Free The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey Page A

rain or not enough, and when their peasantry could not produce bountiful crops, Tyrants took it out on them, adding torture and murder to the hardship of semistarvation.
    This, of course, tended to produce Heroes and Champions, but it was dreadfully hard on the people themselves.
    Tapping one finger on her lips as she considered the image of the Tyrant himself, seated rigidly on his throne, Aleksia wondered what she could do to ease their lot. Interestingly, this man was no usurper; he had come to this throne legitimately.
    Well, after a fashion, anyway. The King had managed to die without an heir, and that was entirely due to the current Tyrant. Benevolent though the old king had been, he had also been weak. His nephew had had no difficulty whatsoever in persuading him to put off marriage, meanwhile ingratiating himself to the old man and all his advisors in order to be named Crown Prince over all the other claimants. A little judicious spending, a bribe here, the assurance of reward there, the creation of a small private army, and when the King died, the Crown Prince was virtually rushed onto the throne by the greedy and corrupt Court.
    Then, when the new King proved to be something other than what had been expected, it was too late. Because the new King had known very well that a man who takes one bribe will take many, and a man who seeks his own preferment over the good of his country can be counted on to turn his coat whenever anyone offers him something he wants.
    So…the problem before Aleksia was how to distract him. “Show me those upon whom he depends,” she ordered the mirror.
    There were the usual types. The Tyrant did not much care for fighting, but he was very smart about how he dealt with the need to go to battle. He had put a General in charge of his armies who lived for conquest and blood—but was not at all interested in the tedium of ruling.
    Aleksia frowned. The General was a simple sadist. He knew what he wanted—free rein to allow his men to run roughshod over the populace. He got it often enough, whenever the Tyrant saw the need for an object-lesson. No hope there; there was nothing that anyone could offer the General that he did not already have.
    The Tyrant’s advisors were all very shrewd as well as suspicious, shrewd enough to know that none of them stood a chance of deposing their Master alone, suspicious enough not to trust any of the others to help with a palace coup. That was a pity; it would have been the ideal solution.
    The Magician was content to enjoy the fruits of his Master’s success. Like the General, he had what he wanted: a luxurious life, the freedom to pursue whatever line of research in magic that he fancied, regardless of how blackly evil it was, and a steady supply of victims upon whom to experiment. Like the General, he had no interest at all in ruling a country, and his ambitions all centered on success in the Dark Arts.
    But then, as she let the viewpoint roam, the mirror showed her someone she had not expected.
    Ensconced in a tower chamber was a fellow in elaborate robes of black and purple. Surrounding him were all the trappings of a Wizard, although Aleksia knew he could not be anything of the sort, since there was not one jot of Traditional power about him, nor any other sort of magic so far as she could tell. This intrigued her enough that she issued orders not to be disturbed and had the Brownies bring her dinner in her rooms.
    Who are you, my little man? she asked him silently. The Tyrant’s Magician did not seem to consider him a threat nor a rival. She had never heard even a rumor of this fellow, who, from the crockery piled outside his door, seldom left his tower.
    She spent the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening watching him, and finally enough of what he did struck a chord with her that she realized she knew what he was.
    An Alchemist.
    But this was more than merely an Alchemist. He was clever enough not to call himself one, hence the Wizardly