Page 60 of Quiver of Cobras
‘Yeah, you are. But maybe only a tiny bit.’ She grinned at me.
This wasn’t going at all as I’d expected. It was my turn to sit down before my legs gave way.
‘So what do you need me for?’ Artemesia enquired.
‘Huh?’
‘You came to see me for a reason,’ she prompted. ‘What is it?’
Oh. ‘There are two things. Your uncle reckons he might have an amnesia-curing potion.’ I screwed up my face, trying to remember what he said he’d used. ‘Uh, with anemone and mugwort and, uh…’
Artemesia rolled her eyes. ‘Lavender?’
I nodded. ‘ I think so.’
She sighed. ‘I know both the spell and the magic he’ll have bound the potion up with. It won’t do a thing to help your amnesia but it will give you the runs for several days. Carduus is a moron.’
The runs? Nice. I wasn’t surprised, though. I shrugged, lifted up the plastic bag and pulled out the dust bottle. There wasn’t much inside but I was hoping there would be enough. ‘The other thing is that you created dust,’ I said. ‘You made it to help us.’
‘And my uncle changed it to harm us.’ Her expression hardened. ‘There’s an example of someone not making a foolish mistake but a deliberate act designed to induce pain.’
‘Can’t you just flood the market with your version, rather than his?’
Artemesia ran a hand through her hair. ‘But my version isn’t addictive. That’s the reason why his pixie dust worked and mine fell by the wayside. He got everyone hooked until his dust was the only one they wanted.’
‘I have some of his here. I thought that maybe you could try and reverse-engineer it. Find out what’s in it that makes it addictive and I can do something to pollute the ingredients in Carduus’s lab so that his pixie dust is weaker than yours. Then everyone will come back to you and, more to the point, their addictions will fade away.’
Artemesia rolled her eyes. ‘It’s really not that simple. You say it like all I have to do is wave a magic wand and, hey presto! Frankly, if it were that easy, I’d have already tried it.’
Morgan rubbed his chin. ‘Maybe you can’t reverse-engineer it, Arty, but I bet that with that original sample you can find a way to counteract its addictive qualities.’
‘You mean find an antidote? I’m a one-woman band here, Morganus. I can’t do everything at once! You two aren’t the only faeries in the city, you know. There are others who have needs as well as you two.’
I placed the bottle on the nearest table. ‘I know it’s a long shot,’ I said. ‘But I thought that it would be worth a try.’
‘I can’t create more time. There are only so many hours in the day.’
‘I can slow down time!’ I beamed. ‘I can help with that.’
Artemesia looked horrified. ‘Have you been doing that? You have to stop. It’s terribly risky.’
I’d been hoping for a bit more adulation. ‘I’ve only done it a few times.’
‘Well, stop! It’ll cause havoc. The more you do it, the more chance there is that the magic will adversely affect this realm.’
‘Morgan did it once too,’ I said sulkily. ‘It’s not just me.’
She glowered at him. ‘You know the risks.’
‘It was a one-off situation,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, just sometimes, the ends justify the means.’
I gazed at him. ‘Have you been eavesdropping on me?’
Morgan just looked confused. ‘Huh?’
I dismissed it. ‘Never mind.’ But it vexed me that Morgan sounded heroic when he said that to Artemesia; when I said it, I sounded like I was making an excuse.
Artemesia picked up the dust bottle, holding it gingerly as if were some kind of nuclear bomb. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said. ‘But it won’t be quick. You lot keep giving me more and more things to do and I can’t possibly do all of them. Reverse-engineering my uncle’s pixie dust, as satisfying as it would be to ruin all his work, is at the bottom of my to-do list.’
