(Warning: Contains rampant sexism and worse. Used by a villain that I already suspect many people hate)

Anne’s story wasn’t particularly sad. Nor was it particularly unusual. It was the kind of story that you hear all over the continent. The kind of story that makes you honestly fear for the human race as a whole.

Someone commented in the works of the Bard... I can’t remember who it was at the time of writing, I suspect either Master Chivay or Master Zigrin. Both of them are dwarves as the observation doesn’t sound like an Elven one. Especially as it has since been proven that Elves are as bad, if not worse, in some ways than humans are in this regard.

The comment was an observation on the nature of what happens amongst humans when times get hard. The comment said that most other races, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings and, at the time, Elves would all group together. They would come together in order to overcome the latest hardship that was being inflicted on them.

Humans don’t do that. Humans prey on each other in order to get to the top. When times get dark, you can easily imagine human’s clawing at each other over the last scraps of food where Elves would divide that food and ration it properly. If humans were trapped in a cave that was filling with water, then where Dwarves wouldn’t panic and would lift up those two weak to swim. All while everyone else would be working to keep the heads above water as well as finding a way out. It is easy to imagine human’s climbing over each other to get to the way out. Forcing friends and family down in order to be able to stand on them as a solid base to stay above water. There would be arguments as to who was more important. Who deserved life more and who was more suited to survival. And all the time that that fighting and debating would be going on, the water levels would be rising.

Halflings and Gnomes would just get on with getting out of there. Halflings especially are a pragmatic people, used to being on the bottom of things and would soon have the entire situation figured out while the humans would be clawing each other’s eyes out to get to the top of the pile and feel the air on their faces.

Exactly the same way that rats do come to that.

Anne’s story was a tale of strong people preying on weak people. It was almost heartbreaking in its simplicity and should the Eternal Flame or any of the other Gods weigh up the benefits of our race. Weigh up the possibility of whether we should survive over anything else. It would be one of those stories that would be held up as evidence that the entirety of the human race should be wiped out and whatever creator God that is behind everything should just have another go and start from scratch.

It was absurdly simple.

Ariadne had gone down to the Belles of Beauclair in order to find me a surrogate for her affections. After some debating and some examining of different candidates, the lady that was chosen was Anne. As money was not an object, there were a number of ladies that were available, the now dead Flower of the Night was one of them. But Ariadne was looking for someone who could care for me as much as someone that could show me the night of my dreams.

She was also looking for someone that couldn’t easily be compared to herself, so there was another candidate that was pale skinned and dark haired, but Ariadne decided that the woman in question looked too much like her and as such, vetoed that particular option. The same with the tall, thin lady with red hair that reminded Ariadne of Marion.

So Anne was chosen. It was all above board at this point. I was just another client, if a little unusual in that it was my fiance that was organising the hire.

Although, not as rare as some might think.

Anne was even a little reluctant to take the commission. Both because she was wary of being someone’s nurse. The idea of nursing an old invalid or holding my hair and clothes out of the way while I puked my guts up into some kidn of chamber pot or into a Garderobe was not attractive to her, and who can blame her. She was also following Kerrass’ advice before she had even met Kerrass. She wanted to make sure that, if it was a nurse that was needed, then it was a nurse that should be hired.

The other problem was that Ariadne is a Vampire. There was no getting round that fact and because of Beauclair’s experience with that particular race of creatures, Anne was rather nervous of sharing a bed with the love of a vampire’s life.

And who can blame her.

Anne would go on to admit that she spent most of that first period of time where she was working with me, all but shaking with fear. One foot already out of the door as it were, where she would constantly be ready to just refund the money and flee should the situation become untenable. If she really was expected to be my nursemaid or if she turned out to be part of some kind of playing piece to be used between two people.

However, this was not an unusual contract for her. It was the kind of thing that she would do semi-regularly. She was not the kind of lady that would be in the building of the Belle’s itself in order to flaunt her wares on top of a table or something. Coupled with the fact that she liked to work really hard for a relatively short period of time and then rest up in order to spend a good amount of time with her son.

So this kind of hire was not unusual for her. She would act as a wife or lover for visiting merchants or nobles that would come here without their own wives, but would still long for that feeling of having a beautiful woman on their arm and in their bed at the end of the day. She would act as the wife for the week or two that the merchant was in town, wave him goodbye at the end of the visit and then set it aside at the end.

During these periods of time, her son would stay with an “Aunt.”

Who was the boy’s father?

She claimed not to know and not care either. I didn’t blame her. The young lad was bewildered by everything that was happening and threw the occasional tantrum in our time with him. As had been suggested, Emma, Mark and Laurelen took him in while Anne was being questioned. Secrecy was still a foremost concern at that time so the less people that knew about Anne’s problems and the fact that she had been turned, the better. So as my family was aware of what was going on, they found themselves “volunteering” very quickly.

The lad was clearly very tired, very overwhelmed by the fact that he had been living a relatively poor, if not badly off life before being taken and housed in a large house with lots of people that he didn’t know, only occasionally being visited by his mother and being treated like what he imagined a young noble lord would be treated. From the outside point of view... From our point of view. This essentially meant that he was spoiled rotten. He was allowed to eat what he liked, when he liked. He was allowed to sleep when he liked, wake up when he liked and was only bathed regularly because “his mother would want to see that he was clean”.

So naturally, he hated us all for taking him away from that. But then he realised that he was being taken up to the palace. You could see parts of him shutting down as he saw things that he didn’t think that he would ever see. When he saw the Knights walking down the corridor stepping aside for us all and saluting. When he met Sir Guillaume who he had heard stories of in the street….

Ok. I will indulge in this one.

Upon meeting Sir Guillaume.

“Are you… Are you Sir Gillome?” The boy asked.

“Almost.” Guillaume smiled. “My name is Guillaume.”

“That’s what I said.” The boy stamped his foot before realising who he was in front of and looking sheepish. “Is it true?” He asked.

“Is what true?”

“Did you really fight the giant?”

Guillaume looked up at the boy’s mother who nodded.

“I did.” He admitted.

“You must be very brave. Everyone says so.”

Guillaume’s face reddened. “Everyone is wrong,” he said. “I was very stupid.”

“But you saved people.”

“I did, but I also nearly died.”

The lad’s face crumpled in thought. “But you saved people.”

“And I needed to be saved myself.” Guillaume tried again.

“But you are a Knight Errant.”

Guillaume winced. “I was.” He admitted. “I am not any more.”

“Why not?”

“Because I realised that being a Knight Errant and what I wanted to be, were two different things. I wanted to help people whereas Knights Errant only help themselves.”

“That’s stupid.” The boy said.

“I agree.”

“No,” The boy wore the expression of children becoming exasperated with the stupidity of adults. “Being a Knight Errant is the best thing in the world. You get to have a sword and armour and a horse and a squire that you can order around. You get to fight in tournaments and have sex with beautiful women.”

His mother gasped in horror. “Fabrice.”

“What?” He demanded. “That’s what being a Knight Errant is all about isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Guillaume answered. “But that’s not what it should be about.”

“Why not?”

“Because being a Knight is supposed to be about being more than that. Those are selfish things. Wanting to be a Knight for those things is selfish. What you should be doing is seeing those things as tools so that you can help other people. I use my sword and my armour and my horse to help other people. I do have a squire but I am training him to be a Knight himself someday. I don’t fight in tournaments because while I am fighting in tournaments, I could be out in the world saving other people like you and your mother. And as for…” He looked up at Anne. “the other thing. I am married to the most beautiful woman in the world and I don’t need any others.”

“That’s stupid.” The boy said. “Why would you want to help others if you can have what you want?”

“What if helping others is what I want?”

“That’s stupid.” The boy said again.

Guillaume sighed. “The world would be a better place if less people thought that.”

The boy went quiet for a moment before he brightened up. “Can I touch your sword?”

“No.”

And on and on it went.

In handing the boy over to my family, they took him in and acted according to type. Mark became the stern disciplinarian who dictated when it was time for things to eat, time for a nap and so that the boy could “get out of those ridiculous clothes. While Emma would wink, smile and play the good person who mothered the little boy. They clearly had a great time until the boy finally gave in to his own exhaustion a little while later and fell asleep.

It was painfully, obviously clear that the boy was the apple of his mother’s eye and what little interaction I saw of the two of them when they were together, told me that he loved her back. As much as she was able to be, she was a good mother as well. All during our time when she was being questioned, she cared little for what would happen to her, but the thought of what would happen to her son was always paramount in her thoughts.

She didn’t care who it was that was the father. In that time of her life, there were a number of different candidates but between the lot of them, there were a couple of clients that she didn’t want it to be. There were a couple more that she suspected would be outright neglectful and only one that would stand any chance of being a decent father. Most would simply want rid of the child and would seek to pay her off. She didn’t want that. She was also well aware of the risk as to what might happen if someone decided that it would be better and easier if both she and the child were “vanished” in order to remove any risk that they might be a threat to some inheritance down the line.

So that was her pattern. She would work for a while, for a month or two, demanding a high price from her client so that she could live, as a mother to her son, for a fixed period. She was also saving desperately for the future and that point in her life where she couldn’t make her living by her looks. She had visions of opening a massage parlour, but it was a distant dream. Mostly, she spent her money on her son and was seeing to it that he had the best education that money could buy for her level of society.

Which largely meant that he learned from a small tutor that taught the other street children. He was learning basic letters and math at the time, although his mother had views of great things in the future.

While she was working, he stayed with an Aunt. We had no idea who this Aunt was to either of them and Anne herself was unsure. She had always been Aunty to her for as long as she had lived.

There was no animosity in the relationship as far as we could tell. The pair of them, Anne and the Aunt, had loved each other for as long as Anne could remember and when it came down to the question of whether or not Anne had any other family, Aunty was the only one that came close to the question.

Yes, Anne had “sisters” in the Belles of Beauclair but the way she said “sisters” was exactly the way that Sam, Guillaume or Kerrass say “Brothers” when talking about comrades in arms.

Anne didn’t think of Aunty like that any more. We never truly found out who it was that sold Anne out to the spy network. Events caught up with us while we were still ferreting that piece of information out which meant that it was, abruptly, no longer relevant. There were any number of suspects. One of the Servants that served the family and I could have let it slip into the wrong ear. Palace gossip is notoriously porous when it comes to being able to keep a secret. It was one of the reasons that it was perfectly reasonable to believe that we would try and hide Lady Caroline Vasseur in a cottage away from the palace to avoid such gossip.

It’s because sooner or later, someone has to do the laundry, take away the nightsoil, cook the food and carry the water as well as providing avenues for cleanliness. If a person is a prisoner then there are whole other things going on but in this case, Anne had been far from a prisoner. If anything she had been close to an honoured guest. The only difference being that she didn’t come to any of the parties that the rest of us were invited to. Even if she could probably have come, hanging off Mark or Kerrass’ arm if she needed an escort.

So it was all too plausible that some servant had let it slip that there was a courtesan staying with the Coulthard party that spent her nights in Lord Frederick Coulthard’s bed. We imagined the conversation would go something like this.

“The Coulthard party needs an extra portion of breakfast taking up?”

“Oh yes? A bit awkward of them to seduce someone to their rooms. Or is it one of the women that have admitted the truth that they just need a man”

(Freddie: Much though it pains me to admit it, I have still heard people talking about my sister and Laurelen in such a way. Emma gets angry with it, Laurelen shrugs and says that if she misses the sensation of a penis then there are plenty of craftsmen that can make her a fake one should she need it. I saw her mention this to one of the offensive asshats once and the man paled when Laurelen pointed out that one of the benefits of a wooden appendage that she has strapped to her lover is that it never tires out or goes limp. The man paled and retreated. Funnily enough, she never had to do it again.)

“No, the breakfast is to be laid in Lord Frederick’s room.”

“But isn’t his betrothed staying with them?”

“Yes, she’s quite happy with the arrangement apparently.”

“Northerners.” A statement that always seems to be accompanied by the roll of the eyes.

Anyone taking part in that conversation, or overhearing that conversation, would quickly be able to put two and two together to get the relevant number. It wouldn’t take much investigation from that point to come to the realisation as to who Anne was, where she came from and what was going on in her life. That’s the way these things work after all.

Unfortunately for their relationship. Anne blamed her Aunt though. All that she knew was that she went down to visit her son one day to talk about all the things that a Mother might ask her son. “Are you listening to Aunty?” “Are you washing your hands?” The ever popular “How was school?” As well as doing all the things that women seem to want to do when it comes to their children. I would imagine that there was much ruffling of hair, wiping of tears, hugs, “My how you’ve grown” and all of the other things as well. There might even have been handkerchiefs and spit involved along with the plaintive cries of “Muuuummmmm,” as the child tried to wriggle out of the grip. But not too hard as then there would be the danger that they might get away from the maternal affection.

Then one day, Anne had gone down there to find that her son had vanished. Aunty was sat in the corner looking scared and more than a little bit ashamed and there was someone waiting for her.

That person had told her about what Anne was expected to do, how she was expected to behave and how her performance in her new role would be measured against the expectations of her new employer. She would still take Ariadne’s money and she would perform all the services that were required by her existing contract. Except for the one about the passing on of confidential knowledge.

This happened fairly quickly after Anne had come and started working for us. Apparently, only within a couple of days.

The pay for her obedience was that she would be allowed to see her son. That her son would be kept safe (The threat in all of this was implicit) and that he would be properly educated in the ways of a young gentleman. Anne is not a stupid lady and she had no doubt that this education was certainly going to involve having her son’s sympathies turned towards the kidnappers and that he would be kept in order to keep Anne on the hook for ever. And should her usefulness ever end, then she would soon find herself in an alley somewhere with her throat slit. Her son would be taught to hate the memory of her and that that would be that.

She gave them plenty. She certainly told them about the affair between Kerrass and Lady Moineau. She stole my spear in order to give it to them ready for the party and Lord Leblanc’s games, which had been a special assignment. They had been sure that she would be caught that night but it was a big test of her loyalties and capabilities. She told them about my illnesses, Mark’s health issues and various other small things. She was desperate to prove her worth to them because she was obsessed with the idea that they would turn her son against her.

She freely admitted that she hated every moment of the subterfuge, but that she felt that she had no choice. The one time that she had tested the boundaries of her captivity, which is how she thought about it, her son had turned up to a meeting with a black eye.

That particular part of the story had everyone that was listening angrier than they had been for the rest of the story. Guillaume in particular seemed to be rather strongly affected by that particular piece of information.

So that was Anne’s story. It was not as completely fleshed out because, as I say, we got caught up in events. The other problem with it all was that Anne was not a good storyteller which meant that the story came out in fits and starts. She started at the end, moved onto the beginning, went back towards the end, stopped for an apology, asked to see her son, started at the beginning, went back to her past history to explain some of the past players that we didn’t really need to know about and so on.

The poor woman was frantic with a desire to tell us everything. EVERYTHING. In as much excruciating detail as she could imagine. She would go over the same points over and over and over again to make sure that we all understood just how much she hated the fact that she was betraying our trust. And then, when it was pointed out that we knew all of that, that she had all but been forgiven and that there was only the legal issues left, she would burst into tears for a while before starting again.

It was awful. Also fascinating to that bleak part of my mind that comments “This is how history is made.” As I say, it’s not a new story. Definitely not a new story when it comes to world history. This is a textbook example of how you get information out of a palace or out of a person. There are manuals on how it’s done with side notes that address the various ways that it’s been done as part of history. I know many of them. Off-hand I could tell you of several times that the world has been on the brink of collapse because of this kind of thing. But also, the way that the continent has been saved because of a correctly placed informant.

And so often, it is a case of turning the person that is already there. This wasn’t even that cruel an example. Normally when this kind of thing is done, Anne would have been sent one of her son’s fingers, maybe an ear or some other identifying mark in order to guarantee her obedience.

All the while this story was coming out I was torn into several different pieces. There was that part of me that mortifyingly embarrassed. As I say, there are examples of this kind of thing happening all over the continent and all over history. I could name a dozen of them off the top of my head along with the immediate results. I remember laughing with friends as we sat around the gardens in Oxenfurt, giggling at the sex scandals of people long dead.

Laughing at how stupid they had been to be taken in by a pretty face, a nice pair of tits or a particularly shapely manhood. So I was mortifyingly embarrassed as now, I had no doubt, at some point in the future there would be a group of students who would be sitting around in a similar situation laughing at me. And I deserved it too.

I also had every sympathy for Anne and the torment that she had been through. She had suggested that we have one of the mages look through her mind in order to confirm what had been said and done in her presence. Something that, of all people, Syanna shot down. I was surprised but it turns out that what a Mage says or does is not usable in court. This is because it is still an argument about who heard what and the court, and therefore the Duchess, can only take the word of the mage that a person is telling the truth. While that was entirely trustworthy at the moment, the court mage being Lady Vigo and the Duchess being fairly evenhanded when it comes to justice, there were times in the past when that was not the case and people could expect the mage in question to tell the court whatever they felt like.

So I was still struggling with the urge to wrap Anne up in my arms and tell her everything was going to be alright. It was not going well in that regard and I often had to leave the room to breathe in and out. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the people that I wanted to lean on in that situation, Ariadne and Kerrass, were heavily involved in the questioning.

But lastly, I was intrigued by the method used. Someone had spoken to Anne directly to induct her into the information gathering. We had no idea who that person was and I would dearly like to have known. That was the intriguing figure in my eyes. Apparently it was a woman which made it even more confusing. That told me that the person in question enjoyed the power and wanted to be there in the moment that they broke the person that they were going after. In this case, Anne. That said something to me. I had no idea what and it wasn’t very complimentary. But they had wanted to be there when Anne broke and capitulated.

Apparently this person had guards.

We were in the process of getting down to that part of the questioning when events started to catch up with us. It is for that reason that I can’t conclusively say what was happening or complete the story. There were holes in Anne’s account. Lots of holes and if we had just had a few hours more to look into those holes, then I have no doubt that we would have found a lot more on the subject. It was not a case of… Anne not wanting to tell us these things. It was much more a case of just asking the right questions to make her think in the right way in order to give us the information.

But as I say, events caught up with us. Not least because we were running out of time. We had all been excited about the prospect of finding the information leak and had harboured a secret hope that this would be the thing that would finally crack the puzzle wide open. Time was dragging on though and we still hadn’t cracked the Jack conspiracy. Night would fall, another victim would be chosen and this time we had no idea who it would be so there was no way that we could defend the person in question.

It was like having this permanent mark on your life. Every morning we would get up thinking that this would be the day that we finally managed to find the missing clue. The missing thing that would lead us to our goal. And then, we would find something. Someone who would lead us further down the path. Who would seem to show us that little bit further into the darkness and we would all get excited for a moment or two.

“This was the one,” we would think. This was the one that would mean that we could stop worrying. That we could stop thinking about all of this and otherwise move on. This was it. This was the hole in the armour of the people that had set themselves against us. Today was going to be the day that, even if we didn’t catch them. We would make it so impossible for them to recover from the setbacks that we had dealt them that they would never climb back. They wouldn’t even dare to climb out of the holes that we had dug for them.

But then, time would drag on and on and on. Sometimes, and that day was no different, it would seem that the day was endless, that we had all the time in the world. That we could take our time, dot every i and cross every t. Other times, and it was often the same day, even the same hour, we would turn around after a long series of questions and answers or a big discussion, we would turn around and hours would seem to have passed. The sun would have continued it’s inexorable and endless journey towards the horizon and we would be no closer to stopping the bastards that were doing all of this.

No closer to saving the next poor woman’s life.

This was no different. It was just beginning to dawn on us that Anne didn’t have the answer that we were looking for. She could implicate the people that were at the house when we raided it but beyond that, there was nothing else really to say for it. There was the woman that had met her at her Aunt’s house but we had no way of knowing who that was, yet.

Things were not going well.

And it was at about this time that Sir Morgan Tonlaire, the black hand, had found out that the city guard, the Knights of Francesca as well as Kerrass and myself had raided one of his properties.

We were just getting to the end of things, that point that is inevitable in any sequence of questioning which is when you run out of ideas as to what to ask. When it becomes clear that the only things that we could do to try and get more information out of the poor, devastated woman was to ask the same questions over and over again in a different order to see if it shook anything loose.

The problem was that, even if we could prove that Sir Morgan had used some of his resources to blackmail Anne in order to get information on me, there was no proof that he had anything to do with the Jack killings. I was convinced that he had nothing to do with it. I, like Syanna, believed that he was simply a product of his time. An old Knight who was used to things being done a particular way and was bemoaning the fact that the world simply didn’t want to work like that any more.

He was rebelling at the fact that he was older, obsolete and that no-one wanted him. The fact that there were other people like him in the surrounding areas and groups of people is what made him powerful. In a society where people still elevate martial skills over things like integrity, honesty and charity, there were always going to be people like Morgan. Mostly living on past glories and old strengths. Still strong in his skills, but slowly watching age erode those skills.

We received word that Morgan had discovered our raid and had demanded that the guard and the other law keeping agents remove themselves from his property. There were other demands as well. Things like reparations, apologies, resignations and numerous other things that he would demand. Damien, who was still down there overseeing the search and cataloging of things, refused.

Because of course Damien refused.

I have a suspicion about Captain de La Tour. He’s the kind of man that if you ask him to do something politely, or if you give him some kind of sob-story, then he will bend over backwards in an effort to accommodate you with whatever it is that you want. He would be the kind of man that would climb a tree to rescue a young child’s kitten. He would help an old lady with their market day shopping and if there was a man trying to do too much due to an old injury then he would be the first man to bend to help.

But the instant that you get in his face and start “demanding” things. Suddenly, even the most trivial of chores will become too much to ask. Even basic paperwork will take hours, the more you argue with him and the more you yell at him, the more he will drag his heels.

So naturally, he threw a load of accusations into Sir Morgan’s face. Nothing that we could prove of course and so Sir Morgan had lost his temper, gathered his allies as well as anyone else that was in town that he felt could lend weight to his argument and was storming up to the palace at the head of what he, doubtlessly, thought was some kind of avenging angry mob.

And like most such people, I strongly suspect that the mob was mostly made up of people who just wanted to see what would happen.

Have you ever seen a building fall down? It’s an occasional occurrence in Oxenfurt and Novigrad. The problem is that both cities are built on the banks of rivers. The ground is uneven and not entirely dependable for a start. Foundations need firmer building blocks than river mud or silt. Plus there is the fact that although the original parts of the cities were built by the elves and therefore were built on the most solid and permanent of bases. Since that time, the cities had expanded. And people being people, lived in the moment rather than thinking through their actions. So they build their houses on the river’s edge. Often, I suspect, telling themselves that it would do as a temporary thing until they could afford a more permanent structure.

But two things are inexorable. The first is time. The other is nature. The river washed away the banks, carrying mud and silt and the basic building blocks away with themselves. So over time, what had been a solid house built on the edge of a river became something of a precarious place.

There are entire districts in Novigrad that were built on mud. Tall houses that are, all of them, right on the verge of tipping over and shattering. Enterprising people that cannot afford to move, construct vast scaffolds of wood in an effort to keep the building upright. As a dare I entered one once. I was young so it was probably either Sam or Edmund that dared me to walk into the building. I found uneven floors and cracks in the walls that had been stuffed with rags in order to keep the wind out. Heartbreaking isn’t the word for it. The floor’s were uneven so I could see tables, beds, chairs and even a baby’s cot that had been propped up with wedges of wood in order to keep them stable and relatively upright.

But one day, the supports will crack and you will watch as the entire thing comes tumbling down. Kerrass tells me that it’s like an avalanche. One beam cracks. One stone falls and the entire thing starts to tumble to the ground. There is nothing you can do, you just watch as disaster strikes and you just have to hope that you are not carried with it as you fall.

It was like that.

We received the message from the runner that Damien sent, that he had received word that Sir Morgan was on his way and after that, there was little we could do other than to watch as events unfolded.

Syanna left to carry word to the Duchess as to what was going on. We had moved past the point where it was beneficial for the Duchess to know as little as possible and now was the time that she needed to know everything.

After that, the Duchess demanded to see Anne herself. A meeting that I would have loved to have been part of. I couldn’t decide why I wanted to be part of that, whether to bear witness or to support Anne in whatever excruciating part of the conversation that was going to happen.

In the meantime, we all sat around and basically agreed that Sir Morgan could probably get away with it if he was remotely sensible enough. He could easily throw the people at the house, under the cart and blame them for everything. All he would have to say was that he was renting the building to the man who had kept Anne’s son Fabrice hostage, would demand an apology for the accusations that would have been thrown at him and then the rest of it would just fall by the wayside. Once again, it would seem as though the guard and the Knights of Saint Francesca had victimised him, he would play the martyr and he would come out of all of that smelling of roses.

And still, we had no new information to save a woman’s life.

“What was it that that idiot was talking about?” Kerrass wondered. “When he said that he was of noble blood and that therefore his word was worth more than some whore’s word.”

Guillaume sighed. “It’s an uncomfortable point of law which is also one of the things at the root of all the problems that we have in Toussaint as a whole. It’s an old law though and nowadays, a Knight or a Lord that invokes that kind of thing is seen as being rather cowardly and weak. What it boils down to was that if a man was of noble blood then he must have done something to get him there. Or his parents had. There used to be more of a tradition before estates became quite as inherited, that a noble child would be expected to spend at least some time in service to the realm to make up for that but that tradition has kind of fallen by the wayside.”

Guillaume snorted to show what he thought of that.

“But those early nobles had fought, bled and hurt themselves in order for the common folk of Toussaint to be able to live. Therefore, they were better than those people that hadn’t. That was why they were rewarded with lands and titles. The high mortality rate amongst those early nobles meant that this was perfectly reasonable as an estate or a patch of land could be expected to go through the hands of a couple of knights a year. If not more.

“Their other reward was that their word was considered paramount. It was part of the whole chivalry thing. They were supposed to hold to honesty, they swore that they would and therefore their word was paramount. If a common man claimed that a Knight had stolen an apple and the Knight said that he had bought it fairly then even if the common man could produce other witnesses and point to the lack of money in his purse for the apple, then the Knight was right and the man was wrong.

“Then it went to other extremes that said that not only that, but the common man was actively lying and the Knight could punish him for that.”

“Such a thing is not uncommon.” I said a little sadly. “The recent wars have done a lot to stop that. Nobles cannot afford to be so…. Obnoxious any more because they have been taught that the common folk can make spears a lot easier than Knights can arm their horses.”

“That is true.” Guillaume agreed. “It is also true that such a practice has fallen out of favour in Toussaint. It’s one of those things that people like Morgan want to get back to. In the long run, those rules evolved into a more catch all version of respect. The villagers know that we could do that. But we know that if we do that kind of thing then the villagers will just stop working.

“So it turns into a mutual understanding. Morgan, Crawthorne and the like want to go back to that time. When they say “People used to respect the Knighthood and the nobility” what they really mean to say is “People used to give us free food and drink and allow us to sleep with their daughters and not complain about it.” They would be horrified to hear it put like that though. But if you boil it right down, that is what they are complaining about.”

“I think we’ve got off topic here.” I said. “So Morgan’s word is worth more than Anne’s.”

“Yes. Twice over. One he is a noble and she is not. But she is also a sex worker which makes her even lower than a common man. It’s much more complicated than that, but because prostitutes are much harder to tax than a farmer… their word counts for less.”

“Why?”

“How do you prove how much money they have earned through their work?” Guillaume sighed with the air of a man who was remembering old lessons from school. “They might keep strict books but then people start denying that they visited the brothel because they don’t want to be associated with that, or get into trouble with wives or mistresses. So how do you prove it? Therefore people think that sex workers are institutionally less honest.”

“Seems ridiculous.”

“And it is. But think of how the world treats mercenaries. If you want a shorthand for dishonesty and unreliability then people talk about mercenaries. They will be dismissed by nobles and generals as being unreliable because they fight for coin rather than for the honour of their nation. But the truth is that a mercenary is a highly professional man who lives and dies by his word. Because if he lies and changes sides for the highest bidder, then he will never get hired again.”

“We’ve got off topic again.” Kerrass commented. “So the problem here is that Anne can say what happened and Morgan can simply deny it.”

“Possibly. I think it’s more likely that if Morgan was involved, which is still an if despite what we think, he will have layers of deniability between him and anyone that approached Anne. The implication is distant. I think he will throw the people at the house off the cliff and we will have nothing. Even if there is a duel, it might not be able to prove very much.”

I sighed. “We’re just one step further down the path of things we don’t know aren’t we. We’ve found the spy but we don’t know what it means.”

Guillaume nodded. “The best we can hope for is that the man running the enterprise breaks. But even then, if he has noble blood, he could just deny it. People like Morgan could back him up on the grounds of noble blood and there is nothing we could do. I couldn’t even champion Anne to defend her if I wanted to. And believe me, I want to.”

“Could I?” Kerrass wondered. “I am not of noble blood either and I could defend her.”

“It’s possible.” Guillaume commented. “However, you are an outlier. He could decline the duel and he could do that legally. It’s whether he cares about his skin more than his reputation. That could go either way. This is Toussaint after all.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

If you are sitting somewhere and thinking to yourself how barbaric all of this sounds. How backwards and how stupid it all is. Then I have some bad news for you. There is very little doubt in my mind that, wherever you are sitting, or standing, reading this before you turn it into something to clean your arse with as you sit in your garderobe, that the country in which you live has similar laws.

I can only speak for certainty about Redania and Temeria who have traded ownership of Novigrad and Oxenfurt since time out of hand, so it’s important to know which rules that you have to follow. But it is true that there is a hierarchy of honesty. It is the same reason that, everywhere he goes, Kerrass has to be careful about what he says and what he does. Because he is a “vagabond” which, believe it or not, is a legal term meaning that he travels from place to place with no permanent job and no permanent home. It means that he has no lord or master to answer to.

The fact that the Empress has only recently changed this is beside the point in many places. Certainly, Kerrass is protected in the bigger cities and things, but you try telling that to the border barons of the border towns who need someone to blame for the fact that their darling younger son accidentally murdered a farmer who had the temerity to protest when his wife or daughter was being raped by said noble scion.

In being a vagabond he shares that status with things like circus workers or travelling peddlers. Accredited merchants don’t have as much of a problem, because they nearly always have a home port or base which pays their taxes, but the average peddler who sells his goods from his backpack or, at best, a wagon. They are vagabonds. Why are they the lowest dregs of society? Why them and not the criminals, beggars, and so called “street filth” that line the poorer areas of Novigrad and Vizima?

Because those poor folk, the criminals, the beggars and the street filth have a reason for being the way they are. And mostly the fault in that can be tracked somewhere. Also, a remarkable number of towns have a use or these poor folk in that they are a quick and cheap source of labour. They don’t mind doing the hard, dangerous work and if several dozen or a hundred of them die while building the latest cathedral, cleaning out the old Elven sewer system or dredging out the riverside docks, then that means less mouths to feed.

So these so-called vagabonds are the lowest of the low.

After that you get the people that start to make the world turn. The farmers and village folk are next, depending on where you are they will get heaped together with the craftsmen and builders. Those craftsmen that belong to some form of guild are higher than that but not by much when you ask the noble that has to sit in judgement over them. On top of that, you get to the merchants, because even the most hard and fast noble understands the fact that in order to make money you need to sell stuff and in order to have stuff you need to buy it. They don’t want to do all of this tedious buying and selling themselves so they need a group of people to do that for them…

There is a school of thought that we are approaching a crisis point in this. A couple of the bigger thinkers that I have had the time to talk to, have suggested that the merchant class are going to overtake the noble class in importance and power. This due to the fact that with Nilfgaard conquering everything in sight there are less borders for nobles and Kings to fight over. So the merchants have all but a free market to use and exploit. Soon the wealth of the merchants is going to eclipse even the most powerful client kings and queens of nations.

And they are becoming more important by the day, because some of them are so rich that they almost control the economies of the nations that they are part of. Even as I write this, there are people in the Imperial court that are arguing for the forced dissolution of several larger trading companies. Including Coulthard shipping. But that’s a discussion for a different day.

Over all of this are the nobles. Their word is law because they had the good fortune to have been born into the right families or because their sword arm is quicker and faster than their nearest competitors.

So there are such laws all over the continent. Certainly in Temeria and Redania. I understand that King Henselt took great delight in sleeping with any woman he liked the look of, whether they wanted to or not. He would even demand payment from the husbands or fathers of the ladies in question on the grounds that he had done them a great service by blessing them with the King’s seed.

As for how Aedirn felt about the noble commonfolk divide. Just take a moment to lookin into the death of Prince Stennis for me and you will see, not only that the nobility of Aedirn saw themselves as being better than everyone else, but also you will see the results of what happens when nobles push it too far.

What Toussaint has done, no more or less, is to codify it. To put it down on paper and set precedent. So before you mock the people of Toussaint for being backwards or barbaric, I would suggest that you look to your own backyards.

While this conversation was happening, we were actually sitting at the window overlooking the courtyard. The Court itself hadn’t been called yet and we were kind of waiting for it all to happen. Again, I’m not going to delve into my normal trope of talking about what waiting is like under these circumstances. This because there wasn’t really a lot to talk about. I had no insights into the human condition or to the state of my relationship with Kerrass or any of the other people that I surrounded myself with. Instead, I was just bored and frustrated. A status shared by Guillaume and Kerrass both.

We wanted to be out there doing something. What we wanted to be doing were different to be sure. I wanted to be getting down to the details of what had happened to Anne and what was going to happen from here. Kerrass wanted to be hounding Sir Alain to death. Guillaume wanted to be patrolling around and therefore intimidating people into not wanting to kill women at night.

All of which were pointless, yet, including my idea, but at the same time, it seemed certain, to all three of us, that we would be achieving far more in doing any of those things than we would be by sitting at a window and watching an angry mob form.

Given that it was what it was, it was actually surprisingly tedious. Also a little funny.

Why was it funny? For a start, It wasn’t quite the seething angry mob that Sir Morgan had been hoping for. We had chuckled to ourselves when he had strutted in through the gate, wife in tow sitting side saddle on her own white horse. She was some distance away and the features were slightly distorted thanks to the small bubbles in the glass, but still, her body language suggested her own boredom. As if, like us, she had her own stuff to be getting on with and was tired of being dragged off to the palace by her husband in order to listen to him rant about this or that for half an hour.

So we watched with mounting amusement as Morgan and his wife stood there and waited as people failed to turn up and take the horses away.

There were the normal suspects as well. Sir Gregoire was there, huge and imposing in his armour. Dwarfing the people around him with his sheer physical presence. Another easily made out figure was Sir Raoul who was wearing his white armour. There were others of course. I could identify several merchants and some of the more well to do nobles that could be relied upon to be bankably outraged whenever something was going on.

So we watched as they assembled and chuckled as we saw that Sir Morgan was visibly disappointed that the angry, seething mob that he had hoped for, turned out to be around a hundred people. Not a small number to be sure, but still, not the sort of thing that would threaten the palace guard. Especially as most of the people assembled were the guards and entourages of the various merchants and other noblemen that had accompanied him. Mercenaries and guards who would refuse to be part of any kind of uprising because that kind of thing would easily allow themselves to be turned into scapegoats.

We watched as Morgan deflated a bit before again, taking some time to build himself back up. Again, given the distance, the plume on his helmet made him look exactly like a cockerel that was puffing himself up before crowing to the morning and chasing a whole bunch of hens.

He got himself all riled up again, made a quick speech to the assembled “masses” before he, his wife and a couple of other hangers on went into the palace itself.

“Won’t be long now,” Guillaume commented to me and sure enough there was a knock on the door for one of the herald’s runners to announce that there would be a court called momentarily. I think he was a little unprepared for me though as I started asking questions straight away.

“Who called the court?” I demanded.

“What?” The Herald asked, astonished. “Why the Duchess of course.”

“Of course.” I responded as though I had said something foolish. I had not, if it was the Duchess calling the court then it meant that she was pre-empting whatever it was that was happening outside. She was insisting that the power was hers and not someone else's.

“For what purpose is the court being called?” I wondered. “Only this morning there was a court called to announce recent developments in the Jack case and to announce the formal adoption of Lady Caroline. Why would we need a court so soon after that?”

The herald rolled his eyes in the expression of bureaucrats everywhere when they are trying to let you know that they have better things to do than to put up with your bullshit. That the world would move along a lot smoother if self-important little assholes like me would just let them do their jobs without all these interruptions.

“The Duchess has called the court in order to ask some questions about some recently made accusations that she finds troubling.” He said. “Now if you’ll excuse me gentlemen?”

He left before we could say anything else.

“I think that Sir Morgan is being a little premature with his victory strut.” I said to no-one in particular. “Either the Duchess knows something, has a plan or there is something else going on that we don’t know about. But I think that Sir Morgan is about to get a reminder that the Duchess both has a temper on her, and also plays politics on a continental level.”

“Might be worth watching.” Kerrass said.

The courtroom was still filling up when we got there. The Duchess wasn’t in attendance yet. Neither was Syanna or any of the other real movers and shakers. But some of the other guests that were in the palace were. People that had chosen to winter in Beauclair were there as well as numerous other people that I recognised from some of the parties that I had been invited to.

Mark, Emma and Laurelen were there and looking about themselves curiously and approached me when we walked in.

“What’s going on?” Emma said.

“I think someone is making a play.” I told her. “I think the issue of Sir Morgan versus the Duchess is about to be decided.”

“What happened with Anne?” Laurelen wondered.

“Nothing good.”

Then, just for a moment, it seemed as though the sun had gone out. I was looking at Laurelen at the time and so I didn’t see what it was. All I saw was that she looked up at something behind me and that her hand covered her mouth in dismay.

“I would like an answer to that question as well.” Rumbled a voice that seemed to be made from the sounds of stone slabs being dragged into place. Also, rage. It was made out of a sullen, contained, long repressed rage. “What happened with Anne?”

I turned instinctively to find myself face to face with a breastplate. I could see the carefully and frankly beautifully carved coat of arms inscribed upon it. The fleur de lis of the Toussaint flag was there along with lions on either side with a heron flying over the top. There was gold paint amongst the carving and the artistry made it seem as though the gold was woven amongst the metal rather than painted on top of it.

It really was a remarkable breastplate.

Automatically, I stepped backwards before chastising myself for falling into so elementary a trap. Indeed, one of the oldest and most basic of traps that an armed and armoured man can use on a smaller, unarmoured man. Stand too close in order to force them to take a step backwards which, in turn, makes them feel smaller and lesser than what they are.

But the step back did mean that I could look up into the face of Sir Gregoire that had entered the courtroom. And the same as every time I saw him, I was taken aback by just how large he was. It was the kind of thing that I had always known, every time I saw him it was obvious that he was one of the taller people in existence. So tall that he towers over everyone and everything that you have ever met. He was taller than Kerrass. Taller than Sir Rickard who stands at six feet tall. Taller than the tallest Skelligan that I had seen which, my memory tells me, was Haakon the Axeman.

Gregoire was tall and not only was he tall but he was broad as well.

He dominated every room that he was in. He took it over, it was impossible for anything else to exist in the world around him. He was just so large, so overwhelming and so… powerful that the world seemed to be defined by him. Existence seemed to mold itself around his presence so that previously, tall people would seem small and puny. His very existence made other men seem weak.

Unkind people would suggest that his mother had slept with a giant or a troll. I had heard those stories and all I can say on the matter is to never repeat those stories in front of Sir Gregoire as he will end you. But the comparison is not unfair. Ariadne called him a genetic freak, a wonder of nature and creation. That every so often, in the same way that genetics can combine to create hunch-backed, club-footed and otherwise deformed people. Every so often that same accident of nature can produce something like Sir Gregoire. Where nature can make a person slight, small and seemingly fragile, it can also make a solid mountain of raw muscle that is molded and formed into one purpose and that purpose is to crush your fellow individual

In this case, that person was Sir Gregoire.

The only person that came close in my head was Letho. But Letho has a slightly hunched attitude about him. As though his head is bent slightly forward like he is a bull, dipping his head ready for the coming charge. Gregoire didn’t do that. He walked like he owned the world and expected the world to get out of the way. And to be fair to him, it often did. There is a reason that he is called “de Gorgon” after the mountain that dominates the skyline of Toussaint. He is the same when you see him in a group of people. He dominates them in the same way that the mountain does everything else. Making snow-capped peaks look like foothills.

I had met him before and I had formed a very different opinion of him than others had formulated. He seemed polite, uncomfortable and faintly bored with the entire proceedings. He had seemed entirely undeserving of the reputation that he had gathered around himself, that of a brute, murderer, bully and rapist. I had decided that it was a reputation that he had cultivated in order for other people to leave him alone. In order that he could make some money at the tournaments, so that people would pay increasingly vast sums to see some new, up and coming Knight knock him from his horse. Some local hero standing up to the mountainous Brute of Beauclair.

People like Guillaume and his wife, Syanna, Damien and all of the others that had spoken to me of Sir Gregoire had warned me of his dire reputation and I had thought it had become overstated.

But then his attitude towards me had changed. He had started purposefully avoiding me at court. He had started glaring at me with anger, rage and hatred as well as some other emotion that I had not recognised when I had first seen it.

I know what it was now at the time of writing. But in the there and then of the matter, as he towered over me in a courtroom, his already far from attractive face twisting into a grimace of rage and hate, I didn’t have the time or the… the wherewithal to properly analyse and dissect what I was seeing.

My Equilibrium was not helped by the fact that standing next to Sir Gregoire, resplendent in his wite tunic, spotless cloak and shining leather gauntlets, while also eating from a paper bag, was Sir Raoul Leblanc.

“Yes Lord Frederick.” Sir Raoul added, chewing around something juicy. “What has happened to the whore that you have taken to your bed?”

Gregoire’s face reddened a little further. I couldn’t decide whether Sir Raoul was baiting Gregoire or trying to upset me. Knowing that festering boil on the backside of humanity though, it could have been either. Or both.

“I wish I could tell you.” I told the pair of them. Spreading my arms nice and wide in an effort to let them know that I wasn’t hiding anything. “I am just as in the dark as to what’s happening with her as anyone.”

The thing that you have to remember is that old lesson about simple not being the same as stupid. The danger here was that Sir Gregoire was far more intelligent than his appearance might suggest. The danger from people like that in a court situation is that they often cut through a lot of the bullshit that you wrap yourself in.

So here, what I said was true. I had no idea what was going on with Anne in the right there and right then situation of things. She was off with the Duchess and I had no idea what was happening there. But I also didn’t want to tell anyone about what had happened given that there was no strategy in discussion. So if I had just come out with it all, then that might blunt everything that the Duchess was trying to do.

So the trick to lying is to… not do it. What I said to Gregoire was the truth. I really didn’t know what was happening in the, there and then, of the matter. But it was also, not the entire truth.

Gregoire took the bait which was good for all of us.

“But…” He frowned. “She has been your companion and now there are all these… rumours and th…”

“Come on Lord Frederick.” Sir Raoul was not as easily fooled. He was a warrior too but it was just as clear that he had received some official training of the courtly arts as well. “Do you honestly expect us to believe that you know nothing about what’s going on. You cannot believe that we are that stupid.”

Note how he was using “we” so that he could claim some fellowship with Gregoire. So that he could get Gregoire onto his side. Flame but I hated this man. Possibly because I could see the tricks that he was using and realise that I had used those tricks myself to the detriment of others.

“You cannot expect us to believe that Lady Anne,” He looked sideways at Gregoire when he gave Anne the extra title, “goes into the city on her normal errands. And that she is part of a raid that happens on a residence near the docks. A raid that you and your Witcher crony are part of. Before all of you return to the palace and now Lady Anne is off somewhere without you. You cannot expect us to believe that you don’t know what’s going on given all of that is true. And we know that it is true. So what is she doing? Where is she? Where is the Knight Commander?”

Did you see Raoul’s mistake? I didn’t. Gregoire did though.

“How did you know that it was her regular errand?” He asked Raoul.

“My friend.” He recovered quickly though. “Servants gossip. They always want to spread words and lies about their betters. You know that better than many, after all, how many of your dealings are spread around Toussaint without your knowledge or permission?”

Gregoire grunted at that.

“And servants gossip amongst themselves.” Raoul went on. “That was how we found out that Anne was staying with Lord Frederick remember?”

“I remember.” Gregoire admitted unhappily. “I remember it well.” He turned back to me. “So Lord Frederick? Where is Anne and what is she doing?”

“As I said.” I was speaking slowly and carefully. There was a violence in Gregoire’s words that was making me nervous. The cold, clammy feeling that warned me that there would be violence soon was on me. I had enjoyed that feeling once upon a time. I didn’t enjoy it any more. “Anne has been taken away to speak with the Duchess.”

Gregoire’s skin tone deepend and he opened his mouth to speak, or roar, it was unclear as to which he was going to do.

“I don’t know what that means.” I said, jumping into the pause. “I doubt that the Duchess wants to make small talk although I have to admit that it’s a possibility. I don’t know if the Duchess is angry, wants to know more or what is happening there.”

I had the dim feeling of Guillaume behind me. He has a smell of armour polish that seems to follow him around.

“Further to that.” I went on. “I do not know if the Knight Commander is involved. I don’t know where she is is. She could be with the Duchess and Lady Anne, (I thought that the honorific was earned a little. Also, I didn’t want to piss Gregoire off any more than he clearly already was) or she could be doing whatever it is that the Knight Commander does when the rest of us aren’t really paying attention.”

I ran out of words there and I was feeling strangely out of breath.

“If she is hurt.” Gregoire stepped forward, looming over me. “If you have done anything to her.”

“Step back Gregoire.” Guillaume went to interpose himself between me and the big Knight. It was not lost on me that Sir Raoul had vanished somewhere.

“Come on Guillaume.” Gregoire snarled. “He is a northerner. He is not used to our ways. He would mistreat a woman sooner than…” He turned back to me. “If you have wronged her…If she has shed one tear because of you...”

“Quite the contrary.” Guillaume said. “Lord Frederick is the wronged party here and I would remind you that he is a…”

I winced. That was not something that I thought it was good to have been allowed out.

“I don’t give a fuck.” Gregoire roared. The court silenced instantly as all eyes turned to us with the expletive and the anger. “If you have hurt her.” He growled at me. “Then I will kill you. I will take you outside and destroy you.” Then he spun on Guillaume. “You too Guillaume. I don’t care if he’s a guest. If you get in the way or make yourself his champion then I will smear the streets of Beauclair with your blood.”

He stomped off and I turned away.

Kerrass and Emma were there. “Freddie are you ok.” Kerrass wondered.

“Freddie, you’re shaking.”

I was laughing and desperately trying to hide it. “Everything is going to be ok.” I told them before I was forced to submit to another fit of giggles.

“Freddie,” Emma said, leaning in. “You’re frightening me. What’s going on?”

I may have done something as foolish as laughing in her face. I just had time enough to see that she was getting angry when I managed to settle down enough to let my mind work.

“Listen,” I began before frowning. “Where is Kerrass?”

“I’m here Freddie.” He said, coming into my eyeline. “What do you need?”

“In a little while.” I began before another fit of giggling threatened to overtake me. Even Kerrass smiled as my mood began to become contagious. “In a little while,” I tried again. “People, probably Morgan and a couple of cronies are going to hurl insults at Anne. They’re going to get really harsh.”

He nodded.

“Guillaume is going to want to step forward to defend her.” I told him. “Whatever happens... Kerrass listen to me.”

“I’m listening.” He insisted.

“Whatever happens, do not let him speak up. Don’t let him step forward and be a champion. Don’t let him. Trip him, do whatever it takes. Use magic on him if you have to.”

“In the name of the Flame, why?” Emma wondered.

“Promise me Kerrass.” I tried to put as much force into my voice as I could manage.

“I promise Freddie.” He was confused.

“Freddie what is going on?” Emma demanded.

I looked at her and I could no longer help it. I laughed at her.

“Everything is going to be alright.” I told her, now openly worried and annoyed face. “If I were you, I would find a good place to watch. This is going to be amazing.”

I managed that before fleeing in search of something to drink in order to hide my fit of mild hysteria. I couldn’t explain why I was so confident that it was all going to go the way we wanted. But I was suddenly sure of it. I found a drink and did my best to find a good place to watch the show.

As it turns out, the best place to watch the entirety of the courtroom was next to a pillar on one side of the room. I had a large cup of wine and I just leant against it as nonchalantly as I could manage. I also snagged a large jug of wine which I set next to my feet, well out of the way so that I wouldn’t kick it over. It was well watered as I had no doubt that I would need to be able to think for myself later and I just did my best to make myself as comfortable as I could.

My small family unit was gathered together in a small knot of people relatively near the dais. Emma, Laurelen, Mark and Kerrass just stood there with their heads together as they talked about what was happening. Guillaume was nearby, partly listening in to the conversation as the families self-appointed champion.

The conversation appeared fierce. I couldn’t help but giggle again although I did my best to hide it in my cup.

“What are they talking about?” asked a voice, a little muffled.

I turned to see Sir Raoul LeBlanc, helping himself to the jug of wine that I had placed next to my feet.

“I have no idea.” I told him. I felt that he was trying to provoke me but my mood appeared to be… chaotic so for whatever reason, I decided to play along. “They are probably discussing whether it is finally time to have me committed to this mental asylum or that hospital for the permanently bewildered. There is almost certainly a discussion going on about whether or not it’s time to bash me over the back of the head and take me home.”

I reached over and plucked a piece of candied fruit from the bag he carried and chewed it thoughtfully. He raised his eyebrows at that but I figured that he was stealing my wine so I thought I might as well steal his candies.

“Will they do it?” He wondered as his eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I doubt it.” I told him, holding my own cup out to be refilled. “I would never forgive them for it and they know it.”

“And that would sway them?” He seemed genuinely surprised by that.

“I think it would.” I told him. “Our relationship has been strained recently and I have had to make a few things plain.”

“I have heard about some of that.”

I had no reason to understand why he was suddenly being so friendly. I think that he was having a strange mood as well, or he was deliberately trying to do something that no-one would expect in order to keep his enemies on their toes.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure you have.”

“What’s all this about then Lord Frederick?” He wondered, this time offering me the bag of candies. Of course I took one.

“I have no idea.” I said. “The last few have been about the Jack question but there have been no new developments in that area.”

I didn’t think this was a lie. And even if it was and even if Raoul was a suspect. Which he only was because I wanted him to be one. Then telling him this as a misdirection effort was not a waste of time. If he thought we were weak then all the better.

“Do you know?” I wondered. “I have seen you as part of Sir Morgan’s group but never quite as one of them if you follow.”

“I do. I try not to be part of these political movements if I can avoid it.” He accepted my offer of a top up of wine. “I know that Sir Morgan wanted a court. Something to do with the raid that happened over in the expanded part of the Merchant’s district that has got a bee in his helmet. He seems to think that this will be the final proof that he needs to destroy the Duchess and exert his dominance over the rest of Toussaint.”

“Will he?”

He looked at me for a while. “Nah.” He said. “I think Morgan is about to be destroyed. I think the Duchess and her sister have been waiting for Morgan to overstep his bounds. Morgan or someone from his faction. I think that they have been giving him the rope that the eventual hangman would use in order that he can tie his own noose. Even now, I think that Morgan is, metaphorically of course....” He grinned at me out of the side of his eye.

“Oh of course.” I agreed.

“I think that even now, he is climbing the steps towards his own doom. I honestly find myself wondering if he’s going to realise what is happening before it does. And, I kind of want to see his face when he realises what is happening. I want to see the look in his eyes as he realises that there is no-one coming to save him. That the world has moved on and that there is no redemption for such as him. There is no final saving, royal decree or no privilege of rank and wealth that will save him.”

“You’re assuming, of course, that he will realise that of course.” I said, suddenly finding that I was enjoying the game. “You are assuming that he will notice as the noose is taken from his hand and put around his neck. I think he will wonder why he is being offered a blindfold or a sack over his head. He will actively shout at the group of beggars that are playing dice over his belongings before he falls.”

“You may have the right of that.” He said before sighing in disappointment.

I took another candy.

“I had so wanted for him to see that he had doomed himself though.” He admitted.

“You hate him don’t you.” I said aloud.

“I do.” He admitted after a moments thought. “Yes I do. I cannot deny it, in fact I declare it with all possible passion. I hate most people when it comes to that.”

“Why?”

“Why him? Because he lied to me. It was not just him to be fair, but it was him and the people like him. Palmerin, Milton, The Crawthornes and all the rest. They lied to me. They told me that all I needed to do was to learn to fight. They told me that kill in arms and a sense of honour was all that I needed to carry me through the day. They told me that my wealth was important but it was important to use that wealth for the betterment of others. They told me that people would respect me for my strength and my skills and that all I had to do to get ahead in this word was to be a good Knight. A strong Knight. A proud and noble Knight.”

“And that was a lie?”

“Yes. It’s all a lie. That’s the joke of it all and it’s why I hate them all for it. Sooner or later there are two things that are pre-eminent in this world. Money and beauty. And then, only if the two walk hand in hand.”

“A somewhat despairing view of the world,” I said.

“Is it?” He wondered. “They all lied to me and I am the bigger fool for believing them. Did you know that I never wanted to be a Knight?”

“I did not.” My enemy was being talkative and I was curious.

“Oh yes. I, pretty much, wanted to do what you do. I wanted to be a scholar. I wanted to learn things. I wanted to know why that berry is red. Why mountains form and why the sky seems so blue. I want to know why we have never had a King and why lances are even used as it seems a very impractical method of warfare for me. I want to know where we came from. Humans I mean and I want to know what sent us here. I want to know things. Anything. Everything. When I was younger I read books and listened to stories and none of it was satisfactory.

“And I was bullied for it. The bigger kids would take my books away and throw them into the mud before jumping up and down on them while they laughed. That was when they didn’t burn them. I used to look at the other kids who were children of the powerful, noble, strong Knights and expected them to leap to my defence. Which they didn’t of course. They were the ones that laughed the loudest.

“So I went to my father and I asked him why that was the case. And he told me that I should learn to fight back. Other Knights said the same, that I should fight and that they would respect me for it. That I should fight fair and all of that other nonsense.

“My father found me an armsmaster and I had taken all of those lessons to heart. I had read about noble Knights and about how they slew the monster, got the girl and ran off with the kingdom afterwards. I decided that I would be that kind of Knight. I worked hard, I trained hard. I poured everything I had into learning to ride, wield a lance and a sword.

“I told myself that I would be a scholar Knight. That I would be the Knight that would ride through the countryside writing poems and investigating ancient ruins. That I would know things about the history of the land and understand the science about what made this happen or that happen.

“And I went to the tournament and got utterly trounced for my naivete. My father died a week later. So I set aside my books and I set aside my philosophies and I hired extra tutors and I threw everything I had into being the best Knight I could be.

“But that’s not what they want now is it. They told me that if I was the best Knight that there was then everything would be alright. That people would love me, I would get a good wife who would adore me, that friends would flock around me and that my enemies would flee from my presence.

“But that’s not good enough is it. I am the best Lance on the continent. There is not a man or woman or other that can face me with a lance in my hand. There are only a handful of swords that are better and most of them have advantages. With a Mace or hammer I am unmatched.

“And so I won my first championships and I started to gain my first measurement of fame and adoration. I found myself at the top of the mountain and in doing so I was able to look around at my fellows were at that same top of the mountain and I finally saw the great lie for what it was.

“You yourself have highlighted the great lie that was Crawthorne. The greatest of all the bullies. I took great delight in the moment when I realised that I was his better at the mace and I destroyed him. I enjoyed that victory. A lot of the others meld into a sameness, the memories forming together into a blob where I cannot distinguish the one from the other but I remember that one. I remember his face as he looked up at me with that realisation on his face, that he had met a better man than he and that I could easily destroy him. He even hissed at me that I should do it, that I should crush him underneath my heel in the same way that he would once have done that to me.

“So I didn’t. I stepped back and got my first cheer for being properly merciful. Another lie. I wasn’t being merciful. I was driving home the point. I was better than him. He was beneath my notice and I would never think of him the same way again.

“Funnily enough he never fought in the mace again. And I took that lesson. To step back from a fallen opponent was seen by the crowd as being merciful, but to the person, on the floor, looking up at me, it was the greatest insult. I because known for being merciful and honourable when the truth was that I was getting crueller with every display of walking away.

“And he was only the first lie that I saw.

“I saw Guillaume’s cowardice. His steadfast refusal to see what was happening around him and stand up for what he believes in. Now he is the craven servant of a woman that he despises while married to another woman that rules his life.

“I saw Milton de Peyrac peyran making a fool of himself. He, that had fought armies and slain monsters. A man that had removed the wretch of a woman, Syanna, from the place where she could blight the rest of Toussaint. He allowed himself to be made a fool of by dressing in costumes for the ridicule of lesser people. Men and women that should have trembled before his sword and his might.

“Palmerin who ignores the ridicule that others pour on his head, a slave to his own lusts rather than ruling them and dominating them. Alain who society sees as a romantic lover and a hero, all the while he goes around and betrays the woman that loves him.

“Understand that I would spit if we weren’t in the throne room.”

“I understand.” I told him.

“Prophets but I hate that man. His greed and his lust know no bounds. Oh, the things I would do if a woman like Lady Moineau had fallen in love with me.

“I saw Sir Morgan. Who is not even a fraction of the Knight that he thinks he is, let alone what the rest of Toussaint thinks he is. I swear that people stand aside for him out of regard for his past. He fights on his reputation now. He is not even in the top half of quality swordsmen in the realm, but people who should be able to kick his ass are defeated because they remember who it is that they are fighting and freeze in terror. They face him, The Black Hand of legend. Hah. An old leather glove that he first started wearing because his other gauntlet had been damaged. And it became a superstition to him. He is not a fraction of the man that I am. Fuck, he’s not even a fraction of the man that you are. You, at least, are well aware of your own failings and weaknesses whereas he trades on his past glories and will trade on those glories until they put him in the fucking dirt.

“It is all a lie. All of it. There is not a single ounce of truth to anything that they tell us. It is not goodness, honour and the rest that gets a man ahead in the world. It is ruthlessness, cunning and ambition. It is the ability to realise when you are onto a good thing and then rolling with it. It is being true to who and what you are. To seize the opportunity when it presents itself and then riding it, all the way to the top.

“Everything that they tell me is a virtue is a weakness that leaves you open to being exploited. I can prove it too. I have constructed this persona around myself. I am Raoul the White. I am the hero of Toussaint. The only man that can defeat the Beast of Beauclair. I diffuse people with humour. I use all of the psychological tricks that I can bring to bear against them and I win, over and over again. I wear the mask of virtue while knowing that I am everything that they don’t want me to be and do you know what they do?

“They love me for it. It is why the only one of the lot that I find remotely tolerable is Gregoire. He knows what he is and doesn’t shy away from it. He doesn’t hide from it or pretend to be that which he is not. He is the truest expression of himself that I have ever known. I even admire him for it a little. He knows that people see him as a brute, an ugly, over-muscled brute and he plays into it. He knows all of that and he knows that it has made him rich.

“He and I have played off so much of that. I am the hero, he is the villain. He will go into a town or a tourney and beat the crap out of all of them, all the local heroes will be lying on their backs looking up at the world through the dinted visors. And then I will be forced to ride to the tourney in order to put him in his place. Or to be defeated to set up a rematch at a later date. People pay so much money. More money than you can even dream to watch the Brute of Beauclair get knocked from his horse.

“He is even more proof that the entire system is corrupt. He barely drinks. He does not bed women, let alone rape them as he is so often accused, unless there is provable consent that, should a legal challenge be brought, he can hold it up for all to see. It’s why he actively prefers to use whores and why he is so in love with this whore Anne. He certainly eschews narcotics. He knows the code of chivalry backwards and other than the bit about working with me to make us both some money, he follows it to the letter. To the letter.

“On the other hand, I drink, I have sex with women, I have several bastards to my name that I know about and probably more that I don’t. And yet he is the one that gets accused of the rapes and the crimes while I am a hero to the people. How can that be true and people claim that all is normal and right with the world? How can people not see it all as the joke that it is.”

He laughed.

I nodded as I listened to his tirade. It was not a new argument. He was a man caught between generations and that had turned to bitterness and disdain in his mind. He was neither the one or the other and he hated those that came before him for telling him one thing and he hated those that came after for proving the parents wrong.

“So why do you hate me?” I wondered before I could stop myself. “Because you do, don’t you?”

“Yes I do.” He said. “Don’t take it too personally though. I hate everyone.”

“Yes, I got that impression. But why do you hate me?”

“Because you prove them all wrong.” He said.

“It is not a complicated matter.” He said. “You and I are a lot alike I think, or rather, we were at childhood. Like I suspect you were, or the figure that I can infer from your writing, you too were hungry to know things when you were young. I think that there is even a possibility that, if we had met each other when we were young, that we would even have been friends.

“I was taught that everything that you are, is weak and foolish. That I will never ascend. That I will never become powerful or important. I would never make my way on the continent if I followed my desires to be a scholar, or to be driven by my hunger for learning. And at every step of my life. At every single step, I have been proven that that was correct.

“Until I heard of you. You have taken your weakness, for you are weak, and you have made it a strength, a source of power and you have risen higher than anyone, including me, would have thought possible even a year ago. You can fight, but only barely and I think that even you would agree that the reason you have known so much success up until this point is largely due to you being underestimated and luck.”

“I would not deny that.” I told him as amiably as I could manage. It’s actually rather refreshing to know precisely where you stand with a person. Even if that person hates the very ground that you walk on. It’s actually rather pleasant.

I stole another one of his candies. I got the feeling that he was enjoying this as much as I was.

“You are not unattractive but you are far from being handsome or pretty.” He went on. “You have skill with words but you are from eloquent enough to be called a bard or a minstrel. You have more than a small amount of skill in the courts but I know that a lot of that has come as a result of your reputation increasing which has opened doors for you that would have remained closed had you been any other man.

“You have openly and honestly written about how you have stabbed men in the back. Written about your weaknesses and momentary cowardice. You are friends with vagabonds, vagrants and whores while advocating for the power of magic users and non-humans. You have openly stood against your own religion on more than one occasion.

“All of which are bad. All of which should have led to your disgrace and your ostracisation. And yet here you are. Engaged to be married to one of the most eligible beauties of the continent. Renowned for her beauty as well as the rank that she comes with. You have the ear of the Empress, could feasibly claim friendship with numerous lords and ladies of the realm including two Jarls of Skellige as well as the Queen of that far off place which means that your families shipping is the safest merchant shipping on the continent.

“You are famous to the degree that other people could only dream of. People say your name in the same breath as people like Dandilion. You have met more and fought more, seen more and done more than many would dare even dream of.

“You are everything that I wanted to be when I was little. You are everything that I was taught would be weak and pointless, and… you are everything that I have seen to be weak and pointless. The world should just have rolled over you. It should have barely even noticed your passing as it chewed you up and spat you out.

“And yet you have everything that I want. And everything that I was told that I would have, if I did it the way that men like Morgan, my father, Palmerin and Milton said I should do it. And yet you have everything and I have nothing.”

“So it’s jealousy then?” I said when I was sure that he had stopped speaking.

“Pretty much.” He accepted my offer of something to drink. “Are you surprised?”

“A little.” I admitted. “I had wondered if it would be something grander, more ornate. If I had done something to you at a past juncture of something. If I had accidentally kicked your dog in passing or similar.”

He laughed at the thought.

“No, I would never own a dog and you would never kick one.” He told me.

“True.”

“So answer me the same question.” He said after offering me another candy. “Why do you hate me? Because you do. I have felt other people’s hatred often enough to recognise it when it is directed at me. You hate me enough to feel it in your sleep.”

“I do.” I admitted, after a while. “A friend once commented that it takes a lot of energy to hate someone and he was not wrong. I have to work at it to not find myself consumed with hating you or to find a way to destroy you. It is an effort to focus on things other than how much I just hate you.”

“It is so pleasant to have decent enemies.” He said, laughing. “So go on then, why do you hate me?”

“Is it not just as obvious?” I wondered. “You are a bully. And I dislike bullies.”

“Am I?” He considered this. “Maybe. But even if I am, I am going to dance on your grave when the time comes.” He sighed happily. “I am going to kill you Lord Frederick. Someday soon I think. I am looking forward to it so I hope that you are keeping your spear sharp.”

“The woman that made it, did good enough work that it rarely needs sharpening.” I told him. “And I want it to hurt a little more when I use it to rip your intestines out.”

He laughed at that. As I have with a number of other enemies. I found myself having to fight not to like him.

“I shall enjoy watching you destroy Morgan.” He said. “He deserves being taken down a bit and I will enjoy watching you do it. Stay alive Lord Frederick. I would be very disappointed if someone else kills you before I get a chance.”

“Likewise Lord Leblanc.”

He wandered into the crowd, chuckling as he went.

I watched him go for a little while and tried to decide what that had all been about. It felt like something momentous had happened but I didn’t really know what it was. It felt like… It felt like I was being tested and I had a nagging feeling that I had failed in some way.

I watched Raoul walk off into the crowd. He exchanged words with a couple of people who were clearly asking him what he and I had found to talk about. Judging from the body language, he was dismissive of the person on every level and the people that were talking to him left his presence disappointed.

No-one tried to come up to me and ask what had happened. I suspect that the people that cared enough to do that were already busy in some way.

The courtroom was getting bored. There was a sullen air about the place. They had all come here expecting some kind of high drama and so far, none of that kind of thing had even begun to show up. Whether they had come here as part of the crowd of people (not a mob) who had followed Sir Morgan up to the castle, or whether they were people who had come here of their own accord, or people that had been summoned. We were all standing around waiting for something to happen. There is a fine line between building anticipation for whatever show is about to be presented and then the line tipping over into boredom and resentment. The line is even finer when you are dealing with a group of noble Lords and Ladies who have better things to do.

Whether they actually do or not. It is still a fine line and it can go either way.

But things were getting boring now. There is only so much that sheer speculation can do to carry people along. Theories and mysteries are exciting after all but eventually, people need answers and that was what was beginning to happen now. It has been claimed by others that since coming out into the world, my courtly talents have improved past the point that any of my tutors would be able to recognise. I remain unconvinced at this. I do need to hunt down that tutor that managed to hammer the basic principles into my head and buy him dinner, even if I can do nothing else for him. As what he told me and taught me then has, undoubtedly, saved my life on more than one occasion. Kerrass’ too for that matter.

But I felt those instincts moving now. I felt it unfurling in my head. This was a play. It was not an accident that things were being delayed. Nor was it an accident that the court as a whole was being provoked into boredom. Someone was watching it all carefully. I even looked around for the person, wondering who it might be.

I rather think it was the master of ceremonies that stood on the door that gets to decide whether or not anyone is allowed through the door in the first place. You should look for these people if you get a chance. They are trained to be invisible during general proceedings but when it comes down to it, they become a wall between you and where you want to go if you are not on their lists.

Like Heralds, the world would fall apart if it wasn’t for their work.