Prince Gwyr was happy to invite me for a talk.

His room was the same as the last time -- the giant table in the middle, the cupboards and shelves with reagents.

"Sorry for the--" he started again, sitting down in one of the chairs.

"It's fine," I interrupted him. I paced around him slowly, moving past the bookshelves towards the alchemical equipment and reagents. "It was a foolish plan anyways. Nothing you could've done, milord. We learn our lesson, and we move on."

He gestured -- Gratitude, I guessed. "But what can we do?" Sorrow replaced the Gratitude as the wings drooped almost to the floor. "The convocation was my last hope. Now Gideon’s case is stronger - and he's more pig-headed - than he has ever been before."

I said nothing, waiting for him to go on.

"I am afraid that after what he said, all those eagles following him, he won't back down, won’t accept any defeat or surrender. Not until he's..." He grew silent, and I did not need to turn my head to know his wing was gesturing Fear and Concern.

"The Count and I are trying something. I cannot talk of it yet, but we need more time."

"I've got nothing," he sighed. "I exhausted every argument, trick and distraction just waiting for the ponies to arrive. Now with the convocation behind him, he's going straight to Father today, and there's little I can do."

"Your brother is strong," I agreed, walking now between the rows of the bottles, calciners, and worm-pipes, reading the labels as I went. "He's a powerful griffon, and his ideas have captured your kin. But the whole thing hinges upon him and his strength. Were he to fall ill..." I levitated a bottle of nightshade, "or should his strength abandon him" -- I added a vial of featherbane to the nightshade, "the war would be postponed."

Or perhaps... My eyes slid over the arsenic and cyanide and the jarrin root. ...averted entirely.

"And your brother's life would be spared," I said instead.

Still, he hesitated, his gaze switching between me and the poison, unable to decide.

"You cannot be..." His wing shot up in disbelief and fell back down. "My own brother!"

“We are of the same blood, ye and I, Prince.” I turned to look at him, twisting the words once used as a sign of trust into a weapon. “They are the brave, the bold, the charismatic. We…” my helpless shrug was only half-fake. “Are not. Such is the truth of the world, this or otherwise -- they wield the power, they get the spotlight. All we ever get is the hard decisions -- and regrets.”

“Aye,” he echoed softly, his eyes settling on the vials I’ve arranged on his table. “Regrets. One way or the other.”

An Equestrian party can be a sort of high wizardry in its own right when the right party-pony takes the reigns and Dame Strawberry was very good. Yet I could not shake away the feeling of wrongness whenever I looked. Plush Equestrian carpets clashed with the hard masonry of the walls, the bright colors of the party-ribbons seemed pale under the leaden winter skies of Griffonstone, and the strange mix of soft and flowing Equestrian materials and the harsh architecture of Gormenghast seemed almost unnaturally perverse to my eyes.

Still, there was certainly unicorn magic at play -- not quite the one cast with the horn, not magic of spells and energies, but the one the Count was teaching me. The ritual of the party, the games and snacks, the cosy plush room pulled even the proudest of griffons into joking and boasting, trying their claw in pony games and stuffing their faces with pastries and hot cocoa.

But not all games and not all tables were equally occupied by the griffons. There was a subtle tension in the room, and the eagles aligned themselves along it, like iron filings stuck between two lodestones.

On one end there was the King, watching the crowd from his high throne-like chair. Even though there was a table at the foot of the throne, with ponies pulling cards from the piles and moving tokens aroubd the board, the King was alone, apart from everyone else. He sat still, like a statue of himself, brow furrowed, his attributes dropped on the clawrests. Only once in a while he'd make a gesture or comment on the game in front of him, but griffons and ponies listened when he did. But now, when the true nature of his power was revealed to me, I could see what eluded me when I have first seen him, that obscured behind the veil of his Power there was something wrong with him, like a shade cast across King's brow, a haze -- in the nigh-invisible slump of his back, in the crease of his forehead, the lethargic movement of his wings, in the eyes that looked not at the board but studied the floor as if trying to find something.

Dame Leaf was playing at the same table, trying to talk him in between the moves, but it was futile -- even I could already see the currents of the floor set against her motion. Whatever she was saying would not be relevant, not to the King, not to the Prince and therefore ultimately not to Griffinstone.

At the other end, there was the Prince. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and he had it in spades: he stood out like a rock above the ebb and flow of the floor: It's not his strength that singled him out, not the peacock-like opulence of the silver and gemstones -- it's how he moved, puffing himself bigger with wings and feathers, crowding in and filling the space, making others back away, a waxing-waning tide of dominant body language. His self-confidence, the magic of griffons, the shadow of Boreas behind his back -- the pure mana he had over everypony else made him the second centre of gravity around which the griffons arranged themselves, a second axis mundi in the microcosm of the room, chicks and tercels alike drawn into the aura of his power.

He reached for the wine, his wings and muscles flexing.

"Maybe you should lay off the drink, brother," Gwyr suggested, as always at his brother's side. "You've been stuck to the bottle since yesterday."

"I am not drunk!" Gideon waved his brother's protestations away and snatched the bottle out of Gwyr's claws. "I have the metabolic endurance of ten eagles!" He twisted off the cork, and took a swig straight out of the bottle, wiping his beak with his wing. "Tonight, Gwyr. It happens tonight."

His coterie, a motley cavalcade of chicks and tercels vying for his attention stiffened at his words.

"Tonight." the whisper rolled through them, "to the West. To take what is ours!"

A voice was missing from this chorus: Lord Graven was not joining the party. He was still supposed to be somewhere in the castle hospital -- the last I heard he was too hurt to transport. A small, if delightful comfort in this situation.

“But first, I’m gonna show you--” he grabbed a ponytail off the silver tray held by the dogs, and let one of the griffons blindfold him, ”--how you pin a tail on the pony.”

“Your Highness,” the Count stepped up as if on a cue, pulling carefully Gwyr aside into a group of older griffons. “A word?”

They herded him towards another game, something with dice and cards.

"We hoped you could join our game."

"Your council would mean a lot..."

I kept half listening in theconversation as I moved through the crowd, mixing with this crowd or that and keeping up the appearance of participation. Meanwhile, I scanned the enfilades and the little prince. He too had a place in our -- my -- plan today.

He was up on a remote perch, clutching his notebook and watching the ponies quietly, with a dreamy expression of a colt preparing to unpack the biggest Hearthwarming present.

For a second our eyes met, but I turned away quickly, stepping back into the pony crowd. And back to the Count’s games.

“I will talk to my brother, but...” Gwyr, spread his claws apologetically “we would need something more to move him.”

“Well, perhaps…” the hesitation in that griffon’s voice, the way he stepped forward, almost pushing the Count away, “perhaps Your Highness would consider that if it weren’t your brother making the decision…”

“What?”

“If the heir were to step down… let the cooler head prevail temporarily…” he dropped his voice so low I could barely pick out the words now. “...or perhaps even per--”

“I can’t help you, my lords.” Gwyr’s expression turned hard, wings stiff at his side.

"But the Kings will--"

"Will always be fulfilled. But so far King-my-Father has not yet spoken on this matter."

"And we believe he will not. Please, Your Highness, you must do something. If the pony was right, we'd be breaking an oath sworn, and griffons word..."

"Is as true as the mountains, yes, yes, I know. Look, my lords, I will stall as long as I can..." He shot a short glance towards me that I pretended not to notice. "Meanwhile, there's nothing more I could do."

"Perhaps your Highness would consider..." the Count tried to intercene.

"I'm sorry." Gwyr's voice went strained for a second, his wings rising to Warning. "There's nothing more I can do for you, my lords. Please."

"But.."

"Gwyr--" the elder Prince interrupted them, "it's your turn, brother."

"Huh." He looked at the pony target -- still tailless. "You missed."

"Shut up, and take your turn." The Prince forced his wings from Irritation into half-Jest and punched his brother in the shoulder. "Consider it your chance to win for once."

They left the Count stitting at histood there there for a while, as the griffons abandoned him, moving on to the next game. He sat there pensively,staring at the tabletop and idly rearranging the cards in his hoof as if he could still change the outcome of the game.

My pockets heavy with the things Gwyr did not dare to use and therefore would not miss, I joined him.

"Wine?" I offered, raising the bottle from within my saddlebag. It was one of his vintages, and I've already started working through it.

He nodded gratefully, taking the bottle from my magic and gulping down a glass.

"That bad, huh?" I poured again, and stepped behind him, putting my hooves on his back, my tail hugging over his flank. He was tense, but a little touch, a little wine and he started to relax.

“Something is wrong,” he said. “It’s not going as I hoped it would. You did too good a job, Miss Shimmer. I hoped you would attract the Prince's attention, but your... fighting spirit has made him more sure that the little ponies are a worthy adversary."

"It's a poor master who blames his tools," I shrugged, working through the stubborn knot in his back, and almost able to feel the intense stare from where the little prince’s perch was. “And no plan survives contact with the enemy.”

“At least the Prince has not made his declaration. Whatever it is that you did clearly worked -- I was half afraid he’ll declare it right here and now, with everypony present.“

“I tried my best,” I said modestly, “but what of your part?”

"I hoped Queen Novo would arrive, then I’d bring her right to the Prince, right to the King if I had to! Then they’d listen.” He finished the glass. ”I don't know how they got their hooves on their accursed pearl, but now they don't need us, don't need Griffonstone. Darn cowards, running away into their underwater caves!"

"In the matters of life and death," I noted, "one's friends have a habit of disappearing quickly. And allies... well,their number goes to even less than zero. It was bravely done, milord," I smirked vengefully, "but it was a doomed effort."

“Just do your part, Miss Shimmer.” He gave me an angry look, “and I’ll do mine. There’s still the Prince, at least.” He marched off, pushing through the crowd to find Gideon.

I had to give the lordling his due -- at least he was persistent. Even if it was the persistence of a gambler doubling down on a rigged game.

I moved in the other direction, circling slowly widdershins through the crowd, and as I tried to find the Princes again, I almost stumbled into Bluette.

Surrounded by a crowd of every sort of creature she was... flirting is too small a word for what she was doing. A flick of a mane, a smile, a wave of the tail. Warm tone with the slightest equestrian accent, throaty, silken, gratitude for every small favour, her wing flutters like butterfly to chest, to leg, to shoulder, summer peach-scented fragrances intoxicate, promises unsaid confuse the thoughts.

I wanted to go there, and throw those griffons out, to claim her as my own by right of conquest, to drink the breath from her lips like sweetest wine. To want, to take, to have.

She raised her head, noticing me, and smiled, the way only she could -- the way that is meant just for me. My heart would’ve melted if it were still in my chest, and I could almost feel the sweet summer peaches of her fragrance. She was art, she was grace: impossible to quantify, and my thoughts scattered like scared butterflies, even as I smiled back, hiding the sudden blush behind my fan.

I wanted to come up to her, to bask in her presence, to ask to be invited again into her cloud-house, but I had no gift, no tribute to bring her…

Forcing myself to look away, I found the Princes again -- just in time.

"Your Highness..." The Count reached them just as Gideon was taking off the blindfold, and looking at the pony-tail stabbed deep into the stone.

Nowhere near where the pony flank was.

"Go away little pony." The prince's wing shot up in anger, as he ripped the blindfold again from the servant-dog's paws. "I'm going again!"

"Perhaps you did have too much," there was worry in Gwyr's voice now, not levity.

"Shut up, Gwyr." The Prince stood back, annoyed at his miss. “It’s just rotten luck.”

I grabbed a few tiny sandwiches while I watched. This was about to get really interesting. After some thought I kept the whole tray to myself -- something really worked up my appetite today.

He fumbled with his claw and the silken handkerchief slipped through his talons, dropping on the floor, and the prince swayed almost falling to the ground.

"Gideon--"
“Milord--”
"Your Highness--"

"What?!"

The griffons said nothing, pointing at Gideon's trembling claw as if it were made of living snakes.

"What are you looking at?!" he dropped it on the floor, pushing the palm into the stone to force the tremors away.

"Perhaps you did have too much," Gwyr's wings moved to Worry. "Or maybe you're ill?"

"Shut up, Gwyr." he twitched his wing.

"But Gideon you're clearly..."

Gideon's wing lashed his brother across the face, and he raised his claw. "I said shut up!"

"Brother I," Gwyr was at a loss of words, "I meant no... I didn't mean!"

"Do you think I'm weak?!" Another wave of the wing and the blast of cold air threw him off his legs before he could stand up. "Now?! How dare you!"

"Young Prince was just just conce-" the Count tried to intervene, grabbing Prince's wing in his magic, but it was a mistake - Gideon anger switched to him now.

"Little pony, you dare challenge me in my castle?" Gideon twisted on the spot, and hung over Fancy like a rock over the waves. "Perhaps you'd like to take my brother's place? Do you too think I'm sick, or ill? Maybe you wish to step into the arena with me?"

"Err, I'm sure there's no need..."

"Do." With each word the temperature in the room dropped by another ten degrees. "You." Glass in the Count's hoof cracked from the cold coiled around the prince like a spring ready to be released. "Challenge me?"

"I..."

I saw the exact moment the Count lost his nerve. When his voice broke, his eyes lowered and ears flattened against his head, and his knees grew, for a second, weak.

He looked around wildly, trying to find me, to get me to step in, but I knew not to be in sight.

A little pony, all alone, save for a giant griffon hanging over him -- he was not ready for this.

"No. Not at all. I was mistaken and I apologize." he tried to look nonchalant, and suave, but it was just words. Power mattered, and there was no clearer way to show that he had none.

"Good." The Prince's tone grew low now, sinister, and his power flowed across the room, chilling ponies and griffons alike, freezing the game pieces to the boards and hooves to strings of the instrument. "Anyone else think I am weak? Anyone else dare challenge me?!"

"GIDEON!" The King rose in his throne across the room, and his voice was like a steel trumpet covering the music and the voices of everypony in the room. "What is the meaning of this?!" he jumped -- flew -- towards the row in one flap of his wings and a single breeze, the crowd scattering before him, and in a span of an eyeblink he was there, between Gideon and the Count. “What do you have to say for yourself?” The King hung over the Prince.

Gideon looked around, but his coterie scattered before the King like leaves before the wind, and he wasn't ready, not yet, not so fast, not with his own body so close to betraying him.

"The ponies are my guests. They drank our wine, they ate our bread, and you dare start a fight? Have you no pride?!"

"Y-you!" Gideon, suddenly confronted by his Father and his King in the worst moment imaginable, tried to gather his thoughts after his outburst. "I have... me and the eagles..." he looked around at the eagles scattered by his outburst, still watching his wings and claws for the treacherous tremble. “N-no.” His muscles knotted so tightly that I wondered how his ligaments hadn't been torn out at the roots, “there was no fight, sire -- just a little misunderstanding." He lowered his eyes. "It's all sorted now. Isn't it?"

“Y-yes.” The Count nodded, still taken by the fear it came out less like a nod and more like a spasm. “All sorted now, Your Majesty.”

"May I please be excused, sire?" At King's annoyed wing-gesture, the Prince turned, and, ignoring his brother's attempts to follow him, took off.

Slowly, the party got back on its track, though there was no more joviality to it.

The Count tried to muster some gratitudes or apologies, but the King had barely spared him a glance and a nod before releasing him from his royal presence, letting Fancy drag himself back to the edges of the crowd.

Meanwhile, I did have my own part, and my own Prince to play. I slipped back and found my way towards where the crowd was thin, and quiet. Hiding behind my fan, I waited, like a spider waiting for a fly.

It did not take long -- not even a few minutes had passed when he landed by my side. Quietly, almost without inflection he recited:

‘How often, by the motley crowd surrounded,
When to my eyes, as in a dream confounded
Tossed in the din of music, laughter, dance
And whispered buzz of shallow chattering talk
The soulless images of the creatures stalk’

“Do you not find the party entertaining, my lord?” I asked, still not looking at him. “The ponies worked very hard for it.”

"It's not the party, it's the griffons." It must have taken practice -- I could never show such subtle emotion with just my fan. That gesture, that subtly inflected wing, that showed both intention to jest and lack of laughter, like making a sad smile. “It was supposed to be a friendship meeting. Ponies coming from all the way to Equestria to visit us here. Dancing, making merry, making friends with the ponies. Instead, everyone sits in their corner, fake smiles and fake words, making politics." He spat the word like an oath, his coltish falsetto breaking with emotion it could not contain.

Looking at the dance hall from above I could see it now. Plastic eyes, fake smiles, no one saying what they meant, no one meaning what they said, all looking not at each other but at the King and the Prince. The herd of ponies did walk as in a dream, confounded and helpless, only the stiff upper lip and manners of nobility drilled into them since birth, keeping them going through the rote movements of polite friendliness, even as their minds refused to comprehend what had almost happened seconds ago.

Galad did have an uncanny eye -- the griffon’s golden eye -- for detail, and quite a way with words.

“I’m sorry--”
“I apologi--”

We both grew quiet after the awkward interruption.

“I’m sorry about our family squabbles spoiling the party.” He finally went first. “They always squabble, but never like that.”

"I'm sorry too. For that thing you had to witness last evening," I said, snuggling deeper into my cape. "But the Count, he--" I interrupted myself. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing I can do anyway.”

“Well, just tell him to keep away! You don’t have to wait on him, wing and claw like you did.”

"But I cannot. I have to -- I am to be married to him," I lied. This sounded ridiculous when I said it out loud, like a line from cheap melodrama, but the princeling took to it like a hound to the trail, ruffling his feathers and watching me with wide eyes. “The Count has demanded me as his trophy, his prize for brokering the peace -- and it had been granted. This is where my life of adventure and studying magic is going to end.”

"Well," the poor tercel tried to come up with something to say. "Count Fancy is not that bad a pony, I'm sure yesterday was not..."

"Oh he puts up a front," I interrupted him, bitterly, "I even thought he was courting me. I told him no and..." I moved the fan over my face, removing Bluette's glamour and make-up, revealing all the marks of the recent encounter with the arimaspi. The broken lip, stitches still visible, the bruised side of the face that looked like a purple nightmare under the coat, the cuts and abrasions... the Prince paled and stretched to brush over my bruises with his wing, as if to make sure that they were real. "What he wants - he gets. And he is not gentle when he gets it."

“Can’t you do anything?” He asked, my feigned desperation infecting him. “Fight it?”

There is a sadness in my eyes, just as we practised, a subtle shadow of something mournful laid over my face. I turned away, covering it with my mane, and wrapping tighter into my dress, in a posture of tightly closed insecurity.

“But… you’re a hero! A sorceress, a student of the Princess -- you fought Graven, you even stood up to my brother!. How could anyone make you do anything?”

"My Princess is wise and kind," I sighed. “But she has a kingdom to rule and I am but one of her subjects. Count Fancy is powerful in politics,rich in wealth and influence -- if the choice would be made it would not be in my favour. And I do not wish to force my Princess to make that choice."

My shoulders shook, and I turned my head to catch the light on the tear in my eye. A troubled young lady, way over her head, hoping, beyond hope for a knight in shining armour to save her.

“I would fight tooth and horn if I could. But he always moves in the shadows, never appears head-on. He… haunts me, where I cannot strike, he threatens my father’s livelihood and my mother’s career and I…” I suppressed a sob, hiding my face behind a fan.

"Something must be done," a swish of tail slashed across the Prince's flank. “There has to be a way to do something.”

"Perhaps… perhaps I could run away.” I said, “to Aris Mountain or Frozen North, to hide from him. "

“No!” he said, “there got to be a better way.” An idea occurred to him, finally, and his wings moved slowly to Resolve. "I will try to do something. To defend you, to help you. Here!" He grabbed a brooch from his chest and pressed it into my hoof. "Find Miss Bluette, give it to her. She is a little pony too, she will help you, hide you from him. I’ll find you there."

"I can't! It must be priceless." The gems alone, the best I could appreciate, cost more than my entire house back home.

He waved his wing. "I intended to give it to her anyway. When I grew up." His cheeks grew pink, and he covered his blush when his wing moved to Embarrassment. "But now..." he waved his posture away. "You're more important."

“Thank you!” I breathed out, not forgetting a quiet sob of relief. I took a bit of time to fix my mane, as I restored my self-possession, which I’d never lost. Finally, my mane fixed, and my face back to the appearance of calm, I summoned another rose from the air. I held it in my magic for a moment before I tucked it into my own mane.

Not yet.

As the Count had told me: The promise of reward is the best coin -- and the cheapest one to mint.

If He play, being young and unskilful, for shekels of silver and gold, 
Take His money, my son, praising fortune. The kid was ordained to be sold.

Fancy Pants, Count Hoofington
Certain Maxims of Hisan