The ink on the contract was barely dry, and already Rosewater was tired of the baroness. Prim Lace was more of a baroness than she was. Roseate was more of a baroness. Simpering fool that she was, the Rushing Baroness Highwater could hardly contain herself.

“What is your process?” the Baroness asked, leaning forward from her seat while Rosewater blew across the ink to dry the signature giving the Rose family exclusive access to the Highwater shipping for three months. “Please, I must know.”

“In time. You will be a part of the process, m’lady.” Rosewater tipped her nose up, taking in the mare’s scent. Too much powder in her mane; a touch of arousal, understandable for one not used to the rich accents of Rosewater’s personal laboratory; and some cheap perfume from Prance. She could practically smell the whale the base had come from. Vomitous. “First, you will be required to bath yourself. Nose to tailtip. Not a hint of another’s scent upon you. Nor that… vile odour you’ve adorned yourself with.”

“Vile?” The mare, Rushing Highwater, stomped a hoof. “I’ll have you know—”

“That particular fragrance costs five hundred bits per vial, yes, yes. I’m well aware of the esteem those whale hork peddlers hold themselves in.” Rosewater sniffed again, curling her lip into a sneer. “Should you wear that odour within my presence again before we are finished, the contract will be voided. It’s offensive.”

“Upstart,” Rushing said with a snort.

“An upstart with a better nose for fragrance and intimacy than you could dream of.” Rosewater sniffed. “The sanitation shower is through there,” she flicked an ear at the open door to the sterile, white-tiled room. “Use the soap provided, scrub everywhere thoroughly. If you fail to do so, I will scrub you myself. Nothing must remain upon you but your natural scents, Lady Highwater.”

“This had better be worth your attitude…” Highwater’s voice trailed off as Rosewater pulled down a vial of rosy pink liquid and unstoppered it. A fragrance like a summer’s day drifted out, floral scents accented by the soft loamy scent of a nearby forest. The smell of wine twined through it all, and the aroma of sex between a mare and a stallion underlay it all.

Rosewater let herself indulge for just a moment the afternoon she’d lain with a stallion outside of Merrie, just enough to hitch her tail aside and wink naturally. No need to induce a wink when the real thing was so much more believable. “This was made with out of entirely flaura. There is no hint of fauna in it, aside from myself. Need I demonstrate further, baroness? Further demonstrations will come at increased cost.”

She watched the mare consider the many meanings of the offer. One way, and Rosewater would gladly add secret additions to the deal Roseate had coerced her into agreeing to. Another, and the entire deal would be off.

Finally, the baroness shook her head quickly and ducked into the shower. It was amusing to see the mare trying to keep her tail modestly flat to her rear and failing.

She spent a moment longer watching to make sure the mare did as she’d been told. Rushing Highwater wasn’t an unattractive mare by anypony’s standards. She was russet, a rare color of coat, with a burnished copper mane, and a smile that would shake almost any stallion to the core, should she learn to apply the right scent upon her backside.

More off putting than the hork she dabbed behind her ears and upon her rump was the attitude and belief that she had no equal. It would do her no favors in Merrie, let alone in Rosewater’s own perfumery. There, she was queen, and not even her mother Roseate would dare to intrude without invitation or proper cause.

Not that her Baroness mother hadn’t tried. Or had her goons try, rather. Roseate rarely got her hooves dirty anymore. More and more, Roseate was trying to push Rosewater to do more and more odious things without letting her get involved in Damme directly again.

Roseate was too afraid of her again. For the moment.

Fear was an interesting emotion, and one could push a pony far using it, but there was a limit, and the more Rosewater used it to protect what was hers, the more it took in return. And the more Roseate grew a resistance to it.

This last time had lasted only a few months, and Rosewater was tired of fighting against her mother’s demands and threats. But there was also nopony else she could ask for help.

Rushing Highwater spluttering in the cold water shower brought her back to the present. Curses poured out of the cubicle as the water flowed, then further disgust at the scent of the soap—astringent, but it would dissipate on its own and break down in the cold water.

She brought a small vial of the neutralizer to counter her scent and wafted a cotton ball doused with the caustic liquid through the air to negate the aroma. A quick catalyzing spell, and the scents canceled each other out and drifted out the window in a haze of pink magic.

While the sound of the hoof-pumped shower continued, Rosewater tended to her own self with the purest water she could make and a sponge cleansed and cleansed until not the faintest hint of ocean remained upon it.

In between careful wipes down her nearly white coat, with the Rosethorn’s signature crimson curling along her muzzle from her nose to run down her throat to a heart shaped crest on her breast, she tended to the artlessly artful wisps of deepest pink mane tucked about her ears and horn.

She did not pause as she brushed over her cutie mark, a triplet of rose petals in a silver pond, nor did she stop when the Lady Highwater stopped showering, her hooves clattering on tile as she searched about for a towel. There would be none. Towels were gathers of scents. Only purest water and soaps she had developed herself were allowed in the sanitation station. But that, too, was part of her process.

“When you’re done washing yourself, please step free and into the basin in the center of the room,” Rosewater called to her.

The last part, washing her marehood, was the most delicate. She could not allow her own arousal to taint the final scent. But, standing with her tail lifted, she facing the mare, she let herself make a show of it as she pressed the sponge lightly around the outer folds of her marehood first, then dipping in to gather the last remnants of her own scent, and finally to wash over her dock and below, washing away with the purity of water and her own magic the last of her smell.

Highwater’s aroused scent flared in the room as she watched. Rosewater glanced over her back to see the mare standing at the entrance to the shower, her tail flagging obviously and stiffly.

“Enjoy the view, Rushing,” Rosewater said in a steady tone, lifting her tail higher to show the mare everything and more, but remaining calm at her core. Working with lust for so long inured one to its minor teases. “It will help with the process. Into the tub, now.”

“They said you were cold,” Rushing said in a strained voice. “H-how…” She swallowed thickly as Rosewater turned, tail lowering steadily, and stepped into the tub.

“Can I stand to be unaroused when you’re ready to be mounted by the first thing to walk through the door?” Rosewater allowed herself a moment of amusement and smiled. “Rushing, you believe that so little can tempt me? My darling,” she whispered as she strode forward, clucking her tongue and shaking her head. “Have you heard the other name the mares who sent you to my mother call our fair city?” Every step was a show, the sway of her hips and the flicking of her tail a reminder of the scent that had so briefly and thoroughly entranced a baroness.

“T-the…” Rushing licked her lips, her eyes darting everywhere but at Rosewater. “The city of Delight.”

“Delight,” Rosewater purred into the other mare’s ear, pausing to nip delicately at it before walking slowly around her, nostrils flared as she took in the myriad of scents the mare was exuding, seeking for that one scent that was the keystone of every mare’s and stallion’s desire. “My mother merely fancies herself its mistress, but I am the queen of Delight, my simple mare. What would you have to offer me in return for—” There it was, right at the base of the mare’s dock. A sharp, frantic scent, with its own pulse racing for completion. With a faint breath and an even more delicate nip to the base of Rushing’s tail, she flicked her own around the baroness’s neck like a caress. “For this?”

The scent intensified, and Rosewater called over a dab of pure cotton and a smooth, dull-edged spoon. The first, she dabbed at the softest part of the other mare’s dock, rolling it through and capturing the essence of her desire. The second, she used to collect a dollop of the mare’s arousal direct from the mare’s lips. Both went into stoppered tubes and set back on the rack they’d come from, glowing briefly pink to cement the scents.

“A-anything,” Rushing Highwater blurted as Rosewater walked away, already humming to herself. “Make love to me, here, now, and I’ll—”

Rosewater silenced the mare with a spell, binding her muzzle closed. “I haven’t even used my magic on you, and you’re already panting like a dog. Be silent or I shall, and you shan’t enjoy the experience.”

She left the spell in place for a few seconds longer as she worked through the scent’s complexities in her mind and began to formulate the mixture of herbs and oils she would need to properly bring out the arousal she needed to embody. Such a task was routine when working with familiar clients like her sisters, she barely needed to remind herself of their peculiarities to produce the scents they needed in the war.

The pointless war. A war her mother was dragging out needlessly long past its original roots. A war she was bound to participate in for the sake of a single pony she wished to protect, that she had already sacrificed much to keep safe.

And Baroness Highwater was clueless to it. Another pawn in the endless succession of jabs and ripostes Rosewater and Roseate traded. All for the sake of one love lost, and one barely held out of reach of the morass.

She caught herself staring at the door to her innermost sanctum, more protected even than her own home, and forced herself to focus on the two vials in front of her. A simple spell revealed the essential natures of both scents, drawing them through even the cork to tease her nostrils.

With somepony as easily drawn to lust as the Baroness Highwater, the scent would need to be bolder or the scent of her own lust would overpower the accents needed to instill it in another.

Then another scent washed over her, and she turned to find Rushing Highwater staring at her, tail flagged as she ravished herself with a telekinetic spell. Crude construct. Poorly adapted shape. It was roughly in the shape of a stallion’s cock, not molded to her own needs and deepest pleasures. She could offer the mare lessons… for a fee.

But the look of utter lust, without the hint of affection, repulsed her. “Have you no shame?”

Rushing glared at her and continued. “I thought this was something your City of Delights did openly.” There was a sneer in her voice.

“You know so little.” Rosewater shook her head. At least the spill would be contained, but the raw scent of sex in the air would ruin the effect if she let too much of it contaminate the base. “When you’re quite finished, wash yourself again and leave. I can’t work when you’re making a mess.”

With that, clucking her tongue at the wasted afternoon, Rosewater activated the security charms in her workspace, leaving only the front door and washroom unwarded.

Prim Collar perched atop the roof of a building across the river in the city Damme, a scope to his eye. It was crude, but effective enough to spy Rosewater’s distinctively lean, tall form leaving the front door of the Rosewater Perfumery. She was bare of the simple scarf and dress she’d went in with, and absent the company of the dowdy mare who’d met her at the docks.

“So begins week fifteen, day three of observing the perfumery,” Collar noted to his companion, Cloudy Rose, a sleek, grass green pegasus mare who lounged lazily in a hammock made of mist. “This is the first time she’s broken routine in the past month. Did you catch who her visitor was? And where was her assistant?”

“Dunno. Looks like today the shop was closed.” Cloudy stretched her wings. “When I did a flyover, I didn’t see anypony at the register.” She ticked her ears a few times. “She must be from the main family line, though. One of the lesser sisters, maybe. They all veil themselves, so it’s hard to tell.”

Collar clucked his tongue. “She’s not, right now. Do you think she’s going to Faerie…” Just as he started to talk, Rosewater’s image blurred, flickered, and fuzzed, then returned to normal. “Yeah. Well… there goes our target. Again.”

He kept track of the bright cloudy-white coat and carnation mane for a while longer. She was a beauty, even from a distance, and even as an illusion. And she was his equal, his foe, and increasingly intriguing.

The sprite vanished in a swirl of white and pink, an event that precipitated only an annoyed shuffle away from it until it dissipated..

“Pity.” Prim Collar lowered his glass and shifted his unaided sight back to the perfumery.

Cloudy let her gaze wander over the city she could never return to. Not even for a visit. As a defector, and having gone AWOL from the Merrieguard, she was an arrest on sight individual, and her imprisonment wouldn’t be pleasant at all. Not that Collar would let her stay arrested for long.

“Do you ever miss it?” He brought the glass to his eye again as the door to the perfumery opened. The blue coat of the baroness peeked for a moment before the door closed again and the mare disappeared back inside. Why do I feel like I was just winked at?

“Sometimes.”

Collar lowered his glass to watch his companion for a moment. “Sometimes?”

“Sometimes I want to wander the streets, drink in the scents of everything without worrying that I’m going to be cited for a scent violation.” Her tail did raise that time, and she let him see her wink. His loins stirred.

He swallowed and used a spell to lower her tail again. “Easy, Cloudy.”

“Sorry.” She buried her head in the cloud. “I was just thinking of this one mare. She swallowed hard and opened her eyes. “Rosemary was her name. Rosewater’s cousin, you know?”

“I know.” The only child of Carnation Rosethorn, exiled these past six years, apprentice to Rosewater. A top suspect for Rosewater's shop assistant. “What was she like?” Not that talking about Cloudy’s previous lovers helped him, but it helped her sometimes, to remember and let the pain of losing contact with them ebb away.

“Nothing like her cousin. She was… kind. Caring and gentle. But a real firecracker in bed. And a wit like the point of a spear. I…” She shook her head slowly and cast a yearning look at Collar. “I don’t want to remember her right now. But…” Her tail flagged to the side as she shivered. “You know how you get a tune stuck in your head?”

“Yeah. I do.” Rosewater, her mane wild, her legs spread and shaking, her tail canted as if waiting for him to come to her, her eyes glazed and locked on him. He could still read the message on her lips as she spoke too softly to hear.

“You will be mine.”

The image from a dream haunted him and had haunted him since she broke through his containment spell with some form of magic he wasn’t familiar with. It wasn’t scent magic, and it had sent even Rosewater’s ‘allies’ into a full rout. In reality, she hadn’t canted her tail, hadn’t whispered the words, only panted and drawn deep breathes as the wild look in her eyes faded into the usual chill that he remembered from the few times they’d passed each other in formal settings.

“Maybe we ought to call it a day, then,” Collar said more jauntily than he felt. “Care for an ale? I could use one about now.”

“I’m still on shift, Collar,” Cloudy whispered, dismissing the cloud to land beside him on the rooftop. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. As your nominal commanding officer, I order you to escort your city’s heir to the bar.” Collar held the serious expression for only a few moments before Cloudy cracked up.

“Aye aye—” She snorted when he gave her a jaunty naval salute. “Sir.”

“Brat.”

The High Stepping Stallion was a place Collar wouldn’t have called upscale in his youth. The booths were all worn to a shine, the floorboards hadn’t been replaced in decades, and were worn to an almost glass-like polish tracing the path of the serving ponies and customers alike.

Now, only a few months into his thirtieth year, the place held a charm to it that was less worn and more cozy. The smooth bench seating, table-tops, and floorboards didn’t speak to disrepair, but to the opposite. There were no splinters, the wood wasn’t discolored—much—and the seats held a pony’s rear at just the right cup.

It held, compared to most other well established places, a certain air of dignity about it even from the outside, and within it was all understated lighting and warm candle-lit coves where ponies could sit and share a laugh and some of the finest Dammerale in Equestria.

“Never been in this place,” Cloudy murmured, sticking closer to his side than she usually did after a lookout. “Way above my pay grade.” She added a second later in a low whisper, “They also have a reputation for not liking Roses.”

“If they say anything to my chief lieutenant,” Collar whispered back, “I’ll have words with the management.”

Being a high-end establishment, they had to wait to be seated, but also as he was the Lord-heir of Damme, they didn’t have to wait long.

“My lord, a pleasure to have you visit our establishment again,” a short, thin stallion with a mustache and goatee said, bowing as he stopped. “Table for one?”

“Two. Cloudy is my guest this afternoon.” Collar raised his head to look around at the rest of the staff stopping to get a look at them. “Table for two, and two draughts of your finest Dammerale.”

“Is this a date, Collar?” Cloudy asked, a hint of mischief in her voice. “I thought I was still on duty.”

“Yes,” Collar said, grinning back at her shocked look. “A date, my dear Cloudy.” It’s about damn near time I took you on a public one. “One of the back booths, please. We have a few things to discuss.”

The look Cloudy gave him said that he did, indeed, have a lot to talk about. “I don’t suppose you have any Rose wine?”

“Indeed not,” the stallion said. “We only carry the finest of Dammerale and the best of the Primvine Yard.”

“Riverrock Stout, then,” Cloudy muttered, then chuckled when he gave her an affronted look. “Pinebark Red? Seafoam Light?”

Collar coughed and interrupted the continuing tirade of looks and counter-offers. “She’ll have a Feathered Bitter.”

“Ach,” Cloudy gasped. “I can already feel my Rosewing heritage crying out in horror!”

“She’s joking,” Collar said with a roll of his eyes and a nip to her ear. “Aren’t you?”

“Absolutely. Now let’s go talk about our relationship, Lord Collar.” Cloudy nipped his cheek and flirted her tail in a very Roselike manner, and sauntered off to the farthest corner booth, currently empty.

Collar gave the stallion a weak smile. “She’s… very assertive. But I do love her.”

Once the Mist Faerie was covering her, Rosewater cast a short range teleport to the side, disappearing behind a hedge and pulled out her own spyglass, scanning the rooftops visible over the hedgerow blocking most of Damme from Merrie’s view.

There. Just across the river from her perfumery. Her tail on and off for the past several months. Sometimes the tail was actually hard to find, and wasn’t the future centerpiece of her collection of the best things life had to offer.

The hooded unicorn was definitely Prim Collar. It was hard to hide that color of coat and mane cloak or not. The other, a pegasus lounging on a cloud and not at all being inconspicuous with green wings against a blue, nearly cloudless sky.

She, definitely a she from the way she moved, shifted on her cloud and dropped to the rooftop beside him. She watched, lips pursed, as the pegasus kissed him, watched longer as he met it a second time and they disappeared off the roof in a rush.

“Keep him safe, little mare,” Rosewater whispered into the shadows. There were other watchers besides they two. “For me.”

For us.

It took only a moment to make sure her mistveil would stand up to the light of day, then she headed along the hedge, flicking her tail and cleaning herself of her momentary lapse in concentration.

When she broke onto the docks, everypony shied away from her, as was the proper deference for a Veiled Rose. She smiled behind the cloaking shadows and made her way through the bubble of ponies that spread out around her, too tall to be her mother, about the right height to be one of her sisters, if viewed from a distance.

None of the spies would be in the throng. Or, if they were, it would be coincidental. Most of them would be working jobs on the docks or pretending to laze in the noonday sun and wind blowing off the North Lunan sea.

Not that it mattered. Her business with Cargo Manifest and his oh-so-cleverly named company Cargo Manifest Shipping was none of hers. She laughed, then, and cast off her mistveil, startling everypony within a hundred yards at the sudden appearance of Rosewater, the Rose Terror.

Let the Prims ponder her reasons. Maybe they would think she’d gone mad. She had another good chuckle at that, then stopped to compose herself before opening the door into the rickety little shack.

The inside of the office was cluttered with corkboards and scroll racks, the latter tacked with all manner of orders and slips, the former overflowing with scrolls tucked everywhere. A palm-oil lamp guttered as she closed the door behind her. The windows were all open, letting in both the scent of the ocean and the rotting of seaweed and other… undesirable smells.

“Lady Rosewater, an honor. We had expected your mother.” Cargo Manifest said as he rose to his feet and glancing pointedly at the windows. “No funny business.”

She chuckled softly. If he thought such paltry uncoordinated smells would disrupt hers… She smiled brightly, letting a touch of mirth ring through in a throaty laugh. “Oh, my dear stallion. There’s nothing funny about my business.” Ponies outside would smell nothing, and the scent she brought with her would not linger. “I am here on my mother’s behest, not mine own.”

“Yeah.” He sat down again, eying her warily.

She allowed a genteel smile to grace her lips as she sat and composed her mane and tail to show off the whole of her sleek form from slender forelegs to slender, muscular hindquarters ready to either leap, run, or sway. And, just between her legs, the supple pink vale between her teats, unknown to milk, and small, but alluring all the same.

She flexed her belly just so, and coughed to cover it, but his eyes were drawn exactly where she wanted them to be drawn when she shifted her legs, bringing just the barest peek of her pink lips into view.

“My mother wishes to negotiate towards these terms,” she said after a long moment of his staring and the shuffling hooves of his attendants aware, but not having seen, the lure she’d placed right in front of him.

The scroll she drew from her satchel allowed her to cover the unstoppering of one of her special perfumes, one formulated for her own use. Along with the scroll, she sent a waft of herself. Barely enough to touch his nose.

Not yet. Let him think it natural first.

His ears twitched as scroll and scent reached him at the same time. He spent a long minute studying the simple, revised table of expenses and costs the Rosethorn family would cover and expect to be eaten by the company during their weekly voyages.

“So, she wants a better deal on exotic oils from Maretronia?” He floated the scroll back to her, giving her an excuse to split her magic again and send tendrils of herself spreading throughout the small office.

A touch of lavender to the guard to calm him to a light slumber, a touch of Rosewater’s own sweet nectar bound to the scroll as she pulled another, this the signature slip needed to record the deal. She touched the stamped, gold embossed symbol of the Merrie-Damme Trade Treaty Office on the slip. “We have already filed our copy with them. We only need your approval.”

She passed both back, flexing her belly again as she shifted once more. This time, she took in the air, filtering out the scents, and found the one she wanted. His desire. For her.

It was the easiest thing to tweak it, tugging it into a swirl with her own perfume, suggesting what she wanted him to do. She smiled brightly, nothing of mirth or pleasure in it as she bared her teeth. They fell so easily. It was hardly a challenge.

“Are you uncomfortable?” He asked, his voice slipping into a near somnolent cadence. “Perhaps…” He stood, revealing the stiff erection that had been hidden behind his desk. His eyes were glazing already, locked on her belly.

“Perhaps we can conclude our business first?” she asked in a coy, soft tone, flirting her tail against the floor. “Are the terms agreeable?”

“Terms?” he asked, his eyes breaking from her for a moment to settle on the paper she fluttered on the desk. “Ah…” His eyes cleared for a moment, shrewd business sense overriding his lust. “What’s in it for me?”

“I thought that would be clear,” she said, rising to her considerable height above him. “Was I unclear in my offer, dear Cargo Manifest?”

He stared at her, his eyes roving along her body, the glazed look coming back as he stumbled, trying to cross through the desk, snarling, and leaping over it.

“Yes, my lusty little unicorn. You get to have me.” Little was right. Even glazed as he was, he stopped shy of her until she rolled her eyes and dropped to her barrel again, tail flagged as she cast the last spell she would need to conclude business. She had to leap away from the Mist Faerie as he mounted it, slotting perfectly into the telekinetic sock she’d made just for his disappointment of a cock.

“You get to have me,” she whispered again as she pulled a jar from her bag and waited as he pumped away at the vaporous mare.

He was so lost to the lust for the object that so resembled her in scent and sight that he never noticed the real her padding around him invisibly. It wasn’t out of curiosity, except perhaps macabre, watching a stallion so badly butcher the art of sex. So obviously a foreigner. No Merrier would consider such a rough display sex.

Rutting or fucking, perhaps.

She clucked her tongue as she studied his terrible technique, his lackluster power, and his ferociously awful banter as he whispered heinous things in her mirror’s ear.

“Oh yeah. You like that. Want it harder? Yeah, you do.”

For all of forty seconds. Rosewater timed it. He didn’t even last as long as a dog rutting in the alley. She sighed and put the jar away. His seed wouldn’t be worth keeping, not even for experimentation.

She could… well, there were some old flames she might entice and let them give chase or consent to be chased if she needed come for some experimental perfume.

Wouldn’t that just annoy my mother?

When he finished, she cleaned him up with the sock, tossed the entire mess out the window to be lost to the sea, and led him back behind his desk. “Deal concluded?”

“Y-yeah…” He blinked rapidly as she wafted the scent of the ocean across his nose. “Damn… they weren’t kidding.”

“They weren’t?” she asked, pretending surprise that her reputation abounded. “What did they say about me?”

“That taking you was like taking Celestia herself. Fiery as the sun, and just as passionate.” He panted and waved at the slip of paper. “Yeah. Buck, Rosewater. Take it. My blessings.”

“Like Celestia herself, you say?” Rosewater chuckled. “I’m afraid she has a good three hooves on me, yet, dear Cargo. But thank you. Our business is concluded?”

“Aye. Maybe we can do business again?” The look of hope in his eyes was pitiable, had she any pity to give. Maybe a little sad.

“Mayhap. If my mother meets my price for negotiations again.” It wasn’t likely. She’d have to be pushed back off the ‘front lines’ again for that to happen. “Do be a stranger, Cargo.”

She left him pondering the words, still half in a fugue of lust, and left to return to her sanctum.