda eyed her mistress. She still wasn't sure if the lieutenant was mad at her or not. Things had simply moved too fast, and Gleaming Shield had, perhaps, been too busy with urgent matters to bother with disciplining an overly rambunctious bat-hen.

Rarity pulled and prodded at the ruins of Gilda's uniform. Gilda's outfit was a echo, an allusion to the idea of the lieutenant's drill armor, rendered in brocade, satin, and twill. Gold embroidery - or something that sought to replicate the effect of gold embroidery without the expense - reflected light in a dazzling array across the fabric.

Or rather, it would have, if half the stitches hadn't come out, and the satin hadn't snagged on her spearhead during one flourish.

"Oi don't see how any o' this did my purpose any good, Lieutenant Shield," said the turul from overhead, clearly bored by Rarity's wittering over the wreck a single march had made of Gilda's prototype. "Oi didn't see a solitary unicorn in that entire crowd, aside from you-all in the officer corps."

The lieutenant resolutely refused to look upwards at the turul. "The purpose today wasn't to attract the attention of random Trottish civilians, 'Bob'. We'll have that soon enough, and from the ponies who actually matter when it comes to attracting the attention of Canterlot."

"Weren't ye supposed to be writin' letters?" The turul's Trottish accent was horrendous, and Gilda wished she'd just drop it, and stop trying to play-act 'Bob'. As far as Gilda could tell, so long as the turul didn't talk about royalty and crowns and coronets, the magic elided their interactions into the appropriate and expected approximations for onlookers and eavesdroppers.

Gilda was still trying to come to terms with just how malleable other griffons' perceptions of reality actually were, and how far they could be led from the plain facts before their beaks by the witchy falsehoods of a bit of gemstone and glass and gold filigree and ancient pony-magic. The turul had been vague about the origins, but had been clear on this, that the coronet was the fault of some monster of a pony wizard, once upon a time, lost itself in the sands of time.

Finally, the white unicorn left off on her poking and prodding and tugging, and Rarity let Gilda go, to flee into a changing-room to shuck herself out of the tattered 'uniform'. Gilda returned the bundled, dirty cloth to the unicorn, and the two unicorns wandered off, arguing over the viability of ensorceled uniform-gems versus putting all that work and effort into something that would come apart in use so quickly.

That left Gilda staring up at the other royal, who was trying her best to look like a tamed beast, squatting there in the marshalling-yard as griffons bustled here and there, putting the battalion away into their temporary quarters.

"So they see what, another griffon sitting beside me, keeping an eye on his 'roc'?" asked Gilda.

"Oi can never be rightly sure, little lady," said 'Bob' in a gruff sing-song cadence. "I can only guess what they see, by what they react to, right?"

"If they are going to hallucinate a Trottish cock sitting beside me, I think the magic will obscure your accent, your highness. Please drop the Trottish, you're very bad at it."

"Well, you know. You never have to get good, if the damn magic is always smoothing out the rough edges for you."

"Effortless success, such a burden. Perhaps we should go inside, lest we turn any eavesdroppers into drooling imbeciles by accident." Gilda frowned to herself. Her accent was slipping. She’d worked hard to drop those educated tones, these last few years. Her protective coloration was fading.

"Would be their own fault if they did, but I see your point."

The fortress had a series of supply rooms and carriage stables across the back of the compound, and Corporal Gustav had arranged for the 'roc' to be stored in Stable No. 29. Gilda wasn't sure why it was numbered that, there were only three stables in Battery Garner. The other two stables were teeming with troopers putting away the carriages, the supplies, and the colonel's gig. Gilda holed up in Stable No. 29 with her new charge and hid from the prospect of honest work. 'Gertie', or 'Bob', or 'Lady George' - whoever she was, she barely fit inside the mostly-empty stable. It was designed to hold six assault chariots, or two heavy lift carriages, but wasn't nearly tall enough to hold the great turul comfortably.

"You clearly don't want to talk about it," said the turul, miserably squatting like a chicken in a henhouse nesting box, her head hanging low, almost beak to beak with the much smaller griffon standing by her side. "But there's only one way you're not affected by this blasted coronet. What is it, are you some runaway hidalgo?"

"Do I sound like an Altiplano griffon? I don't want to talk about it, talking gets hens shivved in dark alleyways." There, that sounded a bit more like it.

"That's what I thought. I thought there weren't any more legitimate Groverlings left in the world."

"There aren't, and I'm not, and I'll knife anygriff who says otherwise, you savvy? Even you. I'll figure out which feather I can put the blade through, and down you'll go, like any Griffonstone guttertrash."

"Easy, there, my little griffon. I have no interest in whatever political fray you're fleeing."

"I'm not fleeing anything! I don't do politics! We don't have politics, anyways. We just have griffons killing each other over stupid crap I can't even understand."

"Don't you feel any remorse for the chaos you're leaving behind in - it is Griffonstone, isn't it?"

"No! Not in the lea- not at all! My family - none of our griffs have sat in that filthy stone seat in five generations! We're not descended from the last king - or even the third! The quarrelling killed both my father and my grandfather, and we're not sure about great-grandmother Gertrude, but it looked an awful lot like poisoning from what the grannies used to say. Those horrible griffons back home can all die of poverty, sepsis, and their own evil burro-shit. We've been tearing our own gizzards out since that first eagle eviscerated that rapist-lion who tore out her throat as he impregnated her twitching corpse. The ponies are right about us.

"The faster we go extinct, the better."

"You can't possibly mean that," Lady George said, recoiling.

"What do you know? What do you care! You're the literal mother of your race, aren't you? You matter! We don't. I don't.” Gilda’s chest heaved. She’d not intended to go that far.

“Can we talk about something else?"

"Like what, Lady Gilda?" The turul knew Gilda's name. That - was that a bad thing? Any other subject, any other subject -

"How about all that gold bullion we pulled out of that warehouse along with your rugs and - I didn't even recognize some of the stuff in those bales."

"It's nice to have employees I can rely on for a change."

"We're not your employees, 'Bob'! It's a business arrangement, whatever the lieutenant says it is."

"How is it that a lowly lieutenant has such sway that she can make this all happen?"

"Hello, that's Gleaming Shield. All the officers know they'll be answering to her in a generation. She was born to be a general. Not to mention she brought you in to impress the hades out of everygriff. A tamed roc turns a lot of heads. The question is, what are we going to do with all of these trade goods?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we're a territorial battalion, not a trading company. The lieutenant claims she has contacts, but I have no idea what that means."

"Well, I do have contacts. They expect to hear from Lady George, though. And half the time the messages never get through, no matter how I try."

"The one thing the military is good at, is communication. Especially within the city proper, or so I've been told. You need to make your connections within the battalion signals platoon. I'll bring some griffs around later. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're just cooling their wings over in the ready room."

"Your battalion has an entire platoon of, uh, 'signals-griffons'?"

"I guess? I don't know, I'm new to this military business myself. There's about a dozen of them, quick fliers who carry messages and work with the telegraph relays." They were, alas, also the fife and drum corps. But she didn't want to dwell on that with the turul. "But they know everygriff. Well, the corporals say so, and the signals griffs claim it, so I haven't heard otherwise. We'll see, we've only been in garrison a couple weeks."

"Isn't that a diversion of public resources to private aims? A form of peculation?"

Gilda looked out the open stable door, thinking. Would Gilda the Griffonstonian gutter-trash know what ‘peculation’ was, or could she safely pretend ignorance? The view offered a prospect to the west, where a pair of black pillars of smoke rose into the brilliant blue sky. There were ponies and griffons fighting and dying in the city while they sat here in the safest, most heavily fortified two acres in all the Griffish Isles. Who really cared about any of it?

"Would you rather,” asked Gilda, “We spent our time murdering rebels and helping burn the city down around the civilians’ ears, or put our efforts into moving your trade goods around that city while it’s still standing, delivering them to those who would do something with them? Grover’s honest truth, it's the Territorials' communication resources. We’re not doing much else with it. We don't hunt rebels, we just prepare for our next march, we staff this big stone heap, and we arrange for supplies and other irrelevant nonsense. You could say that your little off the books messages are the most Equestrian, pony-like material to cross our bored signals-griffs desk in all the time I've been a member of this battalion."

Gilda didn't mention her interest in facilitating the unwinding of the turul's business dealings. What the big bird didn't know about what Gilda was skimming off the top, wouldn't hurt it. And it turned out that dealing with Griffonstone guttertrash was remarkable good practice for negotiating with respectable business-ponies and banking griffs.

Someday, Gilda might even be able to put down a payment or two towards her debt to her mother.

Falconry And Petty Larceny

Gilda watched with envy as the great bird tucked into a terrifying dive from far overhead, lancing deep into the crystal-blue waters of Trottingham Harbor. At the very last second, the turul backed her wings, cupping the air in a crushing deceleration as her talons tore through the water, breaking the mirrored surface in a flash of shattered sun-light.

The turul struggled back aloft, not so much against the grey wiggling form dangling from her talons, as against her own great bulk, which nature had never intended for flight, let alone like this, hunting the northern waters of a griffish port. ‘Gertie’ bobbed gracelessly over the still, mostly calm waters, slowly making her way to the jetty on the back of the Battery, away from the ocean-side of the fortification.

The lee of Battery Garner had proved to be a wonderful place for afternoon fishing, sun-warmed, good breezes, and calm waters. Gilda waved the turul over to the stone batter beyond the jetty. The fish the turul had pulled out of the water was far too heavy for handling on the wooden jetty. The closer she came, the more Gilda realized that the catch wasn’t a fish at all, but some kind of shark. She was vaguely amazed even a bird as large as Lady George could carry such a weight.

They had Gleaming Shield’s little library to thank for this. Gilda hadn’t been impressed when the lieutenant had excitedly shown her the unicorn’s ‘find’. It wasn’t Gilda’s idea of a proper library - there were no locks, no armed librarians, no hookbill over the lintel. Just a closet full of dusty books, not even a latch. Just some shelves with a more-or-less complete set the City of Trottingham’s statute-books, and some previous unicorn officer’s magical research cache

Gleaming Shield had monopolized the magic books, which Gilda gathered were somewhat random but ‘tasty’. The bat-hen had amused her tired self by paging through the dry and dusty books of the law while her mistress wasted the night away filling their sleeping quarters with exclamations of interest and unicorn horn-glow too bright to sleep through.

The lieutenant hadn’t found anything useful for Lady George’s predicament, yet, but Gilda had discovered something in the dry and involuted pages of the ancient law of Trottingham that promised a great deal, indeed. For their personal advantage, if not the solution to the turul’s woes.

And this discovery was what allowed them to turn this bit of exercise for the battalion’s ‘trained roc’ into - well, a really ripping windfall for the turul, the battalion, and if all went well, Gilda herself.

But in the present, that shark wasn’t the only thing that the day’s fishing had caught. Gilda kept an eye on the harbor cutter that was closing quickly on their post. It had been tacking across the harbor waters for the past fifteen minutes, against an unseasonable sea breeze. The sun was shining here, but behind Gilda’s back, storm clouds were building. The shark that the turul had caught would feed the great bird - and a good portion of the battalion as well, or at least as many as Gilda could manage. They already had several buckets full of hundred and two-hundred pounders which represented a respectable feast once the cooks got done with them. That shark was half a ton if it was an ounce.

They got to work cleaning the catch, while Gilda awaited the arrival of what looked like the authorities in that boat. While they did, she thought about the promise and the reality of libraries. Gilda had been careful these past few years to not show a vulnerable interest in the contents of the lending libraries. For one thing, she’d come to the realization that as a bitless fledgling, she couldn’t afford the amusement, nor even the education they represented. Her mother had hid from her little chick just how expensive the subscriptions had been, how much of Gilda’s life-debt was draining into those long days spent hiding in old auntie Gertrude’s massively fortified library in the old neighborhood. Gertrude hadn’t been a blood relative, and sweet Scirocco bless her for that.

Gilda looked up from her memories, the knife, and the shark she was helping Gwaine gut. The presumably governmental intruder was gliding up to their small dock. Lady George was daintily picking at one of the two-hundred-pounders, trying not to be too obvious about watching as the drama began to unfold.

An overweight earth pony wearing an over-decorated uniform leaped over the gunwale of the cutter, cursing as he came. Another dark-eyed earth pony with a military bearing helped the bureaucrat over the side, and then sat, staring, as the confrontation unfolded.

“You! Griffon! What in all that’s harmonic do you think you’re doing! Dive fishing season isn’t for another five months in these waters. You want to go playing fishergriff, go join the fishing fleets!”

“Says who, you overdressed popinjay? You stand on EUP territory, not Trottish soil. Civilians can get right out, and keep their wittering to themselves.”

“Being a soldier doesn’t exempt you from the laws of the land! Fishing by talon in the offseason is a crime, punishable by fine and, in case of contumely, imprisonment!” The fat stallion seemed incapable of speaking an unexcited sentence. It was becoming quite tiring. And that dark-coated, dark-maned pony was still sitting in the boat, watching, quietly.

Gilda took a deep breath. She had long pretended to be an unlettered Griffonstone guttersnipe, and what she was about to say would break that illusion, at least in front of Gwaine and the bureaucrat and his goons. Here goes…

“Yes, yes, city statute 1003.5.e.1.II. Except subclause .III clearly states an exemption for falconry, baited hunting, and use of nonsapient birds for the purposes of removing predators from protected waters. This is a roc, those are protected waters, and this disgusting great mass of guts and deceased predatory intent is a shark. Not sure what breed, I’m not from around here.”

“It’s a porbeagle, Gilda,” said Gwaine, looking up from his gutting and grinning. “Big one, too. Maybe twelve hundred pounds. We may have to figure out how to preserve this beauty. She’ll feed Gertie here for almost a week. Ain’t that so, Bob?”

“Four, five days, belike,” agreed ‘Bob’ from around a beakful of the mackerel the porbeagle shark had been stalking before the hunter had become the hunted.

“Falconry? Falconry? FALCONRY! That’s for gyrfalcons, and hunting hawks! Not a chimerical monster bigger than my revenue cutter! And you! You’re no noble-hen. If you’re nobility, I’m the ruddy Count of Molting Capon!”

“Pleasure to meet you, Count Capon. I have the honor to be the Honorable Gilda de Griffonstone, and of royal enough blood to qualify as noble even by your watered-down Equestrian standards.”

The functionary sat back on his haunches, still trapped on the jetty by the filth of the butchery they’d used to block entry. Against ponies with any respect for their finery, that is. “You’re having me on. You’re no royal.”

I only wish that was true.

“Well,” sighed Gilda instead, “You can’t prove otherwise here on the dock, can you? And you know I’m right about the falconry statute.”

And she was. It was right there in faded black and white in those leather-bound statute books, marked down by hand on parchment by some griffish talon in days gone by. Griffish law, under pony authority. A memory of Griffish Trottingham, before it was Trottingham, before the interregnum and the ponies taking the Isles in one of their infamous fits of imperial inattention.

The bureaucrat fumed and the bureaucrat raged and spat, but eventually he was bustled off, half-dragged off the jetty by his sailing-master, who had been eyeing the onrushing stormclouds coming down out of the north to Gilda’s back. The dark stallion had never left the boat, or said a word, just helping the sailing-master capture his charge and aiding her cast off and put up just enough sail to send the boat rushing back into the protection of the inner harbor.

“You were joking about bein’ an ‘onorable, weren’t you, Lance Corporal?” asked the other griffon, as they rushed to bag up the day’s catch and run for shelter before the rains reached the battery. Gilda wasn’t used to having rank, it still confused her when griffs addressed her by the proper title of an officer’s bat-hen.

“Of course I was, Gwaine. Kidding on the square, we used to call it back on ol’ Stoney. The thing is, that all Griffonstonians are royal. Every last one of us has the blood of kings. You know why?”

“Royals is a bunch o’ ruttin’ rapin’ savages?”

“Well, that too, but mostly because all the peasants died before they could lay their eggs. Only the bastards and the nobles lived to breed. Now let’s get going before these fish get washed back into the harbor.”

"What in Boreas's ice-rimmed asshole are you doing, lieutenant ma'am?"

“Don't look, don't look!”

"It's a bit too late for that. Is that a costume? Why is it so... glittery?"

"The books! I found something in them I’ve been wanting for months now, I had to try it out!”

“So… wings are they?”

“Yeah! But I didn't think they'd come in so... much like butterflies. Please…”

Gilda had never seen Gleaming Shield look so vulnerable, with her twitching, glittery new appendages quivering like bits of morning-dew and starlight.

“Please don't tell anypony about this."

"That'll be hard to do if they don't go away soon. We have drill in a half-hour. Do they work?"

"I don't know, I just conjured them.” The lieutenant regained some of her sparkle, and looked up at her enormous butterfly wings.

“Let's see!"

"Ack! Look out! Stop! Not indoors!"

Luckily, the only things damaged belonged to the lieutenant. And of that, mostly her pride.

“We can’t be constantly diverting the spare colonel’s gig to ferry the Stinging Needle back and forth from the Batteries to all of these… random factories in the neighborhoods. It isn’t appropriate use of battalion resources, and it isn’t safe! Some of these neighborhoods are deep inside the blue zone.”

“Sergeant-Major, it isn’t my decisions that make these things happen.”

“You are Gleaming Shield’s bat-hen, you are in effect her adjutant.”

“The adjutant’s adjutant?”

“Yes! That is the role you accepted when you took the position!”

“I didn’t take the position, it took me. Or rather, the lieutenant ma’am gave me a choice between chains and polishing her pauldrons.”

“You polish the armor, you take the orders, you take the obligation. Now talk! Why are we stepping and fetching for a fashionista?”

“That spelled stone amulet you and the other non-commissioned officers wear now? That can be triggered to hide you from the enemy if we’re in contact?” Hypothetically. Gleaming Shield hadn’t ironed out the bugs in that one yet, but the sergeant-major didn’t need to know that. Carrying on... “That’s Lady Rarity. We got them at below cost. The same with the cockades, and our shuttling her around is going to get us the fineries to match the cockades. We will be the finest-outfitted unit in the Territorial Division.”

“And all that will do is put targets on our flanks, when the military police descend upon us and clap us all in irons for abuse of Her Royal Government’s funds. I do not want to go to the stockade for the sake of Gleaming Shield’s vanity, and your - whatever the hades it is you’re up to. Don’t think you’ve fooled me, my fair hen, I know you’ve got something up your wing. I will clip them but good if I catch you out!”

“Just as I would expect, Sergeant-Major. We’re not abusing Her Royal Government’s funds. I don’t even have access to those. We are, at worst, redirecting underutilized resources. They have us fly out here to one or another of the batteries, settle in for half a week, and then go flying back to barracks! We see nogriff, we talk to nogriff, we get nothing done, we do nothing but polish the columbiads and rearrange the cannonballs. Do you know how popular Rarity’s escort duties are?”

“Yes, and I know that you’ve been sending them out with the supply carriages and loads of poached fish. The carriages are starting to stink! The officers are complaining!”

“Well, that’s no good. We’ll have to work harder at scouring out the vehicles after each load. Because this is your share of the last two week’s proceeds.”

“Wait, what? Really? What have you been pulling out of the harbor?” A fair amount, but that wasn’t the source of most of the funds. A great deal of contraband could be hid under a load of stinking fish. They’d been putting aside a supply of trash-fish to cook off in the sun for the purpose.

“We keep thinking we’ve exhausted the lees, but they keep swimming back in from the open sea. The chains may keep out the ships, but to the fish, it’s nothing more than a lintel. ‘Gertie’ gets tired, eventually, but it’s a good little business. We haven’t figured out how to charge admission to the crowds on the shore that watch, but that’s only a factor when we’re in Fort Gharne. Although I hear tell that somegriff has started offering chartered excursion boats for ponies and griffons wanting to get a closer look at the ‘great roc’ fishing out of Trottingham Harbor.”

The sergeant-major really should have asked more closely, because the story didn’t hold up even to the most light-taloned of examination, but Gilda had touched him in the place that mattered, the one place that all griffons harbored, somewhere, to some degree.

His cupidity. After she’d found that, it was simply a matter of arguing terms. The sergeant-major would have his cut, and they would continue to distribute Lady George’s fineries to their customers.

“Lieutenant ma’am, I have concerns about what Lady Rarity is about in the neighborhoods.”

“What, why? And why are you the one coming to me about it?”

“Some of the troopers came to me the other day about the places they’ve been taking the Stinging Needle, and so I went out with them today to see for myself.”

“I had wondered why Gwaine was the one handing me my lunch while I was working. Be sure to tell the cook that her new chowder is superb, by the way.”

“I’ll be sure to do so, lieutenant ma’am.”

“Just make sure nogriff tells me or any other officer what’s in it.”

“Why would you say that if you know…”

“Tell. No. One.”

“If you say so, lieutenant ma’am. The factories we’re taking Rarity to, and materials from?”

“What about them, Gilda?”

“They’re not factories.”

“If they’re not factories, how are we getting these uniforms from them? Look at this stitching. As solid as the walls of Battery Garner.”

“Indeed. But they still aren’t any sort of sweatshop I’m familiar with.”

“You come from Griffonstone, whose sole notable exports are extremists and mad bombers.”

“Still, I know a factory when I see one, and these aren’t. They’re guild halls.”

“What, like contractors?”

“Not quite like, ma’am. More of a sorority sort of situation. Except with laborers and artisans.”

“You mean union halls?”

“Labor unions were banned in the Griffish Isles in the Fifth CE, 173, lieutenant ma’am.” Gilda had seen the ukase, in a much more recent volume among the Trottingham City statutes, bound pony-style in dull paper and buckram.

“And so, they’re ‘guilds’, I see. So they’re aggregating the work of lots of little sweatshops. Fine, I don’t care how the work is done.”

“It’s radicalism, lieutenant ma’am.”

“Are you saying we’re getting uniforms from rebel artisans?”

“Of course not, lieutenant ma’am. If anything, the red guilds seem to hate the rebels more than we do.”

“Then I don’t see a problem.”

“The problem is that they hate the military government more than the rebels. Great deal of hate, labor radicals.”

“You sound admiring.”

“I am a connoisseur of hate, lieutenant ma’am.”

“I didn’t think you knew that word, Gilda.”

“I try to broaden my horizons, lieutenant ma’am.” And she was starting to loosen up on her presentation here among the ponies. Now that she was a proper non-commissioned officer, there was much that Lance Corporal Gilda was allowed to know, that Gilda the guttersnipe had been forbidden.

“So, Rarity has been using our largess to encourage the cause of outlawed and banned labor radicalism in a city under siege and awash in rebellion and unrest.”

“Yes, lieutenant ma’am.”

“You’re concerned our vehicles could become misappropriated?”

“More than we already have misappropriated them? Perhaps. More worried about getting caught in any dust-ups if the bosses send in the brute squads.”

“We are the brute squads.”

“As I said, it could be awkward.”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. We’re doing too well by the exchange as it is. I’ve just made deals with the whole of our brigade, they’re impressed with the work Rarity’s offering.”

“Uniforms for the entire brigade?”

“Possibly for the whole Territorial Division if this pans out.”

“More than worth a little political trouble, lieutenant ma’am?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Of course, lieutenant ma’am.”

The Crab Bucket

The Fifth was packed and ready to return to the barracks when the explosions began to ring out across the city. They had spent the week in Battery Giuseppe on the pony side of the harbor, just across a minor channel separating the chained casemates and bastions sitting on a trio of natural seamounts. It was, if anything, the least vital portion of the seaward defenses of the city, which is why they were able to abandon the post to the pony artillerists who permanently staffed the battery, and fly to the sound of the guns.

Or the bombs, as it proved to be.

The crab-back marches had turned tense and confrontational as fall had faded into winter. The successful raiding and neighborhood-clearing campaigns of the summer and early fall had been utterly undone by the wave of new migrants that had followed the fall harvests into the city from the countryside, and a whole new cadre of rebels pugnaciously filled the griffon side of the city with new anger and new ambition to drive out the pony oppressor.

In retrospect It had only been a matter of time before the rebels attacked the marches, instead of simply hiding in place and duking it out with the strike forces that always swept in when their covering crowds emptied out of the ghettos the rebels infested.

Gilda was just glad it hadn’t been the Fifth that had caught a beakful from the rebels.

The Fifth was in its full finery when the moment came, not quite in march array, but awaiting their turn as their replacements had danced and strutted their way through the city. Rarity’s genius had birthed the new uniforms in all of their beauty, and the Territorial battalion looked like a dawning sunrise, blue fading to yellow, with red grace-notes provided by the individual vanities of the troopers who insisted on lacquering their wing-blades and upper armor plating with streaks of crimson and burgundy. Rarity had objected to the practice, until Gleaming Shield had noted the potential image, and then the fashionista had leaned into the idea, sourcing better lacquers and directing the artwork of the troopers appropriately.

Gilda thought they looked more like the proper and traditional celestial blue crab, the old and ancient ones sometimes taken from the shallows west of Sandstone, with their blue shells tinted with a sort of dawn rainbow of reds and oranges and yellows. She herself picked a more orangeish sort of ochre for her lacquer.

All of that proud delight in their new fuss and feathers fell by the wayside when the twittering and laughter of the griffons milling about the marshalling-yard were shocked into silence by that chain of detonations that rolled across the harbor like the drum-heavy overture of a horrible, grim opera. One of the nasty griffish traditional ones, full of betrayal, sibling slaughter and nobility in all its glory.

Gilda was looking at Gleaming Shield when the bombs went off. She’d never seen the purple unicorn look so pale, or once the twinge had passed, so emptily furious. The lieutenant’s voice was first to break the shocked silence with the necessary orders.

The troopers gathered around the full supply carriages as a set of scouts leapt into the air to race westwards, and gather information. Cockade after fine-feathered cockade was flung into the open tops of the carriages, revealing the iron-pot helmets they’d provided aesthetic cover and protection from the brain-cooking sun.

By the time the initial scouts returned with a word-picture of the unfolding disaster, the battalion was in battle-array. Gilda untied the golden cloth-frames which had hidden the armor and utilitarian frames of the spare colonel’s gig which she and Gleaming Shield had been scheduled to operate in the now-canceled crab-back march. Gleaming Shield sat in the colonel’s saddle, her satchel behind her in the boot. The lieutenant’s own armor had been modified in Rarity’s finest aesthetic, and Gilda’s had been stripped down for carriage-hauling, but still flamboyant and flashy, all yellows and blue grace-notes, the former tailored specifically to Gilda’s sad lack of azure plumage. They both looked oddly decapitated without the signature cockades.

The battalion rose into the air over Battery Guiseppe in a unison as well-tuned and well-formed as if they were flying for the crowds and the joy of the parade. But they were armed and armored for something worse than a simple bit of feather-flashing and leg-stretching joy she’d been anticipating.

They reached their apex over the center of the harbor, with the pillars of black smoke and fire visible ahead on the griffish shore, inland from the docks and much of the neighborhoods. The distant sound of fighting was interrupted by the orders of the sergeant-major and the corporals, a very specific order that the unicorn officers never would have issued, that was no part of pony military culture. Throughout the ranks in flight, the rear ties of the troopers’ drawers were untied and yanked open.

As the ranks ahead of them in the flight began shitting in unison, Gilda was thankful they’d been able to talk Rarity into adding those emergency evacuation flaps on the back end of the drawers for their fancy uniforms. Elsewise the traditional pre-battle defecations would have meant that their finery would have been a great deal more yellow and brown than Rarity’s designs had made allowances for.

“Oh, for the love of harmony, Gilda, do you have to?”

“For the love of the harmony of my uniform, yes, lieutenant ma’am, I do. Unless you want me shitting myself when the bolts and bullets start flying.”

“Oh, god, it stinks!”

“Better up here before we come into contact, it’ll dissipate,” said Corporal Gustav from the file maintaining formation just to the right of Gilda and Gleaming Shield’s gig.

The shadow of Lady George flying just above Gleaming Shield’s gig interrupted the afternoon sun in a brief eclipse, and the lieutenant looked up, reminded that the turul existed.

“Gilda, get us up by the roc! There, good. Hey! ‘Bob’! We don’t need ‘Gertie’ for this, and she’ll just create panic. Well, more panic than there already is. Can you just… go to cruising altitude?”

“Can do, lieutenant ma’am!” said ‘Bob’ in ironic imitation of Gilda’s usual tones. Lady George spread her wings and rose on the thermals rising from the fires ahead of them, quickly shrinking with distance as the battalion fell and she soared high into the brilliant blue of the autumn sky.

The Fifth parted with its royal mascot, and flew into the war.

They made a combat stoop on the north side of the chaos in Gilbert Square, two blocks away from the smoke and the screaming and the yelling. The rippling roar of the light cannon had ceased, and now there was only the sound of screaming and the clash of arms for those not deafened by the preceding barrage.

As they descended, an orange pegasus in some unfamiliar coat-tight blue uniform intercepted them.

“Good, you’re in the exact right place!” the pegasus yelled. “Take up blocking positions along July Street, the word is they’re breaking, they may be breaking this way!”

“Major-?” asked Gleaming Shield, looking askance at this random officer giving her griffons orders.

“Spitfire! Wonderbolts, on detached service! We knew they’d come out into the open like this, it’s an opportunity! A bloody, wonderful opportunity!” The pegasus mare wasn’t Trottish, and she wasn’t cursing. She was just giddy at the prospect of slaughter.

Gilda sometimes wondered what exactly had happened to the peace-loving ponies Grampa Gruff used to wax nostalgic about. Or were they always this bad, and hadn’t thought to vent it on griffons before this?

Ponies on the ground guided the Fifth into their blocking positions along the side-street which crossed the Boulevard of the Corbids, which had been the marching-route of the other Territorial battalions when they’d been ambushed. A third of the griffons of the Fifth, along with their unicorn officers, took up formation on the ground, and another third landed on the squat apartment buildings that lined July Street.

The last third circled in the air over their fellows, ready to intercept any fliers as they fled from the confusion two blocks south on the smoke-choked thoroughfare. This was more chaotic than it sounds, because civilians were still straggling away from the bloodshed, the more curious and bloodthirsty remnants of the crowd which had been scattered by the bombings. These enraged towngriffs had apparently taken up any weapon or weapon-like implement that came to talon, and more than a few had been captured along with the rebels they’d been harrying as those griffons tried to retreat through the Fifth’s lines.

Gilda kept Gleaming Shield aloft to provide officer cover for the swirling mess which their aerial deployment immediately disintegrated into, pairs of griffon troopers grabbing bloodied and wild-eyed griffons in disheveled civilian attire, and pulling them down to the rooftops to process and sort out the angry victims from the escaping rebels.

The aerial third of the Fifth quickly found themselves on the rooftops, their talons full of their captures and incidental civilians, and the third which had been at that level, rose to replace their fellows. Gilda and Gleaming Shield stayed aloft, maintaining control over the gyre of Territorials rising empty-taloned, and falling with their temporary captives. The other officers processed their catches, having climbed up to the rooftops to maintain order.

It seemed like forever, but it was barely three in the afternoon when the heavy skirmish lines from the ambushed brigade of Territorials met the Fifth’s griffons along their positions on July Street. Only a talons-full of rebels fled ahead of the enraged griffons who had chased them from the fighting in Gilbert Square. When they came up against the griffons of the Fifth, every single one threw down their weapons and surrendered. They survived the rout, unlike many of their fellows.

The griffons of the Ninth and Third had not been amused. They were out for blood.

The Fifth just put their final captures into the improvised pen they’d built out of a half-smashed chicken coop on the roof of one of the apartment buildings on the south side of August Street, and laughed off the demands of the pissed-off troopers from Gilbert Square. These rebels were the Fifth’s, and that was that.

The book-keeping and arguing over prisoners went on long into what little there was of afternoons in the last days of fall.

Gilda took a moment to shake out her overstrained wings, unhooked from her gig. It was heavier than it looked, weighted down with armor plating along and under the colonel’s saddle, a little bucket or tub designed to protect the rider from the projectile fire of any prospective opponent. Nobody really cared about the griffon that had to drag all that weight unprotected at the end of the yoke. No extra armor for Gilda

Some loudmouth in the prisoner’s pen was raving at his guards and his shame-faced fellows. Not all the fight had been beaten out of the rebels, it seemed.

“Ah, proud is it, you damn scuttlers across shallow seas? You may have penned me up here with these cowards like a pullet in among the broilers, but the rebellion still lives! It would thrive, if we weren’t all here in this bucket with you damn crabs! You’re the reason the ponies don’t even bother locking their doors! To keep a crab captive, just put her in a bucket with other crabs, and they’ll all keep each other in their place! They can count on you to pull us back down into the pot with the rest of you! Damn you, damn you all!”

The guards weren’t in a laughing mood, and the mouthy griffon might have caught more than just a couple spear-butts in his face, but a trio of heavily-armored earth ponies and a unicorn officer arrived just in time to haul him alive out of the Fifth’s prisoners’ pen. The mouthy griffon must have been somegriff important.

Gilda went back to watching her lieutenant work, and resting her wings.

It was nearly dark when Gleaming Shield finished her part in the resolution of the situation along July Street, and coaxed her bat-hen back into the traces of their appropriated colonel’s gig. The lieutenant got them back up into the air, and directed Gilda southwards into what had been the center of the fighting earlier in the day. They barely got going before she told Gilda to land in the Square, so that she could look over the battlefield before they lost the last light.

Gilda thought wryly that the lieutenant must have been restraining herself mightily from taking similar tours of the strike-force raids. Those had come like clockwork, every week, almost on a bloody, smoky schedule. This was the first time the unicorn had indulged herself in a bit of massacre tourism.

Perhaps it was the bombs, perhaps it had been that being an actual part of a battle had loosened Gleaming Shield’s iron self-discipline enough to play military tourist, but here they were.

And Gilda had to admit she was curious, too.

The square looked like the jetty-side batters after they’d butchered one of Lady George’s catches. Gilda had not expected there to be this much blood. It stank even worse than it looked, like a crowd had sacked a butcher shop and shat and pissed on every counter, in every corner.

Further south was the blackened rubble and the smoke, here it was all bodies and blood. The two of them had landed in a part of the square where the fighting had been talon to talon, spear to shield, wing and paw, beak and tooth. There were windrows of dead griffons laying in clumps where they had fallen, dressed in the rough woolens common among the rural poor and some of the worst griffish ghettos. Gilda’s beak stung from the horrible bouquet of copper and ammonia and feces.

And just the faintest whiff of sweet acetone and sulfur.

Details from the other Territorial battalions were policing the battlefield, removing their own dead and collecting discarded weapons. There were less of the former than Gilda had feared, and more of the latter than she’d thought possible.

It occurred to her that they hadn’t taken nearly enough prisoners earlier in the day to account for all of these blades and clubs and - were those slug-throwers? The rebels had been heavily armed.

As Gleaming Shield was examining the shattered barrel of some device in her magical field-grip, Gilda heard someone behind them chirp in a weirdly cheerful feminine voice.

A voice that made the lieutenant freeze in wide-eyed horror.

“Didn’t I tell you that we were due for one hum-dinger of a shindig, General Sir? I can’t believe how many party favors they left us!”

“Major Pie, we lost a lot of birds today,” rumbled something like a gravel-pit given voice. “Perhaps you should show some restraint, given the dead all around us?”

“Gee, General Krupke, this is my mourning grimace! I can’t help if it looks exactly like my ‘I told you this was going to happen if you kept letting the Territorials show off’ face!”

“Pie, you told me to double down on the crab-back marches!”

“Because I was pretty sure it would be worth the price. And I don’t know yet if that’s true. But I have hopes, because look at all these party-poopers, our crabbies pinched them but good. Oh, hey, Twilight, long time no see!”

Gilda watched as Gleaming Shield wiped that look of horror off her face and composed herself. She followed the lieutenant’s gaze as they both turned around to face the voices.

It was the commanding general of the garrison, a heavy-set older stallion named… Gilda forgot his name. Something to do with forges or anvils. She was pretty sure it wasn’t anything so unpony as ‘Krupke’.

Beside him was an earth pony so shockingly pink that Gilda thought at first that she’d been bathing in viscera. Her mane was long, lank, and equally pink, but there was a crazed look in her eyes, an enthusiasm that sent a shiver down the hen’s back that had nothing to do with the autumnal chill in the evening air. The pink mare was wearing a staff officer’s uniform, and major’s tabs.

Beside them both was that damn dark-coated earth pony Gilda kept seeing around the city. The one that had been with that bureaucrat that had objected to their falconry a month or so back. The one that kept showing up in weird places where ponies shouldn’t be. Like guild halls deep in the griffish quarter.

“Hey!” yelped the pink mare. “Hey! Twilight Sparkle! Over here! Howaryadoing? I haven’t seen you since the Academy! Isn’t all this keen? We really walloped ‘em good here, didn’t we? Hey, come on, Twilight, say something!”

The After-Party

“Hello, Pinkie Pie,” said Gleaming Shield through gritted teeth. “It hasn't been nearly long enough since the last time I saw you. And don’t call me that, my name is -”

“Yeah, yeah, grrr, I’m so tough, I’m going to pretend I’m my dead brother! Fine, hi there, ‘Gleaming Shield’. You manage to kill anygriff today? Boy howdy did we send you a lot of rebels, didn’t we? Which battalion were you with again?”

“Fifth Griffish Territorial, as I’m sure you already knew. You always know, somehow.” The lieutenant’s eyes fell on Major Pie’s rank tabs, and Gilda felt for her at that moment. Gleaming Shield had been so proud of her early promotion, and the prospect of an even earlier captain’s baton in another half-year or so. How did a classmate of hers from the pony military academy end up reaching the rank of major already?

“Oh, yeah, I remember now. You must be the only member of our class to have volunteered for the colonials. Not that a few others didn’t end up out here all the same, but none who wanted it, or with your grades.”

“And none with your grades, either, Pinkie. Tell me again how you passed the final exams?”

“Ha! Family secret, I can’t tell you!”

“If that’s a euphemism for nepotism…”

“You know where I came from Twilight, the ponies of Rock Valley don’t have any hooks in high command!”

“Stop CALLING ME THAT!”

The pink staff officer giggled and stuck out her tongue, making an ‘oopsie’ face. Meanwhile, the general had gotten bored of his underling’s antics, and wandered off with the dark-maned pony soldier without any rank tabs. To look closer at the piles of griffon dead, Gilda supposed.

No pony corpses anywhere to be seen.

“Did you say that this battle was your idea, major, ma’am?” asked Gilda, to derail the circular argument the two ponies were locked into.

“Oh, yeah. Maybe. Not really? I mean, I didn’t mean for this, exactly, to happen. But we always knew that taunting the rebels day in, day out with flashy military parades would eventually draw out a response. So did the rebels, though, so, you know, they avoided being drawn out, and we kept waiting for the boom. Always boom tomorrow, you know, never boom today? Six months we’ve been waiting for the boom.

“Honestly, I think we finally killed or captured the last rebel commander with the sense to not rise to our bait, and here they are. Baited! The dummies must be in charge on that side of the fence, now. I just hope we didn’t catch the dumber ones in this.

“They might try it again!” The young staffer giggled like an innocent foal, smiling sweetly in the midst of the worst stench Gilda had ever smelled.

And Gilda had known some truly ripe quarters of old Griffonstone. She looked down, and realized that although the pink pony was bouncing up and down on her naked hooves, somehow she was staying out of the pools of drying, sticky blood and worse fluids soaking the cobblestones under-hoof.

“Pinkie,” ground out Gleaming Shield, “Could you take a little less joy in the damage done to our own battalions? The Second Brigade had to have paid heavily for this success of yours.”

“I’m not celebrating today’s success. I’m rejoicing in the end of six months of failure! What you have to understand, Twilight, is that war is full of ponies who absolutely, positively, absoposolutely need cheering up in the worst way possible. So we need to blow them up in the fastest, quickest way possible, so that the survivors can enjoy the 'yay, you surrendered!' parties!

“So as far as I’m concerned, the tragedy wasn’t today. It was these long, boring months of burning down the ghettos one warehouse and shack at a time, torturing these poor birdies and killing them only a little at a time. That was the real tragedy! So we killed a whole bunch of them this time! That’s a good thing!

“Maybe the survivors will even come in and sue for peace! Wouldn’t that be nifty?”

Lights were being set up by griffons under the instructions of unicorn ponies with their horns glowing bright. The clean-up continued, as more and more uniformed ponies appeared to rubberneck, much like Gleaming Shield and Gilda had done. Gilda was stuck with the lieutenant’s gig, so she couldn’t wander around like the rest of them, and slowly lost track of both Gleaming Shield and her sort-of-not-really friend from school, as they meandered into the darkness, still squabbling.

While she waited for the lieutenant to wrap up her screaming session with Major Pie somewhere out in the half-darkness of the battle-damaged square, Gilda found herself with nothing to do but stare at the nearest pile of dead griffons, and eavesdrop on the conversations of other officers as they emerged from the darkness in their turn, and drifted past her carriage.

“Amazing that they chose Gilbert Square. It’s as if they were trying to get mouse-trapped…”

“...strike force was in exactly the right place, it’s like they just put their flanks in our faces…”

“...could you believe it? I thought it was a trick. We didn’t tuck right into them, because I was busy sending scouts into my own rear and flanks looking for the other side of the pincers or the surprise. But they didn’t find…”

“...when Major Pie told us to move the flying battery in parallel ahead of the crab-backs, all she said was that we were ‘in case of massacre-related emergencies’. I have no idea how…”

“...but how would they have known we were there? We didn’t know we’d be there until we were…”

“...things scare me in this world, but that mare terrifies me. It isn’t the glee, it’s the incomprehension when you ask her…”

“...terrible civilian losses, though. The bombs caught more onlookers than anything…”

“...sickening, really. We did our jobs. Damn well. It could have been…”

“...hospitals are overflowing, I hear…”

“...not a single casualty in my entire unit.”

“Really? I had two wing-sprains and a recruit managed to stab herself with her own spearhead.”

“Well, those hardly count. That’s your basic marching order sick-list fodder…”

“Interesting place to wait for your officer, Lance Corporal Gilda,” the dark-coated stallion said, appearing out of nowhere in Gilda’s blind spot. “Getting a good earful of intelligence, are you?”

“Gah! Hello, uh - sir? Do I know you from somewhere? Uh - where’s your rank tabs?”

“That’s need to know, and you’ve already gotten two ears full of things you did not Need To Know. I think it would be an excellent thing if ALL THE OFFICERS IN THE SOUND OF MY VOICE WOULD RETURN TO THEIR UNITS IMMEDIATELY! This is not a coffee klatch, nor is it a staff conference! This is a battlefield! If you are not scrubbing cobblestones in five minutes and you are still in this square, I will have you arrested for dereliction of duty!”

Gilda looked around for the goon squad which the nameless dark pony was using to back up his utterly unsupported threats, but there wasn’t anypony or anygriff anywhere around. But when Gilda looked back, the dark pony was gone, and the officers were scattering to the four winds.

“...the residue of a prepared mind. Oh, hello, General Grouchy-pants. Seen enough of the butchery yet?”

Gleaming Shield and Pinkie Pie emerged from the gloom in one direction, and the General and a collection of additional aides from another direction, both of them arriving in Gilda’s dim little corner of the stinking darkness at the same time.

“Pie! We still need to talk about the decisions made today! If you’re going to be part of my G-3 section, I need better accountability-”

“Oh, General, didn’t you get the memo? I won’t be joining your Operations section. I have a letter from Sky Marshal Firefly. They’re establishing a new command-level staff section for me and my ponies. J-13!”

“J what? There isn’t even a J-12!”

“No, and there isn’t a J-11 either. But there’s a J-13 now! I’m calling it the Special Section for Plotting, Planning, and Partying! I will need to talk to your Gs 1 through 5 inclusive. This experiment proved the concept, I’ll be spinning up your very own Special Section, your own G-13! We’re going to make this war so much fun, the enemy will just die from laughter!”

The lieutenant rolled her eyes, and turned her back on the livid commander and his herd of confused underlings as the pink pony continued to fill the darkness with her madness.

“Come on, Gilda. We’ve been ordered out of the way of the cleaning crews. Time to return to the battalion.”

And as night displaced evening, the griffons with mops and shovels started appearing out of the darkness around the jabbering major and her captive audience of staffers. Gilda and Gleaming Shield lifted up off the ground, spiraling lazily counter-clockwise over the indifferently-lit battlefield.

As they rose into the dark skies, Gilda saw first one, then three pegasi in the light armor the pony aerial squadrons wore. They were doing something peculiar she didn’t quite understand at first in the darkness. Without asking permission, Gilda turned the colonel’s gig aside to investigate.

Gleaming Shield helpfully lit up her horn to illuminate the mystery ponies as they flitted about in the smoky air over the darkened battlefield. Gilda could now see this pony and that grabbing bits of blackened smoke, and dragging them here and there, while others flew rapidly in and out of the globe of horn-glow like barn-sparrows through a fireplace-lit longhouse.

“What are they doing, lieutenant, ma’am?” asked Gilda, flummoxed.

“Storm-making, Gilda. They’re building a rainstorm from scratch. It’ll be a filthy rain, put together with this miasma. Stinking of gunpowder and death.”

Gilda had never understood the pony fixation with controlling the weather, but never had she not understood so intensely as that night, watching pegasi labor long into the evening, wringing a bit of foul drizzle from those dry, smokey clouds.

“But, why?”

“Tradition, Gilda, tradition. After any battle of note, the warriors of the pegasus nations have done this. They bring together whatever clouds they can, and wring them out over the battlefield. Some say it is their way of weeping for the dead. They themselves will tell you it’s to wash the blood and the hate away, so that it doesn’t attract windigos.”

“But windigos are a myth!”

“The pegasus position on that question is that if they keep to their traditions, the windigo will continue to remain a myth. Regardless, I like my posterior unfrozen, don’t you?”

As Gilda bent the aerial cart downwards, and started the search for the rest of their battalion in the half-darkened streets below, they passed between the flying ponies as they flew through the measures of their traditional cloud-cotillion. Long after they left them behind, the pegasi continued to wring bitter tears from the dry eye of the heavens into the night.

Burn Barrels And Hot Wheels

Gilda stood beside the burn-barrels, and wished for a lungful of that nice, clean, sulfur-tainted air over last week's battlefield. Canister after canister, box after box of contaminated bedding, bedpan piled upon bedpan, it was truly impressive how much toxic, dangerous filth a field hospital could produce day after day. The wounded and the patients leaked hideous fluids from every orifice, natural and otherwise, and all of it needed to be collected and disposed of without sickening anyone involved in the handling or collection thereof.

Gagging noises were coming from inside the now-abandoned row-house whose windows and entrances were glowing with a air-tight quarantine spell. Rankers Gilford and Gump were inside, mopping against the creeping flood of contaminated septic-tank overflow which was the result of those two imbeciles' having attempted to dispose of said contaminated waste in a simpler, dumber fashion than the right way, the regulation method for disposal of semi-liquid medical waste.

So now Gilda was doing their job for them, laboriously shoving all of it into the burn-barrels to broil away, while they got to mop up their messes inside, where Gilda devoutly hoped it smelled worse than it did out here.

"Come on, Lance Corporal, let us out!"

"Not until you're done mopping up that filth. Send out the next pair of buckets."

"We're going to be at this all week!"

"Come on, let us out!"

"No. This is what you get for trying to flush your obligations down the shitter."

"Come on, let us out and we can just burn this dump down!"

"Yeah, we're just going to put all of this into the burn barrels anyways, this whole place is a shithole! Nogriff will miss it!"

"We're not burning down a rowhouse, it'll send the whole block up in smoke. And anyways, it's somegriff's house. Even if it is a dung-encrusted hovel, it's somegriff's precious dung-encrusted hovel. Get back to mopping, and here's the next couple of buckets."

Gilda fed the burn-barrels with the filth from inside the hovel. As the imbeciles inside passed out the contaminated waste welling up from the compromised septic tank, she fed the buckets back through the seal. She finally let them out when they swore on a stack of princess-medallions that the outflow in the gloryhole had ceased.

Gilda used the stick that Gleaming Shield had given her that controlled the seal on the building. The magenta glow dispersed, and the wind once again passed through that two-storey shack's open windows and doors. It wouldn't help, of course, because that wind was heavy with the foul black smoke from the burn-barrels, but that would have been the case whether or not those two idiots had tried to flush befouled bed-sheets down a septic tank.

Gilda had no idea what they were thinking. They didn't even have septic tanks in Griffonstone, and she knew better than to do that.

She left the tending of the burn-barrels to Gilford, who was the less-imbecilic of the pair, and took the utterly hapless Gump into the kitchen with a fresh set of mops and buckets to see what they could do about the slightly less befouled kitchen. They were putting a bit of a spit-shine on the absent homeowner's cooking area - which might someday be worthy of actually preparing food in, some happy day - when Gleaming Shield stuck her head in the kitchen window, her head surrounded with the glowing sign of a stink-filter spell.

"Are you done with this punishment detail, Gilda? We have another caravan of prisoners who need guard oversight."

"I don't know, lieutenant ma'am," said Gilda, eyeing the cretinous Gump as he whistled and wiped a table-top with a filthy rag. A table-top which hadn't been befouled in the original septic backflow, but certainly was now. "Never mind, I think we've done enough damage here. Put that down, Gump, and get these buckets and mops out of here. Can we destroy these with the other tools, lieutenant ma'am?"

"I don't care, that's what burn barrels are for. Go on, private, do as the lance corporal says."

"Yes'm!" He bumbled out of the kitchen, bouncing once off of the door-frame as he went.

The lieutenant wrinkled her nose as she dispelled her protective spell, taking a cautious sniff. "Doesn't smell too bad in here, after all."

"Huh. I wouldn't know, my beak is burnt out by now. Maybe I'll smell something again in the new year."

"So… have you learned your lesson, Gilda?"

"What, to not talk about the officers behind their backs when they're actually behind mine?"

"That would be a start. Also, not calling my fellow officers 'Blue' Falcon and 'Gold' Brick would be nice."

"Thing is, the captain is a buddy-fucker, and Lieutenant Brick has never seen a job she couldn't foist off on the next victim sooner than I could flick a bit of dung off my left paw. And they both dumped this hospital detail on your back without thinking twice."

"Somepony had to do it. The mobile hospital people had wards full of wounded rebels, and not nearly enough orderlies to keep order."

"This is the least mobile outfit I've ever seen."

"From your long months of service, no doubt. But yes, the experiment seems rather… tentative, doesn't it?"

Gilda tromped out the back, and met Gleaming Shield out by the burn barrels in the courtyard, where the remains of the mops and buckets were burning merrily, aiding in their way the destruction of the medical waste they'd been contaminated with.

Having reassured themselves that the two idiots weren't going to set themselves or anything else in their vicinity on fire, the lieutenant and her bat-hen passed through the passage between rowhouses out into the street that had become, however temporarily, the 93/1st Medical Field Squadron. Each front door on the road was marked with sloppy red crosses, and orderlies and nurses passed in and out of said marked doors with a surprising regularity. The entire encampment was abuzz with activity.

This was, of course, and still, the fault of the previous week's bloodshed, which the officers insisted on calling the Battle of Gilbert Square, and everygriff else called 'the Crab Bucket'. Even one-sided slaughters resulted in far more wounded casualties than corpses, and the Crab Bucket had been no exception. Few rebels had surrendered unharmed, and fewer still got through the process of capture without a little 'Trottish justice', as the locals called it. The 93/1st and the other, more traditional medical squadrons were fully engaged in fixing, repairing, and warehousing the hundreds of enemy wounded in various locations around the Boulevard of the Corbids.

The local charity hospital had been filled to the brim with the doctors and staff of the traditionally-organized 11/14th and 27/14th Medical Squadrons, leaving no space for the eccentrics of the experimental 'mobile field hospital'. Instead, they'd fetched up here, on a side-street known informally as Tinker's Alley and more officially 'Hope Floats Street'. The tinkers had been shuffled off with whatever portable precious goods they could snatch up and bundle away, and the doctors and officers of the 93/1st moved into the appropriated structures, which they'd turned into ad-hoc operating rooms, wards, barracks, and storage stables.

It quickly became obvious that the medicos couldn't operate on their patients, guard said patients when they were conscious, and secure their own perimeter at the same time. The morning after the Crab Bucket, a detail had been called for, and the Fifth Griffish had caught the shit-bouquet.

All the officers with the worst records had been assigned to the detail, along with Gleaming Shield, who had bought herself no grace with the major for disappearing for half the evening in the middle of the closest thing to a fight the battalion had seen in months. And where Gleaming Shield went, her bat-hen followed, weighed down with all the baggage and at least three check-lists.

The Territorials set up shop on the roofs of Tinker's Alley, where they could get some sleep in the night chill, as well as a good vantage of the alleyways and hovels of the griffish ghetto they were supposed to 'secure'. Down below, the row-houses were full of moaning, miserable prisoners and their caretakers, such as they were.

The staff of the 93/1st wasn't all that unusual, as far as pony outfits went, being mostly Baltimarian earth ponies from what sounded like a series of ghettos no wealthier nor more prestigious than the griffish one that surrounded Tinker's Alley. But it was the doctors and some of the doctors' hangers-on that really made the 93/1st something out of Gilda's experience.

For one thing, almost none of them were ponies. The lieutenant colonel, a rather abstracted pegasus named Fishing Pole, was, obviously, a pony, and so was a mean-faced martinet who insisted on being called Major Burn Salve. But the bulk of the scalpel-jockeys were foreigners and weird creatures, some from places Gilda had heard of, and some totally out of her ken.

The diamond dog, for instance, was from a species Gilda knew existed, but she'd never seen one in the hulking flesh before. Bones spoke in a cultured accent Gilda didn't recognize, either, although someone told her that it might have been Saddle Arabian. He didn't talk to griffons outside of the squadron, and in Gilda's observation didn't speak much even at the card-table when he thought nogriff was watching.

Gilda wasn't even sure what Hawk Eye was, aside from incurably randy and handsy. She sort of looked like a pegasus and a monkey had knocked up a griffon and then kidnapped the egg to be raised among dragons. She had a beak, and wings, and feathers on those wings. Otherwise? Freaky-looking.

Most of the other doctors were similar odds and ends, no two alike, aside from Bones' three wives, who worked as a cook, a scullery maid, and a nurse, respectively. Gilda had been assured by one of the Baltimarians that the ability to keep three wives under one roof was why Bones was known as the Mighty Spear. The giggling mare clearly meant it as some sort of naughty joke, but Gilda just rolled her eyes at the pony.

As soon as Gleaming Shield released Gilda from her punishment detail, Gilda hurried back to what she'd been working on before the Territorial officers had caught her cursing their names in front of other enlisted griffons. Or, in this case, enlisted ponies. It took Gilda some scrambling to track down the supplies and logistics sergeants that she'd been talking to before the officers had interrupted.

Sergeant Ration Line was washing bed-pans in the third stable Gilda checked. The converted 'stable' had been, in its civilian life, a metal-worker's forge, but the tiny little reinforced benches, small anvils, and littler forges were instead covered with bales of rolled-up bandages, stacks of clean bedpans, and various packages piled higgledy-piggledy.

Gilda looked closer, and realized that there were an awful lot of bed-pans stacked in the corners. And… were those partially assembled pans? Like, one hanging on that anvil, half-formed?

The sergeant was using a wash-station for the tinsmiths to clean out used bedpans. The tinkers would be furious if they saw it, Gilda thought.

"What the hades is this? Are you making your bedpans from scratch?

"Ah, the dyed lance corporal," said the pony sergeant. "How are you, hon? I gather our little interrupted conversation got you a morning's worth of unpleasantness, did it?"

"More than a morning's worth, sergeant. What is this, seriously? It looks like somegriff's been making tin shitters in here."

"That's because they were, before we appropriated the place. We aren't getting any more until we move out of this street, these griffons were our suppliers, I think. So, are you ready to talk now?"

Gilda centred herself, and looked him square in the eyes. "All my most humble apologies for wasting your time, sergeant. I must be more careful in observing what's going on behind my tail."

"Especially with Captain Eye in the vicinity, this is a fact. But before we were so rudely interrupted by your superiors, we were talking transportation, were we not?"

"I believe so, sergeant. Namely, your perennial lack thereof?"

"For a mobile hospital, we are sadly…"

"Immobile, so I have seen. I haven't seen a single carriage since we got here that we didn't bring ourselves."

"Ah, and you certainly keep an eagle eye on it, do you not?"

"Ancestry has been kind to my race in that sense, if no other. But really? You have no wheeled vehicles?"

"Well, we did when we got here. But we turn our backs, and poof! The alleys are empty, the blocks kicked aside, and nothing to be found. Once, there was a nice neat pile of medicine and bedding sitting in the middle of the road, where the cart had been. As if somepony had just yanked the cart right out from under the cargo."

"Well, moving a hot carriage, that's a simple matter. There's an endless market for good carts. Medicine? That's a specialized business. Maybe they thought they couldn't move medicine."

"You seem oddly knowledgeable about the matter. Lance corporal, did your griffons steal my carts?"

"Mistral forbid! No, sergeant, my griffons never ventured so far into the pony theatre of operations as to encounter you medicos and your sadly light-wheeled vehicles. Speaking of which, where has the EUP been hiding you all? I have to admit I was surprised to find that so many dedicated medical units had been secreted here in Trottingham, without my having heard of it."

"Far-flung information-gathering apparatus you have, my young hen?"

"Levant forbid! I am merely a… quick study. And there's so much to study here in the Isles. Such as how easily entire squadrons disappear into the metropolis. Let alone a clawful of easily re-painted carts."

"So you don't think you can retrieve them?"

"Not those specific carriages, nor would if I wasn't confident that they wouldn't be stolen right out from under your nose as soon as I turned my back. Your outfit has a sad lack of disreputable blackguards, Sergeant Ration Line. I had hopes that you might be that villain, given your name, but you haven't once tried to blackmail me into doing your bidding. I'm shocked at how badly you're slacking your officers."

"You think I should study evil, to do right by my ponies?"

"I think that is the proper study and occupation of all sergeants, sergeant. Sergeants, corporals, and princes - virtue in all of these is an offense against their chosen professions. You should be claiming your squadrons' vital equipment as your personal fiefdom, and jealously guarding it for your own evil purposes. Nogriff ever washed a borrowed cart, nor will a griffon properly protect a vehicle unless they claim it, selfishly, squalidly, meanly - as theirs."

"That's an unnecessarily cynical point of view. Almost sounds like March Valley."

It was, Gilda had read that disreputable pony's Treatises on Livery's History Of Roam as well as that facile bit of toadying March Valley had written to suck up to Queen Grizelda when he'd been exiled by the pony princess. March Valley had been much more popular in Griffonia than he ever had been in his homeland.

"Well, anyways, something must be done.You're too honest to be a non-com, Rat Line. They should have made you an officer."

"I know! Just because I faint at the sight of blood..." The sergeant used his teeth to pick up another bedpan stained with filth and gore, and continued his washing in the now almost as befouled tin-forge sink.

Gilda crooked an eyebrow at this, but let it pass.

"Well, sergeant," she continued. "If I can't convince you to cheat on virtue with practical villainy, I can at least do something to entertain the lady when you and your wife are not in the room. Let's talk about where I can find some new wheels for your temporarily immobile field hospital."

The Hijacking Crews

"The streets hain't safe no more," the supply corporal confided as Gilda's griffons helped his assistant unload the kitchen supplies, crates of crabmeat and assorted staples from the cart. They were standing in the alleyway behind the big guildmaster's house which dominated the entrance to Tinker's Alley, which boasted the only kitchen on the whole block big enough for the cook staff to operate out of without getting in each others' pin feathers.

"It's Griffish Trottingham, of course they're not safe. They never were 'safe'. But by Griffonstone standards, it ain't bad."

"You 'aven't been out 'ere, mum! She's in a mean mood, Our Lady of Th' Cobbled Mudholes. It's worf your life to stop for a breffer in some of these back ways!" The squirrelly little earth pony outranked Gilda, but he'd taken one look at her and it was nothing but mum, mum out of his mouth. Bubblesqueak had decided she 'looked like an officer', and that was that. The little pest was a pony, yes, but he was a ghetto pony, and he spoke like a born crab-back. Which he was, right down to the matching coat and mane.

"Not this one, though, right?" Gilda's troubles were more than sufficient, she didn't need the supply ponies refusing to do the hospital run, too. There were too many prisoners and Territorials and medicos here, they'd go hungry quick if supply cut them dead and they didn't have the transportation to go fetch it themselves.

"Oh, no, mum, you've got this block and 'er neighbors right and tight, you do. I feel as safe as 'ouses. But the moment I get Bertie 'ere out past June Street, the stump-jumpers will be looking for me dock, they will."

"Stumpjumpers?"

"Gentlemares of the road. Th' stand and deliver brigade. It's like they're having a family booze-up, it is." Hijackers, the little stallion was talking about hijackers.

"I thought the Crab Bucket would have taken the wind out of those sails."

"Nah, more like opened Three Stringed Lute's own box, it did. Every fifth corner has somegriff standing watch, and the sixth will 'ave a brace of plug uglies with sharpness and, if you've been especially behind in your praise for 'armony, one o' those slug-throwers. You 'ave to 'ave been 'earin' those pop-sticks goin' off?"

Gilda had. The noise was unmistakable, and had kept the detachment's guards on their pinions and claws, jumping at shadows. So far no rebels had taken a shot at them, but it felt like a matter of time.

"Yeah, that. I think, me, they cracked open th' crates with their new deaf-dealers, and nogriff wants to put away their 'earthswarmin' gifties. Like foals and fledglings wif new toys, they is."

"If there's still that many rebels out there under arms, we're in hades' own pickle-barrel, aren't we?"

"Aw, I don't know that from Apple, mum. That's offercer business. 'ubcap and me we gots to be goin'. The 'alf-dozen blocks between 'ere and the Boulevard are good-griffon territory in daylight, but I don't trusts them after dark." The blue pony took a deep sniff of whatever the cooks inside had started baking, or broiling, or - Gilda wasn't sure, it smelled a little like sewage to her.

"Ah, that's a damned shame. They're makin' peat mash soup! Smells like 'ome, it does."

"I thought you were a city pony, Bubblesqueak," Gilda observed.

"Don't mean I don't love me the 'omeshire peaty goodness, mum. Toodles!" The supply pony, his underling hooked in their cart's traces, cart, grabbed up his spear and helmet, and yelled, "'ya, 'ubcap!"

They went tearing off down the alley towards the main road.

Gilda took up her own helmet, and turned to the next item on her check-list. Life with Gleaming Shield was a busy one, but at least there was always somepony keeping track of what needed doing. Even if the ponies did insist on cooking what smelled like raw sewage in the kitchen.

Lieutenant Brick managed to disappear into the aether the moment she found the excuse. That excuse was leading the first big caravan of prisoners out of the city to the new prisoner of war camp the EUP had established beyond the suburbs. Because the 93/1st had lost all of their assigned transportation, the transport had to be done with Fifth Territorial vehicles, which of course required the supervision of a proper officer.

Gilda hadn't been surprised when the carriages had returned short one, under the command of Corporal Gustav. She was more irritated that Brick had absconded with Corporal Guillaume along with one of the heavy carts. The first load of prisoners were hardly the last, after all, and now they were even more short-taloned.

The disappearance of a third of their supply of officers, as well as a precious vehicle, meant that Gilda couldn't keep holding back. They needed more mobility, and they needed it now. Bubblesqueak's tales of highwayhens and hijackings had given her some ideas, and all she needed was the acquiescence and, if Gleaming Shield was feeling helpful, the aid of Gilda's own, personal officer.

"Out of the question. We can't go playing military police. The real military police are out there, on the job!" The lieutenant was sitting in the crowded 'dining room' which they'd made out of the common room of the journeygriffs' hall that stretched along the west side of Tinker's Alley, opposite of the guildmaster's house. The dining room was full of tired-looking nurses and orderlies from the medical squadron, having their morning breakfast. Gleaming Shield had chosen to eat with her fellow equines for a change.

"The real military police are busier than bugbears. It's a madhouse out there, lieutenant ma'am!" Gilda tried to not blanch at the disgusting mess her lieutenant was digging into.

"They detached the MP companies from Division, and put them under the Provost Marshal. He's a family friend, a good one!" Gleaming Shield waved her spoon lazily around, emphasizing her point. The crusted grey-green goop she was devouring dripped messily on the table all around her plate.

Oh, Celestia, she kept eating it! "Your clutch uncle may be a fine stallion, but you know how useless our MPs are - the ponies at least know what they're doing! Half my bribes went to those boars' tits in the griffish MPs. I've been too busy to check on our supply routes, by the way, we've probably lost most of that business, we'll have to rebuild it all from scratch."

Gleaming Shield swallowed, then replied quickly, "Can't be helped, we've got our actual jobs to do."

"Which is why I want to do this! We can't wrap this project up without additional wheels." Maybe the lieutenant was done, she'd cleaned her bowl, the scullions would barely have to disinfect it, let alone wash it out.

"It's risky." The lieutenant grabbed the pony who was running past with a fresh bucket of the grey-green gunk, steaming and filling the dining-room with the smell of well-broiled swamp. The cook poured more peat mash into Gleaming Shield's empty bowl

"Which is why I want you there, backing us up." She was doing even more damage to the fresh peat than she'd done to the first serving.

"I'll stick out like a sore hoof."

Gilda needed fresh air, badly, she felt like she was turning almost as green as the unicorn's breakfast. She swallowed, and then offered, "I've seen you practicing with that disguise spell."

"Practicing. Not perfected. Also, what am I going to do, pretend to be a griffon MP?"

"Exactly!"

"I'd have to break out the wings spell."

"Y-yeah. You'd have to." Gilda gulped. "Do that."

"I think I got it down the last time." The last time Shield tried to fly, she’d bounced off the parapet of Casemate #7 in Battery Giuseppe and they had to get Lady George to fish her out of the harbor.

"Maybe you could pretend to be an MP sergeant? I haven't ever seen one of those use their wings." The lieutenant polished off her second bowl of stinking peat. Maybe they were finished?

"Hrm. Maybe. I think I could do with another bowl. You sure you don't want any peat stew? It's glorious, I swear. I can't understand why we never got it in - oh, I'll see you outside, Gilda! You make the arrangements, right?"

The first hijacking didn't go as planned. It took all of Gilda's persuasive power to convince the rankers they'd recruited to not dress up in barbaric splendor. The Stinging Needle had left behind a mixed collection of flamboyant rags, which some of the rankers had found in a crate they'd accidentally brought with them to the 93/1st. Grant had been particularly discontent that he wouldn't have the chance to dress up like a Parrot buccaneer attending a fancy-dress ball.

Instead, Gilda had gotten them to dress down in their armor and helmets, with badges hung on their gorgets defaced to look sort of like MP brassards. A bit of magic from their disguised unicorn, and they had the general look of a squad of Territorial MPs.

The key was the 'supply cart' they were using for bait. Gustav and Gump drew the cart, while a disguised Gleaming Shield drove it. The back was full of crates loaded with random tinkers' cruft, and two hidden rankers crouching for close support if any of the hijackers' ambushes they triggered went sideways.

Gilda and the rest of the volunteers followed a half-block behind the bait, doing their best to look like a military police patrol.

They didn’t move quickly enough, and that was why the first ambush they triggered almost didn't go off. The damn lookouts had left a stay-behind to watch for exactly what Gilda and her griffons were planning. The stay-behind was a little griffon, not quite old enough to call 'hen', too old to call a fledgling.

The overgrown fledgling lookout's desperate squawking, flailing, and dodging about frustrated Gilda and Grant's attempts to grab her. When they finally caught her, Gilda raced ahead to catch up with the now-blown 'bait' part of the team, while her fake MPs wasted their time beating the tar out of the loudbeaked little brat. The commotion had done the lookout's job for her, because by the time Gilda arrived at the ambush site, the rest of the hijacking crew was swarming the bait cart.

She arrived to find Gleaming Shield holding off two angry-looking griffs with a magenta shield while she repeatedly kicked a third on the ground caught inside the shield with her. Gump was down, and Gustav and the two griffs who had been hiding in the cart were trying to keep the rest of hijackers from doing to Gump what Gleaming Shield was doing to their buddy.

Gilda and the 'military police' contingent put an end to all of that, once the latter caught up with the bat-hen. They even managed to get their talons on the rest of the lookouts. It would have been a clean sweep if they were actually military police.

Since they weren't, the surviving captives presented a problem.

Gleaming Shield was pacing back and forth as Gilda did her inexperienced best to 'convince' the most responsible looking hijacker to tell them where their cache was.

"Where" slam "are" slam "you ‘iding" slam "your stuff?"

"Awk! Awk! Awk!"

"Sergeant, stop that. You'll just give her a concussion." They were still pretending MPs, and the MPs didn't have lance corporals, they had sergeants, the poncy prats.

"I don't care what I give 'er, as long as she gives up her bits, mum!"

"We don't care about bits, right? Supplies. The supplies hijacked on this route yesterday, and three days before that. And most importantly, the carriages the supplies were in."

Wham "You 'eard the first serjent. Where's the 'ades-damned, 'armony-bedeviled CARTS?"

In the end, the bandits gave up their hideout. But there weren't any carts, or gigs, or carriages. Just a pile of bits, a lot of booze, and some weapons.

They ended up returning to the hospital with nothing to show for that first night's efforts but a pile of trussed-up would-be hijackers, sharing their crowded heavy cart with said weapons and booze. Halfway home, Gilda looked at their cart-bed full of battered, bleeding, tied-up city-griffons, and she suddenly found herself wondering what had happened to the journeygriff tinkers and tinsmiths the mobile hospital had displaced.

She didn't know how to even begin to ask whether any of their captives were out of work tinkers.

The doctors of the 93/1st were glad to get their appendages on the booze, and the battered hijackers were patched up and added to the general population of damaged rebels. After the ambush, the hijackers were not in much better shape than some of those rebels. Gilda kept an eye on them, but none said a word about where the Territorials had found their prey.

Gilda took the next batch of prisoners and hijackers out to the new POW camp herself, and used the hijackers' own bits to pay off the guards at the camp to take them as if they were just more victims of the Crab Bucket.

Which, in a way, they were. Even if they loudly insisted to anygriff that would listen that they weren't damned rebels. As far as she could tell, none of the missing tinkers were in the catch she delivered to the ponies of the POW camp.

But they could have been.

All Gilda heard from the hijackers was a lot of cawing about how loyal they were to the Duchess of Trottingham. It might have been a tough bit of gristle for the bandits, but that was what bandits deserved, wasn't it? Disturbing the Princess's peace was a sort of rebellion. Whether you called the immortal white alicorn the Duchess or the Princess, peace was peace, the law was the law, and they'd all be transported together when the time came. It was the new territories for the lot of them.

The new territories would be a better place than Trottingham during the troubles, Gilda told herself.

The next hijacking went much more smoothly, as did the one after that. They collected more hijackers, and more booty which they shared liberally with everygriff they encountered. But they only found one sad, rattle-trap mule-cart, and things were getting worse.

Because the casualties from the real war kept pouring into the 93/1st, and the Territorials couldn't empty out the wards fast enough. The slug-throwers had filled the streets of Old Griffish Trottingham full of bleeding bodies, and far too many of them were arriving in the immobile hospital, to lay groaning in the beds of the absent tinkers and tinsmiths of Tinker’s Alley.

Gilda heard the moaning of the patched-together wounded in her dreams.

When the third ambush produced a bit of intelligence about where the hijacking crews were selling off their stolen carriages, Gilda was hot to chase it down. She was tired, and nightly nightmares about maimed tinsmiths weren't helping matters. Even if it meant that she and Gleaming Shield would have to play another round of dress-up.

Swinging For The Fences

"They taking care of you in here, Gump?"

"They's doin' right by me, Cor'p'l Gilda. I's feelin' plenty fine." Gilda had never been able to figure out Gump and the way he talked, he didn't sound a thing like the rest of the rankers. He might look like a Trottish bird, but he didn't talk like one.

Gump had gotten fairly well kicked around in their first attempt at hijacking a hijacking crew. A broken wing, a broken skull, various lost feathers and contusions - he was in a ward with some of the less dangerous prisoners and a few loyal birds, wounded in the recent fighting. They were planning on emptying the rest of the prisoners out of that building with the next shipment out to the POW camp, but until then, there was an armed Territorial and an orderly from the medical squadron in the room to keep order.

"Bubba here is doin' fine by me. We're having ourselves a right old home week here in the ward, ain't we, Bubba?" The orderly in question was some sort of Baltimarian hick, whose accent was almost identical to Gump's.

"Shore is, Gump. You are a real breath of home, you is." Not almost, was identical; the forest-green pony's name wasn't Bubba, but he seemed to like it better than whatever they called him at roll call. Whatever he called home, it had to be a hole right next door to whatever bog Gump had crawled out of. Gilda marveled as the mystery of Gump unfolded in front of her eyes. The two of them, pony and griffon, were bonding tighter than pony-glue over their shared background.

Who knew they had griffons in Hayseed Swamp? Wherever that was.

Gilda did her best to put Gump and his swamp-rat buddy out of her croggled mind, because the next thing on her checklist was checking in on the lieutenant, who had been messing with some project the bat-hen hadn't understood, something to do with the books they'd liberated from that closet in Battery Garner. The lieutenant's swagger-stick was sitting on the crate they were using as a table in the lieutenant's cramped quarters in some tinker's attic, held in place by a set of medical clamps Gilda had stol- borrowed from Rat Line.The lieutenant herself was nowhere to be found.

Thirty minutes later, Gilda was sneaking up on a den of iniquity, looking for her missing lieutenant, whom she had been informed was visiting the doctors in their quarters. Gilda, as the lowliest of non-commissioned nobodies, was not supposed to trespass in officers' quarters which weren't Gleaming Shield. At least in theory.

In practice, Gilda got away with what she chose to get away with; she just didn't care to spend much time in the sketchily amorous company of Captain 'Roving' Eye.

Gilda didn't care to become another notch on the surgeon's cot.

Gleaming Shield, on the other hand, seemed oddly attracted to the weird-looking foreigner, and Gilda had been required to pry her unicorn out of the monkey grip of that oddball more than once. Gilda was more than a little concerned that the flirting might become a bit more.

The 'hippogriff' kept quarters with two of the other surgeons in a second-storey walkup above one of the kitchens they'd converted into surgical galleries. The 'Fens' would have stunk of chemical disinfectant and death if it weren't for the copious amounts of alcohol they produced out of the pocket still that the three medical officers shared their space with.

Instead, it just stank of gin.

In the end, Gilda didn't have to climb all the way up to Hawk Eye's eyrie, because the purple unicorn met her halfway, coming down.

"Hello, lieutenant ma'am. You have what you need?"

"I got what I came for."

"And no doubt a bit more than you wanted, I wager?"

"Oh, no," Gleaming Shield said, smiling on the stairs. "You don't understand the captain, Gilda. She only chases the ponies who run. If you just smiled and nodded at her, she'd have no idea what to do with you."

"Predator, you mean?"

"I would have expected you to have understood better than me."

"I'm better at predating than being prey, lieutenant ma'am."

"The secret is to not give them openings, Gilda. And turning to flee is hades' own mouth opening underneath your hooves."

As Gilda thought over this bit of wisdom, she was startled by a high-pitched shriek from behind her in her blind spot, "CHARIOTS!"

Gilda turned to meet the slit-eyed gaze of Ping staring creepily at her with his head stuck inside the front door of the rowhouse. She jerked back, startled by the 93/1st's resident batpony and office assistant to the squadron commander. A commotion behind her proved to be Gleaming Shield tumbling down the stairs just ahead of the inhabitants of the Fens.

Gilda dragged her lieutenant out of the way of the stampeding doctors, and scrambled herself to avoid being trampled by Hawk Eye, a rabbity-looking Burn Salve, and that Abyssinian whose name Gilda could never remember.

As the dust settled, the two of them peered out the door at the rushing doctors and nurses as they raced to meet the heavily-burdened pegasus-drawn chariots dropping out of the sky. As the chariots settled to the ground, the medicos swarmed the still figures on immobilization stretchers strapped to what seemed to be every horizontal surface of each vehicle. The intermittent madness which was the medical squadron at work was back in session.

Gleaming Shield pulled Gilda away from the front door of the rowhouse, and they headed for the converted kitchen and the door out into the back alley. A pair of orderlies were already slaving away, filling the air with mists of disinfectant and whirling white rags, preparing the operation tables strapped across the tables and counters in what had once been a place for making food.

As they stepped out into the alley Gleaming Shield looked pensive.

"They're going to be busy well into the night, looks like," Gilda offered.

"Looks like."

"We really need to get those ambulances."

"That we do."

"Are you ready, lieutenant ma'am?"

"No, no I am not."

"Did you at least get what you came for?"

The unicorn held up a flask of clear liquid in her horn-grip.

"Not quite, but this will do. I still have work. Go be a corporal for a while, Gilda. I don't need you underhoof."

Gilda took out her frustrations on the rankers, and pestered all of the guard-posts and tracked down the outer perimeter patrols, who were far easier to find than they ought to have been, and received Gilda's well-deserved chastisement.

The Fifth Territorial had let its actual standards slip, and Gilda was pissed. The old birds just smiled at the young hen and tried not to mock her rank to her beak.

A much calmer bat-hen returned to her lieutenant's attic, having purged her emotions in a safer manner than the angry rant she'd almost unleashed on her mistress. She found Gleaming Shield, swagger-stick in hoof, waiting impatiently.

"Gilda! Where have you been? Time's a wasting. Let's go be pirates!"

"What! What? WH-" Gilda shuddered, and ran a talon through her crest. "Yes, lieutenant ma'am, if you say so."

The lieutenant had decided to accept Gilda's plan, and her interpretation of that implementation was 'let's play dress-up'. When it came to dressing up, Rarity was, of course, the solution, and Rarity's costume finery provided the wardrobe. The Stinging Needle herself was present, to Gilda's considerable surprise. The fashionista had not been around much since the Crab Bucket had put an end to the crab-back marches. Gilda had almost expected to hear that the white unicorn had picked up stakes one day, and disappeared on the next airship to - Manehattan, or Fillydelphia, or winds knew where else.

But, instead, here she was, Rarity herself, helping Gleaming Shield into a sort of dress uniform, strapping the narrow-withered unicorn into something that emphasized her less filly-esque proportions.

"Honestly, lieutenant, you could stand to wear this sort of thing more often, it suits you. Not that I relish the occasion. Do you know, I actually was accosted twice on the way here from the fifth wardl guildhall? Me! Everygriff knows me."

"They didn't rob you, Lady Rarity?" asked Gleaming Shield just before the white unicorn pulled the stays on that decidedly non-regulation saddle, robbing the purple unicorn of her wind for a second.

"Oh, of course not, I know better than to carry bits around with me these days. Ruffians on every corner! The guilds are talking over the problem, you know. Some of them are even calling out the old block militias. Even though they're technically banned. It's like everypony has run mad at the same time. But something must be done, nothing can move in the streets right now. Every pony for themselves. Dreadful!"

The fashionista turned on Gilda, and smiled in a predatory manner that put a shiver down Gilda's spine. "What do you think, darlings? I'm thinking 'eyepatch'."

As the Stinging Needle worked and gossiped, that bottle of rot-gut Gleaming Shield got from the medicos came out, and she and Gilda took turns swapping it back and forth, swigging a bit at a time. The gin burned like Tartarus on the way down, and Gilda made sure to splash it around a bit, so that the smell stuck to her feathers, while she listened to Rarity chatter about guild matters.

"Now there, darlings. How's that look?" The fashion pony had them both looking in a small mirror mounted at one end of the attic opposite the stairs.

Shield's new outfit was suitably piratical, a supply officer's uniform cut to distinctly non-regulation standards, and looking just barely military enough to not get her brought up on charges for being out of uniform. Her swagger-stick stood out a bit, but she made it work as a sort of sleazy prop. Gilda got an eyepatch and her crest-dye washed out with some concoction that made her beak sting from the smell.

Gilda took another swig from the bottle to kill the stench of the dye removal. Then Gleaming Shield took one more drink for luck, and used her magic to spritz them both with enough gin that they smelled like a distillery with loose joints.

As the lieutenant climbed down the narrow stairwell beneath her attic, Rarity leaned in to whisper to Gilda.

"Don't worry too much about your tinkers and tinsmiths, lance corporal. They're big birds, they'll find work anywhere they land. The guilds take care of their own. And big, strapping griffersmiths will definitely find a use."

"That's what I'm worried about," Gilda muttered back.

"Relax, darling. Unionists are first, foremost, and always for the union. Any union," Rarity said, looking arch. "They'll be good colts. I'll look out for them while you're off saving the Princess's honor."

Gilda followed her lieutenant down the stairs.

"Have fun stealing them blind, darlings!" waved Rarity from the top of the stairwell as Gleaming Shield and her escort of cosplaying griffons strapped into the Territorial battalion's best heavy-lifter. Gilda had argued in favor of bringing that rattletrap dungcart they'd taken off the last bunch of hijackers, but she’d been over-ruled.

They'd be bringing prime product for the fences.

The fences worked out of a business on the north end on the pony side of the city, far from the fighting in Griffish Trottingham. It looked like a prosperous carriage repair shop, with a half-dozen work-bays and a warehouse full of military-style haulage carts, assault chariots, and even two commanders' gigs. One of the gigs and two assault chariots were in the bays, and earth ponies were swarming over them, putting them back together from obvious battle-damage.

"Working business," observed Gilda from the side of her beak as they pulled their best cart into the warehouse where they'd been directed by a greasy-maned unicorn.

"Easier to move vehicles while they're in company," argued Gleaming Shield, trying not to move her lips as she dismounted from the heavy cart and helped Gilda un-hitch herself from the traces.

"Or else we got sold a bill of goods by that bandit."

"Well, if that's the case, we'll cut bait when they ask for the cart's papers." Gleaming Shield laid her swagger-stick on the pavement inside the garage to free up her horn-glow as she fussed with the apparently stubborn buckles on Gilda's hitch.

"Then they can call the MPs on us."

"I'm pretty sure I can talk my way out of that one." The lieutenant bent down to pick up her swagger-stick with her fore-leg, holding it like an earth pony.

"Yes, lieutenant ma'am, but can you argue the rest of us out of it? We're pretty far from the Griffish neighborhoods here if this goes sour." Gilda eyed the lieutenant as she spotted a bit of horn-glow around the swagger-stick's head, which had a fresh layer of something that looked less like brass, and more like a bit of gold paint. Why was the lieutenant fussing with that damn thing?

A prosperous looking earth pony with a sort of pink and yellow color scheme came bustling out of a side-door, and trotted quickly around their shiny heavy lifter. The carriage was the pride and joy of the Fifth Griffish Territorial, and after they put work into it, it barely smelled like fish at all.

"Oi like it!" the mare said. "The unit blazons aren't great, but oi've got ponies who can buff that off in 'alf a minute. Shake, bake, an' we can turn this mule around inside of a couple days, easy. Oi like it a lot."

She turned around, eyes blazing. "You, oi don't like at all, you fookin' screw'eaded 'inny cunt! Oo fookin' sent you?"

Gleaming Shield looked - Gilda had expected her to be put on her back hoof, with an aggressive mare in her face. Instead, she'd managed to look dead-eyed and bored. The only move she made was to turn her eye to her bat-hen in her pirate's gear. Then she ever so slightly raised her eyebrow.

At least she'd stopped playing with that damn swagger-stick

Right.

"OK, you stroppy bitch, you can step right back off the lieutenant ma'am, or I see how your insides look on the outsides." Gilda didn't normally carry weaponry, but she knew how to hide throwing-blades between her primaries, and two were suddenly right where they needed to be - pointed about an inch and a half in front of the rude whorse's left eye. "You got a name you want put on your gravestone before we tie it to you and drop the both of ya into the outer harbor?"

"Huh," said the fence. "That's a strong move for griffons on the wrong side of the blue line. You, oi like. 'er oi'm not sure about yet. Oi'm Chop Shop. That's me name on the sign outside. And those are me boys with the slug-throwers over there between those assault carriers in the corner. Say 'ello to the 'en with the pointy bits 'ere, boys."

A sharp explosion and a twanging sound heralded the discharge of one of those damn new sluggers. The bullet buried itself into a target-bale that someone had set up between the gates Gilda's griffons had come through just a few minutes earlier.

Things were perhaps a bit more heightened than they had bargained for. These crooks were better-armed, better-organized, and deeper into their defensive social network than Gilda and Gleaming Shield had war-gamed. This wasn't a position they could take with the muscle they had available, or any they could afford to bring to bear.

Gilda put away her throwing-knives, and raised her wings in acquiescence. "No harm, no foul, right?"

"No oi bluddy don' think so, you overgrown squab. What unit did you say you was with?"

"The 38/11th, on detached duty."

"The Territorial Division, roight, roight. Why am oi looking at this mare oi hain't ever laid peepers on before, and not Longshanks?" First Sergeant Longshanks wasn't the senior non-com with the squadron which handled the Third Brigade's resupply, but he was the one you dealt with if you didn't want problems. This gangster was familiar with Longshanks?

"Longshanks," Gilda essayed, spinning the prompt into a quick turnabout, "He's not kicking back like he used to, you know? We wanted to cut our own deal. One that's all upfront, no more backside, you know?"

"Cuttin' deals outside of channels, that's 'ow ponies end up wit' cinderblocks around their 'ooves and their 'eads 'alf a fathom deep in a cistern somewheres. Hain't nopony sensible-like disposes of bodies in the main bluddy 'arbour, that's a mugs game, it is. The bottom of shitters, that's the ticket." The evil-eyed earth pony gave them all the stink-eye.

"But Longshanks," the pony continued, after a long moment, "'e's been shortin' more than 'is own, and that's the naked 'onest truth. Bring me Longshanks' 'ead wit' the next load, and oi am interested. Show me 'ow you operate, and oi will make allowances, I will.

"Because oi look at you, and that pretty piece of officer meat in that 'orse costume, and oi think you, me 'en, is the pony to be talking to in the Territorials. The city is changing, it is. Alliances shiftin', rules bein' re-written. And maybe oi want a griffon to do griffish business with, oi do."

Gilda, the lieutenant, and their useless guards left Chop Shop's 'legitimate business' less one exceedingly precious vehicle, but considerably heavier in the purse than they had been when they came in, and nogriff got perforated in the process.

Call it a win.

Gleaming Shield looked at her bat-hen, as they walked towards the nearest boulevard and the long road back onto the griffish side of the blue line, and sighed.

"What now, Don Gilda? We seem to have gone into the gangster trade."

"Well, you know what they say, lieutenant ma'am. It's always good to have friends in tight places. And there isn't nogriff as friendly as mobsters looking for new friends."

"It's when friends fall to squabbling that things get difficult, isn't it?" The lieutenant cast a privacy shield around the two of them as they moved quickly down the mostly-empty boulevard, followed by their two stone-faced rankers.

"What gets me, is that we're down a vehicle, and I don't see how we're getting any more out of this lunatic. She wants us for purchasing, not sales."

"It is always harder," sighed Gleaming Shield, "to push a load uphill, than to just let it slide to the bottom of the hill."

"Maybe we need to get a running start," Gilda said as she thought, furiously. "Can we fake a pony's decapitated head?"

"That, Lance Corporal Gilda, sounds like a spectacularly bad plan in the offing. Maybe this might be more useful?" Gleaming Shield used her magic to turn the head of her swagger-stick, and suddenly…

"-over it with a fine tooth comb, Slantwise. Oi want to know what spells is on it, any taint at all. Oi knows the Argosian Manticore as wells as any school filly, oi won't be fooled by no jumped-up royal-lookin' Old Stoner-" The lieutenant turned the head of the swagger-stick to its original position, and smiled, slyly.

"Not everything is about threats and bluster, Lance Corporal. Would a decent remote surveillance cantrip be of use?"

"Cor, blimey, lieutenant mum, you bugged 'em. Oi tink it just might!"

"Celestia's flowing tail extensions, Gilda, don't do that. I swear, your Trottish is worse than Bob's."

Kidnapping And Official Cover

Gilda thought about giving the swagger-stick to Gump, and asking him to transcribe everything he heard.

Then she remembered Gump was functionally illiterate, and scrapped that.

Eventually she and the lieutenant worked out which ranker was most useless while still retaining the capacity to write down the important points, and stuffed Gene into a closet with Gleaming Shield's stick, a notebook, and a pencil.

Meanwhile, the war went on, and there were hijackers to ambush, and a supply sergeant to kidnap. The latter took priority, so Gleaming Shield put Gilda on that, while the lieutenant issued herself a pass and went to see her 'Uncle' Brass Tacks to get some sort of color of authority.

It was starting to get wild out there in the streets, and the time for the Territorials to freelance their enforcement of the Duchess's Peace was coming swiftly to an end.

The supply squadrons operated out of a permanent set of fortified warehouses in the massive chain of fortresses that squatted outside the old city walls on the landward side of the city. Normally, it took a lot of work to get inside those warehouses if you didn't have authorization.

Gilda had bits, for now at least. And friends in low places. The combination of the two got her and her strike team inside of the 38/11th's little blockhouse easy peasy, although they had to use one of the brigade's heavy carts for the sortie, with a clearly obvious Territorial blazon and the obvious shine of Territorial equipment. It required both that look of official business and Gilda's ongoing relationship with the carter-pony driving the cart. Short Haul had been one of her first recruits into the delivery scam for Lady George's business's long dissolution, and he'd made a good many bits for his large and burgeoning family back in Salt Lick City, smuggling jadestone and Abyssinian rugs with his usual deliveries.

It made her cry on the inside, spending those damn bits. Like her mother’s debts, screaming into the night, Gilda was sure she’d be reliving the moment she handed over those poor orphaned bits in her dreams.

This time, he just hauled a quintet of Territorials plus Gilda into their own supply squadron's sanctum. It was almost legit.

The weapons they brought with them weren't really in the schedule, nor was the way they cut Longshanks off from his retreat when he saw them pile out of the 38/11th cart with mayhem in their eyes. He tried to run, of course.

But Longshank's own assistant just backed into a corner when Gilford held up a few bits in one talon, and a short spear in the other. "Plata o plamo, mate. You can't fix this. Just let it 'appen, and you'll be brill in the mornin'. A 'ero, even, when it all sorts out. Longshanks, 'e's been a bad colt, 'e 'as."

"You see that, Longshanks?" asked Gilda of the cornered supply pony. "You've been shorting too many, too long."

She punched him in the muzzle, and stuffed his head in a sack.

"Maybe you shouldn't have tried for top bit, you pillock," Gilda gloated as her own assistants bound their target hoof and cannon.

She looked around at her 'griffs. "I used that right, right? Pillock?"

They all laughed at her as they bundled their victim up. Gilford and his partner prodded the 'intimidated' Short Haul and the terrified supply assistant to unload the rest of the cart they'd come in, and start moving the prepared load for the next leg of Short Haul's usual supply run.

Gilda found the expected cart heavy with supplies for one of the other Territorial battalions, probably heading out to the batteries or the harbor fortress. She ordered her griffons to steal it along with the stolen pony they proceeded to hide under a tarp behind the driver's bench.

Gleaming Shield had given Gilda a prepared spellstone with 'an imager matrix preloaded to copy a likeness'.

"Hey, pony, look lively!" Gilda yelled at her co-conspirator, looking menacing for the supply assistant's benefit.

Short Haul looked stupidly at her as the spellstone flashed brightly, and suddenly Gilda was seeing the world through a magenta haze.

"How's that look?" she asked Gilford.

"Crikey, lance corporal, you're the very livin' life of 'im. Feel any different?"

"Nah, it's just a light show. Let's go before it wears off."

They took off in the stolen cart, Gilda driving and wearing over her feathers the lieutenant's 'Changeling Cantrip' that hung an illusion of the little pony carter Short Haul. The gate guards barely gave her a glance on the way out. They barely checked the outgoing carts in the normal course of affairs, anyways, something that in the past had no doubt facilitated Longshanks’ own dubious operations.

Gilda almost had them take their prisoner back to the Fifth Territorial's barracks, where at least they had lots of backup and griffons everywhere, but remembered at the last moment that they were operating without a letter of marque. She took the path of the better part of valour, and hurried her strike team back to the 93/1st's nest in the back ghettos west of the Boulevard of the Corbids.

She beat Gleaming Shield back to their base, and found the compound around Tinker's Alley empty but for the Fifth Territorial guard-posts. The sounds of chaos and pain inside of the operating theatres told Gilda all she needed to know about what was going on with the medical squadron. The war was keeping the doctors and their support ponies busy, which meant that she and her griffons had a free talon.

They found an unoccupied supply stable at the back end of the Alley, one where nogriff could see blood from the street, one that could be easily cleaned. They parked the newly stolen cart outside.

If nothing else, it was a replacement vehicle for the one they'd lost to Chop Shop.

Longshanks had stopped squawking after the third time she'd bopped him one when he'd made noise through his hood on the way home. He barely said a peep when they propped him up in the painting shed, and yanked the hood off of his bedraggled head.

Gilda stalked up to him, holding a box that Gleaming Shield had enchanted before she'd gone off to talk to her honorary uncle the Provost Marshal. An enchantment recorded for this very purpose. She shoved it in front of the corrupt supply-pony's face, and triggered it.

"Longshanks.He's not kicking back like he used to, you know? We wanted to cut our own deal. One that's all upfront, no more backside, you know?" Gilda's tinny voice came out of the little box, almost true to the life. Longshanks’ little beady eyes narrowed as he took in the recording, glaring at his captor.

Then Chop Shop's thick Trottish tinkled out of the little recorder-box, and his eyes widened. And then...

"But Longshanks, 'e's been shortin' more than 'is own, and that's the naked 'onest truth. Bring me Longshanks' 'ead wit' the next load, and Oi am interested."

Gilda closed the little box with a click, and looked at her target, slumping in his bindings. This was a pony that knew he was a dead pony. The tears trickled down, leaving him empty-eyed and a bit blank.

"You have the idea, Longshanks me colt?" asked Gilda.

"Is this you gloating? You damn birds, you have to gloat, don't you? Predators, playing with your food…" said the sergeant. It wasn't even whining, not really. He just sounded… sad. "Get it over with if you're going to do it. I just wish I'd sent off the last bit for home. My momma…"

"Fuck your mother, you pony bastard," spat Gilda. "I don't give a cloacal squirt for the whorse who farted you out of her saggy cunt. You sold us, you vaginal discharge. You sold the Territorials for what - a couple bits for home? A filly for your leave? Some griffish hen to suck your pitiful pony cock?"

"Fuck off, you meat-eater. You can kill me, but I won't take shit from an inharmonic carrion bird! Kill me, cut my goddamn head off, but I won't take shit from you!"

"Well, bugger me, my toms and cocks, the colt has some fire in him yet, doesn't he?" asked Gilda. She turned and looked at the old birds who crouched in the corners of the stable, staring at the supply pony who had been selling Territorial equipment to gangsters. "You think the little herbivore has some reasons? Do we give a pigeon's shit for why the fucking grazer's betrayed the Duchess for a mess of pony pottage?"

The griffons growled their contempt for this line of argument, clacking their beaks in agitation.

"You were one of the Duchess's own ponies, Longshanks," Gilda yelled in his face. "You're the Equestrian ideal, you are. What are you doing, shitting in the Duchess's ear? Why do we gotta find you in the middle of this shame? We're the fucking Territorials, we are, you traitorous boar's tit. Mare up, you ball-less wonder! Show me why we shouldn't chop your worthless grazer head off and hand it over to this gangster piece of shit!"

The crooked supply pony's eyes opened at the idea that his death wasn't a forgone conclusion. "Wh-what- why?"

"Fuck your whys! Tell me how, grazer! How does it work! Tell me the hows and wherefores and the howcomes and the thises and the thats! I want to know Celestia-damned everything! EVERYTHING!

"Give us everything, you worthless sack of horseshit, or we'll take your last bit and bury you somewhere even your dearest will never find your bones!"

Longshanks started talking, and he didn't stop.

Longshanks' information got them the names of his co-conspirators, and his methods, and all of his dirty deals. Grant sat in a corner and wrote down everything.

They sent for Gump's buddy Bubba, who got Gilda some drugs, and they doped up Longshanks and stuffed him in one of the new pony wounded wards. Bubba agreed to look in on the new 'patient'. Bubba was generally a very agreeable pony, Gilda liked her.

Longshanks also got them the procedures and the time-frames they needed to work with. Chop Shop's in with the Territorials was shut down, and that wasn't anything to spit at. But Gilda wanted more, and they still needed more.

She took her griffons out on a raid while they waited for Gleaming Shield's gambit to pay off. The pony lieutenant hadn't returned yet, before Gilda and her griffons set out again.

The fourth raid was as much a success as the third, and they rolled right over the 'militia' which was taking carts on Falls Road. Three carts came back along with the dozen captives, one of which was a 'block boss'. The boss kept trying to sell out his pony connections, and couldn't seem to understand why his information wasn't buying him his freedom.

Gilda stabbed him twice in the thigh, and left him for the doctors to patch together. The painkillers shut his damn mouth.

They used the extra carts to haul most of the remaining survivors of the Crab Bucket out to the POW camps, and since Gilda rode along with the prisoners' caravan, all the carts came back without any losses to Prench leave or to hijackers.

When they got back, Gleaming Shield was back.

Finally.

"Am I under arrest, lieutenant ma'am?"

"No, Gilda, you aren't. Neither am I, and thank you for asking."

"I didn't ask, lieutenant ma'am."

"Yes, I understand, that was sarca- nevermind, Gilda. I have good news."

"I figured as much, lieutenant ma'am. If you didn't, I rather thought you wouldn't have returned. Just MPs swarming the whole of Tinker's Alley."

"Well, bully for you. We have leeway."

"Leeway! Well, la dee da. Leeway! What the hades does that mean?"

"It means that the Provost Marshal knows what we've been doing, and we're not under arrest."

"What a paragon of pony virtue he is, then. He's not taking over our investigations?"

"We have investigations?"

"Well, I've been doing my best, lieutenant ma'am. I haven't had a chance to check in with Gene. But I have my hopes. And Longshanks on ice. And some more hijackers in custody."

"Hijackers! Who told you to go out and do that?"

"My initiative, lieutenant ma'am. Since I had no idea if you were coming back. Since I don't know your clutch uncle from Apple."

"That's a pony saying, you're getting corrupted, Gilda."

"We're all getting corrupted, lieutenant ma'am. Do we have license to continue arresting hijackers?"

"Not that you waited for it, but no, we don't."

"That doesn't sound like good news. At least I picked up a couple carts before the boom lowered."

"Well, Uncle Brass didn't forbid it, either."

"Such a lawful regime you ponies have given us lawless griffons, lieutenant ma'am."

"Shut your beak, and take what your given, Lance Corporal."

"Yes, lieutenant ma'am.."

The lieutenant had brought Instructions back from her meeting with her uncle-the-Provost-Marshal. You couldn't call them orders, because Colonel Brass Tacks wasn't in their chain of command, and there wasn't anything actually written down, not where Gilda could lay eyes on it, at any rate. But Gleaming Shield insisted that the provost marshal had written out 'orders' and put them on file, in a locked safe.

Nopony could know, but it was legal. Their detachment had been undetached, and re-attached. Or detached again, Gilda didn't understand that part.

"The bad part," Gleaming Shield continued, "is that Uncle Brass doesn't give a hoot about the stolen carriages."

"What! That's the whole point of the exercise!"

"Yes, well, from our point of view. He says it happens every day in the city, and that's the business of the local police. Which - have you ever laid eyes on a Trottingham cop?"

"Not outside of the pony neighborhoods I haven't."

"Exactly. But he still doesn't care. What he does care about is that slug-thrower that Chop Shop's thug used to not-exactly-put-a-hole-in-you."

"Glad that someone cares about that."

"Well, they didn't perforate you, so no harm, no foul. I almost didn't mention it to Uncle Brass, and mare, would that have been a lost opportunity. But I did, in passing, and he cared a lot more than I thought he would.

"Slug-throwers, Gilda! That's what they care about right now. Uncle Brass sent out a message, and that creepy charcoal stallion came in with friends."

"Charcoal - oh, that guy. Yeah. He scares me."

"I think he scares everyone, Gilda. He scared Uncle Brass, I could tell. But he was the one who told me that we had official cover."

"Did you get a name this time?"

"What? I must have. Hold on. Let me think. Uncle Brass must have called him something!"

"Nothing?"

"No, blast it. I have perfect recall!" Gleaming Shield did not have perfect recall. Gleaming Shield thought she had perfect recall, because she'd read a book that claimed to offer memory retention techniques that supposedly allowed for improved recall. Gilda hadn't told her that memory palaces required constant maintenance. Sometimes very smart ponies could be remarkably dense. "I don't understand this. I don't even recall his cutie mark!"

"He has one, right?"

"Of course he had a cutie mark. Everypony has cutie marks, this isn't magical kindergarten!"

"So he was a unicorn? Must be someone else, the one I'm thinking of is an earth pony."

"No, he didn't have a horn… and he was wearing uniform trousers. No cutie mark, no name… this is going to drive me mad!"

"At least it'll be a short drive."

"Oh, please. But it's good news! We're on an undercover operation, Gilda. And we're on the hunt for griffons trading in slug-throwers! It's like a novel!"

"Great. Wild. Can we still steal ambulances for the doctors?"

"Sure, why not. When we're not working on more important matters."

"Very good, lieutenant ma'am."

"Oh, don't start that up again!"

It Never Rains But It Freezes

The surveillance enchantment hadn’t paid off as handsomely as they had hoped, at least, not yet. It turned out that crooked carriage repairponies did not, after all, plot villainously in earshot of the front gate of the warehouse they stored their stolen merchandise. Or, at least, they didn't do it consistently enough to immediately provide unambiguous, actionable intelligence.

Likewise, the captured Sergeant Longshanks was a wasting and limited asset, and Gleaming Shield had ordered him turned over to the Provost Marshal's ponies as soon as was practicable. They would not be hoofing him, alive or otherwise, over to Chop Shop and her villains for dissection or submersion in the nearest filthy cistern. He disappeared into the military police's dungeons, to be drained dry by actual interrogation specialists.

No, what actually provided Gilda, Gleaming Shield, and Corporal Gustav's strike-force with new and usable intelligence turned out to be Rarity's friends in the guild-halls, who were eager and willing to report criminal activity in their districts. The tip in question had been delivered by an enthusiastic informant-unionist, garnished by a great deal of fulmination on the subject of the disloyal and rebellious nature of this particular gang of road agents.

Said informant-unionist rode along as a guide for the lieutenant and her usual gang of well-armed Territorials hidden inside of their special ambush-carriage driving through the miserable slush of a Trottingham winter morning. Gilda and Gustav trailed behind with the bulk of their force as usual, slow-marching patrol-style through a snowy mix of sleet and rain. It wasn't quite cold enough for the snow and the sleet to stick, and the grey precipitation was subsiding when they heard it, that outburst of slugger fire that was the first clue that this latest raid had hit the jackpot.

And the jackpot was firing back.

The explosive rattle of multiple slug-throwers firing so closely together it almost qualified as 'volley fire' sent ice water into Gilda's veins to match the ice rimming the cobblestones underpaw. She and the rest of the reaction force broke from their careful walk, picking across the slick streets, into a half-flight gallop, rushing to catch up to their comrades under fire.

Grant and another ranker trampled the distracted, chilled hijacker lookouts, and Gilda, Corporal Gustav, and the others left them struggling in the slush as they darted through the drying air in a rush to get to their forward element before the bait-carriage was run over.

Or just shot to pieces. That was a lot of slugger fire.

When Gilda came into view of the ambush, a dozen feet above the slick cobblestones and moving at three times dry-weather ground-gallop speed, she could see the rapid flickering of a magenta dome ahead of her. Each time a lead slug struck the lieutenant's shield, it flared, flashed, and shattered like ice before refreezing as it fell.

It went through this terrifying freeze cycle two and a half times in the wingbeats it took for Gilda to cross that soggy, freezing ocean of air. She wanted desperately to look for that shieldwall to come back up one more time, but she was on the shooters, and the backs of their heads were more important…

She thought afterwards that a set of throwing knives and an air-lance couldn't have been nearly equal to something as newfangled and horribly long-ranged as a crowd of griffons firing state of the art slug-throwers, but the shooters had hyperfocused on the unicorn holding her shield-dome over the carriage, and weren't watching their rear, were putting ill-advised trust in their lookouts. They paid terribly for their misplaced trust.

Griffons went down left and right, sliding in the miserable slush, sluggers flying and blood splattering. A lot of griffons went down, but there were significantly more than a lot of griffons in that mob. If they had been trained, it might have been bad. If their powder was drier, it might have been a catastrophe. Gilda blessed the miserable weather, and almost prayed in thanksgiving when Corporal Gustav and the others flew to her support. The chilly, slushy chaos turned into a little less of a fair fight.

No soldier ever wants to fight a fair fight. Fair fights are for drunks, boxers, and civilians.

Sluggers proved to make for rather inferior clubs in close quarter fighting, and once there was more than just Gilda in the fight, things went quickly their way. But not before a lucky thug with a loaded slugger and dry powder put a round into Corporal Gustav's back.

Gilda lost her temper a bit after that. They didn't take many prisoners from that ambush, and those they did, would go straight into the surgical teams' appendages.

Those that survived the icy race-course ride back to the hospital.

It was a shame so many died, and that the rest weren't in condition to be interrogated immediately. They'd had a lot of slug-throwers. Somegriff probably knew where they got them.

If Gilda was lucky, it was one of the survivors under anesthesia, and in the careful paws of Dr. Bones. Or the Abyssinian the nurses called Trapper Tom. Or even that weirdo Hawk Eye.

Four winds help them all if it was the bird being operated on by Burn Salve.

Gleaming Shield wasn't actually in the queue for the surgeries. She had gotten through the ambush without any exterior wounds, just a grossly overstrained horn and a bit of intermittent unconsciousness. She'd kept all of her griffons intact, and unperforated - even the idiot unionist who'd led them into far more trouble than she'd prepared them for, or, to judge from her cursing and endless apologizing afterwards, expected herself.

Gilda had gotten her unicorn up the stairs to her garret in the attic, and left a ranker named Gil to keep an eye on the unconscious lieutenant. Gleaming Shield would be fine, she just needed to sleep off her magical overexertion. Or so a horned nurse had assured Gilda in the triage station.

Gleaming Shield would be fine. Unlike Gilda. The lieutenant was her responsibility, and she'd nearly been beaten flat by massed slugger fire. Corporal Gustav was her responsibility, and he'd gotten shot.

The corporal was always insistent that he was Gilda's superior, and not vice versa, but that wasn't how it felt when that slug had blown a hole in him right in front of her, and left far too much of his blood on the half-frozen cobblestones of Halfpenny Road. When she'd gotten them all back home, Gilda had made sure that Gustav was the first under Bones' knife. Everypony in the 93/1st insisted he was their best meatball surgeon, whatever Hawk Eye and her drinking buddy said.

She looked out the window at the house across the way that held Gump and his pony buddy in that second-floor improvised ward. They'd had no casualties before now, not even in the Crab Bucket, not in Gilda's time with the Fifth Griffish Territoral. Now they'd had two and a half, and all of them from her teams.

She burst through the front door of the building housing the surgical ward, and hurried down the street. Maybe Gene had something to report from Gleaming Shield's long-distance surveillance rig. Gilda kicked furiously through the puddles that had gathered between the cobblestones in Tinker's Alley. Somehow the sleet that had befouled Halfpenny Road had missed the 'hospital', where the city was a couple degrees warmer, and the weather had been simply miserable rather than outright filthy.

She paused as she passed the two muck-stained ambulances they'd hauled back from the site of the ambush. The profligate bastards had been using them as barricades, tipped on their sides and weighed down with barrels full of rocks. The Territorials had flipped them back on their wheels,and tossed the wounded and the sluggers into them and hauled them home through the puddles and the slush. The unionist was sitting on the back of one of them, looking half-frozen and woeful.

Gilda didn't have time for that griffon's miserable guilt, and stalked past her, ignoring her tears.

They hadn't even found the hijackers' lair. The Territorials were only able to take what was left abandoned and half-ruined on the field of battle. Sirocco only knew what they had squirreled away in some warehouse or factory-shop somewhere deeper in the ward!

Gilda looked up at the observation post on top of the rowhouse across the way. They needed somepony to give orders.

"Hey, Gerald!" she shouted up at the bundled-up griffon on the roof. "Where's Falcon?"

"Hain't seen 'im in days, lance corporal!" the old bird shouted down from his rooftop perch. "Maybe last Friday?"

"Days! Who's been overseeing you lot?"

"We oversee ourselves, we do, lance corporal! The corporals know what they's doing, they do."

"Then where's a corporal?"

"Why, 'ave you misplaced yours, lance corporal?"

"Don't make me come up there and wing-slap you, private!"

"Ha! You an' what army!"

Gilda leapt off the cold cobblestones, and got in the disrespectful bird's beak.

"Whoa! Was only funnin' lance corporal. W- w- izzat blood?"

"Yes. Yes it is. And I will see your weapon, now. Present arms for inspection, the lot of you!"

Gilda distracted herself from her anxiety with a display of authority.

Even if it was mostly imaginary. Nogriff claimed she didn't have the right. Especially after she loomed over them.

When had they all gotten so small?

Eventually Gilda found who was in charge of their griffonshit outfit. Corporal Gabrielle was astonished to be informed that with Gustav out of commission, she was senior noncom, and as there weren't any officers on the premises…

They found Captain Falcon passed-out drunk in a closet next to the Fens, to which a sleepy nurse - who had been getting some rest in that den of iniquity before her night shift - had guided them.

"How often has this been happening, do you know?" Gilda asked Corporal Gabrielle, who looked less surprised than resigned.

"About five minutes after 'e found out about the still they have over there in those officer quarters, Gilda." The corporal sighed. "'e's always like this around alcohol. It's my fault, we should have sent 'im with that load of prisoners instead of Gold Brick. 'e wouldn't have come back, either, but at least 'e might have been useful with the battalion. If I didn't know 'e had a wife and kits back home, I'd say let 'im drink himself to death."

"Bah. They all have wives and foals back home. Seems to be the default setting for ponies. I guess this makes it a griffon affair until my officer sleeps off her magic-burn."

"Is it bad?"

"Could be worse. She could be dead, or shot in the back, like Gustav."

"What in Tartarus were all three of you doing out there in this filth by your lonesome!" snapped the older hen.

"We weren't by our lonesome. But they believed in leading from the front, I guess."

"Damned fools. Where did they get such a damn foolish idea? Celestia preserve us from brave officers."

"You prefer the drunkards?"

"He ain't doin' any damage 'ere, is 'e?"

"Try saying that when the rebels come rolling over our posts because no officer's been keeping up standards."

"Feh! The officers wave their sticks an' their 'orns, we do the keeping up of standards."

"If you say so, Acting Sergeant."

"Oh, 'ades, no, don't you pull that on me!"

"Somebody got to take the minotaur by the horns until we have at least one conscious officer."

"Buggerit. Let me know when yours is foreconscious?"

"Meh, I had something I wanted to… yeah, no, you're right. Priorities."

Gilda went to look in on her battered officer. The rest could wait until there was an officer to blame for whatever went wrong next.

Of course that was when the turul princess flew down out of the sun in a mood. Gilda had almost gotten to the lieutenant's attic and was talking to Gil when that batpony pest Ping came scrabbling through the front door of their rowhouse.

"Griffon for you, lance corporal! Also, huge honkin' bird of prey, but the griffon's the one who's yelling for you!"

"Huge honking-" Gilda looked out the cheap clear-plastic screen that passed for windows here in the ghettos. It was a little blurry and rain-streaked, but that was obviously a dampened Lady George perched delicately on a rowhouse roof that maybe wasn't built to hold a couple tons of great bird. "Gah! Bob and Gertie!"

Gilda ran out into the street, and for the third time that day, threw herself skyward off of a cobblestone street surface. It was almost like she was a fully functioning griffon adult, she thought sardonically, shivering a bit.

"Hello, 'Bob'," Gilda said with a false cheerfulness which she hoped to elicit an equal exchange. "Hello, there, 'Gertie', have you been a good roc for the griffs back in barracks?"

"GILDA! I'm hungry, damnit! And cold! They won't let me go fishing in the harbor! I can't get any exercise anymore! And nogriff will tell me anything about the status of my investments and my goods. I'm becoming quite wroth with your Lieutenant Shield!"

"That's terrible, 'Bob'. Can you get 'Gertie' to go down into the street and perch down there? This house isn't built to hold her."

"Oh, fine, right, here." The big fussy bird jumped down into the street, the released rowhouse groaning a bit as it decompressed from the sudden removal of a great deal of weight. Lady George came to rest on the cobblestones below, right in the middle of a puddle, looked down in disgust, and then looked up like she'd remembered something.

"Oh, right, I brought something. There was a couple letters for your lieutenant. Also the rest of these griffons, here, but the important one's one top." The turul tipped a postal bag out of her crown, and flung it at Gilda. Where the hijackers with their slug-throwers hadn't come close to knocking her out of the sky, the turul accomplished with the weekly mail.

Gilda bounced off of the half-timbering of the rowhouse, and barely got her wings back under control before she splashed into the cobblestone-lined puddle below.

"Oh, oops, sorry. I keep forgetting you're not bigger than you look."

"No, that's fine. They make us tough in old Stoney." Gilda set down next to the mailbag on a dry patch of street, and looked into it.

Package of letters for her lieutenant, bunch of nonsense for the rankers. She snorted, and grabbed Gleaming Shield's bundle.

Gilda looked up at the post on the roof of Gleaming Shield's rowhouse, where three curious bundled-up Territorials were looking down at the free entertainment.

"Greyson, get down here and get this mail distributed. MAIL CALL!"

Gilda got up and went into their rowhouse. If Gleaming Shield couldn't be bothered to be conscious, her bat-hen could read her correspondence for her.

"Where is the lieutenant, anyways?" boomed Lady George outside in her 'Bob' voice as Gilda climbed the stairs. When she got to the attic, she stuck her beak out of the roof-hatch.

"Asleep, and overexerted, if you'd kindly be quiet, 'Bob'. Officers trying to sleep, here."

"Officer no longer sleeping," groaned Gleaming Shield from behind Gilda. Gilda looked over her shoulder at her lieutenant, who looked as hungover as Blue Falcon no doubt would be, if that souse ever would stop drinking. "Hello, Bob. How is Gertie today?"

Gilda closed her eyes, somehow sad and irate at the same time. "Lieutenant ma'am, you should check your left withers-pocket."

"What? Oh, fine," the lieutenant said, pushing aside her blankets and leaning out of her cot and groping for her jacket, hung over the chair beside the desk-crate. She pulled the note-paper they had written up together, a necessary reminder of Lady George's circumstances to the decidedly not regal unicorn, who was prone to forget the existence of the turul. This wasn't the first time the unicorn had forgotten her charge and her obligations to the great bird. That accursed crown… "Ah. I see. Yes, that makes much more sense. Sorry about that, 'Bob'. How have you been recently?"

"Fine, Lieutenant Shield. I brought a reminder for you," said Lady George from outside of the building, not even bothering with her 'Bob' voice anymore, simply shouting through the thin wall.

"Mail call, lieutenant ma'am," Gilda said helpfully, grateful to see the unicorn shaking off her horn-fatigue and mental fuzziness with her more usual alacrity. The bat-hen handed her officer the bundle of letters

Gleaming Shield dragged herself out of bed, and sat wearily at her desk-crate, looking through her letters, muttering to herself. "Hmm, hmm, a-ha!"

"And?" asked Gilda, impatiently. Lady George looked in the roof-hatch with one eye, as close as she could get to being in the attic.

"It never rains but it pours," sighed Gleaming Shield.

"In Trottingham, it never rains but it rains sleet," muttered Gilda under her breath.

"What was that?" the lieutenant said, turning around. "We've got company coming. Lots of it. Great time for visitors, don't you think? Just perfect. Gilda!"

"Yes, lieutenant ma'am?"

"We still have those slug-throwers in the armory?" The armory was a rack of spears and bladed weapons in the shack behind the shelter that 2nd Company's sole assistant armorer bunked down in, when he wasn't doing post duty as a ranker. The three sluggers lived in a crate under Armorer Gertrude's bunk. They barely had any of the black powder the sluggers used at all.

"Such as they are, lieutenant ma'am. Also, we collected a bit more than ten functional weapons from the field. Plus a lot of busted tools, and whatever powder and shot the old birds were able to strip off of the dead. Maybe more in the effects of the prisoners and wounded."

"Collect everything we have that can shoot, and everything we can shoot with. We have VIPs coming, and I'll be damned if I won't have a way to protect them against what happened today."

"Yes, lieutenant ma'am."

Afternoon On The Firing Line

"ARE YOU DWEEBS LOADED YET?" Gilda yelled at the top of her lungs.

"No, lance corporal! Gale's got some issue with this slug, we're going to have to shave it down."

"Put it aside," Gilda said in a milder tone, "and use another one. It's not lead we're short of!"

"Yes, lance corporal!" The two griffons pried the misshapen lump of lead out of the offending slug-thrower, and managed to get their next bullet into the barrel with only minimal hammering at it with the ram-rod. They had managed to break five ram-rods so far this morning, but since they had far more slug-throwers than powder and shot to put them to good use, it hadn't been a disaster up to now. The powder in that almost-jammed slugger was worth more to Gleaming Shield's test series than the slugger itself.

"Are we ready on the firing line now, you blue-daubed dweebs?" The griffons stood to the line drawn in the brown, stubby heather underpaw, their sluggers in their talons. They cried out in sequence, acknowledging their preparation. "LIEUTENANT MA'AM, WE'RE READY FOR TEST ROUND FIVE!"

"Ready!" came the reedy reply, distant across the clearing, emanating from a pile of sandbags in front of a wall of similar sandbags on the far side from the line of sluggers.

"PRIME!" The aiming point was a red stain on a sandbag in the wall behind and above the protective pile of sandbags under which her unicorn crouched. A mixed magenta-purple shield popped up over the pile of sandbags, turning the target-stain black as the shield obscured it.

"Take AIM!" The griffon rankers brought their slug-throwers to bear, and squinted down the steel tubes.

"FIRE!" The Territorials, unlike civilians, road agents, and thugs for hire, knew how to conduct volley fire, although the manual of arms was written for crossbow and longbow. Their fire was less the disjointed popping off that Gilda heard these days down in the city, but more a proper massed scream, like a metal plate being sheared sideways. It could have been better - the poor powder and the non-standardization of the sluggers meant that it wasn't really possible to fire in actual unison - but it was a respectable volley.

The clearing in the juniper grove filled once again with a cloud of grey-black smoke. Gilda was placed just far enough to the right of the firing line that her view of the shielded pile of sandbags wasn't initially obscured by the slugger-smoke, the shield glistening like oil in the grey afternoon light.

It stayed up! Only a little ripple, more like jellied ham repeatedly tapped by the edge of a spoon than the harbor with rocks thrown into it, or the ice-wall quivering of the original unicorn-magic shield-spell that had shattered so easily on the battlefield.

"Secure weapons! Moisten swabs! Fix swabs to ramrods! Clear barrels!" The books on artillery had been clear on this subject - the barrels had to be swabbed with dampened sponges after every round, or else they could foul and burst the gun, according to the old, deprecated muzzle-loading cannon manuals Gleaming Shield had gotten from the Royal Artillery.

They had to use the canonniers' manuals. There was no such thing as an Equestrian manual of arms for talon-held black powder weapons. They just weren't practical for pony hooves, not that anypony had shown interest in such advances in the past. As far as the pony military was concerned, ranged fire was for bowmares and unicorn magic, or bombardment by pegasi, or field artillery from the earth pony batteries.

"Oh, bugger!" came a cry out of the smoke over the firing line. Gilda could barely see all the way down the line. "Fire, lance corporal!"

"That's what the buckets are for, Gerald! Put it out before it spreads!" The heather was drier than Gustav's wit, and the primitive slug-throwers threw as many sparks as they did smoke and slugs. Their flint-and-steel triggering devices put sparks into the air as well as into the priming pans, and sprayed burning bits of black powder along with smoke and slugs down-range. Every other volley had sparked fires on the range. The heather under and in front of the firing line was now spotted with little charred spots, not that Gilda could see them at the moment.

"While Gerald and Gunter put out their fire, the rest of you break ranks and go collect the trenching shovels, my little dweebs and dweebettes! I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of having these blasted weeds catch fire under my paws.

"Don't just stand there, hop to it!"

Gilda marched out onto the range, fairly confident that nogriff was about to pick up a slugger and fire another round while she was crossing their line. It was too damn much hassle to load the blasted things. In her opinion, crossbows were less of an annoyance. At least you couldn't set fire to your own cover with a crossbow.

She crossed around behind the sandbags, and found Gleaming Shield poking her horned head up over the sandbags, looking around to see where the slugs had ended up this time.

"Lieutenant ma'am, care to evaluate round five? It looked good from this side."

"Stress was about… the same, I think?" mused the lieutenant as she climbed over the top of her sandbag pit and started picking out the bits of hot lead smoking in the turf and from one sandbag that had been outside of the shield. "The elastic recoil definitely did the trick. Each slug isn't really all that energetic when you look at its force-profile. It's just - significant when you consider it in point vectors, that force in space. Spread the shock over a hoofs-length or three and it's nothing more than somepony jabbing with a spear. Or a bunch of someponies jabbing with spears. I think I can hold that continuously."

"Was the stress from the volley, or from just holding it? Won't be any use if the shooters don't put together a volley fire, and just keep plinking away at your shield."

"No, it's definitely the weight of the rounds impacting, not holding it by itself. That was true of my use in combat of the Mark I shield, but that spell was much less efficient, I think?"

"Maybe the next test should be timed fire? One second intervals?"

"Hey! I like that. Yes, we should do that. Wait, what are they doing out there?"

"Clearing the damn heather, I'm afraid we're going to get a backfire into the powder boxes if we don't clear the range better."

"Well, your judgment call. I'm going to go take a nap under the bushes. Wake me when you're ready."

"Yes, lieutenant ma'am."

The second round of timed fire was ongoing in the clearing out beyond the POW camps, when a herd of ponies in regimentals appeared trotting down the track from the main road. Gleaming Shield's liquid shield was holding steady now despite the steady bang! bang! bang! of the griffon rankers firing in sequence. Gilda didn't hear their hoofsteps for the clatter of the sluggerfire, and jerked in astonishment when a hoof tapped her on the flank right above her left rear pannier bags.

She tore her gaze away from her officer's multi-colored shield, to find said herd of officer-ponies and non-coms staring in consternation at the scene.

"HOLD LINE!" Gilda yelled, not taking her eyes from this new complication. The firing ceased, leaving the clearing suddenly, paradoxically silent.

"Can I help you gentle-ponies," Gilda asked, mildly.

"Oh, hey, girls!" came her officer's voice from behind the griffon, along with the clopping hoof-beats of a pony in a hurry. "Gilda, these are the ponies from the new Slug-thrower Study Group that was formed last week."

"Gonne Research Group," said the large purple pegasus in a captain's uniform.

"What the hay is a gonne, Big Bell?" asked a straw-colored earth pony wearing lieutenant tabs and a thoroughly non-regulation stetson hat. "Yew know everypony's callin' them sluggers on the streets. Just because yew found some silly name in those old Morari the Maneless journals…"

"They're clearly what she was writing about. It's proper Ponish it is, the way it ought to be! Gonnes!"

"Musketoons," said a pop-eyed earth pony with a slightly scorched mane wearing the hideous green and orange dyes of the Hayward Dragoons. "One of the designers in the labs has been experimenting with projectile-type weapons that fired incendiary grenades. Wanted to call them musketoons."

"Pfft, these only set things on fire by accident, Zippo. I still say it shoulda been Slugger Study Group," sniped the tall, scrawny unicorn lieutenant with… why did that pony have black grease painted under her eyes?

"ANYways," interrupted Gleaming Shield, "you guys should definitely check this out. I've got the anti-slugger shield working, I think! Gilda, how many rounds do we have left for a demonstration?"

"We're running short of powder. I'd guess less than forty rounds total. Maybe more if they start underloading the pieces."

"Well, we can't have that!" said Gleaming Shield, broadly, playing to the audience. "Doesn't make for a proper test if we lighten the pressure of the fire."

"We can't know how common powder is among the griffons we captured these weapons from. In field they might tend to underload their sluggers if they think they're short." Gilda knew when to play Discord’s advocate.

"There's no good reason you should be short of gonne-powder," said a blue unicorn with ensign tabs. "Twi- Gleaming Shield, why haven't you been around to talk to Lieutenant Lulamoon?"

"Who?" asked Gilda's lieutenant, whose eyes had narrowed a bit at being half-addressed by that forbidden name that Gilda herself wasn't allowed to use.

"Trixie Lulamoon! You remember her! She dropped out of the School in our second year, the one who was always playing with fire. She went into the Royal Artillery, she's here in Trottingham!"

"Hmfph. Maybe I have seen her somewhere. I doubt she'd be willing to help, you know we didn't get along. When I asked the Artillery, they said they didn't stock this primitive black powder mixture. Something about savages and filthy saltpetre concoctions…"

"Ha!" laughed the blue mare. "You know Trixie. She's more flexible than you'd think when it comes to stuff that goes boom. I'm sure she'll be able to help!"

"Perhaps. But… for now, we don't want to calibrate the shields to the wrong standard. Come on, girls, we're going to show you a volley, then a display of timed fire. Gilda! Set it up with the rankers, I'm going to show my colleagues the range!"

The lieutenant scurried off in what, for her, passed for a cheerful mood, chattering at the herd of young pony officers. It was the largest group of peers Gilda had ever seen Gleaming Shield among, these young officers she'd somehow summoned to their testing range out here in the scrubland. Gilda looked away from the herd, and discovered that the blue-furred unicorn had appeared in her blind spot, eyeing the bat-hen with a strange expression she couldn't quite parse.

"Oh, don't mind me, please, order your troops as you need. We're not used to griffon troops in the provincials, you know. Just ponies in our barracks. I suppose it's rather the same as commanding pegasi, if, you know, they trusted us with commanding pegasi."

"Pegasi aren't griffons, nor vice versa, ensign ma'am."

"Oh, call me Minuette. I'm really just in this uniform for the tour of duty. Not my life, you know? Every graduate gets a reserve commission these days, and I'm sparing the rest of my class by taking my tour now, so they all can get a leg up on life when they're young and busy. So here I am, serving in the Marezonian Provincial Regiment with the girls. Boy, we've really caught it with these dang gonnes, or sluggers, or whatever you want to call them! Us and the bloody Beefeaters, we're the ones who see the mess in the streets." She waved a hoof at one of the pony officers down-range with the others, a grim-looking unicorn wearing crimson Princess's Own Griffish Rangers regimentals.

"Primitive contraptions," Ensign Minuette continued to ramble, "but don't they make a mess! The regiments in garrison and back home don't seem to understand why they're important, but you get out there, and woo! Ponies down all over town!"

A talkative unicorn. Exactly what Gilda had always wanted in life. She turned away from the chattering unicorn ensign who showed no sign of shutting up, and rattled off a quick, brusque series of orders to the firing line, directing the volley fire and timed fire steps and preparations required.

The blue mare kept rattling on, ignoring Gilda's preparations.

"...not Gleaming Shield! Mare, she was such a phenom in school, you know? Burned like dragonfire. Nopony could understand why she went for something so low-status as the Griffish Territorials. Might as well have gone into sanitary engineering, you know?" The mare showed no indication she had any idea how insulting her comparison of command in the Griffish battalions with latrine digging might have been. Not that Gilda didn't sort of agree, but it was the principle of the matter.

"I was under the impression the lieutenant ma'am attended the Military Academy, miss." If the blue mare insisted on not claiming her rank, Gilda could accommodate. "The Academy does not hoof out 'reserve commissions', or so is my impression of matters. LIEUTENANT MA'AM, WE ARE READY WHEN YOU ARE!"

"Oh, she did, but I was a student at Gifted Unicorns, you know. We shared faculty, especially when it came to the high-thaumic stuff and the greater evocations and thaumaturgies. Gleaming Shield was always first in our shared classes. Nobody could out-work her when she was applying herself, not even the Princess's Own Student. Drove ol' Moondancer absolutely around the bend." The blasted blue mare had talked right over the lieutenant's reply to Gilda, but the stream of ponies rushing off of the range and back to a safe place behind the firing line gave the bat-hen a good idea what the substance had been.

"Miss, if you could stand back behind the firing line for safety's sake. LIEUTENANT MA'AM, ARE YOU READY?"

"Not yet! Give me a moment!"

"HOLD LINE!"

"I say they're too close to the targets," grumbled the pony in Rangers regimentals. "Most of our casualties have been from snipers operating at twice this distance."

"Balls to that!" said the big, beefy pegasus mare in Maretonian khaki. "When it gets bloody, it'll get damn close, it always does. Point-blank's when your shield's gotta hold, if you're gonna be doin' unicorn witchery!"

"Close is better than far," said a third officer, male, spectacled, shaggy, and horned, wearing some regimental uniform Gilda didn't recognize. His distinctive pale 'socks' stood out against his orange coat. "They're physical thrust mechanisms, chemically driven. They will lose energy with distance. Highest stress at point blank range."

"Ready when you are!" came floating over the range, the sheen of the liquid shield appearing over the sandbags.

"PRIME!" Gilda yelled at her griffons, aware of the crowd of ponies behind the firing line.

"This is exactly the sort of madcap magic Gleaming Shield was always getting up to, you know," said the blue mare, as downrange the many-colored shield dome glistened over the lieutenant's sandbag dugout. "But leave it to Twi- Gleaming Shield to figure out a way to protect against the snipers and the ambushers. Hey, there Braeburn! Whaddya think-"

"AIM!"

"What ah think is that the question is, will ponies who ain't magical prodigies be able to put that spell to use," Lieutenant Braeburn groused.

"FIRE!" The rippling crack of the sluggers going off in semi-unison drowned out the lieutenant's friend's witterings. But Gilda had to agree with the stallion. Just because Gleaming Shield could perfect a shield, didn't mean that others could use it.

Could they?

Very Important Pony

Two companies of the Fifth Territorial were drawn up on the airship field outside of Trottingham in the chill of an Isles winter afternoon, dressed in their full crab-back march fineries. Turul feathers bobbed over their war-bonnets, and blue-chased yellow brocade shone over their half-armor in the weak winter sunlight. The uniform almost kept Gilda warm. One of the companies standing at ease was Gleaming Shield's; the rest were deployed in the area in bits and pieces distributed on outer perimeter duty. The whole battalion had been extracted from their various assignments - including the guard-detail at the 93/1st in Tinker's Alley - for this special duty about which nopony was saying anything, and nogriff knew anything about.

Except Gleaming Shield, and she wasn't talking.

There was a griffon or a pony at the bottom of every tree in line of sight of the airship grounds and along the planned procession route back into the city. There was also detachments guarding the other routes into the city, spread out as to not give the rebels any clues as to what was really going on. A good quarter of the garrison was deployed for this greeting; only a select hoof-full of companies would actually lay eyes on the VIP.

Gilda had endured Gleamng Shield's dizzying marathon of preparations over the past week and a half between Lady George's delivery of the mail, leading up to this moment standing at attention on Trottingham's emptied-out airship field. The usual courier barques and heavy lifters had been sent on runs to the outer islands in some cases, or on unscheduled supply runs to Manehattan or Hayward, in others.

Speaking of Hayward, the Fifth Griffish Territorials were facing two companies from a regiment from that city, the Third Hayward Dragoons. Despite the name, the unit had nothing to do with dragons. The studied arrangement of the companies, one file of pegasi separated by two files of earth-ponies, repeating for the length of the formation, said something about the mixed composition of the unit. These Dragoons had left their three-pony air-rigs back in garrison with the rest of the regiment in a market-town which housed the governing officials of the least secure of the outlying districts. This was about as close to Trottingham as the garrison staffers liked to see the Dragoons deployed; they didn't trust those ponies to not burn the capital down. Barracks rumor held that the general staff had made them leave their flamethrowers in armory back in Hayward before they were allowed to board the troop-ships to the Isles, but rumor said that they'd quickly found other expedients that made up for the lack of their preferred weaponry.

It was almost impossible to keep the madponies of Muskratonic from constructing their infernal incendary devices; Gilda had heard that there were at least a round dozen industrial chemists enlisted or commissioned among the ranks of the Third Dragoons. Ensign Minuette and Lieutenant Slapshot's oddball friend Zippo Raid was a lieutenant with the Dragoons, but he wasn't present on the field. His company was part of the quick reaction force which had been pre-positioned as a precaution in case the rebels managed to put together a main-force assault against the procession back into town. Nopony actually thought the rebels were capable of such a feat, but the humorless General Staff officers who had shown up with the advance party had insisted on the turn-out.

It took some work, but Gilda managed to take her eyes off of the flamboyant flame-helms of the Haywardian Dragoons. One of them had wrapped a novelty foam hat around her helmet. Gilda knew exactly enough about cloudball to recognize 'The Flaming Weasels' as the local team from Hayward; she wasn't sure if it was a major league team, or the local university's. She would have resolved to talk to one of their sergeants about the ill-advised and undisciplined display of home-town spirit, but she was fairly sure that it was a sergeant wearing the hat. She squinted down-range, trying to see if those dots in the distance were birds or the ships they were expecting.

Somepony was coming, that was all that anygriff knew, and whoever it was, was important enough that they were doing their best to maintain absolute secrecy. If Gilda didn't know that whoever it was, it was close to Gleaming Shield, she would have put her bits on the Princess's chief minister, Fancy Pants.

The Dragoons and the Fifth Griffish Territorials weren't alone on the airfield. Also drawn up were shivering, representative companies from the Marezonian Provincials, the Ninth Pony Territorials, and the Third Griffish Territorials. It wasn't snowing, but the stains on the northern horizon promised otherwise before dawn, possibly before twilight.

They had run about like madponies, getting Shield's anti-gonne shield perfected, making arrangements with Rarity's guild unionists to take over the anti-hijacker patrols in parts of the city, checking on their (irritatingly fruitless) surveillance operation against the carriage theft ring on the pony side of the city, and trying to keep the great turul from going stir-crazy waiting for whatever visitor or visitors were coming. Gleaming Shield refused to talk about it, and everypony in the military hierarchy seemed to know someone was coming, but nopony would say who or why.

Ensign Minuette's unicorn friends had been instructed in the witchcraft which produced the anti-gonne shield, which Gleaming Shield had christened the Slug Shedding Super Shield, and everypony else just called 'the anti-gonne shield'. Nopony was quite as good at it as Gleaming Shield, but when Minuette's irascible friend 'The Great And Powerful Artillerist' showed up with several barrels of gonne-powder, they all got plenty of experience testing out the new spell.

Gilda and the old birds had been kept busy digging three new sandbag pits, extending the back-wall and clearing a fresh firing line to the appropriate length. They didn't have enough gonnes to supply the entire company Gleaming Shield had wanted on the firing line, not even after the Dragoons and the Marezonians had brought their own captured weapons, but it sufficed for the training day they'd managed to squeeze in between everything else.

Until they ran out of lead slugs, of course.

Gilda hadn't seen her bunk in three days. By the the time the flight of airships appeared out of the faint beginnings of what promised to be a truly spectacular sunset, she was about ready to fall asleep on her paws. As the ships glided into sight and began their curving descent towards the mooring-grounds, it became obvious that one of the four ships was a Royal yacht, chased in the Duchess of Trottingham's family colors, as well as Princess Celestia's sunburst cutie mark. Cream and white, gold and orange, streaked lightly with the colors of the aurora. It looked like it cost more than the entire city.

As secret visits go, this was proving to be less than subtle.

As the yacht settled into its berth, a number of pegasi leaped out of hatches, trailing mooring-lines. They fluttered down alongside their ship, tying her into the mooring berth even as she settled beside them. Earth-pony crew appeared in the yacht's main hatch, and efficiently dropped a gangway down into the provided slot, one of them sliding on his knees down the descending gangway's high sides, his weight forcing the portable stairway into its place with a thunk that echoed across the field. The three escort warships circled overhead, shedding dozens of armed ponies to gyre in a protective swirl like a kicked beehive.

Gilda stared at a flight of pegasi as they raced overhead. Not Royal Guard colors, that was for sure, although she'd never seen them except in woodcut illustrations. She'd had the color schemes explained to her by veterans and ponies who knew about these things.

Not from Gleaming Shield, though, even if her dead brother had been an officer in the Royal Guard. Some things weren't to be walked on, not if you knew what was good for you. Gilda got her information from sources who weren't quite so heavily mined with dangerous associations.

Gilda thought those ponies were from one of the Cloudsdale regiments, the Chasseurs or maybe the Kitewings. She'd heard more about the elite pegasus regiments than she'd seen, aside from that exceptional night the rebels had gotten their beaks kicked in on the Boulevard of the Corvids. The squadrons of pegasi assigned to the Isles kept busy, kept moving, and, for the most part, kept away from Trottingham.

These flying ponies were, like the squadron that had made a dry sky rain over Gilbert Square, as multi-colored as their ground-bound kin, bright and gem-like as songbirds in flight. You barely could see their sharp-edged blades and armor as they flew by at speed. The one thing you could give ponies - they didn't all look alike. They were as colorful and assorted as the candies and pastries their bakers delighted in.

While Gilda had been distracted by the VIP's aerial color guard, the VIP herself had fluttered over the gangway, ignoring the convenience offered her by her ship's crew. Gilda turned her eyes front and center, and discovered her officer marching forward, swagger stick tucked tightly to her side, to meet the delegation, the majority of which was working their way down said gangway.

Four of the VIP's entourage hurried in the wake of the large pink pegasus, richly dressed earth ponies with brilliantly white coats and blonde manes so similar to each other that, even to Gilda's eagle eyes, they might as well be carbon copies of each other. Ponies! It's as if they conspire to mock all expectations at every turn. The moment you peg them as 'colorful and distinct', they throw something like this at you.

The rest of the delegation streamed behind the four identical mares, a much less uniform mass of equinity that struggled to not overwhelm the straining gangway, or fall too far behind their impatient VIP. That airship had seemed enormous, but to see so many ponies come pouring out of it, one had to marvel at how much the ship had been carrying.

From the back of the enormous yacht, the crew was lowering a heavy cargo hatch, from which Gilda could see emerging the ornate nose of a massive touring carriage, no doubt for the VIP's personal use. Gleaming Shield's fellow officers had collected additional black-chased civilian carriages ahead of time , sourced locally for the rest of the VIP's entourage and delegation. These were now drawn up on the tarmac beyond the mooring clamps that held the yacht. Gleaming Shield had handled those arrangements - Gilda suspected her lieutenant of not trusting her to succumb to the temptation to 'disappear' one or two carriages to be re-painted as ambulances and shuffled off for the use of the 93/1st.

The VIP herself stood out among her entourage like a burning brand among tinder, and it was obvious which one was the Very Important Pony. For one thing, she stood a good half-head above the tallest of them. She was as striking in her own way as Trottingham's resident mad tactical genius, and like Major Pie, was a bright, almost toxic pink, that pony blend of red and white that just screamed to predators, 'dangerous and probably poisonous to eat'. A little tiara poked up out of her long, mildly curling mane, which was streaked in a lovely non-rainbow tumble of magenta, canary-yellow and pale purple. Her face wore the habitual drawn expression of a kind pony who had seen nothing but sorrow in her life. She wore black and grey, widow's weeds as if she had been born to them.

Gilda recognized the 'unicorn' from Gleaming Shield's sepia-tinted memento of her late brother. The wings hadn't been visible in the photograph, nor had it done justice to the mare's face, her sheer animal presence. Gleaming Shield had never talked about this- this princess who was - what was she to Gilda's officer? Clearly the answer to why a lowly lieutenant of the Territorials had been so central to the planning of a VIP's grand 'secret' visit to the city.

"Princess Mi Dolente Cadenza," boomed Gleaming Shield, her reedy voice enhanced ahead of time with a projection cantrip, a spell with which the lieutenant's practice-sessions had kept both Gilda and half the company awake on more than one sleepless night. "Contessa di Skye, Lady Protector of Cloudsdale, Baroness of the Lonely Mountain and Dame-Baronnet of the Crystal Reaches, greetings and welcome to Your Highnesses' Duchy of Trottingham and the Kingdom of the Griffish Isles. We here offer and extend your loyal subjects' welcome and love, and to give promise that your stay will be a safe and pleasant one."

The pink alicorn settled on her golden-shoed hooves, and nodded gracefully to the purple unicorn. Gleaming Shield bowed deeply in response. Gilda's eyes were riveted to the new royalty standing before them, her mind racing.

Lady George might be the daughter of a queen, and half of Gilda's family might have been of royal descent, but this was a princess. Say what you will of the ponies, but they did royalty with a vengeance.

Then the alicorn princess scanned the ranks behind Gleaming Shield, making eye-contact with each griffon standing quivering at attention. She didn't smile, but when she met Gilda's eyes, it was like the bat-hen had stuck her beak into an electric main, or licked an active spell-stone. She felt her feathers separate, each from the other, a literal static burst that traveled down her body and left her tail-end a puff of excited fur.

The princess's eyes were dark and deep, like a well she'd once seen outside of Griffonstone, into which Gilda had dropped a stick, from which no sound had ever returned to report of bottom, water, or end. Gilda felt herself falling, she found herself drowning like she once had in the sea off the coast of Skye. She burned. She froze.

She gasped as the princess's gaze turned away, and the world and the companies in formation came back to her.

She thought to herself that she needed a cold shower, as Gleaming Shield and the other lieutenant shouted their orders. The airship grounds teemed like a kicked-over anthill as the companies formed their individual columns, and the officers began jostling to see who went where in the march-order for the escort into the city and the awaiting garrison. The VIP and her delegation headed towards their respective carriages, around which the procession coalesced.

Our Lady Of Sorrows

They weren't supposed to be advertising that there was a pony princess in the city, but it was impossible to hide a shocking pink alicorn dressed in gold and black and grey in the middle of an honor guard of griffons and ponies in full dress uniform a quarter-mile long, with a squadron of Cloudsdale Chasseurs flying cover overhead. All it would take would be the addition of Lady George, and they'd have been the very embodiment of the return of the crab-back marches. They'd managed to alternate pony and griffon companies in the column of march, with the Fifth Territorials' companies just ahead of the princess's carriage, and the companies from the Marezonian Provincials just behind.

This happened to put Gilda and Gleaming Shield - with her perfected anti-gonne shield spell in hoof - right in front of the princess's open-topped travelling coach, whose armored roof had been rolled back to let the VIP see her fellow-princess's duchy eye to eye, muzzle to muzzle, face to face.

Minuette and the Marezonian lieutenant known as Slapshot followed immediately behind the princess's coach with the rest of that pony regiment's honor-guard. They had been positioned so that the ponies who had shown the most affinity for the new defensive magic were properly placed to cover the princess from attack from the rear.

Thankfully, the majority of the procession-route from the airship field to the gates of the garrison was through the mostly-pony suburbs to the south of the city, and aside from every shop-keeper, housewife, and worker-pony in the entire district showing up for the spectacle, it wasn't as overblown as it could have been. There were enough of the civilians that Gilda was pretty sure someone had been talking; it might have been the detachments of soldiers posted at every corner, crossroad, and tree along the route.

A yellow unicorn came running up beside the procession column, and jostled Gilda as she hurried past. There was an enormous boxy device in the unicorn’s hornglow, and Gilda turned her worried eyes in alarm to her officer, marching beside the lance corporal.

“Ignore it, Gilda. It’s not a weapon. It’s just an annoyance.”

Gilda saw what Gleaming Shield was talking about when they caught up again with the yellow mare, who had her device unfolded from its box and set up on a tripod, another big bulbous device held overhead. What was that, was it a…?

A bright, blinding light put stars in Gilda’s eyes, and as she blinked and stumbled in confusion, the new unicorn was gone, her bulky devices trailing behind her as she galloped down the street beside the marching, blinking troops.

“See?” said Gleaming Shield, projecting for the benefit of the rest of the flash-blinded company. “Photographers. Annoying but harmless. Keep moving, everygriffon!”

The crowds got thicker as they got closer to the city, and it soon looked like some damn fool had let out the schools. The last half-mile was lined by cheering, chattering schoolfoals, giddy to have gotten out of their classes. The princess stood in her carriage with her wings twitching as she waved, to one side, then to the other, then back again, the smile on her lips never quite meeting her eyes. The yellow photographer scurried about, setting up her camera to quickly capture each little crowd of foals as they jumped and bounced to get on film with the princess.

Gilda noted a strange thing as they passed each clump of civilians along the road. As the princess's carriage approached them, they raised their hooves and cheered, smiling and laughing. But as the princess returned their waves and met their eyes, silence spread through the little crowds. Smiles slipped from faces, and eyes glistened in the fading light. The schoolfoals who crowded to get close to the princess were hit particularly hard, and Gilda's eyes were drawn to the little clots of weeping fillies leaning on each other in the wake of the princess and her publicity photographer.

Maybe they were just blinking the glare of the camera flash out of their eyes.

Maybe.

The last few blocks were in the gloom of the sudden twilight of winter, and the crowds were deep, but even in the gleam of the flickering streetlights, Gilda could see the shock-wave of the princess's regard as they moved, and the crowds' mood shifted from the celebration of spectacle to something more… inward and confused.

The princess's passage left behind her solemn, even teary-eyed ponies where there had been crowds looking for - what do crowds seek when they go to watch a parade? Validation? Hope? Fellow-feeling?

They didn't get what they expected to get, of that Gilda was sure, of that if nothing else.

But the photographer kept getting her shots. Gilda wondered how well they would come out, in the darkening gloom.

The passage inside the garrison fortifications was subdued in comparison, and they got the princess and her entourage of stuffy unicorns and hoofmaidens and so forth ensconced in the royal apartments that every Royal Fortress had built into them as part of the basic architectural design, an entire wing of spacious rooms just below the turrets, and above the general officers' quarters. The crowd of would-be honor guards occupied most of the officers' attentions as they did their best to peel off all the excess ponies and griffons, lest the pressure of their jostling and crowding bring down walls and bury each other in loose-jointed masonry.

The Army of Occupation's G-2 section had quietly claimed the royal apartments for extra meeting and office space, and the squatting ponies had been rather stubborn about evacuating the princess's rightful suite. Gleaming Shield and the princess's head of personal security, a jovial pegasus named Spearhead, had to roust the last few intelligence boffins out of the royal boudoir they were squatting in, almost at Spearhead's namesake. Meanwhile the princess waited, patiently, greeting various ponies from the assembled honor-guards, saying little.

"Well, then, my little ponies," said the princess, that paragon of pony virtues, to her remaining escort of griffons and pegasi who crowded the hall outside of her newly claimed apartments. "I thank you for your help in making today such a painless and wonderful experience. Your professionalism and enthusiasm created, within what I know to be a warzone, a moment of peace and happy meetings. Go to your bunks tonight with the knowledge that you have done your Duchess, my Aunt the Princess Celestia, and all her hopes of peace and justice, proud."

As Gilda and Gleaming Shield turned to lead their griffons back to the temporary berth they had in the Fifth's barracks, the pony princess continued, more quietly, just for them.

"T- Lieutenant Shield, a moment of your time, I need to discuss matters with you. Please, include whomever you think should be included in our talk, if you…" the alicorn waved a wing vaguely, trying to hint at what, Gilda didn't know.

"Ah, yes, of course, Your Highness. Gilda, tell Corporal Guillaume and Lieutenants Light Bringer and Clockworks that they have command of the joint companies, and I will see them later tonight if I can get back in time, or in the morning if not. Then join us in the royal apartments. These fine troopers will know to let you in - am I correct, gentlecolts?"

The pegasus guards and Gilda braced in acknowledgement, and all turned away to do their duties.

When Gilda returned, one slate of duties completed and half a carafe of coffee gulped down, the red-eyed bat-hen found a new set of pegasus guards in the foyer of the princess's apartments. One nodded to the griffon while the other looked through the armored slit in the door across the back of the foyer, said something to the pony on the other side of the thick door, and nodded.

The heavy door creaked open, its hinges clearly rusted from disuse. Standing beyond the doorway was one of the white-coated identical ponies, a mare with striking grey eyes and a benevolent expression.

"Lady Mirror, the Princess's guest has arrived," said the lavender-coated mare in neo-classical Roamish armor.

"Oh, dearie, no," said the blonde earth pony in an even, blissful tone. "I'm not Mirror, that's my older sister. I'm Hotspur. You can tell because I'll tell you when you get us mixed up, everypony says I have to work on my temper. I'm sorry to snap at you, you're doing a lovely job, the Princess is pleased."

The earth pony mare turned her regard upon Gilda, and her even smile didn't even so much as waver. "Corporal Gilda, I presume? The Princess awaits your presence, dear. Please follow me."

"N-no," stuttered Gilda, put off by the unnatural affect of the princess's - what, majordomo? Hoofmaiden? "I'm a lance corporal. But I think she's expecting me - I'm Lieutenant Gleaming Shield's bat-hen."

"Are you now? Fancy that.”

Just then, the entire hallway was lit up by the sudden flash of light which Gilda was beginning to recognize as a camera going off. If Gilda hadn’t experienced it before, she’d have thought somegriffon had just set off a bomb in the hall. She turned to look, and sure enough, there was the blasted photographer again.

“Do you mind, you damned dweeb?”

“Nope, don’t mind in the least! Just doin’ my job. See ya!”

“Oh, dear,” chuckled the blonde hoofmaiden as the yellow unicorn scurried off. “Well, our Lemon Hearts, she is industrious, isn’t she? Sorry for the inconvenience, ‘Lance Corporal Gilda’. Please follow me, this way."

The royal apartments were larger than an entire company's barracks, but were subdivided such that they didn't echo or give the cavernous impression of a public space. The blonde hoof-maiden's tail swished back and forth in a graceful fashion that made Gilda think of a pony romance of the First Celestia Era she had once read in Auntie Gertrude's thick-walled fortified lending library.

They found the princess and her lieutenant in a shabby receiving parlor that looked like the evicted spooks had been using it as a break room. Gleaming Shield looked uncomfortable on a rather threadbare loveseat across a battered coffee table from the beautiful young princess, who was sitting placidly in a clam-like sitting chair, the name of which escaped Gilda. Fauteuil? Gondola? Bergère? Grandpa Gruff had cared so much about fine furniture, and had pored over an old catalog from his import-export days… not that she'd ever seen a stick of it outside of books. Whatever it had been in its youth, it was now a shame and an embarrassment to be used as it currently was, worn and patchy, holding the royal derriere. Gilda was embarrassed for the chair, and whoever had been responsible for seating the princess in it.

The near-divine pony sitting in that once-elegant chair made Gilda think of other wood-cut scenes she'd seen in books, of the queen of the seaponies, bourne by strange heraldic figures heaving her up out of the foaming waves of the sea in a giant clamshell.

Only the figures holding up the goddess were street-bums, and the clamshell a bit of flotsam held together by half-dried seaweed. And the goddess was dressed in black and grey, with black kohl or eyeliner ringing her eyes like a mournful raccoon. The latter was much more obvious here, under proper lights, than it had been back at the airship grounds, or in the procession into town.

"-fool thought to tell you that." Gleaming Shield was saying, fuming. "This city is not ready for a royal visit. The griffish districts are an open fire zone, we're getting dozens if not hundreds of casualties a week, you can't drive a carriage from one side of the city to the other without getting robbed, and there are hamlets out there in the hills where travelling in less than company strength is considered invitation to open battle by the clans. I have to say, your presence here is a provocation, another one! Did that lunatic Pie dream-"

"Calm yourself, Twi- Gleaming Shield. My decision to come at this time was my decision alone. We're aware of the difficulties you've encountered, but it's time to show the flag. I've been assured that the Battle of Gilbert Square was a turning-point, and we need to reap the moral victory from the physical one."

"The Battle of- have you been getting letters from that imbecile Blueblood? Nopony who fought in the Crab Bucket calls it that! One slaughter doesn't make a war, we've just cracked open the cyst. The city still has the infection, it's still sick with rebellion!"

"Calmness. Do you recall that little trick I showed you to get past your panic attacks?"

"This is not a panic attack! This is a reasoned argument based on the fact that the city is full of snipers and bandits, and the hills full of hostile clan-griffons."

"It is a risk I am willing to take." The pink princess turned from Gilda's fuming officer, and looked directly at the bat-hen, who had been trying to not get involved in the argument.

"Ah, Corporal Gilda, was it not?" asked the alicorn, and Gilda's heart nearly stopped. The princess knew her name! Her presence was overwhelming, she terrified Gilda. Gilda wanted to grovel at her pony hooves, she wanted to run and hide in some dark corner where she could forget that this pony knew her name, knew who she was.

Wait. She thought she was a corporal.

"No, Your Highness," Gilda choked out.

"You are not Gilda of Griffonstone?"

"Well, yes, I am, but I'm only a lance corporal, your divinity...ness."

"Cadance is fine, Corporal. And you've been promoted, because Tw- Gleaming Shield has been promoted. It was the least I could do."

Gilda looked at her lieutenant, who had, it appeared, been upgraded. The purple pony rolled her eyes in disgust.

"Congratulations, captain ma'am. If you have a bit, I'll be glad to sell you your first salute."

"That's for ensigns, Corporal. Sit down and stop looming."

Gilda sat in the shabby clamshell chair's twin, all the way across the coffee table from the goddess and her lieut- her captain. She'd gotten herself under control by keeping her gaze upon her captain, but as she snuck glances out of the corner of her eye at the pinkness, she had to struggle for mastery all over again.

It was a princess, nothing more. Royalty, like all of her abominable kin. Nothing to worship, nothing to adore. A villain in pony skin.

"Tw- Gleaming Shield has much to say about you. But much of it doesn't make much sense. Can you explain?"

Gilda seemed to be tripping over ponies constantly these days who insisted on riling up her officer with her discarded, forbidden name. Annoying enough to focus her attention on the situation, and not the pulsing pink challenge to Gilda's entire world-view sitting demurely in that derelict of a chair. Gilda came to as much of a species of attention as you can achieve while sitting down.

"That depends on what it is I am to explain, Your Highness Ma'am." Wait, blast, that was wrong. "What are we talking about, Ma'am Princess?" Not better.

"Ha! Do you know how long it's been since I've laughed, corporal? You may call me Cadance. Gleaming Shield does, when she remembers. And please, don't make a princess ask you three times. Cay. Dance."

"I always remember, Cadance," sighed Gleaming Shield. "It's grossly inappropriate, but I obey my princess's orders in this as well as everything else."

"Gleaming, we're practically family. You can't keep putting this distance between us."

"And yet, Princess, there is a distance."

"I foal-sat you! I dated your brother!"

"And I was a child. When we get our cutie marks, we put away foalish things. As you should have done long ago. You don't belong in a war zone!"

"Still, here I am, and here I will be until it is time for Aunt Celestia's yacht to return and send me and my ponies on my way. For whatever good that may do. You may be right for reasons other than the danger. Did you see those crowds?"

"Yes, of course. They loved you as they always love you."

"You're kind. I could see the tears out of the corner of my eyes. They were miserable."

"It's a country at war," said Gleaming Shield, "a city under siege. They have a lot to be upset about. You know you don't make it out of nothing, right?"

"I can, if I want to. If there's a fleck of something, I can bring it out. Sometimes it happens without me even trying. What if I wanted those ponies to be miserable?"

"Did you? Want them to be miserable?"

"No!" the princess snapped. "Of course not!"

She looked aside, and looked back at the purple unicorn. "Sometimes it's a choice between anger and pain, Twilight. Do I want to pour more anger into crowds while you're all doing your best to put out these fires? Like we did at the beginning?"

"Gleaming. Shield!" growled Gilda's captain through her gritted teeth. "You of all ponies should remember that. It's the reason you worked the crowds in the first place. The reason we're all here, up to our fetlocks in Trottingham slush and filth. We couldn't let it rest unanswered."

"I- you know I do my best. I just wanted to do my best. I've always wanted the best for everypony, it's just that sometimes… I get things wrong. I'm tired of getting things wrong."

"We weren't wrong!" barked Gleaming Shield. "You weren't wrong. This is a necessary thing. You did the necessary thing. Just as we're doing the necessary thing now. That 'better peace' than the one we started with."

"Aunt Celestia told me at the beginning, told us, standing there at Minister Pants' bedside. 'There is no war preferable to even the worst peace.' I wish I'd listened to her, but Fancy Pants was so broken. I was so angry." The long-horned, wide-winged beauty looked sadly at Gilda's officer. But then, the princess had done nothing but look sad and beautiful, all day long. Gilda felt the urge to - she didn't know what. Cheer the pony up? Shake her until her teeth rattled? Shake her until she smiled? All Gilda knew, is that she had to do something, before this discussion broke somegriff's heart.

"Princess," began Gilda, feeling her way across the conversational ice, wondering where the ice was thinnest, where it was safe to tread upon. "Perhaps we could begin with defining our terms, our resources, your goals, and our needs. Then we could safely say that we've stepped beyond usages and hit upon the actual principles underlying our endeavours." Blast. Gilda hadn't intended to quote Hominy's Present Theory of War.

"Gilda, damn it, you have to stop that, every time I tell ponies you're just a simple bat-hen, you start talking like a textbook. And what are you talking about… wait. Princess, Gilda tends to remember more of our problem due to the exigencies of the… the… what was it again, Gilda?"

Oh.

"Our princessly curse problem, lieut- captain ma'am. You've not checked your cheat sheet recently? Left withers pocket, jacket, captain ma'am." Just the subject to distract the princess from… whatever they had been arguing about. As Gleaming Shield scrabbled for her reminder-note, Gilda turned to the princess. "Princess ma'am, the problem is that we have a foreign princess in Trottingham with a cursed object which keeps ponies and griffons from remembering who she is, what she is, and many assorted other facts associated with Lady George."

"Right!" barked Gleaming Shield, looking up from her cheat sheet. "George! I'd almost forgotten again. The Great Turul's heir! She's in the city. In the garrison, actually - is she still here, Gilda?"

"I looked in on her briefly as I saw off the company, captain ma'am. I'm not sure how we'll engineer a meeting between Princess Cadenza and her, though." Gilda turned back to the royal princess sitting on her chair, looking a bit confused by the sudden change in topic. "Turuls are enormous, intelligent bird-folk. Their lesser breeds are known here in the west as rocs. We supposedly have one as the mascot for the Fifth Territorial. This is not, in actual fact, a roc. It is the royal heir of the Turul Flock, whom some say are the rightful rulers of the continent of Beakland."

"In the middle of the Trottish Rebellion? That seems… not an ideal state of affairs," observed Princess Cadance, brushing at the black velvet of her dress.

"The characteristics of her curse means that most griffons and ponies forget her existence almost as soon as she leaves their sight. It is a sort of defense."

"Of sorts," snorted the princess. "I would rather like to be the subject of such a curse. There are worse blessings."

"Well, it makes the rest of her life as problematic as the lack of threats to her person are a benefit; considerably more so, I would say. We've been trying to improve her situation, and putting her to gainful employment with the battalion, but this is not, not…"

"The appropriate occupation of a princess of high rank and supposed prospects?"

"As the Princess says."

"You are not affected by this curse?"

"For my sins, no, Your Highness ma'am."

"Gilda doesn't like to talk about it," said Gleaming Shield, her eyes glittering at her bat-hen, "But I'm fairly sure she's the legitimate heir to the Crown of Grover."

"LIES! Calumny! Falsehoods of the first feather! Lieutenant ma'am, how can you slander me so? I am not one of those monstrous royals! I'm better than that, damn it all! What next, will you accuse me of cannibalism or clipping bits?" Gilda looked back at the pink princess, and saw assailed guilt in her eyes.

Huge, black-outlined, watery eyes, the kohl just beginning to run, her lower lip trembling, quivering.

This was a pony burdened with something vast, heavy, the dimensions of which Gilda had only just now come to see, dimly. And however belatedly, just how her ill-considered words had added another few pounds to the crushing load.

"No, no, Princess, ma'am, Your Highness - I didn't, I didn't - I didn't mean you!"

And then the waterworks began. Gleaming Shield shot out of her loveseat to comfort her foal-sitter princess, who was now bawling her eyes out, weeping shamelessly, like a fledgeling too young to know better. The captain's eyes burned like coals at her treacherous, brutish bat-hen.

Gilda was in so much trouble.

A Nest Of Royals

Gilda felt her eyes burning and watering.

"No, no," Gilda found herself saying. "I didn't mean - I didn't intend - please stop?"

The bat-hen started hiccupping.

The princess wouldn't stop crying, and Gilda couldn't stop herself babbling, and hiccupping, and heaving. The white-coated hoofmaiden was back, and she'd brought two of her. Their hooves dragged the frantic griffon out of that disaster-zone of a sitting room, and Gilda found herself, found herself -

Why was she crying? She never cried! She was a free bird of Griffonstone! She ate lead slugs and spat dragonfire!

Why couldn't she stop?

The twin blonde mares pushed her into an even whiter space, and between the wavering liquid wobble which were thick greasy griffon-tears, Gilda blinked and blinked until she saw that she was sitting in a chair in the kitchen. The sobs were fading, but she felt sick, and the hiccups weren't going away.

Gilda looked around, wildly, trying to stop the unfamiliar feelings. It was a very well-stocked kitchen. The General Staff's Intelligence Section apparently ate well.

She heaved and gasped, confused by these new, unpleasant sensations. The tendency to tear up had been beaten out of her at a young age, as they were from all griffons of a certain social standing. It felt like she was about to be gutted, or drowned, or beaten by her thunderously frowning old mother, and the sickness was joined by a sudden jolting fear. Her mother! Her mother, who, in her memories, was suddenly, astonishingly, caught like a flash of light in the darkness, tear-streaked and confused. The day…

The day Grampa Gruff finally died. How had Gilda forgotten that? She remembered now, viscerally, painfully, how she and her mother had wept for the old bird's last rattles. How her mother had plotted through her angry tears their escape from the hovel they'd been hiding in, the second such hovel they'd hidden in since they'd been driven from the mansion. The first, after the great wave of fighting had left the mansions painted in her cousins' blood. The second, after the assassins had found Gruff in that back alley, and one of them had followed him back to that first hiding place. And then, after they'd hidden his broken body in that second squalid sanctuary, far from the first… he'd been so long dying.

Gilda remembered as if she was hearing it for the first time, her mother whispering father's forbidden name, the prematurely aged hen dashing away her tears and pulling out the valises for their latest bolt into the night.

They'd left Grampa Gruff's corpse cooling for the land-hen to find.

"There, there, dearie. Are you back to us yet?" asked one of the two - no, three white mares. She smiled at Gilda as if nothing at all was wrong in her world. "Close proximity to dear Cadenza sometimes takes a pony like that. You hit her hard, too. I'm guessing denial, what do you think, Livery?"

"I think Hotspur will know best, Mirror. But yes, it's usually denial that hurts the worst. Ever since that assassin that Uncle Bullion sent in her first year with us."

"Oh, Hidden Blade?" said the third pony, as blissfully even as the others, all of them wearing the same unsettling smile. "Personally, I think Cadance trapped that silly fool in depression. Catatonia, don't you know. But who could imagine it, an assassin named something so on the nose. How he lasted long enough to try for a princess of all things, I never will know. And such a fool! Did he think the wings and horn were for show?"

"Well, whatever might be the case, it couldn't have been that bad, our patient is still conscious. You are with us, dearie?"

"Yes, I hear you," replied Gilda, clawing for self-mastery. "Wait, what are you talking about? What effect?"

"Oh, lovely. You'll be fine. Sometimes, dear Cadenza turns her regard on a pony, and it can be… a powerful effect. She's an alicorn, after all, is our Cadenza."

"Aunt Celestia moves all the heavens, the sun and the moon," said one of the others. "Did you think that our darling little sister couldn't move ponies?"

"Well, Cadance isn't exactly Sol Invictus, is she?" asked a fourth as she came bustling into the kitchen. "Serene, she needs you, why don't you go and help little Twilight with the princess?"

One of the three grouped around Gilda got up and walked out without a word, smiling beatifically.

"Hotspur, one of the reasons I encouraged this trip was to get Cadance away from that assassin's bed. Visiting the pony that tried to kill you, every week. It's morbid, isn't it?" What Gilda found morbid was the way this pony said these things, without a single change in her calm, smiling face. None of them were - it was like they were reading from scripts.

"But that is our Cadenza, isn't it?" said the one holding Gilda's talon in an iron grip, calmly stroking her back with her other fore-hoof. "She may lock you into an eternal reverie, but she'll still feel for your fate. Poor dear, she simply will not ever let go."

"That's our job, isn't it, Mirror? Letting go. Shouldn't you?"

"Oh, dear me, my apologies, dearie. Didn't mean to colonize your personal space like that."

"Mirror," said the first pony, still holding her tone and expression as if the - sister? - had simply made a mild joke.

"What, are we not allowed to joke about our brutal occupation of her homeland?"

"Th-the Isles aren't my homeland, Lady - you are a lady?" Gilda would not be treated by these - nobleponies? - treated like a wounded or pampered cat.

"Ah. Did nopony introduce ourselves to the little kitty-bird?" The speaker was half a head shorter than Gilda, who was no giant among her kind. "Little one, I am Lady Livery, oldest foal of the late Princess Electrum, scion of the House of Platinum. I would have, in my time, been princess in my turn, if it weren't, well, for the lack of a horn. You see before you my darling little sisters Hotspur and Mirror, likewise disappointments to our ancient and royal blood. Sister Serene is attending to our dearest of littlest sisters, our beloved Cadance."

Royals! Gilda was surrounded by royals! They'd eat her alive!

Wait, they were all grazers, and earth pony grazers at that. Gilda looked around herself, alarmed but confused.

"Personally," one of them was saying, "it was that madpony Minister Pants I wanted to get Cadenza away from, Livery. They were never good for each other."

"Fancy Pants. Tooling around in that gold-chased wheelchair of his, refusing all medical magic to fix his hurts. As if he was the only pony to ever suffer."

"And mourning, mourning his dead whore."

"Hotspur."

"Well, she was. None of them were even betrothed, were they?"

"We say so after the fact, regardless of the facts. You're not supposed to talk ill of the dead, Hotspur."

"I don't see how the dead could possibly care."

"Well, Cadance's love for poor Shining Armor was real, that much is true."

"I wasn't calling Lieutenant Armor a whore, Livery."

"She wasn't suggesting that you were, Hotspur."

The three mares sighed, looking placidly but steady-eyed at each other, each looking each other in the face. Then one turned to meet Gilda's eyes.

"Oh, dearie," said… Gilda thought it was Hotspur, but wasn't sure. They kept shifting about in the kitchen. "The look on your face. Have we scandalized you? Oh, yes, we've heard about you. There's been talk of you in our little household. The griffon whom the little vengeful Twilight Sparkle is willing to employ, let alone tolerate. We've seen the reports, the same as our darling little sister. Not that she pays much attention. That's what she has us for, isn't that so, sisters?"

The other two nodded, calmly. The subject matter had turned suddenly, from quarrelsome to alarmingly personal, but the amiable cheer never left any of their smiling faces.

"Gilda de Griffonstone, captured last year as part of an infiltration attempt by yet another little band of Griffonstonian illegals. Forcibly recruited into dear little Twilight Sparkle's little social project, one of the Griffish Territorial Battalions. Nominally the battalion of one Dinky Doo, beloved by-blow of… well, let's not gossip about others. Especially not when they're so heroically dead. The dear child looked so charming in her regimentals at her grandmares, didn't she? Old Golden Dawn is so proud of her grandfilly, and she should be. Such a darling."

"Not charming enough for the House of Greenspire to acknowledge properly."

"Oh, hush, Hotspur, not every noble house is matrilineal." So, not Hotspur. Livery? "You've been a strikingly loyal trooper, Gilda de Griffonstone. Surprisingly so, given your apparent antecedents. And reports that I've seen just this afternoon suggest that you've been truly loyal, or else I would have never allowed you access to our darling little sister.

"You see, the House of Platinum has a great deal of experience with alicorns, born into the family, and adopted into it. We have had our successes, and our failures, but never have we been as weak as we are today. Our parents had such high hopes for all of us, and we each of us failed them, one after the other. For the longest time, we thought that little Bluey would be the solution to all of our problems, the one success that redeemed all of our shortcomings, but he failed in his turn. Such a disappointment.

"But Platinum adopts as well as gives birth, and Celestia brought us a princess, to redeem all of our despairing failures. A beautiful, wonderful little filly, good-hearted and true, sad, it is true, mournful, it was as expected, a pony who had ascended in such tragic circumstances. Of course we clasped her to our bosoms, and held her in our hearts.

"And we thought we were doing well, for all of her crotchets. She found a young colt, and he seemed like he'd bring her out of her gloom. So lovely together. Even Aunt Celly approved of the match, for Aunt Celly reasons, no doubt, but beggars can't be choosers.

"And then the bombings happened, and all of our good work, ruined. If we had any rage left to us in those moments, you can be sure, we would have been first among the crowd crying for griffon blood.

"Lucky for you. We had been drained of all grief before that moment, and we four were able to offer dear Cadance a sort of… ballast, to keep her from tipping over in those troubled seas. And though she raged against your race, and poisoned hundreds, perhaps thousands with anger in the weeks after the bombings, it could have been worse. And now, today, she feels so much guilt over her part in the beat of war, the cries for vengeance and bloody-hooved retribution."

"Well, when Fancy Pants isn't breathing fire, death and damnation in her ears," said Hotspur, cheerfully.

"Well, all that is over and done with," continued one of them. "We are here because Cadance is here, whatever our other purposes that Cadance doesn't share in. And Cadance wants the dying to end."

"She feels it, even in Canterlot she feels it," said the third.

"She feels it even as she mirrors anger and denial and grief," said Hotspur, so gripped by the thought that there was almost a wrinkle upon that unnaturally smooth brow. Although Gilda might have been imagining that wrinkled brow, it went away so quickly.

"You see," said one of the others, looking kindly at Gilda. "She doesn't really control her effect upon others. She tries, oh bless her she tries. But she's a pony like any other. And her beau, that lovely colt, if he hadn't died, oh I can't imagine where we might be today. But he died, and here we are, and here you are. And we didn't start this, we didn't."

"Those madgriffons, those were the ones at fault," continued Hotspur. "We didn't start the fire, but poor Cadenza, she blames herself for everypony burnt in the blaze."

Gilda was just starting to feel up to the task of extracting herself from this nest of madponies when she heard the sound of raised voices in the hall, muffled by the closed kitchen door. They didn't really have any time to react before a tall white horned stallion burst through said door, fuming.

"-nopony says a word, nopony sends a letter, nopony even bothers to notify me that my entire family is about to descend upon my city!"

"Bluey," said the fourth white mare, following at the stallion's heels, "Dearie, calm down. We would have sent a letter, or a pony, or-"

"It's bad enough they won't give me my necessary ponies in this harmony-forsaken stinking mouth of Hades, and that they wouldn't give me the keys to this suite as was my due. Look at how shabby everything is! This degenerate generation refuses to give the royal house our proper support and maintenance, it's because Aunt Celly refuses to treat them all like the peasants and serfs they truly are!"

"Bluey, really," murmured one of the hoofmaidens already in the kitchen. "Serfdom has been abnegated since the days of Platinum. There are certain grudges the keeping of which only makes us ridiculous. Let it go. And how have you been, my dear little north star?"

"Hotspur! So you all are here! I heard the report, but didn't credit it. Still following in the Pink Watering-Can's train? All four of you, look at that. I get deployed to the savage end of creation, and none of you could be bothered to come visit, or send one of our retainers, or even the occasional care package. But the Widow of Mysteries gets it into her weepy pink head to come visit the front lines, and it's the whole bloody house here in bloody-hoofed Trottingham!"

"My dear," one of the white mares turned to say to Gilda, she thought maybe it was Livery, "may we introduce to you our dear little brother, the hope of our house, our pole star, Prince Major Blueblood, sixth of his name?"

"Livery!" barked the tall blonde unicorn, looking incensed, "what are you thinking in that head of yours to introduce a prince to this griffish peasant? A ranker, from her looks, indeed! You, you ragamuffin, get out of my house's kitchen and our rooms entirely, unless you're here to cook for my adopted headache of a little sister, in which case, get out anyways, we don't need her getting used to the filth they call cuisine here in the barbarous hinterlands!"

"Bluey. You can't speak to the Princess's guests this way, any more than you can to Aunt Celly's guests and generals. This is why you're still a major, and exiled out here in the war-torn provinces."

"Be silent, Hotspur! Mares! I swear, mares always make a mess of things. Well, I'm here now, and I'll put this mess to rights. "

"No. No you will not," said an iron-willed voice from behind them all.

Gilda turned to look, and there was the princess, back in the pink, and her mane rippling with fury. Gleaming Shield was looking over the princess's shoulder with a strange mix of disgust, concern, and fury. Gilda couldn't tell how much of that was aimed her way, and how much towards the clearly insufferable prince major.

"Corporal Gilda, your Captain requires your services. And I have my… brother to discuss matters with. My apologies for the earlier misunderstanding, we will have to talk later, when tempers are cooled. For now, I clearly need my Anger, for there are matters I must, as Bluey says, take in hoof. Good evening, Corporal, Twilight."

Gilda bowed in a loose approximation of a courtesy she half-remembered from a half-forgotten book, and scrambled around the incensed princess, who was advancing with fire in her eyes at her apparent adopted brother.

"Captain ma'am! Time to regroup, I'll secure our lines of communication!"

"Gilda, for once in your life, shut your bloody beak and follow me," seethed Gleaming Shield, clearly smarting at the use of her forbidden name. "I think everypony has more than enough to think about. Sufficient unto the evening is the evil thereof. Go on, go!"

One of the blonde sisters followed Gilda and her officer as they fell back to the hallway.

"Gilda de Griffonstone. We all have put great hopes in you. We trust those hopes will not betrayed.

"Do not betray them. Have a nice day." The steady-eyed royal bowed, never breaking eye-contact with Gilda.

The bat-hen escaped the royal vipers' nest, her captain covering her retreat.

Airships, Politics, And Other Uses For Hot Air

"Why aren't we talking to the princess again?"

"Because I am grounded until further notice for making princesses cry. So saith the captain."

"I'm never going to get used to you calling her that. And you've never made me cry."

"Give it time, Lady George. I disappoint everygriff eventually. And I'm not sure I'm ready to forgive the princess for promoting the captain like that, so offhand. Like it was something she needed to clear out of her throat. Like a bit of phlegm." Gilda hacked up a gob and spat to the side, away from the turul flying beside the bat-hen over the griffon side of the city.

The old bird flying in formation on Gilda's other side gave the corporal a dirty look. The file-griffs weren't any more used to Gilda's promotion than she was, even if it gave her the requisite rank to hold the position that she'd already held over them, with Gustav on medical leave. They were Gustav's toms, and they were more than a little salty about it.

As old salts got.

"The captain had been fighting so hard for her promotion, working herself into pass-out-into-your-bunk comas to prove herself out in the field. And what happens? The princess shows up and hoofs her a promotion as a greeting. Not for anything Gleaming Shield did, but because that's what princesses do, apparently."

"I have never promoted anybird, ever."

"Your bizarre turul customs aren't at question here, bizarre pony ones are. And they're supposed to promote on rigid, time-locked schedules. Not at the whim of some childhood friend. Unless a princess shows up and overturns the applecart."

"And that's why…"

"Why the captain and her anti-gonne spell is off playing bodyguard for the princess while she meets aldermares over on the pony side of town, and we're looking in on the guildgriffs and your financial empire. Before the former steals the latter. There's Tenpenny Road."

Gilda and her file of rankers stooped beside the great bird, landing in front of the Tenpenny Guildhouse. Nogriff was outside waiting for them, because Gilda wasn't big enough of a fool to trumpet her movements ahead of time.

Gleaming Shield might have a magic shield that kept her from getting perforated, but griffons didn't have horns.

Gilda was still laughing at the mental image of an alicornic griffon, horn jutting awkwardly through the Crown of Grover, when she tracked down the guildmaster. Or rather, the guildmaster's right-talon hen, as that worthy wasn't in the guildhall, and nogriff knew where she'd gotten off to.

Goldclip was the griffon that she and Lady George needed to talk to, anyways. Gilda and two of her old birds grabbed the gabbling villain and dragged her outside to talk to the turul.

"B-bob! Lady George! I can explain, I 'ave your bits!"

"Of course you have my bits, Goldclip. I gave them to you. My agents must be misinformed. You couldn't possibly have misplaced my bits. What I want to know is where are my bits' friends? They were supposed to be recruiting in your talons, Goldclip. Seven will bring me three, was, I believe, your words to me. In three months' work. Lady Rarity spoke highly of the Tenpenny Collective Cooperative, and your technological wonders. You were doing great things."

"W-well, there were tooling 'eadaches. And we gots ourselves raided by the beefeaters in September. That ate up time while I bailed out me designer and two of me master craftgriffs..."

"I invested in August. It is January. And I never heard a word from you about these delays. What is the state of my investments?"

"Non-liquid! I swear, we're making good progress! It's just, we had to divert craftgriffs to the militia, and guard duty. But we got replacements, and more than replacements! Griffons got excited when word spread of what we've been working on in this district. In the middle of a war! Tight, lightweight frames! Magically enscrib'd circuitry! Gearwork so finely interwoven, it'll make watchmakers cry! Cid Sawhorse is a bleedin' talent for the ages, 'e is. Not a bit of bodge in his 'ide. First-rate right down the line, ship-shape and Bristle fashion."

Gilda allowed the shaky guild-griff to lead her and one of her rankers back into the guildhall, and they threw open the windows in the blueprints office to the frigid January air so that Lady George could stick her crowned head in and follow the discussion.

Gilda found herself impressed but a bit cowed by the technical details. Goldclip actually had something to offer, and the mechanical master she pulled out of an office across the way knew the project top to bottom.

"...We'd be nowhere near prototyping if it weren't for those refugee tinsmiths. For every griffon we lost to this bollocks in the alleys and on the streetcorners, we've 'ad a tinker at loose ends with the technical know-'ow to make things happen. Cid is besides 'isself. You've never seen a 'appier 'orn'eaded pony."

"So… explain this so that a stupid non-com can follow it," begged Gilda. "What is all of this… for? It looks shiny and technical and complicated. But I don't understand why Rarity is involved in a - it's some sort of drive train and engine? I think?"

"No, no," waved Grov the master-mechanist, "that's not Lady Rarity's department. She's working across Fourpenny with Bright Stitch and Gloria, the wing an' the 'ull and the envelope. That mare is a real Reneighssance… mare, I guess. This whole side of town is like a kicked-over anthill. Everygriff's been pushed into everyone else's space, and there's just - ideas bouncing off of every wall!"

Grov walked over to the wall opposite the open windows, and waved at all of the pictures cut out of newspapers, and a few precious photographs of military airships landing and taking off from Trottingham's airship field.

"We 'ad to bail out Giovanni twice over this 'spying' nonsense, but look at how great the pictures came out. Trottingham once was in the forefront of aerial innovation. I remember the good old days, when the Terror sent more and more baroque mechanical monstrosities into the pillar-pitch!" The master-mechanist waved at a fading cloudball poster on the wall to his left, drawn in fin d'ère style, proclaiming some long-ago victory by the Trottingham Terror.

He looked at Gilda's unit badge. "The Territorials, is it? Have you served with Gary?"

Gary? That name seemed vaguely familiar, but Gilda couldn't remember where she'd heard it.

"Sergeant-Major Gary?" piped up the other Territorial in the room, a ranker named Gwen. "'e's with the Twenty-First. Everygriff in the ranks knows that."

The rest of the griffons turned their eyes questioningly at Gilda, their expressions silently demanding to know how she possibly could not have heard of the famous Gary.

"You can't expect much of' the corporal, Master Grov. She ain't from the city. You can tells by 'ow funny she talks, right? Complete treebilly, the corporal is."

"No idea who Gary was…" clucked Grov. "What a shame. The Trottingham Terror was our pride and joy, they was. And 'ere we are, ten years later, with the skies of Equestria teeming with self-propelled aerocraft getting more and more advanced with every month, and we're not involved. Trottingham needs to get back into the aeronautic game, it's a patriotic duty, it is!"

"Airships," muttered Gilda to herself. "You're talking about building airships. In a city on fire."

"It takes a fire to get an 'ot air balloon off the ground!"

"You're a madgriff."

"I know, ain’t it aces?"

"The important bit is that the ship-builders are interested, now," interjected Goldclip. "They've had their eyes on the Equestrian airship business, and wanted a part of it. But the weight concerns kept tripping them up. The difference between a zeppelin and the heavy oak constructions of seaships are just too wide, they kept tripping over each other…"

She and Grov went off on a technical argument that Gilda didn't follow at all. She sat there, ignoring them quarrelling over the alleged contributions of the ship-building guilds, and stared at the beautiful, cryptic blueprints spread out before her.

Never had Gilda so regretted being poor. This was a massive investment opportunity.

She had to tell Gleaming Shield.

If only the captain was speaking to her.

Things were wrapping up with Lady George promising to double down on her investments in the guild collectives' airship project, when a shout from one of the rankers guarding the turul's rear out in the street came wafting through the open windows. Gilda walked over to stick her head out the window as Lady George extracted her head and turned to look.

Grant was waving at Gilda up in the window, and he turned to point at a column of armored ponies surrounding a familiar pink-maned head marching down Tenpenny Road.

"Oh, hello up there!" chirped Major Pie, waving a hoof from the middle of her herd of expressionless, helmeted ponies. "Is Guildmaster Gillian up there?"

Gilda climbed up on the sill, and jumped out the window, fluttering down beside Grant and the other rankers. She squared herself to await the pony delegation. Goldclip's head was now poking out of the window above, and the guildgriff shouted down at the pink pony as she and her guards stopped in front of Gilda's own guards.

"No, sorry," apologized Goldclip from her window. "The guildmaster is still out with the militia, not expected back until evening."

"Well, nutberry scones and butter! I thought for sure I'd catch her on my way to see Boss Gabon. Eh. I think I can trust my itchy left hoof to tell me where to track down our missing guildgriffon. Come on, Marble, we have little to do and too much time to do it in."

"Major Pie!" barked Gilda, knowing she was making a mistake even as she opened her stupid beak. "Might I accompany you through this district? It isn't safe for VIPs on the streets."

"Oh, I know, that's what everypony tells me. But I know better! Tenpenny Road is having a safe day, and will be absolutely harmless for… at least thirty-six hours. I think. Marble, what did I say yesterday?"

"Mm." The armored pony next to Major Pie showed her something on a clipboard.

"Ah, forty-eight hours! Wait, that was fifteen hours ago…"

"Mm."

"Oh, and Marble says that you should address me by my current rank. Lieutenant Colonel! See? New tabs and everything! Gotta run!"

Gilda waved her griffons into column with the little party of ponies from - what regiment was this? Gilda didn't recognize them. Grey armor, grey unit flashes… She put herself next to the manic pink lieutenant colonel, and opened her stupid beak again.

"When did that happen? You were a major last time I saw you."

"Do I know you, corporal? I don't know very many griffons."

"Captain Gleaming Shield's adjutant, lieutenant colonel ma'am."

"Oh, right. Twilight's taxi driver. What can I do for you, Twilight's taxi driver? And what's with the big bird?"

"Big- oh, this is Gertie, she's our unit mascot. A tamed roc!"

"Why is your tamed roc wearing a golden hat? Is it part of the Fifth Territorial's fancy dress uniforms? Very snazzy, I liked the figure you guys cut on the march. Really ramped up the game, helped a lot in getting the rebels pissed enough to strike." So the mad pink pony knew who they were? Wait - she could see the heir's coronet?

"What hat?"

"Gold. Hat. Crown thingy? Hey, Marble, what do you call things made out of gold and worn on the head?"

"Mm."

"No, tiaras don't have a full circlet design. Coronets, that's it. Hey, birdie, why do you wear a coronet?"

"Is she talking to me, Gilda?"

"Oh, neat, the bird talks! I mean, I've known ponies who talk to animals, but they don't generally talk back, you know? Hi, birdie, Corporal Gilda here says your name is Gertie!"

"If Corporal Gilda says that is my name, I won't contradict you. You can see my coronet?"

"Why wouldn't I see it? Is it supposed to be invisible!" Lieutenant Colonel Pie gasped. "It's invisible, isn't it? Why don't ponies tell me these sorts of things! I haven't outed you as a secret agent, have I, Gertie birdie girl?"

"If you have, I'm sure it will be fine. Look, could we talk about something else. Your guard is getting glassy-eyed, and we're going to block the road if we don't keep moving."

"Oh, wow, Marble, Sergeant Chip! Snap out of it, keep the troops moving! We have three street bosses and two guild masters to invite to the party before nightfall."

"Mm? Mm!"

"What? Oh, come on, I haven't been breaking operational security. If I were, I'd be talking about the mmhfprmfm!" the officer said through a mouthful of her assistant's hoof.

"Mm!"

"Nonsense! Gilda here is a good friend. Because she's a loyal bird, aren't you, Corporal Gilda."

"As far as you know, lieutenant colonel ma'am. Although I'm a bit alarmed at this subject of discussion in the middle of a busy street."

"Look around, corporal! Only ponies or griffons in earshot are you, my ponies, and your griffons. And your giant talking bird, I suppose."

"Mm!"

"How have you operated like this for so long, and not lost us the war?" demanded Gilda, wild-eyed and terrified of the pony babbling about operational security and secrets and all but self-destructing right in front of her beak.

"On that note, Gilda, I am leaving before I get involved in," Lady George waved a wing vaguely in a circle, "whatever madness this is a prologue to. Good day, Lieutenant Colonel Pie, I'd like to talk to you later at some point about me and my invisible gold hat."

"Ooh! That sounds like... Wait. Let me think. Square root of fudge, carry the two, multiplied by - yeah, I think that will be fun!"

With an amused squawk, the great turul took off, her vast wings beating the frigid air into submission and taking her in the general direction of the garrison and the battalion barracks.

"That was a very friendly giant predatory bird! You keep interesting company, Corporal Gilda! Unfortunately, I plan on keeping rather infuriating company, and daylight is burning. Marble! Let's get this evil plot on the road!"

Gilda waved her griffons forward, and kept pace with the pink officer who clearly was trying to dismiss her.

"So, I don't recognize the unit your escort is from. What-"

"Oh, come on, how come nopony ever recognizes our home town regiment? These boys here are friends from back home. Say hi, Rock Valley Pioneers Company B!"

"HELLO!" shouted the marching company of ponies in unison.

"And they're in… garrison here? I've never seen them before."

"No, they're new. The clans out in the districts have started mining the roads in some places. The Rock Valley Pioneers are acclimating to the climate before we sent them out into the hills to get sniped at and blown up by bombmaking clangriffons. So I thought I'd take these guys out for some air. Can't get acclimated if you don't get out and enjoy the bracing climate!" Lieutenant Colonel Pie took a deep breath of frigid winter air, and started coughing furiously, her guard Marble pounding on her heaving back.

"Y-y-yeah, that's the stuff. Brisk!" The pink pony started moving again, shivering. "Let's keep moving, don't want to freeze on your first day in Trottingham, Pioneers!"

"Wait, I was just out at the airship field yesterday, there weren't any troopships moored!"

"Did I say they came by air? Did I say that, Marble?"

"Mm."

"Well, there's no need to be sarcastic. And it wasn't a secret that they used actual seagoing troopships for the Pioneers. No need to waste expensive airship resources on a regiment of pioneers! It's not like they're a gloomy pink princess and her thundering herd of perfumed parasitical courtiers and associated ponces!"

"Mm!"

"Oh, don't fret, Marble. Princess Gloomypants loves me! And by that I mean she makes a face like she stepped in something stinky every time she lays eyes on me. It's how she shows she cares! Aha! There's our missing guildmaster! Gillian! You've been a naughty, naughty catbird thing!"

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" asked the perplexed guildmaster, standing among a small clot of griffons holding spears and wearing heavy quilted jackets. "That's enough, journeygriffs. Go find a warm spot to roost, we'll deal with the Ninepennies in the morning."

"No, you don't know me, but you will soon! I'm Lieutenant Colonel Pinkamena Diane Pie, and you're invited to the inaugural meeting of the reconstituted Griffish City Council!"

"The what? They haven't let us in city council meetings since Gilbert and Pickle Jar mauled each other in '92 in front of the whole council."

"As you should know! You were alderhen from 182 to the moment they threw you aldergriffs out of the council in 192! I want you to be our council speaker. You have the experience!"

"We're kind of in the middle of a war, here."

"More towards the end than the middle, I hope! And getting you griffons representation is part of that ending. We want you resolving your differences across a table! Hopefully without weapons held under the table."

"Interesting… tell me more." The mismatched pair walked off as Lt. Col. Pie jabbered wildly, expressively, and the guildmaster looked half-confused, half intrigued.

"So," Gilda asked the quiet grey mare with the sergeant stripes. "You been working with your officer for long?"

"Mm."

"You don't say much, do you?"

"Mm."

Gilda stuck to the mysterious Pinkamena Pie throughout that day, trailing her increasingly bored and irate rankers behind her. The griffons that Lieutenant Colonel Pie visited ran the gamut from gruff but decent guild masters, to the worst kind of neighborhood 'bosses'.

One of them, Gilda was pretty sure, was a relative of the griffon she'd stabbed during a hijackers' raid a couple weeks back. The one who was biding his time in a POW infirmary until he was well enough to be transported to the 'new territories'. His brother - or cousin, or uncle, all Gilda knew was they looked related, and the new 'boss' glared feathered death at her - didn't strike her as any more respectable or law-abiding. A gangster, in her estimation. This was aldertom material?

The pink pony never once told her uninvited guests to take a hike. She just let Gilda loom disapprovingly over her shoulder as she cajoled the good, the bad and the ugly into signing on to her 'party'. Nor did she ever explain why exactly the head of Special Section for Plotting, Planning, and Partying was organizing a civilian political organization into… organizational existence?

All Pinkie Pie would say was that 'political parties are still a kind of party. Even if they're the boring, corrupt, meanypants kind of party.'

Something about the whole situation made Gilda drool.

She always did when she smelled a rat.

A More Collegial Exchange

"I'm just saying, I know a roc's breakfast when I see one. Whatever Lieutenant Colonel Pie's up to qualifies as a roc's breakfast."

They had just concluded a discussion of the Princess's day, and Gleaming Shield's day as well, as the captain had stuck to the Princess of Gloom like spirit-gum to the bottom of your paw. They'd visited a half-dozen factories on the pony side of town, and spent hours listening to politicians and rich ponies lecture the princess and her ponies about how well Pony Trottingham was holding up during the 'Unfortunate Troubles'. The subject had finally come around to Gilda's and Lady George's day.

"Have you ever seen a roc's breakfast, Corporal?" asked Lady George, looming over the bat-hen and her officer in the turul's roost. "They're horrifying because, if you remember properly, rocs eat people. Griffons, diamond dogs, parrots, ponies, even young dragons - they don't care if you can talk, because they certainly can't. They're stomachs with wings."

It was a little cool inside the converted equipment stable, but at least it wasn't out of doors, where the temperature had dropped below zero that afternoon, and now in the full darkness of night was plumbing the bottom of even the ponies' advanced thermometers. Gilda found herself sweating a bit under the big bird's glare.

"OK, sorry, no more talking about your mindless distant relatives. It's just a Griffonstone expression, I don't know where it comes from. Sorry."

"It no doubt comes from that infamous Griffonstonian sense of morbid nihilism, I expect. But about your madmare Pie. She saw me, didn't she? Saw the crown. Heard me talking, and didn't assume into existence an imaginary handler like any other non-royal would have done."

"That doesn't necessarily mean anything," interjected the heretofore silent Gleaming Shield, eponymous magical shield flickering around her head. "Pinkie Pie is known for knowing things she couldn't possibly know about. And afterwards, she will pretend that she has no idea what you're talking about, will pretend that she doesn't know the things she had to have known about to say the things she says in class or in the field. Why do you think I can't stand working with her? Pinkie Pie is a trotting, pronking offense to rational thought."

"That might be true, captain ma'am, but it doesn't sound like helpful. If she's inexplicable, we can't predict what she'll do based on what we've seen her doing, or heard her saying. She's nothing but a black hole of- of ignorance, if that's true."

"That about sums her up," said Gleaming Shield. "You can't react to Pinkie Pie. You can only work around her."

"Well, that's not helpful. I just wasted an entire day following that black hole of unknowledge around the city, watching her do Boreas only knows what."

"Take her out of the equation," Gleaming Shield suggested. "What was going on around her?"

"Company-sized patrol from a new regiment," Gilda said, tentatively. "She said something about it being her home-town battalion."

"Oh, right, I'd heard they'd brought in the Pioneers to replace one of the Manehattan regiments in the rotation. The plan is to send them out into the districts, though, they're not for the garrison."

"Well, they're here now," Gilda muttered.

"An escort in - where did you go?" her captain asked.

"The Pennies, mostly. Street bosses and a couple guildmasters. Political talk about reconstituting a separate council for Griffish Trottingham."

"Wait, separate? And a pony patrol in the middle of the deepest ghetto neighborhoods."

"Well, they weren't all ponies, once me and the toms joined the procession."

"Congratulations, Gilda," laughed Gleaming Shield. "You just made yourself Pinkie Pie's griffon beard. You were her griffon faces."

"I didn't even talk to her boss-griffons! All I did was exchange dagger-glares with the brother of that one I put into the prison infirmary."

"Your presence would have been enough. Is Pinkie Pie turning political? This is more subtle than I've seen her get in the past. Generally, Pinkie's as political as a battle-axe duct-taped to a whoopie cushion."

"It was all she talked about out there. Had a lot to say about Trottish politics I had never heard before."

"You're a very junior non-commissioned officer who has only been in the capital for what is it now - less than half a year. Nopony would expect otherwise. Stars, I don't know much about city politics, either. There were books about it in that library-cache out on Battery Garner… blast. Now I'm wishing I'd taken them, too."

"We only had room for so much in your baggage, captain ma'am."

"Nonsense. There's always room for books. I could have thrown out my spare uniforms and armor repair kit…"

"Clouds under the tree, captain ma'am. We were talking about the scary pink mare who likes to talk about mass murder and partying with survivors?"

"So, a parliament."

"City council," corrected Lady George, who had been listening as quietly as was possible for a six-meter-tall bird of prey. "Has many of the characteristics of a provincial parliament, but also some local executive functions. Normal towns' burghers usually end up running their neighborhoods personally. No room for both alcaldes de la hermandad and alcaldes ordinarios at that level."

Gilda looked up at the looming Lady George, and remembered that this was a true princess, with the education that came with it.

"So, what would you say if I told you that Pinkie Pie's list of potential alderhens were a bunch of outlawed unionists and neighborhood bosses with reputations for banditry and gross corruption?"

"To a hen?"

"To a hen, one or the other. There were plenty of block bosses we passed by on Pie's little long march, skipping over the good and cooperative bosses in favor of the ones that haven't played cloudball, including the one who replaced that tom we arrested for street piracy in the act."

"She's collecting bad actors, then. The guilds are remnants of the outlawed union movement. From her point of view, they're disloyal, whatever fondness for Princess Celestia they profess.“

“Duchess Celestia, captain ma'am.“

“Distinction without a difference.“

“I'm pretty sure the locals care about the difference, captain ma'am. And the bosses behind street violence and disorder? This griffish council is going to be a-"

"Nest of scum and villainy?" asked Gleaming Shield with a look of disgust.

"Put all the bad eggs in one basket," said Lady George, squinting into the shadows above their heads.

"And… drop the basket?" asked Gilda, trying to follow the turul's metaphor.

"Wait, what?" asked Gleaming Shield. "Pinkie Pie is a maniac, but she's not a criminal mastermind. It would be an official organ of government!"

"She isn't," the bat-hen said, snapping her beak in irritation, "but she's been known to maneuver the rebels into doing her dirty work for her. As we all know well. I've been wondering about why there's still rebels running loose in the city. I've been hearing talk that the beefeaters have been slacking. It's like they don't want to wipe out the last few bands of armed rebels hiding in the deeper neighborhoods."

"Somebird to drop the basket for her?" asked Lady George.

"Or bomb the basket," Gleaming Shield said gloomily. "Seems like a Pinkie thing to arrange. There's still enough gonne-powder on the streets that anything could happen. I'd been wondering why we hadn't been seeing more terror-bombings inside the walls. There's been enough out in the districts."

"A council-building full of robed aldertoms and hens would be a hell of a statement," Gilda said, sitting down.

"It would revive the war all over again," Gleaming Shield agreed.

"Could you possibly be misinterpreting this? I thought that this lieutenant colonel wanted to bring the war to a close!" asked Lady George.

"Pinkie's exactly the sort of extremist who wouldn't consider the war over until all the bad actors were blown to bone-shards," Gleaming Shield said, gritting her teeth.

"Maybe it's our duty to keep that from happening?" wondered Lady George.

"Since when do you have a duty to the madgriffons of Trottingham, Princess?" asked Gilda, looking up at the insufferably noble turul. "Don't get attached, we're supposed to be sending you home to squat on your people's egg-clutches, remember?"

"Common decency, Griffonstonian. I can't do anything about my birds right now, but I can do something about an injustice here, today."

"What's injust about arranging the extermination of a flock of corrupt street-bandits like those toms and hens I saw Pie talking up today?"

"Including the guildmasters?" asked Gleaming Shield. "All they're guilty of is calling out an illegal militia and restoring order to parts of the Pennies."

Gilda sat back on her haunches, out-argued. She decided to change the subject.

"Oh, I had a message waiting for me when I got back," Gilda said. "Gene says the fences are responding to that message you had me send them."

"Positively?" asked Gleaming Shield.

"He says it sounds like a company under arms. Including target practice. I have a response matching what he's hearing on the listening stick. They're inviting me to deliver my 'product' tomorrow in the Pennies. One of the bad neighborhoods."

"Well, I'm not free," said the captain. "We're doing a Territorials review outside of the walls tomorrow for Cadance. There won't be much more than a detail of griffs from the company available, either."

"So we'll just leave Chop Shop's boys holding the bag?"

"I didn't say that. Let me go talk to the girls from the Gonne Research Group. Some of Minuette's friends said that wanted to test out their new spell under field conditions."

"Tell me more," Gilda said, eyes glittering.

Gilda awoke to three thoughts.

The first was that she was terribly cold. Her armor and padding were missing. She was naked to the world, and yet was not in her nice snug bunk.

The second was that she couldn't remember why she wasn't in her nice snug bed.

The third was that she couldn't move.

These three thoughts quickly were chased out of her head by the fact that she could not, in point of fact, determine exactly where she was, because there was a black hood over her head, and her wrists were bound under her aching forearms, which were trapped under her body in their turn.

Her wings were bound, too. This wasn't good.

She tried to remember the last thing she could recall. Leaving Lady George's roost, yes, also Gleaming Shield trotting off to talk to the Marezonians.

Gilda had picked up their weekly bundle of newspapers from the commissary, and gone back to the barracks to read. Since the local newspapers mostly concerned themselves with the overseas cloudball scores and the goings-on among the pony elite on the good side of town, this was mostly a waste of time, but sometimes things showed up when you least expected them.

What did she do with the papers? Left them on the captain's desk, Gilda thought.

Oh, right, Gilda had gone to use the toilet.

She didn't remember actually using the toilet. She shifted a bit, to try and figure out if she'd… impossible to tell without her undergarments, whether they'd been soiled or not. Her furred legs were simply chilled, no way to tell one way or the other.

"Oh, good," said a vaguely familiar voice through the black bag tied around her head. "You're awake. I wasn't sure how long the chloroform would last on a specimen like you. You're big for your age, aren't you?"

Gilda immediately prioritized biting a hole in the damn bag so she could see who was talking. It was a bit too loose to get the fabric into beak-tearing range.

"Now, now, none of that. I need my hoods for future interrogations. Can't have you damn birds destroying my equipment. It'll come off in a moment, if you stop struggling."

And it did, with a rough jerk. Gilda rolled her eyes to see who had her at his mercy.

Glaring light. Blast.

"Now then, we've been operating at a remove for far too long. And you've been a busy, busy kitty-birdie, haven't you?

"HAVEN'T YOU?"

If the pony thought that him shouting in her ear with a light glaring in her eyes was going to startle a Griffonstone bird, he had another thing coming. Also, when he bent down to scream at her, she got a good look at him out of the corner of her peripheral vision.

It was that dark brown earth pony who didn't bother to wear rank tabs, the one who had been stalking them all for months. Gilda hadn't seen him around recently. This, apparently, was where he'd gotten off to.

"WELL?"

"W-w-" Gilda cleared her throat with a great hacking cough. "Pardon me, dry throat. Well what? You haven't actually asked a question yet, Mr. I'm Not Sure If I'm Supposed To Salute Or Demand You Present Arms For Inspection."

That earned Gilda a sharp blow across her crest. Which stung a great deal, but could have been worse.

"None of your lip, Griffonstonian!"

"You will observe, Mr. Pony, that I, like all griffons, have no lip to give."

Ouch. Hopefully that one didn't break one of her primary feathers.

"I mean no back-talk, Corporal!"

"Oh, good, I've been promoted from foreigner to non-com. Can I get a name at least?"

"I ALREADY KNOW YOUR NAME!"

"Of course you do. I rather hope you don't just randomly kidnap birds out of the middle of garrison before they can make water in the latrine. Speaking of which, I can't remember, did you let me take my piss before you - did you say chloroform? Ugh. No wonder I have a headache."

"That's good, chatty is good. This will go faster if you can't shut up."

"And yet, you still haven't given me your name or rank, Mr. Mystery Spooky Pony In The Shadows!"

Gilda heard some muttering from the shadows, revealing that they weren't totally alone in this - what was beyond that glaring light?

"What? What do you mean I actually have to identify myself? Since when?"

Muttering.

"That's preposterous! I'm a professional, we don't give our interrogation subjects our names and certainly not our ranks!"

Muttering.

"Horse puckey! I can't work like this!"

More distinct muttering. Gilda definitely heard the words 'Flag Staff' in the midst of that burble.

"Fine! Fine, Flagg Staff it is!" barked the madpony. Once again, in a lower tone that Gilda didn't think she was supposed to hear, "Isn't even really my name."

"Did you hear that, Interrogation Suspect Number 192? I am your interrogator for today, and I'm told by somepony who really ought to know better, that I have to inform you that my name is FLAGG STAFF. And boy are you in for a lot of trouble today! The only way you'd be in any more trouble would be if I could prove that you're a changeling, because by Celestia, I have been waiting for a changeling to experiment with!" What the four winds was a changeling?

"But, unfortunately, my secret changeling detector passed you with flying colors, so no Skinning Box experiments for you! You're just a boring old griffon hen. Boring, you hear me? Boring!" The loon paused for a brief bout of self-justifying mad laughter.

It took a moment.

"But!" the stallion continued. "You have been sticking your beak into matters that don't concern you, so I'm going to have to waste all of our time draining you dry, and drop you in a cistern afterwards if I hear anything at all I can prove is a lie!"

"My name is Gilda de Griffonstone," Gilda said rapidly and clearly, projecting from her position strapped down on that table. "I am a corporal with the Fifth Griffish Territorial Battalion. I was captured last year among a band of adolescents trying to sneak into the Isles to have some fun with the rebellion. I was recruited into the Fifth Territorial. I now work for Gleaming Shield as a bat-hen. I also by extension work for the Provost Marshal via Gleaming Shield's remit, and am a loyal subject of the Duchess of Trottingham. You will get nothing from me about deployments, secrets, passwords, or procedures. Do your worst, villain."

"I hate it when they lie with the truth," grumbled Flagg Staff, as he turned off the glaring light. A stone-walled room was revealed to Gilda's still-dazzled eyes. She blinked as details began to emerge from the afterimages of that glare. She could see her tormentor clearly for the first time.

He was putting away his instruments of torture. "That right there is something I can't do anything with. For one thing, it's every word of it true, and even sounds respectable when she puts it like that. If I torture her now, I'll only look like I'm trying to extract details about the princess's security, or sticking my muzzle into the damned Provost Marshal's business. And because I can't go digging among the damn secrets I'm not allowed to know, I can't find all these nuggets of treachery and betrayal that I just know are hiding inside that chimerical hide."

"How very frustrating for you, sir," said Gilda, wishing she could tug at her restraints without setting the agitated Flagg Staff off again. "Might I ask what you were looking for, in hopes of establishing a more collegial exchange of information?"

"Oh, what does it matter, now? There's no retrieving this operation. It's just ruined. Ruined! First they set a minder on you, then you get locked out of all the communiques. Then it's the desk in the back office. Then someone steals your stapler, and the paycheques start bouncing!" The torturer slammed the lid shut on his tool-chest, and pouted.

Gilda could hear the murmuring from said minder from behind her, where she couldn't see.

"No, no, you don't have to get somepony else. You - yes you there - griffon. What's with all the running back and forth in the city? You started working for this mystery griffon, Lady George, sometime in August-"

"September, actually. Late September."

"Really? September? OK, late September, and quickly - more quickly than I'd thought, really - you became her main transportation and enforcement arm. Misappropriated Territorial resources, smuggling goods and payments throughout the blue zone."

"I like to think of it as payment in kind for supplies, livestock rental, and political cover."

"Lady George has no political sway! The bosses seem to have no more idea who or what she is than we do! She just moves money and goods in and out of the city, and half the time nopony can tell me how it happened! Do you know how much time I wasted trying to determine if this mystery employer of yours was the one smuggling slug-throwers and black powder into the city? I was sure you were my in with the weapons smugglers. And then what did you and your pain in the ass officer do? You started innovating. You started experimenting with anti-slug-thrower magic! You started being useful! I would have sworn you were both changeling infiltrators pulling the sweetest long con I'd ever seen, but then you had to go and pass your changeling detection scan. MONTHS! Months I wasted on you two!"

"You could have asked."

"NO I COULD NOT! NOPONY COULD FIND LADY GEORGE!"

"You could have asked me."

"I COULD HAVE- damnit! You were one of her lackeys! I was sure of it! Out of nowhere, one of the princesses' favorites' bat-hen, consorting with mystery hens and unionist radicals and gangsters! And then a complete left field swerve, right into the heart of the war. Madness! Madness upon madness! You ponies drove me absolutely BONKERS!"

"Your own fault for not asking."

"GAAAH!"

The stallion took a moment to compose himself, while Gilda amused herself by counting the hairs on his increasingly dishevelled mane.

"Look, I don't honestly care about this rebellion business anymore. I'm over it! Over it, you hear? It's boring! It's stupid! They kill an alderpony here, blow up a police box over there, piss off entire neighborhoods, and start stupid feuds. The rebels are morons! All of them, dead and alive! I had a real career before you Trottish pains in my flank took over my life! I was chasing real monsters, real conspiracies! While I'm wasting my time on you disgusting steady-form chimerical clowns, the international changeling conspiracy to devour all of our pony affections and good feelings is ongoing! Those disgusting monsters continue to infest Equestria like termites burrowing through a tree!"

"That why you have a secret changeling detector?"

"Exactly! Wait, what do you know about the changeling infiltration plot? Are you a secret agent for them after all?"

"You just told me about them. Right now. Five minutes ago."

"Bah! I should get my detector checked. Maybe it's misadjusted?"

"Who sold it to you? Was it maybe a changeling?"

"I-I-I- STOP TRYING TO CONFUSE ME!"

"Look, it's not my fault if you're easy to wind up."

"Gah! Where was I?"

"You were just talking about quitting."

"NO I WAS NOT!"

"Well, it sounds like you should. You're a free pony. You could always go home and do what you want with your life. I'm not holding you here. I mean, you're not the one who was kidnapped into service are you?"

"What! No! I am a stallion under authority! I OBEY ORDERS! And I'm stuck, here, until I find out what monster or chimera or evil harmony-forsaken corrupted unicorn is smuggling dangerous weaponry into the Griffish Isles to destabilize our nation!"

"Why couldn't it be changelings?"

"THAT'S WHAT I SAID! But they wouldn't let me put the secret changeling detector into mass production and mount them over every city gate."

"If you mount them everywhere, it won't be a secret anymore."

"SHUT THE BUCK UP!"

"You might want to calm down and take a deep breath before you give yourself an aneurysm."

"I AM PERFECTLY CALM!"

"Yes, I can tell by the vein bulging over your brow. Has anyone talked to you about what the head of J-13 is up to in the city?"

"What? Who? Oh, Colonel Pie's freaks. I don't know, I've been concentrating on the weapons-running - wait, why are you asking about her?"

"Colonel Pie? She was just made lieutenant colonel, I thought?"

"I beat the new promotion lists out of a traitor last week. You wouldn't believe how often that mare gets promoted, We have somepony who's on that problem now, it wasn't my department. Wait. DON'T DISTRACT ME! What is this about Pie?"

"She's setting up some sort of Griffish town council? Full of real rotters, but some decent griffons, too."

"No, this is the first I've heard of such a thing. Like who?"

Gilda gave names and locations. And added that only 'Colonel Pie' seemed to know what it was all about.

Flagg Staff was intrigued. He was almost calm by the time that Gilda finished.

And then, just when Gilda thought they maybe would let her go, she suddenly found a hoof with a stinking white rag shoved in front of her beak, and things went wobbly again.

She woke up the next morning tucked snugly in her own bunk with a terrible headache.

At least she was warm again.

A Scrimmage In A Back Alley

Gilda sat beside Gwaine on the buckboard, rolling slightly as she read the weekly papers and he drove their covered heavy cart down the Boulevard of the Corvids. A block and a half ahead of them, the cobblestones rang with the hoofsteps of hundreds of steel-shod ponies marching in formation, part of a pony regiment moving stiffly through that bitter winter air, in the general direction of Fort Gharne.

Two of Gilda's rankers were in the traces pulling the cart; three more heavy carts followed behind, all bumping over the chilly cobblestones. It wasn't snowing, but it was still damnably cold, and the packed snow got stuck between the paving stones, lurking to heave the occasional stone up out of the street and rattle an unwary's rider's beak.

Gilda had her wings half-extended, in a mostly futile attempt to keep her balance in her seat while she read her papers. There weren't really dailies published anymore in the Griffish Isles due to shortages and distribution issues, and there was only two weeklies that published outside of Trottingham, neither of them in the rebel sympathizing districts of the main island. The closest thing to a rebel sheet was a four-pager called the Beak and Bone, and it wasn't so much a disloyal paper as one that was unpredictable and caustic. Gilda had heard that they'd been raided numerous times, but had heard little about the printer herself.

The papers were full of the doings of the princess, all the Trottingham ones, at least. The news didn't seem to have reached the Blue Skye or the Dark Roost Beacon as of the last printings. If this was a secret visit, Gilda couldn't imagine what a well-publicized one might look like.

Three of the papers were basically pony society journals, and unless you cared to know which impoverished peer or peer's daughter was chasing which factory-owner's heiress, you weren't likely to get much of interest out of reading those, but occasionally they had obituaries of notables. Or so Gilda had been told, she never was able to pick the notables out of the usual array of decrepit widows and ancient, irrelevant relics. She just didn't know Trottingham well enough to tell who was a mover and a shaker, and who was just shaking in a corner, waiting for the killing to end.

The two griffish weeklies were more interesting, and of those, the Beak and Bone was the most interesting. The griffon who wrote it - and it almost certainly was just one hen, or else they'd managed to get every single contributor to write in the same eccentric style - was no fan of the princesses, but in previous numbers they'd shown a level of hatred for the rebels that put cats' proverbial hatred for water into the shade. Perhaps it was just that one of the princesses was in town and available for abuse, so the sins of the insurrection were left for later, so that the Beak could feast upon this week's lunch special. An opportunity target, of sorts. But whoever they were, they were surprisingly well-informed about Mi Dolente Cadenza's deportment and couture. Were they a griffon in one of the battalions?

Oh, this was interesting. Where had Gilda heard this particular turn of phrase, 'pink watering-can'? The prince-major. It couldn't be… could it?

Gwaine turned their cart off of the main drag, and into one of the neighborhood access roads, leaving the distant companies of ponies to continue their shivering march towards the city wall and the fortifications around the harbor. Gilda loudly commented on each road they turned onto, each time they made a turn, and Gwaine rolled his eyes at each announcement. No one else said anything, and the heavy canvas covering the cargo bed didn't ripple in reply, either.

There was a mixed group of ponies and griffons waiting for them in a courtyard off of an alley running parallel to Threepenny Road. This was boss country, and the guild militias didn't have any griffons patrolling these alleys and streets. Gilda vaguely recognized the greasy-maned unicorn as the one from Chop Shop's garage. No sign of Chop Shop herself.

"This 'ere the merchandise?" asked the unicorn stallion.

"Damn, colt, I don't know, maybe. We were taking these down to Tinker's Alley to pre-position for the evacuation of the doctors and nurses. I guess they won't be getting their carts, if your boys are gonna 'hijack' 'em. Where's Chop Shop?" Gilda said.

"Oi don't see your officer, either, 'en," the criminal pony replied.

"Ma'am was busy, sent me to make the exchange."

"So I 'ears, so I 'ears - alla the Territorials is supposed to be outside ov the walls to prance for the princess. Why're you birds 'ere with yer carts, if you're supposed to be out wif the rest of the Terries?"

"Well, you know they can spare somegriff like me and my boys. They prefer to not know what we're up to on the best of days, let alone a bastard cold day like today. At least this here coach-bench ain't as cold as freezing my feathers off out there in the open, with the damned Boreal blowing on 'em all. Where's Chop Shop?"

"So it turns out, the mum, she was busy too. Everypony's busy today, cept you and me. Busy days, ain't it? Even if it is cold as a 'og's 'ind tit."

"We're all busy. I got shit to do myself, can we make this happen before my own hind tits freeze?"

"Agreement was for carts an' the 'ead of Longshanks."

"What are you, stupid? I wasn't going to be carrying a horse head through the streets. There are patrols out here! We were driving right down the middle of the Corvids!"

"That's the thing, me 'en. You've been johnny out of sight for 'ow long now? We thought Longshanks maybe did for you and your fancy 'orse. Then we didn't 'ear from Longshanks either, and we didn't know what ta think."

Ponies and griffons with gonnes emerged from the shadows all around the griffons in their cart-traces and on their buckboards. Enough to make one hell of an ambush.

"And then? One of our ponies wif' the provosts, she sees Longshanks bein' hauled t' an iterrygations room in the guts of Gharne. We sees that, and we figgers you weren't serious about your business proposal. Till we got yer message. Chop Shop don't appreciate bein' taken for a ride." The unicorn stallion took out Gilda's signed note, throwing it in the alleyway mud underhoof.

"So g'bye, Corporal Gilda ov Griffonstone. We don't fancy yer type here. Light her oop, boys!"

Gilda kicked the buckboard twice.

Two things happened in rapid succession at this point. The distinctive oil-slick waver of the anti-gonne spell turned the world to rainbowed underwater shimmer, followed quickly by a series of sharp cracks as the armed gangsters did their best to shoot down Gilda and her rankers.

Lieutenant Slapshot's shield held, wobbling in that distinctive way that an anti-gonne shield under fire did as each bit of high-velocity lead was slowed and stopped mid-air. Gilda started breathing again, and she reached forward to pull the rip-cord releasing her rankers from their encumbering traces. Everygriff grabbed their ready-weapons, which for the two just set free of their traces were hidden under the cart's haul-pole, their bundles dropped loose by the same ripcord that had freed the griffons from of their harnesses.

Gilda and Gwaine grabbed their own gonnes out from under the buckboard. The Marezonian ponies in the cargo hold threw off their canvas covers, and rolled over the sides of the cart, waving their own pointy bits in every direction as they got their orientation in the sudden brightness of the sheltered space under the unicorn's magical dome. The other carts had all sprouted their own little magic domes, and the Territorials operating them were likewise shaking loose their restraints and retrieving their projectile weapons as their pony cargos dismounted under cover.

Gilda barked in outrage as the swifter-witted villains dropped their gonnes and scattered.

"ONE ROUND RAPID!" Gilda screamed, bringing her own gonne to bear on one of the dumbasses staring stupidly at the griffons who had failed to be properly shot down.

Her weapon misfired.

She looked down at her piece as the other griffons' gonnes barked and smoked at the would-be ambushers. Her gonne's priming pan had lost its black powder charge. Gilda cursed and scrabbled to re-fill her pan, and then snapped back to the scene, which was now in natural light as the Marezonian officers had let their shields drop so that the griffons could fire.

There was one horned pony still in view, running towards the passageway into Threepenny.

Gilda fired, and this time the gonne bucked in her talons. The pony went down with a red spray.

"GIDDY UP!" screamed Captain Big Bell, and that pegasus led the charge. A thunder of hooves heralded the armed stampede as the Marezonians gave chase.

In a matter of seconds, only the griffons were left with the abandoned carts, the clouds of gonne-smoke, and the bodies.

"OK," yelled Gilda. "Hens and toms, time to police the scene! Find the wounded! Gather the gonnes! Gwaine, Grant, reload and stand guard, I don't want any surprises!"

She walked over to the other side of the barricade, grabbing a polearm from one of the rankers looking stupidly at a dead pony lying in a heap in the muddy slush. She looked around the edge, ready for a stay-behind to try to take her head off.

Oh, look, another cart. Her lucky day.

"One round rapid?" Big Bell asked with a broad grin on her face. "Last time I heard, those gonnes only got one round in 'em without steppin' and fetchin' and playin' with rammy-rods and powder-horns."

Gilda looked up at the huge pegasus as she touched down in the alleyway. Captain Bell had been the first to return. There weren't many pegasi with the Marezonians, and the big pegasus's wings, however stubby and silly-looking, gave her a degree of mobility the earth ponies and unicorns that made up the bulk of that regiment couldn't match.

"We're using the manual of arms for bowponies. Longbowponies. Supposedly, they can get up to a dozen rounds off per minute. Same with unicorns and their horn-blasts. Doctrine calls for 'five rounds rapid', and as soon as I can get a gonne that can fire five rounds in a minute, you can be damn sure I'll be calling for that."

Gilda was standing over the pony she'd shot down, overseeing Gerrald as he cleaned the hideous wound on her victim's head. He'd never hold another gonne in his horn-magic again, poor bastard, but maybe he'd live out the day.

"And what kind of battle-cry is 'Giddy up', anyways?" Gilda said. Then she added, reluctantly, "Captain ma'am?"

"Aw, roadapples, seemed like the thing to say at the time. What shoulda I cried, 'Celestia Wills It'? 'Fer Harmony An' Equestria'?" The pegasus shrugged her wings, smiling amiably.

"'Charge' probably would have sufficed, captain ma'am," Gilda suggested. The Marezonians were not the most disciplined bunch Gilda had seen in her relatively short career in the military, but they didn't seem to get embarrassed about it.

"Anyhoo, we lassoed at least five runners," Captain Bell said. "The rest have either gone to ground, or maybe got picked up by the main body. We'll see what they come back with in about twenty minutes, they were still scrambling when I left."

"Any griffons, captain ma'am?" Gilda asked.

"Just the two I saw. It's the blue zone, the ponies that went to ground can't hide too long, can they?" Technically Big Bell should have been in charge of this part of the operation, but the big captain didn't know the ground or the situation, so everypony was deferring to the Territorial corporal. It made Gilda a little uneasy.

"Depends on how many bits they've been sloshing around in this neighborhood. They had to have made themselves pretty popular with the local beefers if Boss Gantry was willing to let them pull this horseshit on his turf."

"Is that what these griffons are, local troops of the neighborhood boss?"

"Well, it's nothing that organized, I think. I'm as much of an outsider to these alleys as you ponies are. We've got two wounded griffons in the carts already. Neither is Gantry. Let's see your captives."

When the Marezonian detail with the first batch of prisoners arrived, neither of the griffon runners were Gantry, either. Gilda didn't know the boss, but Gwaine was a local, and said he knew ol' Gantry from his civilian days.

"You see him before the ambush went shooty?" Gilda asked him.

"I dunno, Corporal. There was a griffon about the right age at the back besides the barricade, 'ad a 'at over ‘is eyes. Coulda been 'im, coulda been any ov a 'alf-dozen other codgers from the Threepenny."

"Well, nuts. That's a disappointment."

The road outside the alley entrance filled up with more and more ponies as the two companies that had proceeded Gilda's detachment returned with their own captures. They'd turned around at the sound of the gunfire, as arranged beforehand. The runners had run smack into a nice little screening force who had been told what to expect. The gangsters had been roped, tied, and hauled back to the ambush-site, trussed up like Boreas Day turkeys. After exchanging a few appreciative, admiring words with the Marezonian's heavily-made-up earth pony colonel Gilda turned to one of the trussed-up ponies sitting in the churned mud of the alley behind Threepenny Road.

"Well, no sign of Boss Gantry, and we know we weren't going to get Chop Shop herself. I guess we'll have to satisfy ourselves with you, Greasy. What's your name, anyways?" Gilda knew Sneaker's name, but the basis for future interrogation was to get the grif- the pony into the habit of answering his captors' questions.

"Ain't 'Greasy.'"

"Well, Greasy certainly suits you. Or maybe Muddy Arse. What do you think, Colonel Jubilee? Dungflank maybe?"

"Shucks, I think I'm not the pony to help ya with questionin' ponies, corporal! Y'all have fun, I gotta get my colts back in stable afore they freeze their ballsacks off. See ya, let us know next time you need beaters for another hunt, honey, my colts’ll bring you some quick hooves and strong backs to snap them coneys right up."

The bound unicorn and Gilda watched the red-maned officer sashay off with her ponies in tow, and Gilda wondered how a mare wearing that much armor could look so… well. She looked at the very much not sexy Captain Big Bell, and raised an enquiring eyebrow.

"What? Everypony loves the colonel. They say she might be the next governor."

"I didn't say anything, captain ma'am. Thank you all for your help and consideration."

"Ain't nothing. We're just tourists round these parts, getting Princess Celestia's grand tour of the east. War's how harmony teaches ponies geography, don'cha know?" The big captain looked down at their prisoner.

"Waddya gonna do with the greaseball, Corporal?" asked the pegasus.

"Turn him over to the MPs along with the rest. Let their prison hospital deal with the wounded, let their docs sew 'em up."

"This town shows a certain lack of deputies. Where's the law? The manuals say we're supposed to hand criminals over to the local authorities."

Gilda and Captain Bell turned to look at Gwaine.

"Boss Gantry is the local authorities, captain ma'am," said Gwaine, looking anxious to be talking to a pony who wasn't in Territorial colors.

"What! Whaddya mean he's the authorities?" the big beefy mare demanded.

"'E was Constable Gantry back when they was still constables. Neighborhoods where as the JPs survived, they's the bosses. Where th' rebels got 'em, the constables generally took over, those the rebels didn't knife, that is."

"Sound just like home," Gilda snarked. "Except nogriff claiming they were chosen by the Four Winds for the job on account of a great-great grandhen that sat on a golden shitter."

Big Bell laughed, and then shivered in the cold wind blowing through the alleyway.

"I don't know about you-all, but my feathers are turnin' blue. OK, colts, git up and go! Let's go find the barracks before the hinges freeze shut!"

The armored ponies passed out of the alley into the street outside, where they could form a column and move out. A bit of yelling and whooping, and then the Marezonian captain and her ponies were gone, too, and it was just Gilda and her griffons. And their prisoners.

"'Ow'd you know?"

Gilda looked down at the shivering unicorn tied up at her paws.

"How'd I know what?" Gilda asked. "That you were going to fuck us? You're criminals, of course you were going to fuck us. I just wish we'd gotten your griffon co-conspirator, that's all. He's already tied up, boys. But tie a bow on him for the MPs. He knows an awful lot about the contents of their prison in Gharne. Maybe he'll see his filly there. That'd be nice, wouldn't it, Sneaker?"

Gilda kicked the gangster, and nodded for Grant to drag him off to one of the guarded carts. She wondered if she'd see Boss Gantry at Lieutenant Colonel Pie's griffish city council. He seemed to have the instincts for politics. Never there when the gonnes started barking.

A Time For Choosing

Gilda sat on another cart's buckboard, bundled up in a blanket against the cold, trying to read a book she'd found in Gleaming Shield's things. The unicorn officer had discovered another cache of books in the garrison which, if you squinted real hard and lowered your expectations, might conceivably be called, with a spirit of generosity, a 'library'. This book in particular was a heavily-worn volume purporting to be a history of the city and noble dynasty of Trottingham, written from a very biased pony perspective.

You'd think the first duchesses of Trottingham had been ponies, for all the writer ever mentioned the species of that clan of notables. Only the names gave any clue to the unwary reader. Gilda was not impressed, at all.

All around Gilda, anarchy was set loose within the bustling confines of Tinker's Alley. The cart she was sitting on rocked now and again as orderlies, nurses, and griffish troopers dumped this box or that bundle in the cart-bed. Gilda largely ignored the process, having decided that the organization of the materials and their arrangement was the business of the creatures of the 93/1st, and none of hers.

She was here to make sure that nogriff took a five-talon discount on… scalpels, or winding-bandages, or… bedpans?

Gilda wasn't sure why she was here, but Gleaming Shield was still busy with her stupid sexy foal-sitting princess, and Lady George had told Gilda she needed to be here for some reason that the enormous bird of prey hadn't bothered to detail. The turul had spent the previous chilly day flying about the city while Gilda had been busy shooting ponies in the back, orchestrating ambushes, delivering heavy haulage carts, and dropping off prisoners at Fort Gharne.

"We don't have room for that monstrosity, Captain Eye! It's against a dozen regulations, it's dangerous, and it stinks!"

"Shut up, Burns. My still is a necessary piece of squadron equipment. We're not leaving it behind so that you can fill up a cart with trashed surgical tools, used bandages, and old bed linens. They're not even clean bed linens! It's all garbage! And what are we going to use broken scalpels and bent clamps for?"

The hippogriff grabbed a sample out of the box sitting on the cart behind Gilda, and brandished the surgical tool in front of the unicorn's face. "I know we call it 'meatball surgery', but not even you would use half a scalpel to open up a patient!"

"They're still squadron equipment, and they've not been written off the inventory lists! That could be re-forged into a perfectly fine scalpel, good as new! And stop calling me 'Burns', my name is Burn Salve!"

"Your name should be 'walking malpractice lawsuit'! And it's garbage, you little weasel!" Hawk Eye threw the offending article over her own shoulder, where it landed between two cobblestones, broken blade down, quivering, right between the squadron commander's hooves.

"Lieutenant Colonel Pole! Tell her she can't take her illegal still with us!"

Fishing Pole looked up, blood in his eye.

Metaphorically.

"Salve, I don't want to hear about it! Hawk Eye, stop throwing sharp objects at ponies!"

The two doctors started talking over each other, yelling.

"I don't CARE! Work it out between the two of you, I don't have time for your damn squabbles. Smoking Tartarus, take it to the griffons, these are their carts. You! Corporal… Grizelda?"

Gilda looked up from her book and looked around, coming to the realization that she was the only Territorial corporal in sight. "Me, lieutenant colonel sir?"

"Yes, you. You griffons are in charge of these rolling disgraces, you referee these two foals'... whatever this is. I don't have time for it. Ping!" The pegasus jumped, realizing that the spooky little bat-pony was already behind him, with a clip-board already held out for Fishing Pole to look at. "Damn it, Ping, you're going to give me a heart attack. Can't you wear… I don't know, a bell?"

"Bells hurt my ears, sir. The next issue is over behind the main house in the alleyway, follow me…" The two administration ponies trotted off, leaving the fuming doctors staring at each other and Gilda with matching peevish expressions.

Well, as long as they were heated, they weren't freezing, Gilda thought, suppressing a shiver.

"Captain, ma'am. Major, sir. You see these stripes? Do you know what they mean?"

"Yes, of course. You're a corporal," said the major.

"What do they signify?"

"You are a very junior non-commissioned officer," Burn Salve said, as if to a mentally deficient child.

"Do they mean I outrank a major or a captain?"

"Stop wasting our time, corporal!" snapped the 'hippogriff' with her weird talons shoved in her armpits, trying to keep them from freezing. "I don't want to arrive in our new posting with first-degree frostbite."

"Why can't the damn pegasi bring in a warm front?" demanded the pony major, likewise standing on his rear hooves with his forehooves folded in front of him, protecting them from the cold cobblestones. "Back home in Hoofington, they'd always bring a break in the weather on the first of the month, so that anypony who was moving could do so without all of this… cold!"

"Trottingham doesn't have a weather team, major." He didn't rate a sir. "The pegasi who grace us with their presence generally have better things to do than mess around with the clouds." Especially when it was this cold. Gilda certainly wouldn't care to go flying on a day like today.

"It's not the way things are done! It's like the Isles aren't even in Equestria!" The Isles weren't in Equestria, Gilda thought, and did her best to not let those thoughts show themselves on her face. She'd gotten that much from the book, if nothing else. The sun alicorn might be Duchess of Trottingham, but that didn't make the Isles part of the realm. It made Celestia Duchess of Trottingham. Technically, the Equestrian EUP Guard was in the Isles at the express invitation of Celestia in her ducal person.

Gilda sometimes wondered what might have happened if the last griffish duchess had left the coronet to one of the elderly hen's many combative suitors. Even on her deathbed, they'd tried to make love to the old bird. Three centuries later, Gilda found herself sickened by the behavior of those repugnant, long-dead toms. Gharne had spited them all, left a will in the custody of her most loyal retainers, left the duchy to her immortal neighbor to the west.

Gilda didn't blame old Gharne for not leaving it to her overbearing neighbor to the east. King Guto of Griffonstone had been one of her most obnoxious suitors.

"Corporal! Corporal!" Captain Hawk Eye was snapping her talons in Gilda's face. What? Oh, right.

Gilda looked into the box of garbage that Burn Salve had dumped on her cart. Then she looked at the disassembled still sitting on the cobblestones next to the hippogriff.

"Why are you making my griffons pack rubbish, Major? This is barely worth hauling out to the nearest tip or landfill."

"If we leave our expended supplies here, they'll only be misappropriated by the local savages! We must keep our properly issued supplies in the possession of the squadron, pursuant to logistics manual CE 142:01, page eighty-eight, section three!"

Local savages. Right.

"OK, you don't want the tinkers pawing through your broken scrap and dirty linen. Objection noted. Captain ma'am, why is the still against regulations?" asked Gilda.

"Why are you asking me? He's the one who says so! I'm the one who wants my damn still brought with us. I need it!"

Gilda fumed, internally. They'd gotten Captain Falcon shipped back to the garrison, so his constant inebriation was no longer a concern for the Territorials left with the 93/1st, but it still stuck in her craw. "I asked you to express why it might be against regulations, in hopes of getting a definition in your own words. What does regulations actually say?"

"How the bottomless depths should I know? Do I look like a mare who reads regulations? I'm a doctor some imbecile waved a wand over and declared a captain, not a soldier who barely knows which end of a scalpel to cut with."

Gilda thought she looked like a half-pony, half-griffon abomination, but she wasn't going to tell an officer that, no matter how careless and unmilitary that officer was. No ma'am for her, either.

"Fine, Major Salve, can you express why you prioritize worthless garbage over this apparatus for the distillation of swill?" Gilda asked the huffy unicorn.

"Hey! I make perfectly potable gin with my still! It is a marvel of portable distillation technology!"

Gilda turned back to the hippogriff. "Which is not an argument in favor of it getting shipped all the way out to Bridlederry with the rest of the squadron. It's a detriment to unit discipline, at best."

"What she said!" sniffed Burn Salve, and Gilda felt dirty for being in agreement with the weasel. She suddenly wanted to find reasons to haul the heap of metal components with them.

"It's a valuable morale-building tool!"

Gilda rolled her eyes at the captain.

"Fine! We also use it to generate pure distilled alcohol for disinfectants, and the gin itself is useful for pain-killing in extreme situations. Which we've encountered in this dump, given how often the supplies have been disrupted. It's a backup for our actual painkiller supplies, and proper chemical disinfectants!"

"Alcohol is a metabolic poison, which makes it a rotten painkiller, and an inefficient disinfectant!" objected the major.

"Fine! Backup source of painkillers and disinfectants for when supplies are disrupted, that sounds like an argument to me," Gilda said, jumping at the opening. She kicked Burn Salve's box of rubbish off of the cart, and waved to the freed-up bit of cargo real estate. "Go wild, Captain Eye. One emergency disinfectant distillation rig, added to the inventory. Next time I see Ping, I'll have her add it to the lists."

"Ping's a stallion," Hawk Eye corrected Gilda.

"What, are you sure?"

They both nodded at her.

Gilda cringed. She thought she had been better than that at judging the genders of ponies.

Thankfully, it was about then that a shadow blocked out Celestia's feeble-rayed winter sun, and Lady George appeared overhead, with a couple griffons flying alongside her.

And Rarity the Unicorn riding side-saddle on the great turul's back like a fledgeling carried on her mother's back.

The diamond dog surgeon and his little harem of cooks and nurses scattered from the middle of the street, as Lady George landed with a mighty thump. The three griffons of great dignity and age settled around her in the street, looking around themselves at the chaos they had just brought to a halt with their arrival. They had landed in front of the guildmaster's mansion, and one of them was staring inside the mansion through the poorly patched hole in the parlor window that some careless charioteer had knocked out a few weeks back during one particularly wild emergency landing with a cart full of dying soldiers.

Gilda walked up to Lady George and the new griffons as Rarity daintily picked her way down the turul's extended wing and jumped to the cobbles below.

"Lady George, this is why I had to be here today?" Gilda asked.

"Ah, Corporal Gilda, so good to see you. Might I introduce to you some mutual friends of Rarity's and I? I hope they will become friends of yours as well. Guildmasters Gort, Gren, and Garrick."

Garrick was the name of the missing master of the tinsmiths and tinkers guild, that ancient worthy whose sacked-out home they were standing outside of, right now. Gilda looked at the long-faced, grizzled old griffon peering inside of his home, and felt a sudden wash of intense shame.

"Lord Garrick," Gilda bowed, deeply. "I would like to extend the Fifth Griffish Territorial Battalion's collective thanks for your generous and patriotic contribution of your premises for the uses they have been put in this time of privation and necessity. The surgical squadron put them to hard but necessary use these last several weeks, and there are many a griffon and a pony who now cling fiercely to life, because they were given a talon up here in your home, and those of your guild-griffons. I wish the saving of them had been less costly to you and yours, in this, the hardest of seasons."

The old tom turned to look at Gilda, his gaze steady and without waver.

"I offered them as was my duty, and as was my griffons' duty. I see nothing burnt to the ground, nor irretrievably defiled, but then, we are simply standing in the street, no? A reckoning must be made. The ponies who requisitioned Tinker's Alley promised compensation for property used and expended. I do not see those ponies here."

Gilda paused, realizing just how out of her depth she was. "My apologies, Guildmaster. My involvement in the stewardship of Tinker's Alley came some days after your apparently hurried evacuation, and I have no idea who it was who made promises, and what was the substance of those promises. We'll get to the bottom of this, I promise so far as my promises mean anything."

"Hrm. Yes. I am not well versed in military matters, but I think you're rather young to be making any sort of promises. Although you're remarkably tall for your age. And… interesting colors. And accent. Griffonstonian?"

"Yes, guildmaster, sir. Recently emigrated."

"Sad state of affairs, Griffonstone. Not even now, in the winter of our discontent, can I envy your homeland's state of affairs. We must do better. I will take your proffer, young Gilda. Follow me, I want to see what has become of my home."

They toured the half-evacuated mansion, whose halls still bustled with orderlies and troopers packing up belongings, supplies, and random kibble. The kitchens were still in use, as the creatures of the 93/1st and the griffons of the Fifth still needed to eat, even as they tore down the rest of the hospital around the ears of the cook staff.

"Better than I'd thought," sighed the guildmaster as Rarity and the two other griffons followed them across the street into the now mostly emptied out journeygriff's hall. "Lady Rarity, your promises to oversee the situation here were not in vain, thank you. And Corporal Gilda, I trust the rest of the homes and shops are likewise… relatively kept up?"

"To the best of our abilities. There were some early incidents with the septic tanks that I had to get troopers to clean up. I don't think any permanent damage was done."

"Ha! Yes, these tanks were dug by a particularly greedy set of brothers in my father's time. I've never been able to replace them with something less temperamental. Ah, well."

"Guildmaster Garrick, may I ask, where have your griffons been? Working here in the Alley has been like walking among ghosts. We had no idea where you all had disappeared to, where you'd gone."

"Factory work, Corporal, factory work! Terrible crowding over on Foundry Hill, but we were kept busy. Most of them are working on that project of Rarity's and Cid Sawhorse's."

"Ah, I'm aware of it. I wish I had the bits to invest in it like Lady George did, I can smell the opportunities."

"Indeed. We once were more active in aeronautics, before the ponies forced us into these guild shackles. My grandfather wasn't nearly so stuffy as I have to be, if I want to maintain my griffons in their homes."

Gilda looked around at said twice-abandoned homes, and thought about the costs of that maintenance.

The old tom looked at her silent assessment, and chortled. "Indeed, indeed. Which is why I'm considering Lieutenant Colonel Pie's project, this new blue-zone city council. I find it difficult to understand how we can have two city councils without, in effect, having two cities. It sets in stone the disparate status of griffons and ponies. Bad enough that we have a pony duchess. But if we have a separate legislative body for griffons, does that mean that we're lesser subjects of that duchess? I've met Duchess Celestia. She's a noble pony, indeed. I don't think she intends to treat her griffish subjects differently than her pony ones."

"But if they're in separate buckets, it's impossible not to?" asked Gilda, trying to follow his logic.

"Exactly. Which is why I hesitate to take up the alder's robes once again. It was very painful, when they docked us from the body politic. One snip! And gone. The Docked Council, they call the pony's legislature. Which would make Lieutenant Colonel Pie's new griffish council what, the Tail's End?"

"Many of your fellow aldergriffs are not likely to be of good moral character," Gilda warned. "Among other reasons which makes me think the council may be a very bad idea."

"Whatever do you mean?" asked Garrick, smiling wryly.

"I don't trust the lieutenant colonel ma'am. She's got bats in her belfry."

"Hey!" yelped Ping as he flittered through their group, a long scrap of paper trailing from his clipboard, looking irate.

"No offense intended - oh, he's gone. Huh. Sorry - what were we talking about?" asked a disconcerted Gilda.

"The contents of the pink colonel's upper stories, I think?" said the guildmaster, smiling.

"She's crazy, the dangerous kind of crazy. And has a history of using flashy public displays to mousetrap the enemy, at the cost of the general public."

"One incident does not make a trend, young Gilda."

"The Crab Bucket was one hades of an incident. And I don't like the composition of the aldertoms and alderhens invited to join the council."

"You disapprove of my potential appointment?" Garrick asked, smiling dangerously.

"You're a unionist," Gilda said, in the least accusative manner she could summon.

"If you aren't planning to have me arrested for it, I will not quarrel with that assessment."

"So are all the other guildmasters invited. The non-guild griffons are, as far as we've been able to determine, the more problematic flavor of street boss and criminal mastermind," Gilda elaborated.

"And I will not quarrel with that assessment, either."

"Lieutenant Colonel Pie is plotting a massacre," Gilda said, flatly.

The old tom sat on his haunches, and looked pensive, staring at the stained washbasin they'd paused in front of, in one of the tinsmithies. Gilda thought it was the same one she'd seen a pony sergeant cleaning contaminated bedpans in, those many weeks ago, but wasn't about to bring it up in the current circumstances.

The guildmaster looked up from his reverie. "There are many things we cannot do without a legitimate council. Appoint new constables, regularize the guild militias, petition the duchess. All these are things that we might accomplish, in council. Not the great things we might do, with the Duchess In Council, but still, good things.

Garrick sighed. "Corporal Gilda, I was willing to sacrifice the homes of my griffons, and the property of my fore-fathers, to the long-term interests of the city of Trottingham, and the future prosperity of the workers of this city. If my presence in this mousetrap of a council can do a fragment of the good that this sacrifice, redeemed, has done, then how can I do ought but offer up my old beak and bones upon the altar? The workers and the duchess, they are worth the price.

The old guildmaster looked around the disheveled mess the ponies had left in his workers' homes. "And if not me, then who?"

Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow

"I will never be warm again, captain ma'am," whined the bat-hen.

"Don't exaggerate, Gilda. All the books insist that Griffonstone's climate is far colder than Trottingham's."

"But we have the feline sense to stay indoors when the world turns to white and Boreas hunts the frozen world over. And Grover's long dead. A smart cat knows to curl up by the fire and ignore the black months. She doesn't go stalking other idiots in the snows among the dead things."

"You were supposed to deliver the doctors to Bridlederry. How did that turn into 'stalking other idiots in the snow'?"

"Fort Guilliame, actually, captain ma'am. Emphasis on 'fort'. The war's still on out there. Every snowdrift's got a clan-griffon hiding in it with blood in their eyes. Those as who aren't snowblind."

"Again, it was just a delivery job. You were glorified moving vans."

"The war had other ideas. There was a bombing on Route Trottish. And then an ambush. And then everyone converged, and decided to throw a party in the snow. The damn doctors piled out in the middle of the road and set their damned surgical cots and started stitching and cutting right in the open.

"Captain ma'am, we had to set up tents over working surgical teams. With the north wind trying to freeze everyone on the spot."

"I'm sure they had their reasons," Gleaming Shield said, raising a brow at the half-melted snow dripping from Gilda's barding.

"They're all mad as Twopenny Lane hatters, is what their reasons are. Admittedly, we weren't getting any closer to Fort Guilliame with a three-battalion battle-front and half of Clan McGregor dying in the open on the road in between. Do they put something in the water here in the Isles? There had to have been thousands of imbeciles running around in a snowstorm trying to kill each other!"

"Haven't you ever had city-wide snowball fights in Griffonstone? We had some real corkers back when I was a foal in Canterlot City. One of the highlights of winter."

"Griffonstone snowballs traditionally are at least twenty-five percent rock by volume. It doesn't lend itself to large-scale playing about."

"You know, I don't remember seeing foals playing like that after… well. We were all far too busy at the Academy. And there was the war to think of."

"Not as much fun to play at war when there's the real thing, is it? Captain ma'am, life's war in Griffonstone. Playing at it in the street just invites actual bloodshed."

"So, five thousand creatures out in a snowstorm, and not a snowball to be seen?"

"Not a one, captain ma'am. On the plus side, the gonnes wouldn't have worked in a blizzard. The doctors mostly had to work with puncture and blunt-trauma casualties that first day. And frostbite."

"And after that?"

"Early morning on the second day, the Hayward Dragoons and the other reinforcements arrived. And the Dragoons set the wind on fire."

"Really drove the clan-griffons off the field, did they?"

"No, captain ma'am. Their flamethrowers blew back in the gale-force winds, and the streams aerosoled. I wasn't close enough to see what exactly happened, but the- the snow must have caught fire. Their charge disappeared into clouds of steam, and then fire… rain." The wind had carried the burning motes for a while, and had looked like what Gilda imagined a phoenix in flight must look, or volcanic ash falling from the skies, two things she'd never seen in person, but only read of.

She now had seen the wind on fire. And the things inside of it burning, falling.

The Dragoons had taken heavy casualties from their own weapons. Gilda had found a half-crazed Lieutenant Zippo Raid in the tangle of his own half-wrecked chariot, his pegasus insensate in the traces. The madpony, half his mane burnt off, had laughed hysterically as he'd watched the droplets of boiling water and flaming gel fall gently all around them, the heat from the burning stopping the driving winds over the fields beneath the failed charge, stilled by the updrafts.

"So this is why you're three days late, then?"

Gilda jerked, returned to the present.

"As was the rest of the battalion! Where were you, captain?"

"No ma'am for me when I'm absent without my bat-hen's approval, is it?"

"Of course not, captain ma'am."

"As you can see, I'm still detached, on princess-herding duty. Which is becoming increasingly unwieldy. And why I sent for you."

"Oh, I'm not complaining, captain ma'am. Let the rest of the old birds freeze their feathers off out there. Maybe they'll get the 93/1st finally into Fort Guilliame by the thaw. Those that don't end up in a ward with frostbite."

Gilda's captain consulted something wrapped around her right foreleg, and then smiled in satisfaction. "You missed the first meeting of Lady George and Princess Cadenza."

"Oh, hey, you upgraded your cheatsheet, captain ma'am!"

"It definitely helps. Cadance's heart broke when she heard about the turuls. She always did love those old breezie tales. The two of them have been chattering non-stop since 'Bob' came around and forced the matter. I would have completely forgotten about it, again, with you not here. I think we've had about enough of you galavanting about on your own, Corporal, while we're on that subject. Are you my bat-hen, or are you some sort of… knight-errant, or land-privateer?"

Gleaming Shield had been the pony who'd ordered Gilda to be very, very busy somewhere which wasn't princess-infested. And then had mostly ordered the bat-hen to be elsewhere as often as possible. But if the captain was willing to let that particular unpleasantness blow away in the wind, Gilda was willing to let it go, and not worry about whoever caught it in the face downwind.

"You caught me going out to collect an accurate map of the East," the unicorn said, brandishing said rolled-up map in her horn-glow. "They're in Lady George's stable. The princess sent most of her attendants away, and shoved the guards outside to guard the hallways and the doors. They're getting on like a house on fire."

"Mmm… fire. That sounds nice." Gilda grimaced at the captain's look of alarm. "No, captain ma'am, that they're getting along. George seems restless sometimes. And the Princess is a princess, isn't she? She'll remember conversations from one day to the next, without George having to pretend to be a Trottish weirdo with an improbable name."

"What is the deal with that? I've never met a griffon with a name like 'Bob'."

"I knew a bird who went by Billy back in Griffonstone."

"Well, that's something."

"It was short for Guilliame."

"And that isn't. How many birds named Guilliame are there, anyways?"

"He was a hero of myth and legend. Also, boringly, history. The first Duke of Trottingham!"

"The original rulers of Trottingham were ponies. You can tell by the name."

Gilda had been reading her history, she knew this. "Aha! But they weren't dukes! First barons, then earls. Then the second siege of Trottingham, and Guillliame forced them to surrender before they had to figure out if ponies were capable of cannibalism, because they'd eaten everything else."

"That sounds vaguely familiar. Didn't I see it in a play somewhere?"

Their walking conversation was interrupted by a sudden bright flash that obscured Gilda's view of the corridor, and the guards at the end of that corridor, before a barred door. As she and Gleaming Shield blinked away their blindness, Gilda saw the source of their torment - that damned yellow unicorn and her photographic camera.

"Damn it, Lemon Hearts!" cursed Gilda's captain. "Do you have to do that every time I enter the Princess's presence?"

"Every time a new visitor shows up, Twilight!"

"Stop calling me that! Gah. Gilda, where was I?"

"We were talking about Guilliame and that old play, The Breaking Of The Nag?"

"Ha! No, not the piece I was thinking of, although I think I've heard of that version. Griffish, right? I remember, now. Stooping To Conquer. Dowry Sting and…"

"Her griffon bridegroom from the Isles clans, Guilliame, yes. I've never heard of Stooping To Conquer. Was it any good?" Gilda and Gleaming Shield passed between the guards posted by the inner door into George's stables, leaving the obnoxious photographer outside in the hall. They found the two princesses inside, with one of the White Sisters sitting in a half-circle beside Lady George's vast sitting-bed, chatting amiably and eating a late dinner.

Lady George had a huge salted slab of tuna, of course.

"The version I saw," continued Gleaming Shield, "was re-cast as a rather pointed propaganda piece, so no, it was not particularly good. Princess! Do you remember that awful play they put on for the first anniversary of the bombings?"

"Oh, stars, not until you reminded me. Awful bit of theater, wasn't it, Livery?" The pink winged unicorn was still as striking as always, but somehow she felt less… overwhelming in the presence of that great bird of prey looming over her. George looked down at her with as much of a smile as the turul's beak could show, nipping thoughtfully at her salted tuna. Gilda could even look at Princess Cadenza without quailing, now that the princess's attention was directed elsewhere.

And it was hard to be over-awed by a pony picking at a salad, even one that smelled as good as this one did. What were they eating?

"I barely recall," said the white earth pony, digging around in her salad for what Gilda couldn't see. "We see so many bad productions, don't we? And noblesse oblige requires we attend every season, year in, year out, no matter how bad the actors, the book, or the direction. We're hardly Manehattan, are we? Such a shame. Aunt Celly loves theater so much, but theater doesn't love her back." Lady Livery shoved a spoonful of the salad into her mouth, wilted lettuce, white flaky stuff, sauce and all. "Ah, delicious. I don't know how we ever survived without 'Shelly Greens'."

The white noblepony turned to the great bird above her, and continued her chatter in between bites of her crab salad.

"Now, Lady George, please, tell us more about the Great Roost. Do you have theater?"

"We don't have nearly the population for big performances," rumbled the huge bird. "Not like you have here in the teeming cities of the west. We can only maintain so many birds in a given territory! The Great Roost is all we can gather together, and then only in the fat of the year. Turuls are solitary creatures in times like now. In the winter, the game hibernate, or hide, or husband their resources against the starving times. Ironically, they'll be in the Bugbear Territory this month, a lot of them, hunting the winter game while the bugbears are hibernating. The turul are never so far west as in January, but they're impossibly scattered, every bird alone on the hunt. The Great Roost will be empty tonight, not even my idiot brother and his supporters. The gathering will not begin until the green is back on the land, and the spring game-animals are back in the fields and the woods."

"So, April?" asked Princess Cadenza.

"In the mountains, more like May. And yes, we did occasionally get a troupe of diamond dogs who put on performances for gems and precious metals. Pretty little speeches, scenes from this and that. I eventually came to recognize what they were performing, from the books my mother gave me. When she bothered to acknowledge my existence."

"Why, did the Queen of the Turuls not pay attention to her heir?" asked Livery.

"I was not her heir until a few years ago. My elder sister was the cosseted successor to be. Until she tried to add to our inheritance by carving out a swathe of new hunting-lands from the altiplano, and the hidalgos killed her and a few of her followers."

"What, she was able to gather followers through that coronet-curse?" asked Gleaming Shield, frowning in concentration as she maintained her shield against said curse.

"My elder sister was an impressive bird, with charisma to burn. So yes, even through this blasted coronet. It wasn't enough to keep the ballista-bolt from her heart, or so I have heard, third-claw via my late mother. A cautionary tale, delivered with the coronet itself."

"We have sent a request for magi," said Livery, "from the Academy of Magic, and specialists from… well, from the agency in charge of investigating foreign creatures and deep magic. But since we have to send our appeals through Aunt Celly, it will be a slow process."

"I can't make my case before the Turulmoot with this damn cursed artifact on my head! But the deadlines are rushing on me. I can feel it in my hollow bones, this will be a breeding year. If I'm not brooding on the nest of nests by July, the whole of the continent will be inundated with a generation of rocs, or worse, an entire generation killed in the nest by their mothers."

"We will do everything in our power," promised Princess Cadenza, impulsively. "I cannot leave an entire race of mothers in mourning! It cannot be tolerated!"

Gilda waved unsteadily, suddenly overcome with a grey wave of hopelessness and pain. Images of past and not-nearly-past-enough horrors flickered in her peripheral vision. Burning griffons and chariots, falling, the boiling rain… The princess's pretty speech faded from Gilda's hearing as the roaring of the burning wind filled her ears.

"Cadance. You're projecting again. Calm yourself"

"What? Oh. Sorry. Corporal Gilda, Princess George, please, calm yourselves. My apologies?"

Gilda blinked, slowly, and the cool, calm stables came back to her. "N-no problem, princess ma'am. Has anyone ever told you, you pack a wallop?"

"It has been noted, by my family among others," Cadance looked ruefully at her elder sister, who was calmly drinking from a flask of tea, her dinner finished and neatly packed to the side. "I forget myself sometimes. Have you collected yourself, Princess George?"

"Y-yes. The coronet protected me, a little. That's quite the trick you have in your sleeve, Princess Cadance."

"Please, call me Cadance."

"Then you must call me George."

"I want to send you and my ponies on an expedition, today! My pegasus guard could easily take us into the Bugbear Territory. You might not be able to talk to your birds, but I can! And we all have wings! It'll be an adventure, and I hope, one without any bloodshed or grief. It's perfect!"

Gilda, still burdened with that wash of remorse and sadness the princess's surge had left lapping around her paws, thought about the bloodshed in the districts, of Clan MacGregor impaling themselves bravely on pony spear-heads, of the Dragoons immolating themselves, of hospital-tents full of screaming wounded and yelling doctors. She thought of the war that this well-intentioned but undisciplined princess had midwifed into existence.

And then she thought of the noble, resolved face of that old unionist guildmaster, promising to walk into the lion's den, walk into Lieutenant Colonel Pie's death-trap, for the sake of his workers, and his absent duchess.

"No," Gilda said.

The ponies bent their heads over Gleaming Shield’s detailed map, and continued their chatter of quests and adventure and problems which neither pressed nor were imminent. Ignoring the war in front of their muzzles. Chasing legends and magic.

"No," Gilda repeated, and Gleaming Shield turned, her attention diverted from the princesses and their plans.

"What are you-" Gilda's captain started to ask.

"No!" Gilda interrupted her. Lady Livery's attention was attracted as Gilda's wings rose in threat-display.

"NO!" Gilda shouted, angrily, in her parade-voice.

The princesses turned, astonished.

"Gilda!" Gleaming Shield yelped, scandalized. "You can't yell at-"

"No more tomorrows!" Gilda yelled. "No more pretty plans! Not today! Not with hundreds bleeding and dying in the freezing cold outside of Bridederry! Not with that lunatic Pie plotting the murder of good griffons for whatever mad plan she has made for us! No more!"

Gilda gathered herself, on the brink of tears.

"Princess, please. These are your birds, your ponies - not some foreign flock you've never laid eyes upon. I can't appeal to Lady George, because that dispersed flock of turul are her flock, but they are not yours. And yours aren't worrying about the eggs of next summer, they're dying today! Tonight. In the snows outside of these walls.

"Leave tomorrow to bury tomorrow's dead! Give your full attention to today's while they still live!"

A burst of sardonic clapping erupted behind Gilda, and she turned, furious, to look at the interloper.

That damned yellow unicorn was standing there, clapping her forehooves together.

"Bra-va, Corporal. I don't think I've seen anyone tell off one of the princesses in a cockatrice's age," said Lemon Hearts, smirking.

News At The Speed Of Thaumfire

The camera in Lemon Hearts' horngrip went off with a blinding flash, catching the two princesses, Gilda, Captain Shield, and the white sister in its basilisk stare.

As Gilda blinked away the afterimages, she heard a mechanical whining noise, and just as her vision cleared, she caught a glimpse of green light around part of that camera's mechanism, a different color than the unicorn's purple hornglow. It almost looked like… fire.

Gilda shook away the fiery flashback, and frowned at the interloper, striding forward to put herself between her and the VIPs. "I don't see how it's any business of yours, flunky. Step back in your lane, and get out of here. Where are the guards?"

"Corporal," said the white sister, Lady Livery, "don't. Let us deal with this."

"There's no way this is right, my lady. Is this pest blackmailing you or something? I've heard stories about retainers getting above themselves in noble families, it never ends well."

"Who could imagine?" asked Gleaming Shield, her restraining hoof resting on Gilda's thickly padded field armor. "An underling getting above herself, and interjecting herself into matters above her purview."

"No, let her keep talking," laughed Lemon Hearts. "This is hilarious. I love to watch the griffon heiress play-act. This is a new one, though. From j'accuse to furiously protective retainer in three seconds flat!"

"Go ahead, unicorn, talk about things you know nothing about again," blustered Gilda. Heiress? What did this staff photographer think she knew? And what the hades did that mean? The only inheritance Gilda had claim to was debt and shame.

Lemon Hearts set down her camera, shaking away the humor with a frown. "No, no. I know, I know, this is no time to indulge my whimsy. My apologies, Corporal Gilda. It is, indeed, a time for a more collegial exchange of information."

Gilda rocked back, falling onto her haunches. The torturer, putting away his instruments, a pout on his face. The indistinct murmuring of some other pony, where she couldn't see them… or her.

"Oh, yes. You know where you sit, now, don't you? We can talk about that later, Corporal. And Princess Cadance. I have had a letter. Right out there in the hallway, waiting on your secret little meetings with the roc's handler and your pet colonial-forces officer. Surprised the hay right out of your guards, Princess, they may need to clean their armor. Hello, Twilight, still pretending to be your big, gruff brother?"

"Hearts, what in harmony happened to you?" asked Gleaming Shield, her eyes glittering, her expression tightening.

"Oh, the same thing that happens to all of us in time. The Princess calls, we reply, or fail and fall away," Lemon Hearts said, breezily. Her expression hardened into iron. "The Princess Calls."

"We have kept Celestia informed," insisted Cadance, looking like a kit caught with her talons in the jerky-jar. "We just sent her a letter via the family book this afternoon."

"And, it would seem, that would be why I've been activated," sniffed Lemon Hearts. "Not all of us get ancient magic journals to write directly to the Princess. For some of us, our instructions come in gouts of smoke and flame. I was perfectly fine just tagging along, recording everything you did and everyone you saw for the Princess's information. But somehow I knew that I'd have to break out Moondancer's new auto-thaumfire attachment for today's attendance, to keep the Court instantaneously up to date. And look what we have here! Reason indeed! Meeting with two griffons and the infamously griffon-hating Twilight Sparkle, in a livestock pen, in the dark of night, with only your eldest sister in attendance! This looks very much like plotting, Princess Cadance."

"What did Aunt Celly's letter actually say, Lemon Hearts?" asked Lady Livery, calmly. "I think perhaps you are misinterpreting your instructions. Just a bit."

"This is intolerable!" rumbled Lady George, "Who is this little pest, and why is she interrupting our discussions?"

"Princess George, please," begged Cadance, not taking her eyes off of the photographer, like a picnicker confronted with a coiled rattlesnake beside their luncheon-blanket. "This is more complex than it looks, and Lemon Hearts is not my retainer. She works for Princess Celestia, directly. She is, in fact-"

"The little princess's minder. Because the real Princess doesn't trust her further than someone she does trust can see her. And what's this 'Princess George' business? Is this griffon one of the corporal's jumped-up fake-royalty cousins? Some escapee from the perpetual season of Griffonstonian slaughter? I won't have you corrupting the princess, or getting her involved in your vicious internal civil wars! Step out where I can see you, Griffonstonian!"

"A griffon princess now, am I?" laughed the great bird of prey. "That is a new development in the curse. Never before has it bent that heavily towards something like the truth. No, little morsel, I am not of Griffonstone, or anywhere near it."

"George!" barked Gleaming Shield, her eponymous shield glittering around her horned head. "You're going to overload her mind if you keep-"

"Yes," said the turul, snapping her beak. "I think I will. Unicorn, what did they say your name was? Lemony Heart? How do you like my roc? Isn't her plumage magnificent? See how sharp her beak is!" The turul princess's beak snapped and shifted as she spoke, her tongue forming the words distinctly, drawing the eye with every movement.

"Her cries are such that the enemy's bowels liquify in fear. Her calls shake the thatch and the roof-beams, they make these western windows quiver in sympathy with the great sounds she gives forth. These are the terrible sounds that my roc makes." No, she was definitely exaggerating, encouraging the on-looker to see her speaking, to see the physical act of that great beak making speech. "Lemony Heart, can you hear my roc speaking?"

The unicorn, hypnotized, nodded, glassy-eyed.

"Good," nodded George. "Gleaming Shield. Can you oblige us by doing whatever it is you do for yourself for this paranoid pest? I think we need to have a full and frank discussion which is not overly burdened by the side-effects of the coronet's curse. So long as she thinks I am a griffon, this will go nowhere."

The turul sat back down on her drums with her eyes on the dazzled, addled unicorn, and sighed. "Not that she wasn't close to the truth. Perhaps I was plotting to involve the Equestrian princesses in my squalid, brutal affairs. Have we fallen so far, to be indistinguishable from Griffonstonian fratricides?"

Gilda's captain strode forward, and bent her horn over that of the mind-blasted Lemon Hearts, casting her own special unicorn witchery. "We don't know how much damage the full weight of the curse does to the minds of the hypnotized. It may be transient, it may, eventually, cause aneurysms or, I don't know, strokes maybe? I never really studied mind magic that closely." Another globe of shielding formed around the greater princess's spy, a spy sent, apparently, to keep watch on the ponies' lesser princess. "There! Done. I suppose we just have to wait, and see how long it takes for Lemon Hearts' reason to return."

"While we wait, we need to figure out how we're going to explain this, Livery," worried Cadance. "Gleaming, we weren't blowing smoke, Lemon Hearts truly isn't my pony. She works for Celestia; if they decide that this was an assault on one of the Princess's ponies, and her designated minder in our entourage at that, this could quickly spiral out of control. Celestia doesn't trust me, not after the war authorization bill."

"Can you blame Aunt Celly?" asked Lady Livery. "You provoked a riot in the Stable of Nobility."

"Two concussions and a broken leg does not constitute a riot!"

"I've seen street riots with fewer casualties."

"You have never seen a riot in person in your life, Livery. Look at this! She wasn't blowing smoke, this is that new invention that Celestia's weird little student was bragging about. Look! Thaumfire reservoir, and a mechanized crank to dip the plate into the reservoir. She took a photograph, and instantly transmitted it to Canterlot!"

"Aunt Celly's spooks certainly outfitted dear little Hearts handsomely, didn't they?" Livery said, as calmly as she ever did. "And why must you say such sad things about sweet little Moondancer? You once foalsat her, and had nothing bad to say about her then."

"Celestia had me foal-sitting half of the scions of Canterlot, Livery. Oh, not you, Gleaming. You were always one of my favorites. Most of them were hyper little show-offs. You were charming. And so unselfconscious! I always loved how you didn't even acknowledge my status."

"Hmm?" said Gleaming Shield, who was poking at the ensorceled transmission apparatus attached to Lemon Hearts' camera. "What was that? I'm looking at this device. You say it destroys the original in order to transmit? Wasteful! Aren't there thaumically entangled methods that would accomplish this, without destroying the plate?"

"Do you see what I mean, Livery? Little Twilight was never interested in patents of nobility and princesshood."

"What? Oh, that. I didn't notice you were a princess until much later, Cadance. You were just the foal-sitter, and the filly Shining made googly-eyes at."

"And that's why I loved you and your brother, Tw- Gleaming. You made me feel… normal." The pink alicorn smiled sadly, looking at nothing at all. "Oh, I think she's coming around."

Gilda turned away from that familial scene, and glared at the nasty little spook. Gilda was almost positive that it had been Lemon Hearts in that torture-chamber with Flagg Staff. She and this unicorn would have words, after this all was over. Livery was over by the guarded door, and had it open, talking to the guards, something about sending for "Mirror to bring the bag. Yes, she'll know which bag, don't ask questions, just go."

As the door closed on the guards, Lemon Hearts blinked, once, slowly. The pony princess had stepped over to stand next to the reviving unicorn, looking at her intently.

"Lemon Hearts. Can you hear my voice?"

"Yes, princess."

"Where are you?"

"I… am in the warren of the princess's pet's pet. The tamed monster Gleaming Shield was bought with. Immaterial, excepting that it is an excuse for the princess to meet with smugglers and conspirators. A danger to her highness's government and court. A plot."

"What? Damnit, where did she get that idea?" demanded Gleaming Shield.

"From the interrogation of Gilda de Griffonstone, who confessed as much, saying that the Lady George had bought their services with political support and the rental of livestock. The roc."

"Interrogation? Gilda, what in harmony is she talking about?" scoffed the captain.

"I told you as much, captain ma'am."

"I thought you were just hallucinating! You got into my gin supply!"

"I told you that was the chloroform, captain ma'am. It's not my fault you wouldn't believe me."

"Gah! Lemon Hearts, you will remember this: you do not suspect-"

"Twilight! Stop that!" snapped Princess Cadance. She talked over the still-half-hypnotized Lemon Hearts, who had started muttering along with Gleaming Shield's words. "Celestia has enough suspicions about me, we don't need to make things worse by messing with the mind of her dedicated handler, my minder."

"Cadance, my dear sweet sister, you mess with everypony's minds. By now, Aunt Celly expects it of you," said Livery, smiling sweetly.

"Not like this! You! Lemon Hearts! Snap out of it! You should be shielded against the curse - both of them!" The pink princess snapped her hoof in front of the swaying unicorn.

Gilda frowned, trying to figure out how the pony was getting that sound out of an appendage without talons to strike against each other.

"Pr-princess Cadance? What happened? Why am I over here?" asked Lemon Hearts, finally coming out of her stupor. "Why is the roc wearing a crown?"

"It's not a crown-"
"That's a coronet-"

Gilda and Lady George frowned at each other, having managed to mutually interrupt themselves. Lady George snapped her great beak, which was bigger than Gilda's entire torso, and Gilda quailed, lowering her head.

Sometimes the bat-hen forgot just who George was, and what.

"Congratulations, Hearts, you've managed to join a select circle of occulted knowledge, for however long I can keep that shield over your brain."

"Shield? What? Is that why everything is tinted pink and magenta?"

"Yes, Hearts," Gleaming Shield replied. "You were under the influence of a strong curse. We were trying to get the help of the Princess's magical research agencies, to deal with that curse. It's what keeps Princess George here - the true heir of the Great Turul, and rightful owner of the Great Roost of the Turuls - unknown, unfriended, and reviled as a common smuggler."

"Imperial master of all the continent of Beakland," added Gilda, helpfully. In hopes of placating the irate bird of prey. After all, she'd just been arguing against the two princesses' rash plans to go rushing off into the wilderness to find solitary turul for… whatever madcap reason they'd dreamed up.

Gilda needed to mend some fences, she suspected.

"What's a turul? Is it anything like a roc?"

"We are nothing like rocs," sniffed George. "Rocs are like us. Or rather, rocs are what is left when you remove sapience, compunction, and any sense of fellow-feeling from a true turul. The fact that you westerners only know of rocs and their abominations is a deeply saddening fact which I must struggle every day to overcome."

"OK, the roc with the crown is definitely speaking."

"IT IS NOT A CROWN!" bellowed George in a very much not-indoors voice.

"OK! Coronet! Fine! You're not a roc! You're a turul! Which is I guess a super-roc. Also, I think you're S.M.I.L.E.'s business, not mine!"

"Who in Sirrocco's name is Smile?" demanded Gilda, eye twitching.

"Not who, wh- none of your business, Griffonstonian! And my stars! You ponies weren't just consorting with Griffonstonian restorationists! You were plotting with monsters!"

"I never!" sniffed George.

"Lemon Hearts, I doubt Princess Celestia intended you to indulge in diplomatic affairs when she set you to watch over my entourage. Nor did she place you with us to insult foreign dignitaries with slurs and insults like 'monster'," chided the alicorn princess.

"Uhh…" the spy said, looking apprehensively up at the enormous foreign 'dignitary', taken at a loss for words. Gilda rather suspected that they'd have been there all night long, talking in paranoid circles, if a gout of green fire hadn't erupted in front of Princess Cadance's face, and a sealed scroll had fallen out of the burst of flame to land at the pink pony's hooves.

"Oh, look, Aunt Celly has decided to join the party," said Livery, beaming. "Do see what our aunt wants now, Cadance dear?"

The princess broke the seal, and unrolled the scroll. "Oh, she's angry that we're not replying in the book. Hm, hm, hm - Celestia recognizes a turul when she sees one, and says - huh. We're getting a team of specialists as soon as they can get a ride with the next courier ship. We're to do nothing else until the specialists have their say." Cadance looked up at her 'court photographer', and hoofed the scroll over. "Princess Celestia has very kind things to say about your proactivity and your celerity, but wonders if perhaps you aren't expending your very limited thaumfire supplies at an unsustainable clip."

"So I see, your highness. And also that I am to advise and assist you in any diplomatic matters related to 'the foreign dignitary', the details of which, hrm, I should apply to you for, on a need to know basis." Lemon Hearts looked up, suspicious. "Did you know that was- well, you wouldn't say, even if you did. This checks out, your highness. I am to place myself in your inner circle, and my communication supplies likewise are to be available for your use. I don't know what this all is about, but I've never seen the Princess so - expansive. But it's definitely her hornwriting."

"Who else would be using thaumfire missives?" wondered Gleaming Shield.

"Among others?" asked Lemon Hearts, rhetorically. "Dragons. We haven't had any incursions in a number of years, but the agencies keep a weather eye for, well, 'dragon weather'."

"That being settled, I think we've just accomplished a great deal towards your priorities, Princess George, don't you think?" asked Princess Cadance.

"Quite satisfactory, Princess Cadance. And I have to agree, however regretfully, with Gilda's objections. An expedition into the Bugbear Country would entail a great deal of effort and resources, to no good effect. My people are too spread out, and too hard to track down at this season." George looked down at Gilda, who was in turn looking up, confused. "I did not want to be so ungrateful as to reject your generous plans out of claw, so I could not say so before. I thank you, little bird, for saying what my sense of gratitude kept me from saying. You are correct, the birds of this city have more pressing needs than I do, especially in this hunting season when all our efforts would accomplish would be to freeze the feathers off of her highness's pegasi."

Gilda blinked up at the enormous princess, unsure what to say.

"What, Corporal, am I carved of marble, that I am incapable of feeling for the guild-griffons I see almost as much of as you do? The strange pink colonel's plots concern me almost as much as they apparently concern you. Something, indeed, must be done. But what can we do, other than find a way to put protections into place?"

"Gilda's delusions aside, neither she nor I command even so much as the Fifth Territorials," objected Gleaming Shield. "And Princess Cadance is merely a guest of the Duchess of Trottingham here in the city, or in the Isles. She has no power, not over the institutions of the city, nor even the EUP high command."

"Celestia has always made that crystal-clear," Cadance agreed, looking a bit miffed. "She's never trusted me, not when I make such messes. If she could, she'd lock me in a nunnery and throw away the key."

"You underestimate Aunt Celly's love for you, Cadance," chided Livery, opening the door to a knock from the guards. Another White Sister appeared at the door to hoof over a leather-bound codex. The pony, presumably the sister Mirror, waved at the gathered notables, smiling cheerfully, before her elder sister slammed the door in her face.

"She's always had great hopes for you," Livery continued. "She has been simply… careful in her approach to the manifestations of your aspect. You have to admit that you can be a hoof-full."

"That… is fair. You can still see the scorching in the old throne room."

"The seneschals want to rebuild that wing, but Aunt Celly won't let them. Something about 'an object lesson'."

"It wasn't the only incident. And the scars from the days after the Thirteenth still ache. You weren't there when she dressed me down about that." The pink princess looked introspectively aside, clearly thinking about the past.

"Well! Water under the waterfall. We have changes in priority we need to bring to Aunt Celly's attention. There are options I don't think you're aware Auntie put in train, in case of eventualities like this. Trusts she didn't want you to know existed, until the opportunity came for them to be deployed to best effect," Livery said, blissfully. "Gleaming Shield's commission, for one."

"What about my commission?" asked Gleaming Shield, baffled. "I haven't looked at it, I've been too busy. What about it?"

"Later, dear," Livery said, "and you of all ponies should know to read the fine print."

Lady Livery turned to her adopted little sister, who towered half a head over her smiling head.

"And as for you, dear Cadance, you have more options than you think. An alicorn princess riding to the salvation of the griffish victims of a dastardly and brutal plot by a runaway staff officer, is exactly the sort of eventuality Aunt Celestia must have had in mind. How, I never can figure. She always seems to be prepared for this sort of mad possibility."

Nine Offices Down

"'Captain' Shield, you are not Princess Mi Dolente Cadenza's liaison to us; you are her entourage's handler. Your orders are, as they have been, to keep them from interfering in governance or military affairs," the staff pony said, his eyebrow arched in contempt.

"And yet, my orders - as drafted," emphasized Gleaming Shield, holding her hoof out to Gilda for the document in question, the captain's eyes eyes locked upon the staff pony's face, "state that I am liaison to the Princess's travelling court. There are no instructions, explicit nor reasonably inferable, that I am in any way to control or restrict her and her ponies in the course of their tour."

"It bloody well was implied, if you would take your head out of your posterior, lieutenant!" snapped the staffer. "And this so-called tour is already well overdue for its next stop on… where-ever it is she is supposed to be going. We cannot be expected to feed all of these deadflanks off of our limited supplies!"

"The entourage is not that large," muttered Gilda.

"It includes an entire air squadron, eating its heads off, not to mention that herd of sycophants cluttering up the royal suites!"

"Not to mention the intelligence bureau sore about having been turfed out of their royal suites?" Gilda asked, holding back a smile.

"Exactly! Wait. No. Not that one! This is not about Major Eyeglass's displaced analysts!"

"I thought this was about why we're talking to you instead of the head of operations?" asked Gilda, smirking.

"Lieutenant Shield! What is this corporal doing talking to me?" demanded the red-faced staff officer.

"Winning an argument, apparently," said Gleaming Shield, her eyes glinting. "And if you're quite done being out-argued by my bat-hen, I'd like to talk about your strangely possessive attitude towards the Duchess Celestia's resources. There are no 'EUP resources' and 'princess resources'. It is all the princesses' largess, and nothing else, Major Bureau. This is a royal fortress we stand within, and it is the personal property of the princesses, not the military's."

"Yes. Yes! Of course! We serve at the pleasure of the princess. The real Princess, not that pink mayfly. The one that will grow old, and die, and be forgotten like the last half-dozen of them!"

"Oh, Gilda, we have a scholar. Major, she may not be the Alicorn of the Heavens, the Unconquered Sun, but Mi Dolente Cadenza is royalty, both by common understanding and legal definition. Nothing in the Federated Kingdom Accords says anything about immortality or permanence in the articles on the sovereign power. Simply that 'the congregation of alicorns shall reign sovereign over all the signatories of the confederation, and the chattels thereof, as Princesses of the Realm.'" Gilda had always known that Gleaming Shield had in her this capacity for malicious pedantry, but the captain had never turned the full weight of that pettifoggery upon any pony in front of her bat-hen before.

The two unicorns were now horn-to-horn, trading barbed quotations. From the commentary on the Accords, Gilda suspected from the context, though she hadn't been able to get her talons on those yet. Her moments left unsupervised among the limited library resources available in the service had been few and far between. She barely followed the verbal jousting as they traded chapter and verse, cavil and codicil, like two troopers at spear-practice, or single-stick duelists in the lists.

The day before, Gilda and Gleaming Shield had worked out a compromise with the wary Lemon Hearts and the pink princess and her adoptive sisters. The royals and their suspicious spy would work their sources in Canterlot via the true, immortal princess and their various remote-communication devices - diary and thaumfire camera, fire and magic - while Gleaming Shield and her bat-hen would sally forth into the military bureaucracy and prepare their ground for dealing with the mad party pony of J-13, Special Party Plans.

"Irrelevant!" barked the bristling Major Bureau, as Gleaming Shield backed him into a corner made of citations from the sixth and twenty-third essays on royal dignity and shared authority, respectfully, in the Commentaries. Or so Gilda gathered from the rapid back and forth. "And I would not take that tone with a superior officer, lieutenant, no matter what brevetting the bloody Territorials care to pour over you. You're still junior to any officer in the real army! I don't care what they say in the 100th Hoof. It's a mostly notational regiment these days, with all its officers stuck in shameful colonial roles, shepherding the barbarians and the degenerate savages!"

This, Gilda was familiar with. No, not pony racism - officer snobbery about title and rank. The ponies' rank systems were impressively complex, recondite, even obfuscated. Even the ponies themselves seemed occasionally baffled by the welter of provincial volunteer organizational commissions, regular EUP commissions, Guard commissions, and the especially obscure double-layered system of seconding and brevetting which bedeviled the Territorial Corps of the Isles and the New Territories. An officer was seconded from their commissioned regiment, into the battalion, squadron, or regiment they actually were to exercise command. While seconded to their commands, those officers could be brevetted to their appropriate rank, and given promotions accordingly as their responsibilities expanded. An officer could be brevetted multiple times without ever touching upon their underlying commission in their originating regiment; in theory only particularly recognized officers received promotions upon their underlying commission. In practice, promotions in their 'home' regiments occurred according to seniority, retirements, and political pull.

The officers of the Territorials were known to sit around the fire and trade dubious claims about their seniority in the 100th Hoof and the priority of their respective brevetting. They could prattle for hours about degrees of separation from their commissioned ranks, when this commission or that was issued, and on the dating thereof of each brevet and commission. The tokens in the game were the ranks and the dates - after every valid promotion, the clock and the date was reset. To make things even more complicated, sometimes a political benefactor was known to back-date a promotion, making a mockery of the entire process according to the officers thus discommoded, usually with malice aforethought on the part of the patron and their client.

It was possible for a brevetted captain or major of the Territorials to discover herself in command of lieutenants with superior dates of commissioning in their much more prestigious but distinctly junior ranks in the 100th Regiment of Hoof. A regiment which had, as Major Service Bureau had just noted, no actual troops to command, being a now-notational unit composed entirely of seconded officers scattered among some of the provincial regiments and the whole of the Territorial Corps. It was not the only such skeleton regiment left on the books. Many of the regular EUP's Hoof regiments had been thus eviscerated in order to provide seasoned commissioned officers for the distinctly militia-flavored provincial regiments.

Gilda had yet to lay eyes on an actual enlisted regular, aside from the aerial squadrons.

"You see, Major, that's the funny thing. I thought that Princess Cadance had pulled some strings for me in the 100th Hoof, too, or gotten me a brevetting in the Territorials. A little gift to celebrate our reunion after several years of separation. Imagine my surprise when one of her courtiers passed this along." Gleaming Shield gestured towards Gilda again, and Gilda pulled the tube out of her satchel, slapping it into the captain's hoof.

The captain didn't even look at Gilda or what her corporal had put into her frog, and silently hoofed over the scroll tube to the suspicious Major Bureau.

When they'd first laid eyes on the captain's new commission, Gleaming Shield had ordered Gilda to put it into that protective tube, and made sure it was well-hidden. They'd retrieved it before coming into Expeditionary Force Headquarters, because the captain had suspected that she'd need every bureaucratic weapon at her disposal. She'd known this was coming.

Well, she'd had Gilda put it away after a bout of hyperventilation and mild hysteria, but Gilda hadn't held it against her once Gleaming Shield had explained the difference between what that beatific White Sister had given them, and the captain's commission in the 100th Regiment of Hoof or the brevetting certificate they'd expected to have been given.

Major Service Bureau, assistant to the deputy commander of the Princess's Expeditionary Force in the Griffish Isles and Head of Personnel, or G-1, unrolled Gleaming Shield's commission with a look of put-upon irritation, until he saw what was in her hoof.

He made a strangled choking sound.

"This can't be real. How did your forgers fake the seal?"

"You would have to ask the Honorable Miss Mirror, Major," Gleaming Shield said, ignoring the barely-veiled accusation of felonious dishonor. "I was not present when it was sealed, but I must take the scions of the House of Platinum at their word. Absent any actual proof that an ancient, honorable, and immensely wealthy noble clan would stoop to paying forgers to procure what they, obviously, are capable of acquiring on their own merits."

"No noble house's dubious claims to merit could possibly pry a Guard captain's commission out of Guard House. Those ponies are jealous of that beyond all reason! There aren't five captains of the guard in the whole army!"

"It isn't a captain of the guard's commission, as much as I would prize that," Gleaming Shield said with an admirable lack of smugness. "Merely a Guard captaincy."

"S-so I see. What in Hades is the Sixth Regiment of Guards? There are only four active Guards' regiments! Including the Royals!"

"We had to look into that ourselves," Gilda offered, happy to talk about her part of the research. It was interesting what dusty old nonsense was included in the substantial if limited libraries carried about by divisional and brigade headquarters. If this hadn't come up, she'd never have known that a history of the Earth Pony, Unicorn, and Pegasus Unified Consular Command were traditionally included in the full collection. She'd immediately 'requisitioned' one for her collection of manuals. "It turns out that the inactive Sixth Regiment dates to the era before the EUP's formation, but was included for historical reasons on the rosters as a notational Guards regiment in the formal structure. One of two such Guards regiments which have never been activated, or ever had officers commissioned into them.

"Until now," Gilda continued, puffing up a bit with self-satisfaction. "The books say that the Sixth Regiment is maintained on the rolls in honor of some long-dead polity I've never heard of."

"The Crystal Guard," Gleaming Shield supplied, joining her bat-hen in a little thrumming chorus of smug satisfaction. "From what little I've been able to pry out of Miss Mirror, Princess Cadance has some sort of ancestral relation to, or magical association with, the legendary Crystal Empire. You can tell by her cutie mark, I gather."

"A new regiment!" marvelled the garrison's head of personnel, sitting down in the chair behind his desk, all of his rancor forgotten. "A new Guards regiment! Has anypony else been commissioned in it?"

"No, Major Bureau," said Gilda, a smirk upon her beak. "Nor any enlisted assigned to it, as of yet. As far as we can tell. Currently, it is a one-mare regiment."

He looked up at that, the gears ticking away in his staff-officer mind. "That makes her colonel of the Sixth Guards by default, until Guards House creates a superior officer. Do you know what that means?"

"The captain ma'am is senior in grade to any other colonel who isn't also a commander of one of the more senior Guards regiments?"

"We don't have Guards colonels in garrison! Or anywhere in the Isles! I think this means we should be putting her in charge of - wait, which brigade is the, the Fifth Territorial assigned? The Third Territorial Brigade. That's Brigadier Falling Water. She's a colonel of volunteers. You outrank her twice over!"

This was fun, but it was starting to get out of control. They hadn't come here to cash in Gleaming Shield's windfall.

"Ahem," Gilda ostentatiously cleared her throat. "Major sir, I apologize for interrupting once more, but I do have to point out that Captain Shield is still seconded to the Territorials, and as such, seniority in grade does not apply in matters of command, only brevetting and appointment. The Brigadier is the Brigadier, and nogriff is challenging her right to her command." It wouldn't do, to accidently put Gilda's captain into an office for which she was neither prepared nor ready, nor had time for, for that matter.

"Quite right!" Gleaming Shield agreed. "The only reason I present my commission is to end this tedious discussion, and to get to the actual meat of this matter, which is my access to the office of the heads of planning or operations. Lieutenant Colonel Pie's activities and plans have come to Princess Cadance's negative attention, and we need to make arrangements for the princess to discuss the lieutenant colonel's- are you quite alright, Major Bureau?"

The staff officer's face had spasmed upon mention of Pinkie Pie, a full-muzzle convulsion that looked revoltingly close to something like an aneurysm, or perhaps a conniption.

"W-why didn't you say this was about Colonel Pie? Gennifer! Bring me my Pie File!" The pony kicked back in his office-chair, and spun around like a loon, with an unnerving grin on his face. "Ha! Is it juicy? Is it actionable? Is it accurate?"

"Is what?" asked Gleaming Shield, warily.

"Whatever you have on the Pie. You wouldn't believe how many ponies bring me things about that pronking disaster area, only for it to come to nothing, or prove to be malfeasance on the part of the accuser, or, - once, a bale of hay fell on the complaining pony!"

"That doesn't sound like it should have caused-" Gleaming Shield started to object.

"Off of an air delivery van, from a thousand feet up! Whistle Blower is still in recuperative care. They think maybe she'll be able to talk in six months, if the aphasia responds to this new treatment - irrelevant! The point is, everypony has objections to the Pie, but none of them ever make it to a hearing. She's a menace, but she's an arrowproof menace! Gennifer! Where's my Pie File, you lazy hen!"

The thick-breasted griffon civilian who had been sitting in the outer office filing her talons when they'd come in, sashayed into the personnel officer's inner office, carrying a modestly thick file in her well-manicured grip. Gilda supposed she might have found the hen attractive if she was inclined that way.

Which Gilda wasn't.

At least, not when it came to hens.

The hen popped the gum she was chewing, and dumped the heavy file on Service Bureau's desk, twitching her tail in irritation as she left.

"Why… don't you have a proper military secretary, Major?" Gleaming Shield asked, staring at the strange hen's display.

The head of personnel was already muzzle-deep in his 'Pie File', muttering. "Eh? Oh, my last five secretaries had to be cashiered for trading favors. She might be useless and insubordinate, but she has no friends in the army. And doesn't care about bribes because I pay her twice what she's worth."

If the foolish pony thought he'd found the only honest griffon in the Isles, Gilda wasn't about to correct his understanding. And the hen's rates were far cheaper than the first three secretaries Gilda had approached this morning before bringing her captain into staff headquarters.

"Ah, here we go. Would you describe your issue with Colonel Pie's behavior as material, organizational, moral, or operational?" asked Major Bureau.

"P-pardon?" Gleaming Shield stuttered.

"Has she offended you by misappropriation of materials or supplies? I have eleven reports of such misapprehensions, every one withdrawn by the accusers not long after their respective filings. Office furniture, baking supplies, a battalion's head cook, a stapler from one of the joint task force operatives, a 152mm chemical mortar from the Royal Artillery, six bedframes from the prison infirmary, forty reams of paper, a portable printing press - I'm still waiting on that last one, but the printing office warrant officer who filed that was sweating pretty heavily, I expect that'll be withdrawn, too, if I give them a couple days.

"Organizational! Six complaints, all of them withdrawn, aside from poor Whistle Blower, whose complaints had to be filed inactive until such time as she can string words together again, poor mare. There was that accusation of mass kidnapping from Brigadier Dark Brew, but Pie apparently managed to produce the paperwork showing that the pioneers were properly seconded to her section. What does a bureau of special party planning need with a thousand sappers and siege engineers, I ask you?! Wait, six hundred and thirty. Why did we get a short battalion?

"Irrelevant!" the section chief spat, putting the offending papers aside. "Where was I?"

"Moral," Gleaming Shield prompted, sickly fascinated.

"Ha! Three testimonials about Colonel Pie confessing to, or bragging about - depending on which pony you ask - massacre, conspiracy to commit atrocities, or invitation to commit atrocities against civilians."

"Those sound serious," Gilda observed.

"Useless! The rebels are civilians, by the laws of war! Nopony cares about massacres of the enemy! Nopony brings me testimony about Pie actually saying this about the general public, just 'grumpy insurrectionaries' and so forth. The one pony who was ambiguous in her testimony, recanted upon further investigation!"

"Operational?" Gleaming Shield asked.

"Oh, every one of the brigadiers, and three of the division commanders have filed complaints about Pie's interference in field operations. Ever since she got here! But she's always right, Discord take her, and it never gets to the court-martial stage. She's a thorn under my saddle, Pinkamena Diane Pie! Sent here by Celestia herself, for my sins, I swear.

"SO! If you have something novel, something I can take to the deputy commander, which you won't back off on once that lunatic starts staring you down and giving you that look, I will back you one hundred percent! Give!"

"Uh…"

"Oh, come on, don't get me all excited and then balk, Captain Shield. It has to be something! It's always something!"

"You may have put too much pressure on the captain ma'am, major sir," Gilda interceded. "It's a simple matter, really."

"No it isn't, Gilda!" Gleaming Shield objected. "It's never simple when it comes to Pinkie Pie!"

"It's morally simple, but operationally complex?" Gilda offered, squinting.

"Not even that!"

"OK, there's the whole 'plotting to murder gang bosses' thing, I guess that's somewhat morally ambiguous."

"See?" cried the staff pony. "That's exactly the sort of thing that tripped up moral complainant number two!"

"But she's recruiting guildmasters and criminal masterminds!" Gilda exclaimed defensively.

"I don't know if you can call any of these griffons masterminds," complained Gleaming Shield. "They're not that bright."

"Captain ma'am, by your standards, Haycartes was a slowcoach," sniffed her bat-hen.

"I don't care!" snapped the staff pony. "Get to the complaint!"

"Murder!" Gilda said, "Political plots! Putting all the bad eggs in one basket, and dropping the basket. Or blowing it up. Maybe burning it down? We're not sure of her planned mass murder method."

"I suspect she's planning to lure the rebels into attacking the building the council is going to meet in," Gleaming Shield opined. "It's what I'd do if I was her. And a sociopath."

"Wait, what?" asked Major Bureau. "What's this about a council? What council?"

"We don't even know where the new council will be convened." the captain said, distracted by a thought. "Were there any notes from Lady Rarity in today's mail?"

"Wait, what council?" demanded the chief of personnel.

"The mail hadn't arrived before I had to come down here and bribe the secretaries," Gilda said by way of an excuse. "Didn't you check your own mail?"

"That's what I have a bat-hen for!"

"Stop ignoring me in my own office! You aren't talking about the Governor-General's plan to re-establish the Griffish Tribal Council in Trottingham, are you?"

"The... what?" asked Gilda. "What the hades is a tribal council?"

"Old tradition! I was in the conference where the Governor-General's eager young assistant put forward the plan."

"If it's an old tradition, I've never heard of it!" Gilda objected.

"Neither have I," Gleaming Shield agreed.

"According to both of your files, neither of your are native to the Isles. Yes, the Tribal Council is an old Trottish tradition. Very interesting. Mr. Sandwich was quite erudite on the subject. No, no, this sounds like another dry hole. Colonel Pie didn't have anything to do with this plan. It's entirely a creature of the Governor's office."

"Who's this assistant?" Gleaming Shield said, confused.

"I don't remember, hold on -" Major Bureau reached over to a thick planner/journal he had stored on a side-shelf.

"Ah. Here we go. One Mr. Cheese Sandwich. Odd looking duck, for an earth pony. But he certainly knew his stuff. I'm told he's a rising star in the Prime Minister's party. No, I'm afraid this won't do at all. I can have Gennifer make an appointment for you, hrm, looks like the chief of operations will be available a week from Tuesday."

"That'll have to do," Gilda's captain said, looking deflated and confused. "If we haven't even heard where the council will be meeting, it isn't an immediately pressing crisis."

"Oh, I know that one," Major Bureau said. "They're renovating the Cathedral of Labour, in Ironmonger's Square. That's what Colonel Pie requisitioned that battalion of pioneers for. One thing rock ponies and combat engineers are excellent at, it's construction and reconstruction. I had a meeting this morning with Operations about when we could expect the pioneers to be freed up. The Cathedral should be ready for Mr. Sandwich's council meeting next Monday.

"And I really do think we need to meet with your brigadier about this Guards commission business, Captain Shield."

Gilda cringed. She'd hoped that the staff pony had been sufficiently distracted to have forgotten about that.

"It's far too irregular, having a Guards captain serving under jumped-up politicians and common 100th Hoof trotters. I'm going to have to put my own hoof down, either we transfer you to the staff, or put you in charge of something large and more appropriate to your new status. We had to send Major Coil home, there's an opening in G-6!"

A Memory Of Stone

"Oh, sky and stars, Gilda, why did I let you talk me into flying?" asked Gleaming Shield, shivering as they glided between pegasus guards. "I can feel every single snowflake on these things! There's zero insulation on them!"

"Because the chariots are still with the battalion, captain ma'am," Gilda replied. "And they won't be back for weeks, given what we heard today."

"But we could have walked!" whined the winged unicorn, her thin gossamer wings fluttering to keep up with the griffon's more substantial eagle's wings. They'd gotten away from the monomaniacal head of personnel without Gleaming Shield being saddled with a brigadiership or an appointment to one of the drier staff slots, but it'd been a damn close run thing.

"You know we'd get ambushed at least once down there on the pavement in the Pennies. The bosses have long memories," Gilda reminded her captain.

"You mean your enemies have long memories! This is all your fault. You're a griffon! Why can't you make friends with your own?"

"I don't make friends with gangsters because I'm a griffon, captain ma'am. Because that would make me a gangster, too."

"There must be a middle ground!"

"That's just the cold and the sleet talking, captain ma'am. And you know you had as much of a hoof in all of that as I did. Some would say that everything I do is your fault."

"They should add that to the traditional list of Eastern Unicornian Curses! 'May you attract diligent griffons to your employ!'" Today was Princess Cadance and the White Sisters' turn to lay siege to the bureaucracy. Gilda and Gleaming Shield had escaped garrison to look into those reports that Pinkie Pie's ponies were renovating an old ruin, deep in the blue zone.

"Ah, here we go, captain ma'am. Almost there. Down, to the left. Two blocks over," Gilda said, turning into an approach vector for the tiny-looking building she'd seen in the distance.

"So it is! Look at the size of that! It looks like something from the older parts of the palace complex back home!" Gleaming Shield marvelled.

Ironmonger's Square was an old market-square in the far western quarter of the city, between the new factories outside the walls, and the old shops and cramped factories within hauling distance of the harbor. The square's ancient confines were made smaller by the encroachments on three sides of equally ancient old-family griffish mansions. Mansions which had been subdivided into multi-family apartments in the collapse of so many old families' fortunes, whose structures had, in their repurposing, gone cancerously metastatic, expanding heedlessly up, down, sideways, and out into the alleged public space of the now-disfavored square.

On the fourth, northern side, sat a large once-ruin. The sacked-out Cathedral of Labour was a relict of the Riots of '73, and the violence which those riots had brought had heavily damaged both the blue zone and the pony side of the city. Today, no signs of the burning remained in the rest of the neighborhood, aside from a general seediness which spoke to the poverty and want left in the wake of those convulsions. The griffons had rebuilt that which they were allowed to rebuild, and put every bit into their own property, their own allowed concerns.

The Cathedral of Labour had been the property of the banned unions. Nogriff would dare to repair the damage done by the army which the factory-owners and the authorities had hired from the outlying districts, had raised among their supporters and clan militias. The Equestrians hadn't been part of the suppression of the '73, excepting those seconded officers who led the then-new Territorial Battalions in their inaugural atrocities. The Territorials and the rich ponies and griffons had put a Trottish face on the suppression of the unions.

The betrayal of the wealthy griffons had come a decade later.

Gilda had found a morgue file of banned newspapers from the era while they'd been researching the governor-general's assistant's new 'tribal council'. She'd found enough to satisfy her captain's suspicions, and prove them true, at least in Gilda's eyes. If there had ever been anything like a tribal council, it hadn't been part of the city's civic life in living memory.

Or those of recently-deceased griffons, for that matter.

The Cathedral of Labour had been where the unions had made their last stand, and large parts of her three transepts had been shattered by the artillery turned against her defenders. The nave itself had only been caved in on one side, where the second tower had collapsed just before the final negotiations led to a relatively bloodless surrender.

Those unionists who had surrendered in the Cathedral had disappeared into the New Territories, gone away, never to be seen again by Trottish eyes.

The fallen tower was now standing again, truncated, squat, dwarfed by its intact once-twin tower on the west side. Little antlike ponies were crawling across the new eastern tower's face, doing what, Gilda couldn't quite make out as she flew by. The rebuilt tower looked solid, though, almost complete. More ponies were likewise swarming over a series of rebuilt buttresses, stone flying into place, being fitted by hoof over wooden frames. They had already put back together the destroyed transepts, and patched up the wrecked side of the great building, which was rising out of the pony engineers' wooden framework like a crippled griffon patched together by the meatball surgeons of the departed 93/1st medical squadron.

The four guards of Princess Cadance's Cloudsdale Chasseurs spread out around Gilda and her captain as they fluttered past the resurrected cathedral rising stubbornly into the grey heavens among the freezing rain and the sleet. Gleaming Shield landed awkwardly on the east side of Ironmonger's Square, and stumbled several paces until she got her hooves under her. Gilda touched down with a modicum of grace, and looked away in an attempt to not shame her captain with any sort of acknowledgement of the dichotomy.

Gleaming Shield hurried under the overhang of a dormer that jutted out from under one of the repurposed mansion-apartment buildings, fleeing the chilly precipitation that was turning the center of the square into a slick cannon-breaking expanse of half-iced stone. Her wings disappeared with a sharp snap, dispelled as soon as the unicorn could take a breath in her shelter.

"Well, they're certainly dedicated," Gleaming Shield offered. "What kind of fanatic works in this sort of mess?"

"Colonel Pie told me with a straight face that she wanted to acclimate her pioneers to Trottish weather," Gilda said, an eyebrow crooked. "Do you think she had this in mind?"

"She may have just been blowing smoke," Gilda's captain suggested, looking uncertain. "But they say that the ponies on the frontier are a tougher breed than the rest of us, and rock ponies even more so. Look at them all go!"

"I've read about mountain goats climbing cliffs," Gilda said after a moment sharing in the spectacle with her officer. "Do you think it looks like that?"

"I'm pretty sure that mountain goats don't generally build up cliffs while they do that?"

"You've never been to Manehattan?" asked one of the pegasus guards. "There are tons of goats in construction back home. Half the city wouldn't be what it was, without the goats. I hear it has something to do with their native magic. They took to high-rise construction like pigs to shit. Maybe these ponies have goat in their ancestry?"

"You ponies can't see that?" asked Gilda. "Half of those builders are horned. See over there? On that roof? And along the sides of the half-built tower?"

"What?" asked Gleaming Shield. She squinted, trying to make out what Gilda had spotted. "Oh, Tartarus! They blend right into the slate, don't they? I can't believe I didn't see them."

"They are the same color, almost," Gilda said. Now that the ponies had the goat builders pointed out, the guards exclaimed and chattered, chagrined at not having seen the rest of the construction crews. Gilda tried to not be too smug.

Ponies just couldn't match griffish eyesight. Especially in this sort of weather.

The shape of the project now emerged from the chaos, the structure within the swirl. The goats swarmed upwards, climbing impossible surfaces, burdened heavily with stone and supplies. High above the cobblestones hung their earth-pony employers, their magic hooves guiding the stones carried up to them by the goats. The stream of rock flowed upwards against the pull of gravity, and dropped into their courses so swiftly that if you didn't look closely, it might almost appear like a sort of reconstructive magic.

Gleaming Shield sniffed. "I think I could do something like that, if I had a couple weeks to research the necessary matrixes."

"Not at that clip," Gilda laughed. "And not in that sort of volume, captain ma'am. And could any other unicorn do what you're talking about?"

"Maybe not," the captain conceded, looking stubborn, "but even so, they're not going to be ready by Monday!"

"I hear they're not going to try," said a voice, and Gilda turned away from the construction spectacle, to see a door in the wall behind them open. Guildmaster Garrick looked smugly dry and warm in his masters' robes. "The nave is enclosed, and that's where they're setting up the council chambers."

"Guildmaster! I didn't expect to see you here!" Gilda chirped, and blushed, embarrassed by her fledgeling outburst.

"Corporal Gilda, so good to see you again. I have information sources other than you and Lady Rarity, you know. I've been here since yesterday, watching the work from my friend's son's window. A box seat to the festivities, as it were. Would you and your friend care to come inside where it's warm?"

"Oh! Pardon me, Guildmaster. Please allow me to introduce to you my captain! Captain ma'am, this is the griffon I told you about, the guildmaster of the tin trade, Guildmaster Garrick!"

"Gleaming Shield, Guildmaster. It's good to meet you, and I would welcome the opportunity to come in from this cold. Is there somewhere our guard detail could dry off in?"

"Captain, we're not supposed to leave you alone," the senior guard objected.

"Stratocumulus, we can't have all of you crowd into the guildmaster's host's apartment," Gilda said, repressively. "I'll be enough to keep the captain ma'am safe."

The pegasus skittered to the side, dragging Gilda away from the guildmaster and the unicorn. "Corporal! This is deep inside the blue zone! There could be rebels everywhere!" She looked side to side, as if a swarm of clangriffons might spring out of the sleet and kill them all in a heartbeat.

"If you want to put two guards on the alley behind this building," Garrick offered, "I'm sure that little Gally here can show them where the rear entrance can be found. They can join my own griffons. I try to keep my followers out of sight of the construction crews outside. After all, as busy as they are, they are still occupation troops, and wouldn't look kindly on guild militia standing to arms in plain sight."

After some rearrangements, Gilda and Gleaming Shield found themselves in comfortable chairs arranged in a well-appointed parlor with a wide plastic-sheeted window giving a lovely view of the goats and earth ponies working on the great stone edifice across the square. A roaring fire in an old stone fireplace kept the room warm. It was obvious from the quality of the furnishings and the size of the apartment that Garrick's friends were the owners of the converted mansion, who had turned the master's quarters into a comfortable apartment for the owner's building supervisor. In this case, the owner's son, a large, quiet tom who stayed in the suite's kitchen, ostentatiously, flagrantly not listening to his guests' conversation.

"I can't believe I'm seeing that tower rise again," Garrick said. "It almost fills me with a sort of doomful optimism. The destruction of the Cathedral was… well, it was the beginning of the troubles. The true beginning, I think. When we gave permission for the owners to bring down the old union bosses, we set loose the windigoes."

"We?" asked Gleaming Shield. "I wasn't even born when they put down the unions."

"No, no, my dear. I don't mean you. I mean me."

"I- I thought you were a unionist?" Gilda stuttered, confused.

"Shh!" said the old guildmaster, a sad smile on his beak and a talon to his culmen. "Nogriffon are unionists today. We are all good guildgriffs. But in those days, my family were union griffons. Everygriff but me."

He looked aside, at the end table across from his chair. A heavy piece of stonework sat embedded in the face of the end table, a pattern of raised crescents defaced by a second pattern of hammer and tongs carved across them. Gilda frowned at the ugly bit of masonry. It was a strange thing to have in such a handsome parlor.

"In those days as today, many of the old families made a practice of hedging their political bets. Younger sons and daughters would often join the opposing side in disputes, so that if the game went against the family, there was a voice among the victors for the defeated. In my generation, I was that traitor to the family cause."

Garrick stared out at the ponies and goats swarming over the building across the square, seeing something Gilda could only imagine. "I voted with my party. I was a member of the council, even then, as young as I was. I voted for the establishment of the Territorials, for the legitimization of the ponies' militia. The regulation of the unions, the banning of this practice and that. And in those days, it was even justifiable. I was able to justify it to myself. With every vote cast, I convinced myself more and more deeply of the owners' case. The unions truly were out of control in the 160s, you know. Gangsters, some of them, selfish, hostile, obstructive. They hated the country clans even then. When the end came, the owners were able to recruit griffons from throughout the backcountry to fill the ranks of their army. Almost all of those are gone now, aside from two or three of the sergeant majors, I think, and if we weren't in the midst of a war, I truly think those griffons would be retired.

"And so, self-righteous and half-forgetting my proper familial purpose, I voted for the final suppression. Like we all did. It was unanimous in the council. The old council, before they docked it, and cut off the council's griffish tail. Griffon and pony, we voted to put down the armed, rebellious unions. They'd seized the factories, you know. Threw the owners' supervisors out, those they hadn't suborned. Murdered a couple of them, in the heat of the general strike.

"General strikes are horrible things, Ms. Shield. Almost as terrible as war, and worse in some ways, because the general strike raises the whole of the working classes against the whole of the rest of society. The things some of those griffons did to the children they were able to catch…

"So yes, we voted to destroy the unions, and set loose the army on the workers. Broke the general strike with spear, brand, and axe. Tore that building down over there. Shipped the survivors overseas. Including my sister and my brother, and their adult children. I took their youngest into my household. My nephews and nieces barely remember their parents, or their elder siblings."

The old griffon's confession complete, he settled into his chair, collapsing into a sort of self-stunned sadness.

"How did it go so bad?" Gleaming Shield asked. "Was it a griffon-pony thing?"

"Ah? No, not at all. There was another siege in the pony quarter. Much briefer, the pony unionists weren't so… stubborn. And almost none of them were transported. They all confessed their sins! Bowed their head to the Duchess, swore their oaths. Some of them now are on the true city council today.

"The Duchess wouldn't see the griffish unionists. She came over here, and was getting ready for it, when she saw the rubble. This rubble, here - that my friend had embedded in this table. It wasn't like this, then, of course. He had someone carve the unionist crest into it, so he didn't have to explain to guests the crescent moon thing.

"You see, the Cathedral wasn't always the heart of the workers' movement. It's ancient, older than the Duchess, some griffons say. Some say the original ponies of Trottingham built the city around the original temple, an abandoned building they found on the site. Some say that it looked nothing like this Trottic building you see in front of you. Then it was rebuilt oh, a thousand years ago, and made into a place of worship for some ancient demon from the old days, when Equestria was expanding and great monsters fled the united pony kingdoms and their magic. Some versions of the settlement narratives say that the Trottish were originally exiles from Equestria, that they brought the worship of demons with them, the worship that alienated them from the Duchess and her government.

"Oh, I suppose she was the foreign princess in those days. The worship of pony demons came to an end when the old earls seized the city, of course. We griffons have always worshipped nothing but our own towering egos, and the wind."

"Mostly the wind, in the good old days," Gilda muttered, stunned by the old tom's forbidden history. None of this was in the ponies' histories, nothing she'd seen or read. Well, nothing she'd come across yet. She'd had so little time to explore the shelves…

"The good old days," continued Garrick. "That was when the earls overthrew the barons of Trottingham, and made themselves dukes. They removed all the obvious aspects of demon-worship, tore down their holy sanctuary, turned it into a palace, hung with Isles icons. But they mostly just hung tapestries. Never bothered to remove the carvings.

"When Gharne sold her inheritance to the pony princess, Duchess Celestia came to see her new duchy. The stories say that she saw what was under the tapestries, and refused to stay in the palace. Shunned it, threatened to burn it to the ground. Her pony advisors talked her out of arson, and talked her new subjects into building her a new palace over on the pony side of the city. All the governance of the Isles moved to that side of the city, some of it bit by bit, some of it all at once.

"She left the old palace to rot, and the unions moved into the vacuum. Converted it to offices, and a workers' rally hall. Flourished in it, really. But they left the new duchess with a distaste for the griffons and ponies who had set up in the old temple. Relations between the coronet and the unions were chilly from then onwards. Adversarial, despite their constant attempts to make the Duchess love them."

The old guildmaster stared at that piece of masonry with its defaced crescent moons, and ignored the soldiers and goats outside his parlor window rebuilding the ancient temple. A temple missing at least one stone, bearing the taint of old demons and the spite of their immortal duchess, who had for some now-forgotten reason rejected the love of those long-lost dwellers within the Cathedral of Labour.

Keeping Up Standards

Gilda sat in a sumptuous waiting-chamber deep in Government House, and awaited the pleasure of her captain. A pile of day-old correspondence sat half-read beside her on the rest of the couch the bat-hen had claimed for herself. A slight rumble of argument leaked out through the cracks of the conference room the notables had locked themselves inside. The conference room the arguments were raging within was a palatial space whose glittering finery put even Gilda's over-decorated foyer to shame, to judge from the little she'd seen of that richly appointed chamber before the ponies had slammed the doors on their attendants and gotten down to the business of yelling at each other.

Gilda's reading material consisted mostly, of course, of Captain Shield's correspondence. They'd not been keeping on top of the captain's mail, between Gilda's absences and Gleaming Shield's distracted princess-minding, and Gilda was trying to catch up on matters. The Fifth Territorial had not yet gotten the paperwork associated with Gleaming's detachment, and the sergeant major, writing for the major himself, had sent several rather stuffy notes complaining of the absence of 'Lieutenant Shield'. The next time Gilda was able to trap the sergeant-major into a private conversation, she'd have to remind him of the consequences of taking bribes, and the necessity for playing cloudball that came with it. He almost acted as if he had a moral leg to stand on.

Personal correspondence from the captain's family… a begging-letter from some social club of hers, all the way from Canterlot. Ah! A response from one of Gleaming Shield's magically-inclined fellow-alumni, about the George situation. Gilda quickly scanned it for details, and set it aside in the priority pile, which had consisted up to that point of nothing but a reminder from the barracks-master that their personal effects would have to be removed by the end of next week. Gilda rather suspected that their trunks and bags would have already been pillaged by the Manehattan regiment which had taken over the Fifth's old barracks, if it weren't for the high-end thaumic locks the captain had set on all their goods.

Gilda would have to make time for moving their stuff into the room they were currently sharing in the back servants' quarters in the royal suites. Even though there was barely enough room for them both when they shared the bed; maybe she could hang their trunks and baggage in a net over the bed? There certainly wasn't any floor space for the trunks.

Gilda was looking forward to finding new quarters. Gleaming Shield snored. And kicked.

The bronze-colored earth pony who was sitting in the waiting-room across from Gilda snorted around his pen, distracting Gilda from thoughts of her nightly torment, trapped in a bed with a sleep-boxing officer. Prince-major Blueblood had deposited his own bat-hen in the waiting room when he'd gotten sucked into this meeting with Princess Cadance and the Governor-General and company.

Bat-stallion? Gilda had only ever heard ponies refer to bat-mares, actually. She suspected 'bat-stallion' was bad Ponish. Despite having grown up speaking the pony-spawned lingua equina, Gilda occasionally still tripped over these odd little pony-centric issues with the language. Griffish was extinct, of course, although they said that Hidalgic was a lineal descendant of that long-forgotten language. Nogriff had ever written down a word of old Griffish, which was a big part of why it died out in favor of Ponish and its endless waves of written material, driven by every moon-rise eastward like the tides.

Almost nogriff still spoke Griffish when King Grover had ordered its preservation, and sent his scholars to hunt down the remnants of their native language, to preserve it for the pride of future generations. A glossary of vocabulary, two volumes of sayings and creation-myths rendered phonetically in Ponish letters, and a little biography of that little old hen they'd found who still remembered the words of her ancestors.

Gilda had paged through that impenetrable book of Aunt Gertrude's, mouthing the alien words, trying to follow the linguistic technicalities.

She'd never been any good at foreign languages. Even one as allegedly familial as her own ancestral language.

Now here was an important bit of writing, from the Provost Marshal's office. They weren't technically seconded to the MPs anymore, but the Provost Marshal had looped Gilda's captain in on the results of the interrogations of the pony gangsters and their cart-theft ring. Chop Shop had disappeared ahead of the raids, but they'd chased her vigorously. She'd only gotten away at the last moment, slipping away from a pier in an outlying fishing village on the far side of Sandstone. This was a copied report from the coast guard cutter that had failed to intercept Chop Shop's boat. Pirates, was it? She'd disappeared on some black-sailed ship, smugglers or corsairs, the coasties thought. The corsairs out of the Gizzard had been getting more and more bold, they complained, taking two ships in the last six weeks, one just outside of Horseshoe Bay at the beginning of January.

Another snort from the bat-mare as he scribbled at his - whatever that was. He had his own big pile of paper beside him, and was writing awkwardly in his chair, a book propped up and acting as a writing-surface, while he bent his neck painfully with pen in his teeth.

Gilda never could figure how ponies did that without getting drool all over their work.

"Hey, Sergeant, what do you call yourself? Bat-mare sounds wrong when you've got a willy," Gilda asked, bedeviled by her lamentable curiosity.

The stallion spat his pen out, and looked up with an offended gleam in his eyes. "Not sergeant, for one, Miss."

"The Territorials say I'm not a Miss, I'm a corporal," Gilda said in turn. She looked at the stripes on his neatly-turned-out bespoke uniform. "Your tailor seems to disagree with you on the subject of rank, and the EUP manual on non-commissioned officers would seem to concur. Aren't majors' servants sergeants by default?"

"I am not a major's servant! I am a gentlepony's gentlecolt. Vulgarly described by the ill-bred as..." he shuddered, grimacing slightly. "Maneservants."

"Maneservants are a civilian thing, ain't they?" Gilda asked, her gutter-accent thickening in reaction to the prince-major's servant's plumy vowels. "We're army issue now, whatever we did outside of th' service. I'm a bat-hen. A dog-robber, they call us, don't they? That'd make you a bat-stallion."

"They might call you that, but that is certainly not what they call me. A bat-stallion, indeed. Sounds like a male thestral. I am a valet militant, my dear. And I am very busy, I have a messenger coming for this order. Good day." The 'valet militant' picked up his pen, and went back to his scribbling.

Gilda packed away her captain's correspondence into her panniers, and got up to see what Sergeant Stuffy was writing.

His eyes got large as he saw she was approaching. He hurriedly finished whatever it was he was composing, and Gilda only got a brief glimpse of perfectly formed copperplate cursive before the valet folded up his last page and hid what he'd been working on.

"I say, these are sensitive matters! A gentlecolt does not read others' correspondence!"

"How the hay do you deal with your major's business if you can't read his letters for him?" Gilda demanded.

"You are your gentlepony, Corporal. A proper body-servant has no independent existence aside from their primary. Their selves, their talents, their marks are all in service to their gentlepony. You are an extension of your gentlepony."

"First I've ever heard of such a thing. Seems a bit much. So you're saying anything I do is my captain's fault, are you?"

"Well of course not. Your failures and faults are your own, of course. Properly speaking, nopony should ever notice your existence at all, young - what is your name, Corporal?"

"Gilda, Sergeant. I notice you haven't given me yours. Is that not considered rude?"

"Well, well, that's very true. But I don't have a name. A good valet does not. They put away their pony name, and they disappear into their gentlepony's service."

"Then why did you ask me for mine? And how do people ask for you, if you don't have a name?"

"Well, well. They call me Jeeves, when they need to direct my attention to this or that."

"Jeeves… doesn't sound like a pony name. But it is a name!"

"I like to think of it as a sort of title. As I am, after all, a-"

"Gentlepony's gentlecolt."

"Precisely! You catch on. What agency did the Twinkles hire you from? You seem rather raw."

"I was kidnapped by the captain ma'am when she was an ensign ma'am."

"Well, they certainly didn't train you pro- what was that? I've never heard of a Kid Nap agency."

"Kidnapped. Shang tied. Bound by law. Fished out of the North Celestial after they ran me to water. I am war booty, Sergeant Jeeves."

"Well, that's a novel method of recruitment, I will give young Shield that. Hrm. Hrm!"

"What are you staring at?"

"I'm trying to see the suture or the scarring where they extracted the bone you must have had inserted through your beak."

"You're thinking of the southern Diamond Dogs. While I've met a few, almost none of them do the ritual scarring thing anymore, Sergeant Jeeves."

"Just Jeeves! It is, after all, a title. Well, well. Exactly what you'd expect of a Twinkle, and one serving in the colonial service, at that! A barbaric breed, the House of Twinkle!"

Gleaming Shield, whose mother was a knight baronet, had told Gilda that her family had been lesser nobility since the third Celestial Era. That made them five hundred years ennobled. Gilda wasn't quite sure if she was obliged to be offended on her captain's behalf.

"Is that supposed to be insulting?" Gilda settled upon as a response. "The most savage and immoral griffons I know have always been of impeccable noble or royal descent. Mostly royal, the noble houses back home have largely been absorbed by the various cadet lines."

"Well, obviously, they are griffons! You are all barbarous by nature. The most humble of Canterlot shopkeepers are better-bred than your kings and dukes! Breeding isn't about blood, it's about company. How you keep it, how you learn to keep it, who you keep it with. The prince-major has several somewhat distant cousins in Saddle Arabia whose ancestors were sent into that barbaric land to civilize the Horse savages by the Princess. They did not Keep Up Standards, and they shamed the Platinum name. Their descendants are now no better than the rest of the Horse barbarians."

"You and your prince-major have been here in the Isles for a number of years now, haven't you?" Gilda asked, trying to keep the smirk off of her beak.

"Five years, yes. I struggle every day to Keep Up Standards. To keep the prince-major in the manner that scions of Platinum are accustomed. To keep my gentlepony…"

"Gentle?" Gilda asked, staring at the pony. For all of his snobbery and stiff upper muzzle, none of it seemed to reach Jeeves' eyes.

His eyes were a completely different story. Gilda didn't understand what she was seeing in those eyes.

Their conversation was interrupted by a rather scruffy griffon entering the waiting-chamber from the outer corridor. Gilda wondered how somegriff like that had gotten into Government House, and turned to confront the interloper, putting one talon on her service-blade's sheath.

"Hold on there, my hen. How did you get past the gate? This is a closed meeting," Gilda said, trying to channel her inner Corporal Gustav, or one of the other old birds.

"Ah, Miss Gayle," Jeeves interrupted Gilda's attempted confrontation. "My apologies, I am not quite ready for you. One moment please?" He was fumbling with a thick sheaf of papers, folding them into an waterproof tube. "Here, here. Please deliver this to our caterers, if you would. High priority! I know it will play hob with our schedules, but there are vital changes that must be made to our, hrm! club menu. We will have new ponies at the table."

"New… ponies?" asked the confused - messenger? The scruffy hen, whose name must have been Gayle, took Jeeves' missive in her talons, and scrambled to put it in one of her own panniers. "Has the… club meeting been delayed?"

"Oh, no, no - delivery still must be Sunday, as much before noon as can be arranged. Extremely important! The prince-major's polo club is very particular, you see."

"Polo club, right. You know I have no idea what you're talking about, right?" asked the new hen, shifting from one paw to the other, and staring at the equally baffled Gilda. "But I can tell them they can't delay anything. Sunday, before noon, right?"

"Exactly!"

"It'll be hard to add anything new on that schedule, Mr. Jeeves, you know that. The machine can't be started and stopped that easily. And we'll have to set type-"

Jeeves eyes had that look in them again, like he was looking at something infuriating, enraging. The scruffy little hen quailed under that hard look which was all the more intense for not involving a single muscle on the valet's very, very still muzzle.

"For-for- the menus, you know? We have this little press we use for to print the menus, right?" For some reason the messenger was staring now at Gilda, as if seeking permission or agreement on this point from the bat-hen.

Gilda shrugged, confused.

"Exactly. Make sure the menus are updated. And the cooks properly briefed as well, of course," Jeeves said, expansively.

"We'll do our best, Mr. Jeeves."

"Excellent! I knew I could rely upon your firm. So reliable! You know what it means to Keep Up Standards."

"Yessir, Mr. Jeeves. Gotta fly." And with that, the griffon ran out of the room like she was afraid that Gilda might eat her.

Gilda turned to the valet, who was now straightening his uniform, and avoiding Gilda's eyes.

"You use griffish catering?"

"Oh, really. Of course we do. Best food in the city. In the province, really. I would not do any other. The local Canterlotian-born and Manehattan-exile cooks are quite substandard. That firm knows how to deliver perfection."

"Last time I heard the prince-major talk about Trottingham cuisine, he had strong opinions."

"Well, of course. We do not serve Trottish cuisine at the table of a scion of Platinum. This firm provides proper Equestrian cuisine. They are, after all, professionals."

"It sounded more racial than cultural."

"We don't employ griffish hoofmares to serve the table, if that is what you mean. That is just another part of-"

"Keeping Up Standards?"

"Exactly, my dear. Now, if my ears do not deceive me, our principals' meeting seems to be at an end."

And so it was.

Crystal And Catacomb

"It can’t be morning!”

"Take it up with the Duchess, captain ma’am.” Gilda bent to her task, pulling greaves and pauldrons from the captain’s armor-tree, standing crowded in a corner of their very, very little room. She was forced to lay them out on the oil-cloth stretched out on their bed, despite the oil and the polish. There wasn’t room for anything else.

"I haven’t finished the engagement plan! I haven’t even worked out a theory of a plan! I have no idea what we’re going to do!” Gleaming Shield did that little dance she did when there wasn’t enough room to pace.

"Yes you do, captain ma’am, and please stand still.” Gilda smoothed out the captain’s gambeson, and began hanging the armor-harness around her pony’s barrel.

"We’re out of time!” The armor plate and accoutrements buckled to the harness, hiding it from view.

"We have exactly the right amount of time. Captain Bell will meet us in the yard, with Major... Major... Major?” Gilda tapped her beak with one talon, trying to remember the name of the Twenty-First Territorial Battalion’s executive officer.

"Major Night Twinkle. She’s a third cousin, twice removed. Or was it fourth cousin, thrice removed?” Gleaming Shield shimmied back and forth, letting Gilda slip the pauldrons over her withers.

"Right, her. We can’t get anygriff from the Fifth. The Twenty-First will have to do.” Gilda gave a tug to her officer’s armor, settling it on its hidden harness.

"We’ve never worked with the ponies of the Twenty-First Territorials!”

"Yes we have,” Gilda said, taking Gleaming Shield’s half-helm from the now-naked armor-tree. "We’ve been brigaded with them for months.”

"Looking at them across the parade ground isn’t working with them. It’s working in proximity! They never even asked me about the anti-gonne spell.”

"They’ve been in garrison roster, you know that.” Gilda took the captain’s cloth hat, a peaked cap designed to fit over the half-helm. "Only reason they’re here and available, and not out somewhere out beyond Bridlederry with our own griffons.”

"They’re a marching society, not a fighting battalion!”

"All we could get out of the brigadier. In fact…” Gilda held up the helmet and hat.

"Yes! Facts! She didn’t give them to us, she just told me to take what I needed. Said she couldn’t keep me from doing what I wanted.”

"Brigadier Falling Water has her reasons, you know that, captain ma’am.”

"I don’t want her job! I can’t even handle my job right now!” The unicorn’s head was darting around, leaving Gilda to chase her around the small room with both helm and hat in talon.

"And yet, that’s exactly what everygriff thinks you’re on the verge of doing, isn’t it? Taking her post as brigadier. Could you stand still for a second, captain ma’am?” Gilda took her shot, and shoved the helm over her captain’s mane and horn.

Gleaming Shield tossed her head in irritation. "Do I need both the hat and the helm today?”

"Yes, captain ma’am. We talked about this. We need both the armor and the uniform. That’s what the hat is designed for, to hide the steel under the velvet.” Gilda was already wearing her brocade lined with ensorceled chainmail under her panniers and her cockade.

"We need the show, and the steel, both.” Gilda shoved the hat over top of the unicorn’s helmet, and stood as far back as she could - which put her into the hall outside their room. "Do you have your flying spell handy?” Gilda asked through the open door.

"Ugh, it takes so much out of me. And the wings are cold!”

"Well, we don’t have any chariots handy today, and no place to park them when we get there. They’d get stolen. Anyway, today’s supposed to be unseasonably warm and sunny. Captain Bell said so last night.”

"She can’t know! Nopony runs the weather in this benighted province! There’s no posted schedule. It’s unnatural!”

Gilda ignored her pony’s pony-centric perplexities. Only Equestrian ponies felt the need to constantly fiddle with the weather, only Equestrian ponies got quite that neurotic about free-range nature. Only Equestrians mistook their wilful overbearing refusal to allow anything to manage their own affairs as the natural state of affairs.

They rattled down out of the royal wing to find the troops gathering in a marshalling yard just inside the Copper Gate. The assembled companies of the entire Twenty-First Griffish Territorial Battalion, and one company of the Marezonian Provincial Regiment. This collection of griffons and ponies made no sort of organizational sense - they weren’t brigaded together, had no common unit affiliations, and had never worked together in garrison, let alone in the field.

But they were what Gilda and Gleaming Shield had been able to scrape together. Obviously, it would have been preferable if they’d been able to work with their own Fifth Territorials, but the perverse demonology of the service had dictated that their home battalion were leagues away from where they needed them.

They found Captain Big Bell looking at a fresh copy of the Beak and Bone, waiting on Gleaming Shield’s arrival. The banner headline read, Villainous Hive Of Scum And Unionism!.

"Hey, there, Gleamin’ ma’am! Congrats on the promotion, mare. The colonel says she knew you were goin’ places. You seen this business? How’d they find out about us? Corporal Gilda, you moonlighting as a stringer fer the local libel-sheets?”

"While I wouldn’t put it past Gilda to take a side-job the way she goes on about bits, she’s hardly been out of my sight this last week. What are you talking about, captain?” asked Gleaming Shield. The big pegasus hoofed over said libel-sheet.

"Huh. Well, they got some of it right. And even our darker suspicions about the pink menace,” Gleaming said with a frown, speed-reading the paper’s thin Sunday extra. "But I’d think that someone listening in on our last-minute planning wouldn’t get it wrong exactly that way. It’s someone at Government House. Gilda, is this paper always like that?”

"Ehh, captain ma’am. Hard to say. Thing reads like one hen writing, but maybe there’s more’n one of them, and they’re just getting someone to-”

"Rewrite, yes. No, nothing show-stopping here. It’s better if the general public knows enough to be on the lookout. This helps. It did get distributed in the blue zone, Captain Bell?”

"You think I hang out on a street corner in the Pennies? Yesterday’s patrols said they were being sold everywhere. One copy came back with my ponies.”

"OK, fine. the rest of your regiment will be out there on patrol again?”

"Right where they can collapse on us if there’s an attack, and screen any big motion to engage outside of the planned perimeter, yes ma’am. Colonel Jubilee is on board.”

"Excellent,” Gilda’s captain said, looking like a cat whiskers-deep in the cream bowl.

That sufficed for the inspection of the pony part of their composite force. The Marezonians weren’t polished, but they’d worked with them before.

Well, Gilda had worked with the Marezonians before. And Big Bell was right there, where she’d promised she’d be. Which was more than could be said of the missing Major Night Twinkle. Or the pony officers missing from almost three fifths of the Twenty-First’s assembled companies.

"Food poisoning,” said the great big tom with sergeant’s stripes whom they’d met last night along with the missing Major Twinkle. "Some ‘alf-daft cook kicked a bad batch of peat mash out of the kitchens last night. ‘alf the offercers are greetin’ the sun in the latrine this morning.”

"How am I going to command two separate task forces of a battalion I’ve never even set eyes on, without officers?” whined Captain Gleaming Shield of the Crystal Guard.

"The same way you would with officers, captain ma’am,” Gilda said soothingly. "Ignore the existence of the rankers, give the orders to those officers we have, and the corporals for those we don’t, and let Sergeant-Major Gary here take care of matters. You can do that, can’t you, Sergeant-Major?”

The greying tom looked down on Gilda with the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his beak. Not many toms looked down on Gilda these days. It was a nice change of pace.

"Sergeant-Major?”

"What? Oh, yeh. We’ll foller your lead, Captain Shield. You don’t look much different from a regular captain. Shouldn’t you be wearin’ something glittery and fancy-like?”

"We didn’t have time! Rarity was too busy, there wasn’t enough advance notice… Gilda, am I out of uniform?”

Gilda rolled her eyes, and rooted through one of her panniers. She found an expended spellstone, and pulled it out of her bag and gave it a quick spit-shine. "Here, captain ma’am, gimme your hat.”

Gilda pinned the cheaply faceted sapphire onto the peak of the cap, next to the badge of the Duchy of Trottingham. She shoved the hat with its bit of shiny bling back on her captain’s head, who gazed up at her bat-hen with a baffled look.

"See? Crystal Guard field undress!” Gilda said to the sergeant-major of the Twenty-First Territorials.

"Izzat so? Well, at least it’s shiny,” the big tom agreed.

"We don’t have the Stinging Needle here to drape the captain ma’am in yards of gold braid. It’ll have to do,” Gilda said, exasperated.

"No, he’s right, Gilda. Sapphires, is it? Hold on, let me try something…” The captain frowned, her horn sparkling with a bit of effort.

The sapphire in her hat flowed, and poured over the unicorn like rain across a plastic-screened window. Wherever the glittering blue trickled, the captain’s blue-and-yellow-chased armor and great-coat turned crystalline and sparkling. When she was done, Gleaming Shield glistened in the morning sun like forty thousand bits of jewelry alight.

"Cor, miss, that’s the stuff!” said Sergeant-Major Gary. "If we’d had you back in the day, hain’t nopony would ‘ave ever outshone us on the pillar-pitch! That’s a right pretty trick, it is. I think the birds will foller you just to see what you do next, if that’s a sample!”

"Captain ma’am,” Gilda said, softly, looking at the gleam of her officer’s glory reflected in the eyes of the troopers standing in their files. "That’s a cue if ever I heard one. Give them their orders, ma’am.”

And so Gleaming Shield did.

The reaction force made the quick-march to Ironmonger’s Square in record time. The advance company of Territorials cleared the morning streets ahead of the pony company, who galloped across mercifully clean, ice-free cobblestones the whole length of the march-route from the Copper Gate across the western side of the Pennies. The trailing company of griffons hung lazily over the flank of the Marezonian column, looking suitably bored. The Twenty-First was more of a marching battalion than a fighting one, and Gilda could tell they missed their new finery, which she’d seen them peacocking around in garrison, now and again. She and the sergeant-major and Gleaming Shield fluttered over the pony column along with Captain Big Bell, whose tiny little feathered wings somehow managed to look less functional than Gleaming Shield’s wispy butterfly wings.

The scratch force enveloped the Cathedral of Labour, griffish corporals leading platoons to seize the entrances of each transept, and Bell’s company advancing to enter via the main nave. Goats and earth ponies were still working feverishly on some of the buttresses, and two of the transepts, despite the big inaugural meeting of the griffish tribal council scheduled for that afternoon. Additional corporals led a string of picket guards up onto the roofs of the neighboring apartment complexes and the Cathedral itself, to sit and stare at the laboring engineers of the Rock Valley Pioneers.

Nogriff knew what exactly the engineers were planning, or what their real orders were. The griffish troopers had orders to watch them like hawks.

For all the good that would probably do. If Gilda and Gleaming Shield didn’t know what to expect of Colonel Pie’s ponies, how could these under-prepared, inexperienced griffons make anything of whatever it was the ponies ended up doing?

Gilda and Gleaming Shield held one last rapid-fire huddle with Captain Bell and Sergeant-Major Gary.

"Way I see it, we’re playing ‘ome,” Gary opined. "The old cathedral’s our pillar-pitch, and we just got to keep the ‘eathen rebel from tossin’ any bombs into our perimeter. Simple matter of dividing up sectors, and letting each set of partners catch their own clouds. Er, rebel attacks.”

Captain Bell rolled her eyes at the old tom. "Buckball was always my game, old timer. And that’s a team sort of business. It won’t be anythin’ as simple as clangriffons in tartan cloaks runnin’ up to toss smokin’ bombs in through the church doors. We gotta work out lines of approach, vectors, that sort of thing. We don’t have enough ponies to go deep, though, do we?”

"Have you seen anything of the rest of your regiment yet, Captain Bell?” asked Gleaming Shield, looking formal and a bit strained in her shining armor. She clearly hadn’t thought through just how much attention she’d be getting from passers-by when she cast that spell upon herself, and there was a steady stream of looky-loos staring at her and the rest of the command huddle beside the patchy facade of the laborers’ portal.

"Nothin’ yet, but their patrol patterns are… hrm, we should be seeing First Company coming down Steeldriver in about thirty minutes. I expect to see the Colonel with them, we can talk with her about special patrols in the vicinity - she knows she was assigned this sector for a reason, but we need to make arrangements, y’know? Signals. What I’m really worried about is where are the Rangers? We’re supposed to have a team of them assigned to us, I talked to the Master Chief last night after you sent us back to barracks. The entire squadron they’ve got in city, is supposed to be all over the west end today. Including a full team that is supposed to be on the premises. I don’t see them, do you?”

"We never see the Beefeaters,” groused Gilda. "It’s their specialty, isn’t it? Not being around.”

"Gilda, shut-”

"I think I might be offended,” somegriffon interrupted Gleaming Shield’s admonition of her mouthy bat-hen. The whole huddle looked around in bafflement, trying to see who had snuck up on them. "‘ere we went to all of this trouble to get ‘ere ‘ours before dawn, and what do I get? Insults. Snide remarks. Accusations of laxity.”

"Are you using invisibility cantrips already?” Gleaming Shield asked, looking around to see if she could spot the tell-tale shimmer in the air.

"What? Do I sound like a unicorn to you? We don’t get your fancy pony spellwork. Just good ‘onest griffish grit and cleverness. ‘ave you fledgelings spotted me yet?”

Gilda looked down, belatedly realizing that the Ranger was projecting his voice away from where he actually was. There was a beak, sticking out of a storm sewer at their paws.

Ew.

"You were hiding in the sewers?” Gilda asked in disgust. "Don’t come out here, I don’t want to smell you.”

"It’s a storm sewer, not a real one, you dozy bint. Clean enough to eat a steak off of down ‘ere, it is. But nah, this stormwell connects with the catacombs.”

"The… what?” Gleaming Shield asked, boggled.

"Catacombs. It’s a cathedral, you didn’t think it ‘ad ‘idden tombs and cellars and witchy weird stuff under it? The bloody unionists used these tunnels for generations to run around the city council and the bosses. We wouldn’t be doin’ our damn jobs if we didn’t know these tunnels like the backs of me claws. The catacombs under the old cathedral’s always been our favorite junction. ‘ades, ‘alf the time we have a listenin’ post down here twenty-four seven. You got any idea ‘ow disruptin’ it’s been with the bloody Pioneers upstairs makin’ that windless racket?”

"Who am I addressing?” demanded Gleaming Shield, trying to regain control of her command.

"Petty Chief Gorham, at yer service, Captain Shield. Cor, ain’t you dolled up. I think yer gonna ruin my darksight, I can’t look at you too long. Don’t stand around too long ‘ere, somegriff’s gonna try and steal you and take you to the fences, they is. Break you up for your stones.”

"It’s a spell, Petty Chief.”

"I’d bloody well ‘ope so, you’re a queen’s ransom standing in the gutter, you is.”

"Can’t you come up out of that gutter? I feel like an idiot talking at my hooves.”

"No can do, yer captainship. This ‘ere is one of our favorite watching posts, it is. There ain’t no exit ‘ere, keeps ‘em from comin’ down after us if they get the idea we’re down ‘ere watchin’. There’s sally ports elsewheres, but it’s a bit of a jog and do we got the time for me to be duckin’ down into the catacombs just so’s you can yell at me at eye-levels?”

"These catacombs, how secure are they?” Gleaming Shield demanded, ignoring the half-hidden subterranean griffon’s borderline insubordination.

"As secure as they can get with me team of Rangers in their bowels. We’re all right and tight down ‘ere. Hain’t seen feather nor tail of a clangriffon in a goat’s age. Just dust comin’ down from all the thumpin’ about upstairs.”

"So nopony down there with black powder or explosives or matrixes or explosive spell circles?”

"Nawt I’ve seen nor ‘eard tell of, no. And explosive spell whats? What kind of ‘istorical romances ‘ave you been readin’? Griffons don’t go for none of that pony black arts stuff. We’re birds for ‘igh explosives and bright steel, Captain Shield. Tell me when the clans start ‘iring warlocks, and I’ll start worrying about the bloody black arts.”

"Damn it,” Gleaming Shield cursed. "I had been planning on going through the basements to see if Pinkie Pie had filled them with explosives and a rebel corpse or two for verisimilitude.”

"No corpses we didn’t make, no piles of barrels of black powder and wires and suchlike, yer captainship. Nobody but us Beefeaters and leetle piles of dust knocked loose by all the construction work.”

"Thank you, Petty Chief. Captain Bell, is that your Colonel approaching?”

And with the appearance of the head of the Marezonian provincials, Gilda and Gleaming Shield’s attention turned outwards, towards the most likely threats to the tribal council’s first, vulnerable meeting.

Pomposity And Pageantry

The first few bosses started showing up beginning at an hour and a half to noon, and arrived in trickles as the minutes wore on. They came escorted by numerous entourages, griffons of rough and evil aspect.

These gangs of street toughs knew better than to brandish their weapons in full view of the assembled Territorial and EUP pickets, but Gilda was certain that they had come armed to the beak. They kept their weapons under coats, hidden beneath wings, in cases and bundles held close to claw and beak.

The bosses didn't cross the square, but stood, isolate, each in the midst of their little knots of scowling minions, each moving to an otherwise unoccupied patch of pavement roughly equidistant to the other, earlier arrivals. The scattered crowds of civilian onlookers scurried to get out of the way of the organized mobs, and bit by bit, the onlookers were displaced by the would-be councilors and their toughs.

At a half-hour to noon, the guildmasters arrived as a single body. As a single column, in fact, preceded by two companies of the Twenty-First Territorials in full panoply. One of the few pony officers of that battalion not languishing in the infirmary presided from overhead in a griffon-drawn chariot surrounded by another company of troopers arrayed in a neatly ordered flight covering the column of guild-griffons from the air.

It had taken a good deal of negotiation with the guildmasters via Rarity and Garrick before they'd agreed to leave behind the technically-banned guild militias. The troopers of the Twenty-First were the fruit of that necessary compromise, one Gilda had endorsed enthusiastically - if anygriff had given a damn about what she thought.

The street bosses could try their own luck. Nogriff would mourn three-fourths of those villains if they died in a simultaneous hail of gonne-fire. And there had been no way, no conduit by which to convince them to give up their individual armed bands, even if they had been willing to be persuaded to any such compromise.

The challenge now was to separate the would-be councilors from their armed retinues in the moment, in the square.

Said retinues had begun to shift and mutter as the guild-column entered the center of the square, passing between the respective street-bosses of the Ninepennies and the Threepennies. Gantry himself exchanged a glare with a few of the guildmasters as they passed his position exactly opposite the laborers' portal.

The guildmasters were led by Garrick in his full master's robes, and the masters glittered in the noonday sun. Each master bore his or her chain of office, along with accoutrements in physical reference to their respective guilds' remits. The garment-makers carried long lance-length needles and whip-like measuring-tapes; the machinists their heavy clublike boiler-wrenches; the stevedores and the longshoregriffs their belaying pins and pry-bars.

The common, incidental character of said symbols of office being their dual usage as melee weapons should have been lost on absolutely no-one.

The guildmasters in their mass were themselves nearly a company strong, surprisingly numerous once you gathered them together like this. The street bosses scattered around the rim of Ironmongers' Square might have outnumbered them, but they were individual, alone in the midst of their minionates.

The guilds were united.

And as the guild-griffons approached the steps in front of the laborers' portal, the advance companies of the Twenty-First Griffish Territorials split to either side, fanning out to cover the approaches, leaving the guild-griffon core to advance through their wings, up to where Gleaming Shield, Sergeant Major Gary, and Gilda stood awaiting the masters wrapped in silent dignity. Overhead, clinging to the roofs and barely-finished buttresses of the cathedral, the earth ponies and goats of the Rock Valley Pioneers looked down over gutters and the gaping holes where gargoyles once had sat, staring curiously at the pageantry below.

The little mobs of street enforcers surged across the square as it became apparent that the guildmasters would be admitted before them, possibly without them. The trailing companies of the Twenty-first that had followed in the train of the guild-column about-faced, and joined their fellows in forming a front against the approaching not-quite-a-rabble.

"Only the invited and duly designated councilors of the Griffish Council of Trottingham will be admitted to the Cathedral today!" Gleaming Shield bellowed over the rumbling crowd and the heads of the guildmasters, her voice enhanced by magic. "Entourages will be encouraged to await their principals' pleasure elsewhere. Order will be maintained at all times, by the standing orders of the Duchess of Trottingham, pursuant to the Riot Act of the Hundred and Twenty-Sixth Year of the Fourth Era of Our Duchess, Celestia, First Of Her Name. Any invited and duly designated councilors shall present themselves immediately to the Duchess's troopers for ingress to the meeting chamber at this time!"

Gilda stood to her captain's right, the text of the Riot Act in her talons. The full reading of the Act was an act of ceremonial importance, that any griffon or pony of the duchy should be well aware of; its reading meant that duly authorized official violence would commence until the streets were clear and the gutters ran red with blood. Gleaming Shield's voicing of the name of the dreaded Riot Act was not in itself a reading. It was merely a reminder that the cannons were in the vicinity, and could easily be wheeled out onto the flanks of the crowd in the time it took a leather-lunged officer to read the text of the Act to a tumultuous crowd.

A friendly reminder, of course.

(The 3rd Light Artillery was not anywhere near Ironmonger's Square, anyways, not that anygriff was eager to inform the onlookers. Gleaming Shield had not been able to guarantee sufficient infantry support deployed in the streets to satisfy that commanding officer's demands. Instead, that battalion was standing by along with the rest of a quick reaction force built around the Fifth Brigade, which was at least a half hour's notice away, on alert, but still in in garrison.)

The gentle detachment of the street bosses from their retinues proceeded, gingerly, as the guildmasters disappeared into the guts of the Cathedral, led by Sergeant-Major Gary and one of his corporals. The individual bosses joined the rear of the guild-procession as they passed through the ranks of the Territorials holding back their followers from, well, following.

From the east, the thrum of many wings heralded the approach of an additional set of principals. Gilda looked over the heads of the councilors as they queued to pass through the portal.

Two full squadrons of pegasi in ceremonial war-gear was a sight rarely seen in Trottingham. The negotiations for that had been even more controversial than the discussions with the guilds over the militias, or the inconclusive negotiations with the brigadier of the Fifth Brigade and the artillery ponies . In the end, the Governor-General's office had scurried to detach a naval squadron of fliers from the flotilla refitting in the port. A naval squadron whose best finery was nothing more than tinsel in the face of Princess Cadance's Chasseurs.

The resulting flight looked rather as if someone had put unicorns and oxen in the traces of the same carriage-team.

Within the flight of battered marines and elite chasseurs, flew the princess herself, along with three carriages bearing the White Sisters and the Governor-General's representatives. They flew rapidly into the airspace controlled by the troopers of the Twenty-First and the Marezonians.

Gilda's eyes narrowed as she registered the absence of the Governor-General.

A bad sign, that.

Gilda helped one of the White Sisters bring the materials into the nave. A set of handsome couch-chairs had been set on the raised dais, deliberately and blatantly not thrones of course, but comfortable and suitable for the derrieres of the privileged and pampered. There were only enough benches below the dais for the councilors themselves, as most of the seating for the masses had been shattered wreckage, and had not been deemed necessary to the proceedings in any event. Nor had anygriff felt the need to haul more benches out of storage than was absolutely necessary.

There were surprisingly little in the way of walls inside the great nave, which had been designed to be mostly window, rising in long, interrupted sheets to the narrow clerestory far above. The original stained glass was long gone, of course, victim to the shelling which had wrecked the cathedral in the riots that had brought down much of the old building. The ponies of Colonel Pie's Pioneers had filled the empty holes with modern sheets of transparent screening. It wasn't decorative or dignified, but the glittering of the sunlight passing through the cheap plastic turned the vast space into a well of warmth and clarity.

Like the glowing heart of the sky, imprisoned within a jail-cell of delicate stonework. The Pioneers had done a good job, piecing together the fine tracings of thinly carved granite masonry, patched so neatly with cement and sealant that Gilda could barely make out the spiderwebbed cracks where it had all been smashed into rubble by the ponies' cannonfire in the riots of '73.

The benches were arranged lengthwise, perpendicular to the couches on the dais, facing each other across a space two spear-lengths wide. Garrick had led his procession into the space, and taken a seat in the benches to the left of the dais, at the fore nearest the dais itself. His griffons had followed his lead, mostly seating themselves along that left-talon side of the floor, shuffling about as they rearranged themselves in some pecking order Gilda couldn't quite discern.

The bosses were quarrelling over the seating on the right side of the floor, and their arguments had spilled out into the floor itself, almost filling the space entirely, and crowding the guildmasters on their own side of the aisle.

Lady Livery looked down at the chaos, her face not shifting in the least, as was the White Sisters' way. But Gilda had the feeling that if Livery was capable of frowning, she might have, confronted with the quarrelling, petty guttertrash making a mockery of the dignity of the occasion.

Gilda gestured with a wing, voicelessly, at the narrow but open aisle between the back benches of the guild-side of the chamber, and the curtain of plastic sheeting and stonework which passed for a wall in this place. The bat-hen led the White Sisters carrying their load of materials around the commotion, quietly passing behind the guildmasters.

The sisters climbed up on the back of the dais, and gathered behind the couches, putting their boxes of paperwork, supplies, and the big roll of butcher-paper where it would be close to hoof for whichever ponies would come to sit upon the ceremonial couches.

The commotion rose in volume as Gilda and the sisters sat, and waited, and watched Sergeant-Major Gary fall into the role of chief bailiff. He interceded in squabble after squabble, sending the respective disputants to this side or that of the bosses' benches, directing his two corporals to go here and there to forcibly guide the undisciplined counselors to their arbitrarily-chosen but now-proper places.

Gilda looked out at the scene, and saw a phalanx of guildmasters to her right, their left, dressed in their dignity as much as their robes of office. To her left, their right, she saw a sort of order emerging out of the rabble, a flock full of erratically-dressed individuals. Some wore finery above their station, far better-made and fitted than anything to be seen on the guild's side of the floor, even among the garment-trade masters. Some wore barbaric, slashed doublets, stained by what fluids Gilda knew not. And some dressed flashily, like the flamboyant street gangsters they were, daring anygriff to say anything about their presence here, at the start of something new, at the start of a new order.

The Governor-General's aide arrived first, his brown mane ironed flat, a set of conservative bakelite-rimmed glasses making him look far older than reports indicated he actually was. He had with him a long wooden stave, clearly intended to be his staff of office, his ceremonial mace. But its head...

Is that… a carved chicken-head?

Behind Cheese Sandwich strode Princess Mi Dolente Cadenza, Gleaming Shield, a number of ponies whom Gilda vaguely recognized as Sandwich's assistants, and Prince-major Blueblood and his valet. The pony delegation stopped at the back of the aisle of benches, and waited patiently for the Sergeant-Major to finish seating the last of the bosses, and for the rest of the chamber to resolve into some semblance of silence.

As soon as that silence had broken out, Sandwich interrupted it with a sharp rap-rap-rap with his chicken-mace, tapping out a rhythm on the nave's stone floor.

"OK, here's the deal!" the earth pony sang out, "We're here to try to educate ourselves! Familiarize ourselves with that old nomenclature! Reviving this old- legislature! Recall the ancient definitions, of representations, among the wild griffons and tribal rulers, without descending into paired-off duelers! And so I call now, from the flocks of Trottingham, elders and the respected, to our pilot program! Toms and hens, this charge I've been given, to summon you to conclave unshriven, resolve this rebellion we're driven, lest we all die unforgiven!"

The newborn silence thus assaulted, recoiled astonished, as the chamber full of griffons stared at the lunatic with his chicken-mace.

Gilda wondered if someone had bleached a zebra and dipped him in chocolate and caramel.

"Uh…" the earth pony said, looking sheepish. "So, yeah, not a heartsong crowd, I take it. Right. OK, you old birds, the Duchess wants to see some representation returned to this dump. You're all we've got. Got it? Simmer down, and let us get the Duchess's own ponies seated up there in those couches over yonder, and we can all get out of here without any blood on any of the fancy new stonework, yeah?"

Cheese Sandwich looked around, as if he expected an actual response to this… speech?

Garrick eventually stood up from his bench, and put the silence out of its misery.

"Mister Sandwich, the guildmasters and elders of Griffish Trottingham stand assembled as requested. We welcome the Duchess's representative, and await the Duchess's pleasure. Ah… without the rhymes if you wouldn't mind."

"Princess, the elders are assembled. Could ya follow me?" Cheese Sandwich said, and waved his chicken-mace towards the dais. He wobbled three-legged down the aisle, rapping his mace as he lurched forward. Princess Cadance followed in his wake with all the dignity she could muster, Gleaming Shield, Blueblood, and the others trailing behind.

While waiting for her captain and the others, Gilda got the butcher-paper scroll ready, standing it up on its end, ready to be rolled out. Mirror, one of the younger White Sisters, stood beside the scroll, ready to hold it in place when the time came for Gilda to unroll the rest of it across the back of the stage.

Cadance walked up to her couch, and stood before it as Cheese Sandwich took his place before her on the first step of the dais, beside where Garrick stood in front of his bench and his guildgriffons. Gleaming Shield and the other minions joined Gilda and the White Sisters at the back of the stage, and Gleaming Shield bent beside the butcher-paper scroll, fiddling with the lowest leaf of the taped-together mess, attaching the big leather-bound book she'd brought with her to it with yet more tape.

Gleaming looked up at her bat-hen, and nodded. Gilda began unrolling the three-lengths-tall scroll across the back of the stage, carefully holding it stiff so that it didn't bow over or fall back. Inside the scroll was a foreshortened pikestaff which gave the whole vast sheet of butchers' or blotter paper a stiffness that kept it from folding in on itself. Mirror held the pikestaff's twin on the far side, so that the great cobbled-together sheet stretched across the whole back of the stage.

Gleaming Shield's horn glowed as she activated the carrier wave matrix built upon the entangled magic of the correspondence journal.

Cheese Sandwich closed his gaping jaw, which had fallen slack in astonishment at the unplanned antics at the back of the stage. They hadn't wanted to give Pie's people time to readjust to their own contributions to this farce; let the Special Party Plans ponies react to someone else's surprise for once.

"Ah, OK, folks, this is it! This is the first and inaugural meeting of the Duchess's Griffish Tribal Council! Hear ye, hear ye, gather round and listen, there was an old mare from Hooftucket, whose life could hardly fit in a bucket, poorer than cow-"

"Mister Sandwich, please confine yourself to the contents of the agreed upon script!" Princess Cadance projected over the earth pony's interrupted limerick.

"I don't know why, nopony else is sticking to the script…" muttered Sandwich.

"Mister Sandwich!"

"OK! Listen up, you skells! The big white horse wants you all to be good to each other! Quiet up, and listen to the voice of the Pr- er, the Duchess!"

And Gilda's captain's horn lit up again, activating the cantrip which made the words appear across the top of the butcher-paper scroll.

CELESTIA, DUCHESS OF TROTTINGHAM, LADY PROTECTOR OF THE GRIFFISH ISLES, FIRST OF HER NAME, it said in bright neon-yellow letters against the brownish butcher-paper.

And then beneath this proscenium of glowing text, an enormous black-inked sketch of a towering alicornic princess appeared, moving slightly as if it was alive, her eyes moving back and forth across the gathered griffons and the few ponies standing in front of the drawing.

"GOOD AFTERNOON, MY LITTLE GRIFFONS. IT HAS BEEN FAR TOO LONG SINCE I HAVE SEEN ANY OF YOU. THANK YOU FOR COMING TOGETHER. I DECLARE THIS GATHERING A DUCAL COUNCIL, AS WE HAVE ASSEMBLED HERE THE ELDERS OF THE REALM AND MY SELF, IN CHARACTER AS YOUR DUCHESS AND SOVEREIGN. LIVERY, PLEASE BEGIN THE OFFICIAL RECORD, WE HAVE HERE GATHERED, THE DUCHESS IN COUNCIL."

The Trooper's Errand

Gilda looked out at the assembled councilors and associated ponies, and tried to re-start her stuttering heart. The sound of the Princess's voice beat down on her like the hammering waves of the winter sea in its full fury. Each vast word, amplified by that enormous sounding-board behind her which was the butcher-paper screen, passed through Gilda's body like an alien heart beating her blood against its own courses. Syllable by syllable, Gilda's own heart fought against that vaster aural vessel, until her little flesh heart gave way, and… took that great paper heart's beat, beat with that thump-thump-thump.

Synchronized.

"WHERE ARE MY PONY COUNCILORS? THERE ARE YET PONIES WILLING TO STAND FOR MY COUNCIL IN TROTTINGHAM, ARE THERE NOT? BLUEBLOOD, WHERE ARE THE PONIES?"

Each syllable drove another beat of blood through Gilda's arteries. Each little pause gave her little heart a reprieve. She'd never felt anything like it, not since that one wild afternoon she'd snuck down the lip of the Abysmal Abyss, to peer over the edge into the howling wilderness outside of Griffonstone. To hear the wind screaming its fury at the victims of its endless rage, the rattling of the bones and bone-shards and bone-chips among the cliffs below as the freed wind tossed and tossed and tossed the remnants of those who had dared to try to enchain the wild wind, to imprison Boreas.

This booming, overwhelming, visceral sound sent Gilda back to that cliff, looking down into the cleft in the earth where a divine wind's fury had trapped itself, its endless vengeance locking it more firmly in a narrow space than ever the pride of Great Grover and his knights had, in their then-famously found, now-famously lost Idol.

"Auntie! I'm not running this hack box! This is Sandwich's mess," the prince-major squeaked, looking aside at the tan earth-pony whose ironed-down mane was starting to frizz at the edges.

"Uh, hiya Princess! My plans didn't include you. Or ponies in general. This is a griffish tribal council, not a ducal council! Didn't they tell you?" The governor's aide was admirably composed, for somepony upon whom the Royal sketch's eye had fallen, disapprovingly.

"IF THEY HAD, I WOULD HAVE CORRECTED THEM. THERE IS NO SUCH THING."

"But!? The books all say that the griffonmoots-"

"DO NOT LECTURE ME ABOUT THE GRIFFONMOOTS. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A GRIFFONMOOT IN TROTTINGHAM. THERE NEVER WILL BE AS LONG AS I AM DUCHESS. I WILL NOT DEBATE YOU, I WILL NOT LET MY SUN SET ON TROTTINGHAM BEFORE I SEE MY FULL COUNCIL BEFORE ME. BRING ME MY PONY-"

And the great booming voice ended, abruptly, in sparks. Gilda's heart pitter-pattered a few more times, searching for its original, lesser rhythm.

"Sorry!" Gleaming Shield yelped, scampering about putting out the little fires lit by the scattering sparks. She frantically returned to fussing over her magic book, her horn glowing with a flameless blaze. "Sorry everypony! The modified Haycartes is touchy, and time-limited! I'm trying to get it- no, that won't work. I need to clear the line, we're getting feedback. Or, no, that's no good. I think I need to cut the connection and reboot. It'll take a couple minutes." She shut the book, and extinguished her hornglow.

Gilda looked up at the now-empty butcher-paper screen now speckled with little burn-holes. The great animated alicornic sketch was gone, leaving only an impression of burning eyes scorched into the paper itself, a charred trace of pupil and sclera.

Garrick, Cheese Sandwich, and Livery were faced off in some sort of argument, with Blueblood standing awkwardly to the side, looking uncertain. The far side of the aisle was in tumult, with Sergeant-Major Gary's corporals and rankers scattered here and there, keeping the unaligned councilors from each others throats, or those of the uneasy guild-griffons. The guild faction sat silently on their own side, their eyes locked on the back of their leader and spokes-griffon, as Garrick fumed at the governor-general's representative.

"Captain ma'am?" Gilda whispered to the distracted unicorn. "Captain? Captain! Gleaming Shield, please, leave that thing be. We don't have the time, ma'am. Please."

"What!" snapped Gleaming Shield. "What? Look, I'm the only pony who can get this apparatus work- oh. Damn. I don't know, let Cadance handle it. It's obvious what the Princess wanted, right?"

"Duchess, captain ma'am. And what is obvious can quail in the face of what griffons - or ponies! Want. They won't do it without somegriffon telling them they have to. That was what She was going to say, before it cut out."

"Then Cadance can tell them in her stead." Gleaming looked uncertain, and shifted slightly, her eyes going back to the ensorceled journal and her self-assigned task.

"Cadance is not my captain. You are. I need you to be the captain, ma'am."

"You do? You do. OK. Go put our oar in. Go get the Princess's - ok, the Duchess's pony councilors. Give Princess Celestia her full council." Stiffening under Gilda's steady gaze, Gleaming Shield straightened up, standing her full length and looking up at her corporal. "Corporal Gilda, gather a party and take them to Government House and deliver the Duchess's orders that the councilors of the old Council join the new joint Council here in the Cathedral. Make sure her orders are understood and obeyed."

"Yes, Captain ma'am."

Gilda charged into the fray, sticking her lowly beak into the heated squabble at the foot of the dais, leaving her unicorn to do her unicorn-things.

Her Captain had spoken.

"-thing is, until we get the straight poop straight from the Princess's mouth, I have to follow the Governor-General's explicit orders. It isn't fun, but it is all the authority I really got, y'know?"

"Mr. Sandwich, Auntie Celestia said all the words. The meaning was clear. I don't know how many- Corporal, we're in the middle of something here."

"No you aren't, Princess. You're at the end of something. I'm just here to hurry it up. Captain says it'll be a while before the connection is back. I didn't understand the explanation, maybe you can hear it from the horse's mouth."

"What? Oh, poo, excuse me everypony." The little princess - when did Gilda start thinking of her as the little one? - got up from her couch and went back to talk to Gleaming Shield.

Gilda's eyes roamed over the scene, picking out the ponies and the griffons she needed. Livery was arguing with Garrick and Cheese Sandwich again. One of her other sisters - Gilda thought it was Hotspur from the steady gaze she directed at the quarrels on the gangster side of the aisle, but couldn't be certain. Sergeant-Major Gary, directing his corporals in maintaining a bare sort of order in the chamber, never actually interceding himself. Prince-Major Blueblood, his valet Jeeves standing stolidly by his side, looking a bit panicky around the eyes, but standing relatively still next to the princess's abandoned, empty couch.

OK.

"Hotspur, could you help me?" asked Gilda. "I have my Captain's orders, and the Duchess's orders. We have much to do, and a long way to go. I could use your support right now."

"My help? Oh, my. That's a new turn, isn't it. Of course I'll help, Corporal. It is what Auntie wants, isn't it?" The White Sister glided gracefully across the dias, passing between Blueblood and the argument on the steps. "Bluey, dear. Don't you think we have something to do?"

"What? Hotspur, I'm busy, don't pester me."

"Bluey, we have an errand. Don't just stand there watching the adults argue. Do what you must while we have time to do so."

"Hotspur! I'm not a colt anymore, you can't send me out of the room for a snack."

"I'm not, Bluey. We're going together. It'll be an adventure. A little errand into the wilderness."

"No! I've got my orders, I'm accompanying the governor-general's aide. That's all that I'm doing."

"We have higher orders now, Bluey."

"But I'm doing what-"

"Sir, I recognize that it's traditional for a Prince to refuse the crown three times, but perhaps we could spare the dramatics?"

Gilda and Blueblood stared in astonishment at Jeeves, as startled as if the empty couch had stood up and offered an opinion on whose rear was worthy to grace its cushions.

Hotspur didn't look surprised to see the gentlepony's gentlecolt intercede, Gilda noted out of the corner of her eye.

"The Duchess Calls, sir," said Jeeves, amiably. He looked at his charge, steadily, smiling slightly. "You will, of course, answer her Call."

"But Jeeves-"

"I knew you were up to it, sir."

"Oh, blast it. How long will this take?" The tall white unicorn looked around, clearly plotting a line of retreat out of the restive improvised council-chamber. "Corporal- what was your name again?"

"Gilda, prince-major… sir."

"Right, I think we need somepony more… ah, him. He'll confuse the councilors enough to get through to them. Right. Right." The tall pony started off suddenly, leaving his valet and the rest to follow in his train. He trotted down the three steps into the half-crowded aisle, and tapped the distracted sergeant-major on the flank.

"I say, Gary old bean, we could use your famous talons. We have a bit of cloud-wrangling, what?"

"Who? Oh, Blueblood. I'm sorry, sir, I've a bit of a wobbly 'ere, these griffons don't want to 'erd, but 'ave you ever seen a griffon oo would?"

"Put 'em in somepony else's hooves, old bean. We need a famous face, and yours is just what the bar-back ordered. The Princess Calls! We've got a load of council-clouds to haul in here."

"What, from Government 'ouse? That's a long pitch, sir. Plenty of space for them to wander on the way."

"Exactly why we need the best cloudpuncher in the game, Gary. Come on, it'll be ripping!"

"Right 'o, sir. Corporal Gilson! You're in charge here, keep them from killing each other while I'm gone!"

Between Sergeant-Major Gary and Blueblood, they got to the chariots without a fight, but it was a damn close thing. Gilda, Hotspur, and Jeeves followed Gary and Blueblood as they worked their way across the square to where the pegasi were keeping their part of the perimeter, and the idled chariots. Little clots of toughs and gangsters were quarrelling here and there, with griffish Territorials rushing back and forth to break up any physical altercations.

Blueblood took the major of Cadance's chasseurs aside, while Gary and Gilda looked to the chariot Hotspur had chosen for their errand.

"Sergeant-Major, I'm not wearing my chariot gear," Gilda admitted, sheepishly.

"Neither am I, me 'en, but needs must when Discord drives. It'll just be a bit of galling," Gary said, looking resigned to the discomfort of hauling a chariot without the usual straps and padding.

"Oh, nonsense, you two. Bluey will get the pegasi who hauled us here to hook up again. Look, here they come. You will escort us, of course? We don't need you, Corporal Gilda, of course, but if your orders from Gleaming Shield say-"

Gilda looked back at the cathedral, and the chaos inside.

No.

"I have my orders…" Blast. Was Hotspur an honorable or a lady? Gilda had forgotten. "Miss. And they are to see the ponies back here. I'm in for the duration."

To be honest, Gilda was trying to not think. The Princess - the Duchess? Gilda wasn't sure what to call Celestia in her head, with nogriffon listening. Whatever she called her, Celestia's voice still rang in her ears, churned in her guts.

Gilda was unsettled, and the more she moved, the less she had to think about that voice, and how it'd stirred the waters of her mind. Like a heavy wind that ripped still waters into rippling waves.

Like the cold, drowning waters of the North Celestia Sea, just before the hornglow of a strange unicorn pulled her soaked, heavy feathers from certain doom.

Cadance's chasseurs hooked themselves into the traces of Hotspur's and Blueblood's chariot, and they took off into the air, rising rapidly over the half-crowded heaving mass of the griffons on and above Ironmonger's Square. Griffons generally stayed on the ground except when agitated, but there were a good many flying around in this part of the blue zone.

Including a couple tangled up and fighting here and there, within eyesight. Additional flights of griffish Territorials were approaching from the south and north. Gilda's half-distracted eyes noted the uniforms and the guidons, and filed them as platoons from two of the other three Territorial battalions sent out to patrol the city that morning, dismissing them as not a threat.

Assuming that no rebels had gotten uniforms from anywhere. If they approached their flock, Gilda'd give them a second thought.

The tangled half-fighting of the Crab Bucket, fleeing rebels in their clan homespun, the Territorials chasing the rebels into the Fifth's positions, the constant fear that they'd strike down the wrong griffons, kill their own griffons in the chaos. The uncertainty of real battle.

Government House was a far flight from the Cathedral of Labour, almost the entire length of the city. Two full flights of Cadance's chasseurs flew escort for the lesser royals' chariot, beside the two griffish non-coms. Despite all the restive griffons in the air that sunny afternoon, nogriff approached the little column.

They were too obviously a tough nut to crack.

The gonne mis-firing in her talons. Scrambling to refill the emptied flashpan. Snapping to aim, the flash and boom, the pony's head bursting like a ripe melon.

Gilda shook her head, and tried to think. She cast one eye up at the sun still overhead. It should be afternoon, the sun should be chasing the western horizon now. Had it stopped moving? Was she imagining things?

They did say that Celestia commanded the heavens, the sun and the moon in their courses. I will not let my sun set on Trottingham before I see my full council seated before me.

Could she do that?

A half-flight of Rangers met them over the Blue Line, and paced them for a few dozen lengths as they exchanged a few words with the pegasi escort. If it'd been only griffons, that would have been a different story.

It was always an awkward dance when griffons crossed the Blue Line in flight.

Garrick outside of his battered house, promising his participation in the maybe-a-death-trap griffish council. Garrick in that borrowed apartment across from the cathedral, confessing to his once-betrayal of the unionist cause and his exiled family, all for nothing but the hope of a promise of some future for the workers and his griffons.

There were no pegasi waiting for them in the air over Government House. There were never that many winged ponies in Trottingham in the best of times, and the lesser royals had taken all of the ones available around Government House with them when they'd flown into Ironmonger's Square.

The ground-bound pony Territorials who guarded the governor-general's palace scurried around ineffectually under the returning flight.

The pegasi dancing with the sickly yellow clouds in the smoky skies over the Crab Bucket. Kicking and coaxing and pleading with the reluctant vapors as they wrung bitter tears from a dry-eyed heaven.

They settled lightly into the landing-courtyard of Government House, and the pony Territorials lined up to greet their Equestrian opposites as the chasseurs gracefully touched down. Gilda had rarely had any contact with the Fifth Territorial's pony equivalents. The pony territorial battalions were outnumbered by the griffish territorials about two to three, and they'd always used the pony battalions to hold the Blue Line and garrison the pony side of the city, and the pony districts in the outer Isles.

Gilda looked at the earth ponies in Territorial gear, and the chasseurs in their finery.

The burning wind full of falling pegasi, falling chariots, burning ponies and griffons screaming with the wind itself, snow and fire and burning fire.

The sergeant of the chasseurs' flight looked back at the ponies in the chariot, and hesitated. Gilda strode forward, seizing the initiative. She found the officer among the pony territorials, and met her gaze.

"Lieutenant ma'am," and wasn't that a bit of nostalgia. "Corporal Gilda of the Fifth Griffish Territorials, on detached duty. We're here to collect some ponies who have gone missing. Duchess's orders. She wants her ponies in council, now, soon as we can get them across town."

"What?" squawked the pony officer. "What council? They're meeting upstairs in the council room. About that griffish thing. Who wants the councilors?"

"The Duchess, lieutenant ma'am."

"The Duchess is in Canterlot, like she always is. The Duchess never wants anything, that's always code for somepony taking her name in vain."

"I'm told she's in Buckmoral today, not Canterlot. Or maybe Canter Surleau. Look, they've got a remote magicky rig thing going over in the Cathedral of Labour, and the Duchess is right pissed, you understand? The Duchess herself, in the virtual flesh - well, papery, anyways."

"What, that griffish nonsense? I didn't think it was going to-"

"It did. It is. And if we don't get the rest of the council up there, we're all screwed. You see that up there?"

"No, what?"

"The sun, ma'am. Duchess said she won't let the sun set until she sees her ponies. Been a long lunch hour, hasn't it?"

"Uh…"

"Let us through, lieutenant ma'am."

"Not my circus, not my monkeys. Oh! Hello, Prince-Major!"

"Yarrow Wood, what are you doing? We have an errand for my Aunt. Get your troopers out of our way."

"Yessir!"

And that was that. Having a prince in one's panniers was, occasionally, useful. As they escorted the royals into the palace and up the stairs, Gilda thought about winds. About the wild wind in the Abysmal Abyss, set free from its griffish prison. About the ponies who could make the wind cry, or burn, or dance.

About a distant pony princess who could hold the sun in the sky, and turn a cold February day into a sweltering, humid summer day.

They found the pony councilors slouching about the oaken-paneled luxury of the Trottish City Council's chambers. The visitors' gallery was empty, and the pageantry of an official session was notably absent, but everypony was there, arguing in a desultory, aimless manner.

The way that powerful ponies behave when nopony's watching, and they're waiting for news, for events to change the facts on the ground.

They didn't take note of Blueblood when he stepped into the room, but a couple jumped to their hooves when Gilda followed in his train.

"Blueblood! What are you about, bringing a griffon into the chambers! That's a security risk!" one of them barked. His cronies got up to join his little chorus of stuffy disapproval.

"Councilor Sachem, I completely understand your ire, old boy, but m' aunt is on the warpath. Let the birds go, we're in the wrong place."

"What do you mean, wrong place? I'm a councilor of the Duchess's council, standing in the council's chambers! I am exactly where I'm supposed to be!"

"Are you in session, now? I don't see the governor-general. Where is he?"

"Upstairs somewhere, probably having a brandy. And no, we're not in session."

"Send someone to bring him down. You are now."

"What! You can't call us to session! You're just the liaison!"

"I am a prince of the blood, you will respect my title!"

"You're a bloody Platinum afterthought, and you ain't any of ours! You're just a major in this room, Blueblood! Stay in your lane. Equestrian."

Sergeant-Major Gary took that moment to step up and calm the Equestrian princeling. Jeeves, Blueblood's valet was standing back, his eyes on his charge, keeping out of the argument. Gilda didn't understand, this was exactly the sort of situation a status and standards obsessed pony like Jeeves should have relished. Gilda didn't understand that pony, and today, she understood him even less than usual…

"''ere now, sir. No need to get worked up. Councilors Sachem, Speaker Tweed, Smith - good to see you all. You all know about our little get-together in the Cathedral today?"

"Gary!" laughed Councilor Sachem. "Is that you? Goalkeeper Gary! Aren't you a sight for nostalgic eyes! How many years has it been?"

"Too long, Councilor. We always were thankful of your support, me and the toms."

"Cloudball was good for the constituencies! And a right ripping lot of fun to watch! Shame when we had to shut it all down. Was against it, you know that."

"We knew, Councilor. I'm too old for cloudball these days, but it'd be nice if the fledgelings could 'ave their turn in the pillar-pitch some day, eh?"

"Sergeant-major!" Gilda ground out, her head full of burning eyes and her heart full of worry. What riots were brewing in the streets of the blue zone? When would the rebels emerge from their holes? What was Colonel Pie plotting?

"Oh, is this one of your proteges?" asked the councilor, looking at Gilda for the first time.

"Nah, she's not even one of my corporals. From the Fifth, but she's political, y'know?"

"Aren't we all! Aren't we all. What's all this about, Gary?"

"Equestrians! And the Duchess, of course. 'erself sent us, she did."

"What! She never! The Duchess is in town?"

"Inna manner of speakin', she is. This new Guards captain, she's got a new toy, projects a pony alla way from Canterlot to speak to us. Could you imagine? Griffons in Trottingham could watch a match from Cloudsdale!"

"Cor! You don't say."

"Well, it only lasted for about five minutes, but proof of concept, y'know? Great things happening, my colt."

"Great things! Fancy that. You say the Duchess was talkin' to that stupid griffonmoot of Sandwich's?"

They were now surrounded by curious pony councilors, listening to the amiable sergeant-major and his suddenly-tamed Councilor Sachem.

"Surely she was, as tall as life. Walkin' across this big brown paper screen like a drawin' come to life. 'er voice, sure as I'm talkin' to you. Louder than 'ades, though. Not sure if that was a drawback o' the medium or what. 'erself's righteous, though, me colts and fillies. So fulla the fire of ire that she burnt a bit of the paper screen. You all ain't where she wants you to be, you ain't."

Gilda had come, intending to dress down this chamber full of ponies, laying about, useless, lazy, cowardly. She had a gut full of angry words, righteous words.

And she wasn't speaking a word of them. But she knew better than to interrupt a griffon when he was on a roll. She stayed silent, fuming, watching.

"Now either you are closing your eyes to a situation with your Duchess that you do not want to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of the Duchess's fury with yourselves. You've got trouble and that starts with a T and that rhymes with C and that spells Celestia!"

"Celestia?" squealed three councilors in unison.

"Now folks, you know I knew the Duchess, even played before her in my prime, yes I did. I was the king of the cloudsball pillar-pitch, and that starts with P which rhymes with T which rhymes with C and that spells Celestia!"

"Celestia!" sang four councilors, looking alarmed.

"Oh, she's a mighty mare, fillies and colts, a big pony, is our Duchess. Tall as the dawn, and hot as fire, but sweet, oh so sweet when she smiles at 'er ponies. She's a big girl, a queen 'ead and shoulders above us all. But when you've made her mad?"

"Trouble!" sang five councilors, looking panicked.

"Ponies, she's in town, in spirit if not in flesh, she's a fiery mare, our Duchess, and that starts with D which rhymes with P which rhymes with T and that spells?"

"Trouble!" sang a half-dozen ponies, up from their slouches, shifting back and forth on their hooves.

"Oh, there's a cathedral full of griffons across the city, my boys and girls, and a princess drawn on a big brown paper screen, and they're waiting on you, yes on you, and the big filly is burnin' 'oles in her paper screen with 'er waiting. You know what that spells?"

"Trouble! Trouble! Trouble!"

"Get to your hooves, my fillies and my colts! Get to your hooves and sing in tune! Get to your hooves and make them dance a jig! Because we got a road to follow, double-pace!"

Then an invisible band started up the tune, and the rest of them started singing, get to your hooves! and the rest of the chorus.

Gilda was all for the pony virtues, but she drew the line at singing. She kept her beak shut tight, but couldn't keep her paws from following the dancing ponies as they trotted out of the council chambers. Gary flapped his wings and led the march, warbling along, his bass voice deepening oddly into a sweet baritone that only half sounded like him.

The rest of the afternoon blended into a long montage, as that ludicrous song led the pony councilors into the streets outside of Government House, surrounded by a chorus of singing chasseurs, and joined by a tap-dancing governor-general.

For the first time in her life, Gilda suffered a heartsong. She hated every moment of it.

Halfway through the number, as they passed through the Blue Line checkpoints, she spotted Colonel Pie pronking in the rear of the parade, a trombone in her hooves and at her lips. It was her, Gilda thought to herself, as her two left paws did their best to tangle her up, I don't know how she did it, but this was her plan all along. How did she do it?

Petition And Redress

The song turned to a different key as the march of the councilors reached the Blue Line. The parade had begun on the wide pavement of Guillaume Boulevard, and there it remained. Just in front of the walls that constituted the Blue Line was Flotilla Street, and there in the half-square which the construction of the Line had left of the old Costermongers' Square was a crowd of ponies and the occasional griffon.

They began a new song. A song of petition, a song of demands, a song to plea for redress, addressed to the pony councilors, and through them the oh-so-distant Duchess herself.

Oh, Duchess, oh, Duchess please, ten years have passed,
Hear our entreaties, your mercy is vast
Duchess, Oh Duchess, we've all had it rough
Tell us when will enough be enough?

A slight pony came out of the crowd, a humble clothier, and she was followed by a sadly smiling Rarity, swaying to the music, supporting her shy friend. The clothier Sweat Shirt met the eyes of the pony councilors, one by one in the front of their little formation. Her eyes met those of the lofty Prince-Major, and she blushed furiously, mortified as the words tore out of her:

Oh, burghers, oh burghers, we tire of this hate
Please let my journeygriffs pass through your gate
How can we live with this chilling divide:
Ponies sheltered, and griffons outside?

Sweat Shirt's stanza sung, she folded into herself, collapsing under the pressure of all of those eyes, her white friend supporting her slumping, shrinking self. Her fellow-shopkeeps and workshop ponies swarmed around the councilors-column and shouted the refrain, singing Oh Duchess, oh Duchess as the pony Territorials at the gate opened the way into Griffish Trottingham. As companies of Territorials led the parade and followed in its train, Rarity led her trembling friend to the rear of the column, and the two mares joined the councilors as Gary and the pony Territorials led the prancing column across the Line.

The city beyond the gate was a different world. The sun and its light was the same, but the streets and the buildings were just a little bit dingier, darker, grimmer. And as the pony councilors danced into the griffish city, it only got dingier and darker.

Where Guillaume crossed the Boulevard of the Corvids, it opened up into Gilbert Square. The only mementos of the Crab Bucket were a few scorches here and there, and three or four missing teeth in the square's gap-toothed grimace.

Another crowd was waiting in the square, muttering. Griffon civilians, mothers and fledgelings. Gilda blinked in astonishment - in most of the city, the civilians kept their fledgelings off the streets, and away from Territorials. Mothers knew better than to let their children out when the soldiers were in sight.

A pale little chick stepped out of the crowd, and the griffish clucking resolved into a song.

The song which had been playing as they had moved down Guillaume, the song which had been following them ever since Flotilla Street. The little chick lifted up on her wings, pale blue in the bright afternoon light. Harmonizing to the humming rhythm of the crowd, she sang at the politician-ponies:

Oh, Duchess, Oh Duchess, we're tired of fright
Scared of the nightmares that come in your night
Oh, Duchess, Oh Duchess, your sun shines so bright
But Mother hides us from the light.

The little chick, her wings failing her, fell back to earth, falling in front of a wide-eyed Pinkie Pie, the pony's trombone silent in her hooves. The crowd took up the refrain.

Oh gentlefolk, gentlefolk, councillors all,
Your cannonfire shakes our paper-thin walls
We don't want our chicks and our foals to be nabbed
And dropped into a bucket of crabs!

The anxious crowd of hens shook their tails and sang, gentlefolk, gentlefolk as they danced and swayed throughout the great square, the Territorials breasting the sea of singing griffons, Gary at their head. Only a silent Colonel Pie stood still, a pink rock in the sea of feathers and blue. Their shrill clamour chased the parade deeper into the city, the column greater by two, with the addition of a pale little chick and her hovering, terrified mother tucked behind Rarity and her workshop-owning friend.

Pinkie Pie, her trombone slung across her back, joined the back of the column, behind Prince-Major Blueblood.

The column and its song moved from block to block, square to square, and Gilda stumbled along, confused and disoriented. The sun barely seemed to move in the sky, and yet as they followed it, that sun led the councilors and their train westwards. She knew in her head that the march must have taken hours, but the song couldn't have lasted more than a claw's-full of minutes. Each crowd they met offered them a chorus and a stanza, and a soloist with another tale of woe. For the Halfpennies, it was the depredations of their own. For the Threepennies, it was the ruination and destruction, and their griffons danced through the burnt row-houses and blasted wreckage of shops and warehouses. In the Crucible, forgemasters, somehow excluded from Colonel Pie's summons to the council, sang of shortages of supply and the impossibilities of transport.

With each stop, more and more griffons swarmed around the column, fluttering in the skies overhead. When each stanza was complete, more and more flew escort over the marchers, flying side by side with Princess Cadance's chasseurs who kept their formation over their charges. In the cramped little square at the corner of Guillaume and Tenpenny, where the boulevard met the Pennies once again on their furthest extent, stood the column's last and greatest challenge.

Above and around that nameless square, which was barely more than a street-corner, stooped the armed griffons of the guild militias, sitting on every rooftop, hanging from windows, standing sullen halfway up the block on Tenpenny in both directions.

A delegation of angry militia-griffons flew down from the roofs and the stoops, slinging their weapons behind their fluttering wings. They touched down on the sun-warmed paving stones, and started a sharp-clawed dance in front of the pony Territorials guarding the column's front.

Oh Duchess, oh Duchess, we won't say please
Without the blood and the fire we would freeze
Duchess, oh Duchess, though we're bleeding for you
Ponies say we never were true.

A tough, scarred journey-hen strode through the strutting, stomping militia. She stopped in front of a bristling Gilda, the Griffonstonian in her full Territorial armor, the Trottish hen in her naked feathers. The unnamed journeygriff turned to face the pony politicians and sang her solo.

Oh ponies, you ponies, you've shirked all the blame
Burnt us out of our nests with steel and with flame
Oh ponies, your hirelings ground salt in our wounds
Seeing only griffish beaks, feathers, and plumes

Never trusting in our willingness to bind...
Never trusting in our ability to find...
Never trusting in our arms and our blades...
Fearing only the traitors' raids.

The guild-hen paused, looking sad.

Oh Duchess… Oh, Duchess.
We still would, we still will

She stopped, her eyes flashed, and she raised up on her paws, and spat,

For our Duchess to fight
For our Duchess to die,
For our Duchess we pledge
To pay any butcher's bill!

The nameless guild-griffon snapped her beak in contempt at the council-ponies, and strode proudly by Gilda to take her place in the rear, behind the cowering mother from Gilbert Square. The timid child beside them looked up at the hen with terror and awe in her eyes.

The guild militia parted in front of the column, and let them pass.

At last, the column and its swarm of escorts and onlookers entered Ironmonger's Square. As they arrived, the sun that had stood still before the advancing column now dropped rapidly, falling behind the sole surviving spire of the Cathedral of Labour, as if in response to their arrival it was racing to find its proper place in the heavens. The song might have lasted two hours, it might have been only five minutes long.

It was time for the finale.

The soloists moved through the parade at a clip, led by Colonel Pie like a grim-faced majorette with her grapevine staff, her trombone long forgotten. They passed through the pony Territorials, and danced up the stairs, and faced the closed doors of the Cathedral.

Pinkie Pie beat on the closed doors of the portal three times.

A pegasus trooper opened the door, and Princess Cadance appeared to the crowd, with one of the White Sisters and Cheese Sandwich peering around her shoulders.

The singers began the finale,

Oh Duchess, oh Duchess please hear our voice
In this we had no reasonable choice
Duchess, oh Duchess, we've given our hearts
It's time at last for you to do your part
Our fellows in blood began this fight
Their sins to punish, your bloody right
We've sung you a song, begged you a plea
Ten years we've waited to ask this of thee

The nameless militia hen stepped to the fore:

For a city that is just!

The pale little chick:

For a city that is safe?

The sweatshop owner,

For a city that is free.

And then, the entire column, in unison:

Oh Duchess, oh Duchess, in only you can we trust
Oh Duchess, oh Duchess, under these fears we chafe!
Oh Duchess, our Duchess, please let this finally be -
Please, in the end, say at last, enough!

Cadance bowed her head to the crowd, and let them into the Cathedral.

Gilda looked out at the crowds milling about in the Square, that had followed them from the Blue Line and all the city in between. They looked aimless now that the delegations had passed within the Cathedral.

She closed the heavy doors, and with that, silenced the distant murmurs. Gilda turned to see what would happen next, inside. The Cathedral was brightly lit, the golden light of afternoon shading swiftly into the deep oranges of evening. The sun herself was passing through the emptied rosette window set within the clerestory at the head of the nave. The grand decorative window where complex stained glass once hung, was now sealed with cheap clear plastic sheeting, glittering with the falling rays of the setting sun.

Gilda strode across the back of the nave, stopping beside Sergeant-Major Gary. Gary's corporals were leading the pony councilors into their seats, rows and rows of benches fetched from where she had no idea, added to the sides of the aisle now lengthened another three dozen lengths down the nave towards the closed doors. Gilda saw that the ponies knew, almost by instinct, how to seat themselves, and their self-order put to shame the display of disorder she had been witness to hours before. This, then, was the mark of experience, of practice, of time in office: these political ponies knew their business.

The delegation of common street-folk and shopkeepers and other followers, who had seemed a mighty host during the song's montage, were also here, standing awkwardly within the solemnity of the cathedral's interior, somehow reduced, cowed, a small clot of petitioners before the throne.

Gilda marveled at the power of perception to warp how one saw the same thing, in different contexts.

Off to the left and just behind the benches now filling up with pony councilors stood the ponies who had begun all of this, the prince-major, his valet, and with them, Colonel Pinkamena Pie, looking - Gilda didn't know. Triumphant? Perplexed? Pensive?

Perhaps shamed. She kept looking at the shivering little hen-chick, half-hidden behind her mother and the militia-hen.

At the far end of the nave, Cadance led the speaker of the pony council to a seat next to Garrick, just before the steps of the dais. Gilda could see her captain still fussing with her book and the apparatus of the brown-paper projection screen at the back of the stage. She could see Speaker Tweed exchange a few words with Garrick by his side, and shoot a few side-glances at the barbarous street-bosses squatting impatiently in the benches across the aisle.

Gleaming Shield's projection screen had clearly been used again while they'd been on their errand into the wilderness. There were additional scorch-marks on its surface, and the paper had burned through in the very center of the screen. Gilda wondered how much more use the apparatus had in it, before it burst into one last consuming fire and was reduced to ashes and embers.

Cadance mounted the stairs, and stepped over to the front of her couch. The governor-general hadn't been with the councilors, and in the grasp of the heartsong, nopony and nogriffon had thought to go retrieve the nominal ruler of Trottingham from wherever he had been lurking. The couch reserved for that worthy still sat unoccupied.

"GENTLECREATURES ALL, THANK YOU FOR COMING ON SUCH SHORT NOTICE," Cadance bellowed in that magically-assisted, leather-lunged way that powerful unicorns and, apparently, princesses were capable of. "WE HAVE BEEN IN INTERMITTENT CONTACT WITH- what? I'm too loud? Why didn't you say so?"

"Pardon me, everyone. I hope this is better. Corporal Gilda, can you hear me back there?"

"YES, YOUR HIGHNESS," screeched Gilda at the top of her lungs. Shadows were now creeping across the floor here and there, as the warm oranges of evening deepened.

"Very good!" Cadance projected from her seat under the glowing rosette and the empty projection screen. "As I was saying, we are in contact with the princess, and she can hear what we're saying right now, but we had to ration the use of the projector, as you can see, it has a limited… lifespan, I suppose you could call it. Sorry, Mr. Tweed, could you repeat that?"

"We were told that the Duchess was here, now. Were we lied to? We need to see the Duchess!"

"Yes, yes, of course. Gleaming Shield, if you would?"

As sun's last rays peeked through the rosette, Celestia reappeared on the projection screen, twice as large as life (Gilda hoped!) and clearly as furious as she had been when Gilda had left to collect the pony councilors. The lines of the sketch were glowing, slightly, more apparent in the dimmer light of sunset than it had in the full light of the day.

"YES, MY LITTLE PONIES, I AM HERE!", growled the animated drawing of a princess. Gilda could see the sparks lighting the butcher paper into flame around the sketch's eyes, and she could even see her captain's horn glowing to the side, where the unicorn was doing… was that a misting cantrip or something? Gilda couldn't be sure from her position, but it looked like something was dripping down the screen. It made the duchess-princess-alicorn look like she was crying charcoal tears. "SPARE OUR MATERIALS UNTIL THERE IS SOMETHING RELEVANT FOR ME TO CONTRIBUTE. CAPTAIN SHIELD, END TRANSMISSION."

"Ahem, right," Cadance said, looking a bit subdued. "As you heard, she is in contact, but wants me to run the meeting for her. We'll get to that in time. Speaker Twill Tweed, you are the current speaker of the constituted ducal council?"

Gilda started moving forward so that she could hear the ponies and griffons speaking without straining her ears. The shadows were beginning to deepen in their pools beneath the benches and in corners neglected by the light. The rich light pouring into through the Cathedral's vast windows began to turn here and there to the reds of early twilight.

"Yeah, that's right. Whenever the governor-general deigns tae call us tae order. Elsewise we're the city cooncil, and gie the proper business of the city done," Tweed was saying in a broad, almost comical Trottish accent.

"Councilor Garrick, do you accept Twill Tweed's status?"

"It isn't worth the argument with the Duchess watching us, Your Highness, so I don't care to argue the point."

"Well, isnae that right pony of you, Garrick. It seems like I've a memory of you threatin' to tear my own windpipe out ov my own throat with yer naked talons the last time we met, was it nae?"

"You were promising to steal my nephew's patrimony for ‘reparations', you cheese-paring old fraud-"

Garrick was interrupted by another flash from the brown-paper screen, and a bellow that nearly blasted Gilda back a length from the pressure of Celestia's voice.

"BE SILENT! I WILL NOT SIT HERE, FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES AWAY LISTENING TO THIS- THIS- SQUABBLING! GARRICK, SIT DOWN. TWEED, BE SILENT BEFORE I SACK YOU THE WAY I AM SACKING THAT WORTHLESS CLOWN IN THE PALACE. THREE MATTERS, MY LITTLE PONIES AND GRIFFONS, AND WE WILL BE DONE WITH EACH OTHER. I CAN SEE THE LITTLE PEOPLE IN THE BACK. I'M TOLD THAT YOU CAME TO ME WITH HEARTSONG IN YOUR SOULS, AND I AM SICK THAT I CANNOT TAKE THE TIME TO HEAR YOU."

The center of the screen burst into flame, and the sketch disappeared again, its light dropping the visibility in the nave, and causing the pools of shadow to spread precipitously. Gleaming Shield said a word which shouldn't have been spoken in official circles, and hosed down the paper with a squirt-bottle held up in her horn-grip.

"Hold on, everypony, we'll have her back in a minute. Miss Mirror, please roll up that side a bit, we won't be able to use the middle of the screen anymore."

"AH, BACK AGAIN? THREE THINGS, AND I WILL HAVE TO LEAVE THIS TO THOSE ACTUALLY IN TROTTINGHAM. FIRST THING, GOVERNOR-GENERAL PLACE IS SACKED. HE HAS PROVEN UNACCEPTABLE. SILENCE! SECOND POINT… I HAVE FAILED YOU FOR THE LAST TIME. I AM ABDICATING THE DUCAL CORONET."

Amidst the screams of outrage and unbelief, Celestia's burning image lit the screen on fire again, and the flames from the left-side of the screen nearly broke it apart entirely. There was now almost as much light coming from the burning screen as from the windows above, which were beginning to show traces of night's stain on the sides of the nave opposite the sunset.

All three of the White Sisters and Gleaming Shield between them barely managed to put out the fire and to roll the damaged two-thirds up on the left-side's pikestaff, leaving the last third of the screen held up as a narrow little screen, and leaving the nave in half-darkness.

Gilda looked aside at Colonel Pie. The earth pony just stood there in the gloom, looking poleaxed, her eyes twitching back and forth like she was doing calculus in her head.

Meanwhile, Cadance and Tweed and Garrick and Sergeant-Major Gary had managed to get the councilors and the onlookers quieted down to a low roar, and everyone muttering uneasily rather than screaming their outrage and fear.

They got Celestia's connection back up one more time. The sketch blazed like an open hearth, lighting the councilors once again in the alicorn's golden image.

The burning drawing of the great alicorn paused, looking out at her baffled, restive ducal council.

"I DON'T… I don't know how to say this to you all. My little ponies, my little griffons, I'm tired. You all stand on the far end of a lever fifteen hundred miles long. I have two vast spheres in my employ, weighing so very much more than you, and in motion so very much further than you can imagine, which take up more of my energy than you can imagine. I have many other, smaller levers upon which my hooves must rest, and one greater than them all whose time is coming rapidly upon us. I have never given you what you should have had. I have never been able to give Trottingham its due share, and it is only getting worse.

"I am so very, very tired. Please. Let me give the keeping of you into other hooves. I have no more attention I can spare for your consideration, and I have done so very, very poorly by you in these last decades. Let some other hoof take this lever from my care. This brings me to the third item on our agenda. You will have to accept a new ducal claimant. I have given you a princess, if you care to take your chances again with an Equestrian.

"Cadance, I've given you space, but it is past time for you to stand up and be the pony that destiny and Harmony have said you must be. Good-bye, Trottingham. I never did you your due, and I apologize for how badly I've neglected you all. But I must deal with my own disasters and those disasters which are to come."

The last rays of sunset passed through the great clear windows of the Cathedral, and darkness fell over the congregation, lit only by the image of their Duchess, almost visible through the rapidly flaring remnants of the paper screen.

"I am sorry to say, there are many disasters yet to come. Be well, and choose well, ponies of Trottingham, griffons of the Isles."

With those last words, the Duchess was gone in a cloud of sparks and flame, and the tattered remnants of the projection screen collapsed into embers and smoke.

And darkness closed over the Council of Trottingham.

Refusing The Crown

Fear had a smell.

Fear was a smell.

Fear was smell.

Gilda knew this, because Gilda was a griffon. Griffons were, first and foremost, predators. They were also at least in part, cats. Cats had excellent noses. Griffons’ noses weren’t any better than average, of course, but their heads were wired like cats to read that tapestry of emotion which was scent. And cats knew how to hunt by the scent of the terrorized.

Gilda smelled terror in the darkness. It was stained with it. Fear smelled like piss and musk, like tight little crevices you could only pray the thing in the darkness wouldn't find, couldn't reach inside. Fear smelled like waiting for the claws in the darkness.

She had been moving towards the dais when the sun went out and the Duchess's image had self-immolated. She had made two, three lengths into the glare before the screen collapsing into embers had taken away the light.

Gilda was still moving in the darkness as it collapsed on her, with its stink of fear wafting in its train. That she was moving was perhaps the only reason she kept moving. If she had been still, not all the will in the world could have gotten her moving in that stinking darkness.

The moving helped her keep moving, kept her hot blood pumping through her shocky heart.

If fear was a smell, anger was heat, anger was motion, fury was fuel.

Her heart beat slower and slower. The darkness was deep, and time and hearts-blood slowed in its stinking grip.

She couldn't see anything, and Gilda wished her family had been descended from owls rather than eagles. The darkness was not her peoples' time.

And then, in the darkness, like the first star of twilight, a magenta sparkle. A warm spark.

Gleaming Shield's hornglow like a harbor-light.

Gilda got moving again, and she could suddenly distinguish the others in the cloud of terror and fury and guilt and… Gilda wasn't alone.

The darkness was full of panicking griffons. Her telescoping baton and her sheathed service blade fell into place, held beside her barrel by her wings to the left and the right. She held them there, not brandishing, not provoking - but where they could lash out in an angry heartbeat at the first provocation.

She found the steps of the dais, and she could see her captain's eyes gleaming in the oblique reflection of the unicorn's own horn-glow. Gilda looked left and right to make sure that nogriff else had rushed the stage in her wake.

It took more than she expected to look away from the light, that dazzling horn-glow, but she turned away and faced the rustling dark. The darkness, which had started to fill with the squawks and caws of the blinded crowd. The crowd who could see nothing but her unicorn's horn-glow in the darkness.

A crowd which was beginning to spark into panic, which was beginning to form a mob.

Gilda could smell the fear and feel the rage and the rest of it.

It was only a matter of seconds. She got set, squared her shoulders, spread her wings to receive the first charge.

And then something moved over the surface of the darkness, like a breeze. Like a feather passing through thick fog.

Like a whisper of infinite sadness.

And suddenly the darkness wasn't a thing, wasn't a cloak hiding monsters, wasn't anything at all, really. And Gilda could breathe again.

And a glow was rising to her right, where the little princess had sat on her fancy couch. A couch which Gilda had charged right past in her panic and momentum.

Gilda blushed, knowing nobody could see her, and moved forward to include the royalty in her arc of control, ashamed that she'd forgotten the little princess. She could hear her unicorn's hooves following behind her, see a little better by the light cast by her unicorn's horn.

Then she stopped beside the couch, as she realized the little princess was glowing, too. Princess Cadance's head was bowed, and tears were flowing like mercury in sunlight, opaque, glowing, - no.

Mercury didn't pulse. And the glow was spreading. Not unicorn-glow - Gilda had once seen the little princess's cornflower horn-glow. This was yellow, and magenta, and pink, and a deep, deep violet. The glow spread from the pony's throat rather than her horn, and it got stronger as it grew.

The yellow deepened into a terrifying paleness, chilling like the sun's weakest, most faded beams on that coldest day of deepest winter, when nothing could ever bring warmth back into the world. The magenta turned shocking deep red, the red of arterial blood, of flames consuming your barricades under artillery-fire. And the violet deepened until it wasn't a color at all, but the absence of color. A glowing blackness that was the color of every sin remembered.

Only the pink remained as the princess rose off of her couch, bent almost in half, like something in her throat was pulling her up, like a fish on a hook.

The shadows fled the princess's brightness, and Gilda could see in her peripheral vision the crowd emerging from their darkness as each row was uncovered by another pulse.

Cadance was half a length off of her couch when a white foreleg reached up from the other side and grasped the princess by her right hind leg.

The princess stirred at the touch, and raised her head. Gilda looked over at the pony who had arrested Cadance's ascent, and saw one of the White Sisters, her eyes closed, still as the grave as she held her adopted sister from drifting into the heights of the now-illuminated nave.

The White Sister's eyes opened, and they glowed like blackness burning. Of guilt given color, and that color, combusting.

Gilda looked out over the crowd, and she could see streaks like colored fog boiling off of the crowd, almost as still as the White Sister herself. Everygriff's eyes were locked on the glowing princess hanging in the air overhead. The colors of the fog swirled, but they streaked towards the pony princess, and joined her glowing, one by tendriled one.

A second White Sister appeared from behind Gilda, and grasped Cadance's other rear leg. Her eyes opened, and they glowed like snow stained in the depths of February, a yellow so faded it might have not been yellow at all. Her face immediately froze with terror, of horror and fear. The other White Sister was now no longer white at all, but turning grey or perhaps charcoal, flank and shoulder. The now-blackening Sister's face set like unyielding concrete, or stone - the stubborn, shameful, prideful face of the guilty facing her accusers.

The other two stepped up, and joined their grip to those of their sisters. The one on the right immediately glowed pink, and she began sobbing, soundlessly, mournfully. The one on the left went shocking, bloody red, and a snarl warped her muzzle.

The darkness was gone, except where it lurked in the eyes of the Black Sister, and Cadance's wings spread out, taking control of her hover, turning it into something more natural, less… unsettling.

The princess settled back down on her couch, and looked around herself at her elder sisters who still held her in their grasp, their eyes burning like brands. One quivering with rage, one shaking with sobs, one with her face frozen in fear, the last her face locked in hopeless, stubborn despair - the White Sisters were white no more, almost unrecognizable in their spasms.

"Livery," the princess whispered. "Hotspur, Mirror...Serene. That is enough. Thank you. Please, rest. We'll talk later."

Gleaming Shield stepped into Gilda's peripheral vision, and grabbed hold of two of the Sisters, and pried their grip from the princess. She struggled to move the mares, as if she was moving marble statuary instead of ponies.

Cadance turned from Gleaming Shield and her sisters, and looked out on the still crowd. The cathedral was full of her light, and Gilda couldn't see any shadows or darkness from her place beside the glowing princess.

They had been ready to riot. Gilda knew this. Gilda had been ready to rumble, ready to beat back the mob. She had… she remembered the emotions, but she didn't feel them. It was like there was a wall between her and her feelings.

"What you are feeling right now," Cadance said in a gentle tone, "is the absence of your proper feelings. I am sorry, ponies and griffons of Trottingham, for intruding into your proper selves like this. It is not always entirely under my control, and though I can sometimes control it, my talent occasionally has a mind of its own."

Gilda looked out at the comprehending eyes of the crowd which had been a council, and might yet still be a mob, and realized that that gentle tone was projecting from one end of the nave to the other. Was this unicorn magic, or a binding magic, something related to what the alicorn had done to them all?

"This is what I came into, when I grew up, when I got my mark and my talent. This is why I have this horn. This is what destiny thought was worthy of princesshood. I take your legitimate emotions, and you have no choice in the matter. I can take those feelings, and magnify them, and build them into storm-clouds, or I can take dry skies and make them weep. I can empty you out like a husk, and leave you so still that your heart stops beating.

"I have killed. I have enraged mobs into mob justice. I have put ponies into comas.

"I am not a fit ruler. Princess Celestia has seen fit to abdicate her ducal coronet, to tell you to choose another duchess. She has been so cruel as to suggest me as your new ruler. She knew why this was cruel. You do not, which is why it was doubly cruel. I will not be your duchess. Would you know why?"

She stopped here, and waited for the mesmerized crowd to realize that they had been asked a question. It took a few heart-beats for that realization to penetrate.

At last, Speaker Tweed stepped out of the crowd, and asked, thick-voiced, "Yes, Duchess, please?"

"I am not your duchess. I am the last person you should ever wish to be your ruler. I brought war to your doorsteps. If any pony is to blame for this present conflict, it is me. I lost someone dear to me in the Bloody Thirteenth, and in the fury and grief of that moment, I used this talent of mine. Do you feel it now, my ponies and griffons, that hollowness and emptiness? Hotspur."

The princess waved her sister forward from the huddle that Gleaming Shield was trying to manage, the angry, rageful sister with Hades and Tartarus burning in her eyes. They touched forehooves, and Hotspur's eyes went blank, and a wave of terrible red light washed out over the nave like an explosion.

Gilda bristled like she'd been struck by lightning. Threats! Everywhere! An entire mob of the enemy! Everyone of them a threat! The guildmasters, every one of them armed with their clever little not-really-a-weapons! Weapons enough to draw blood! To kill! Gilda discarded the sheathe on her service blade and-

And the red tide receded, retreated, and reversed flow. Gilda blinked, and looked at the naked blade in her talon. Hotspur, her eyes burning once again, stepped back from the princess.

"This is what I did to the Stables of Nobility and the Commons, people of Trottingham. I filled them with my anger and my grief. The war that followed was an avalanche propelled by the boulders I flung at the world. I have done this city and these Isles a terrible injustice. I deserve to be brought to trial before you, how can we talk about the possibility of my rule over you? So no, I will not be your Duchess."

The crowd, calmed again by the princess's touch, looked at her, and said nothing.

The former governor-general's aide, Cheese Sandwich, stepped out of the crowd. "And yet, Princess, they need somepony to rule them. This country is a mess, and the only thing they agree about is they need a duchess. They don't have any love for each other. Hay, they don't even like each other. Without a duchess, every griffon and pony in this room would be plotting each other's deaths by the end of the week! I'm an organizer. I organize things, events, y'know? I make doing those things fun, even if they aren't actually all that fun under all the happy-talk. It's what I'm for. You're a princess, Princess. You're supposed to rule us. Take the coronet, Princess Cadance, and stop being a stick in the mud!"

Cadance looked cross, and shifted her gaze from the earth pony with the utterly frazzled mane to the rest of the crowd, the ponies and griffons around him, all of whom who were nodding their heads, griffon and pony alike.

"I am not even the only royal in this building, let alone in Trottingham. Each of my adopted sisters here are the descendants of Platinum, and would be, by all natural right, princesses, if it weren't for the idiot traditions of Canterlot. My adopted brother Blueblood, over there, is a prince in name as well as fact! Why not him?"

The ponies and griffons around Blueblood looked at the nervous-looking stallion with varying admixtures of disgust and impatience, with only his valet sparing him from that universally disapproving side-eye.

But nopony and nogriffon dared to look at the princess's quivering, spasming Sisters, whose coats were swirling with strange magics and whose pupil-less eyes were like portals into unearthly worlds that nogriff wanted to really think about.

"Well, OK, not Blueblood, but- there are griffons with royal blood here! This hen - here! I can't take the coronet, make Gilda your duchess!"

Gilda paled, the eyes of the congregation suddenly upon her, upon her and her naked blade and her scruffy armor and her damnable royal plumage. She looked at the blade, and tossed it over her shoulder before somegriff got the wrong idea.

"What! Princess, that's hilarious!" Gilda half-yelled. "Come on, why would you- everygriff knows that- I'm a damn corporal in the Territorials! What would a royal be doing in the ranks! STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!"

"That's interesting, 'Corporal'," Cadance said, with an almost-smile. "You seem to be shaking off the effects of my talent. Almost like you have Grover's blood in you."

"Grover's blood! Right! Princess, that's the secret of Griffonstone - everygriff in Old Stoney's got Grover's blood in 'em! The entire city, from tree-top to the bottom of the Abyss, we're all royal bastards' get! That old tom-cat got around, you know? Every other litter, they say! All Griffonstonians are royals, because all Griffonstonians are bastards!"

Gilda felt like they weren't buying it. Wait!

"And hey! I'm not even Trottish. You can tell by the accent, yeah? A Stonian from tail-tuff to crest, I am!" Blast, that wasn't very Stonian, was it? Try again. "I'm a foreigner. I'm a foreign sell-spear. Who of you wants to be ruled by some base-born, foreign, coarse clown with the right coloration, huh? Come on, you damn dweebs! I'll raise taxes! I'll form a harem of your firstborn! I'll sell your grandparents to the Parrots! I DON'T WANT THE JOB!"

Garrick strode out of the congregation, and smiled at them both. "Corporal Gilda almost convinces me that she'd make a good duchess. Nogriff that doesn't want the job that aggressively could possibly be that bad at it. But I think there's someone in the room who doesn't want the job even more enthusiastically than the poor corporal, and she's old enough and seasoned enough to be fit.

"Aren't you, Miss Cadance? I won't call you princess anymore, because we're Trottish, and this is a Trottish matter. We have no princesses, no royalty. Only a duchess. But you have the spark in you, I can see it."

"I started this war!" Cadance said, standing up from her couch, looking a little wild around the eyes.

"Bollocks!" Garrick snapped. "We started this war, when we let those terrorists escape the isles unmolested with their loads of explosives and their ill will! Or when we let the separatists fester in the back districts. Or when we let the ponies suppress the unions. One might even point the talon at the former duchess's neglect and distance, her refusal to do her duty and restrain our worse impulses. But in the end, they were our faults she let fester. Blame for this current crisis goes back generations, young Cadance. You have had your part, as have I. If we were to choose based on guilt, nogriffon would be fit for the seat, and we would only find ourselves back here again, naked, without the buffer of law and tradition that keeps us from the open war of all against all.

"And you have the talent to keep us from turning into that murderous mob, don't you, Miss Cadance?"

"I'm a MONSTER, you old fool!" yelled Cadance, at last losing her cool in the face of the old bird's stubbornness. "I'm a killer! I don't save ponies, I just lead them to- to-"

The old bird strode up onto the dais, and wrapped the sobbing princess in his blue wings. If it had been any other griffon, Gilda would have beaten him down with her baton. As it was, she was too startled to do anything other than stare.

"There, there. I'm sure it wasn't that bad."

"I broke the world," Cadance said, so softly that Gilda didn't think that anyone other than the three of them heard it.

"You couldn't possibly have," whispered Garrick. "Look! It's still here."

"Aunt Celestia says I could have fixed it, and I broke it. Maybe irreparably."

"How could you have fixed what was not already broken? The world was broken long before you had a chance to break it, little girl. The former duchess is equine, like I'm griffish. It means we can be mistaken. And she's made so very, very many mistakes in the last millennium, hasn't she? But it's your turn to make mistakes, and fix the ones you can, while you can. After all, where there's life, there's hope."

The old griffon turned to the congregation, his wing still around the sniffling alicorn. "We here in Trottingham have never held our rulers to a standard of perfection. Our first settlers worshipped some nameless demonic entity. For the longest time, we were the exile of choice for Equestrian demonologists and Griffonstonian fratricides. Our first duke was a pirate and a rogue of the first water. His successor was a literal bastard, as he had to be, there being no hopes of get from the first, pony duchess. More often than not, as young Gilda has so trenchantly noted, our rulers have been bastards. This is Trottingham! We have never been able to make firm distinctions between our heroes and our monsters, we've never had that luxury. Miss Cadance, you will fit in here, just fine. Can you please, for the third time, take the coronet? Our arms are growing tired holding it up to you."

The pink princess nodded, still sniffling, within the old bird's comforting blue wing.

And the council raised its collective voice in a sort of weary cheer.

It had been a very long day.

Loony In A Bin

"Where are the explosives, Pinkie?" Gleaming Shield wasn't gleaming so much anymore, but she was cleaner than Gilda was, and didn't look half as tired as Gilda felt. They'd just got back from searching the catacombs under the Cathedral of Labour for what felt like the fourth time, but was probably only the second.

A better name than 'catacombs' would have been 'sewers', in Gilda's opinion.

"Twilight! Oh, It's so good to see you! Alive! There were so many ways that- well, none of that happened, obviously. Look at you! Breathing! And not zombified at all!"

"Pinkie! The missing explosives! What did you do with them?"

"You kind of stink, though. Aren't the prisoners the ones that should be all filthy and stinky and angry? What's the point of building dungeons if you're going to clean them? The prisoners end up all neat and tidy, and the guards are the ones who look like they're rolling around in the filth!"

"You have to know we just got out of the tunnels under the cathedral! We can't find them, Pinkie! Where'd you put them? We have the detonator, they're not going to go off now!"

"Oh, that doesn't sound right. Which detonator did you find? Who gave theirs up? I'm thinking Uncle Sandstone. He never did approve of our insurance policy. Did he get a pass for giving up the backup detonator?"

The captain closed her eyes with at least half as much disgust as Gilda was feeling right then. "Gilda! Go have them search Sergeant-Major Sandstone Pie's quarters and person. Again."

"Oh, Oopsie. Tell Uncle Sandy I'm sorry I gave him up!"

"Oh, hello, Gilda. Nice to see you. You're cleaner this time." Colonel Pie wasn't nearly as cheerful this time, but then, Captain Shield wasn't there for her to act up in front of. The bruising and the bandage-wrapped immobilizer on her left foreleg might have had something to do with her lack of energy, though.

"We found the rest of the detonators. And the entire battalion is in the stockade. All eight hundred and thirty-seven."

"Thirty-seven? There should be eight hundred and forty-three. Did somepony get hurt?"

"You know very well that Lieutenant Maud Pie and her team are missing. Where is Lieutenant Pie, Colonel Pie?" the bat-hen demanded.

There are too many Pies in this mess, Gilda fumed to herself.

"Oh, impossible to say now that she's had time to run. Could be under half the city by now. Or tunneling halfway to Bridlederry, for all I know. I told her to dig so deep that even I couldn't find her."

"She's digging? How far could she have gotten in three days? She can't be going outside of the city, the detonators won't work if she takes one that far away."

"I thought you said you had all the detonators?"

"If Maud Pie has one, clearly we don't have all the detonators."

"Where is Twilight Sparkle, anyways? Why is her bat-hen interrogating me? By your lonesome?"

"The captain is busy with your co-conspirators. Cheese Sandwich insists he didn't know anything about the bombs. I almost believe him. The spooks don't, though."

"Oh, yeah, the spooks." Pinkie Pie waved her bandaged foreleg. "Flagg Staff sends his regards."

"I didn't figure you did that to yourself. Charming paranoid, isn't he?"

"He doesn't fall for the changeling distraction anymore. I gather that's your fault, Gilda de Griffonstone."

"That maniac isn't my responsibility. Nor is whatever he did to you."

"He stopped quickly enough when I pointed out that the bombs might not have anything at all to do with the council job. They might even be insurance against ponies doing things like shoving hot nails into my frogs."

Gilda winced. "Sorry about that."

"Like you said, he's not your lunatic. Whose lunatic is he, is the question you silly ponies ought to be asking. I'm pretty sure he isn't mine," she sighed, looking at her bandaged hoof.

"About the bombs…" Gilda tried, hoping to get the discussion back on track.

"It's been three days, has it? Hard to tell in here. They're doing a good job, delivering the food at weird times. I've totally lost track of the time."

Gilda grimaced, realizing too late she'd given the pink menace exactly what she wanted.

"Three days… has the coronation happened yet?" asked said menace.

"We couldn't find the bombs, they had to move the ceremony to Government House. We can't use the cathedral until we find the explosives."

"Didn't keep you from using it for the abdication, did it? Nice job on that, by the way. Surprised the roadapples out of me."

"I don't believe that for a second. You had that plotted out to the minute. You laid the rails, we just ran the engine over the tracks."

"Is that what you think I was doing? Luring you into doing my bidding? Am I that clever?"

"I think you're exactly that clever. I just don't know how you did it. Nogriffon could possibly keep that many factors in their head. Nogriffon could possibly predict how so many different people would jump, minute to minute, second to second. We came damn close to everything ending in fire, Colonel Pie."

"Hrm. Then maybe it's a good thing I had an insurance policy, isn't it?"

"What I don't understand is why?"

"Why what? Why the revival of the national council? We couldn't end the war short of extermination without it, Corporal."

"Why did you stack the council with scoundrels? Why endanger the whole project by filling the gallery with crooks, criminals, and pocket warlords? We thought for sure that you were going to let the rebels into the city and engineer another Crab-Bucket."

"What? That's silly! Why would I repeat myself? Nopony likes a one-trick pony! No, it couldn't be the rebels. Again. They'd know better than to dance to my tune again, those that survived. And those that survived have mostly fled the city. The war's out there in the districts now, you know. Almost no rebels worth the name left in town. I made sure of that, you betcha.

"No, no more letting the rebels take the blame. I figured that if the city was going to self-destruct, I might as well bring the destructive elements inside the council itself. Keep the bloodshed contained, you know?

"And they might have surprised you, Corporal. Your scoundrels. Bad ponies have hearts, too. They get lonely, they want to be loved.

"Why did I choose the bad ponies? Because they're villains, Corporal. The good ponies have people who love them, they have hopes, dreams, expectations, priorities. Family mares have their family to think of; businessponies have their customers and their suppliers; landowners their tenants and their debts. Only bad ponies have room in their hearts for everypony, because they know deep down, nopony else will be there for them when the troubles come a-flocking. Patriotism is the last refuge of bad ponies, because they have nopony else. It concentrates the mind wonderfully, having no other choices. Of course I chose villains! They make the very best patriots!"

"But you threw them in with unionists, and nogriff else!" Gilda yelled. "We thought for sure you were just collecting griffons who you wouldn't miss. It looked exactly like you were planning another massacre!"

"Well, Corporal, what you see is your own problem. I like my pirates to dress like pirates. I don't trust villains that walk around dressed like bankers and good ponies. It makes my back itch." Pinkie suddenly spasmed, scratching her back like the maniac that she was.

"Are you quite alright, Colonel Pie?" Gilda asked, half-mocking, half-solicitously.

"No, I'm not. Three days… three days. So they're crowning the pink one today?"

Gilda raised an eyebrow at this characterization.

"Oh, you know what I mean. The little princess. I didn't really see that coming, you know. Despite what you seem to think, I don't see everything. The princesses are - it's like, they cast long, weird shadows? You can see some of the ripples, but you never see the stone. Look, Corporal."

The pink earth pony lunged, sending her chains rattling, her blue eyes bulging out of their sockets at a startled Gilda.

"Where is Marble? Where is my sister? I need my little sister! Right now! Give her to me!"

"Y-you're in no position to demand anything, Colonel Pie. Sergeant Marble Pie is in good talons. She's safe. How many of your relatives did you bring into the service with you? Is there anyone left at home?"

"We're earth ponies, our farms damn near run themselves. I'm not worried about Marble, she can take care of herself. I care about me! I need my sister! Right now!"

"Why is that, Colonel Pie? Does it have something to do with those drugs we found in her bags?"

"The drugs are just tools, they can be replaced by willpower. But Marble's the one who knows how to- oh, no." As quickly as Pinkie had scuttled forward, she retreated to the back of the cell, staring at something over Gilda's shoulder.

Gilda craned her neck, looking to see what the madpony had seen, if anything. The only thing she could see was a spider working on its web in the corner above the jail cell door.

"What is it, that spider? It's a common house-pest. Harmless."

"Where did you get that nonsense? Spiders aren't pests, they keep down the pests. I love spiders! No, no, if you have some more spiders, I'll give them good homes, I swear. Just bring me Marble. I don't want to be alone when they come! Oh, please hurry. Please, please please -"

And then Pinkamena Diane Pie, lieutenant colonel of the Rock Valley Pioneers, brevet colonel in the volunteer service, bureau chief J-13 Special Party Planning, stopped talking and started screaming like a terrified filly.

"I'm telling you, captain ma'am, she just collapsed and started screaming and sobbing. I couldn't get anything out of her. The guards say she hasn't touched her food since yesterday." Gilda was standing beside the military police jail's east-wing guard-post, two pony MPs staring wide-eyed at her and her unicorn captain as they waited for the officer of the day to bring the cell-keys.

"Sergeant Pie refuses to say why she had to deal with her sister personally," Gleaming Shield observed mildly.

"Can she actually say anything?" Gilda asked, dubious. She'd met Sergeant Marble Pie, and never heard her say a syllable.

"Despite what you think, Gilda, Marble Pie isn't a mute. Yes, we did get a few words out of her. Some indication of dosage, when I told her we were going to drug Pinkie with her help or without it. But she claims she has to be here, and won't say why." The officer of the day arrived, and led them down the corridor towards the imprisoned party pony's cell.

When they arrived at that cell, Gilda noted the splat of green ooze dried dripping opposite of the cell door. She sniffed at the mess as the MPs unlocked the cell door, and wrinkled her nostrils. Peat mush. I'd have thrown it at my guards, too.

Pinkie Pie was sitting in the center of the cell, her head bowed. Her mane was flat and greasy, hiding her eyes, but not her flattened, pursed lips. The cell was well-lit, but it seemed like the earth pony was draining all of the color and light towards herself. Not like that other pink pony, not as if she was drawing it into her, but as if there was something… some aura which was making the light… fade.

"We have a new duchess," the mare said, her eyes still hidden behind the darkness of her mane. "It was a great success."

"Y-yes," Gleaming Shield said. "The guards told you?"

"In a manner of speaking. I could smell it on them. A party. A successful one. Was there singing?"

"No, no there wasn't. I was disappointed. I wanted to see heartsong for myself. Gilda here got to hear two heartsongs in as many hours, the first I've been able to confirm since… I don't know. They say that they used to sing at the Grand Galloping Gala every year, like clockwork. I've never seen it."

"Heartsong is overrated. It wakes things up. Things you don't necessarily want to meet in a dark night of the soul. Or was that dark alleys? They're kind of similar when you're lost in them, Twilight."

"You know I don't like to be called that."

"And yet I can't be bothered to care. Most of me knows you by the old name, you know. It baffles them when I talk about Gleaming Shield. Except the ones that aren't Pinkie Pie, and the Bubble Berries get really, really confused when I use that name."

The earth pony paused for a second, and then looked up through the curtain of her lank mane at the unicorn. "You're not supposed to be Gleaming Shield. It breaks everything that you are."

"I'm sorry you don't approve, Pinkie. You've been scaring your guards."

"Good. They should be frightened. This is a horrible world. I should be one of the hanging Pinkies. It's an abomination that I'm me."

She turned at something Gilda couldn't see or hear, staring at one of the walls, then suddenly-

"SHUT UP ALL OF YOU! You don't get a SAY! You're all dead! Just hang there, and stop whispering! Yeah, that's right! I'm the one that says anything! You can just all shut up and let me talk to Gleaming Shield here! No, not that one, he's as dead as all of you! No, I'm not getting my genders mixed up again!" Pinkie's mane had blown back with the first scream, and her eyes were burning like Hotspur's under Cadance's influence.

"You gonna be quiet? I'm talking to my Twilight now! Right? Right. I'm sorry, Twilight," she said, calmly, turning back to Gilda and Gleaming Shield.

"The tree comes, and they come with it. And they just hang there, and they gossip. Like grannies! Dead, grimacing, rotting grannies! About everything! And they won't shut up until Marble sings them to sleep. I need my sister. Bring me my Marble." Colonel Pie bowed her head again, and hid those eyes full of Hades behind their curtain of lank, pink mane once more.

"They say we might be free and clear, by the way," the earth pony continued. "We're not going to see any new outbreaks. Not in the Isles, anyways. Who'd have thought that a mind-controlling abomination like Mi Dolente Cadenza would be the missing puzzle-piece? Also, there will be gonne smugglers on the west shore in a day and a half. Evening tide, this little port hamlet named Gould's Jetty. Get there ahead of time with the Princess's Own, and you can roll up the entire operation. Don't get there in time, and things get weird again. Not bad weird, though, I don't think." Pinkie turned her head, like she was considering something.

"Are they still going to be the Princess's Own, now that Celestia isn't the Duchess? I never understood how that worked. She interacted with the griffons as the Duchess for so long, how did the Rangers end up being the Princess's instead?"

"Cadance is still a Princess of Equestria, Celestia will probably transfer her colonelcy to Cadance," Gilda opined, staring at the terrifying pink conundrum slumping in the middle of the cell. "The Rangers are an EUP unit, not in the local military structure except by extension."

"Yes, Corporal, I know how these things work. But it's a new start, isn't it? When the time comes to transfer rights, that's the time to make things… right. To fix the things which are wrong. Can you ask her to come here and fix me?"

"Who, Cadance?" Gleaming Shield said, with a pitying look. "We couldn't possibly risk her safety by exposing her to you. She's fragile enough as it is."

"She's stronger than she looks," Pinkie said, her eyes hidden. "But I can see how you'd not want both of us in the same room. Celestia's right about her, you know. This world is Cadance's fault. No, you shut up, you just bucking hang there and keep your opinions to yourself, Pinkie!"

The mare took a shuddering breath, and continued. "It is her fault. If she'd controlled herself and saved the witch like she was supposed to, none of this would have happened. Look at you all! You were all happy, weren't you? You smug, horrible ponies! Damn you all for not being real! Damn her for not making any of you real.

"DO YOU THINK I WANTED TO BE THE ONE WHO GOT TO BE REAL?"

Pinkie Pie collapsed into a pink puddle, and started adding to the puddle with high-velocity streams of tears. Gleaming Shield broke free of Gilda's grasp, and rushed to her fellow-Academy graduate, gathering her up in a hug.

Gilda looked at her captain comforting the madpony who had nearly killed them all, and watched vigilantly for any twitch which might be Pinkie's mood turning murderous.

"I ju-just want my Marble. I'll be good, I'll be good. I've tried so hard to be good, but that damn princess messed things up so badly, and I see every last bit of it! Everything that we could have been, and will never be. This war made it all so much worse, you see. Can't you see?"

"No, Pinkie," Gleaming Shield said. "We don't see the world like you do. We can't see."

"And- and- that's a good thing. You'd be crazier than I am if you could see what I see. I - I - oh, that little bird. That little kitty. I did that to her! I did. It was my fault. She was my fault. Oh, she'd have been dead if I hadn't, but I scared her so badly… The blood gets everywhere, you know. Sometimes I can see the real blood, and sometimes, it's only the blood that might have been… The cathedral was the crux, you know? It was the point where everything turned, one way or the - well, a hundred others. But more good ways than bad! I think? I thought. So I put all of our bad eggs in that basket, and built it as strong as I could.

"I built it like an ark. An ark to carry us across that nasty little stream. Did it go well? It felt like it went good. I didn't see anypony die that day, not for real. So many ways for it to go wrong, so many ways for it to go really, really wrong.

"Of course I built an insurance policy into the ark. Into the buttresses. They're in the buttresses. The bombs are in the walls, and because there are no walls in that silly mass of stone and glass, I had to put them in the buttresses. Don't blame the Pioneers, they were following orders. And I had different ponies build the bombs than the ones who put the packages into the hollows.

"Maud will know how to defuse them. I'll tell you how to signal her, and she'll come out of whichever hole she dug for her team. Just give me Marble. I can't sleep like this.

"Please."

Sergeant Marble Pie sang sweetly, like a chorus of angels. It was exactly what Gilda had imagined when she’d listened to Grandpa Gruff’s stories of the ponies of Equestria and their songs. She sat slouched outside of the cell and listened to the mare sing old Harmonist spirituals for her disturbed sister.

Gilda sat and waited for the knock, waited until they had finished.

It was a long time coming.

Sinks The Fire

The conference room was crowded, and Gilda's captain was badly outnumbered. Major Tall Grass and her aides sat at their end of the long table, but Gilda couldn't agree that the ponies of Civil Affairs were truly on their side, being only organizationally so. The rest of the room was full of aides from the intelligence and operations bureaus, as well as the G-3's chief assistant Major Fair Winds who was chairing the meeting in the name of Operations. A nonentity from the military police sat to Gleaming Shield's right hoof, representing the provost marshal, but he hadn't said a word yet, leaving all the talking to the accidental representative of the Duchess.

It should have been Prince-Major Blueblood, but he'd waved off the honors, and trotted away to deal with some personal matter, as if that took precedence over the monumental work that was the effort to disentangle the affairs of the new duchess from her aunt's extensive and overwhelming Equestrian interests.

The staff ponies had struggled through a bare half-dozen items before coming to a dead halt on the current subject of discussion, the new duchess's disapproval of the Blue Line, and her angry insistence that it must be dismantled. Ever since they tripped over that line in the agenda, they had been stuck in the same circular argument, an argument that refused to end.

"As I've already stated multiple times, that is a matter for the Duchy's own military, Captain Shield. The Blue Line was built by, and has always been staffed and operated by, the Territorials," Major Winds said patiently.

"And the Princess's Own," Gilda reminded the Operations staff-pony, not looking up from her paperwork.

"And the Rangers, yes, thank you Corporal. Who are primarily Trottish troops, whatever the technicalities, and when we talk about this tomorrow with Bureau, I'll be sure to bring that matter up, it is not subject matter for today's meeting, is it?" the head of operations said stiffly.

"And that is the problem, isn't it?" asked Gleaming Shield, staring down the long table at her opposite number. "There is no Ducal military to speak of, is there?"

"I haven't the slightest notion what you're on about, Shield. You yourself spent two years in the Ducal armed forces!"

"The Territorial Corps aren't an army, they're a regiment!" wailed Gleaming Shield. "A sprawling, horrifically bloated regiment with far, far too many battalions all acting as if they're single-battalion EUP provincial regiments. Many of them have Equestrian ceremonial colonels, for the love of the stars! Only a third of the battalions have any Trottish officers at all. They're brigaded and officered within the EUP's own expeditionary force. All operational matters have to be addressed by EUP staff, because there is no Trottish staff!"

"None of which changes the fact that the Blue Line is garrisoned and operated entirely by the Trottish Pony Brigade. I strongly encourage the new duchess to take command of her own ducal forces and acquaint them with her notions of... social engineering."

"All Sally Port says is-"

"Brigadier Port," sniffed Major Winds.

"Pardon?" Gleaming Shield asked, looking like she had been slapped.

"Brigadier Sally Port is an EUP officer of rank, and shall be named as such in officially recorded meetings," said the major, looking to her left at the earth pony stenographer industriously banging away at his two-key typewriter. "Even by such an elevated personage as the acting Colonel of the famed 'Crystal Guards'."

Gleaming's coat was starting to lighten from its native purple-violet to something dangerously lighter, and Gilda could smell something burning. She had only really seen one of Gleaming Shield's infamous fits of temper once, but the memory of that event made Gilda look around to make sure she knew where the conference room's fire extinguisher was located.

"And that was," ground out Gleaming Shield between gritted teeth, "what Brigadier Port said when we tried to meet with him, just before he informed us that he only took orders from 'Command', and that he would begin writing up his letter of resignation in the event that we pressed the matter. You are, I believe, who he meant by 'Command'?"

"I have no insight into the thought-processes of old Sally, and I'm sure he can explain his own actions in his own words, if you would care to bring this matter up to him, Captain Shield. Now, if we could properly table this item and move on to the next line on the agenda, reduction in forces, we are quite concerned about the excessive logistical load on the expedition by the current number of units in the field and in theater."

"This item is tabled, Major," seethed Gleaming Shield. "We are in Trottingham, to 'table' a matter is to bring it into discussion. Try to remember we are no longer in Equestria."

"I am quite aware that we, and almost a full third of Equestria's military - active and worse, volunteer! - are forward deployed on what is now quite clearly foreign soil, Captain Shield! We recognize the sovereignty of the Duchy of Trottingham-"

"Trottingham and the Isles," Gilda interrupted.

"What?" demanded the deputy head of operations, turning to stare daggers at the bat-hen.

"Duchess Cadenza was coronated ruler of the Duchy of Trottingham and the various counties of the Isles. All eight of them. As is traditional in the history of the Isles. The duke or duchess of Trottingham is sovereign of the combined Duchy of Trottingham and the Counties of the Isles."

"What? I've never heard that, where does it say- oh." The pegasus major stared through her bifocals at the document one of her aides held up to her view. "Well, that's a matter for Civil Affairs, and out of my purview. Most of these matters are no longer my business, I don't even know why I'm here- here now, who's that? We're very busy, young lady, you can bother the Duchess's liaison after the meeting's over! Go away!"

The MP who had slunk into the back of the room was leaning over and whispering to the Provost Marshal's representative and Gleaming Shield. Gilda couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but caught 'fire' and 'jetty', and thought she knew what it was about.

Gleaming Shield turned back to the perplexed pony staffers, and cleared her throat. "Gentleponies, I'm afraid that we'll have to put a pin in this agenda and return to it at another time. A matter has come up which cannot be delayed. A security matter."

"Well, if there's a threat to the new duchess, of course you must go, Captain Shield- Captain Shield! You will want a copy of the transcript?" yelped the pegasus major at the retreating back of Gilda and her unicorn as they fled the meeting as swiftly as they could.

Gleaming waited until the door slammed behind her and her little entourage before she blew out her ire in a rush of breath that was only figuratively draconic.

Gilda counted her blessings that it wasn't literally so.

"Very good timing, Baton. How fresh is the news?" Gleaming Shield demanded of the military policemare as they hurried down the corridor to the stairs that led up to the royal apartments.

"You can see the smoke on the horizon, Captain. Very fresh. But it'll take half the morning to get out to the site. The 14/3 is on scene, and I hear the navy's got a couple frigates and the air wing moving into the area."

"They should have already have been on station, if they'd listened to us! Did somepony get crosswise and send the pegasi in early or something?" ranted Gleaming Shield as they passed between the guards still posted in front of the apartments. The guards had remained, even after the former princess and her ponies had packed up and moved across town into Government House.

"And dang it, it already is morning!" she snapped, looking at the clock in the foyer. "Gilda, go get my armor ready. Do we have that spare gig upstairs? Get your harness, I'm going to need you to do some flying."

"Yes, captain ma'am." They split apart, Gilda scurried into their tiny backroom to shuck herself into her hauling harness, and to collect the captain's field armor. Meanwhile, Gleaming conferred with the MPs in the parlor, which was reverting to the meeting and office space it had been before the courtiers had claimed the space for its designed purpose.

Gilda found her unicorn bent over a packet of sloppily composed field reports spread over the coffee table, muttering. Gilda carefully undressed her captain as the unicorn read, the latter only acknowledging her bat-hen's efforts by shifting a leg or tail here or there to facilitate the change while she absorbed the information. She finally looked up as Gilda slapped the helmet on her head, the officer's cap now permanently stitched on top of the padded steel.

"Well, it wasn't what I wanted to get me out of that green-silk-paneled nightmare downstairs, but it'll do. Come on, Gilda, the chase is ahoof!"

Winter had returned with a vengeance, as if enraged that it had been driven from the throat of its prey by some greater gleaming predator. Gilda struggled against the bitter winds out of the southwest, and a flight that should have taken an hour took two wing-aching hours as she tacked against a driving snow-flecked boreal blow.

Half of that time was spent fighting through smoky air, surprisingly thick, given the gale force winds. It lightened somewhat once they got beyond the down-wind of the district that the ground forces were clearing that week. The Hayward Dragoons were back in the field, and living up to their reputation. You could see the burning huts and hamlets in the distance, little sparks that marked the dying spasms of the rebellion. They would remember this harrowing of the rebel districts, would, for generations to come, remember that Equestrians took war seriously.

The wind had let up a bit by the time they came within sight of Gould's Jetty, or rather, the blackened, burning ruins where Gould's Jetty had once stood. Gilda turned twice over the burning, fresh ruins, gliding on the thermals still billowing from the fires.

They had clearly been started sometime overnight, and were only subsiding now because they'd consumed most of the burnable mass of the former little hamlet-port. The eponymous pier was long gone, a scattering of broken, burning planks downcurrent along the shore just beyond the barely-protected cove. The earth and stone work lined with pilings which had protected the little port was shattered, a hole blasted in the breakwater through which the open ocean was pouring, tearing away at the rest of the crumbling structure.

A formerly seagoing ship was impaled upon the outer half of the broken breakwater, her sails long since consumed, that portion of the tumble of masts and wrecked timber standing up out of the waves still burning merrily in the sea wind.

In the distance, both up the shore and down it, could be seen smudges of black smoke marking the corpses of other ships. Gleaming had Gilda fly upwind and find the nearest wreck beyond the one burning on the breakwater.

The next wreck upcurrent was an airship, a flying corsair to judge from its light lines and broken spars. It had been a delicate, swift, deadly little craft before something fiery and faster and more deadly had swatted it from the skies like a hoof of fire.

"How could that have gotten here?" demanded Gleaming Shield, shouting in Gilda's ear. "Those aren't long-distance craft, are they?"

"Do I look like a naval bird to you?" Gilda threw over her shoulder. "This looks like naval business to me, captain ma'am! The investigators ought to be back in the town, oughtn't they be?"

"Gilda my hen, we are the investigators!" laughed Gleaming.

"We're all doomed then, captain ma'am!" Gilda replied, as she turned back to what had once been a little local port.

They found the major of the 14/3rd kicking at a burning pile of timbers which might have once been an inn, or a pub. Three of his pegasi were trying to pry apart the burning wreckage with crowbars and polearms.

"Major Skies!" Gleaming shouted, no doubt, Gilda thought, still wind-deafened by their survey from the air, "I'm Shield. I'm here to take over the investigation. What can you tell me about this mess?"

"Ah?" he said, intelligently. "Who? What uniform is that? Look, I'm trying to get into this vault. Captain- Shield? You're Gleaming Shield? You're younger than I thought you'd be."

"Yes, yes. Why do you think there's a vault under that?"

"Prisoner. Only survivor, really. Over here. Who're you with again?"

"Provost Marshal, for one. Also, the new duchess. Also, captain of the Guards."

"That's not any Guards uniform I've ever seen."

"New regiment. Still spinning up."

"Uh-huh. Yeah, we've got one survivor. Says she was a pub landlady. That one my ponies are poking through. Says they were running sluggers through this place, can you believe it? Says an awful lot of things, actually, pretty rattled." He led them over to a fat hen who was shivering under a blanket, talking mile a minute to a pair of pony interrogators, who were scribbling away, taking her statement. "She's been at it for hours, seems like. Won't shut up."

"Yer damn roight I won' shut up, I won't! I won't sit 'ere another day, I won't! I've 'ad enough, I 'ave! I want to be transported! I want out of this evil land! I want to live somewhere safe, governor! Somewhere where all I gotta worry about is bein' eaten by dragons or cannybals or Daimondy Dogs!

"They took everygriff, they did! An' burned those ad not go! She burned them, she did! Burned everfing, she did! The orange witch, the jetty burned under 'er bludy 'ooves, it did! Said she'd come fer our sins, come fer our wicked ways. Called us traitors and damned pigeons. Killed the mayor and the marster, she did! Lit them right up where they stood, them and their bluddy gonnes. Blew the gonnes right up in our talons, she did! Didn't get off a damned shot, the braggarts. So proud of their little pop-guns. We moved so many of those useless wastes of iron and wood - are all the unicorns like that witch?

"Take me somewhere south, marsters. Take me somewhere wif no unicorns, them and their sunburst sails and their fires. I've 'ad enoff, I have."

Gleaming Shield looked around at the burning wreckage, and back at the hen, pulling off her helmet and showing her horn. "Who did this orange unicorn say she was?"

The captive hen squawked in alarm at the revelation of yet another unicorn. "She didn't! She didn't, she just sent 'er damn ponies and parrots to sweep everygriff up, forced them into 'er 'olds, she did. The pirates, they called 'er Captain, noffin' more. 'ad an eyepatch on, she did, but you know all of these corsairs do that, it don't mean noffin'. It preserves one of they's eyes for downbelows, it does. Sight-like. But the other eye, oh, it burned green like 'ades it did."

"Did you at least get a ship name?" asked Gilda, tired of the hen's display of terror.

"Oh, what? Yeah, I think I seen something on the bow. Somefin with an I, I think? An S and an I. I don't know. Maybe Sol Invites?"

"Sol Invictus?" asked the pegasus major. "We found a proclamation nailed to a post in the middle of what used to be the town square." He let them away from the hysterical griffon, and showed them the post.

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard -

To all who would stand against the will of Harmony, profit from war's fury, or abuse the freedom of the seas, know by this, the death of a now-nameless port of profiteers and all those smugglers who took refuge in it, that the Sun shines on the innocent and the wicked alike. The Sun Remembers. And the sun will bleach your bones if you who crawl under her rays offend against her justice.

Sunset Shimmer, Captain of the Sol Invictus, and Crew

“Pfft," Gleaming Shield said, making a face at the scroll. "Can't get more pretentious than that. Red Yard's 'Recessional'? Come on, Gilda, let's see if this Captain Shimmer left any other clues."

They found nothing more but more destroyed smugglers' ships, chariots, and airships, all along that fatal shore. The raiders had stormed along that shore, and killing or capturing everything that moved. Not that there were very many corpses in the wreckage - most of the victims seem to have surrendered, to judge from the lack of the dead in the town and along the shore. But the few corpses they found were thoroughly incinerated, their bones indeed, ready for bleaching in the sun.

Major Skies' captive hen wouldn't stop confessing, and her confessions lined up with the mystery captain's proclamation and the physical evidence. Someone had found the villains who had been smuggling foreign-made gonnes into the Isles, someone had stalked them for - Gilda wasn't sure how long, but it must have taken them months to pin down where everything was, everyone was. And then, when they were ready, they had struck. In a single night, the mystery pirate had wiped out an entire cabal, an entire operation, torn them up root and stock, and disappeared into the morning sun.

Leaving Gilda and her captain to clean up the mess.

The Hades of it was, Gilda knew when the papers found out about this, the mysterious Captain Shimmer and her ship would be the toast of the city. It was just too juicy a story for the yellow press to resist.

No Time For Sergeants

"It really is a beautiful morning."

"Getting on towards noon. Might be afternoon already."

"No, no, see? The sun isn't that high yet."

"I think we've turned a bit, you're looking at it wrong, captain ma'am."

"No, I've got my bearings. The ship's yawed five points east of southeast."

"If you say so, captain ma'am. I never had any head for these naval matters. I was just as glad when we transferred to landside postings."

"It's simple geometry and calculation, Gilda. Look at that! I think the heather is pinking up?"

"I believe that's redtip, captain ma'am. And those are thickets, not heather."

"Listen to you! They'll make an earth pony of you yet, Gilda."

"Don't get any ideas, captain ma'am. I saw that book on transformations you had on your desk."

"I wouldn't start my experiments with a pony! Or a griffon. I have scruples!"

"Indeed, captain ma'am."

"Anyway, the orange exploded. I clearly was doing something wrong."

"Evidently. Couldn't you have used something less exotic? Oranges cost far too much."

"I prefer apples, anyways."

"They're cheaper, at least."

The two of them looked out into the deep blue spring sky, without a cloud to be seen. The world under them was cantered about fifteen degrees out of true, and above them in the sheets the workers and the crew were fighting with the envelope.

"Wind's turning," Gilda offered after a moment, as the horizon slowly crept back over the port side of the tilted ship.

"And picking up a bit. They're going to have to spread extra sails if they don't get the engine engaged in a few minutes. Drifting uncontrolled isn't a good look for the company's bottom line."

"Or yours, captain ma'am. How deeply did you say you were invested?"

"Had them sell off a third of the funds to buy up what I could of their debts and stock. And I still think I should have gone deeper. The end of the war will cause the funds to sink on Stall Street."

"And the same won't happen for a start-up building warships?"

"This doesn't have to be a warship! It will be sturdy enough for long haul shipping, have sufficient stowage for serious freighter work, and be fast enough to serve as a rich pony's yacht!"

"If they ever get the engine working properly. This is not confidence-building, captain ma'am."

"All new technologies have their teething problems, Gilda."

"We've been drifting for three hours now."

"And time well-spent! I've learned so much watching them work."

"You've been mostly out here staring over the side with me, captain ma'am."

"Well, earth ponies, you know. They were getting defensive about me hovering and looking over their shoulders."

"I don't think the engineers appreciated the 'unicorn perspective'."

"I almost got my mark in magic! I had valid points! And that thaumic coupling just needed the changes I told them they were ignoring. They should have listened!"

"It's designed to be operated by earth ponies, captain ma'am. The whole point of the thaumic conversion engine is that it doesn't need expensive hoof-holding by dedicated unicorn engineers."

"Well, you know us unicorns. Nopony wants to get all dirty and black-faced under the decks."

"Not even unicorns with engineer cutie marks like Cid, captain ma'am?"

"Cid doesn't count, I think he believes he's an earth pony. I mean, have you ever met a unicorn with an engineering cutie mark other than Cid, Gilda?"

"Captain ma'am, you were literally the first pony I met in my life. The unicorns I've met since then have been Cid, officers, or soldiers."

"And Rarity!"

"And Lady Rarity. Could you see her climbing around down there in that filthy mess they're making?"

"She'd look like- like-" Gleaming Shield broke up into giggling laughter, and Gilda allowed herself a smile. The captain had been sullen and strange ever since the former duchess's abdication, and the staffers pestering them about Gleaming's new commission hadn't helped matters. She was like a different pony up here in the sky.

Gilda looked out across the slightly less cockeyed Trottish countryside drifting below them, and grudgingly, silently conceded her unicorn's argument that this had been a better use of their time. This was less soul-destroying than sitting behind a desk in garrison pushing papers and arguing with junior officers about matters that none of them had control over. The section chiefs' chosen method for bullying Gleaming Shield into seeing things their way had been to set their juniors upon them, and Gilda and her captain had ever since then been subject to a sort of siege by subordinate. Harassment by junior officer was, apparently, how things were done at that level.

And so, in order to escape the investing force lurking outside their encampment in the royal apartments, Gleaming Shield jumped at an invitation by Cid Sawhorse to observe the test-launch of the first ship out of the new Trottingham air-yards. Gilda should have known it would be a cluster when none of the other investors or designers had shown up to take advantage of the first cruise of the Duchess Cadance.

Nogriff but Cid and his earth pony and griffon cronies had been there when the bat-hen and her captain arrived at the airship field. The laughter of the watching EUP crews as the new griffon-made ship had crawled slowly into the sky had been another clue. But at least the engine had been working on take-off, however inefficiently. But, an hour later, they lost all headway. The engineers had piled into the engine-room and, not long after, the shouting had started. An hour after that, they'd thrown their opinionated investor out of the engine-room and slammed the door in Gleaming Shield's face.

Gilda, adding up those hours, did the sums in her head, and cursed. "Captain ma'am, it has to be after noon now."

"It certainly is, Gilda."

"We had afternoon meetings."

"With Bureau's herd of yes-mares? Yes, we certainly did."

"We're not going to make those meetings, captain ma'am."

"Such a shame!"

"You didn't want to go."

"I certainly did not. And now I don't have to! I'm stuck on this experimental airship. Unavoidable. So sorry!"

"You can't keep putting them off forever."

"I wanted… one more day." The captain sat there, staring down into the great airy void under their drifting airship.

Little clumps of white here and there on the plains below marked the winter coats of hardy Trottish sheep. Gilda could barely make out the little grey and blue flecks which must have been the griffon shepherds trailing their herds.

"The war's over," Gleaming Shield said after several minutes. "Don't get me wrong, there's still some griffons out there that haven't made their bow, still haven't come in to beg for terms. But they're cold and hungry and starving. It's just a matter of time. Look at that out there!" She waved vaguely at the pristine horizon, unsmirched by the slightest taint of black smoke - well, aside from the thick black clots of smog pouring out of the back of the ship, from the malfunctioning engine.

"You can't see the burned-out districts from here, captain ma'am. Also, that's Haymarket in that direction. They're all ponies on that side of the island."

"You know what I mean! The Dragoons aren't even burning anything anymore."

"There isn't really anything left to burn, captain ma'am."

"Zippo Raid must be so disappointed. No more worlds to burn."

Gilda couldn't help it. She snickered.

And then Gleaming Shield's stone face cracked, and the pony snorted.

And then they both laughed and laughed.

"Stop it! St-stop it! It isn't funny, Gilda! Zippo's a madpony! And those were atrocities! We should- sho- hahahaha!"

"Better huts than griffons, captain ma'am. And those dweebs tormented Trottingham for a decade. And before that - the clangriffons were a bunch of assholes. They got what they deserved, the lot of them. It's just too bad that Colonel Pie isn't around to throw them their surrender parties."

"Oh, yeah. I saw the note. Sent back to Equestria?"

"So they claimed. You notice that Flagg Staff hasn't been around since they shipped the colonel home to the funny farm?"

"You have no proof that he had anything to do with it, Gilda."

"You used to think he was a figment of my imagination, captain ma'am."

"Not everything is a conspiracy orchestrated by secret agents of the Peytral!"

"No, some things are plots by piratical madponies."

Gleaming Shield's eyes lit up at Gilda's successful change of topic. "Cadance and the Sisters say that Princess Celestia used to have a student named Sunset Shimmer," she confided in a tone just low enough to be drowned out by the laboring engine for any eavesdroppers who might be listening to their conversation.

"Really? How have they kept that out of the papers?" Gilda asked in that same soft tone. "She even named her ship after the princess."

"Nopony knew the name of the mystery ship or her mistress until the raid on Gould's Jetty," Gleaming continued in a loud whisper. "Anyways, Princess Celestia keeps her students out of the Equestrian newspapers. You never read about Moondancer, right? The local censors must be leaning on the Trottish papers."

"The censors didn't keep the damn Beak and Bone from calling me a bloody 'Royal bat-hen'," Gilda snapped, abandoning the confidential whispering. "Repeatedly! In print!"

"They didn't name you at all, Gilda. That's how they get around the censors."

"It's libel!"

"That's what they used to call the papers, you know. 'The libels'."

"I've read the same book you have, captain ma'am."

"Well, it was just sitting there on the shelf."

"Why don't they pester you?" Gilda demanded, too exasperated to maintain her usual civility.

"I'm not the one who was waving around her sword beside Cadance and being all dramatic in front of a crowd. You're a spectacle, Gilda. Get used to it, if you're going to act up in public."

"I'm not the duchess's military advisor. They should be stalking you."

"Then you're doing your job by distracting them from harassing me, so - good job, Corporal!"

Still agitated, Gilda glared down at a busy road as they drifted overhead, tiny figures in the distance hauling carts here and there. The wind was pushing the ship back towards the city.

"Did I ever tell you that I volunteered for the Territorials?" Gleaming Shield asked, out of nowhere.

Gilda looked back up at her captain, feeling a bit more composed. "No, ma'am, but someone must have mentioned it, because I was aware that this was true."

"I had my pick of posts. Top of my class. Not bragging, just the plain truth. Might have been top of the Princess's School if I'd chosen to go there, too. I didn't choose."

Gilda grunted, not sure where her captain was going with this.

"I wanted- I don't remember what I wanted now. I needed to prove something, to myself, to my family, to the world. Did I ever tell you about my brother?"

"No, captain ma'am, but people talk. I've gotten the gist." More than once. And she'd never, ever wanted to talk with her unicorn about that martyred, sainted brother of hers. Gilda knew it was treacherous ground.

"Shining really was something. In time, he would have been a general, or the Princess's Captain of the Guard. The real Guard, the Royal Guard. He… his name suited him. He shone."

The unicorn tried to stare at the sun, but, blinking, turned her dazzled eyes towards Gilda instead.

"I was very, very angry for a long time after Shining died. And I blamed you. The griffons, I mean. I wanted to see the war at the cutting edge. I wanted the - I think I wanted blood, heavens help me. Carve out the vengeance myself, personally. And so… the battalion. The ranks full of Celestia-be-damned griffons, and we'd be… griffons killing griffons. It seemed right. Proper. No matter what happened, if we won, if we lost - justice being done. In retrospect, it's amazing things didn't go very, very badly. I would have deserved it, even if you all wouldn't have.

"Because I'd have spent you all like water. But I don't know if they knew it, or it was just an accident, but they kept the Fifth away from the front lines, from the real killing work. And - nopony keeps up a killing hatred patrolling a hundred nautical miles of empty ocean."

"And then you pulled me out of that water," Gilda said. She wasn't sure what else she could have said to her captain's strange not-precisely-a-confession. It was none of it a surprise to her - only that the captain had finally spoken of it. "You did well enough in the battalion. After a while. And by the time we got to Trottingham, you hardly even bothered to glare. But we haven't seen the battalion in weeks, captain ma'am."

"More like months," Gleaming Shield laughed.

"What I mean is, captain ma'am, we've not been working with the battalion for a while now."

"That point has been made to me. Repeatedly. Which is why we're up here, in the air, Gilda. Because the moment my hoof touches the earth again, I'm going to have to sign the papers and acknowledge that my time in the Territorials is over. The paperwork was sitting on your desk when we left this morning."

"What does that mean?" Gilda asked, uncertain, starting to feel a strange sort of bubbling anxiety under her uniform. They weren't wearing their armor today. Just undress, and nothing else. It was a bit chilly up here, the warm spring sun warring with the strengthening breeze.

"They're removing me from the battalion rolls. No Guards officers seconded to foreign regiments, and that's final."

"Does that mean that- an Equestrian Guards officer can't have a bat-hen from a foreign regiment, either."

"Funniest damn thing, Gilda. I looked at the working rolls, and you weren't on them. Did you never notice that you weren't drawing pay?"

"What?" Gilda squawked. "I- what? WHAT? That bastard Grippe said they were garnishing my wages because of the whole prisoner-of-war thing!"

"Well, apparently, Grippe is in the hooves of the MPs. Nopony noticed she was grifting her way through the job. You were one of about thirty imaginary griffons on the official, doctored rolls."

"I'm not imaginary!"

"But you were on fraudulent rolls. And never actually drew pay. Corporal Grippe was pocketing your portion, along with all those others. She'll be transported for sure."

"Well, damn. Ain't that a kick in the beak? So I was never-"

"Never actually a trooper in the Territorials, no. Technically you've been a prisoner of war for over a year now."

"Over a- has it been that long?"

"Yep. Fished you out of the drink a year ago last Tuesday."

"I was promoted! Twice!"

"That's something nopony wants to admit happened. You're now an official embarrassment. Technically, I think that makes you a civilian, Gilda."

"Uh. OK. What does… what does that mean? Do they put me into one of the internment camps, or onto a ship for the territories?"

"Gilda, you've been my bat-hen for almost a year. Barely anypony even remembers you were captured trying to sneak into the duchy.You're not getting transported. It's just… we have to make our working relationship - we have to settle matters. Set it on a regular basis."

Gilda looked down at the freshly turned fields outside of the city walls, and the little colored dots that must have been earth ponies preparing the soil for the year's plantings.

"What do you have in mind, ma'am?" Gilda finally asked.

"Gilda, I just told you you're a free hen. You can call me by my name, you know."

"I… don't think I can… captain ma'am. I'm not that fledgeling you pulled out of the sea last year." Looking into the distance, across the slate-grey city, Gilda could barely glimpse the blue sparkle of the harbor's waters glittering in the distance.

"And I certainly am not that angry, bigoted ensign who pulled you out of the sea, either."

The unicorn pulled a sheath of paper out of one of her saddlebags. "I've got a form here. A whole ream of forms, actually. Apparently when you draw enlistment papers from supply, they only give you the whole packet. Not sure what I'll do with the rest of them."

Gilda took the enlistment packet from Gleaming Shield's horn-glow. The top form had been filled out with Gilda's information, and details. She hadn't realized that the captain had been listening the one time Gilda had let slip her mother's name. There it was, filled out for 'next of kin'.

And at the top of the form, the regiment blank had been filled in Gleaming Shield's fussily precise horn-writing, Sixth Guards Regiment, First Battalion. As well as the intaking rank.

"You see, I want to make something of the Crystal Guard. It's an imaginary unit. A nonsense-unit. The echo of some mythical empire that nopony other than Princess Celestia remembers as anything other than a cautionary tale about tyrants and power. But now, after all of these centuries… there's me. I'm not a regiment by myself. An officer by herself is just an opinionated, armed lunatic. It takes a sergeant to make an officer."

Gilda looked up at her unicorn. "I didn't think that you could enlist as a sergeant, captain ma'am. Shouldn't I be a private or a ranker or a legionary or something like that?"

"If an officer without a sergeant is a lunatic, then a soldier without a sergeant is a thug. The reason that the Griffish Territorials work so well is because of their corporals, Gilda. The best that the Trottish griffons have to offer, forced to work as NCOs. The Territorials may very well have the best corporals in the world."

"They have to, captain ma'am, because they were never allowed sergeants. We had to pick up the slack. But the Crystal Guard is supposed to be a pony regiment, isn't it?"

"Says who? It's an EUP regiment, but associated on the books with a nonexistent sovereign state that I can't even get a straight answer from anypony about whether the Crystal Empire ever was part of Equestria. If I'm the first and only officer in the regiment, I think I get to say what exactly the Crystal Guard will be. And I say… the regiment will take griffons. And ponies. And hippogriffs and Abyssinians and anything else we can lure to the colors.

"But I can't do it alone. Right now, I'm an armed lunatic with a signed and sealed paper saying I'm an officer. I won't actually be an officer until I have a sergeant."

"I was never a sergeant, captain ma'am. I was - there is no such rank as 'sergeant' in the Territorials."

"If you sign that, neither of us will be in the Territorial Corps, Gilda. This isn't the Territorials anymore. The war's over. Isn't it time to move on?"

Gilda sniffed, and then forced her features into the appropriately fierce, greedy grimace that the occasion warranted.

"I'm going to expect a full year's back-pay, captain ma'am. The Territorials might have been a corrupted, disreputable colonial embarrassment, but if the Sixth Guards are to be an honorable, upright regiment with a tradition of honesty and probity, then they bloody well will pay their griffons their back-wages!"

"At sergeant's wages, Gilda, I promise," Gleaming Shield said.

Gilda quickly, messily signed the form, tore it off of the fresh pad of forms, and threw it at her unicorn.

The captain grabbed it in her horn-glow, and gently handed it back to Gilda.

"Sergeant, I need you to file this form. We'll open a file for recruits when we get back. And look! We're coming to a stop. I guess they figured out how to land this drifting boondoggle."

The engineers and the crew eventually grounded the ship; it landed in the middle of Gilbert Square, with half the city crowding around to marvel at the spectacle.

Gilda convinced Gleaming Shield to cast the crystal-glamour-uniform spell on her newly-minted sergeant, and then on herself. The sparkling sergeant marched flashily about, booming broadly to the fascinated crowd of young griffons and ponies who milled around the stylish, sleek air-ship. Gilda told them bombastic breezie-tales of the glories of the service, the honor of the Guard, and the splendors of the soldier's life. She promised them adventure, excitement, and wonder. She promised them the world.

She lied shamelessly.

Gleaming Shield just stood there, letting Gilda do all the talking. The Guards captain glittered in the sun, looked impressive, talked up the prospects of the shipworks' new vessel, and took the occasional filled-out enlistment form.

They had a dozen recruits by nightfall. A third of the recruits were adventurous ponies from the other side of the city, slumming it in the blue zone, some of them for the first time in their lives. The rest of them were griffons eager to escape the griffish slums and see the world under a crystal banner.

Sergeant Gilda made a note to talk to Rarity about having a crystal banner made. Then she made a note about making up a regimental budget. And where they'd get their funding from - the captain was personally wealthy, and could afford Gilda's wages easily. But an entire platoon's worth of wages? Or more?

The list will only keep growing, Gilda thought, looking at her captain as Gleaming Shield pointed out some technical detail on the grounded airship to one of the enthusiastic recruits.

It was a good thing her unicorn loved lists.

A Fledgeling Of Griffonstone

Author's Notes:

Fetch And Carry

Author's Notes:

Between Waves On Seafoam

Author's Notes:

Rats, Spats, And Crab-backs

Author's Notes:

A Streak Of Yellow

Author's Notes:

A Roc In A Hard Place

Author's Notes:

Prototype, Princesses and Peculation

Author's Notes:

Falconry And Petty Larceny

Author's Notes:

The Crab Bucket

Author's Notes:

The After-Party

Author's Notes:

Burn Barrels And Hot Wheels

Author's Notes:

The Hijacking Crews

Author's Notes:

Swinging For The Fences

Author's Notes:

Kidnapping And Official Cover

Author's Notes:

It Never Rains But It Freezes

Author's Notes:

Afternoon On The Firing Line

Author's Notes:

Very Important Pony

Author's Notes:

Our Lady Of Sorrows

Author's Notes:

A Nest Of Royals

Author's Notes:

Airships, Politics, And Other Uses For Hot Air

Author's Notes:

A More Collegial Exchange

Author's Notes:

A Scrimmage In A Back Alley

Author's Notes:

A Time For Choosing

Author's Notes:

Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow

Author's Notes:

News At The Speed Of Thaumfire

Author's Notes:

Nine Offices Down

Author's Notes:

A Memory Of Stone

Author's Notes:

Keeping Up Standards

Author's Notes:

Crystal And Catacomb

Author's Notes:

Pomposity And Pageantry

Author's Notes:

The Trooper's Errand

Author's Notes:

Petition And Redress

Author's Notes:

Refusing The Crown

Author's Notes:

Loony In A Bin

Author's Notes:

Sinks The Fire

Author's Notes:

No Time For Sergeants

Author's Notes:

Mature Rated Fiction

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