“That --” said Count regarded me critically, as I showed him my preparations. “Will not do.”

I glared. I liked this dress, and it was a gift from my Princess. Maybe it wasn’t as decorated and up to the latest fashion as those featherbrains and vain turkeys that populated the halls of Gormenghast would have it but was that really important?

“I’m going to watch and talk, not to be displayed like a mannequin.” I stomped my hoof for emphasis. “What does it matter how I look?”

“Form has an essence of its own Miss Shimmer,” he said in his dry ‘school-teacher’ voice. “Neither form determines the essence, nor the essence determines the form. Both are important. Style, grace and beauty -- those can be your weapons as much, if not more than the spellwork.”

That may have been true -- a thought that made me frown -- but I would have no idea how to even approach this. But then again, I was always a quick learner, especially when I had a good teacher, and such an opportunity would be a waste to miss.

“So, I take it you have some alternative, my lord?”

He nodded, summoning two purses from the next room.

“I don’t need money!” I protested. I may not have had a silver mine in my backyard or fancy rent houses in Canterlot, but I had my pride and my Princess’ stipend.

“It’s a gift.“ Count smiled, waving my protestations away. “And not for you Miss Shimmer -- for an old acquaintance of mine. I hope you know a good cloud-walking spell - I made the requisite arrangements and she shall be expecting you today.”

I found her bathing on the roof. The steaming water, heated by the red-hot stones in the bath felt warm even at a distance.

She rose when I approached, water streaming down her luxurious black fur, and her beauty in the moonlight struck and overthrew me. The immaculate elegance of her features underscored perfectly her smooth, sinuous grace -- she moved as if the gross flesh, the constraints of bone and skin did not dare limit her motions.

It went beyond mere physical presence, beyond the perfection of her movements. All that was superfluous, no more important to her appeal than the sheath of a sword to the deadly beauty of the weapon. It was something primal about her, something that made you yearn to own that beauty and be owned by her in turn.

Some distant part of my brain free of the instant infatuation still managed to work, figuring out that she was the midnight-black pegasus the youngest Prince was so hesitant before, and I felt a distant surprise at the notion: The Count had sent me to a whore.

She shook off while I gaped, the tiny shivering motion setting the water streaming down her sides aided by the pegasus magic without clinging to the fur or feathers, and stepped forward, regarding me as an owl might a rabbit, her sapphire-blue eyes sharp and alert.

"Help me, child." She nodded towards the straps of her sandals. Her voice matched her appearance: deep and smooth like velvet.

My higher mental faculties still not quite engaged, I reached for the leather with my magic, but she stomped it back down.

"Properly now," she admonished. "Things are to be done in the right fashion, or not at all."

That was something I could get behind -- the rules to the game, a semblance of a ritual, something to do while my brain racked the correct etiquette for this occasion. Bowing down to tie them with my mouth and hooves, my cheek glanced against the inside of her foreleg. Her coat was as soft as the richest velvet and as smooth as the thinnest silk, and she smelled almost subliminally of summer peaches.

I strapped her shoes and dried her off with a towel. She needed little drying but she requested it nonetheless. I did so -- properly, with hooves and mouth, relishing the warm touch of her soft body.

“Good.” she nodded after she put on a plain white toga. The thin, almost transparent cloth covered nothing and accentuated everything.

Bluette -- that was her name, like the flower on her cutie-mark I could see through the silk -- led me back down. I followed like a calfling on a tether, still unable to articulate a thought, the soft strata of the terrace shimmering around the enchantments on my hooves.

Her cloud-house, far above the valley of Granath, the only cloud-house perhaps in all of Griffinstone, had many rooms. Rooms sharp and stark, with floors of black and white cloudstone made hard as marble, alternated between the snow-fresh alabaster and charcoal blackness, rooms of gold and silver, made to griffon fashion with opulent, barbaric decor, rooms soft and warm, and filled with thin silks and soft velvet and smelling of incense that tickled my nostrils and inflamed imagination, and the room we ended up in - a small and cosy affair, with hard floors and tall mirrors and a sole chaise lounge.

“Wine?” This, for one, was not an order - this was an offer, a flourish of her wing pointing to the tray, where a bowl of honeyed fruit was arranged along with an amphora of sour pegasi sky-wine.“You are a guest, after all.”

She poured wine, adding honey to mask its sour tone, and, wine in hoof, settled me into a huge plush chaise lounge. I drank and waited while she walked round me, studying me again.

"The Count told me you would come. And it’s so good of him to send you to me, else I would have to invite you myself"

"Me?" I gulped down the sweetened wine, trying not to drown in her green eyes. "Why?"

"You're an interesting one, child. A student of the Princess, a night-traveller if rumours are to be believed. And you made quite a mark on our little princes. I intended to make your acquaintance, but here you are, coming to me, all by yourself." The way she licked her lips, the breathy husk when she said that word sent shivers down my spine. "So tell me, child, why are you here?"

“Sir Fancy….” I reached for the ‘gift’ the Count has given me, “...sent me here. For the ball this evening?”

“The Count expects miracles,” she sighed, setting the gemstones aside. “But perhaps not the impossible.”

She stopped behind me, hidden behind the back of the chair, and I heard the sound of a drawer opened, steel being drawn.

“Stop fidgeting, child,” she said sternly when I turned, twisting my head to follow her. “Let me do my work.”

I caught her hoof as she dragged a band of white silk across my fetlock, tickling my skin, and loping around the armrest. Words sprung to my lips like a protective charm -- and it was a charm, one of eighteen, to make any fetters burst from my legs and any bindings from my hooves.

"You’re too restless, child,” she explained, softly wiggling her foreleg out of my grip. "Don't you trust me?"

"No." I trusted nopony... but I made no further motion to stop her from tightening the knot.

"Clever girl, "she laughed as she reached for a razor - as sharp as a good razor should be - and dragged the flat of the blade against my coat, cold metal sending shivers through my skin, making my heart beat a touch faster.

I was starting to like this game of hers.

"Perhaps a little nick," she mused. "Perchance a little taste:" her lips were almost touching my ear. "You are a rare treat, my little lady. Some other time, perhaps. You will come back to me, child, won’t you?"

She snipped a lock of hair off my mane, and the razor moved again, round the back of my neck where I could not see, a wake of her feathers tickling me as a counterpoint. And then the blade came back and the true magic began.

“You clean up nicely.” Fancy appreciated. I watched him watch me, his eyes sliding up and down my body. “Bluette does good work.”

I stretched. Not my usual stretch to warm up the muscles and speed up the blood -- a strange intuition guided me through a luxurious little wave, allowing the Count to see the movement of my body underneath the dress and imagine everything else. A smile appeared on my lips, surprisingly coy and I almost managed to make my face blush, though I could not quite hold my giggle when I saw his reaction.

I was beautiful that day: the stitches and bruises hidden under the expert glamour of Bluette’s alchemical supplies, my mane cut and released in full flow with colours toned down by a shade, my coat made soft and glistening with aromatic oils. I was now dressed not in a frilly equestrian ensemble of a faux-noble, but a sleek and simple dress, with a single green scarf to match my eyes -- like a schoolgirl that just ran away from prom, a permanent fixture in the erotic fantasies of any grown stallion and fervent dreams of adolescent colts.

“There’s something missing though.” A box levitated off the nightstand in his golden magic and opened revealing the fans inside.”I have a crafty dog in the city, so I asked him to make this little nothing. Hope they are to your liking.”

They were perfect. Twin, perfectly equal in weight, size and balance, mirror images of each other. One - red vellum and gold, the other - yellow vellum and red gold, they were made in my colours. The spokes, gilded with a silver pattern were steel: light, strong, and -- I appreciated -- sharp.

It could be used to complement any outfit, wielded with magic or used as a melee weapon of last resort.

I ran my hoof over the small stamp of three golden crowns at the base of the handle -- the mark of the one who gave it to me. "They're beautiful." This time there was no need to feign any awe or gratitude, as I swished the fan, letting the sharp spokes stab into the neck of the imaginary foe and opened the both of them, one to rip wider the hypothetical wound and another to cover myself against the inevitable splash. "Thank you, Fancy."

I entered the ballroom hanging off the Count’s right side like an ornament, my shiny new fans at my flank, trying to listen and to watch the random motion of ballroom pleasantries trying to filter out the meaning in every look and gesture, as the Count has instructed.

Quilineze silks falling off the high ceilings in waves of silver-embroidered drapes, the redwood of the Southern Jungle for the tables and the floors, and the crystals of the Frozen North on the chandeliers -- everything in the room screamed of the power of the Griffon King to bring every luxury from the four corners of our world.

“Chin up, back straight, Miss Shimmer. Try not to stare at everypony,” The Count suggested sourly, without turning his head. “Remember the plan. And please, at least try to smile.”

I smiled.

“Maybe without clenching your jaw quite as much.”

The liveried dogs in the corner were playing their musical instruments, while others carried trays of food and drink. I felt a sudden, wolfish hunger at the sight of the hors d'oeuvres, and I had to down a glass of champagne to calm my nerves and my stomach.

The politicking was just about as I imagined it -- getting dragged from one backroom to another, where old Griffons would speak in implications and half-riddles.

Talks within talks, implications within implications, messages between the lines of messages between the lines. This was machinery as complex as any spell I weaved.

Now I was beginning to appreciate...

...the way an inflexion can move the crowd

"But isn't the prince afraid that Equestria..."

...the way an off-hand phrase can stab worse than a knife

"I'm sure your word is just as important to the King, but if I could just talk to Senor Gawain..."

...the way an implication can be hidden in a phrase not unlike poison in a wine.

"The griffon's words are as firm as a mountain, so one needs to choose the right griffon to follow..."

It was nauseating, vomitous in how circumlocutous it was, but it was power nonetheless and any power has its own beauty: Behind the soft façade of a Canterlot nobling, drinking the wine and making offhand comments the Count really was a sublime violinist playing two crowds of griffons at the same time, each sentence, each phrase playing differently for different listeners, straddling the very edge of the wave where either one or the other would understand too much or too little, pushing and pulling them apart. And the dogs -- the arimaspi’s little spies, scurrying to and fro in their silver liveries, would be none the wiser.

He was... Dangerous. Yes, that was the right word, weird as it was thinking of the posh Canterlot unicorn in those terms. Dangerous enough to move the Griffonstone court, dangerous enough to try to fight the arimaspi, dangerous enough to bind me with nothing but a smile and a trick.

And I found that I liked it.

"...now there are some... interesting news from the south." the Count continued another conversation.

"Surely it's not the Drowner?" Wings flew up, and claws glinted in the morning light.

"True, he stirs," the Count looked askance at me, and I found a very interesting piece of the floor I that demanded my attention. "And Daring Do is dead again. But the news I talk of, come from beyond the jungle. When I was at the Pearl Court in the Mount Arris..."

The conversation continued, all implications and half-statements, as I watched and listened, as the Count instructed -- as he had shown me how to look.

It is not a trivial matter to understand a griffon unless they apply an effort to be understood by a pony. For them, there is another layer of language, concealed within the bend of the wings and positions of the feathers. An angle of the wing, a spread of alualas as easily recognized by griffons as you and I would know a frown from a smile.

Pegasi may learn it, others make do with fans -- that was the other meaning of the Count's earlier gift.

"Are you sure that going against the Prince is a good idea?" the griffon to his right asked. "Can we trust the little ponies and the halfbreeds to carry it through? They are part-pony after all."

I've been studying it recently, and now I could recognize how their wings were lower than you should, barely touching the position of Respect.

Seemed like they needed a reminder.

"Speaking of," I stepped softly forward, arranging my fan into the position of Curiosity. "Is Lord Graven ok?"

"He's fine." The wing lowered by an inch, and there was perhaps a touch more respect in his voice. "Recovering in the castle medical ward, I was told."

"Ah," I said, satisfied, still holding his gaze. "That's good. Wouldn't want there to be permanent damage."

For a few seconds, the griffons kept silent, their wings barely moving, and then their leader nodded. "Yes, indeed. Now as to your proposal my lord..."

They exchanged glances.

"We shall send an invite."

The Count nodded, satisfied, "And?"

"And we shall talk to the younger Prince."

“My lord,” I said, trying to hit the tones of a bored party-filly, “I believe you promised me there would be dancing.”

This was the sign we agreed on -- the sign that I saw the little princeling lurking around, and gathering the courage to actually talk to me.

“I see,” he smiled towards the griffons, arranging his own fans carefully. “If you excuse me, my lords, I’m afraid I cannot keep the lady waiting.”

“Now Miss Shimmer” he walked me towards the dance floor, where the Dogs were arranging their instruments, “You’ve observed my method, and you’ve seen the floor. Tell me, what do you see?”

"Well, um,” nobody likes a surprise quiz. But being the Princess’ student, I knew to adapt. “The Prince wants to start a war, because of the arimaspi and that old scroll, but the King his father does not allow it, so the Prince needs the support of the convocation. With it he will have the power to do as he wants and he wants to throw the Winds against Equestria. That's what we want to stop."

"And what of the other Princes?" the Count asked. "You only mentioned the heir apparent."

"The others…” I guessed, remembering something the arimaspi said, “... the coward and the dreamer?"

The Count looked sharply at me.

I shrugged. They had no power, so they hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things."Err... Gwyr. He's following his brother? They always argue, but in the end, he is going to do what Gideon wants, and Galad will do nothing at all.”

“Now I believe you wanted to have a dance?”

No, I did not want to dance. At least -- not here, not at one of those fancy dance parties. The bland music, the rote moves… dancing should be about passion and display, for igniting desire and expressing yourself. Not for the lazy rotation of dressed-up geezers going through the motions like puppets in a clockwork.

But we were on the dance floor, and Lord Fancy bowed most artfully, inviting me to the first dance. I could hear the murmurs of the Equestrian crowd and, sighing, I bowed back, my very best, as taught by the Princess, and took his hoof in mine.

The music started. It was not what I expected - the strings went low and threatening. This was no drab Equestrian waltz -- it was the paso doble, the bullfighting dance. The first cry of the horn, low and threatening, reached into my bones, making my blood flow hotter.

“Now, Miss Shimmer,” The Count stepped forward, I felt his magic flow around my frame, gripping me with a blanket of tangible force, helping me into the first step, and protecting my bruises and wounds. “You are a quick learner, and you did well intervening, but still, you need to be more subtle.”

I twirled around, guided by him, and shrugged. It worked, didn’t it?

“Do you see the little Prince?”

I did -- even twirling to the double-step as the music began playing in earnest, waves of strings swirling like a rising maelstrom to the call of the trumpet, I knew where the princeling was lurking. Awareness was something I knew well enough, and I could easily find Galad’s rouge in the crowd, and our eyes met, even as the Count’s magic gripped me by the flanks, raising me for a turn.

"Very good." He nodded. "But do you know what he is thinking?“ I didn’t, but he -- he did, he knew what the prince was thinking, and he knew that I did not, without waiting for me to answer. “Now, Miss Shimmer, if youlend me your ears -” Movement became faster and more complex, as the pairs whirled and moved around us in every shade of white and scarlet. He held me tight in his embrace, guiding me through the steps and pirouettes, making the world spin around in step with the music. “I shall be your eyes.”

I nodded, and his magic gripped me tighter, stripping me of all control over my own body, as the music broke the rhythm again, the sound of the trumpets rising against the current of the strings and the clicking of the claws, and started it anew.

With his power, he wielded me like a cape through the movements of the dance, spinning and twirling and weaving in between other dancers and I felt myself grow hot with the alcohol and music. The speed of turns and pirouettes, the thin, sharp scent of his perfume and the perfect control of his magic made me giddy as I leaned against his body, clinging to him tighter than his own shadow.

In time he would teach me to dance, though I had little interest in the art of it. But more importantly, he would teach me to see what he saw - and then I‘d learn so much more. To divine, the secret thoughts in the tremor of the hoof and the direction of the gaze, to guess one’s true desire by the pitch of the voice, to cleave the lies from the truth with a single glance and to control stallions and mares like puppets with but a choice of words. The power of silver and lead, silken promises and steel-like threats. Diplomacy and intrigue are not that different from fighting or warfare. The basic principles remain the same. Awareness. Control. Finding weaknesses and exploiting them. It is just a little more... subtle.

But the dance grew over, in a last few triumphant сhords, and the swirl of the dancers slowed, but his hand remained on my foreleg, and his magic on my flank. "There are many such things I could show you, Miss Shimmer,” he said, his hoof tracing up to my chest, then my chin. “Things subtle and powerful. If you let me…”

He moved closer, his magic holding me tight, forceful, rough and insistent, going down my cutie-mark and below, pulling me in, his muzzle inches away from mine, hungry lips half a breath away, a quarter, even our hearts beating in the same rhythm, a and a spark jumped between our two horns, joining our magic for a brief moment I almost wanted--

I slapped him across the face. Hard, with a flat side of my new fan, making an entirely too satisfying sound that echoed around the room like a party-cannon shot. The music stopped, and the dancing fell apart, the whole crowd now staring at the two of us -- me, still clutching my fan between me and the Count. Him, holding his hoof to the quickly reddening cheek.

"Stay away from me, you..." Bereft of words and breath, I almost hit him again, the fan only barely deflected by his own magic. "You bastard!"

Ripping out of the residual grip of his aura, I twisted, and ran, away from the non-music and stares, up and away. I wanted to go back to my room for a second, to hide, like I once did. But that never helps -- the monsters I faced were not ones to be stopped by the night light and the safety blanket.

I circled round instead, like a wounded animal, unable to leave, afraid to stay, until I found my way up, to the balcony that looks upon the dancing floor, dark and empty. There I waited, alone and in the dark. I did not have to wait long, though.

"Lady Shimmer, are you all right?" The youngest Prince finally found me, interrupting my meditations.

"I'd think you'd be dancing, milord." I noted, avoiding the question, "the griffon ladies certainly would be happy for your company."

"They don't like me," he said, simply. "Not really. They'd much rather have my brother. He's the proper griffon, he's the real Prince."

My opinion of the Prince went up a notch. Not every colt this young could spot that girls did not like him, much less admit it.

"And of course, I'm entirely too much griffon for Equestrian ladies," he said.

"Did you imply that I'm not one?" I asked, enjoying his little blush.

"You're not like the other Equestrians," the Prince said, his wing angling up and alulas spread to indicate a compliment "You aren't afraid of us. You don't just think of us as predators. You ate meat at our table.” He sighed. "I wish you could stay a while longer. Even with this dreadful business, Gideon started..." I recognised regret in his voice and his wing-gesture.

I could not have asked for a better straight line. Arranging my fan carefully in a gesture of regret, "I wish I could stay," I echoed.

"Surely there are parties in Equestria? Much better ones, at that."

"It's not the parties, it's the ponies." My eyes tracked Count's form pointedly. He was telling something to a group of griffons who nodded sagely at his explanations. "Some can make any party unbearable."

"I..." he noticed the direction of my gaze, just as the Count knew he would, "I've seen. What happened?"

"He...he overstepped, and..." I covered my face, with the fan. "I don't want to talk about it. Please?"

"Oh." he gestured, long, almost hugging gesture that I now knew was meant to indicate a desire to comfort. "Of course. If there’s anything..."

“Just stay,” I asked. “Please. I don’t want to be alone right now.”

"I must confess," the princeling said, moving closer in an awkward semi-flapping amble. "though it is selfish of me, I am happy that you decided to come -- that awful incident notwithstanding. It is good to have someone to be alone with, sometimes."

"Yes," I said, my hoof moving to touch his claw. "It is. Sometimes."

Together we stood, watching the dancers below until the music died and the floor began to empty.

"Ah, Miss Shimmer," the Count appeared from behind, swaying slightly as if drunk, the fizzy wine in his glass wobbling precariously. "There you are! We should go."

It was not his usual conspiratorial "Miss" -- this time it dripped with such condescending poison, that were he to address me like that when we first met, I would've ripped his throat out on the spot.

But the ruse was to be maintained. I recoiled from his words as if stricken, moving behind Galad for protection, and his magic stretched after me, spilling across my coat, gripping my limbs, sticky and controlling, pulling me back towards him.

"Shall we?"

"I think the lady does not wish to go with you, sir," Galad said sternly, fluffing his feather with a fighting-cock-like flutter-step.

"And I think that this is none of your damn business, milord," Fancy parried. He had an excellent expression of haughty countenance, with that nice edge you can only get from a truly upper-class upbringing. “No one appreciates the third wheel.”

“Perhaps," Galad grew pale, and his voice was so devoid of inflexions as to be deathly. "You should then leave, sir. The lady may stay." His claw rested on my shoulder, cutting away Count’s magic, and his wings unfurled as the eaglet mustered his courage.

“Oh dear me. Will you run off to fetch your brother?" Fancy asked. "I'm sure he'd make good on your little threats."

"Galad, please," I said meekly. "You’re only making it worse. I have to talk to the lord, and I’m sure I can sort it out..." I shifted, and his claw slipped off my shoulder, and he stepped back, aghast and utterly lost.

We moved away from the Prince and from the ball, and I overtook the Count as we neared our quarters.

I looked at the Count. That knowledge he had, how he controlled that eaglet with only his words, playing him like a fiddle, winding him up like a toy soldier, that power….

Want. Take. Have. That’s all there is to life.

The hunter’s moon in the sky was making my head spin with all the wine I drank and the lessons I’ve learned, and I could feel his scent making my blood boil with desire. I definitely knew what I wanted -- whom I wanted -- and the consequences be damned.

“Perhaps milord would want to show me some dance moves in the privacy of my room,” I suggested, my best attempt at coy and sultry leaving no doubt as to the type of moves I have implied.

He was taken aback with my directness - that much even I could see.

“Are you sure of your words Miss Shimmer? We should be more circumspect, with the political situation, and that creature....”

I moved too close to him, reaching for his ear with my lips, tickling his fur with my breath.

“In Hind, there is a riddle, a saying:'' I whispered, “‘Imagine’, they say, ’you’re hanging at the edge of the cliff, only a bush of wild strawberries holding you from a fall to your doom. A fierce tiger guarding the edge of it should you manage to climb up. And then, imagine that two mice start nibbling at the very vine that holds you against the fall. What would you do?”

He cocked his elegant eyebrow, returning the question back to me.

“What would you do then… Sunset?”

My magic flowed around him, just as his did before with me, grabbing him to pull him into a nuzzle, and whispered:

“I’d eat the strawberries.”

I closed the door behind us, and for the rest of the night nothing could have tasted sweeter.

I go to concert, party, ball --   
   What profit is in these? 
I sit alone against the wall
   And strive to look at ease. 
They never notice me at all
   Instead for him they pine; 
And that's because I'm seventeen
   And He is forty-nine.

Fancy Pants, Count Hoofington
"My Rival"
Burned shortly after writing