Something about the expression in Elena's eyes put Aleksia on the alert. “I trust you are going to enlighten me.”
“Well, unless you actually are turning to the bad, and you have found a way to walk through mirrors and are hiding this from me, the fact that I am speaking to you and that I know you are in your Palace, means that whatever is going on, it is not your doing.” Elena's lips thinned. “Someone is causing…problems…in the vicinity of the Sammi. And she is using the name of the Snow Queen.”
Suddenly the sausages were no longer so appealing. Aleksia set them aside to listen very closely to everything Elena had to say.
When Elena was finished and the mirror was back to reflecting nothing more interesting than her own face, Aleksia found herself in a very disquieted state. It was not greatly surprising that she should have heard nothing of this. To most people, everything out of their immediate geographic sphere was vaguely “over there” and concatenated into a single whole in their minds. Granted, a Godmother's sphere did tend to be much larger than even the average monarch's — but there were five hundred Kingdoms, and a great many places which, like the land of the Sammi, were not strictly Kingdoms at all, and there was a lot of distance between the Palace of Ever-Winter and the land of the reindeer-herders. The very nature of this mountainous country magnified the distances; the eagle might fly from here to there at will, but people had to find pathways through and over the mountains. So to Elena's mind, rumors of something that might herald trouble seemed to be centered on an area very near the Palace of Ever-Winter, when in fact, it was not at all surprising Aleksia had heard nothing.
She got up from her nest and allowed her attendant to help her into a gown, not paying much attention to it, until the Brownie was doing up her back-laces. Only then did she notice that her little servant had intuited that she was not going to want to see Kay in person today; this was not one of her Ice Fairy gowns, not a magnificent silk creation. In fact, when she was Princess Aleksia, her stepmother would probably have been horrified to see her in something so plain — it was a very simple, tight-sleeved gown of gray wool, without a single ornament.
But the wool was not just from any sheep — it was from special flocks that lived only in the mountains, and grew fleeces softer than those of newborn lambs. Yarn spun from this wool could be made so fine that a lace shawl knitted from it could pass through a woman's wedding ring. It made her look businesslike, even a bit severe; when she spoke to her various contacts via the mirror, they would know this was no light matter.
She continued to plan what she would do as her attendant put her hair up in braids and wrapped it about her head, crownlike.
That someone up to mischief would have the audacity to use the title of the Snow Queen…that made her angry and just a trifle alarmed. As the blizzard outside subsided, she made out a list of who might know something about these rumors. And it was going to take some organization on her part.
She spent the rest of the afternoon until well after the sun had set and the moon was rising over the snowfields in front of her mirror, reaching out to those Witches and Sorceresses she knew who lived near the Sammi. Speaking with someone via mirror who was not expecting you to contact her was not just a matter of casting the spell and seeing them. Alas, no. She had to work a rather complicated bit of magic that would leave a message on whatever reflective surface was nearest them. It was simple — it had to be — just that she needed to speak with them. Then she had to wait for them to go to their own mirrors and initiate the contact. And, of course, none of this would happen in a controlled manner. At one point she had a conversation going in three different mirrors at once, resorting in desperation to her little hand-mirror that she used to see the back of her head when she was checking a complicated hairdo on the rare occasions when she made an appearance in public.
None of those she contacted had heard any of the rumors that Elena had reported. All of them promised to probe their own sources of information. And that was the best she could hope for at this point. The thing was, the land of the Sammi was rather — unregulated. There were not many Witches and Sorceresses of the sort that made regular reports to the Godmothers. Truth to be told, the few who actually knew anything about Godmothers tended to think of them as…i rrelevant to the condition of the Sammi. And it was very true that in the land of the Sammi, the creatures of legend, godlets and powerful nature spirits tended to interact with humans much more than they did in the more “civilized” parts of the world. It was a wild land, and everything in it was primitive and more than a bit unpredictable.
That much she knew already; that evening was spent in her nest with books the Brownies brought from her library, and a great deal of hot tea. She learned that most magic workers among the Sammi were Wise Women and Shamans, who often were aware of Godmothers only vaguely, if at all. From a travel book by a Godmother, she proved what she had vaguely known already — that part of the world was full of demigods and nature spirits that were laws unto themselves and rather disdainful of the Godmothers.
That gave her a moment's pause. If it was one of them causing mischief, well…Aleksia would probably be able to tell right away if she could handle the situation herself.
Tread cautiously here, Aleksia.
Still, there were demigods, and there were demigods. A god of Winter would be able to squash her like a melting snowball, but a god of a single glacier did not even rate a level of concern. If she could not deal with the troublemaker on her own, well, quick delving into more books assured her that it had been proven before that not even a demigod could stand up to the combined power of two Godmothers and a Fae. Elena would certainly help, and she had more than enough contacts among the Fae to call in a true Fairy Godmother. The Fae had created the mortal Godmothers in the first place, because, Aleksia presumed, they had grown tired of the constant meddling in human affairs that steering The Tradition required.
With a goblet of hot mulled wine in hand, she went over all she had done that day.
Finally, she concluded that there was nothing more to do at the moment, and with a resigned nod, she dismissed it from her mind. In the absence of information, the only thing she could do was allow her agents to gather it for her. It wasn't as if she didn't have quite enough to keep her busy at the moment.
She put her wine down, and passed her hand over the surface of the mirror to look in on Gerda.
The girl was braiding up another girl's hair, in some small room heaped with a magpie's treasure-trove of pirated goods. A bed was almost hidden under a riot of colored pillows, a truckle bed only partly shoved beneath it. Gaudy necklaces were festooned from a tarnished and blotchy mirror, and the dressing table was awash with silk ribbons, more jewelry, paints and powders, perfumes and kerchiefs. The owner of this room got whatever she wanted, and it seemed that what she wanted was Gerda to wait on her.
Though Gerda looked desperately unhappy, she did not look ill-used. Ah, good. She seems to be holding her own. As Aleksia had known would happen, because she had nudged things in that direction with her own subtle magic, nothing had happened to her other than being robbed, imprisoned and frightened. The Chief of the band Aleksia had chosen had a daughter about Gerda's age, and as Aleksia had made sure would happen, the daughter had taken one look at Gerda and claimed her as her own particular servant.