She spent the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening watching him, and finally enough of what he did struck a chord with her that she realized she knew what he was.
An Alchemist.
But this was more than merely an Alchemist. He was clever enough not to call himself one, hence the Wizardly trappings, although the Magician visited him once, and it was obvious that although the Magician considered the Alchemist an inferior, he also respected the Alchemist's abilities.
Once again, the Tyrant had been clever enough to find someone who could be given everything that he wanted. Now, whether he was also clever enough not to waste his time in the search for the Philosopher's Stone — which was a metaphysical concept anyway and did nothing to transmute base metals to gold — or whether he really did realize it was a metaphysical concept, he was not involving himself with crucibles and alembics and furnaces. She watched him, instead, making very useful things such as poisons and antidotes — cures for the unfortunate diseases that men who indulged themselves in certain vices were prone to — and watched with extreme interest as the Tyrant appeared for what must have been his daily dose of a concoction of at least thirty common poisons. No wonder he didn't employ a taster! His Alchemist gave him immunity to anything but a truly exotic poison, and probably had the antidote handy for anything truly exotic. Exotic poisons tended to kill slowly, leaving plenty of time to administer an antidote. This was sheer brilliance.
Once the Tyrant was gone again, the Alchemist turned to another pursuit entirely.
Aleksia watched as he secured the door, bolting it from the inside, pulled a velvet pall off of some object and settled himself into a comfortable chair in front of it. He imbibed some sort of concoction of his own…and went int o a trance. His head fell back so that Aleksia could see that he was staring into an enormous crystal ball.
Now, as every Godmother knew, it was possible for perfectly ordinary people to have visions of the future, if they took the right sorts of potions. You had to be very disciplined — which this Alchemist clearly was — and you had to be good enough to know how to sort the hallucinations from the real visions. Usually these visions were not very accurate once you tried to look more than three months into the future, but for someone like the Tyrant, that would be enough.
“Well!” Aleksia said aloud, staring into her mirror with probably the same expression that the Alchemist was wearing as he stared into his crystal ball. But it just so happened that anyone who did this sort of parlor trick could also be very easily deceived. And that gave Aleksia precisely the opportunity she was looking for.
After all, the great crystal was a form of glass. She could make him see whatever she wanted him to see. In his drugged state, he would be very suggestible, and his powers of discrimination would be set aside. Besides, he would have no reason to suppose that anyone else would be sending him visions. Why should there be? There was no reason to think that anyone could, or would, interfere. No one knew about him but his Master and the Magician, and neither wanted him deceived.
So it was that when he emerged from his drug-induced trance, it was to run straight to the Tyrant with the description of what he had seen — a conspiracy against the ruler, the meeting of the conspirators, all of whom were robed identically and masked. And just to make it all the more interesting, she had made the leader some sort of Magician, who had conjured up a demon that promised them success in their endeavor. The surroundings, as crafted by Aleksia's imagination, were opulent, but apparently subterranean. When anyone spoke, it was with the cultured tones of the upper classes. And they made reference to the King In Waiting. It was quite the fantastic creation, but very believable, especially to someone like the Tyrant. The Tradition would be working against him in that way, making him suspicious and looking for conspiracies; the fact that he couldn't find any would make him all the more certain that they existed.
Now the Tyrant would be actively searching for this conspiracy, powered by a Magician. His search would concentrate on those of the upper classes. He would not be able to tell if these were his own nobles or those in exile, for she had given no clues at all as to the location. He would only know that whoever was involved had wealth, as well as occult power. He would assume that somewhere along the line he had missed a potential heir. This would drive him mad trying to ferret it out. And he would be so fixated on it he would leave his peasantry alone.
Aleksia made a mental note to keep sending more false visions whenever she managed to think of some new variation.
I should also make an attempt to put disturbing things in the palace from time to time. Perhaps an ornate dagger in the Tyrant’s bedpost, or a burned rug and the smell of brimstone in his dressing room. These things would take some arranging, but they would be worth the doing. Anything that kept him nervous and alarmed. Perhaps she could leave a hint that the apocryphal conspirators knew about his immunity to poison. Brownies could slip in anywhere, and slip out again undetected; alone of the Elven-kind, they had no difficulties with cold iron. They could easily leave daggers and burned places anywhere they chose, and one of them might find it amusing to slip some concoction into the Tyrant's nightly draught to make him sick.
And this would have the effect of making Valeri's job so much easier when she and her band were ready and made the attempt to depose him. It was not wise to depend too much on The Tradition alone to take you where you wanted to go. It was always better to have so many hedges around what you wanted accomplished that The Traditional power flowed downhill in the channel you wanted like so much runoff water.
Aleksia dismissed the image in her mirror and looked up with the realization that she had been bending over it for hours. Her shoulders and neck were stiff and sore, and her eyes felt dry. One of her Brownies was at her side as she straightened, appearing, as they often did, without needing to be summoned.
“It is after midnight,” the little woman said, as Aleksia massaged her own shoulder carefully. Rosemary, that was her name. “Young Kay moped about the dining room, pushed food about his plate and retired to his suite when you did not put in an appearance. It seems he has decided to experiment with getting drunk tonight.” Rosemary grinned, with just a hint of malice. “He is going to have a head in the morning.”
“Then one hopes he won't repeat the experiment.” Aleksia smiled a little herself. If Kay was suffering from a hangover, he would not be a nuisance for some time tomorrow.
“Rosemary, would you have any objections to other residents here? Not like Kay,” she amended. “Pleasant ones. And hopefully permanent ones. Peers of mine.”
“None at all, Godmother,” the Brownie replied serenely. “The Palace can hold a small army, and if we need more help here, 'tis easy come by.”
“Ah, good.” That was a relief. There were times when Aleksia was not quite sure just what her privileges as a Godmother were, nor what they extended to. As a Princess of the Blood, she had taken such things as servants and where one put guests for granted. As a Godmother, who tended to both the highest and the lowest, she had learned that it was never wise to take anything for granted.
In fact, her first apprenticeship year had been very enlightening. She would not have considered herself spoiled — but her eyes had certainly been opened to just how much work went on behind the rooms frequented by the noble and wealthy. She had learned that magic was not always the answer to a problem. She knew now, for instance, that the Palace was so remote that her Brownies changed monthly. At first, she had thought there was a never-ending stream of them, but now she knew that the little folk, who were highly social, aside from her very particular three — Tuft, Pieter and her special maid, Moth — most simply found remaining for any length of time at the Palace of Ever-Winter too much of a hardship. Aleksia did her best to learn their names in the month or so they were with her, but if she forgot one, she merely apologized, since the Brownies themselves didn't take it amiss. Of course, one benefit of this was that her menu, which could have gotten very tedious with the same cook, was instead changed with the tastes and training of the Brownie in charge. This month, there were a lot of lightly spiced fish dishes, an excellent change from the cook of the previous month, who favored stews and complicated soups and meat dishes with fancy sauces. And that had been a change from the month before that, when the menu had boasted very little meat, and many varied noodle and vegetable concoctions, some of which had been so highly spiced her eyes had watered.