I have found, that it is sometimes better to discuss confidential things in busy places rather than in quiet areas. Two people sitting with their heads together is unremarkable in a tavern whereas two people with their heads together in a field is cause for gossip.

But still.

As far as Sam flavoured delays go, he wasn't actually that late. No more than three quarters of an hour. I spent the time resting, gossiping with Lady Vigo (who was another person that I was getting to know) and accepting the, now standard from people who know a little bit about things, admonishments to get plenty of rest and to be gentle with myself.

Then she completely undid all the good work by asking me some questions about the shadowy figure on the mound in the North of Redania. She was fascinated by that until she realised that the line of questioning was causing me a little bit of distress and she stopped, looking a litte chagrined.

So I was taking a break from it all. Sitting on the bench, resting my eyes and focusing on the breathing exercises that Lord Palmerin had taught me when Fringilla spoke up.

“He's ready,”

I climbed to my feet, a little more laboriously than I might strictly have liked and stood where indicated while the gate formed.

I had considered how to play this. I had spent a, not small, amount of time thinking about what I was going to say to my brother when I saw him again. We had not parted well and the last time I had any contact with him, I was yelling something about him being cruel to Elves. My last letter, looking back, could easily have been misconstrued as being overtly hostile and petty. So I had wondered.

Do I rush forwards and embrace him like I used to. With a grin and a laugh and an insult. Do I wait to see how he behaved and adjusted my thinking from there. Or do I offer cool and calm handshakes.

The fact that I had spent quite so long worrying about such things before my brother turned up then became the subject of actually a fair bit of shame for me as he turned up, took that split second that everyone takes when they step through a portal, to orient themselves to the new place before he gave a little shake of his head, to clear it, before he saw me and shouted in delight, before rushing towards me to throw his arms around me.

“Freddie you utter bastard.”

Believe me when I say that this is a greeting of absolute joy.

I had little chance to do anything other than register the man behind him as being heavily armoured before my brother enveloped me in a bear hug. I instantly felt awful for all the stategising and plotting that we had done in order to figure this whole thing out.

And suddenly, because of course I was, I was on the edge of tears.

Sam pulled back. “You look fucking awful.” He declared to me happily.

I brushed tears from my face. “You look as bad.” I told him. I meant it too.

His brain caught up with his eyes then. “Freddie are you alright?”

“Fuck no.” I staggered and he caught me, lowering me onto my bench.

“Fuck Freddie, what's going on?”

“He is injured.” Lady Vigo stood nearby. “Give him a minute.”

“God Freddie, I heard you were sick and injured but I had no idea.”

“Never mind me.” I told him. “What's going on with you?” I sniffed and took out a large hankerchief before blowing my nose hard.

“What about me?”

“Sam, I wasn't joking earlier when I said that you looked as bad as I feel.”

He grimaced briefly and a shadow spread across his face. “We might have destroyed the cult in the North Freddie, but that was not a pleasant campaign and one of the things that I'm finding is that victory is hard.” He sighed and his smile returned. “There is stuff to talk about though, over wine preferably. I've been in Toussaint for several minutes now and no-one's offered me a drink.”

I laughed and the spell was lifted. Sure enough, there was a jug of watered wine nearby and I poured him a goblet, taking another stiff one for myself.

The other man that accompanied Sam was huge and armoured, helm on and visor down.

“You remember Sir Kristoff?” Mark asked me.

“Of course.” I said, giving it everything I had to make it seem that I was enthusiastic to see the knight. Another man for whom I had mixed feelings. “How are you Sir knight? It is good to see you.”

The knight grunted his acknowledgement of this and nodded to me. “Lord Frederick. Is Sir Rickard in your party?”

I felt my eyebrows rise and glanced over at Sam who's brows were furrowing in annoyance before I looked back at the knight.

“He is not.” I answered. “Our guards are provided by the Knights of Francesca here in Toussaint and Emma didn't feel it politic to bring more guards of her own. Sir Rickard is currently overseeing the training of some guards up at Coulthard castle and applying his... imagination to the defences.”

I saw Sam nod out of the corner of my eye.

“A shame.” Kristoff rumbled and took his helmet off. Presumably now that he wasn't going to be leaping into battle straight away. “We should get under cover Lord Kalayn.” He told Sam stiffly. “I do not like you to be so exposed.”

“Lord Samuel's safety is guarenteed in Toussaint.” One of the two knights that had escorted me down here rumbled from behind her armour. I hadn't learned her name but she was easily as tall as Sir Guillaume and easily as broad across the shoulders as well. She spoke with a broad Toussaint accent that betrayed her origins as coming from the fields and rural areas.

“That is lovely but you will understand if I do not take your word for it.” Kristoff rumbled.

The woman was unamused by this. “I do not understand.” She said, stiffening. “I will guarentee Lord Kalayn's safety. The duty of protecting him and his family fall to the knights that bear his sister's name and we do so with pride. Do you challenge this?”

“Damn straight I...”

Sam sighed and put his hand on Kristoff's arm. “Kristoff. I know that you are angry that your nemesis isn't here. But do you really have to pick a fight with the first person you meet? Especially when, if you win, you insult and degrade everything that people are trying to do here?”

Kristoff stood there, glowering at the woman who was still face-plated.

Kristoff was the leader of Redanian soldiers that had gone to support Sam in his taking over of Kalayn lands when he went. He didn't like me very much and that was alright because I didn't really like him either. My impression of him is that he is old before his time. He lacked the family connections, the money or the charm in order to gain promotion within the Redanian army and as such had occupied a relatively minor post in the army. This had embittered him somewhat. Especially to people like Sir Rickard who had seen a LOT of action and had been knighted from the rank and file by Jon Natalis.

So the two men had hated each other which was made worse when Kristoff did his best to have Rickard Hanged for insubordination. It wouldn't have worked, but the fact that he tried is one of the things that had angered us all against him.

He is an older man in his later thirties early forties. Balding with a small smattering of facial hair. He's powerfully built, and I can dislike him all I want but I have to admit that I have met few finer soldiers. Courageous, skilled, strong and utterly without imagination which meant that he was able to withstand the assaults of the Cult of the First Born in the North. He had led the rescue party that had salvaged more than one situation from the brink of disaster.

But no, I don't like him.

“Why don't you see to it that our baggage gets up to the castle.” Sam went on. “I will join you there presently.”

Kristoff recognised that for the order that it was and demanded some porters to help him before he stomped off.

I had recovered from my little episode then and climbed to my feet as the two of us watched him go.

“Not for nothing Sam, but if there ever really is a duel between that man and Sir Rickard....”

“I know.”

“Rickard is going to kick his ass.”

“I know.” Sam said again before sighing. “Rickard has a level of violence in him that Kristoff is lacking. I even think that that is part of what is making Kristoff so angry and bitter. He knows it about Rickard as well. He knows that Rickard is the better soldier, the better fighter and the better leader and it makes him angry and bitter. There is no way that, if their situations had been reversed, there is no way that Kristoff would have been able to bring you and Kerrass out of the North. And he knows it. Not that he would ever admit that.”

He sighed again and I realised just how tired my brother was. “But I need him Freddie.”

“Well,” I protested, “I don't think you do.”

“I would not have come so far without him and I owe him that much.”

“What do you owe him Sam?” It seemed that my brother wasn't going to elaborate on it any further unless I prompted him a bit.

“He is my man. My man. Not someone elses. Look, is there somewhere we can talk, before we get up tot he castle and I have to start fighting with Emma.”

“You don't have to do anything.”

“No I don't, but I will. I can't seem to get anywhere near her at the moment without the two of us trying to cut each other. I love her. She's my sister but at the moment, all she seems to want to do is to make me bleed. And I would admit that the same is also true from me. I feel the same. God, but it's awful.”

“What happened Sam?”

“No-one ever told me how much we are hated.”

“What?”

“Freddie, the campaign against the cult was awful. Not because of what we were up against but that was awful in and of itself. The things we found that they had been up to. The cave system that you gave us the details to find was not the only complex of that kind that they had. Not by a long stretch. It turned out that they were far more wide-spread than we had thought possible. We were interrogating prisoners and every time we thought we had come to the last of them, there would be some riders seen on a ridge line as though they were taunting us.”

He shook his head. “Seriously though, this is a longer story of what my life has been like over the last year or so. While you were going off and risking your life against ghost ships and angry villagers who want to kill unicorns, there was other stuff going on.”

“I'm sorry Sam. I had to go. I had to leave. I couldn't have stayed in that place. Not for a moment longer.”

Sam gazed at me for a long moment. We were walking now. After Sam had asked to go somewhere so that the two of us could speak, we had taken a path down into Beauclair to see if I could find us a bottle or two to share.

“I know Freddie. I really do... But I wanted you to stay. I needed you and I'm not going to lie. There was a time there when I was really angry at you for that.” He sighed. “And I wasn't the only one. I rather think that Kristoff kind of wants to duel you as well. And Kerrass for that matter.”

“That would be an even more ugly fight than between him and Rickard.”

Sam snickered at that and I felt myself reassured. My brother was still there but a silence had fallen over him and I looked for a way to break it.

“What happened Sam?”

“I was furious with you for leaving before I could talk to you again. I wanted you to be there. I wanted you to see it when we finally managed to get rid of them all. It was supposed to be our victory. You and me. We were supposed to defeat them. You started it and I was going to finish it. But instead, it was almost done despite me.”

He laughed suddenly and bitterly. “We did all the work. You and I. I will admit that you did more than I did. But at the same time it was you and I that found the problem and it was you that brought enough word of quite the scale of the problem that meant that we could deal with it properly. As well as the intelligence about where the problem could be found. So there was no way that we could do it by ourselves. No way. We would be accused of war mongering for a start if I built up some forces and went off to destroy the cult. Also, if I did that, I would have ended up being out maneauvered. I would never get enough people together to properly oust the cult and even if I took down another couple of the Lords that were involved in it all. The crown would have interfered in what would have been perceived as my ambitions.”

“And the cult would have gotten away.”

“And the cult would have gotten away.” He agreed. “So we called for help. And I had no idea, no idea at all, just how hated the Coulthard family is in the continent until people started to show up to help. No idea.”

We came into Beauclair properly and I took him to one of my favourite little watering holes. It was a place near the river. It had two floors with a downstairs that is much larger for listening to music and dancing and the like. There is an indoor area upstairs for if you want to drink in some silence, or share the place with other people. The kind of place where you would take a parent for a meal out. Then there was a terrace out in the open air, backing onto the river. It was a beautiful place, flowers lining the trestles with creeping vines carrying the multi-coloured flowers blooming along them.

The place is often used for card tournaments in the summer where people come from miles around to take part. It was here that the newish Skellige deck was formally introduced to the tournament scene and although some tournaments still ban the deck, it was here that it first gained official recognition. A fact that is commemorated by a small brass plate that is nailed to the wall. The proprieter is a lady well known for her somewhat sharp sense of humour and skill with choosing the foods of her trade. The place specialises in cheeses and although not all of them were to my taste, indeed some even made me flee for the garderobe on more than one occasion, many are indeed delicious.

All around that veranda there were bowls and baskets of fire that were well attended and maintained but it meant that the two of us could have something to eat and drink while we talked and enjoyed the... almost magical open air feeling of Toussaint.

I had found the place the last time that we were in Toussaint. In that period of time after I had spoken to Jack in that strange dream scape and we were waiting for the search of Toussaint to be concluded. It was one of the places that I found that would serve me where I wouldn't get bothered by passing well wishers. The owner and propieter insists on peace and quiet and if her guests want to be left alone then they damn well get to be left alone. She spends a not small amount of money for some burly men to stand in the doorway and ensure the matter and there are always knights or other armed people that are willing to go to the aid of a distressed customer when they are being bothered. Often because they had gone to the place for the same reason.

We ordered a bottle of wine, a pair of cups and sat close to one of the fires.

“So how are you Freddie?” He asked as he poured us a drink. “I had heard you were sick but that seemed like something else up there by the gate.”

“I am sick Sam.” I sighed and scratched my head while I considered how fragile I was and whether I could bear to have this conversation here and now or whether I would be better off pleading to delay. Sam wanted to talk though and if it would help get the conversation started by my admitting to my weaknesses then so be it.

“No one can seem to agree a name for what's happening.” I told him. “Some people are calling it Helmet Shock as though I've been struck in the head. Others are saying that it's my Nervous System that has been shattered. Others are saying fatigue. Words like “Aftershock” and “Cowardice” are used in my presence. Are any of those true? I have no idea.”

Gratifyingly, he had smirked when I had said Cowardice.

“I know that it isn't a head injury.” I said. “But that is the closest that I can think of. You know how people get hit in the head and then they seem fine for a while before they suddenly have a spasm of some kind, before dying months, if not years later and no-one can figure out why. Or they might have a series of spasms and the only thing that anyone can think of is that they got struck in the head.”

He nodded to show that he was following.

“It's nothing like that.” I quipped and he laughed. “But that's the closest thing that anyone else can seem to think it is like and I am finding that it is far easier to tell people that I have had a head injury than it is to try and explain what is actually going on.”

He nodded. “What do the real people think? People who know what they're talking about I mean. Ariadne and the rest.”

“Ariadne says that we don't really have a term for it yet.” I smirked. “But she says that what is basically going on is that I've been through too much this year. Done too much, seen too much and suffered too much.”

Sam sighed and grimaced unhappily. “I hate to say it Freddie, but I can believe it. You were always the most sensitive of us. It doesn't surprise me that you've been kicked in the balls by all of this. Fuck, it's a surprise that you're still as sane as you are.”

“Ariadne pretty much said the same thing. Those first few years of travelling with Kerrass were pretty intense. What happened in Amber's Crossing with the thing that lived in those woods. The poisoning in Angral that, apparently, nearly killed me. That would have killed me if not for some magical healing.”

“I thought the spider bites cured you.”

“I thought so too. But Spider venom is still spider venom. It neautralised the deadly part of the poison but it still poisoned me. The entire thing damaged my innards and I wouldn't have lived to see another year had that Priestess and Ariadne done things to ensure my survival.”

“But even so.” Sam answered. “Getting that close to death can do things to a man.”

“They can. So those few years were quite bad. But this last year has... Well it's not been great.”

“I've read your diaries Freddie.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I don't really look very good in them.”

“I was really angry with you at the time that I wrote them. I was really angry with you when it all happened as well.”

He sighed. “Not without reason I fear. But you were saying.”

I swallowed. We had skirted close to dangerous territory there and Sam had pulled us back. Deliberately I think.

“So over the course of this year. I have gone through all the stuff in Toussaint with Francesca going missing, the chase, the failures and the hallucinations.”

“You were injured then too Freddie. Not by much but you were.”

“Yes I was.” I rubbed my chest. “But then I went off and was tortured by a group of church nights who, in theory, followed a religion that I am part of and love. I still worship the Eternal Fire but I can't help but notice that an increasing number of assholes who want to make my life difficult belong to that same religion.”

Sam laughed as though I was making a joke. Which I was I suppose, but at the same time I wasn't.

“Then I get accused of murder, threatened with hanging and all kinds of horror. Then I head north where I get poisoned.”

“Again.” Sam pointed out.

“I get bled as well, before being sent out into the wild. I over exert myself, I suffer the beginnings of malnutrition, dehydration as well as all the symptoms of blood loss and then I head into proper exhuastion territory. Then I travel overland, get poisoned again, Fight in a battle, swim through a swamp and am subject to strange supernatural forces.”

I shook my head. In the back of my head I could hear the screams of the dying on that hill in Northern Redania. Just for a heart-beat. Less than that even. But I heard it.

“So I got sick.” I carefully didn't mention being forced out of a castle by my brother's politics so instead of getting better in a warm, clean environment, I was forced to do so on a forest floor. “Then I go to Skellige. I get sick again because, as it turns out, you don't just recover from all that sickness, poison and torture. You need to take the time to rest and recover which can take months.”

“If ever.”

“If ever. Yes. So then I go to Skellige. I go through abnormal magical cold to the point that I suffer Frostbite. I'm actually down a couple of toes.”

“What's it like? Missing toes I mean.”

“It's weird. I can still feel them itching. But then I forget that I've lost them and get shocked when I take my boots off.”

We laughed. Because it's funny. But it's also true.

“A lot happened in Skellige.” I said when we calmed again. “I was confronted with some parts of my nature that frighten me. I should have stopped following this road then. Fuck, I should have stopped this ages ago. I should have gone home after the Cult stuff, or even after Francesca vanished. But I definitely should have stopped after Skellige. I do not like some of the things that I did there Sammy. I killed a lot of people.”

“Who were trying to kill you Freddie.”

“That doesn't make it any better.”

“It never does.”

“I made more friends in Skellige than I have at any other part of my travels. I should have stopped there. But I was too stubborn. I kept going didn't I and then.... it all fell apart. Body and brain can't take any more.”

Sam nodded and called to a server for another bottle.

“It happens Freddie. I've seen it before in the army. When men just can't see or do or take any more. Brave men shake at the prospect of drawing a sword for training. Men who have medals for valour can't butcher a pig. Who drop what they're doing and just scream.”

He sighed and shook his head. “It's not anything to be ashamed of Freddie.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah I do.” I blew out a breath. “I know it even when people who remind me of Kristoff are there telling me that we should have done better on our way South. When people who are like Father or Sir Robart or any number of childhood bullies or even teenaged bullies or bullies that I encounter even now, are telling me that what I am going through is Cowardice. When they say that I should have done better. That they would have taken that axe of Cavill the younger and split his head with it. Or that I could have done more, saved more people and.... A man, just the other night told me that I was weak for talking about these things. For trying to say that they were alright. He told me that if he had been in the North then not only would he have made it south without the help of the Elves, but that he would have killed those Elves for the vermin that they are.”

Sam said nothing.

“Six months ago, I would have killed him for that. I would have dragged him outside by his ear, demanded that someone gave him a sword and then I would have skewered the bastard. But instead, you know what I did?”

Sam said nothing.

“I fucking burst into tears didn't I. Instead of getting angry, instead of feeling that energy and that drive, I feel the trembling in my fingers, I taste something bitter and metallic in the back of my throat. I start sweating and shaking and I burst into tears.”

Sam still said nothing.

I looked out over the frozen river. There were a group of children skating on it, slipping about and sliding. They were playing some kind of game with sticks where they were using the sticks to hit a ball or a rock of some kind around the ice. To my eyes there seemed to be rules and borders and an etiquette to it but for the life of me I couldn't say what it was.

“I know it's nothing to be ashamed of but nearly everyone else disagrees with me. There are exceptions. Lord Palmerin de Launfall is one, Kerrass, Ariadne, Laurelen too I think. Mark sees it and is compassionate about it but I don't think he understands it. Not really. Emma literally stormed into my room in order to tell me to pull myself together and sort myself out, before I proceed to just go off on one at her. My nurse almost had to bodily set her aside while she sorted me out. She goes through the motions and things but she doesn't understand it. Not really. And she's just as much a product of father's conditioning on this subject as we are.”

I snorted.

“Pull yourself together.” I snarled with as much derision as I could muster. “Man up. Sort yourself out.”

“Oh Flame but he's crying now.” Sam quoted and I nodded. His impression of Dad was always better than mine.

Silence fell for a while. One of the servers brought another bottle and set it down next to a jug of water which Sam used to pour ourselves some drinks.

“I know it's nothing to be ashamed of.” I told him finally. “I know it. People I respect, admire and even Love tell me that it's nothing to be ashamed of. They tell me that it's a product of my body dealing with everything that I have seen and done over the course of the last year. That it's involuntary. That there's nothing I could do about it. That it's the way that the Flame, or whoever you believe in that is responsible for our bodily construction, made us. That this is the way it is. So I know that it's nothing to be ashamed of. I do, I know it.”

My gaze had sunk to the table and I was tracing patterns in the wooden tabletop with my finger.

“But you are ashamed nonetheless.” Sam said softly.

I nodded as the tears finally fell. “Flame curse me for a fool.” I snarled as I wiped the water from my eyes with the back of my sleeve.

“You're not a fool Freddie. Not a fool.” He sighed. “It seems redundant to say that you have done extraordinary things. But you have. It would be extraordinary for anyone to do those things. People are angry with you because you did them and they did not. So they seek to belittle you for doing the thing that they feel ashamed for not doing.” He sighed again. “I can relate to that.” He admitted.

There was another pause. The noise of the children playing on the ice drifted up to us. It would appear that someone had scored a point or something.

“I am sorry for what happened at the castle.” Sam told me. “You were right. What happened to those Elves was shameful and they way we treated them was also shameful. But we... But I could do nothing other than what I did.”

It was my turn to say nothing.

“I have gone over those few moments in my head. Of the two of us yelling. Of Kristoff shouting. The threat of violence, of you, Kerrass, Ariadne and Rickard. Heroes all, standing between my men and the men of various churches. Standing between a group of ragged Elves and the men that were angry at them. I have thought about it and dreamt about it and thought about it again. I've argued with Emma about it and I've yelled at Kristoff about it as well as other men that you haven't met and I am certain, more certain than I am entirely comfortable with, that there was nothing else I could have done. There was no other way round it.”

A dozen responses leapt to my mind and I had to swallow all of them.

“In fact.” Sam went on. “Even if I knew how much of a wedge it would drive between you and I, even though you are the member of the family that I feel closest to. Even if I knew about all of the negative... response that I have received. I would still have been forced to do exactly the same thing. I didn't have a choice.”

I had to swallow my words again and focus on remaining calm.

“And I know,” Sam went on. “I know that you want to yell at me. I know you want to all but scream at me that I had a choice. That it was, and is, my castle and that I can do whatever the hell I damn well like. I have read your account of those events over and over and over again. But this is my turn to tell you that you simply don't get it. Neither you, Emma, Mark, none of you understand what is happening out there in the world because all of you are protected from it.

“You are protected by your fame, influence, who and what your fiancee is and the fact that people often don't know where you are until after you publish your accounts of what you've done. Emma is protected by a vast merchantile network, the influence that brings and the sheer mountains of money that she has at her disposal. Mark is a Cardinal of what is, currently, still the most powerful religious organisation of the North. And I? Little Baron Kalayn in his little patch of land in North Eastern Redania.

“Baron Kalayn with his lands riddle with Heresy. His family history of heresy and abuse. Little Baron Kalayn, not clever enough to be part of the merchant family. Not clever enough to join the church or go to University like his brothers. Not charming enough to go to court like his little sister. Not strong enough, not good enough to stay in the army or make a name for himself with the strength of his sword arm. Coasting to success on the coat tails of his father and the skirts of his sister.

“I have none of the protections that are offered to you or the rest.”

I very nearly told him that he should ask for help. It is the fallacy of those that aren't being bullied. People ask the child, “Why don't you ask for help against the bully?” and the child says. “Because that will make it worse?” And that is the truth. I wanted to tell Sam to ask Emma for help. Ask Mark, fuck, ask me if I can do anything. But Sam wouldn't. Of course he wouldn't. Because then he would make the problem worse.

So instead, I said nothing.

“I had no idea how much everyone hates us.” Sam said after a while. He was resting his elbows on the table and rubbing his hands together, staring off to the side without actually being able to see anything.

“We spent years being educated by Father. When he used to tell us that we would be the first in a new breed of Redanian noble. Where people would learn to look up to us. To emulate us. To want to be us. He told us about how he and his father and his Grandfather had fought and bled and sweated to bring our family out of the gutter. He taught us to believe that we deserved it, and we do, don't get me wrong. He told us that we would be hated by the people around us for being different. For not being descended from the older noble families and that we would have to work that bit harder. Fight that bit harder in order to make our way in the world. Do you remember that?”

“I remember.”

“And I remember taking pride in that. I remember taking pride in the fact that our family had built itself up from nothing. I remember swearing to myself that I was going to carve out a position in the army. That I would fight in the guard and make a name for myself.”

He shook his head.

“Well we all took our lessons from that didn't we. We learned the lesson that he wanted us to learn. A little too well if you ask me when I'm dealing with Emma sometimes. But then we wondered why Father was so angry all the time. Why he was so bitter and frustrated. Why he would drive us to be better and stronger.”

He shook his head and looked me in the eyes for the first time in a while.

“I'm going to share something with you Freddie. This is a horrible thing and I'm a little ashamed of it. But you are the only person that I think I can discuss this with. And I know, I know that this conversation is almost certainly going to end up going into one of your journals. I know it and I'm ok with it.”

I nodded my acknowledgement of that.

Sam took a couple of attempts to talk about it though. It took him a couple of tries to get the words out.

“I.... uhhhh..... I've been.... I find that I've been having some sympathy for Edmund recently.”

I said nothing. I was getting really good at it by this stage.

“It goes with this theory that I've been getting recently as I start to see how the rest of the world views us. I've started to think that Father was not trying to raise children. I think he was trying to forge weapons. I think he was trying to make us all into extensions of himself.

“Some of us were luckier than others. Mark, Emma, Francesca.... me. We all fit into our roles the way that we were supposed to. Mark was the one to go to the church. He was interested and talented for it but you notice that after he did that, father all but ignored him. That was his duty done. Emma was the favourite I think. Dad's only dissappointment was that Emma was a girl. But Emma is the closest out of all of us to Dad's own character.”

“I think you might be a little harsh on Emma there.”

“Am I? Don't get me wrong, I love Emma but when she gets going in one direction. When she gets an idea in her head, there is absolutely no way that you can get her out of it. And woe betide anyone that gets in her way. Believe me, I know.

“I was built for purpose. A soldier born. But once again, other than attending my tournaments and casting a gaze over my training. Father didn't care about martial prowess and he all but ignored me, occasionally getting frustrated with me when I wasn't as good at letters which meant that I wouldn't get as high in rank as he wanted. I was the very least of what he needed. So he could tell his peers that he had sacrificed. That his son was fighting for Redania.

“Same with Mark. That one of his sons was fighting to save everyone's souls. Francesca was a born courtier. She was also exactly what Father wanted her to be and she even went over and above even the best that father could have hoped for. She was supposed to be a marriagable girl in order to attract some princeling, preferably by looks and charm but if not, the kind of dowry that father could offer. So that the Coulthard family could get more and greater connections. All perfect tools, absolutely fit for purpose.”

“But Edmund. And you, but we're not talking about you yet. But he failed with the two of you. He didn't get what he wanted. Edmund was supposed to be Father's clone. He was supposed to be interested in the land and the people on the land and the things that father was doing with the land. He was supposed to be what Emma became. But he wasn't was he. And father got so angry with that that he tried to force the issue. Tried to force Edmund into being something that he wasn't. Whereas if Edmund had been allowed to channel his energy and his restlessness into my role in the family? You remember how good a swordsman he was? Even if he did use it to bully and murder people.” Sam shrugged. “Is there any wonder that it all went wrong.”

“So what was I supposed to be?”

“I suspect that you were supposed to be a girl.”

I laughed. I couldn't help it and even Sam grinned a little bit before he continued.

“I think you were supposed to be a girl. I think you were supposed to be what Francesca eventually became.” He laughed. “You succeeded too. Just not in the way that Father wanted. You bloomed when you started to get out from his shadow and his influence. But I remember him berating you after you got back from the... whichever time that you got rejected by that girl in the place.”

“I remember.”

“And I remember thinking that he was being really harsh although I couldn't have told you why. And I don't think that it was your fault. Leaving aside all of the facts that, back then, you had not grown into yourself yet. You didn't have the confidence, the charm, wit and grace that you have now.”

“You're making me blush.” The conversation was getting lighter and I wanted to encourage the trend.

“I'll kiss you later.” Sam seemed to agree. “But now, looking back, I know something that I didn't know back then. You never stood a chance Freddie. There was no way, even if you were twice as charming, twice as clever and had all of the benefits that you have now. You would never have attracted a bride. Never. Because there is no way. No way on this continent. That any woman that father sent you to court, would ever be allowed to marry you. Because their fathers hated ours.

“Father had almost systematically alienated, insulted and belittled every noble family in Redania and Temeria. Some in Aedirn too from what I hear. So even if you charmed the girl, you weren't going to get married and that wasn't your fault. It was father's. But he blamed you for it. He should only have counted himself lucky that you turned into you and not another Edmund.”

“He would not have let me get away with the stuff that Edmund did. Edmund was the Eldest son and therefore charmed. I will admit that I was not as cut off as I used to think I was. But I was still pretty cut off.”

Sam grunted his understanding of this. “But I'm getting off the point. Until I was named Baron Kalayn, my knowledge of how much the rest of the continent hated us was an intellectual thing. I knew they hated us but I didn't understand it. I didn't feel it.”

He sighed again.

“Well I fucking do now. They hate us Freddie. They hate us a lot and I'm beginning to see how that happened, why and, fuck, there are even some times where I think we deserve to be hated.”

I got the sense of a boil that has just been lanced. That feeling that the first explosion of pain had begun but now the entire thing needs to be squeezed to get all the poison out. It was going to be a process. Long, drawn out and painful, but once it starts, it cannot be stopped.

“Grandfather and father have done extraordinary things. They did amazing things. Things that they can and should have been proud of. But we need to be honest here and now. You and me, with each other. To climb so high, they had to do so by standing on the necks of other people. In order to get as high as they have, they had to climb over business parties, take advantage of people and otherwise be shit to the people that they come across. As I say, they were even using their own children to further their goals. I shudder to think what Father's childhood must have been like.

“Now to the common folk, the people working on their fields and things, that was good. They saw one of their own climbing to unimaginable heights, unthought of, impossible heights. They saw Grandfather confounding, confusing and defeating those merchants that had been screwing them out of the proper price for their wool, tanned hides, beef and wheat for years. Then Grandfather beat them at their own game. Yes he still fucked them over on prices and things but he didn't fuck them quite as hard. And he was one of them. So he didn't resent him for that as much.

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“So Father took up that attitude and used it and the lessons that he had learnt from Grandfather and took it up against the other members of the nobility. He bought out their concerns, he undercut their contracts and he learnt from their mistakes. And then he rubbed it in their faces. He had to. He had to be the baddest bastard on the face of the world. But all those knights, nobles, diplomats and churchmen that he fucked over in order to get where he got to in his life, they remembered.

“He got away with it because he was fucking over the hated nobles. The twisty diplomats and beaurocrats. He confounded the churchmen and when the knights got uppity about how much power he was accumulating he looked at their armour and their weapons and said “That armour was made in my forges by my smiths. It was bought using a loan that I partially financed and it was carried to you on my wagons. So I am forclosing on the loan which means that I want my armour and weapons back please.”

“But he didn't stop there. When the knight backed down, father would carry on. He would tell those uppity people that they were working on his lands. That his wagons got food to his common folk. That Coulthard trading provided the stone, timber and other goods that were needed to build this that and the other thing and all of that could stop. Here and now. It could stop and then, the very real threat was, that Father would offer everything that he had offered those people to the competition. He was the Merchant Baron and what that meant was, that he was for sale.

“And the commonfolk cheered him on. But he was becoming powerful. I've spoken to men that said that if Nilfgaard hadn't invaded for that third time then Radovid would have had to destroy us. That he would have turned up outside Coulthard castle with an army and that we would have been destroyed. Because, unlike just about every other noble at court, Father's wealth and influence was not defined by location and proximity.

If he was exiled then he would still make money and the King would have sent that power and wealth that father commanded, into the pocket of the competition. If he had fined Father, then Father would laugh at him and pay the fine as well as a lot more. If he levied extra taxes then the other nobles would get worried because what could be done to Coulthard family could be done to them. I'm even told that Radovid tried that and the council of Lords shouted him down. And then Father paid it anyway. But Father was becoming a power and if Radovid had survived the war then we would have been dragged out in chains to greet the noose, or worse.”

I said nothing. But this time, I said nothing because I had nothing to say.

Sam continued to stare out over the river while we both waited for the next thought to cross his mind. For the next torrent of sentences to spill forth.

We didn't have to wait long.

“We had no chance at all.” He said after a while. “Father always taught us that it was us against them. That the entire world was out to get us so that they only people that we could realistically depend on was wach other and the people that worked for us. But only each other really. But what he never added was tha the reason that it was against them was because he, and his father, turned them against us.”

“If he hadn't. We wouldn't have had the advantages that come to us.”

“No we wouldn't. But I am sitting here opposite you now Freddie and I am wondering. Would that have been a bad thing?”

“If we didn't have those advantages, then there is the possibility that we wouldn't be here Sam. Literally. Father would not have been able to marry mother because it was his money that meant that he was even remotely close to being accepted in that way.”

“Oh believe me Freddie. I know that there's a difference between dying and never being born. And as I sit there in the North, in a command tent, in someone's hall or even in my own hall and I see the naked hate being levelled at me, being levelled at us and I am not sure that it would be a bad thing.”

“You're being a bit harsh to Dad there Sam.” I told him. “Don't get me wrong, there are still some times where I hate the fucker as well. But he was made the way that he was by his own father as well. I don't really remember Grandad. If I ever knew him at all. But being the child of a self-made man cannot have been fun. I mean, where else would Dad learn how to be a Father if it wasn't from his own father. I notice that we never hear of any Aunts and Uncles on Father's side of the family.”

“No. And that's true. And I will agree that he, and we, are the products of what all that made us. But we have continued his legacy. We have kept going with it. We are even more hated now than he ever was and that hatred is only getting worse. The name of Coulthard is snarled at, spat and pissed on. People hate us Freddie. They hate us. They want to hurt us just to watch us bleed.”

There were tears in his voice then. A rasp that I hadn't heard in his voice since I had struggled to teach him how to properly form the letter “u” with a pen.

He must have heard it too because he laughed at himself.

“Honestly, I'm this close, just this close to telling Mark to do what Emma wants him to do and to pass the title down to you. I will be happy being Baron Kalayn in my relatively small patch of North Eastern Redania and leave you to all the nonsense and horror.”

“Flame, don't give it to me.” I shuddered as theatrically as I could. “I don't want it. What would I do with it?”

“Which is exactly the same as how I feel.” He replied. “Where do we go from here except to get bigger and bigger until we might as well be a nation in and of ourselves. I've read your journals and Emma is right. We can't do anything other than to keep doing what we're doing. If we are going to preserve what we have then we need to keep growing and keep on keeping others down. The hatred of others will only get worse towards us and I don't know if I can live with that.”

“Sam, you can change that.” I told him. “I'm going to be off in Angral. Ariadne's well established there. We don't offer anything that Coulthard lands don't already do and better so we're not exactly going to be a vital part of the company. When you're in charge you can do that.”

He shook his head. “The damage is already done Freddie. I can't fix it, I'm part of the problem. We...” he gestured at the two of us, “are part of the problem. We're looking up at the hole and wondering how we got down here, despite the fact that we dug that hole for ourselves.”

“I gotta admit Sam, I don't really see how we got ourselves down in this hole.”

“Don't you? You are one of the major parts of the family that dug it. It was your journals that got Francesca into the Empress' presence. It was your journals that started to make us all famous. We are hated and we did this to ourselves.”

“I just don't see it Sam.”

He stared at me. “You can't see that we're hated or that you can't see why we're hated.”

“I can see that we're hated. But I'll be honest....”

“It's that we have a habit, a recurring habit, that we like to show people how wrong and how stupid they are. We also follow that with rubbing our successes in their faces and when we've done with that. We will throw another thing at them where we show them just how wrong. Just how... entrenched they all are. We throw insult after insult after insult at them and sooner or later this is going to blow up in our faces. We are rushing headlong into the way of things, pushing, always pushing without seeing all of the consequences that we are sewing for ourselves. All the danger that we are putting into our future.

“We are like the proverbial Bulls in the glassware shop. Mark goes from a fairly standard priest. The kind that you can find in churches and halls all over the continent. And then he gains prominence. And you can't tell me that the reason that he gained prominence is because of his growing fame and the families growing coffers. The church is just as much of a money driven organisation as anyone. And they wanted the influence and the money that the Coulthard family offers. You can't tell me that that isn't the case Freddie. You just can't. And I notice that his promotions didn't happen until he became Baron Coulthard and that you made him famous with your travel journals.

“Emma is head of, now, the biggest merchant company in the North. There's no-one to touch her. And she is ruthless with it. She will say that she has to be. You would say that in order to defend her. And you would be right. But think about some of her actions and the way that they will upset and infuriate people. She's openly gay. She was outed in Oxenfurt by the actions of de Radford and the demands of the watch. So they did that and so it was pointless to try and hide it. So you were right in making that public because, if you're going to be untradtional or eccentric then you need to jump in with both feet. But do you have any idea how many people she upsets just be being who she is?”

I gave him the answer that he wanted and shook my head.

“Neither do I. But it's a lot. So many people being angry because every day, she shows the world and all of the misogynists in it that women can be just as powerful and stong as the men that they go up against. She shows their wives and their daughters that men are not really needed and that terrifies them.

“But that's not all she's done. She's forged alliances with powerful people. She's on first name terms with the Empress. I understand that the Empress even intends to make her Imperial Chancellor of the Exchequer. A job for which she's eminently suited which is going to entail her telling even more stuffy old men what to do. That is not going to win her any friends.”

“Other than the Empress.”

“But that comes with it's own risks. It's easy to forget that we are a conquered people. Not everyone likes that and the fact that we are ruled over by a woman does not sit well everywhere. Not even in the majority of places. The Empress cannot protect Emma from a knife in the dark. And that was before Emma started to turn Oxenfurt docks into the Coulthard docks. Just how angry do you think that Novigrad is with us now? We have taken our business out of their docks. Thus depriving them of their taxes and tarrifs. Depriving the market sellers and shop keepers of Novigrad our goods. Instead they have to pay out to go to Oxenfurt.”

“Oxenfurt likes us.”

“But Oxenfurt doesn't have it's own religion, nor does it have, all but, it's own army. Nor is it as rich as Novigrad. If all the merchants and nobles of Novigrad put it's money together to hire a mercenary army to raze Oxenfurt to the ground. Then they could and the mercenaries wouldn't even notice that they've just rolled over Oxenfurt. Only to dissappear in the wind. Yes, Oxenfurt will love us. But not as much as you might think. We own the docks. So instead of having to pay a tax or a tarif to the city to use the docks. They have to pay us. So they're not the Oxenfurt docks any more. They're our docks. That sort of thing does not exactly inspire friendship and love Freddie. In fact it inspires the opposite.”

There was an answer to all of this growing in my head, a response, an argument against it all. But I really did think that there was a lot of this stuff that Sam needed to get this off his chest. So I meant to let him.

“And then there is you.” He said. You, who have made us famous in circles other than our own. Our own personal little propaganda machine. You travel the world and you elevate those people who society have kept down. You put down those that society has lifted up. You outed Emma and Laurelen for the world to see. It has to be said that if you had outed my secret lover in such a way then I would have fucking strangled you. But you also, somehow, made it acceptable.

“You overturned years, a century even of stable Southern Territories by freeing Sleeping Beauty. You interfered in the civil war in Angraal. A place that no-one, including me, had ever heard of until you started writing about it. So suddenly it's not the other parts of the Pontar delta that have the fame and fortune. People know about Flotsam and Angren and places but they think of those as lesser. The one a jungle swampland pitted with corruption and urban decay. And the other a site of a haunted battlefied and the rumoured site of a royal lynching.

“It's Angral that is the central spot of the Pontar delta now. It is them that are seeing appropriate growth and it is you that has done that.

“Over and over again. Every time you publish something in that magazine of yours you upset people. You attack the status quo. You protected the Elves and belittled those people that tried to lessen them. I can go on and on and on.”

“Ok.” I said, putting my hand up to stop the flow. I will admit that I had wanted to wait a bit longer before interrupting but it's much harder to hear about your own faults than it is to hear about the faults of other people.

“Ok. All of that is true. And I will admit that I have a tendency to speak first and worry about consequences later which means that I also have a tendency to write first and ask questions later. But here is my counter to all of those arguments. Are you ready?”

“You're going to say that we're right aren't you.” Sam sighed, deflated.

“I am. All of the examples that you have given me are examples where we did the right thing. All of us. Even you and I noticed that you haven't talked about yourself in listing the family's faults yet.”

“Oh, I'm the worst of all of us.” He snarled, a little bitterly. “Like Edmund. Not clever enough, charming enough or... anything else to make my own way. Being pulled along on the coat-tails of Emma, you, Mark and Francesca. I got named Baron Kalayn by fluke.”

“Which you inherited legally.”

“So we say. And so the Empress' courts say. But not according to general people. I'm just saying what others are thinking here.”

“Ok, carry on with the way people talk about us then.”

“I got in the army with Father's money rather than my own talent. It was you that found and rooted out all the heresy, not me. Both in the North and around Oxenfurt. It was Francesca that got us an in to the imperial Court and earned us the ear of the Empress. It was Emma that grew the business. I did none of those things. What did I do? I prevented the Elves from getting the help that they needed. That they deserved.”

“You're being unfair on yourself Sam. Or they are... Whichever. You fought in a war. I did not. Neither did anyone else in the family. You fought in a war. I served, so did Mark in the way that the church did. But you fought and I know the argument that you yourself have made that the loss was down to other people. But that is the point. You fought the Empire to a standstill. You and the people like you. You forced the Emperor to the negotiating table.

“And if we're talking about the cult issues. If you had not led us into the North in the first place. Then what people are calling the greatest heresy that the North has seen since the, incorrect, worship of the Lionhead broke out, would not have been destroyed. You led us there. I did not. You could have stayed in Novigrad, around Oxenfurt or wherever the fuck and just collected the rents from your lands to set yourself up. But you didn't. You led us all North, you put those spirits to rest and you rooted out the evil that was found.

“I could not have done what I did without someone stable to get back to. I might have done everything that I did but if I had made it back to a weaker base then everything could have been brushed under some rug because no-one wants to admit that there was widespread heresy amongst the nobles in the North. You brought that to everyone's attention. I might have made it famous. But you did that. You organised the defense of your lands and your people. Not me.... and fucking definitely not Kristoff.

“You have done great things as well Sam. Great things. So don't let anyone try and tell you that what you have done is small or that what we, as a family have done is wrong.”

“I'm not as good at arguing that Freddie. You and Mark are the debaters and the arguers. Emma is the clever one. If Father had summoned me before his seat to tell me that everything I believed was wrong. That I would do something else that I didn't want to do. That I must change myself in order to attract women that had no insterest in me.”

“All the things that he did to me you mean.”

“Yeah. Precisely. If he had done all of that to me. I would have believed that he was right. I would have done that work. I would have changed myself and studied what he told me to study and when I failed, which I would have done...”

“Same as what I would have done.”

“Yeah. When I failed, I would have seen that as a failure of myself because that is what Father would have told me. There was no room in me to see different. When I am sat here with you and you explain it to me. You explain that the Elves led by Chireadean deserve plaudits, land, money and everything that we can give them. I agree. Wholeheartedly. When you point out that what Mark is preaching is actually the most tradiitonal form of the teachings of the Eternal Fire. I can see that. I really can. I know that the admonitions against female debauchery and anti-magic sentiments are recent additions to the sacred texts. I know that Emma is running a business and that she, that we, cannot defend ourselves from others with money unless we have money of our own.

“I know that the Novigrad dock system was corrupt and that the position there was untenable. I know that Robart de Radford is a petty little man that wants to destroy us in general and you in particular because you showed the world just how stupid, incompetent, petty and cowardly he is. I know all of these things. While I am sat here with you. But when I'm sat in a campaign tent in Northern Redania and I hear about all the people that we, as a family, have stomped on to get where we are? When people who I respect that are of a higher rank than me tell me that the Elves are scum and that they will not help me if I harbour the Elves, then what am I supposed to do?”

He shook his head.

“Did you know that de Radford has a sister?” he wondered.

“I did not, but, to be truthful. I didn't really care.”

“And that, right there is why people hate us.” He told me. “We don't care. We trample through lives, righting wrongs and fighting for agendas whether that's the return to the tradional by Mark or the advancing to the progressive in terms of you and your championing of non-humans and magical people. I agree, that both need to happen. For peace and for the general benefit of everyone. Both need to happen. But what we don't care about is the people that we hurt in the mean time.

“You don't care that the fact that your pointing out of de Radford's cowardice and corruption means that his sister, an otherwise nice lady by the way, has been ostracised by society. She is never going to get a suitor and as such, she is going to die alone and unloved.”

“That's not my fault. Nothing would have happened if her brother hadn't...”

“But you didn't just defeat him. You jumped up and down on him. It's not just you either. Emma has destroyed numerous merchantile endeavours. Bankrupted numerous merchants. What about their families? Now that is competition, I agree. But then she jumps up and down on them to make sure that they never get back on to their feet. Mark with his rivals in the church and me...”

“You pointed out earlier that I didn't talk about my own faults or talk about the things that I have done to make these things worse and you are right. I did not. What did I do? I agreed with you. I didn't tell Emma to calm down a bit. I didn't tell Mark to just chill out a bit or call you out when you spout some of your more... biased writing. Because you are Freddie.”

“Of course I am. No-one isn't. I am a historian and the first thing that you learn is that you cannot separate the person from the context. You cannot take away what I am saying or seeing from the measure that it has taken.”

“But you don't care Freddie. You don't.... You remember that knight that found you first on the mound. The one that you and Rickard, quite rightly, told that you weren't going to go with them. I know why you... and I definitely know why Rickard didn't permit you to go off with strangers. But he was just a young lad. Caught up in tales of glory. And then when he was rebuked by you he went back and you rebuked the churchmen that came up to support him. All of that was right. But then you named him, named the churchmen as well and then you humiliated them in print.

“You didn't need to do that Freddie. You didn't need to hold that... boy.... up to ridicule and abuse by your readers. Did you know that he killed himself. He was recalled by his father and yelled at. He was a figure of ridicule by others, including the women that he was sent to court and at the end of the day, he could no longer take it and he killed himself. Did you know that?”

“I did not.” I admitted.

“Would you care?”

“Fuck off Sam.” I snarled. “Just fuck off. I'm not going to take the blame for that. I might deserve some of that but we can blame each other all day for the things that have gone wrong. All fucking day. He was brought up to be that way. He was taught to be that way. By his arrogant uncle or whoever the churchman was. He was taught to be that, by his parents and the noble institution that made him that way. He deserved knocking on his ass and learning some humility. And then, after that, I was not his parents, his friends or the women that he hoped to marry that berated, laughed at and humiliated him. I might have been the fist stone in the rockslide, but I did not pile the rocks so precariously. Nor did I keep pushing them down hill when any number of people could have stepped in to stop them. Including me. That is not my fault Sam and you know that. I interacted with him for less than an hour and he did nothing to tell me that he had any remorse, nor his family for that matter, indeed as I recall, they kept coming after Kerrass, Rickard and I.”

We sat in uncomfortable silence for a while. One of the guards who keep peace in the place was watching the pair of us closely.

“I'm sorry Freddie.” He said. “I didn't want to go off on you. I didn't even mean to. I've spent almost all the time in the field since you left, listening to people pick apart what the family has done. What we have done and what we are doing. Listening to people blame us. You said it yourself once, we can only listen to too much of that stuff before we start to believe it.”

“Then you need to hang out with a better class of people Sam.” I told him, swallowing my own anger. Now that it was leaving me I began to feel the first of the small shivers in my fingers and I took a deep drink.

“I don't have a choice.” He said. “You live near Oxenfurt. Where Coulthard power is centralised. You are going to live in Angral where the people love you and your bride to be. I live in the North. Where our neighbours hate me. I need them. I need their trade and I need them not to raid me. That was what I was confronted with when you came back with the Elves. Churchmen that would have cast me out for helping the Elves. Nobles and military men who would have deserted me for supporting the Elven scourge.”

“Raid them back.” I told him.

“I can't. I have to be whiter than white. If I raid my neighbours then they will all unite against me and come to destroy me.”

I nodded my acceptance. “You could ask for help Sam. Emma could hire mercenaries. Ciri could order decrees.”

“I can't ask for their help Freddie. Emma hates me and... asking help from the Empress of Nilfgaard?” He shuddered. “I have to work at it, this is not a joke, I have to work at it not to think of you and Emma as a traitors for working with Nilfgaard and being friends with the Empress. I am a soldier.”

“It's called using allies Sam. We're fighting for our survival. We're not just working for our views, we're fighting to survive.”

“Why is it a fight. Why do you need to fight so hard?”

“Because we're under attack Sam. Someone came and took Francesca from us. We were attacked. We are still being attacked. You are being attacked by these neighbours that are trying to beat you down. I am being attacked... a little by you at the moment I feel...”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...”

I waved him off.

“Mark is dying and his rivals are rubbing their hands together with glee at the prospect of his death so they can fight over his remains. People are coming after Emma even as she works to make people's lives better. Not perfectly I will agree. I am sick and people harrangue me every day for that perceived weakness and because I champion the cause of people who literally saved my life. Those Elves, Ariadne, Kerrass and more have saved my life Sam. How do you feel about those other soldiers who have saved your life Sam?”

“I would die for them.”

“Precisely. So the least I could do is defend them from the people, like that young knight and his churchman uncle, who came to attack those Elves. To Defend Rickard and Kerrass from people like Kristoff who wanted them both hanged. If people come at us, we defend ourselves. That is what we are doing. I agree with you that we might need to be a bit more sensitive to the people that we have made enemies of. But I know that Emma has taken in a lot of the merchant companies that she has destroyed and offered the workers, and owners, jobs.

“Mark is preaching the Eternal Fire. The original, purest forms of those words. Over and over again, the people that are against him are the people that would burn Emma, my best friend, my fiancee and plenty of others that have saved me, at the stake.”

Sam smirked. “I would like to see them burn Ariadne. That would be funny.”

I did not laugh. “But that they would try. And all that anyone has to do to get a good write up from me is to not be an asshole. To not attack the people that I care about. And I have defended and elevated as many humans as I have non-humans. Helfdan is not Jarl because of me. He and his people did that for themselves.”

“I guess...”

“Do you want to see me sort this out right now?” I growled. “Do you want to see me marshal all of the things that you rail against on your behalf. Do you wanna see what happens when you go back to Kalayn lands with the backing of the Lodge of Sorceresses, Toussaint trade, Skelligan mercenaries, Emma's support, Mark's support, you wanna see what happens when you stop fighting us and let us help you. You wanna see what happens to your lands when Elven fighters, sworn to you and trained by Rickard,start to patrol your woodland and keep your villagers safe? We are on your side Sam.”

“Emma doesn't seem to agree.”

“Because you are fighting her. I yelled at her about the same thing. I told at her to stop trying to order you around and instead to try and help you with what you want to achieve. You need to work together, not against each other.”

“I suppose so.”

“Sam. Whether you like it or not, you are going to be Lord Coulthard in a year's time. Eighteen months at most. At that time you're going to have to learn to work with her.”

His eyes flashed. “When I'm Lord Coulthard, she will have to learn to work with me.”

“It goes both ways Sam. Emma is indispensible in this case. You can't do it without her. No-one else holds it all in her head. She knows where everything is and knows how to make it all work with all the legal wrangling and the contracts that need to be honoured. Never forget that.”

His eyes went thoughtful at that.

“So you need to get her on side.” I went on. “I will help where I can and I have told her the same thing. You have an interesting perspective on what is happening and yes, alright, we need to hear some of these things. But we are not your enemy and we can help you. We have been fighting back since we lost Francesca and we need each other more than ever. It was made clear to me that Mark and Emma were terrified that they are losing me and I shiver to think how close I was to being lost. But it's true of you as well. We love you Sam. We can't lose you as well.”

“I know.” He said. “And I'm sorry. I've just.... I see it all you know. I see the way we tend to treat people and I've had Emma turn that on me. When she thought you had been lost she was so angry with me that she cast me as the villain. I got a glimpse as to what it's like from the other side. I saw how frightening we are as a family.”

“And we need that perspective Sam.”

He nodded. Then he laughed.

“So how was Yule?”

We both laughed. “As an effort to change subjects, I've heard worse.” I told him.

“I'm done Freddie. I need a holiday. You are right. Of course you are. We need to talk more. As a family we need to talk more and we need to have a gathering where we aren't all coming together for a funeral, or because one of us is sick, or missing or because we are honouring the dead or missing. We need a happy event.”

“Hey man. I'm working on it. Got a wedding coming up.”

He laughed at me. “I'm looking forward to it. I will even try to say something nice to that Empress of yours.”

“She's your Empress too Sam.”

“I know. But I spent a not small part of my life fighting against everything that she represents. Men in black armour with the golden sun on their chests killed a lot of friends of mine. And I know that they did so on the commands of her father and I know that she is not that person. I even know that she is from the North, but I can't forget holding my best friend as he died after his guts were pulled out of his stomach. You know? I'm going to struggle to think of her as a friend, let alone an adopted sister.”

There was another uncomfortable silence, before he grinne at me. “But seriously though. How was Yule?”

I laughed at the memory.

“It was... It was the most Yule-like festival you could imagine. Ariadne pulled out all the stops to make her first Yule as part of the family as special as possible. But she also did so as an outsider. So she was going through the motions without entirely understanding them.”

Sam laughed appreciatively.

“We did it as porperly as we could.” I told him. “We had a large tree in the corner of the receiving area which Ariadne insisted that we decorate. We dressed up in costumes and gave each other gifts, all the while Ariadne was watching everything to make sure that we were all doing it properly out of the definitions of the festival that she had got out of a story book. She kept asking whether or not this was right or whether we were doing it wrong. We burnt the log and made plans for the following year which was a little poignant on the grounds that there was no certainty that Mark was going to be there the following year. But on the other hand, there was the promise that Ariadne and I were finally going to get married.

“There was one uncomfortable moment where Ariadne admitted that one of the things that she was really looking forward to was the fact that she and I finally get to sleep together. She said so in this really brutal and crude language that made Mark blush and Emma laugh. While also making me feel desperately uncomfortable.”

Sam was laughing. “But also rather aroused right?”

“More than somewhat.” I admitted. I was only hiding part of the truth from Sam. A truth which he now knows which is that Ariadne was actually distracting us all from the bleakness of the situation. Mark had just admitted that he probably wasn't going to be there this time next year and that even if he was, it was unlikely that he would be entirely aware as to what was going on. We had all stood around looking a little unhappy before Ariadne had punctured the seriousness of the situation by making crude jokes about our marital night.

“We also nearly had a fight over who was going to carve the roast ready for dineer.” I went on. “Tradition says that it's the man of the house. But there isn't one. Ariadne refused and declared that I should do it. But I still work at thinking of myself as a guest. We aren't married yet and I deferred to Mark. Who said that he wasn't of the household. In the end, Kerrass did it. On the grounds that he was better with a knife than the rest of us put together.”

“I bet he fucked it up.” Mark was laughing at the image.

“On the contrary. He managed to carve the slimmest, thinest slices of roast that you or I have ever had the fortune to see. It was absurd. And he did it really quickly as well. With a speed that was more than a little intimidating.

“But we ate too much, we drank too much, we wore the silly hats and gave each other gifts.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“It wasn't all fun and games though.” I told him. “We went to church in the morning at Ariadne's insistence. I suspect that that is a duty that I am not going to be getting away from ever again. As it's a thing in Angral that the Lord of the Manor goes to church on the morning of Yule. We also took parcels of food out to the villages and farmsteads on Ariadne's land. Spending a bit of time with all fo the major groups of houses. In all truth, it was actually a busy day.”

“Good though?”

“It was. It was a good day and if that is the model for how it's all going to work moving forwards, then I am alright with that.”

I took a deep breath.

“We missed you though.” I told him.

“Yes. Well...” He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I would just have been in the way. Emma and I would have...”

“Sorry Sam, no.” I said it as gently as I could. “We love you and we missed you at Yule. Ariadne is a good woman and a good host and she would have seen to it that you had a good time. Emma also expressed a dissappointement that you couldn't be there and wanted you to be there with us. So did Mark. We missed you and we wanted you to be there. And even if Emma had tried to pick a fight or to talk about business with this and that then Ariadne woould have been furious with her. She was so focused on making sure that our first Yule as a family was as good as it could be that she would not have allowed work or arguments to come between us all. She just wouldn't have it. As it was... Heh.”

I laughed at a memory. “Laurelen gave Emma a new diary. Beautiful thing it is. This huge, leatherbound volume with each day of the year broken down into a page with the opposite page having space for notes that come up for things to remember on this day or that. She'll show it to you later. Remember to look surprised and to make appreciative noises over it as it must have cost a fortune. But no sooner had Laurelen given it to her, along with a new set of Quills and an ink pot, that Emma was off and working in the new book. Ariadne snatched both out of her hands and hid them until the following day saying that there was no work to be done on Yule.”

Sam shifted his weight a little as he enjoyed the story.

“I thought you were going to guilt trip me about it being Mark's last Yule.”

“I was tempted.” I told him. “But I thought that that would be a little over the top and beneath me. And Mark deserves better than to be used as a weapon to make you feel guilty. Do you feel guilty?”

“A little. It was a hard choice to make.” He took a deep breath. “The north is very fragile at the moment. Adda, the Bitch-Queen-Regent, is making our lives hell. Playing us all of against each other for her own amusement.”

“You wanna be careful about how you say that sort of thing.”

“Oh, Adda knows what I think of her, what we all think of her. You want to give The Empress some advice to make her popular in the North. Tell her to sort Adda out and stop her from playing her little games. It would instantly secure The Empress' to us all. Instantly. Including mine. I would kiss her slippered feet after she had gone walking through a pig pen.”

“Sounds a bit strong.”

“Adda's bored. Bored, abused and more than a little mad. Years as a monster, followed by years of being spoiled within an inch of her life, followed by a year or two of relatively happy marriage before Radovid's new found piety and slow decent into madness meant that she was abused and all but imprisoned in a castle with some not very nice people. Don't get me wrong, she's had an awful life but that is no excuse for how she behaves now. She entertains herself by playing the Lords of Northern Redania, not Southern Redania and the people around the Pontar that the rest of the world cares about. But those of us in the North that are neither famous or fashionable. She amuses herself by putting one of us against the other with the promise of being taken into her bed. Of wedding bells which would turn is into the crown regent while we get to properly bring up that child of hers.”

“I thought that Ciri had insisted that the Prince be properly educated and fostered elsewhere.”

“She did and I am grateful for that. But the country still needs ruling. And with the destruction of all those heretics and their lands reverting to the state. The North of Redania has devolved into this, den of vipers as we all claw each other's eyes out to try and get a bit more for ourselves. Borders of lands are being redrawn on the maps as we speak. So I needed to be in the North to fight my cause.”

He sighed.

“You are right. We are under attack and we must fight back whenever we can. I have to fight just to keep the land that I have, let alone anything else. I must play politics and be suitably pious all the time. I have to suck up to the Queen Regent and I have to use all of those sneaky underhanded tricks that I know we both hate to use and I'm just not as good as I should be. I've sat in on meetings where men try and carve up my lands so that their sons could get a bit more for themselves.”

“Sam, I hate to say it. But everything you are telling me just proves how right I am about everything else. You wanna see those problems melt away. Let us help you. You don't even have to ask.”

“I wanted to do this by myself Freddie. I wanted to have this one thing that no-one else could touch. To have this thing that the family didn't give me or that I could prove that I did it by myself.”

“None of us.... Sam, nothing that any of us have, is not given to us by the family. And there is no shame in asking for help.”

“Not everyone agrees with you.”

“And those people are wrong. And when they insult you then we fucking destroy them as well.”

Mark said nothing to that.

“It is true that I also wanted to spend time with my people.” He told me.

I nodded to show that I accepted his efforts to change the subject. “How are they doing?”

“They still set a watch.” He told me. “There are still mists that come down off the mountain and when that happens, they flee indoors and no-one can ever find them. They still mark the faces of their children and they still wait for that day that the Hounds return.”

He sighed, a little sadly. “The roads are properly patrolled now. We have helped them rebuild and we have done many many things in an effort to make them feel safe. But it just isn't helping. The fact that their medicine woman betrayed them still causes a lot of pain. They trusted her and she was selling them out. More than a few people took that hard and, unfortunately, it means that there is a renewed hatred for Elves in that area. And yes, before you complain, that is despite the Elves that ensure the destruction of the cult.”

I grunted at that.

“A few things that you will be amused to hear about though. Father Trent still lives there. He took over that chapel that Father Gardan used to live in and the building has been expanded and rebuilt. He actively campaigns to turn Gardan into a Saint.”

“I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that Sam. He fought for the good of things, but he did a lot of evil at the same time. He deserved better than what he got but sainthood? At this stage?”

“There is still a strong anti-non-human sentiment in the church around us. He will probably succeed. And although I can understand where you are coming from on that regard. It will do us good to have a saint on our soil. Trent tells me that there have been massive numbers of converts to the Eternal Fire, but that no-one comes to church.”

I nodded. “So they're hedging their bets. Converting because they think that it will help them win favour with you.”

“Yeah. I wish I knew what I could do to help them. So one of the things that I had to try was that I would spend a winter with them. I wouldn't rush off to court or to the centre of civilisation and therefore be running away from them. I would share their burdens and share their lives. Even if it was only for a little while.”

“Did it work?”

“A little.” He sighed and scratched his head. “It's going to take a long time. A long time. And I owe it to them to do everything that I can to help.”

“Then let us help you.” I told him. “For them as much as for anything. Offer some advice?”

“Sure.” He sighed and shrugged.

“Hold a festival or something. Something to celebrate the destruction of the cult. Full works, have a massive party. Give them something to celebrate.”

He nodded. “It's not a bad idea.”

We chatted a bit about various things that he could do to help out in his lands. I offered ideas, some of which he had thought of, some of which he thought were good ideas and some needed some work. It was fun and went a long way to dismiss some of the shadows that had come over us. We brain-stormed some things for a while before he looked at the sky to see where the sun was and rose to his feet.

“Well, fun though this is and I thank you for it. Is it time to go up to the castle. Time to face Emma and the rest.”

I caught him by the wrist. “That's not why I brought you here.” I told him. “We needed to air things out and we've had a lot to talk about.”

He sat down, frowning slightly. “I feel better as well Freddie. I guess that we need to put some work into it to get closer again but...”

“Sam.” I said gently. “We can talk about that stuff over the next few days. We will work and we will talk. And the same will happen with you and Emma and Mark. But that's not why we're sat in a Tavern away from where people will hear us. Lets face it. We could have talked about all of that up in the palace in our rooms. It would have been much warmer and much more comfortable for a start. But I didn't want you to go in there unprepared.”

“What's going on Freddie?”

“You need to know just how the people of Toussaint are treating Francesca. Because otherwise it will slap you in the face and I wish that someone had warned the rest of us.” I smirked at a thought. “It has not exactly helped with my recovery.”

“Ok.” That wasn't all and Sam knows me well enough to have seen that.

“And there's something else.”

“What?”

I took a deep breath to suppress a shudder.

“Freddie, are you alright?”

“Flame no. And just to warn you, I'm getting really fucing sick of people asking me that.”

He smirked a little.

“It's just,” I went on. “This is the first time I've had to talk about this to someone who doesn't already know what's happening.”

I concentrated on breathing in and out for a minute. “Ok, here goes. Let's start with Toussaint.”

I told him about the museum and the statues and the poems and the music. His face was a patchwork of anger, outrage and some other emotions that I couldn't quite read properly, but he was waiting for the punchline.

“I'm sure it's all horrible Freddie and I will take my justifiable rage out on someone as soon as I find someone to be angry at where I don't think I'm being unfair. But what's going on. You look as though you've seen a ghost and that it's just walked across your grave.”

“Funny story about that actually....”

“Dammit Freddie.”

I took another breath. I was actually shaking. I frowned at my hand as it trembled. I made a fist with it and squeezed as tightly as I could before I let go. The shaking was still there.

“You know how...” I swallowed and took another run at it. “You know how one of the reasons that we were going to Angral over the winter was that Kerrass wanted to look around. Now that we knew more about the cult in the North, more about the magic involved in Francesca's death. You know all of that?”

“Yeah, so? As I recall it was mostly meant as something for Kerrass to do while you and Ariadne stared into each other's eyes all lovey dovey like. So he wasn't a completely fifth wheel on the wagon.”

I nodded and swallowed. “Well, while I was doing my best to shake my skeleton out of my skin after everything that has happened over the course of the year. Kerrass was out and about. It got a bit bleak after we left Skellige and... well... it might be better if you get that part of the story from someone else. We consulted someone else on what was happening and she turned out to be as helpful as everyone else has been during our search and investigation into what happened with Francesca. I did not take it well and Kerrass made a problem worse until I snapped. What you're seeing here is me recovering from that.... snapping.”

I shuddered violently.

“Freddie, do you need something.”

“Tea. Strong with lots of honey in it please.” My teeth chattered with the trembling as I spoke.

Sam called a server over and directed her as to what he wanted.

I just focused on breathing for a little while longer. “Our logic was tenuous.” I hadn't intended to speak, nor had I any realisation that I was going to start or what I was going to say when I did start to speak. “After the news that the magic that was used to take her was ancient and alien we were seeking advice elsewhere. That didn't get us anywhere and in the cold logic of the morning light, we didn't actually think it was going to get us anywhere. But that didn't stop it hurting every time someone made us jump through hoops in order to tell us that they still didn't know anything. A Unicorn, a Druid, A Goddess and more.

“But then another thought occurred. The guys that had attempted to enslave Ariadne in order to overthrow the Duke of Angraal, had been trying to use ancient magic rituals from an ancient time and place. And as we were going to be there anyway, we reasoned, why not look into it while we were there. There was not a great chance that we were going to find anything but, “hey” we thought. “Worth a shot.”

“And Kerrass was in disgrace for literally and figuratively throwing me to the wolves.”

“What did he do?”

“He exposed me to an ancient and powerful being. And when that experience turned out to be massive and overwhelming, he just left me to it rather than trying to help me to come to terms with it. That's making a massive and long story, very short though so...”

“I get it. You're trying to get to the point.”

“Trying being the operative word there. So after Ariadne threw him out....”

“Ariadne threw him out?”

“Yeah it was a whole thing. But after she threw him out, he went looking as an effort to redeem himself and to come to terms with the thing that he had done. And, well, he found something.”

“Fuck me.” Sam breathed. “After all this time.”

We sat in silence for a while. The server brought me my tea. There is nothing that makes you feel quite so small as having to use both hands to hold a cup of liquid so that you don't shake that liquid all over your shirt.

“I'm almost afraid to ask but,” Sam began.

I had leant back, my eyes had closed out of reflex while I waited for the tea to work it's magic and to help me calm down. I forced my eyes open and gazed at Sam. He was sat, leaning on the table with his elbows as his eyes darted this way and that. I recognised that pose. Sam was thinking furiously.

“Don't get too excited.” I told him. “It wasn't much. Not very much at all, but it might be something. It just might be something.” I sighed, taking another deep breath as I remembered that distant farm house where Kerrass had told me the story. Where he had been so worried about me as he did so. I shivered with the cold that was not in Toussaint and I saw, again, Kerrass' shame.

“I had given up Sam, I really had. I had set all of it aside. It took everything I had to set Francesca aside after all the damage that it had done to me and to the people that I cared about. I had set it aside and there Kerrass was, telling me that he might have found something and he didn't even know what it was that he had found.”

Flame but I was in tears again. I was sat on the bench and I had curled my hands into fists and pushed them into my eyes. I could not get that image out of my head. A barn, Kerrass and his look of shame. He had supported my decision, promised to help me with what I had decided to do and then he had shown me that thing that might get me on the road again.

“Freddie.” Sam put his arm round me. “Freddie,”

“Fuck's sake.” I growled, suddenly furions with myself for the tears.

“You don't have to do this now Freddie.”

“Yes I do.” I told him.

There's a trick to it. It takes time and I haven't entirely got the hang of it yet. But it goes like this. You have to unclench yourself. You have to focus on your breathing and make sure that it's as regular as you can make it. You have to keep calm and then you have to calm the blood rushing through your veins.

Believe it or not, it was actually getting easier.

“What Kerrass was doing.” I told him. “What he was doing was he was talking to those survivors of Dorme's lands. Those men and women that had been with Dorme,”

“You called him Lord Fuck-face as I recall.”

“Yes. Because that way, his name has less power over me. I still shiver when I think of how close I came to shitting my insides out with the poison that he gave me.”

According to what Sam said later. I was speaking quite normally while the tears ran down my face and I shook violently.

“But the theory went that Dorme was trying to contact those powers so that he could properly subjucate Ariadne. Our theory went that Dorme...”

“Call him Fuck-face.” Sam said with a little venom.

“Our theory was that... Fuck-face did not have the connections to get hold of that power by himself. Therefore someone must have got it for him. Someone must have taught him those skills. It was a question that the church and the Lodge of Sorceresses and the rest have asked the people of Angral before. But the theory was that Kerrass might have seen more, know more or recognise more. Especially after all the things that we had seen and done since then. After all, back there and back then, he had other things on his mind.”

“Like your survival for instance.”

The trembling was beginning to subside.

“So Kerrass was talking to the people that had survived with Do... Fuck-Face the longest. Most of them recognised him of course and had no fear of him. Now that he had some more context to ask his questions, he was able to find a Shepherd out in the middle of nowhere that was able to give him some information.”

Sam said nothing so I just kept talking.

“Dorme was part of a cult. He was the leader of it. We know that he was not a true believer because we were able to interrogate some of his followers. He was in it for the power that it gave him, going through the motions. We knew that he “worshipped” with other people that would come and go. The little knights and younger sons that had accompanied him on his efforts to overthrow the Duke and it was here that Kerrass was trying to emphasise things. “So he found this shepherd. The Shepherd had been a groom or something close to the former manor house. His wife had been taken and... used as part of an early ritual and she had been discarded. The Shepherd had seen which way the wind was going and had taken his now broken wife and fled into the mountains. His parents had been shepherds and as such he knew all the secret sheep paths and things. Fuck-face didn't follow. A little groom and his, to Fuck-face and his shadow of a cult, used up and broken woman posed no threat. Who would believe a Shepherd and his damaged bride when they accused Fuck-Face of... all the things that they did.”

“The arrogance of some nobles.” Sam spoke up finally. “The Eternal Flame Bishop of the area would have recognised enough to investigate.”

“He might. But the former groom, now Shepherd also believed that he would be ignored. So he took his wife up into the hills and helped her to recover. I've since met the shepherd and he seems a good man, a little simple but wise enough to get his wife out of there. And it was her that Kerrass wanted to talk to.”

“That can't have been easy.”

I finally opened my eyes and managed to take a drink. I almost instantly felt better and wiped my eyes. I took out my potion bottle that Walther had given me and added a measure to the tea.

“Medicine.” I told Sam.

“The kind of medicine that you can share with your big brother?”

“Not really. This kind of medicine is something else. There is plenty of the other kind of medicine around though if you want it.”

“Maybe later. What did the woman tell Kerrass?”

“Well, it took some doing but Kerrass was able to get her to tell him about the people that were involved in the cult that took part in the ritual that Fuck-Face had first taken part in. Most of the cultists were people that Kerrass knew about. But here is the crux of the matter. This was Dorme's first ritual. Step one on the way to constructing the bag that he thought would be able to enslave Ariadne's mind. It was also, according to other witnesses, relatively mild as these things go. Otherwise the woman would never have survived. But one of the figures was not recognisable as a member of the Angraal cult. He was not present when Dorme's cronies were arrested and it was originally thought that he was just someone who was into it before realising that things had gone too far. He would not have been alone in that feeling.”

“But you now know who that person was.”

“We do. You remember Lord Cavil's mage? From the cult of the First-Born?”

Sam hissed. “How could I forget. The bastard that figured out how to hide you from magical searches and how to break your link with Ariadne. Phineas Tor....something wasn't it”

“That's the shit. His name is Phineas Tordril although he used Torlane in the North ” I took a big breath. “We don't know if even that is his real name but it might mean we can hunt him the easier. We know, with some certainty now, that he was in Angraal before Fuck-Face attempted his coup and release of Ariadne.”

I sighed and a massive shudder went through me.

“It's small.” I said. “It's very small and it's hugely dissappointing as to how small it is. But now there's a connection for us to tug on. Phineas Tordril. The magical mastermind behind some of the more magical elements of the Cult of the First-Born was also behind some of the magical elements of what happened in Angraal.

“And he must be caught.”

(A/N: This chapter was a struggle to write. Partly because of some of the subject matter and partly because I just couldn't bring the damn thing to a stop. I feel as though I could keep writing this one forever and not get to a place where I would be happy with it. So I've decided to stop here as I promised that I would tell you what Kerrass found in Angraal. Please be gentleI have also been struggling a bit with my own mental health recently. That's not a cry for help. I am ok in the main and my support structure is strong and taking care of me. But I'm taking a few days break as we go away on a short holiday. So there will be a slight delay before the next chapter. I'm not abandoning the story, just taking a few days off.Take care of yourselves folks. Stay Safe out there and thanks for reading.)