Chapter 211 "Thank You"

Lora took the "elixir" from Prince Ian's palm. The pill was ochre-colored, about the size of a "roll-your-eyes-and-kick-your-legs pill" — this should be a mercury compound with cinnabar in it.

Down the Aurelian years, and again in the dynasty that came after, the only men bold enough to poison in broad daylight were these ignorant, fearless alchemists.

Only now did everyone catch sight of the palace maid following at Lora's back — three bowls of beaten silver on her tray. Lora walked to the table, cleared herself a space, and smiled:

"Uncle Gawain, would you be so kind as to turn these three empty bowls upside down on the table for me?"

Prince Gawain hadn't the first idea what she was about, but he did as she asked. Lora pinched up the "elixir" and waved it once before all their eyes: "Now, Fifth Sworn Brother — drop the elixir under one of the bowls."

Prince Ian did as asked too.

"You've examined the bowls and the elixir both. Next, Lora will work her spell — and don't any of you blink." The smile went clean off Lora's face. Her hands shifted the three silver bowls, this one and that one, round and round, while her lips went on muttering an incantation.

By now even the King's gaze had been drawn over.

Lora sped up. The instant she stopped, she turned her head to Prince Gawain with a smile:

"Uncle Gawain, open them and see — is the elixir still under the bowls? If it's still there, it must be false, and whatever you do, don't eat it."

The onlookers had it figured out. Every one of them laughed inwardly:

This Princess Isolde was a fair hand at bamboozling too. Who couldn't do this? Swirl the bowls around, lift them up, pill's still there — there you are, no need to eat it, the elixir's a fake.

Her first time at court, and she counted Uncle Gawain an elder of the house — she was helping the man dodge this pill.

The King snorted through his nose: And here I thought it'd be something rare.

But then the impossible happened. Uncle Gawain lifted the three bowls one after the other — and even Leon, who had not blinked once, went stone-stunned: nothing under any of the three. The elixir, right before their eyes, had vanished into thin air.

Uncle Gawain, as if to make sure the King heard it too, cried out in extravagant alarm: "Ah! The elixir? Where's it gone?"

"What else? If the elixir's gone, that proves it was the real thing." Lora spread her two hands — meaning: nothing in these; I never so much as touched the elixir.

Prince Ian was the most worked-up man in the room. He went over the three bowls again, and waved two palace maids over: "Crouch down and hunt — did the elixir drop on the floor?"

Lora looked the very picture of innocence: "It's a true elixir, I told you — how would it drop to the floor? Or would you like to search Lora's person as well?"

"Then where did it go?" Prince Ian couldn't make his peace with it. Brewing one elixir was no small matter — the ingredients alone took an age to gather. If it was a true elixir, to lose it — wasn't that a crying shame?

Lora pouted: "An elixir carries numinous breath. Lora spoke the spell over it — of course it flew away!"

Flew — flew away?

It did, kind of, make one small piece of sense.

The King kept his eyes on the two maids under the table. They hunted a good half of forever, then crawled out to report: "Searched every inch of the floor, Your Majesty. Nothing."

A source reminder: the story's author publishes this chapter on their official page, but this version was taken without consent.

Lora batted her big eyes and said, deadly serious: "Trust me. An elixir is a numinous thing — it would never fall to the ground."

By now Prince Ian didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Only Prince Gawain, as solemn as Lora herself, pronounced:

"The elixir flew."

The King was still trying to straighten the thing out in his head: If it truly was an elixir, those rotten alchemists ought to have presented it to Me. I am the King — how would it land in the Fifth's hands?

The hall buzzed with talk. And at last came a string of quick footsteps.

An inner servant appeared in the doorway. Head down, he hurried to von Klein's side and murmured two sentences in his ear; surprise broke all over von Klein's face. He went quick to the King and whispered a few words, then called the servant back and put a question or two to him.

The King's face went iron-gray. His voice cracked out:

"Bring me Joss Wray and Goldwater!"

The master of the palace music saw which way the wind sat and looked in a hurry to von Klein; von Klein waved him off, and the dancing girls and the musicians scrambled out. In a trice the whole hall had forgotten the marvelous elixir, and every man was asking his neighbor what under heaven had come off.

The Queen Mother, seeing it, rose at once and led the way out, taking the women out of the great hall. Lora would have gone too — and Prince Gawain, while the whole room was shifting about with never an eye on him, said softly to her:

"Thank you."

She smiled faintly, dropped a curtsy, and went hurrying after her mother's steps.

Lora, pressing down on the bowl's bottom, had known from the very first turn which bowl it was that covered the elixir; the moment the shuffle swung round to the table's edge, she had let the elixir roll off into her sleeve.

And just before her "search me," with no one a whit the wiser, she had slipped the elixir into Prince Gawain's hand.

If Prince Gawain had meant to keep playing the simpleton with her, he'd have said nothing at all. But he said "Thank you."

Prince Gawain was a man worth respecting — though in his old age he would go on to commit his great error, and push the last-flare, gasping Aurelian, quick as quick, down into the abyss past redeeming.

And this had been no flash of temper on her part. One clever friend the more — wasn't that better than one enemy the more who played the fool?

Close behind her mother, Lora passed Felix Fairfax and Roland, and the several officers with them, escorting Goldwater and Joss Wray — going by the other way.

This was the first time Felix Fairfax had set eyes on Lora since coming up to Augustburg. He'd supposed himself to have forgotten her clean — and here, one look, and he still found her so unlike anyone else alive.

By now the Supreme Hall stood cleared of every idler, and the King had mounted the throne. At his side stood Voss, eyes nailed on Joss Wray walking in.

Voss didn't know Goldwater from Adam. But Joss Wray was his own recommendation to the King — a man, he'd said, with a rare gift for parsing texts. The King had heard him expound two pieces, found him good indeed, and kept him on as a Reader.

Joss Wray was a "divine physician" — and that in the plain, literal sense: a physician of the miraculous.

He had first gone into service under old Duke Neville. With prescriptions no other living soul could read, he had cured the chancellor of an illness the royal physicians couldn't lay a glove on. But the man's appetite was a sight too ugly — at first Voss couldn't abide the look of him either.

The strange thing was that the old chancellor, upright as a lance, called him a prodigy and told Voss not to kill him.

For a man of Duke Neville's standing to wear such patience with a taker of bribes — Voss's curiosity was up too. One conversation, and he found Joss Wray a monster-talent: any sentence at all, out of that mouth, came out sounding perfectly sound — past all rebutting.

The two hit it off at a stroke, and from that day forward Joss Wray rode the first chamberlain's coattails for all he was worth.

Joss Wray had brought Voss money-roads without end — it was through Joss Wray that Cedric Salt had first hooked his line into the Grand Marshal.

So for a man of that stamp to come to grief — Voss found it passing strange:

Who was it had put a foot on his man's tail? Whoever it was, he had to pry Joss Wray a gap to breathe through:

"Your Majesty, today is your birth-feast. The birth-tribute comes in big round sums, and into your own private treasury at that. Even if the figures don't tally, for the sake of the gifting ministers' good hearts, you might let them fetch the shortfall in later — no great harm done."

Voss stood beside the throne, standing higher than any prince or minister on the floor below.

He piled a smile onto his face, which slit his eyes to fine thin seams, so that no man could tell where his gaze had landed.

But the King gave him no heed. Cold-faced, down at Fairfax:

"Lord Treasurer Fairfax — report the whole of it."