Even after Lucas walked Mr. Twee out and watched his carriage depart the fortress that afternoon, the adrenaline flowed through him. It was only when that was gone, and his heart rate had come back down to normal that he decided the gambit had been worth it.
He was satisfied that the voice of that Goddess wasn’t just nonsense in his head now, and Lucas’s mind whirled with the possibilities of that insight. Sadly, there wasn’t time to come up with new experiments, though, because only a few hours after Mr. Twee left, they were all being bundled into carriages to attend the festivities in Lordanin.
Since there were several carriages in the convoy, Lucas had hoped he’d at least get the pleasure of sitting apart from the gnome, but sadly, he was denied that peace. Instead, the other two carriages were decoys, like this was some kind of shell game.
“All of the important passengers are in a single place, so any preemptive strike is less likely to target us!” Heisenburgle explained as if Lucas couldn’t figure that out himself. It wasn’t the worst odds, but he wasn’t the sort to be his life on a one-in-three chance.
Nothing happened, but still, after the first hour of listening to the gnome explain the intricacies of distilling starlight into a usable reagent, Lucas wished that they’d be attacked so he could be put out of his misery. In the end, it probably had more to do with the thirty men on horseback that accompanied them in a long, slender formation that kept any trouble at bay.
Still, between the tromping of hooves and lectures on Ether-luminescence, he managed to get a few cat naps. The gnome offered him another potion of wakefulness, but Lucas rejected that outright. “I’m not getting hooked on that or anything else,” he shot back.
His mind wasn’t on the offered potion, though. It was on the other potions that the gnome had in his case. While Lucas knew that they were making another delivery to Skylara, he didn’t know that the gnome was doing likewise with the Prince’s particular elixir, and he studied the pop-up that appeared in detail since he’d never seen it before.
Extended Elixir of Superior Insight - Intelligence 6, essence -4, endurance -3, poison 3, euphoria -2, strength -2, Agility -1. Highly addictive, effects last for up to a week, decreasing over time.
The thing struck him immediately as both powerful and dangerous and certainly explained the cold Machiavellian intelligence he’d seen in the Prince’s eyes on their previous encounters. The man was a chess master, but he was playing with other people’s lives instead of pieces on the board.
You know, if I could get a sip of that, I’d probably be able to say what it was the Goddess was hinting at, he mused to himself before discounting it. Lucas was in no hurry to try that brew, even without the highly addictive tag. He’d seen the monstrous choices its user was willing to make, and he had no interest in knowing what kind of awful shit that version of himself would be willing to do.
Still, he’d love a chance to check out the ingredient list. A toned-down version of it might be just the thing to help him unravel this riddle. Lucas never found the chance to ask on the ride there, but if Heisenburgle was appropriately liquored up, he’d make it a point to ask about it on the way back in the morning when they were both bleary-eyed.
The ball, as he expected, was a grand affair held at the palace, with all of the pains in the ass that such a thing entailed. Lucas worried he was going to have to endure pat downs and stern gazes for the next twenty minutes when they stepped out of the carriage, but instead, the gnome did the only useful thing that Lucas had ever seen him do. He lifted a medallion that he wore around his neck, and instantly, everyone left him and his entourage, along with their baggage, alone.
Impressive, Lucas thought with a smile. Instead of parting the Red Sea, he parted the Red Tape. I’m going to have to learn that trick.
Rather than join the general flow and proceed to the main ballroom, the two of them, along with a pair of men who were carrying their cases, went up to the third floor, where the Prince was apparently waiting for them.
Honestly, Lucas had expected to find Skylara there too, but after waiting for a few minutes in an antechamber, he found the sharp-eyed man sitting alone. “Heisenburgle tells me that you make both progress and enemies; which one would you like to discuss first?”
“Well, I don’t know who my enemies are exactly, but—” then find out, the Prince said, handing him a thick book. “While you look, Heisenburgle can tell me about your progress.”
Lucas nodded and sat down. Then, he began paging through the book. It was basically a mug shot book for the entire mage guild, just like the gnome had explained it, which struck Lucas as rather smart for the second time. While the two of them discussed the various roads, they’d tried to further increase the potency of Lucas’s Blue. The Prince seemed much less bothered by the failures than Heisenburgle did, especially after he explained the increases in potency they’d been able to obtain so far.
“Well, it all sounds like it's going ahead of schedule to me,” Prince Raston mused. “Do you think it would be possible to adulterate this mixture should the worst happen?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“That is unlikely, my Lord,” the gnome answered, explaining just how volatile and finicky Lucas’ mixture was.
While they did that, Lucas went through page after page of mugshots. At first, he started at the front, but he quickly realized the thing was chronological, and the man he’d seen had been very young. So, instead, he started from the back and found the man in question 34 pages from where the blank pages started.
He studied the young man’s expression for a few seconds as he tried to remember both times the mage had come close to killing him before he finally said, “Elard Waroven is the man you’re looking for.”
Both of the other men stopped and looked at each other. “Who’s that?” the Prince asked. “I’ve never heard of the man.”
Lucas handed the book back to Prince Raston and said, “This is the second time he tried to kill me. The first was after I first started dealing city-wide. I think he was working with the Whisperers then, so it's a safe bet to say he’s doing so now.”
The Prince’s knuckles tightened slightly as he gripped the edge of the book. “I will speak with Lord Torvin and the Leader of the mage guild about this personally this evening, in fact.” the man said in a slightly strained voice. “A third-year journeyman is not making these decisions on his own. I will have my answers promptly; you can be assured of that.”
Lucas nodded as Heisenburgle asked, “Perhaps it would be better if my assistant didn’t show his face publicly until all of this is—”
“Believe me, I would love nothing more than to leave both of you to do your work until it is done,” the Prince sighed, “But she has asked for him, and there will be no denying her our chef or anything else for that matter.”
The gnome knew better than to respond to that, so Lucas kept his mouth shut, too. Instead, he waited for the Prince to finish elaborating on his short-term plans before dismissing them both and promising to join them both at the ball shortly.
“Tell me you brought an antidote potion with you, just in case,” the gnome whispered as they descended the stairs.
Lucas nodded. “Never leave home without it.” Truthfully, he had three vials hidden in his jacket. There was a vial of Blue for Skylara to sample, just in case she asked for one, along with a healing potion and an antidote. It was nice to see that they were worrying about the same things for once, at least. That made Lucas smile as he strode into the hall.
Neither of them was important enough to be announced, which was good. The bad news was that now he was at the very heart of the kingdom, and everyone, who was anyone, was whirling around on the floor in a riot of frills and colors.
Lucas wasn’t afraid that his jacket might be out of style. On the contrary, he hoped it was. He’d hate to look like any of these assholes. It was the speed at which the outermost ring was whirling that annoyed him. It was like the social scene of the nobility had been made manifest and transformed into a gaudy whirlpool that was threatening to suck him in.
Heisenburgle ignored all of that and made his way over to the refreshment table while Lucas struggled to identify even half of the people in the room. He’d met many of them before, mostly as customers, though for the life of him he couldn’t put many names to those faces. Still, he received more than a few smiles and nods, and he nodded back where appropriate, at least until he picked out Adin and his new wife.
While the Parins were not important enough to be invited to such occasions on their own merits, the Torvins were, and he had no doubt that now, that new strata of privilege applied to Adin as well. When then whirled by, Adin did not smile at Lucas, but his wife did, in a rather venomous sort of way. He wondered which of the two expressions was more disturbing, but he didn’t worry too much about either. When he decided that Lady Skylara wasn’t on the dancefloor, he thanked his lucky stars that he didn’t need to be there either.
Instead, he got a glass of wine and set about looking for her. The tall, dark-haired woman didn’t take long to track down one of the several balconies that overlooked the city. She was surrounded by a crowd of hangers-on, and even if they didn’t know who or what she really was, they knew she was rich and powerful.
She was also beautiful, of course, in an Amazonian, man-eater sort of way. Her dark curly hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her red sequined dress showed off more than most. That wasn’t hard; of course, when her tits were nearly the size of his head, that wasn’t hard. Normally, those things might have been enough to make him hot in her eyes, but between the whole dragon thing and the fact that she was used to getting absolutely everything she wanted, there was nothing there for him to desire.
For some people, power and tits are all it takes, he thought as he approached her. Usually, one or the other is entirely optional, too, depending on the audience. If mages invent TV, maybe we can get a new hit show, Keeping Up With the Skylaras.
The dragoness in sheep's clothing spotted him well before he reached her. She even smiled a little more brightly, but it took her some time to brush off some of the most persistent conversationalists who were so intent on trying to prove their cleverness that his wine glass was drained by the time he reached her.
“Well, if it isn’t my dear friend Lucas Parin,” she said, kissing him politely on the cheek before she introduced him to some of the people who were still present in her dissolving social circle.
“How have you been?” she asked, sniffing him slightly before she let go of him. “Something tells me you’ve been making progress.”
Lucas worried for a moment that she could smell the Potion of Lesser Communion that he’d drunk several days ago but quickly decided she could probably smell the potion in his jacket pocket instead.
“Never better,” he said with a smile, “And as to progress, the only answer I can give is always. That gnome is a slave driver!”
She smiled at that before she ushered him away from everyone else by the elbow. “I’m certain,” she agreed. “I’m simply famished for gossip; you must tell me absolutely everything you’ve been up to since we last spoke.”
While everything was out of the question, he decided he had to tell her something, so as they walked away to obtain at least the illusion of privacy, he racked his brain as to what it was he might be able to tell her that would get him out of this.