the creatures of legend, godlets and powerful nature spirits tended to interact with humans much more than they did in the more “civilized” parts of the world. It was a wild land, and everything in it was primitive and more than a bit unpredictable.
That much she knew already; that evening was spent in her nest with books the Brownies brought from her library, and a great deal of hot tea. She learned that most magic workers among the Sammi were Wise Women and Shamans, who often were aware of Godmothers only vaguely, if at all. From a travel book by a Godmother, she proved what she had vaguely known already — that part of the world was full of demigods and nature spirits that were laws unto themselves and rather disdainful of the Godmothers.
That gave her a moment's pause. If it was one of them causing mischief, well…Aleksia would probably be able to tell right away if she could handle the situation herself.
Still, there were demigods, and there were demigods. A god of Winter would be able to squash her like a melting snowball, but a god of a single glacier did not even rate a level of concern. If she could not deal with the troublemaker on her own, well, quick delving into more books assured her that it had been proven before that not even a demigod could stand up to the combined power of two Godmothers and a Fae. Elena would certainly help, and she had more than enough contacts among the Fae to call in a true Fairy Godmother. The Fae had created the mortal Godmothers in the first place, because, Aleksia presumed, they had grown tired of the constant meddling in human affairs that steering The Tradition required.
With a goblet of hot mulled wine in hand, she went over all she had done that day.
Finally, she concluded that there was nothing more to do at the moment, and with a resigned nod, she dismissed it from her mind. In the absence of information, the only thing she could do was allow her agents to gather it for her. It wasn't as if she didn't have quite enough to keep her busy at the moment.
She put her wine down, and passed her hand over the surface of the mirror to look in on Gerda.
The girl was braiding up another girl's hair, in some small room heaped with a magpie's treasure-trove of pirated goods. A bed was almost hidden under a riot of colored pillows, a truckle bed only partly shoved beneath it. Gaudy necklaces were festooned from a tarnished and blotchy mirror, and the dressing table was awash with silk ribbons, more jewelry, paints and powders, perfumes and kerchiefs. The owner of this room got whatever she wanted, and it seemed that what she wanted was Gerda to wait on her.
Though Gerda looked desperately unhappy, she did not look ill-used. Ah, good. She seems to be holding her own. As Aleksia had known would happen, because she had nudged things in that direction with her own subtle magic, nothing had happened to her other than being robbed, imprisoned and frightened. The Chief of the band Aleksia had chosen had a daughter about Gerda's age, and as Aleksia had made sure would happen, the daughter had taken one look at Gerda and claimed her as her own particular servant.
No one dared to molest the young woman after that; the robber girl had been schooled in violence since she could crawl and had no compunction about enforcing her demands with whatever weapon came to hand. In particular, she was masterful with knives, and every man in her father's band knew she could beat him to a pulp, then slice him up into ribbons if she chose. They already looked to her as her father's heir, and while it was barely possible that one of them might challenge her, it was more likely that such a man would be beaten and become her right hand and partner.
Aleksia had plans for her in good time, but she was not quite old enough yet. It amused her, though, to think of this wild girl righting all the wrongs of her father's band and more as a Champion — yes, and turning the entire band from robbers into freedom fighters. There was a tyrant ruling over the Kingdom of Svenska — one of those things that Aleksia had not been able to prevent; it was not yet time for him to be deposed, but that time was coming soon, and Valeri the Robber Girl would be just the woman to do the job.
That was at least three years away. First, Valeri had to do a bit of traveling and discover the truth for herself. Then it would be a matter of waiting until her father came to the end of all Robber Chiefs and she was called home. Yes, three years away, at the least. Perhaps as much as five.
So now the Robber Girl was acting as she always had: deep down, fundamentally kind, but selfish, helping herself to what she wanted. At the moment she was wearing Gerda's fine clothing; Gerda had been carelessly given some of the Robber Girl's leathers and furs — which were actually going to stand her in much better stead on the road ahead than her original clothing would have. Gerda needed to win Valeri's sympathy and to harden a little more under privation. In another week or so, it would be time for the next step.
So Gerda was sorted. As for Kay…
She passed her hand over the mirror and looked for him. He was not in his workshop, nor the library. Finally, she found him at the window in his bedroom, staring out at the snow, an expression of bleak loneliness on his face. On the windowseat beside him was a half-finished drawing, not of some clockwork mechanism, but of a girl's face. It wasn't very well done in comparison to his clockwork plans; in fact it was hardly recognizable. But the hair gave it away as Gerda.
Well, things were coming along nicely there, as well.
Time to look over the rest of her charges.
This took a bit more effort. Concentrating hard, she called up the image of the energies of The Tradition, silently telling her mirror to overlay them on a map. It looked rather like a many-colored fog-bank over the landscape rendered in extreme miniature, and she saw a problem almost immediately.
And just in time; a huge surge of Traditional power showed her where the trouble spot was, and she followed the train into the deep forest outside the tiny village of Gottsbergen in the Kingdom of Svenska. She made the mirror backtrack in time a little — it could look into the past, but unfortunately not move forward into the future. She watched as a cruel woman in Svenska sent her stepchildren out into the forest after nuts — it was, of course, just a little too early for nuts, but they didn't know that. They were already far too deep into the woods to be anything but lost. This could go badly very quickly. With that much Traditional power building so quickly around them, they were a far-too-tempting target for the Tyrant, or to be more precise, the Tyrant's pet magician. He would not even have to do anything, just allow them to die…or be killed. They could last for several days in the woods, getting hungrier, colder, with the power building all around them.
She firmed her jaw, feeling a flush, not quite of anger, but of something close to it. This was why she had become a Godmother. Not for the sulky Kays. For innocents like these.
And she put everything else out of her mind but the need to save them.
Using her second mirror, while she kept an eye on the children in the first, Aleksia searched for someone who could help. A Witch, a Sorceress, one of the creatures of the Faean, like a Giant or a Unicorn, even a Wise
