I wish I could tell you, dear reader whoever you are, that I reacted to the revelation that I had been the one leaking the information to the enemy, well. Not only that, but I had been doing so in the worst, most boring, stereotypical way that a person can imagine. I wish I could say that I took that well.

I literally spilled my guts out to a pretty woman on the pillow. The sheer fact of that alone was mortifying. I mean… what? What kind of idiot lies on the bed and tries to show off to a beautiful woman by spilling the deepest secrets that he could be aware of.

As it turns out, it’s this kind of idiot.

I wish I could tell you that I rose to the occasion with grace, dignity and dynamism. I could probably even get away with doing that, after all, the only people that know the truth were in the room at the time and one of the benefits of being a known chronicler and historian is that my words are generally known to be reliable.

But I did not do those things.

What I did was to kind of fold in on myself while the activity carried on around me. I didn’t quite curl up into a ball, but I did shuffle backwards until I found my back against something solid enough that it would support my weight, and then I started to stare into space.

I didn’t register it. I didn’t see it or watch anything that happened so I can’t swear to this. I am told what happened from the people that were there at the time. Syanna took charge. She ordered Anne to be moved into one of the smaller guest rooms on our corridor. It might even have been the one that Sam had been using.

When some Knight bent to do that, it turned out that, in flying through the air and through several pieces of furniture, a vase and a picture, Anne had been quite badly injured.

Funny that.

She wasn’t dangerously hurt, but certainly to the level of some cracked ribs and something that was called “impact damage” to the back of the head. Ariadne was mortified and after checking that I wasn’t physically hurt, she worked with Laurelen to heal Anne’s injuries.

In the meantime, Syanna refused to allow anyone to leave. The Knight who had threatened Ariadne with a sword was tasked with clearing up the broken furniture and crockery. Apparently, Kerrass was astonished that he bent to the task without complaint. A couple of the other guarding Knights stripped the furniture and things out of the newly designated prison cell and there was some clattering from down the corridor.

After that? When Ariadne and Laurelen were satisfied that she could be moved, Kerrass helped Anne into the room in question. By this point, Ariadne wasn’t looking at me. Emma would tell me that her eyes would move towards me and then she would seem to tear them away.

I was dimly aware of some orders being given. Syanna telling people that no-one in or out, that kind of thing before she came over to me.

“Freddie?”

The whistling in my ears stopped as suddenly as it started.

I looked up at her. She had stopped being Syanna at some point and had become the Knight Commander.

“I presume I’m fired.” I said.

“What? Whatever for?”

“I am the leak.” I said. “I’ve been giving information to our enemies.”

“Freddie.” Mark said. “We have all sat and gossiped with her. We have all told her things. It wasn’t just you.”

“Me too.” Emma admitted. “As we sit here and talk about all of this, I am currently thinking about what kind of information she might have been able to pass on about our trading concerns.”

“And I did not guard my speech in front of her.” Kerrass added as he came back into the room where he nodded towards Syanna.

Syanna took the nod.

“Freddie…” She began. “I can’t claim to know how you feel right now. No-one can. You’ve been made a fool of by someone with a pretty face. Join the club. You are not alone. We are all prone to being lonely, scared and unhappy. For my mind, they chose exactly the right way to get to you.

“But right now, I don’t care how badly you are feeling. I just don't. The reason for that is that I do not have the time. I was not joking before. When you are done with your immediate work, I am going to commission you to write a book on practical courtly methods for the aspiring Knight. I am going to make the Knights read it. I am also going to get you to write a book on investigation technique. The way that you have been able to put yourself in the mind of our enemies recently has been really impressive.

“But where I know more than you is in the subject of interrogating prisoners. You know about interviewing people, this is different. This is going to be an interrogation. And we do not have time to fuck about. Torture is pointless, I could persuade Lady Vigo to tear the matter out of the courtesan’s mind, but I would first need to persuade my sister that such a thing would be necessary and Madame La Comtesse du Angral is having a bizarre reaction where she has come over all protective of our prisoner.

“But we need to know what she knows, turn her to our cause if possible and we need to do that. Right. Fucking. Now. Because the instant that it gets out of these rooms that we’ve turned her then what she knows will be useless and her little boy will, at best, get his throat slit.”

She was kind enough to leave out what the worst was. I have no doubt that that would involve fingers, ears and toes.

“This is what I know about.” She said. “Or at least, what Colonel Duberton taught me about. But this is not really a hard case. She will say nothing to anyone for fear of her son’s life. Except to you I think.”

“Why do you think that?”

“She’s upset about this. If she was a professional agent, she wouldn’t have even blinked. It’s just the cost of doing business that sooner or later, you are going to get caught. But here, she is mortified about the fact that she has betrayed you all. My guess is that she was turned after she was made part of your group. She is ashamed and that tells me something. I am not sure what, but it tells me something.

“I need you to sack up a bit. Set aside your nonsense for a few days more and help me nail these bastards to a fucking wall. After that, I will hire the entire Belles to look after you and suck your dick constantly while you fall apart. But for right now? Feel like a fool later. I need Lord Frederick.”

I nodded. As pep talks go it lacked a certain something but it worked.

I climbed to my feet and stretched. I felt stiff and strange but the stretch overbalanced me a little and I staggered. I forced myself over to the table where I poured myself some watered wine and drank it off.

“Ok.” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

“We need to turn her to our side.” Syanna said. “That’s the best course. We need to know what she knows. And we don’t have a lot of time. If I go in there, or anyone else goes in there and tries to get her to talk, she’s going to dig in. She won’t answer all of the questions because she will claim, correctly, that if she speaks then they’re going to kill her son. I will argue, also correctly, that unless we can get these bastards then her son is dead anyway. She’s going to refuse to speak, she’s going to refuse to act.

“Now I know how to break her. It’s simply a case of coaching the matter in terms of rescuing her son. The faster she helps us, the less trouble she herself will be in. But she doesn’t trust me. And why should she, I am the person who she has been forced to be afraid of. She has been told that if she speaks to me then her son is dead. She will see what I am trying to say but she has no reason to trust me.

“But you? You’re the one who made her speak up in the first place. Guilt of how she had behaved towards you is why she owned up. So if you go in there and tell her that we need to know how to rescue her son then, then you can convince her that we will follow through with that.”

“Will we?” I asked bitterly, before I could stop myself.

Her face reddened and her eyes flashed. “You are hurt Freddie.” She hissed between clenched teeth. “Otherwise I would rip your balls off for that.”

She took a breath.

“Of course we’ll rescue her kid, we’ll do it today. I can’t wait. An honest to the Prophet bad guy that I can hit, arrest and take to trial. I am positively moist at the prospect. But it needs to be soon if that boy is going to be alive. And for that, I need you.”

I nodded and climbed to my feet. I nodded and almost groaned in relief when I felt my mind starting to work on the problem. There is a constant fear at the moment when I am being overwhelmed by… whatever in the moment. There is almost a fear that I will lose the ability to think. That might sound irrational, but it’s a real fear for me sometimes. That loss, the inability to sift and analyse information is vital to… well me being me. It is something that I have always had but now, when I sometimes lose myself. I lose it and there is always a fear, just a small one, that it will never come back.

But there and then, that my mind was coming back, meant that I was ok.

For now at least.

I moved through the corridor. There were guards on the bedroom door now. I noticed as I just walked in. I noticed, but ignored the fact that the guards checked with Syanna who was behind me as to whether or not I was allowed.

There were still guards in there, working. Taking ornaments and containers out and stacking them in the corridor. In the middle of the room was a table and a set of a few chairs.

Anne was sat on the bed with her head in her hands, sobbing her lungs out. To my further astonishment, Ariadne was sitting next to her doing her best to comfort the woman. I have seen Ariadne unhappy before, I have seen her in a rage and upset. But she looked stricken here.

I took a breath and walked over to the two women.

It took another deep breath to be able to kneel in front of them and take Anne’s hands in my own.

She looked at me, tears shining in her eyes. “Oh Prophet Freddie, I am so sorry. I know how much…”

“Stop it.” I said as gently as I could.

It was not perfect and it certainly came out harsher than I wanted it to. Just as I had seen her eyes I was struck by a memory. I had been looking into those eyes from almost this exact angle when she had been naked and on top of me. I had seen that wonderful kind of fear that comes into a person’s face in the extremes of pleasure and for a moment, I could see her like that.

I would never see that expression on her face again and for a moment, my heart broke.

I swallowed and tried to think of Ariadne who was sat nearby, watching my face.

“You don’t need to apologise to me.” I forced myself to say. After that, the words started to come much easier. “Your son was in danger and you did what you thought you had to.”

“I did,” She wiped her hands across her face. “But that doesn’t stop…”

“Please Anne.” I told her, feeling as though I was getting to firmer ground. “We don’t have time.”

“What?”

I straightened and walked over to the table and sat down. There was already paper, ink and quill there.

“Anne,” I said carefully as I pulled up a chair. “I am hurt. I am upset, angry and I do feel awful. But you were doing your best to help your son and keep him safe. I cannot blame you for that, although I will admit that I will struggle to trust you again. But I cannot blame you for it. If you want to talk about it, if it would honestly feel better to have me rant, scream and weep at you, then we can do that later. We don’t have time for that kind of thing right now.”

“But…”

“If we are going to rescue your son, we need to know as much as you can tell us.” I told her. “We need to know where you meet the men that take him. We need to know how they let you know that he was taken. How do you report to them and so on. The more you tell us, the more likely it is that we can get your son out of their hands and back into your arms safe and sound.”

‘But… But they will…”

“You are going to object.” I told her. “This is not a new story. They have told you all the terrible things that they are going to do to your son. They will have threatened you with what happens if you go to the guard, or the Knights Francesca, or tell your boss at the Belles who, I understand, many fear more than they do the Duchess. They will have told you that they have agents everywhere and that those agents will tell them if you betray them.”

She nodded and I hated myself for a moment. I had her and I knew it. She knew it too and somewhere in the room, Syanna was watching with a smirk of amusement. I hated her too.

“Well, one of two things is true there.” I told her. “The first is that they will soon find out that you have been caught and they will act accordingly. That makes it necessary that we work fast. The second is that they are lying, they don’t have the agents that they told you they have and that they are waiting for your daily visit. In which case… we still need to do this quickly.”

“But I have wronged you…” She said. “You want me to tell you about them and what I saw. Is that it? Is that the bargain that you would strike?”

“I will not deny,” I began. ‘That the thought had crossed my mind.” I told her. “But the truth is that we will take at least one of your son’s kidnappers alive and we can question them if you don’t want to talk. That might leave you in a bit more legal jeopardy but the Duchess is understanding lady and she will take into account the fact that you were afraid for your son’s life, especially given how she has just adopted a daughter of her own. Your help will be invaluable of course.”

“But…” She looked panicky.

“You are next about to object, wondering what happens if they see us coming. You are afraid that they will kill your son before we get a chance to save him.”

She stared at me and I knew I was right.

“Anne, the woman on your left is an Elder Vampire, somewhere north of Nine hundred years old. She is also one of three Sorceresses in Toussaint, another of whom is my sister’s wife. The third can possibly be persuaded to lend a hand as well. My best friend is a Witcher. Sir Guillaume, one of, if not the foremost Knights of the Realm, will come and the Knights of Saint Francesca will also help out if they are able. You will be astonished at the amount of righteous violence that is about to be unleashed on your behalf.”

She looked over to Syanna who nodded.

“Why would you do this? Any of you. I have…”

“You are a wronged woman.” Syanna said. “Even if you had killed someone, or worse, because they held your son hostage, we would still do our best to ensure your son’s safety. And when it is decided on what to do with you, because that conversation is going to happen, we will also take the fact that you acted under duress into account. But

also, we will rescue your son because it is the right thing to do. I am literally shivering with anticipation.”

“Why?” Anne asked us.

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Because this is Toussaint.” I told her.

It all came together fairly quickly after that. Once that first seal had been broken, she just started speaking and it was almost more difficult to get her to stop. She kept enough back so that she still had something to trade with after her son had been rescued, but I rather thought that was redundant. Once her son was rescued we would get what we needed.

I could not help but imagine the way this would have gone under Radovid with the famous Redanian secret police. Anne would have gone to the torturer and the boy would have been thrown out, if they had bothered rescuing him in the first place.

There is a reason why the thought of Toussaint is so attractive to us all. It is the world as it should be, as it is supposed to be and the rest of us are cheapened with the fact that we don’t live up to the ideals of a place like that.

Anne told us how it all worked. She would go into town and do her shopping. There was a house that overlooked the marketplace that had a window facing down. When the people that had her son were confident that there was no-one following her, they would hang a blue rag from the window which was when she would go to one of the taverns just off the square. A place called “Poor man’s rest.” It was not a big establishment and it’s main selling point was that it had a view of the harbour. That, and the beer was cheap and it was on one of the access roads to the market place itself. It did most of its business from the market stall holders who would send for a sack of ale or wine to wet their throats after a hard day’s selling.

She would buy a small ale and sit and watch the docks for a while until a carriage would arrive. The carriage would be black and shuttered and she would get inside. She could not see out but she knew that they always took a different route to the place where she was going.

There would be two men driving the carriage and one inside.

They would take her to a house. She thought it was near to the docks but could not be sure as she was always emptied out into a courtyard that had no view. After some leading questions from Kerrass she told us that the house itself blocked the view of the palace so it was reasoned that the house faced towards the harbour and down the hill. She had not obscured this fact, it was simply a case that she hadn’t thought like that.

There she would be met by more men who would ask her questions about her day, about the plans of the family and anything that she could glean about the workings of the investigation. If the questioners were pleased with the reports then her son would be produced and they could spend some time together.

Her son appeared to be clean, healthy and relatively well fed, often in the company of some kind of noble looking woman who seemed to act as part nanny, part governess, part private tutor. Anne would have assumed that this was some kind of servant figure. She was often in the background during those meetings, listening in on things and just, generally, being in the background. Her son wanted to go home and wept when it came time for her to leave, having to be pried away from his mother by the Governess woman.

Anne would get back aboard the carriage and then it would drive to drop her off in the same part of town where she was picked up. After that, it would take her a little while of walking around to recover from the heartache of either seeing her son, or not seeing her son as it could go either way. Then she would “fix her face” as she said and returned to the palace.

And yes, apparently this was a daily ritual although it didn’t take place at a fixed time.

I didn’t stay in the room and listen to all of that for long, I couldn’t bear it. I kept looking over at the weeping, broken woman and wanting to reach over and comfort her. And worse than that, every so often, she would look up at me with her huge, gorgeous eyes and I found myself wanting to take her in my arms and kiss the problems away. That was when the images that those eyes conjured were not even more erotic than that.

In the end I made an excuse about getting some rest and left, eliciting a promise that someone would come and get me so that I could be a part of the rescue. I shared Syanna’s longing for someone righteous to hit in the face, or the balls, whichever. It would feel good to have a real enemy.

After leaving the room I realised that I really was exhausted physically and mentally, so I decided to give some truth to the lie and go to bed to get some rest.

My room was quiet and had a strange hollow feeling. The servants had already been through it so there was a fire flickering in the hearth and the linens had been changed. Given that it was winter, how they managed to find fresh flowers to put in one of the pots I will never know. The clothes that had been set out for laundry were pressed and laid out.

It felt empty.

I didn’t want to sleep too deeply, even though I was approaching that stage of fatigue that Emma calls “falling down tired”, I wanted to be relatively alert when the call came. I made do with leaving my boots and outerwear nearby. I had been dressed in some courtly clothes for the morning’s announcements and I left those out for cleaning while I changed into some “work” clothing. I didn’t put my armour on but instead, left it in a place where I could easily reach it and get into it as fast as possible. Almost exactly the same way that I would arrange matters if I was camping by the side of the road.

I sharpened and oiled my spear, dagger and two combat knives and left them out as well. I didn’t bother with the eating knife. Not because it didn’t need sharpening. Eating Knives always need sharpening. They are just too small to be used for reasonable combat. But instead, because I realised that I was procrastinating. I was putting off going to bed.

Taking a deep breath I moved to the bed and forced myself to lie down on it in the universal pose of “I don’t really want to sleep, but here we go.” Lying on my back, feet stretched out and hands folded over my belly. I must have slept eventually but it was the kind of uncomfortable doze that I didn’t really feel as though I had slept, and would later not remember sleeping. But time had passed so I must have slept at some point. Mostly though, I just lay there, massively uncomfortable, and stared at the ceiling of the beds canopy.

I know I was awake when someone opened the door slowly. It had that sound that meant the person opening it was trying to be quiet. You know the sound, the one that actually sounds louder than if they had just opened the door normally.

“I’m awake.” I said to the ceiling before I tried to straighten. “Is it time?”

Ariadne was next to me in a heartbeat, gently pushing me back down to the bed. “No,” She said, “it is not time yet.”

I looked at her and frowned. “Are you alright?” I wondered.

“That’s funny.” She said with absolutely no humour at all as she looked around the room before moving off to collect a chair. “I actually came here to check on you. To make sure that you are alright.”

“I’m tired.” I told her. “And I can’t sleep.”

She picked up a heavy arm chair with one hand and carried it over to the bed. I had been right, she was upset. She would never use such an absent minded display of strength normally for fear of widening the gap between us.

“You miss her.” She said as she settled the chair down. “Anne I mean.”

She was right. That was what had been missing in the room and it was why I was so uncomfortable. Even when I was just coming into the family apartments, she would follow me into the room. I was used to her soft and gentle presence and now, the bed seemed large, cavernous and far too big. It was cold and… empty.

“Yes.” I admitted. “I am sorry, but yes I do.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I looked over at her sharply. She has one piece of easily recognisable body language which is that she draws herself in when she is upset. A protective gesture, wanting to protect her torso from being injured.

“I do.” I admitted. “But only if it’s not some kind of self-flagellating act on your part.”

She smiled a little. “We are coming to know each other well Freddie.” She told me.

I nodded and turned so that I was staring at the ceiling again.

“I do believe that I hate her.” She went on softly. “It is a strange feeling for me. I have disliked people in the past and there have been, and still are, people that I would gladly murder. You have been very wise in not telling me about some of your adventures until after the fact as otherwise the world would have relearned what it is to anger me.”

“Which is why I don’t tell you about it until they are over.” I told her. “Preemptively acting as you would want to, and as I want to to be fair, is dangerous.”

“I know, it is a lesson that I learned long ago. But the truth is that I have never hated any of them. Disliked? Oh yes. Strongly even. I have been angry to a spitting rage. But Hate? I have never hated anyone before. Because if it had ever gotten to that stage in the past, I am powerful enough to simply kill them. They would not be a threat to me.”

I listened to the rustling of fabric as she adjusted herself in the seat.

“But this woman? I do believe I hate her and I worry that it’s… I feel that I am lessened by it.”

“Why?”

She sighed. “I am not sure. I need to think about this a lot more. Jealousy is certainly part of it I think. But… That is unfair.”

I could not contain a sigh and a yawn. I have no idea where it came from but it was there without warning.

“I’m sorry,” She said. “You should be getting some rest.” More rustling of cloth as she climbed to her feet.

“I am.” I told her, reaching out for her. “I’m not going to sleep. I might even ask if I can change quarters given everything that has happened.” I sighed again. “You and I have not spent enough time talking recently. Please stay.”

She settled back down much to my relief.

“Why do you think you’re being unfair?” I prompted.

“Everything she did, she did for the right reasons.” Ariadne began. “She betrayed us because her son was in danger. I absolutely believe that. When the son is safe and in her arms again, we are going to find out that she was targeted because she was already here. She was not an enemy agent when she came to us, of this I am certain, but she was targeted because she was already here. So in another way, this is all our fault.”

“Blaming ourselves is a dangerous hole to fall down.” I told her. “Also, you promised that this wasn’t about self-flagellation.”

“I did and I meant it, I’m just trying to work it all out. So she betrayed us because we were just customers to her and that was her son. We might have been customers that she liked, was even friends with on some level, but that doesn’t change the fact that we were customers. So if we she was going to choose customers over the life of her son, which would any of us choose?”

I said nothing. It didn’t seem like the right juncture for me to start speaking just yet.

“So I don’t hate her for that. It was the wrong choice but, if she was threatened that there were other agents that would betray her if she came clean and told everyone that was happening early on…”

“Which is the give away that there isn’t.” I said. “If there were other agents that would report on her if something went wrong, why would those agents not give the bad guys the information that they wanted. If there was an agent here that would know if she owned up to us, or if there was another agent that would inform if she owned up to the Knight Commander, then why would she be needed?”

“Because she is disposable.” Ariadne responded.

“And is therefore less likely to be trusted. You will have checked to see if she was an agent, the place where you gained her recommendation is known for its discretion and secrecy and Syanna wouldn’t have allowed Anne to get anywhere near us if there were any concerns. So we didn’t trust her, it was only when she passed all those tests that we started to open up. So I agree that she was not an agent when she first came here.”

“She was also not thinking rationally.” Ariadne argued. “Her son was in danger, how would any of us be able to think clearly and clinically if someone we love is in danger.”

The way she said it made me think that there was something there. But, again, I decided that this was not the time to be pursuing that kind of discussion.

“So no, that is not why I hate her. I’m pretty sure that I do hate her. I would dearly love to grab her by the head and spend some time figuring out exactly how much force it would take to push her head through a wall.”

She paused and I continued to look at the ceiling. I could easily imagine her slightly furrowed brow as she spent her time trying to think it all through.

“Jealousy is the other reason.” Ariadne declared. “She had everything that I want. Literally everything. She had your confidence and trust…”

A dagger of ice slid into my heart and I fought the lump in my throat down and closed my eyes against the tears that also threatened. Ariadne didn’t seem to notice.

“... She had your affection and your body. She was able to wrap her arms around you in the night when you were troubled and sooth you when you needed it. She was able to kiss away your pains and your troubles and sing softly to you when your dreams were turning into Nightmares. And yes, it is true, I am also jealous of the fact that she got to enjoy your carnal skills when I have not been able to do that yet. I have lain awake at night, even though it has only started to happen recently and I have been able to hear the pair of you.”

“Oh?” The desperate discomfort drove the pain down for a while.

“Oh yes.” She failed to take the hint. “Vampiric senses are much sharper than humans. I am interested to see how you manipulate my sense of touch when it comes to my turn to share your bed.”

I diplomatically said nothing.

“But I have been able to hear you. I have been able to hear the genuine sounds of her pleasure, things that she was just as surprised at as anyone, and I have not been able to help myself as my imagination has put me in her place instead of now, when I can only imagine what she must have been feeling in that moment. And then in the morning I have seen the way that you walk and have noticed the slight shifting of your posture as you have relaxed slightly but importantly. I have seen how you have felt more… at peace after a night of passion with a beautiful woman and I have felt jealous of the fact that it was not me that provided that peace and release for you, as well as the fact that I have not felt my own…”

“Release?” I suggested.

“Lessening of tension.” Ariadne corrected. “And then I can smell her on you.”

It really was a lot of work to fight down my own embarrassment.

“But…” Ariadne went on. “I knew that was going to happen. All of it. It was what I hired her for after all. You needed someone to take care of you. A nurse would have been too… distant, too clinical. You needed care, affection… Love. And it was not something that I could provide you with so it was only natural that I find you someone who could give you these things when they were beyond my reach.

“So… if anything, I should be grateful to her for the fact that she has been able to give you those things while I am unable to. So I don’t think I hate her for that.

“So is it the fact that I trusted her maybe? I had paid her and I had given her… or rather loaned her the most important thing, the most precious thing in my existence. I do not own you but, I rather like to think that you belong to me. To give her that, to let her anywhere near that… I know that there have been other women since we have known each other. I have known about all of that and I know about your valiant efforts to maintain your own… chastity in the face of some… occasionally really quite tempting.... Well… temptation. I have not been bothered by this. As I have admitted, more than once, I have looked for and received my own measure of sexual gratification in the past while waiting for you to…”

“Come to my senses?” I suggested with a slight smile.

“Exactly.” She admitted.

“Ok.” I said. “But here, it was not some seductress that managed to get past my defences. Nor was it some Goddess where I couldn’t help it, Marion where I needed her help, or anyone else. And I repeat that there have only been two women that have known me since we became engaged. The Goddess and now Anne.”

She snorted. “More fool you, I would be willing to wager that the women of Skellige could have taught you a thing or two.”

“Probably. But in this case… Those other women… Marion, Saffron, the many and various ladies in the many and various houses of pleasure that Kerrass has taken me to. Those were women that you had nothing to do with. Whereas this one… You were the one that pushed me towards her. You deliberately put her in my way and stood over the pair of us until we…”

I paused. Not wanting to say the words. But Ariadne was too clever for that.

“Loved each other?”

“Yes.” I admitted.

“I am not threatened by your love for her Freddie. Nor am I threatened by the love that you still hold in your heart for Marion, the affection for Saffron or the Love that you hold for the girls in Oxenfurt. I meant what I said to Anne about you when we were first discussing her coming to work with you and what her duties were going to be. I am well aware that you cannot take a woman to bed, or allow yourself to be vulnerable with one with that degree of intimacy unless there is a certain amount of Love there. You cannot help it and indeed it speaks well of you… In my opinion. There is a time for sexual intimacy without that and there is a time for it with.”

“I have tried it without.” I commented. “I found the experience to be fun but unsatisfying.”

“Precisely. I knew that you were going to fall in love with her a little and although I hated every moment of it, I knew that it was coming.

“I am wondering if it’s the betrayal of trust.”

“It’s definitely the betrayal of trust for me.” I said. “You are right in everything that you have said. I agree with the assessment that she wasn’t an enemy agent when she first came here. But in allowing her to get close to me, I had to trust her. I have to trust all the ladies that I allow to get close to me. Some of those women have had unfair advantages in getting me to trust them. Marion is the only one that I think I would have loved anyway without that, but the others… The Goddess was… too overwhelming to be denied. Saffron was a Succubus and I knew enough about Succubi to be able to trust her, even without the power of her pheromones.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“And her shape. Don’t forget her shape.” Ariadne said.

For a moment, the image of Saffron pulling me along a forest path with a wicked smile and a sway of hips was almost too much for me and I had to force the image down.

“But trust.” I tried again. “I need that trust. I need it. I need to be able to trust the person that I am with. There are shortcuts of course. With the courtesans and similar that I have been involved with, there is the trust that my money will be paid and that if they hurt me then the house will cast them out or worse. There was no benefit to Saffron or Marion hurting me. The Goddess… Well… That is as perfect an example of what happens when I can’t, or don’t trust my partner not to hurt me.

“But, she has betrayed that trust.”

I sighed and shook my head as I, again, had to force the tears down.

“Why is that trust so important to you Freddie?” Ariadne asked. THere was an edge to the question that I couldn’t identify at the time and that I haven’t asked her about since. Looking back, it suggested that she already knew the answer, or could easily guess what it was. I wonder, now, if the reason why she asked me that question in the there and then of the thing was because she was trying to get me to talk about it with her. If this was her method of getting people to talk, just as Kerrass’ method is to appear disinterested and get people to talk anyway.

In all truth, it was not really something that I had entirely thought through myself. Examining it all through Ariadne’s eyes might be of benefit.

“I’ve talked to you about my romantic past haven’t I?” I wondered aloud.

“A little.” She said. “As well as the things that I have been able to gleant from what you’ve written over the years.”

“Then I apologise if this hurts you a little. I promise that I’m not doing it for that purpose.”

“It’s alright.” She said as she arranged herself into a general kind of attitude of someone who is listening and taking mental notes. It’s one of her favourite postures. “All of this happened to you a long time ago and there’s nothing that can be done to change it now.”

It took me some time to actually start talking. I spent a bit of time staring at the ceiling of the bed canopy.

“I was a disaster, romantically I mean, before I met Kerrass. I don’t know why and I have long ago decided to stop probing the question. In light of modern thinking and some of the people that I’ve met since then, you included, I suspect it was a bit because I was an ass. Before I went to University, in that period where I worked in Redanian Logistics and intelligence, and after when I was still living at home. I just could not make it work.

“Father would arrange introductions to ladies, perfectly beautiful and wonderful women that I liked an awful lot and that I would have been glad to get to know better and glad to woo and marry. None of them were as beautiful as you mind,”

“Thank you.”

“But there were not a small number of beauties there. There were also plenty of women that made me laugh and that I enjoyed the company of, to the point where, even if desire had not been kindled, I rather thought we could make each other happy in other ways. But it never got anywhere. There was always a problem. There would be another suitor that would swoop in at the last moment in order to interrupt my suit or their father would cut off negotiations or something.

“For the longest time... There is still part of me that likes to believe this and for all I know it is also true to a certain extent, I used to believe that it was my Father’s fault and the fact that I was a younger son. I could easily imagine Edmund having no difficulty getting a wife on the grounds that he would inherit Father’s title, lands and money, but I was a younger son and what would I show for it.

“Looking at it now, I had plenty of reasons that a young lady might marry me on her father’s orders. Not least because my father would look well on the matter and that was no small a deal. He would be able to help out with trade or monetary matters for the father of the bride. So a younger daughter, married to a younger son. That kind of thing is more common than a lot of us would like to think.

“But Father was far from popular and we knew that too. The nobility hated him and it was easy to see that. He was a difficult man to like as well so it was easy to believe that he would alienate the people that needed to like him.

“I also used to blame the fact that I wasn’t that attractive to look at. People are very kind now and say that, again since Kerrass, I have grown into my body a little more as well as gaining a certain amount of physical confidence around my movements that has made me more attractive.

“All of those things might still be true, but I am also left wondering as to whether there might have been another reason. A friend once told me that I sometimes came off as being a little too desperate to be attractive. That I was so miserable and that, in looking at me, it was as though I had already had my heart broken and was just looking for someone to do the actual… breaking of the heart for me. He said that I was so longing for love that I drove it away.”

“It’s possible.” Ariadne said. “I cannot speak for most of that as I find you more than attractive to my eyes but what I first loved about you was your mind and your humour that went with that. You were not desperate with me.”

“And that kind of proves the point. I was terrified of you. I didn’t see you as someone that I was trying to court in those early days. I saw you as someone that I was just trying to survive the meeting with.”

She chuckled at that. No matter how true it was.

“So when I eventually managed to run away from home, away from the constant torment, and it was a torment of constantly being sent off to suit eligible women only to be turned down time after time… I made it to Oxenfurt. Emma and… I think Mark and a little bit of mother arranged for my fees to be paid and an allowance to be sent. It wasn’t the first thing that I did. It was not on the first night or anything like that. I think the first social thing I did was to go out and get drunk with a group of the other guys that had just got to the University. I think I spent a good week of time just being drunk and attending lectures. But it was shortly after that that I remember realising that… I remember realising that I had money, that I was by myself and that there was nothing to stop me from going and getting laid.

“And I did. I asked around, a little too discretely for my own good. Meaning that all my friends were quick to figure out what I was doing and one of the locals was good enough to take me under their wing. They took me to a place and I lost my virginity. Looking back, I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do. I go back and forward on it. On the one hand, it meant that I wasn’t disappointing a loved one or a girlfriend. She could teach me a few things so that when I did end up in the bed chamber with someone that I cared about, I wouldn’t completely disappoint her.

“And yes, after this experience, I did go out and get some books so that I would know more about what to do when I found someone who would let me explore them properly.”

“I am particularly looking forward to it when that time comes between the two of us.” There was a smile in Ariadne’s voice there.

“But here’s the girl I normally leave out.” I said. “And as I’m in the process of baring my soul here, I should say that I’ve not told many people these events other than those friends that were there to help me at the time. And, to make matters worse, I have changed events, lied about them and told the story in various ways in order to not appear as weak and pathetic as I actually was at the time. It is also true that I have melded two women into one person when I talk about them in many ways. That is… I suspect, unfair to both.”

And that applies to you too dear reader. These days, even despite everything else that has come since then, are among the worst in my memory. Everyone has their heart broken at some stage. Everyone. A friend of mine once said that it is a necessary part of the evolution of a man, or a woman, to be truly and utterly fucked up by the person that they love. It’s just one of those rites of passage that makes a person grow up to be “a normal and worthwhile member of society.” He claimed that it was this experience that forces someone to have perspective on everything else that might be happening throughout the rest of the world. I am sorry if you feel as though I have misled you, but it would not be unfair to suggest that I have misled myself.

It is also true that when you compare what I went through to what I have been through since (torture, illness, injuries, horror and so on.) that this is not all that bad. Odd how it’s the formative experiences that stick out so much.

“It is true that the first, great, unrequited love of my life was Dr Shani. She was very good to me all things considered and could have, very easily, torn my heart apart. As unrequited loves go, she could have been a lot crueller but the truth of the matter is that I was far too young for her. In experience as well as age. I am glad for her and Rickard as I rather think they both need someone to care for and have found that in each other a little bit.

“After that comes the romantic horror. Some of it is even funny looking back. There was one girl who I found myself falling in with. We were working together on some project or another. We talked, we laughed, we joked and were developing a relationship as friends. I spoke to my more experienced friends and they suggested asking her for a drink. One day after we had finished working on a project I did exactly that, I screwed up my courage and asked her for a drink. I will never forget it, we were standing in the sunlight after the workshop and I turned to her, looking gorgeous in the light green dress that female medical students wear in the summer. An outfit that benefits from girls with long legs if you know what I mean. She was laughing and smiling in the sunshine and I asked her if she wanted to go for a drink.

“She laughed in delight and said. “That would be wonderful, I could just do with a nice cider. Where were you thinking?” I was dizzy with delight and couldn’t think of an answer which is when she dashed my hopes forever when she said “I’ll just get a message to my boyfriend and get him to meet me there.”

“I was crushed. The situation was made worse by the fact that, when he did arrive, it was clear that the two of them were hopelessly in love and that it would be cruel of me to even try to get between them.

“Pretty much the same thing happened with the next lady I fell for. She was taller, cooler, more noble as in the social caste noble. I rather thought that Father would approve. We struck up the beginnings of a friendship and I invited her for a drink. I still didn’t know what to do to progress things from that point. I used to assume that there was some kind of lesson that I was missing that meant that I could progress things from “Would you like a drink?” to “Would you go to bed with me?””

Ariadne laughed at that.

“I realised my error when she met my friend though. A calm and polite interest in me changed into all but panting when she saw his broad shoulders, proper beard and shining blue eyes. Of course, now I know that those two were meant for each other but at the time, I was more than a little bit crushed.

“Then there was the other girl. She lived in the same halls as I did in my first year. Startlingly beautiful girl, mischievous grin, sparkling eyes, wicked sense of humour. I was helpless. We were walking home from class one day as we had suddenly developed a habit of doing. I hadn’t thought of her in a romantic way as she was betrothed to a Knight in the army who was bigger than me. I had met him, he was a decent enough fellow, seemed a little cool to her in my opinion, but as we were walking home she started to tell me about all of the things that she was unhappy about in her relationship with him. Neither of them were noble born but like me had got to the point by being really clever and having rich parents.

“I had that happy problem of being really perceptive when it came to other people’s romantic lives so I calmly and carefully asked her if she had told her fiancee about the problems that she was having. I told her, not incorrectly, that men are stupid and ignorant and that if she wanted to fix the problem then she needed to tell her fiancee that and then see if he was willing to fix the problems. She grinned at me, hugged me, thanked me for the insight and skipped off.

“I mentioned the incident to my now, loved up, friends and the girl, who I was still a little in love with, who was sitting on my best friend’s lap laughed at me.

““So she’s been meeting you to walk too and from class with you?” She wondered.

““Yes.” I replied.

““And she was telling you all the problems in her existing love affair?”

““Yes.”

““Freddie.” She was laughing unhelpfully. “She wanted you to ask her for a drink so that she could sob on your shoulder and see if you would be better for her. She had a crush on you and wanted to see if it had legs and whether or not you were interested in her.”

They laughed at me as I re-examined all my interactions with her in a new light.”

“What happened to that couple?” Ariadne wondered.

“What? Oh. She did as I advised and took her grievances to her Knightly fiancee. He listened, considered and thought about it. Admitted that there were problems, admitted that there were problems that he had with her as well but that he wanted to fix them. She agreed and last I heard, they got married. She stopped walking to class with me shortly after that.”

Ariadne considered this story for a while. “You are right.” She said in a deathly serious tone. “It is pretty funny, although I cannot deny that I am glad for your romantic mishaps as it means that you are free to love me instead.”

“That is some consolation.” I admitted.

“Only some?” She teased before turning serious again. “Who broke your heart Freddie?”

I took a deep breath. Weird how after all these years it still comes back to haunt us.

“It was actually two women.” I told her. Two women, one who started the job by being casually cruel, although there is a different interpretation that suggests that I just misread the entire affair, and then another to shatter me into little pieces that she walked all over for no reason that I ever found out.”

“Tell me.” She said, gently.

“The first was, to all intents and purposes, my lucky escape. I was drinking with some friends one night when I had gone along with them for a reason that I cannot actually remember. I do know that it was to a bar that I would not normally have gone to, not because it was awful but because they had a certain kind of minstrel there that I did not enjoy.”

“What kind of music?”

“Is it important?”

“When I hire a Minstrel to play for you, I want to make sure that I get the right kind without offending your delicate sensibilities.”

I chuckled. “I like harmonies where the main melody is still obvious. That bar liked this, almost random, clashing sound of music where I could not find the melody in the middle of it, no matter how hard I looked. To me, it was just noise and what made it worse was the fact that everyone else there was nodding along with the band’s efforts, tapping their feet and shaking their heads to the sounds as though there was some kind of magic to the sounds. It left me feeling as though I was missing out on something.

“As I remember it though, a friend of a friend had a lover that was part of the band, I think she played a flute of some kind, and we were all dragged along to listen to that nonsense. I was alright, I found it amusing for a while, my friend would owe me a favour and the wine was reasonably good, but that soon turned into boredom.

“I was at the bar when she came over. And if I’m honest, I can still remember what she looked like as she came. She was… Oddly, she reminded me of Saffron quite a lot, or rather Saffron reminded me of her. She smiled like a hunter and I was her target. That makes it sound more poetic than it actually was. I hadn’t been laid in a while, there were some girls that I had one or two night stands with. Some friends with occasional benefits stuff where I got to practise my practical knowledge of female anatomy. But I had never found either kind of situation particularly fulfilling.

“And then she was there. Of the two women, she is the one I find it hardest to remember. I find myself wondering if I had imagined it or if I had got something wrong.

“The charitable interpretation of events is that, to her, I was another notch on her bed-post. I know that she was as bored of the music as I was and had decided to go and see if she could find some toy to amuse herself. But that’s unfair to her really. As I say, the charitable interpretation is that I was a diversion, little more than that. Someone and something to have some fun with for a few days before she would move on. Friends warned me about her as this was her habit, to pick someone, use them up and then move on. But me being me, I fell in love with her didn’t I. Or close enough that I didn’t know the difference.

“I knew very little about her really. We didn’t really talk very much if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean Freddie.”

“She was the daughter of a townsman who had made it big in some way and she had managed to get into the university on some level. I have no idea what it was. Some people have suggested that she found the sudden freedoms that she was offered to be intoxicating to the point of madness. Suddenly she was in charge of her own funds and her own destiny and she went mad with it. She was a hedonist and she wanted everything. Drink, sex and later she turned to drugs to get that high. This wasn’t helped by the fact that she was painfully beautiful.

“I fell for her, really hard, despite the advice of all my friends that I was making a mistake. That it would end badly and all of that. But I refused to believe it. I was in love, she laughed at all my jokes, listened when I moaned about my family and, the sex was amazing.”

I realised what I was saying a little late but fortunately, Ariadne saw the funny side and laughed at me.

“And then she moved on. I walked into a pub to meet her one night to find her sitting astride a mercenary of some kind having wine poured into her cleavage which the mercenary lapped up to her amusement. I was devastated. She wondered why I was so upset. I never spoke to her again.

“I will admit that one of the main reasons that I never spoke to her again was because every time I was anywhere near her, one of my friends would firmly take me by the arm and move me on. Other than one memorable occasion when a very attractive minstrel friend of us all saw her making eyes at me with a calculating expression on her face. The theory at the time was that she had heard about who I really was and wondered if she could make some money by having my bastard or trapping me into a marriage of some kind. But the minstrel in question firmly took my hand, put it on her chest and kissed me soundly. When I came round she grinned at me and told me “That’ll teach the bitch.”

“As memories of my university life go, that was quite a good one. I was too stunned to make anything of it and it was over, really before I knew what was happening.

“She is the girl that got into drugs. She had been gorgeous when she was younger but after a while, the near constant drink, drugs and sex damaged her in some way. Her body could no longer cope with the abuse and it started to give out. Coupling that with the fact that her father disowned her and refused to pay for her medical treatments. She married a soldier, had his baby before she cuckolded him and he threw her out. I don’t often get news of her now and I sometimes wonder if she’s still alive. I know that she occasionally contacts old friends out of the blue and asks for money. There is something of an alliance amongst that circle that says that they will help her, food, clothes, shelter and so on. But that they won’t give her money because she will spend it on drugs and alcohol and other ways to damage herself.

“But that incident broke me. It shouldn’t. As I say, it was the world’s most predictable heart-break. There have been other occasions when I have been quite happy to be a notch on some woman’s bed post, including women who were more hedonistic than she was. Including the minstrel that I have just mentioned. But for some reason, that one got to me. Something about the way that she listened to me, or pretended to, got it’s hooks into my soul. I thought it was more than it was and as such, she broke my heart.”

I looked sideways at Ariadne, wondering if I should risk the next part. But as has happened so often, my mouth just decided that I was going to keep speaking.

“I will not lie, I still have nightmares about walking through that door and seeing her there like that, laughing with wine spilling over her tits with another man’s mouth suckling it all up.”

Ariadne didn’t blink. After everything, I wondered why she might have been put off by that. “Understandable.” She said. “It was a traumatic moment. Trauma doesn’t have to come from a near-death experience or combat. It can come from all kinds of places. So that was the first woman, who was the second?”

I took a deep breath.

“She was worse. Largely because she was better in almost every way.”

I sighed and straightened from the bed to pour myself a drink. A dim part of me wondered when the plan was going to come to fruiting and whether or not someone could come in to say that the rescue was going to be underway in order to save me from this conversation.

“They are still working out the details, Freddie.” Ariadne told me. “This sort of thing seems to thrive on the details”

I lay back and sighed.

“I was very fragile after that. So fragile that I eschewed female company other than those established friends. One of those friends called me “Saddle shy.” She said that it was like I had hurt myself falling off a horse and didn’t want to get back in the saddle. As I recall, I told her that calling any woman a horse, or a saddle that I needed to get back into was a little insulting which made them all laugh and say things like “And that’s why we love you.”

“There were various well meaning attempts to “get me back in the saddle” as it were. Men introducing me to girls they had met in the bar who talked me up to the point where there was absolutely no way that I could live up to the expectations that these poor girls had of me. My female friends tried to introduce me to their friends and room-mates. But nothing came of that either. Nothing quite as embarrassing as when your friends push you together with someone that you don’t know in the hopes that the two of you hit it off in a romantic way. The pair of you are just watching everyone who are hiding round the corner with a series of whispers.”

I sighed. “I’m dodging the subject aren’t I.”

“Yes you are.” Ariadne told me, “but you are working up to it so I will let you off.”

“In the end, it was Shani who came to my rescue. To this day, I have no idea if she was trying to set me up with her, or if it was just a well-meaning favour for a friend. She was everything you are not. You are tall, slender, pale, dark haired and serious with occasional flashes of sharp humour. She was short, blond, made of curves and constantly laughing at things.

“She was a new medical student that Shani had taken under her wing given that she was extremely talented. But, apparently, she came from a wealthy family and, like me, she had all but run away to learn things. Her parents wanted to encourage her learning of healing by having her spend time with the local herb-woman. But this wasn’t enough for the clever young girl. Shani had decided that this young woman had too much talent to be wasted and was doing everything within her, then, rather limited power to keep her in the university. One of her methods was to get me to show her round.

“As I say, within moments of meeting her, she had made me laugh as she mocked some of the more stuck up people in town. Moments after that, I had made her laugh with some of the stories about the escapades of myself and my friends. Including the various horrors that my love life had entailed. We laughed through the entire day and then later I took her to the bar to meet my friends and they all fell in love with her instantly.

“Apparently, she loved me from the moment that we met but I didn’t see it. I was still saddle shy and oblivious, refusing to see what a girl, especially one as wonderful as that, would see in me. My friends teased me about it mercilessly as they tried to persuade me to ask her out.

“It took me three weeks to pluck up the courage. Matters were not helped by the fact that I had seen several other men try to ask her out only to be eviscerated in turn. She would later tell me that she had already decided that I was the one for her and had considered herself taken from day one.

“When I finally screwed up my courage to approach her with a bunch of flowers and ask her if she wanted to go for a walk by the river with me… Another moment that I will never forget… She looked at the flowers and rose to her feet before looking up at me. As I say, she was rather short. Then she grinned. “Fucking finally.” She swore, knocked the flowers aside and pounced on me to the cheering of our mutual circle of friends.”

Even now, all these fucking years later. This story still brings a tear to my eye. I am several years older than I was at the time. So much more experienced in both the world and in matters of the heart and the bed chamber. I am in love with, and engaged to be married to a lady that is stimulating in mind and soul as well as being, objectively, far more beautiful than this girl was at the time. But damn me if it doesn’t still hurt like a motherfucker.

“It was brilliant.” I said. “Amazing even. I was surprised to find out that I was the more experienced sexual partner. Not because of a judgement on her behalf but rather because I had been so used to being the innocent one in the pairing that it seemed strange. She wasn’t a physical virgin due to an accident when she had learned to ride which was not uncommon in those of us that don’t have to work in the fields, but also are not wealthy and powerful enough to ensure that a virginity is a more valuable commodity than charm, intelligence or an education.

“It certainly didn’t bother me although I took care to hire a prostitute to take me through some things to help our first time be as magical as I could make it. According to the girl’s feedback. It was all wonderful until it came time to actually… inserting the peg in the hole. Apparently that was uncomfortable and hurt, still, but she said I was very gentle all things considered. And things certainly improved during the second attempt and by the third she was much happier with things.”

Ariadne listened to all of that with a smile.

“We loved, we laughed, we talked. We had a great time. It wasn’t perfect and looking back, that was almost certainly my fault. I kept waiting for her to betray me.”

“Only natural after your previous experience.”

“That’s what my friend said. I know it upset her occasionally but the truth was that… The most magical part of things, or rather one of the most magical parts of things, was learning to trust her. As time went by, my body and mind learned to relax around her. I began to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to come round a corner to find her being all over some dipshit of a mercenary. Or snogging a friend or the latest pretty bard to decide that he wanted to recapture his youth by playing in some of the student pubs and sleeping with the medical staff.

“She was a good woman and I enjoyed her company immensely. Enough so that I met her parents when they came to town. Nice people. It got to the point where people would talk about us in the same breath. They would say Freddie and… her. (Freddie: Yes. I am protecting her name. For all that she broke my heart, she doesn’t deserve to have me dragging her name through the mud.)”

“What happened?”

“You see, that’s the worst of it. About seven months into the whole thing. When my young and romantic heart was dreaming about things like engagement rings and thinking about trying to introduce her to my family. One day, she just met me from one of my classes and told me that she didn’t want to see me any more. She would be open to the idea of remaining friends but that she no longer wanted it to be a romantic thing.

“And then she just walked away as I stood there, for far too long, gaping after her. She was as benevolent as she could be and it was a little off-putting as to how much planning she had put into it. She had arranged it so that there would be friends nearby to catch me. She chose to do it on a day when I had nothing coming up for a few days so I could just allow myself to wallow in misery and then she just… walked away.

“It was not a good night, and not a good time. I wept, drank, screamed and shouted along with the best traditions of having your heart broken. But over and over again there were two different refrains. The first was “Why?” But the second was “You promised.”

“That was what broke my heart the most. She had promised that she wouldn’t do this. That I could trust her not to break my heart. But she did it anyway.”

“Did you ever find out why?” Ariadne asked gently.

“No. There were lots of theories of course. And years later I was conscious enough to realise… What could she say that I would be happy with? If she had told me that she just didn’t love me any more then I would have wasted time trying to tell her that I could change. That I would change and that I would fix whatever it was that she was unhappy about. If she had told me that she had met someone else then I would have demanded to know who it was and why they were better than me. No way that ends well.

“The one that I consoled myself with for… well… for years. Was that her parents had found out about who my parents were and decided that no daughter of theirs would be allowed to marry into that family. Or that they had managed to find her a better husband than me in the long run which, to be fair to them at the time, would not have been hard. That explanation meant that I could keep blaming Father and my family ties as a whole.

“But that was the thing that broke me. I was just learning to trust her. Still, even after several months of learning to trust her. A process that I loved, was still loving and enjoying as it went on. It was the most joyful thing in the world. Every time when I would think that she was making eyes at someone else or leaning into some other man, entirely figments of my own imagination I might add, when she would turn to me and wink before blowing me a kiss. Every single time that happened, I was overjoyed with it. The relief and the… euphoria that came with that. Knowing that this woman. This magnificent woman was allowing me to kiss her, touch her and laugh with her. That enormous privilege was intoxicating and relearning that privilege, every time, was worth every second.

“And then she broke her promise, and in doing so, she broke my heart.”

“Do you still blame her?”

“Yes and no. Nowadays, I remember the hurt. I still feel the hurt and it can still upset me if I’m not careful. I would still like to know why it all happened. But that heart-break was one of the things that gave me the kick up the backside that I needed to get me out of the city and on the road to meet Kerrass. Seeing her walking through the streets of Oxenfurt, arm in arm with another one of her girl-friends that I had known fairly well once. They were laughing without a care in the world. They waved at me, happily. As though everything was alright. That drove home the necessity of finding something that could get me out of the city. So without her, at that time and place, I would not have been on the road to meet Kerrass. I certainly wouldn’t have met you.”

“But it still hurts?” Ariadne wondered.

“Yes.” I told her. “It still hurts.”

“How interesting.” She said. “It also puts your behaviour with me into context. You were learning to trust me. You are still learning to trust me.”

“It also suggests that, you being a vampire, means that I can take into account that you are not going to behave like anyone else. But yes. Being afraid of you meant that you were able to circumvent a lot of the trust issues. I was too busy learning to trust the fact that you weren’t going to rip my throat out and eat my spleen to worry about whether or not you were going to break my heart.”

“Ew no.” Ariadne shuddered. “Spleen is far too bitter. You were still struggling to trust the other thing as well weren’t you.”

“Partially. But the other factor was… You were trying to arrange marriage. That was one step further than any of the steps that I had been along up until that point. I was being pursued rather than being the pursuer. With you, the trust is going to be different in that I am going to be learning to trust that you won’t betray me after we’re married. I’m going to be looking for paramours and strapping stable-boys and…”

She laughed for a moment.

“You laugh, but that was not entirely a joke.” I told her.

“I know. Just as you also know that that would never happen. You fascinate me Freddie. Not Guillaume, Helfdan, Rickard or any of the other wonderful men that I have met since you and Kerrass released me. I love you. Although I am pleased to learn that it was not just your issues with my being a vampire that caused you to distrust me.”

“That was certainly part of it.”

“Yes.” I wasn’t looking at her, but I could feel the smile. “So the reason why this is affecting you so much is because Anne… Cut through your trust. You found yourself loving her a little bit and then…”

“She side-stepped the trust issues. She was hired, yes. But I didn’t think you could fake that level of kindness and care. It just doesn’t seem possible for a woman to be that wonderful but also being that…”

“Treacherous?”

“And I know, I know that it was because they had her son. I know that and it’s the best reason for it. But I trusted her. I did. I let my guard down and I trusted her.”

“At least part of that was her job Freddie. Even if she hadn’t been a traitor. It was, at least partially, her job to get you to trust her and to let your guard down. That’s what she does.”

“I know that, but… But I was… She is not the first professional woman that I have been with. Nor is she the first that works at her kind of level. Kerrass once paid for me to have the royal treatment and those women were almost beautiful enough to stop my heart.”

“And I am not?” She teased.

“Ariadne…”

“There are some differences though.” She said. “The first is that you have been ill. It might not seem like a lot. But it really is. You have been vulnerable. The second is… I have taught you that you can trust. It is part of the reason why I am so angry. I have taught you to trust and I all but through her into your path. You are tired… The work that you are doing with Kerrass and the other Knights is amazing. Outstanding and I am so proud of you. But you are still tired. You are still sick and you are still vulnerable. Kerrass is, and has been, right when he says that it’s occasionally necessary to live a little and one of those ways is to know the erotic company of the gender of choice. You have deliberately deprived yourself of that. Another of the reasons for which I think so highly of you. But in doing that, you have left yourself vulnerable to feminine based seduction.

“So you were vulnerable, sick, tired, randy to all hell and there she was. A beautiful woman that the other women in your life are all but throwing at you. Of course you trusted her and of course, it went badly. It is not your fault.”

I nodded. “Easy to say here in cold blood though isn’t it.”

“It is.”

There was a pause. Something felt unsaid.

“I must ask Freddie.” She began. She was speaking in the quiet voice that she uses when she is slightly nervous about the question. “Has this damaged your trust in me? I brought her to you. I told you to love her and to let her in. Has this damaged your trust of me, or your ability to trust in general?”

I considered this for a moment. It felt like the kind of question that deserved some space to breathe.

“I charge you to be honest with me Freddie. I need truth in this.”

I continued to stare at the ceiling. It seemed like a natural place to let my eyes rest on.

“I don’t know.” I decided after a while. “Is that an acceptable answer?”

“Always.”

“Then I don’t know. Gut answer? Yes. Yes it has hurt me. Time will tell on that matter, as will the question as to how much it has hurt me.”

I literally chewed the problem around.

“I…. ummm…. I also know that the problem is with me, not with you. This is not your fault. It is a problem in me and I am going to need to work on it as much as anything. I can’t promise that that will happen quickly. But I can promise that it is not your fault.”

She let out a small burst of breath. “It kind of feels like it is. As I say, I brought her to you. When you were uncomfortable with the idea, I pushed the concept onto you. I encouraged you to let go of your inhibitions and to let go.”

“Yes you did. And all things being equal. That was what I needed at the time. It was a solution that no one else offered. That no-one else would even have dreamed of. Sir Walther said that that’s what was needed, you couldn’t provide that concept which would have been ideal. I wasn’t really in a position to take that comfort elsewhere. So, it was a solution, you offered it and all things being equal, if everything else had gone to plan… It would have worked as well. The fact that it didn’t work, is neither your fault, nor your doing.”

I still didn’t want to look at her. I could tell that she was in some form of distress because I could hear her breathing as she sucked down air. I was getting better at learning her tells. Hands clenched and heavy breathing meant extreme’s of emotion and an effort to control herself. It didn’t always work of course.

“Truth be told.” I went on. “I am currently in the process of deciding who’s fault it is and who I get to blame.”

“Have you come to any conclusions?” She wondered.

“I am not there yet.” I decided. “I desperately want to blame her.”

“I can sympathise with that.”

“I want to blame her so badly. I want to call her a mercenary and yell and scream and shout and do all kinds of things. I want to demand her head and I want to… But that would be wrong. It would be harsh and unpleasant and… I don’t really think she deserves it. And despite everything else… She did help me.”

“I wanted to be the one that helped you though.” Just the slightest hint of a wail and a complaint in that voice. When she is being careful with her emotions, Ariadne can make Kerrass look and sound expressive.

“I know.” I told her, reaching out a hand which she took. If you held a dagger to my throat I wouldn’t be able to tell you who was giving whom the strength

“I wanted to be the one who held on to you and I wanted to be the one that comforted you in the depths of the night.”

“I know.” I told you.

“And I… And I… I wanted to be the one who was there for you when you climbed out of your hole, I wanted to love you and share in that exaltation. I wanted it so badly. Freddie, you have had your trust damaged and I am grateful that you trusted me with that honesty. But it is only fair that I trust you with that.

“The night that you came home and you were awake and powerful. When you came back, the night that Lady de Launfal died. You walked in and you were as alive as I’ve seen you. As alive as you have been since long before we came to Toussaint. Since long before the Goddess or even… in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen you that… alive and sure of yourself since you stood up to your brother in Redania, before that even.

“But I saw you there and then. In that moment… You had met the problem, Kerrass had rebuilt you and you were confident, strong and powerful. You were wobbly, shaky, like a new-born horse where you can still see the power in their legs that will one day carry a Knight to victory in the tourney fields. I could almost see everything inside you waking up and coming back to normal. I could see the emotions and the triumph and the strength returning to you, visibly, before my very eyes and I knew what you wanted. I knew what you needed. Oh so very human of you. You had triumphed, not over the enemy or the bad people but over that element of yourself that you had been fighting with. And when humans win, they want to celebrate. More so with you because you had been skating towards the edge of death and there is nothing more human than a need to affirm life in the face of that.

“I wanted to be that, I wanted to feel that. Instead, I gave you to Anne and she betrayed you, she betrayed me. She took everything that I wanted and… I don’t know if I can forgive her that. She literally did the thing that I was paying her to do and I hate her for it. How does that make sense?”

I smiled. “It is very human of you.”

She laughed. “I suppose that is something that your race and mine have in common. A refusal to see sense. Even when your mind and your education are telling you one thing, there is a steadfast refusal to see it as anything other than a betrayal. Logic be damned.”

“Logic is not really as exciting though is it?”

She laughed. “I am really looking forward to the point when logic and passion combine when it comes to my relationship with you Freddie.”

“I know.” I told her. “I feel the same.”

We sat in silence for a bit longer. Then she grunted.

“That’s another reason I have to hate her though.”

“What’s that?”

“Now, I am going to have to work even harder to overcome the problems that you have with trusting beautiful women, all because Anne betrayed us.”

“No she didn’t.” I decided. “Well…. She did but that doesn’t make her bad. It means that we were low down on her list of priorities and loyalties. And to be fair, neither of us have children, unless there’s something that you haven’t been telling me.”

“No.” She answered with the edge of a smile in her voice. “I do not have children. I have not met anyone I would be comfortable with, to try and grow a life. I have some ideas as to how we might pursue matters, but we are not there yet. I kind of want to enjoy married life for a while before we start trying to have children.”

“I agree. But that also means that we don’t really get the right to judge Anne. Yes, she betrayed us. Yes, there are lots of other things that she could have done in order to make the situation better. She could have trusted us to rescue her child. She could have trusted us so that we could have fed our enemies false information. She could have stood up to her blackmailers. She could have done all of those things. But I cannot imagine what it must have been like to have been standing there when the single most important person in my existence has a dagger to their throat.”

“How do you think you would react?” She wondered. “If someone held a dagger to the single most important person in your existence?”

“This will make you blush,” I considered, “or it might insult you. But it rather occurs to me that if anyone held a dagger to your neck then they would deserve everything that they got.”

She laughed, plainly delighted.

“But that’s the other matter.” I went on. “There is a big difference from you, a grown woman, a sorceress and a vampire. Powerful, confident and sure of yourself. Versus a child of… however few years. Alone, scared and utterly unable to fight back. I am angry with Anne, but I cannot hate her. This is one of those points where I am wrong to be angry. I know why, but this was not her fault. It was the fault of the people that took her son and when we go to rescue him, I am going to take great delight in smashing some faces in. And when it is done, I will speak to the Duchess on Anne’s behalf.

“And I might bring some pressure to bear to say that we find somewhere for her in Angral. As close or as far away from me as you are comfortable with. I would not want her close to me anyway. Trust, or lack of it, there might lead to some other problems.”

“I will admit.” Ariadne took a breath. Definitely distressed. “That I would not love the idea. I would feel the need to compete with her.”

“You know that you don’t, right? That you would win every time.”

“Yes Freddie, I know that.” She squeezed my hand. “But I would still want to, and others would know the history apart from anything else. I suppose.” She took a deep breath. “I suppose that we could find her a husband. There would be many more people in the North that would be willing to look past her history in order to take her in.”

“She could start her own enterprise.”

“No.” Ariadne shook her head. “No she couldn’t. She has betrayed the secrets of a client. Who would ever trust her, or take her in again?”

“True. I suppose your plan is the best then.”

“Finding her someone to marry. It would not be difficult, I suspect. The Duchess of Angraal could do with a new Lady’s maid, someone who was a bit more aware of the erotic side of life. In that position, she would quickly attract a merchant or some other…noble man of the court.”

A thought tickled my brain, but I could not quite nail it down. As I tried to focus on it, it just seemed to slip away from me as it just… slipped through my fingers. There was something there though.

I shook my head to clear it.

“Still,” I tried, “One thing at a time, first we must rescue the boy. Then we must convince Anne to tell us everything she knows.”

“Which will not be hard,” Ariadne guessed. “The question is more, how much did she know?”

“We will also take captives if I know anything about how Syanna will be thinking and they can be questioned as well.”

We sat for a while longer, just holding hands.

“I shall order you some food.” Ariadne decided. “Something with meat, bread and cheese in order to get you ready. Then, you and I shall go and help them with the planning of this encounter. I will admit to agreeing with you that the urge to pound some people in the face is awfully seductive right now. And I rather feel as though I owe it to Anne, in some way, to ensure that her son is returned to her, safely.”