Lucas’s consciousness was salved when he found out the prisoners that Heisenburgle kept were all junkies of a sort already. Not that anyone deserved to have a euphoria monkey on their back, of course, but at least he wasn’t going to try it out on the servants at random or anything.
“Criminals and junkies of the worst sort,” the gnome cursed as the guard unlocked the door that led them into a basement dungeon in an entirely different part of the compound. “This a kinder fate than any of them deserve. If I didn’t need them for my experiments, I’d gladly watch them dangle.”
Lucas said nothing. He just watched as Heisenburgle dosed all three of them and then checked to make sure they were still breathing after each of them passed out into a fog of irresistible bliss. Lucas was sure it was a good time, but he was equally sure it was a bad trade, and it would get worse as they made the drug stronger.
“Well, it would seem you put on more than a show,” Heisenburgle said, “I would have bet dragons to kings you’d made the whole thing up, but well…”
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about then, huh?” Lucas asked, gesturing to the junkies on the ground. “They might be able to take a dose that’s thirty or even fifty percent as strong as that one, but double? You’ll kill ‘em.”
“And more besides them if we have to. Many more, if necessary, our project is…” Heisenburgle’s voice traveled off as he looked around the room furtively. “Not here, though. Too many eyes. Too many ears…”
Lucas suppressed a smile as the gnome’s paranoia emerged, and he went back up the human-sized stairs as fast as his little legs could carry him. Once they were back in the opulent, sprawling complex, he led Lucas to somewhere he’d never led him before: his office.
Whether that was a mark of new esteem or simply one of paranoia, Lucas couldn’t say. On the way there, he spoke at length about the way the soundproofed room was warded against scrying and other pesky magics, and once they were inside the place and the door was barred, he threw around sparkling dust everywhere to check for his ‘minders’ as he called them.
“The Prince is certainly not above using such stealthy agents,” the gnome said, waggling a finger. “I tell you, I’ve seen their footprints before. I’ve noted their presence in the way it has affected sensitive experiments even!”
Lucas let the man rant. Being watched by invisible people was pure craziness, of course. Well, it would be if not for the ring I’m wearing… he thought to himself. Certainly, he hadn’t considered the fact that he might be watched to that degree. It was unlikely, but it wasn’t impossible. Locking a pet alchemist or two in a cage was monitoring enough as far as Lucas was concerned, but what did he know.
When that was done, and the cloak-and-dagger bullshit was at an end, Heisenburgle poured himself a snifter of fine brandy and then sat in a worn, padded, easy chair that was easily older than Lucas. “Who gives a fig if a junkie dies in the pursuit of this project?” the gnome asked rhetorically. “Can’t you see how much bigger than that this is?”
“I mean, maybe I would if you and everyone else weren’t treating me like a mushroom,” Lucas said, eyeing the crystal decanter.
“A mushroom?” Heisenburgle asked. “I don’t—”
“Feeding me shit and leaving me in the dark,” Lucas said, blurting out the punchline. He expected the gnome to scowl at him in annoyance. Instead, after a quizzical look, he did just the opposite.
“Feeding shit? In the dark…” The gnome pursed his lips, and then, once everything clicked, he proceeded to laugh long and loud. He just kept going, and by the end of it, there were tears in his eyes.
When the moment passed, and he finally stopped to catch his breath, he said, “That’s very good, I’ll have to remember that one. Now, where were we?”
“You were about to tell me what you’ve been hinting around at for days,” Lucas answered with only mild annoyance as he finally sat down in the only human-sized chair in the room. “That’s what all the cloak and dagger shit is for, right? The big secret?”
“Ah, quite,” Heisenburgle nodded, “And it is a big secret, too. A pity you still haven’t made a single good guess.”
“By big, I assume you mean castle,” Lucas said with a sigh. “Or maybe Lordanin as a whole. You might—”
“Do you know what’s bigger than a King, Lucas? Ten times bigger, in fact?” the gnome asked.
“I don’t know, a gang of Kings?” he answered, wishing that the gnome would just get to the point. “An emperor.”
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“Cold. Cold. Cold!” the gnome said, “Cold as the winter snows! This is the problem with humans, besides their excessive size and strange body odors. They have no sense of cleverness about them.”
As he proceeded to insult Lucas in the most random of ways, he drew a silver coin from his purse and flipped it across the room to Lucas. “Does this clarify my last question, just a touch?”
“Oh, a silver king…” he answered, getting tired of this game as he looked at the coin. “If that’s what you meant, then the solution is…”
As Lucas’s mind finally grasped the thread the gnome had finally been starting to string him along with, he balked at the thought. A Fucking Dragon? He practically shouted as he tried hard to keep his poker face in place. He hoped that this was a joke about the almighty dollar, or in this case, gold piece, and how all they were ever doing was trying to make the Prince more money. However, something about the way the gnome looked at him said that simply wasn’t the case. Heisenburgle’s sneaky smile implied a terrible shared secret.
“You’re saying that we’re making drugs for a dragon,” Lucas said finally. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”
“Now that is the first good question you’ve asked in days,” Heisenburgle paused to sip his drink before he continued. “The answer to that one is tragically simple - because it’s the first thing she’s shown even the vaguest interest in besides gold in all the time that the royal family had been paying her tribute.”
“Tribute?” Lucas asked. “Are you saying the dragon is running an extortion racket?”
“In a way, I suppose,” the gnome agreed, “though I don’t think she’s ever actually threatened to burn down the city. It’s more like she’s a patron saint of Lorderan for a price.”
“What does a city need a dragon on retainer for?” Lucas said, forgetting the Blue for a moment as he delved more deeply into this mystery. It was simply too surreal not to. He’d long known that the Prince was the real power and that the king only clung to life from his illness. Everyone knew that.
Additionally, he suspected the Prince was hopped up on a different sort of drug that the gnome was making for him that turned the man into some kind of Machiavellian genius type. Lucas hadn’t even suspected that there was a power behind him, though, or that the Prince wanted to get the hardest, purest drugs that could be had for his gigantic, draconic boss.
“Oh, that’s right,” Heisenburgle said, a moment before he snapped at Lucas instead. “You aren’t from around here. You don’t know the troubled history that this region has had. Pirates. Orcish invasions. Regional wars. Civil wars… If you want all the details, I could recommend VonDarken’s Histories. It’s only twelve volumes, but it sums up the—”
“The short version is just fine,” Lucas snapped, trying to get back to the dragon.
“Yes, well, sufficed to say, when the current King’s father struck that deal with Skylara, things improved markedly, but in recent decades, the terms for peace have been getting rather onerous, and well… that’s where you come in,” Heisenburgle said, gesturing to Lucas.
Lucas was sure he’d heard that name before, but it slipped from his mind almost immediately as he moved on to other topics. “So you want to pay her with 10 gold worth of potions instead of 10 gold worth of ingredients, right?”
“So you do actually listen to the things I say,” Heisenburgle chortled. “Yes, that’s it exactly. This particular dragon has a taste for something very like your Blue. She describes it as ‘a weaker vintage of an old elven favorite.’ Apparently, the forest folk make something quite like it.”
“And if we can boost the potency, she’ll take that instead of gold?” Lucas asked as more pieces started to fall together for him.
“Well, not instead of, at least I don’t think so,” Heisenburgle answered with a shake of his head. “but if we could pay even a portion of her tithe with kegs of your ditch herbs… well, thirty, twenty, or even ten percent less would allow the Prince to drastically lower the tax burden of the city and stop trying to squeeze blood from a stone.”
“I see,” Lucas said as he realized he did. He’d heard all about the ever-increasing taxes thanks to Kar’gandin. The dwarf would talk your ear off about import tariffs if you let him. It made sense, of course, since that was the reason he was nearly hanged. What hadn’t made sense, especially after he’d met the Prince, was why the man was hoovering up money like it was going out of style. It was obviously short-sighted, and now, he knew why. Because the first person who got paid every month was the loanshark.
“Well, then, I suppose we can safely test a new, improved Blue on her, no matter how strong it gets. So if we—” Lucas started as he put his mind into gear. Until now, he’d had a lot of reservations about this, but with this new information, well, he didn’t see too much of a downside unless the dragon was unhappy with the product, of course.
“Before we get back to alchemy, or its lack thereof in your product, we have other things we have to discuss,” Heisenburgle said, cutting Lucas off. “You must understand that this is a very serious secret. There are few that are likely to get you killed as quickly if you were to repeat them. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” Lucas said, “I—”
“Even this facility… Blackgate Manor…” the gnome said, “It might be a place dedicated solely to creating certain contingencies for Skylara, but it does not exist, not officially anyway.”
Lucas suppressed a smirk. It was a delicious irony that Heisenburgle was lecturing him about secrets when the gnome was the one that was constantly letting them slip. If not for his smugness of lording secrets over the heads of others, Lucas doubted very much that Heisenburgle would be able to keep one to save his life.
“Sure, dragon contingencies, I get it,” Lucas said. “What the hell is a dragon contingency?”
“Well, you know,” Heisenburgle said with a bit of trepidation. “Your drug was not foreseen in the Prince’s calculations, but he definitely foresaw a day when Lordanin would no longer be able to pay her high price, so we had to be ready for that, should the worst happen.”
“The worst?” Lucas asked, shifting in his seat.
“In case we should have to kill her,” the gnome said curtly. It was the first time the gnome had fear in his eyes that Lucas had seen, and it showed very clearly that he did not like that proposition at all.