The days passed slowly for Rosewater, preparing for her next move simultaneously against her mother and towards Collar. At times, it seemed like both plans were one, so similar in scope they were, and with similar goals.

One day, she caught herself staring across the river from her sitting room couch, lost in thoughts of what would be coming in the future if she succeeded in either or both of them. The next, she mixed up the ideas for both plans and when she finally realized it, she couldn’t tell the thinking that had gone into both sheets of paper apart.

“What in the Mare’s name am I doing?” she asked her empty, warded study. The books on the shelves around her offered no answer, and the two scrolls in front of her gave her even less of a care. In order to defeat her mother, she needed something to pull Damme to her side.

But she couldn’t openly pull Damme to her side. Making a plea to Lace or Collar would almost certainly be considered an act of at least open rebellion if not treason. At the very least she was looking at being disowned and stripped of title and heirship.

Without a child of her own, she couldn’t guarantee her disinvolvement in the war or her mother’s plots, and the best she could do was be incompetent at the tasks set to her in such a way as to disprove any plan to fail at them.

Without a mate… Stars above and Mare curse her. Any potential mates she’d gotten close to in the last ten years had been threatened, indirectly always, or enticed away. The last hadn’t even been a prospect that could give her a child. Roseling, a soap and shampoo making mare whom she’d shared one lovely night of talk about only mundane things, soaps, scents, fragrances, all near to Rosewater’s heart.

And one night of passion in the woods after a naked chase where Roseling, not Rosewater, had been the victor.

The very next day, her shop was visited by Rosejoy and her goons and warned her against seeing Rosewater again, to which Roseling had, of course, gone straight to Rosewater’s estate, knocked on the door, and kissed her right in front of the goon squad.

Thus began a weeklong campaign by Roseate to drive away customers.

Until Rosewater had put an end to it by asking Roseate to leave her alone. The price had been too high. Too much. Simply to have a lover unmolested. And no guarantee it wouldn’t continue.

Tears stained the scroll under her hoof as she stared down into memory and anguish. Just the latest cruelty made more poignant by Roseling’s pain, the hurt and the disbelief in her eyes.

Why did I do it? Why did I give her up?

Even now, she couldn’t find a satisfactory answer. ‘Because I was afraid of Roseate’ didn’t hold water. ‘Because she was losing business’ had likewise been stomped into the ground by Roseling herself. ‘Because I didn’t want it to get worse’ was the closest. She didn’t want to see what the next level of escalation would look like. Drummed up charges of treason, perhaps. Manufactured evidence of selling secrets to Damme when the Rose Palace leaked like a colander.

Roseling ripped away from her like Carnation had been.

She crumpled up both scrolls and threw them in the fireplace to be used as kindling later, dashed away the tears, and drew out a fresh roll of rough, fibrous paper.

Focus on Collar. He couldn’t be bullied like Merrie’s citizenry. He could stand up to Rosewater, and he had a reasonable chance of standing up to Roseate. Especially if Lace entered the fray at her son’s defense.

Not that she could count on the sixty year old mare for much. She was fit for her age, but she was also growing more delicate, and her husband wasn’t a powerful enough presence to hold back the tide of opposition. Collar himself was a formidable force in politics, as she’d garnered through her daytime excursions disguised as a simple seller of shampoos—one way she’d been able to see Roseling again and again, acting as a simple stallion who would act as her factor in Damme.

Focus. It’d been weeks since she’d seen Roseling, and it would be time to dust off her carmine makeup powders and the padding she used to bulk herself up without the use of magic. A simple—

“Stars above, mare,” Rosewater grumbled at herself and stood up to pace the small study, turning back and forth, trying to clear her mind of the mare who’d captured her heart for a night and held sway over her still. “It was one night, and she hates you now. Let her go.”

It was one night and the last time she’d really connected with another pony on a personal, and then romantic level.

She stamped a forehoof and snapped her tail, glowering at the fireplace. After a moment, some of the tension bled out of her, and she focused her thoughts on Collar instead, thinking about him, how he’d looked when his patrol had encountered their raiding party, the largest since the days before the Lace Reformations. Roseate’s orders had been simple: cause chaos, take nopony, but show the ponies of Damme that their leadership was unable to protect them.

It was simple. It should have worked.

What had been meant to be a strike and fade raid turned into almost a pitched battle, with both sides trying their best to subdue without harm. The Merriers to get away cleanly without their faces being shown, the Dammers to capture a bumper crop of infiltrators.

The forces had been equally matched, with Rosewater’s two sisters along for the farce, Rosary and Silk, not quite a match for the three prepared unicorns and two pegasi focused on them. The ten Merrieguard regulars had been similarly equally matched by seven Dammeguard working in concert.

Until Collar and Rosewater faced off, her tall and slender form no doubt instantly recognizable even under cloak and shadow, just as he was in his mixed mail and padded armor.

They’d shared no words as their private duel of magery began, she testing not with scents, but with spells to prod at his armor, loosen a buckle, shift a strap, make him stumble. All the while, he’d tried to capture her with silver shackles, neither of them managing more than a brief moment of capture before the spells broke or focus demanded attention elsewhere.

In the end, he’d given up the pretense of sparring and set a dome around her.

And, in that, he’d given her a tool. None on her side could see what she was up to, and thus hadn’t seen her preparing the Lustre Lilac perfume and spell, a simple psychedelic fragrance, not one to use often, but induced visions and dreams.

Surrounding herself with another dome of clean air within the dome, she’d atomized her entire bottle and pushed out with the fragrance, building pressure inside the dome, draining herself, and had taken two enchanted Citrus Circus to outlast him, to push against his strength the little more she’d needed until his spell faltered and the dome shattered, sending her spell out in a burst of lilac-induced madness that caught Merrier and Dammer alike, leaving her alone, panting and barely able to stand in the middle of a circle of expanding insanity.

And his look across the fields of blue poppies had been one of shocked incredulity, fear, and not a small touch of respect.

She focused on that look, the same one that still came to her in dreams. Respect.

Did you know why I did what I did? Did you suspect my reasoning wasn’t simply panic?

Whatever the reason, taking two enchanted Citrus Circuses had left her near comatose as soon as she’d staggered home, and left her unable to function without headaches or fatigue for nearly a week afterwards.

It’d taken her a month to get back to full strength.

“No more Citrus Circus,” she said. The boost they offered was tempting, but the cost to enchant them, almost a day’s worth of magic poured into a tiny hard candy, and the cost they extracted from using them too often…

She knew it was a promise she couldn’t keep. She would need to have at least one on her, and perhaps two or more if she meant to keep Collar and Cloudy free of Roseate’s influence.

The recollection put her back in focus on Collar, but left her with no more ideas than she’d started out with.

I really should see Roseling soon.

“Stars damnit, brain,” Rosewater grumbled, starting to pace again, then stopping. She couldn’t go to Roseling as Rosewater. That was right out. She also couldn’t just cross the river as Rosewater in broad daylight.

A plan began to form in Rosewater’s mind, around an awkward, lanky stallion and his quirky, frail gran.

“Rosetide, you genius…” It would get her just within range of a short range, small item teleport to Prim Palace. Small enough for a message in a bottle.

With a little treat attached.

It wasn’t often that Collar had no idea where Rosewater had gotten off to. Reports kept him apprised of where she was at the earliest to within an hour of her having been there. She was, after all, one of the most recognizable mares, veiled or not, in either city.

But every now and then, she disappeared around a corner and nopony saw her come out again anywhere else. For hours.

Then, as if she’d never been gone, she would come back out of the same street as if she’d never gone anywhere at all, go about the rest of her day as normal, with only the hours-long gap frustrating them.

It didn’t particularly make him feel better that the Merrier goons that seemed to shadow her almost everywhere didn’t seem to know where she’d got to either; rather, it meant that Rosewater confounded everypony equally.

Attempts to enter her perfumery or her house at those times, strictly against the decree of the Lace Reformation, resulted in only failure. They never went personally, of course, but teleportation spells sending small objects into Rosewater’s house or workspace always failed. It was expensive to ward against that kind of intrusion, but the mare that wanted privacy could do so, and it wasn't a complicated working, either, but the gems and gold needed to hold a spell for any length of time added a prohibitive expense for it to be common.

So instead of watching her, he watched the mingling of traders, workers, and the rare common pony as they wandered to and fro across the bridges.

Thirty years ago, it’d have been unheard of for so much commerce to cross either way, and that little bit of traffic that did would have been escorted by Dammeguard or Merrieguard the entire way, or under seal of the Treaty. It had been, his mother had told him during his lessons and afterwards, heartbreaking to watch the distrust that should have been honest commerce under her father’s reign.

Part of that was her association with Dapper, he knew. But, looking down and seeing the more honest cooperation between the guards and the common pony of Merrie, some of them even joking with familiar faces, trading stories while the customs inspection went through and cleared them of contraband, he knew that a larger part was this.

Camaraderie between neighbors, genuine care about others from different cultures.

Things were changing more than they had in the entire history of the Treaty, and for the better.

“Peace has to start somewhere.”

“It’s working, mother,” Collar whispered, and settled down to pony-watch. At least, during his stint watching the river, he could relax whenever Rosewater wasn’t around to give him conniptions.

He didn’t know where she was, and he couldn’t very well go looking for her.

A cart caught this attention after a few minutes, draped with the signage of Roseling’s Rosie Rinses. Cloudy still got her shampoos from salons that carried them, along with a few other brave scented soap merchants that were willing to shop their wares across the river.

Curiously, the cart was driven by a tall, slender stallion with his mane in a bun, but the one who did all the talking was the crotchety old mare in the cart’s bed. His cutie mark was an anchor sprouting roses from the eye, and hers a ship with rose decorated sails.

Sailors, then, and possibly not Roseling’s usual carting crew, but an interesting pair nonetheless.

Rose sailors. Collar clucked his tongue and watched as the cart made its way easily through the checkpoint. They’d be less awed of him, more broadly experienced with the world. And Cloudy needed something to soothe the mind.

“Corporal Primshawl,” he said, nodding to his partner for the day, Cloudy having been pulled off the active roster to take lessons with Lace. “I’m going to take a little break.”

After days cloistered inside, worrying about planning, worrying about Rosemary, and worrying about the next steps her mother would take against her, it was freeing to be able to cover herself with a mix of makeup, temporary dyes, and an illusion to cover her cutie mark, change the contours of her muzzle, and the padding under her cart blanket and go about Damme as if she were just another stallion in the stream of ponies trying to find their way to a good deal.

It was less freeing to, a few minutes after passing the bridge checkpoint, to have Lord Collar step out of the shadow of an alleyway ahead of her and her ‘granny,’ and even less when he raised a hoof while looking right at her.

He did not, immediately, shackle her, however.

She gave the mist puppet of Granny Galleon a voice she’d practiced on and off for the last few months, and said, “Why, my Lord Collar! What a surprise to see you.”

Collar blinked at the old mare, then at Rosetide, and shook his head. “Pardon me for interrupting your journey, and I would understand if you have your wares already spoken for, but my…”

“We call them mates, when we’re not bonded to them, young pup,” Galleon said with a tip of her chin.

He stared at the old mare again, huffed a soft laugh, and waved up the road, falling in uncomfortably close to Rosewater. She could smell Cloudy on him still, and the remnants of some of the same shampoo she was carrying in the cart. “Very well, my mate is running low on some of the wares your cart is advertising. Triple-R Soapery, right?”

“Roseling’s Rosie Rinses, yes,” Rosewater said in a high approximation of a male’s voice, throwing in a hint of seapony’s burr on each R.

“Apologies, good sir.” He turned his attention back to Granny Galleon. “I don’t suppose you have any that isn’t spoken for?”

“I’m afraid not, young colt,” Granny said, a touch of sadness in her voice. “But you’re welcome to try and barter away from our customers. Roseling had a full delivery route for us.”

“I see. Very well, in the interest of getting it fresh, I will accompany you on your journey, madame and sir,” Collar replied, a gaiety in his tone that had been absent in every encounter Rosewater had had with him thus far. “I trust that won’t be an issue?”

“It’s an issue so long as we’re strangers,” Granny groused. “Rose Galleon. Everyone calls me Granny Galleon. Used to be a captain of my own ship, the Rose Galleon. Till she sank and lamed my leg.”

“A pleasure, Granny. And you are…?” Collar asked, peering at Rosewater more intensely.

“Rosetide, sir. I’m just a seapony’s mate. Keep hopping from ship to ship with my scrip. Back in port every two weeks to look after her.” Was that too much? Rosewater resisted the urge to swallow nervously. You didn’t plan for this, idiot mare. You should have.

“Good stallion, then.”

They walked on in silence for a time, the tension rising until it was all Rosewater could do to keep her ears upright and herself focused on the road ahead and the slight rise from the riverwalk road into the city proper to the informally named Fashion Quarter.

Only a few ponies gave them a look, and while Rosetide and Galleon got looks now and again when Rosewater made this same trip to the gossip center of Damme, these seemed more focused on Collar.

Before they made the final turn, Rosewater prompted her mist puppet to ask, “If ye don’t mind me askin’, my lord, you don’t seem that uncomfortable around us. Mighty comfortable, really.”

Collar’s ears ticked, and he sighed. “You’re old enough to remember the days when things weren’t so peaceful, Granny. When my grandfather raided and caused as much chaos as Roseate is doing now. Or trying to do. You and Rosetide are making the difference, along with all the other Merriers who’re willing to brave the ignorance of my ponies.”

You… believe that, don’t you? It was all Rosewater could do to keep from turning to him and asking him if he did.

Instead, she had Granny say, “I do recall. I also recall when the Reforms came into play, and Roseline embraced them just before she died. And I remember when Roseate walked that back within days.”

Collar grimaced and sighed. “My mother was devastated when she passed on. But that’s why I’m not uncomfortable. Because my mother pushed me to understand that not everypony was a Roseate or a Rosewater.”

Before she could stop herself from broadcasting the thought to the puppet, Granny said, “Rosewater’s not bad, young pup.”

Collar raised a brow and glanced from her to Rosetide. “Your grandson doesn’t seem to share the same sentiment.”

Because I’m an idiot and can’t keep my thoughts from flowing into the magic. “It’s not that, my lord,” she said in Rosetide’s voice. “She’s… a cousin of mine. Distant cousin,” she added quickly at his sharp look.

“Family is important in Merrie,” Collar said, relaxing minutely. “I understand. Even if you don’t agree with them, they’re family.”

Resist. Resist the urge, Rosewater. Don’t blow your cover. “She can be scary,” Rosetide admitted, earning himself a thwack on the hindquarters. “What? She can be.”

“I knew her mother,” Granny grumbled. “Her real mother. She had the healer’s touch, my lord, in word and in magic. She helped me with me leg. Still can’t walk long, but at least I don’t need Tide to keep me goin’.”

“Carnation was an exception,” Collar said, still maintaining a polite mien in the debate. “And… possibly Rosemary.”

“Met th’ lass once,” Granny said with a grunt. “Sweetest thing on four legs.”

“Met her more’n once,” Rosewater said as Rosetide. “Too true.”

Collar’s ears perked, and he glanced from one of them to the other. “What’s she like, if you don’t mind my asking.”

Rosetide shared a look with Granny, and turned back to Lord Collar, flicked his ears once, and said, “She’s hard to describe.” He nodded down the street to where awnings and spinning barber shop poles driven by the wind started and stopped, carrying chatter and bits of conversation. “Pardon, my lord, but we do have deliveries.”

“Ah. Of course. I apologize for sidetracking you. I’m merely interested in her.” Collar coughed as that garnered some curious looks from nearby Dammers. “As a project for my mate, Cloudy Rose.”

“How is the dearie?” Granny asked, almost out of the blue just as Rosetide stopped the cart in front of Cuts and Curios, their first stop. “I heard she got into a bit of trouble.”

“She’s doing well,” Collar said simply. “I apologize that I can’t say more. Rumor has spread…”

“Oh my goodness, Rose Galleon, my dear mare!” Prim Cut cried as he bolted out of the store, then stopped when he spied Collar. “My lord. Was there trouble?”

“No… did you expect there to be?”

“Not with her, no.” Cut shook his head and blocked the wheels of the cart while Rosetide undid himself and started checking the orders against the crates of jars in the back. “Mrs. Galleon is a regular supplier of mine. She and her grandson are by every two weeks or so. Longer this time. Ship just get into port, ‘Tide?”

“Nah. Been in port. Just… well. Letting the ruckus die down a bit.” He turned his cheeks left and right to show the faint Rosethorn marks on his cheeks. “We’re not exactly popular.”

Collar pursed his lips and rubbed at his foreleg. “No. Rosewater didn’t exactly help things, either.”

Rosetide forced himself not to slip back out of character, even in thought. “I think that’s it. Four crates of Simply Lavender. She does sell other fragrances, you know.”

“I know,” Cut said with a sigh. “But we’re not exactly an imaginative people when it comes to scents, ‘Tide.” He nodded to the crates as he floated them inside. “For most of my customers, this is adventurous.”

Collar snorted. “I hope it’s not all Simply Lavender. Cloudy would chew my ears.”

“What scent does she usually use?” Granny asked while Rosetide hooked himself back up to the cart.

Collar pulled a scrap of paper from his saddlebags, studied it for a moment, and sighed, “Scintillating Sunrise. Do you all use alliteration in naming?”

“It’s a part of Merrie cultural heritage,” Granny said with a chuckle. “Alliterating alluring allegorical—”

“Stop, please. I beg you,” Collar said with a laugh. “I get it. It’s something Merriers do to torment us Dammers.”

Rosetide snorted. “That’s exactly the reason. We have some Scintillating Sunrise, but just one jar. Our next stop has a customer that asks for it.”

“That’s probably Cloudy,” Collar grunted. “She likes her mane shorter.”

“She sounds interesting,” Granny said, “and I heard about when she ran away from Merrie.”

“She didn’t run away. Get that straight if you could, over there.” Collar sighed and shook his head. “Sorry. Roseate… asked her to do something, and she refused. She fled before she could get the same treatment as Carnation.”

Oho? Rosewater glanced aside at Collar, letting the mannerisms slip for just a moment, and said in Rosetide’s voice, “She does that a lot. Roseate.”

Collar glanced at her, and Rosewater slid back into Rosetide like a glove.

Stop that, Rosewater.

“She does. You won’t get in trouble saying such things?”

“No. My master is my captain, not my baroness.” Rosetide said with a snort. “My ship of the moment sails out of Damme.”

“Interesting way of looking at it. Don’t you have anypony in Merrie you’d miss?”

“Granny,” Rosetide said with a sigh. “But she’s canny enough to seek asylum if Roseate got angry at me. And it’s not like we can’t live in Canterlot or somewhere south.”

“He keeps trying to get me to move for my health, the brat,” Granny grumbled. “But Merrie is my home. Even more than the Galleon was.”

Collar blocked the wheels at the next stop and waited as Rosetide slipped out of the harness and started checking the list and setting crates in order while Granny counted bits. It was draining keeping her illusion going for so long, and empowering her voice at the same time so much, but it was honestly refreshing to have a talk with the stallion without so much in the way of history and assumptions.

“This is the store that asked for Scintillating Sunrise,” Rosetide said, whistling and kicking his hooves, then startling and tapping at the door with a spell. “Sorry. Got distracted talking to you, my lord.”

“It’s quite alright, ‘Tide. I’ve enjoyed talking with both of you.” He chuckled and cocked his head. “It’s so rare that I get to talk to Merriers that aren’t scared of me.”

“We’re sailors at heart,” Granny said with a smile and nod. “We’ve seen all sorts in our travels, Lord Collar. Lords. Ladies. Brigands, and even a few pirates. A lord isn’t anything terribly new.”

“I see. Well, it has been refreshing.”

Prim Perm, the owner of the shop, peeked outside, startled, and ducked back in briefly, “I’ll be just a moment! Lord Collar is here.”

Rosetide tittered. “She was with a customer.”

Collar glanced aside at him, chuckled, and nodded, looking thoughtful. “Nevermind on the sale, Rosetide. Rather, I’d like to employ you as an independent trader to buy some varied, simple fragrances from Roseling’s soapery for Cloudy.”

“Sir?”

“Whatever you think a mare her age would like. Nothing magical or too fragrant, understand?” Collar pulled fifteen bits from his saddlebag, giving Rosewater a mere second to slip her message in under a veil as she accepted the bits. “Three jars?”

“Of course, my lord. Three jars. I’ll have them for you in two days.”

“How can she bottle cookies?” Collar demanded, staring at the impossible bottle and its message steeped in the smell of fresh-baked cookies. And not just any cookies, but his favorite peanut-butter-butter cookies. Freshly baked. “It’s not fair.”

“You know it has to be a trap,” Cloudy said, sniffing the paper again, then the bottle. “It’s not activated, at least… if it was even meant to be activated. We have spells to detect that kind of thing.” She pulled away and sat back down, cradling the bottle in the crook of her ankle. “I’m more worried about how she slipped it into your saddlebags in broad daylight.”

“Nopony said she wasn’t bold…” Collar plucked the letter from the desk and read it again.

My dear Lord Collar,

I am writing to you now because I believe that, for the moment, our goals are aligned. I want Rosemary safe. You want Cloudy safe. I can’t keep Rosemary safe if Cloudy is in Roseate’s custody. I would be compelled to give up guardianship to release the mare to my custody.

I doubt your ability to keep Cloudy Rose safe on your own, and so I propose an alliance in secret, even from your own ponies. I will share information you don’t have access to, and you will share the same.

Burn this letter after reading. I’ll meet you, should you agree, on the night my cousin Rosetide delivers Cloudy’s jars of shampoo.

She had to have been shadowing me the entire day. Somehow. He’d already checked into Rosetide’s history, and as a minor Rosethorn, he only had an every two-week visit with the bridge guards to deliver soaps. He wasn’t the only pony to deliver for Roseling, but he was the most regular.

“She’s involved her cousin in her schemes…” Collar sighed. “Did he slip it to me, I wonder? At her request? And why?”

“Maybe he did. Maybe she coerced him into it. Or maybe she slipped it in some other time. She has range to her magic, Collar.” Cloudy sighed and set the bottle on the desk. “Still… that was nice of you. I’m about out of Scintilla Sunset, and Prim Perm is expensive to see for a simple mane washing.”

“You know it’s probably a trap. The invitation.”

He sighed, remembering the concern Rosewater had shown for Cloudy. Or, at least, concern for Rosemary through Cloudy. He wasn’t certain at all what she was up to, but he was less certain of her animosity. Her intent to take him as a mate, she’d made clear more than once, and Cloudy’s belief that she meant it as a Rosethorn Thrall held some weight.

He pursed his lips and pulled the next paper from the inbox, another report from Priceless, indicating that Rosewater had been seen some hours later coming back out of the same side-street she’d disappeared into. Same modus.

Included as a footnote was Rosetide and Granny’s route back through the city to a warehouse far back in the hills, about as far from the sea, and the center of the city, as one could get and still be in the city. A warehouse that small could as easily have been a house at some point, and was likely where Granny holed up while her grandson was away on his sea voyages.

“Did you know them? Rosetide, or Rose Galleon?” Collar asked musingly.

“No. But, given what you told me, they were probably at sea most of my life.” Cloudy peered at the report, the footnote, and cocked her head. “Why? Do you think they’re in league with somepony else?”

“Not particularly, but they cart for Roseling’s Soapery on occasion, it seems.” Collar sighed and shook his head. “Most of the time, it seems like the makers themselves have to cart their wares over. It’s certainly the case with Rosie Night.”

“Makes sense. Sailor ponies wouldn’t have the same conniptions about wandering across the bridge as most of the rest. They have to, in fact.” Cloudy tapped the report. “Did they seem suspicious to you?”

Collar grinned. “Not particularly.”

Cloudy rolled her eyes. “You told me he seemed upset when you made aspersions against Rosewater. Doesn’t that seem a little unusual?”

“Well, I mean… for Merriers family is everything, right?”

“For most Merriers.” Cloudy flicked her tail against his flank. “Roseate’s made it clear that it doesn’t mean much to her.”

“Rosewater seems to be cut from a different cloth,” Collar said, frowning and recalling the playful manner in which she’d returned Cloudy to him. “Maybe not too different of a cloth, but different nonetheless.”

“What’s curious,” Collar said and ruffled the letter again, reawakening the scent of cookies enough to make his mouth water, “is how Rosewater knew Rosetide would be delivering the shampoos in two days.”

“Interrogated him, perhaps? He made no secret about where he went.” Cloudy pointed towards Merrie and ruffled her wings. “Made the letter, stuck it in a bottle with the scent, and got back to Damme before you got back to the palace. She had more than an hour to do that, since you wandered around enough.”

“Except she wasn’t seen at all during that time.” The mystery deepened, and he shrugged, then added, “Unless Rosetide is still out at sea and Rosewater usurped his image and his grandmother.”

“That’s getting a little far-fetched,” Cloudy said with a snort. “She’s good, I’ll grant you that, but she can’t hold that much illusion and telekinetic resistance for the cart harness to fit right. She’d basically be using her magic to pull the cart for hours, Collar. Not even you could do that.”

“Granted, if she was using only illusion. But there’s enough evidence that Rosetide is real and so is Granny Galleon, and I doubt that Rosewater could impersonate Rosetide for the hour he was out there, talking as much as he was, and not slip up to customers who knew his voice and face.”

Cloudy sighed. “Alright. So what if Rosetide isn’t real, and he’s been Rosewater all this time? What if Granny Galleon was one of those… autonomous mist faeries?”

“Yes, but Granny Galleon wasn’t one of those,” Collar said, shaking his head. “She was real and solid, Cloudy. Weak, but she handled the bits, and he did the work. And she didn’t… glitch out. She held a conversation with me. Cogently, I might add.”

“So she changed the spell after that, and now she’s in direct control of it.” Cloudy jerked her chin in a ‘so there’ gesture.

“Possible. But why go through the risk? We have spells to catch most of the tricks she uses, and they passed by the checkpoint cleanly.” Collar grimaced and sat back. “Until I have reason to suspect Rosetide as an imposter or an agent, I have to believe that he was exactly what he looked like, a sailor doing a good deed for his grandmare and a friend.”

“You know why I have to present the far-fetched, right?” Cloudy asked, relenting and settling against his side again.

“Consider more possibilities. And… you’re right. I’ll run it by Priceless later, too, and see if we can get a watch on Rosetide. Find out which ship he’s with, maybe.” He didn’t hold out a lot of hope for that. Captains were protective of their crew, so long as the crewmate in question was reliable—something sometimes hard to find and keep in the Dammer ports, when the siren’s call of Merrie promised an easier life.

Not that I’ve ever heard of sailors hunkering down en-masse. Merrie was too different for their tastes, too. Their culture was one of openness and acceptance—at least among the common pony—and the sailors from other monogamous cultures often found it harder to accept than the occasional Dammer who strayed and found their joy on the other side of the river.

Most of those who went were Dammeguard who’d gotten to know some of the Merrie traders better than most Dammers would consider safe, and most of those ended up living and working in the Garden of Love.

All possible because of the Lace Reformation.

And because of that possibility, and the potential that he would gain a valuable ally, he needed to consider that Rosewater was not acting out of malice. He read the letter one more time and set it in the fireplace.

“What are you doing? That should go to Priceless!”

“I have the letter memorized,” Collar said as he watched the coarse paper flare and curl into carbon. “If she betrays me, I’ll write it out again.”

“You’re not going alone, you idiot.”

“No, because you’re going to lead a squad of pegasi to follow us from above. You know what to look for with my invisibility spell. Follow us, stay out of sight, and don’t come down unless I give a signal or it looks like she’s trying to take me.” He waved a hoof. “Break out the lampblack for this one, Cloudy, and pick your squad. You have two days.”

Author's Notes:

Yay! I didn't have to completely rewrite this one. I did, however, split it off into two chapters. The second half is coming in three days instead of a week. (Just need to polish it a bit.)