First: A New World

Joaon. The letter shapes, the strange way he ended certain letters – she could not read this, not yet, but she could recognize his handwriting, even in a script that had changed immensely.

She needed.  Well, she needed potions.  She needed a whole bunch of potions.

It was time to see what this pretend-workroom had been stocked with.

And what this pretend-cauldron was going to do.

She started going through the cupboards, one through one.  All of them were labelled in this strange script – not in her handwriting, or in Joaon’s – but they were also labelled right after that in her own language.  There she was, tongue-of-the-maiden and kisses-on-eyebrows, her favorite flowers.  They had grown in the rooftop gardens, once upon a time.  But if she was “forbidden” to go up there, it was unlikely anyone had maintained them.  She would have to find all the right ingredients again.

She sniffed one and then the other, then the base she liked to use and several more rare ingredients.  They all smelled correct, if a little stale – except the Water-Brush, which was completely wrong.  Oh, well, there were other options that would make a slightly less accurate potion, and it was too much to hope for, in this dummied-up laboratory, to have all of her ingredients be correct.

She wondered, momentarily, what had happened to the traps on the lower floors.  She, of course, had taken the back stairs and moved through the patterns that avoided triggering any of the more pernicious traps, but the obnoxious man downstairs, those guests she was supposed to have, she could not imagine that they would know how to do such things.  Had they all been taken down?  She found herself a little saddened at the thought.  She had worked hard on those, finding exactly the right balance of terrifying and generally non-deadly to discourage without making her the Scourge of the Sandy Ways.

The Red Madder was exactly as it ought to be.  It wasn’t her favorite ingredient for this type of potion – it had a habit of dyeing one’s lips for weeks – but it lasted far better than the Water-Brush in storage.  She began shifting ingredients, moving one of the small, presumably-meant-for-decoration but far more serious than the larger example, cauldrons to what appeared to be some sort of gas flame.

Well, they allowed real heat up here, even if it was some sort of view-for-the-Muses.  Perhaps they hired fake-Kael women who actually knew about potion-making?

A little of this, a little of that, and the Red Madder at exactly the right moment.  Kael breathed in deeply.  Yes.  This was the potion she needed, with or without the Water-Brush.  

“What, exactly, do you think you are doing?”  Mr. Vibius had not so much snuck up on her as he seemed to fill the place in her mind that had been filled by various functionaries throughout the decades and centuries: He belonged here, so she had ignored him.  She took a breath and turned to look at him, remembering that what he called the Kael-look did not seem to faze nor bother him in the least.

“I am learning about the potion ingredients, Mr. Vibius. The Kael, that is Kaelingrade Torrent-Step, she worked with potions, correct?  And thus ‘the Kael’ you have here should appear to be working with potions?”

“Not with that cauldron!  Use the one over there!  And use the fake potion we have set up for you! We don’t want to mess something up and have fumes all over here!  You wouldn’t believe the sort of thing that was around here when we first started cleaning it up – well, I say we, but some of the floors my predecessors handled, and some of them I handled!   This stuff can turn toxic if it’s not handled correctly!”

Kael managed to hide a snicker, but only with a great deal of effort.  “I will be very careful.  I see that this here might have been used as a venting mechanism?”  They’d managed to duplicate that part of the set-up from her actual workshop quite well.  

“It’s primitive, but it might work.  Still, stick to the script.”  He narrowed her eyes at her.  “Where are you from, anyway?”

It would do no good to tell him she’d been born not a day’s travel away, in the mountains, when this whole land was scrub and rocks and dirt.  “As I said, I’m from out of town.”

“Your accent is funny.  No, no, that’s good.  It lends credence to the whole mystery of the Kael.  All right, you look properly spooky, mysterious, and potion-mistress-y.  Now just remember to glare at them and tell them to get out of your lair, and you’ll be all set.”  He headed for the door, stopping to admonish her.  “And no messing with the ingredients!”

“Yes, Mr. Vibius.”  She had no intention of “messing” with anything.

 
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