“What happened with Lord Kalayn?”

“He was there.” He told me, refilling his pipe. As I say, he was watching the entire thing, with this kind of smug expression on his face. I hated him for that expression just as I hate all those noble bastards that think a title gives them more authority to do this, or that or the next thing to their fellow man. I hate that. I hate that an accident of birth makes you more of a human than the next guy.

I remember that he didn’t seem to get on with his son very much. His son was relieved but also disgusted by the sight of his Father. We had to let the parents in to see the sons and I remember that he insisted that we wait outside.”

“Didn’t stop you from listening at the door did it?” I commented and he smirked.

“No,” he admitted, “No, it did not. The boy was relieved to see his father. Even while he was then furious that it had come to this. He didn’t want to be rescued by his old man. Boys and their fathers,” he sighed and shook his head.

“I remembered their conversation. The boy, your cousin, protested. He told his father about how you were weak, how you had cheated and about how you weren’t strong enough to do what needed to be done.

“Lord Kalayn told your cousin to shut up. That if you were weak, then why was his son so easily captured? Your cousin didn’t like that. He told his Father that he was on the verge of something. He had made contact with something powerful. Something that was going to secure his future and that if he had just had a bit more time then he would have been able to…

“The Father struck the boy I think. He told his son that his place was not to think. That his place was to do as he was instructed. The boy called his father weak and lacking in proper piety and devotion. That if he had devoted himself to…

“The Father cut him off. He told his son that the level of devotion that his son was talking about was what had resulted in them all being caught in the first place. He said that that level of piety would attract the attention that they did not want. That the stupidity and conviction were for other men. That the Kalayn family needed to be careful because they were too exposed. Doubly so now.

“The boy was unhappy. The Father demanded to know why they had killed Lord Coulthard, your Father. The boy told him about the fact that Edmund’s inheritance was in jeopardy and that the matter needed to be expedited. Lord Kalayn told them off for being sloppy which I was surprised at as I thought that the murder of your Father was quite a good plan all things considered. The weakness that they hadn’t taken into account was your Mother’s intelligence and the presence of that Witcher of yours.

“Lord Kalayn told him that if they had wanted someone like Lord Coulthard dead, they would have been better off simply hiring a hitman on the grounds that any number of people wanted Lord Coulthard dead. So there would have been any number of motives for figuring out who it was that had done the deed before they came to Edmund. Lord Kalayn asked who’s plan it was to do it that way and your Cousin was forced to admit that he had no idea.

“His father called him some names and it got a bit bleak after that for a while. But your Cousin stuck to his guns, insisting that he had no idea who had told Edmund to do the deed. If anything, I would suggest that Lord Kalayn knew your older brother well enough to be able to declare what you already know, that being that Edmund wasn’t clever enough to come up with the scheme to kill Lord Coulthard.

“Then Lord Kalayn demanded to know who had killed Edmund. It wasn’t common knowledge yet that it was your mother. Your cousin insisted that it wasn’t him and that they didn’t know who it was.”

“What happened then?” I wondered.

“Hmm?” I had disturbed him from a train of thought. I had to be careful about that. It was far too easy for a man like this to be lost down a passage of thought and then I needed to distract him. “Not much. They argued a bit. Lord Kalayn was insistent that his son know who it was that had killed Edmund and who had been foolish enough to give Edmund the idea to kill your Father. But after all that, it was an impasse. The Father told his son that it would all be over soon, that a considerable amount of money had exchanged hands and that he, your cousin, would soon be released and that was that.”

“What happened with Lord Kalayn on the night?”

The old man sighed and took a deep breath before clamping the pipe between his teeth. Clamped it hard enough to let me hear the wood groaning.

“The decision was made to do the deed. The prisoners were being moved and were protesting loudly. Lord Kalayn was staying in town and word got to him fairly quickly. That wasn’t a surprise but still. He joined the mob but he hadn’t paid for the best protection for himself. He had two men with him and they fought their way through the crowd.

“It was dark already, we had waited that long anyway. There was a lot of smoke and the priests had got their old questioning gear out. The Witchhunters had done the same. There is still enough fear in the countryside that men do not want to go up against a Witchunter or a questioner and most people stayed back from all of that. I was busy. I was looking after the entirety of the crowd so I didn’t see much.

“I remember hearing the shout when Kalayn went onto the fire though. The fires were pretty well guarded all things considered and there were multiple people per fire, multiple victims I mean. The priests told us that this would be for the best and I was not going to argue. After all, those fucks had experience in those matters didn’t they.

“Bastards.

“When he went on the fire, it took him some time to catch, he thrashed about a bit but other than that, he seemed to die quickly for all of that.”

I nodded.

“Can you give me the names of the guards on that fire?” I wondered.

“Ummm, it was Baxter, Jannes, Ferick and…. Tall fellow with a drooping moustache. Traiser. That was the fucker, could never say no to a drink.”

“Are they still with the guard?”

“I have no idea.” He told me with relish, and I care even less.”

“Did anyone examine the body afterwards?” I wondered.

“You thinking that he was dead before he hit the fire?”

“The thought had occurred.”

“It did to me too.” The old man admitted. “It was burnt to a crisp. His clothing caught and the stupid fucker was wearing mail. He would have baked fairly quickly and there was little left to comment. We only knew who it was through witnesses.”

“Which witnesses?”

“Those guards I was telling you about.”

“Where did he stay in the city? Kalayn, I mean?”

“At the time it was the Flame and Rose. The old one that was run by the squire of one of the old Knights of the white rose before it became the burning rose.”

“The one that’s a brothel now?”

“Yeah,” the old man laughed. “I imagine that the old man would have hated that.”

“That’s what you get for insisting on propriety in your inn. You go out of business.”

We laughed.

“Who do you think it was that gave Edmund the idea to kill Father?”

“I have no idea. I really don’t and it’s the kind of thing that… is not as important as the person that did the deed. Somebody gave your brother the deed. I would even suggest…”

The old man paused and tilted his head to one side. As visual a clue that thought had just occurred to him as ever I have seen.

“I would even suggest that he had an accomplice. I read your articles with great interest. Your brother was a lech, a drunk and an addict of the worst kind. It would be polite to call him a hedonist. I’ve known some perfectly good hedonists in my time and your brother was not one of those. But his hands shook and some of the things that you talk about in your articles require careful thought and precision. Your brother’s hands shook. It would not have taken long before some duelist would have known and then your brother’s days were over.”

He shook his head, partially in disgust but also partially as though he was shaking a thought loose.

“It’s possible.” He said. “It is possible that he had an accomplice in your castle. Some guard or someone who could do more finicky work. Not even with evil intent, someone that he could have promised a fortune to and… oh dammit all.”

A small tear spilt out of the corner of his eyes as he turned to me and put his hand on my arm.

“Don’t become like me. Look at me, an old man, a professional suspicious bastard that can’t stop seeing enemies around every corner. An old, paranoid racist that has to…”

“That’s enough,” I told him firmly. You served your city and you saved many lives by being a suspicious bastard. You were one of the few that I ever met that didn’t care what shape the person’s ears were and you defended them as often as you arrested them. You were one of the good ones and I won’t let you tell yourself that you weren’t.”

He subsided and stared into his little fire for a while.

“I still can’t help it.” He told me. “Just… every so often, I wish I had done something different with my life you know?”

“I do know,” I told him. “I do. But then I remember the lives that I have helped to save. I remember the friends that I have made and the woman that I would not have met if I had stayed at home, or done what my father had told me and married some lord’s daughter for an alliance.”

He grinned.

“Some of those noblemen's daughters are quite attractive.” He leered. “You know, for the stuck-up little snots that they are.”

“And the ones that are attractive would not have looked at me twice without an older name and a thicker bank account.”

“I bet you could get some of them now.”

“I could, but only because I went out into the world and did what I did.”

I took a deep breath, the old man seemed to be doing a little better now so I steered the conversation back to where I wanted it to go.

“So who was it that told Edmund to kill Father and how to get the job done?”

“Let's be honest young lord, it could have been anyone. It could have been some idiot that he met down the pub in the evening. It could have been some other conspirator or it could have been his accomplice. All the way up to some heretofore unknown private advisor. I don’t think you are going to find an explanation there by asking who. You need to think about “why”. Because of that move, killing your father and using that method over randomly having him poisoned in town or stabbed in the street. It was either a work of genius or a work of utter stupidity. That is the place that I would be looking, if I was where you are now.”

That was a good thought. Certainly a better thought than the possibility that he might have had some accomplice that we had never found. I mean, I know that we have all but replaced the guard from back in those days and the new Stablemaster has exerted his authority in many ways. But…

I was here for other questions. I could take these thoughts away and come back with them later.

“So are there any other cult cells out there?” I wondered. “Were Cousin Kalayn and the rest the only ones out there or was this multiple and…”

He looked at me out of the side of his eyes in such a way that I actually felt a little bit ashamed of the question and I could not have told you why.

“The simple fact of the matter is that there is always evil out there. There are always men like your brother and your cousin that want to do sick things to people more vulnerable than themselves and their justifications for doing it essentially boil down to the fact that they think that life owes them their… whatever. Occasionally they introduce shit like whatever it was that your brother was worshipping to get themselves off. But there are always people like that.

“I didn’t stay in the guard long after that night. It made me feel a bit like a hypocrite. But I do remember some other people who did similar things. They mostly turned out to be copycats though. People that were jealous of all of the things that your brother and cousin managed to get away with and wanted to try their hands at it themselves. I’m sorry to say that some of those people got away. Some of those people were arrested and then mummy and daddy bought their way back into favour with the Queen Regent in Redania or the Queen’s council in Temeria. And some we were able to throw to the penal barges or the headsman.

“Were there other cells? Probably. After all, didn’t you find out that this was essentially a breakaway faction from all of that “cult of the first-born” nonsense that was going on in the North?”

“It was,” I said. “Cousin Kalayn was either a true believer and thought that more debauchery would mean bigger and better rewards. Or he found a new flavour of supernatural horror to follow through on. It could have gone either way, to be honest, and we were never really able to find out why because everyone involved is now dead or gone to places that we can’t follow. So there might have been other cells?”

“There might have been, there might currently be? There might be going to be? Your Imperial intelligence buddies will be able to tell you more about that kind of thing I suppose.”

I must have grimaced because he looked at me with a sly smile.

“Not what you wanted to hear?”

“No,” I admitted.

“It never is. There are always people out there. Some people have always wanted to do horrible things and then one day, they can’t bear not to do it anymore. And other times, people don’t care. They look at this peasant girl or that sex worker and see them as being less than human. And then…”

I nodded. He was right of course. Time for me to go. I climbed to my feet.

“Thank you for your help.”

He held his hand out, even while he didn’t get up. “Are you going to be ok Lord Frederick?” He asked me as I shook the offered hand.

“You’ve never called me Lord Frederick before.”

“Yeah, I’m trying out. See what I think of it.”

“And?”

“I don’t care for it.”

I left to find that Carys had made permanent friends with the older woman, swearing an eternal sisterhood based on the fact that all of the men in their lives are terminally stupid.

They might not be wrong.

I rode back to Oxenfurt with a heavy heart.

-

Entry 80

I gave a poor lecture on the habits and growing intelligence of Nekkers. Someone suggested that I was arguing that we should spare Nekkers before telling me that what they were were crude and disgusting creatures lacking in all empathy and grace. I got several angry looks when I pointed out that it was more than likely that the Elves and once said pretty much the same thing about us.

I left in a bit of a temper and I do not think I was alone.

But I had a good lunch and answered a few letters before I decided that I was being too passive. I wrote to the current watch commander about the whereabouts of the four guards that the old investigator had mentioned and then I went to see if I could get into the room that Lord Kalayn had once stayed in.

I contacted Ariadne and asked if it was alright if I were seen to be hiring a prostitute. She seemed more comfortable with the thought that I just needed to get my end away than she was with the thought of the investigation. But she decided that she didn’t care that much. She would tell people that I was refining my technique for our wedding night.

I went and hired the services of a tired-looking brunette who was grateful for the opportunity to just lie on the bed and nap while I searched the place. I didn’t expect to find anything and in that, I was not disappointed. I left a small sum of money with the girl and told her to get some rest.

She laughed at me.

-

Entry 81

I have received word back regarding the guardsmen.

Ferrick had, at some point on the night of the bonfires where those cultists had burned, had managed to catch brother Sam’s eyes and had been recruited by him to accompany Sam north into Kalayn lands. I will write to Sam to ask if Ferick is still with him and ask if the former guard could be brought south for me to ask him more questions.

I will need to work on that letter to not offend… anyone.

Baxter had been killed in the line of duty and his widow had moved away to be with her brother in Vizima. I did check but it was just one of those things that happen when you are a guardsman. Whatever else might have happened with Emma improving the docks on the waterfront, it meant that sailors were coming ashore and doing as sailors do which is drink, fuck and fight when they are ashore. The city guard has benefited from Emma’s patronage and as a result, they are well equipped and well manned enough to deal with this kind of thing. But on that day, one of the brawlers had a knife and the guard had to take him down hard before he hurt anyone else.

Baxter had taken a scratch, little more than a scratch from the blade. He wrapped the scratch up himself, they brought in the brawler and he went home. Then infection had set in and the guard had died. Just one of those things. A warning for life, but he had been too insistent in dealing with the issue than having a small injury cleaned up.

It was being used as a warning story for recruits so that they didn’t do the same thing.

I have appointments to speak to Jannes when he gets off shift and Traiser has left the guard to help out in his family’s bakery.

Mother is arriving in a couple of days so I will need to head back to the castle. Luckily I will just have time to greet her before I have to turn around and come back to give the next Witcher lecture.

-

Entry 82

Jannes had little enough to tell me. He remembered the night fairly well. He had the Watchman’s eye and memory for faces so he remembered Lord Kalayn being suitably insistent regarding obtaining his son’s release. But on the night, the man had been cloaked and hooded. There was some conflict between the desire to be seen to be law-abiding and religion abiding in the face of witch-hunters and questioners. But also the desire to rescue the criminals from the pyres. So very many people were hooded and cloaked, including Lord Kalayn.

Jannes had certainly seen Lord Kalayn on the night. Given that his son and heir was apparently going to be on the bonfire then Lord Kalayn was one of the people that the attending guardsmen, who were all volunteers, had been warned would be attending.

Jannes was able to confirm that Lord Kalayn was there and was seen to be talking to several people who were all hooded and cloaked as well. That was not something of concern because everyone was hooded and cloaked that night. Including Kerrass, Sam and myself to be honest. So there was no way of telling what was happening and to whom. He was accompanied by a couple of other people that were also hooded and cloaked although they seemed to be acting as bodyguards so it was genuinely assumed that that’s what they were.

Jannes joined everyone’s astonishment that Kalayn would have killed himself. He didn’t seem the type, lots of “Don’t you know who I am” kind of things. “People obsessed with their own self-importance don’t tend to kill themselves” was one of his lines.

I didn’t get to speak to Traiser today as he was out at some other thing and I couldn’t wait. Have to be at home when Mother arrives apparently.

I am not looking forward to this.

-

Entry 83

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

Mother arrived in the red habit and white wimple of a nun of the Eternal Flame. She travelled in the entourage of a priest that I have never met as well as another group of nuns who were travelling to Novigrad as part of a pilgrimage. According to Rickard, there were half a dozen or so of them and they walked past the path leading up to the castle and as they were doing so, one of them just kind of peeled off from the rest, waved to a couple of her friends and then just slung her pack over her shoulder before walking up the path.

We didn’t know that she was arriving until she was almost at the gate.

I had arrived home late the previous day and had not been able to do much other than putting my things away and stealing something from the kitchens before collapsing into bed. The homecoming for me was made a little easier by the fact that Ariadne was there. She had decided that it was time to meet her future mother-in-law and wanted to discuss something with Laurelen and Dr Shani.

I didn’t find out what, apparently something to do with “female things” and I fled shortly afterwards.

But I was up early, bathed in the new bathhouse structure that has been erected and then expanded to help with all of the coming guests. I had combed my hair, a remarkably useless routine, but Emma insisted and so, when the guard brought the news that Mother was at the gate, I was as prepared as I could be.

I had enough time to set my ink and quills aside properly and make my way to the front entrance of the keep where Emma and Ariadne were already waiting.

Mark was ill and unable to attend.

And then we saw her coming up and into the top courtyard, escorted by Rickard who was showing off. You can always tell when Rickard is showing off. Normally that’s because he’s wearing armour. He walked with military precision, helmet under his arm and his other arm was holding onto his sword hilt as he escorted mother to the front entrance where he saluted Emma before bowing to Mother and about facing before walking off.

Mother looked… She looks as though she is twenty years younger than she was the last time I saw her. She smiled as she saw us which was all but unheard of and she looked about herself with bright, happy eyes. If I didn’t know who she was, I would not have recognised her.

I wondered if this was the woman that Father had fallen in love with.

She walked up to Emma and hugged her. They exchanged some quiet words which I didn’t hear before she turned around and looked at the figure of Rickard who was now drilling some of the men that were nearby. The men were also showing off for the former lady of the castle.

“I like him.” Mother gestured at Rickard. “If he had been in charge of the guard instead of old Froggart then I might have been tempted towards scandal.”

Her eyes flashed mischievously.

I may have gaped.

“He’s spoken for.” Emma told her with a smile. “Hopelessly in love with our new family doctor. Or she is whenever the state and the university can spare her.”

“Not that I would have.” Mother went on. “I would never have done that to your Father. But I would have been tempted.”

She came to stand in front of me and examined me.

“You’ve grown.” She decided before stepping forward and hugging me.

It took me a moment of shock before I hugged her back.

“I am so very proud of you.” She whispered in my ear. “So very proud. And every criticism that you have levelled at me, I deserve the lot. I hope that we will get a chance to talk soon.” Then she pulled back leaving me feeling as though I had been fired from a catapult. In that, I felt as though I was flying, but there was bound to be a moment coming up where I impacted against something hard and was therefore splattered across the scenery.

I had enough sense to turn and introduce Mother to Ariadne.

“I have heard so much about you,” Ariadne said with a polite smile. The one that she uses when she’s trying to put someone at ease. Where her lips carefully hide her teeth to not put them off.

“Oh flame, have you?” Mother pretended to horror. “Well, I shall have to do something about that in the near future. Unfortunately, it is probably all true. But still.”

She stood back and examined us all before her face fell a little.

“Mark and Sam?” She asked.

“Sam will be here a bit closer to the wedding,” Emma said. Something in her voice must have triggered an instinct in mother as her eyes narrowed a little as she looked at her daughter before she sighed.

“Ah, Sam.” She said a little sadly “And Mark?”

“Mark is in his rooms,” I said automatically. Mother frowned in confusion before Ariadne spoke up.

“I have learned that this is family code for ‘Mark is not very well today and is not up to receiving visitors’.”

“I see.” Mother’s positive expression fell a little bit further before she brightened. “Then I shall see him later.”

She turned back to Emma “I would like to bathe and get changed if I may. Where have you put me?”

“We are all in our old rooms,” Emma said. “So you are in yours if that’s alright? We can move things if you would prefer.”

Mother sighed a little. “It’ll be fine. Although given that I normally sleep in a nun’s cell, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of that space. I am told that I am to reclaim the title of Dowager Baroness while I am here until a week after the wedding after little Freddie here…”

“Hey,” I protested.

Mother didn’t break stride while Emma smirked and Ariadne hid a smile behind her hand.

“But I don’t want to get too used to the good life again. I want to keep things simple.” Mother pinned us with her “Mother” stare.

“So if I can bathe, change and then I want to go and give thanks for the safe journey in the chapel?”

“We can have a bath run for you and we have a ladies maid chosen.”

“Thank you. Although I don’t need one. And then if you want to give me a tour and show me what’s changed?”

Emma nodded, looking as bewildered as I felt before turning and leading mother off.

Ariadne came to me as I stood and watched her go.

“Freddie?” I turned to look at her.

“If you want me to hate her, then I will.” She told me.

I shook my head quickly.

“Good. Because I like her. Not what I expected.

“Nor I,” I admitted. I was more shaken than I realised and so Ariadne took me off somewhere quiet for a sit-down.

-

Entry 84

Oh Flame. Mother wants to come to one of my lectures.

-

Entry 85

The start of Mother’s stay at the castle seems to have gone well. She spent that first day walking around with Emma, re-introducing herself to the staff that remembered her and getting to grips with all of the changes that have been made. She spent some time in the chapel and then some more time at Mark’s side.

She spoke with Mark’s doctors and asked some pointed questions that I would not have known to ask and would not have expected Mother to know to ask either. When I wondered about that she told me that nearly two years in the service of Mother Nenneke at a healing temple had expanded her mind considerably. She asked if Dr Shani would be attending dinner and was disappointed that the answer was no.

She spent the following day resting after the journey although I say “resting” she seemed fairly active to me. She spoke with Ariadne a bit and told the ancient Vampire off for trying to put Mother at ease by obscuring her Vampiric nature.

Ariadne didn’t know what to make of that.

Mark was having a better day though and the two spent quite a bit of time talking.

They had a lot to talk about I suppose.

However, I want to head back to Oxenfurt. I had to spend a bit of time considering whether I wanted to go back to Oxenfurt because I wanted to go back to Oxenfurt. Or if I just wanted to get away from my mother. The short answer was that it could have gone either way in that regard.

Either way though, it didn’t get me anywhere. Mother needs to come into town so that she can get some dresses. All of her old dresses are either ruined in storage or no longer fit. It seems that working in the fields of the abbey or working on the sick and the dying, as well as the different diet, has changed Mother’s shape leaving her with muscles in certain areas and less weight in others.

I think she looks good for it but it does mean that she needs a frock or two. Not my words.

This means that she can come into town wearing a couple of dresses that are “not too bad” and pick up a small wardrobe worth of clothes so that later she can travel back to Novigrad to get a proper gown for the wedding. She wants to take Emma, Laurelen, Shani and Ariadne with her as an, I quote, “girls outing”.

Rickard, Mark and I are terrified and fascinated in equal measure.

Rickard proposed that we all get drunk and get some dancing girls in to keep us company. Mark said that he might have a cup of ale but that he would leave the dancing girls to those more healthy than himself. Which, in turn, led me to tease him about what he got up to when he was feeling more healthy.

-

Entry 86

Today’s the day that I travel back to Oxenfurt with my mother. To make matters worse, my mother seems to get on with Carys. I was looking forward to that meeting of minds but it seems that I am even losing out in that regard too. As I write this I am watching as Mother tries to remember how to ride side-saddle.

She is complaining about it loudly. Apparently, she rides at the abbey regularly as the surrounding farmers injure themselves and then a team of nuns have to ride out to bring medical aid. She quickly saw the astride method of riding as being more useful and now hates having to go back.

I will not lie. It is very funny to watch.

-

Entry 87

That was possibly the longest journey to Oxenfurt that I have ever taken. The two of us, essentially, rode in silence although Mother would exclaim and point out various places to me. Places of significance that meant something to her or something that she remembered. She seemed happy in her journeys and would occasionally hum some religious hymn that I recognised as well as some that I did not.

But we didn’t really talk. It was… excruciating.

We got to Oxenfurt where she greeted a couple of people that she knew by name and we went to the up-market Inn that Emma had arranged rooms for her in. The kind of place where she could stay with a Maid to help her out. Something that Mother had found hilarious for reasons best known to herself.

I told her that I would meet her for dinner and went to walk away before she caught my arm by the sleeve.

“Freddie?” She began.

I turned back. Because, what else was I going to do?

“I was not a good mother.” She told me with a serious expression on her face. “I did not defend you enough from your Father’s tempers. I was remote, distant and that made me cruel. I also know that I cannot redeem myself in your eyes in the few short weeks that we have together before I must return to my penance.”

She took a deep breath.

“But I would like to try. And just so you know. I am… immensely proud of you. So was your Father but I am so proud of you that I think my head is going to fall off. You did things in the North that I would never have thought possible and I know that I bear the blame for some of what you went through. I do… and I’m sorry.

“I know that we have much to talk about and I know that you have much to yell at me about and I know that I deserve the lot. But thank you. For all that you have done and all that you continue to do.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

“I will see you at dinner this evening.” She said before going into the inn.

I just made it back to my own lodgings before bursting into tears.

-

Entry 88

I chickened out of dinner, sending a message claiming that I was too tired after the journey. Knowing mother, she probably anticipated the lie.

Feeling awful, guilty and cowardly.

-

Entry 89

Would dearly love to spend the day hiding in my room under a blanket, but that is not possible. And would be a shame and a lessening of myself apart from anything else. I need to go and see Traiser at the bakery and I need to prepare for tomorrow's lecture. And I also need to put my big boy pants on and meet my mother for dinner. Needless to say that I am not looking forward to it.

Ah well

-

Entry 90

Interesting, very interesting.

Traiser is now a baker, he is a bit old for an apprentice but it is his third career after serving in the army of Redania, then the Watch of Oxenfurt and now he is learning to be a baker. The balance of the matter is that he has enough about himself so that he is not ashamed of asking for help and will freely admit when he has made a mistake. According to the actual baker, that is rare in these circumstances as most apprentices will just forge on regardless and end up making a colossal mess of things.

After all that though, it did mean that I got to eat some fresh bread and a nice warming cake straight out of the oven for my lunch. Traiser knew that I was coming and had had some chance to prepare himself for the coming meeting.

He has done well for himself. He met the baker’s daughter and is intending to marry her and take over the bakery. It seems that she is a widow of the first time that this traditional process was attempted and the Father of the matter had kind of despaired given that his daughter was too old to attract a young apprentice but not wealthy enough to attract another type of husband. So when Traiser came along it was a boon.

Traiser had decided to leave the guard after the night of the bonfires. The night when the cultists were burnt. He had joined the guard after leaving the army expecting a nice life of standing on walls, walking up and down streets, ringing his bell, inspecting trade wagons and watching the pretty students walking by. But in turn, he said that he had seen more horror and the very worst of humanity in the guard. He did not hesitate to describe the day that he came across a woman with a broken arm and a collapsed eye socket, with the eye still hanging free, beating her husband to death with a poker because of what the husband had done to the child that was bleeding to death in the corner. The husband was already dead and it was clear that the woman was quite mad.

He also told stories about the horrific games that entitled students play on the poor and more than one murder. He wanted to get it out. He had things to say.

Somewhere in me an instinct roared that there was a story here. There was something to be said and that if he wrote down all of his experiences, then it would make a good book for people to read.

Not for me to write though. I have subjects and things to keep me busy from now until the day I die. But I might suggest it to some other people.

I did suggest to him that he might be able to write it down before he told me that he only just had his letters and the prospect of sitting at his desk all day to write when he could be doing something useful was abhorrent.

But still, his insistence that he had seen more horror in his time on the streets of Oxenfurt than his time in the army spoke to something in me.

He had already all but decided that he was going to leave the guard and had just not quite decided what he was going to do or how he was going to go about it when the night of the Bonfires happened.

Like Jannes he remembered Kalayn well although he was of the opinion that if trouble started it wouldn’t be from Kalayn. So he spent most of that time with his eyes on other people.

“The problem, sir,” he said. He wanted to call me sir. I tried to stop him on the grounds that I was neither Knight, military commander nor customer. And that an honorific wasn’t necessary. I joked that he couldn’t even reasonably expect to call me “My lord” because I wasn’t. But it seemed that several years in the army had meant that he reflexively called everyone that was of superior social standing to himself “sir”. I even saw him serve a woman at the bakery and call her ‘Sir’. She asked him why and he grinned suggesting that the alternative was Madam or Ma’am and that suggested a brothel keeper so… She laughed with him and went on her way.

“The problem, sir, was that everyone was cloaked weren’t they. I mean, you were there weren’t you.”

“I was.”

“And you were wearing a cloak weren’t you sir?”

“I was. And a hood and also armour.”

“Yeah right. Only sensible weren’t it, given what we were expecting. It were a dark night that were. Weren’t it sir.”

“It was.” Not that it seemed as though he needed an answer, he wasn’t asking a question. He was one of those men that had received his education on the streets. And his army days had taught him the dangers of being too clever. He was obviously intelligent. Again, I had seen him at work a little and watched as he added up a bill from a merchant ordering bread for his wagon train. His arithmetic skills are better than mine.

“I remember him, yeah. Full of the rightness of himself if you follow?” He said when I asked him about Uncle Kalayn

“I do.”

“The kind of fuckwit that thinks that his shit smells sweeter than mine does, beggin’ your pardon. But at the same time, wouldn’t know which end of a shovel to grasp if a monster told him to dig his own grave.”

His fiancee had secured a table round the back of the counter and was checking on us. She had a kind of wary adoration as she looked at Traiser. As though she expected him to up and run away at any moment, She kept wanting to touch him and check up on him to see if there was anything he needed. He acted towards her with the deep courtesy and gallantry of the uneducated soldier and she smiled timidly for him.

It was all rather sweet and I found myself hoping that it all worked out for the pair of them.

“He had two fuckwits with him.” Traiser went on.

“Fuckwits?”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Begging your pardon sir? I thought you would’ve known. Slang term from back in my army days. Fuckwits are the heavily armoured infantry. Don’t have a brain cell between them. The idiots just point them where they want them to go and that’s where the fuckwits go. Don’t have to think, see? All that armour makes them feel invulnerable. Couple that with the fact that their hats mean that they can’t see a fuckin’ thing… begging your pardon, and they just walk forward swinging their maces, hammers and what have you until some idiot tells them to stop.

“Don’t have to think, see?. Don’t have to look for threats because their armour keeps them safe. Don’t have to think where an enemy is going to strike from because the armour can take it. And because they’ve got armour on, they think that they’re better than those of us who have to dodge and weave and shit.”

He sniffed to show what he thought of that.

I was fascinated.

“I see.” I said. “And idiot?”

He grinned. “Men like you sir? Although you’re better than the average idiot. You’re not afraid to get stuck in. Yer average idiot sits in his armour, on a horse that’s got more brains than he does.”

“I see. So… Fuckwits are heavily armoured infantry. Fighters not thinkers. Arrogant brutish guard types.”

“I see you’re getting it sir. They make for good ceremonial guards and the type of men that stand in front of doors.”

He took a drink from the mulled wine that was in a jug between us before grimacing at the taste. It did need a little more honey.

“Quite fancied being a Fuckwit myself to be honest with you. I mean, my missus claims that I would have been bored and she’s probably right. But still. Lots of armour. I bet, that if you stand just right, you could go to sleep in that stuff and the armour would keep you upright.”

“I’ve seen it done.” I claimed. “A good knight or officer can spot it though.”

“Yeah, but most of them are just as lazy as we want to be. Otherwise, they would do the fucking jobs themselves wouldn’t they.”

There was some truth to that.

“So Kalayn had two fuckwits with him?” I prompted. My own fascination needed to be put aside for the benefit of learning a few more facts.

“Yeah. Two of them. Same size. Big dickheads they were. You could see the armour underneath the cloaks.”

“Wearing any suit of arms?”

“No. Fuckwits are only as stupid as the man leading them and whatever else the cunt might have been, Kalayn wasn’t stupid.”

“Fair enough.” I said, pouring myself another cup. I always love talking to people like this. It reminds me that all the things that I think are true. The common man is more clever than his philosophers, nobles and scholars like to think. That servants and guards see and hear more than we give them credit for and that respect is not a commodity that is automatically granted.

“But I remember the three of them. I remember that I was trying to keep things moving. That was my job that night. Any group of people that were looking as though they were building up to doing something stupid, either to free a prisoner or to prevent the church guys from doing the burning so that something worse could be cooked up?”

I nodded to show that I knew what he meant. There was a real concern that some family of a victim would try and do away with a prisoner to visit a worse punishment than being burned alive as a heretic might be. I don’t know what that could be but I imagine that if I caught the people that took Francesca, I could come up with a few things.

“So I were moving through the crowd, breaking up the groups with a word where I could and my cudgel when I couldn’t. And I saw him. He was shouting at the church people that were tossing the sacred oil on the pyres before the flames were gonna be lit.”

He sniffed.

“I don’t know what the difference is between the sacred oil and the stuff we put in our lanterns.” He said. “They both burn.”

“They say it’s the holiness.” I told him. “But my brother once told me it’s because they want the burning oil to smoke less. The danger being that the victim suffocates on the smoke before they have a chance to burn to death.”

He looked at me.

“Huh.” He said. “Every day’s a school day.”

We laughed together.

“How did he look?” I prompted.

“He looked angry, I thought. Kind of bored if anything. You know how… well maybe you don’t. All the knights have to turn up to watch a soldier being punished in the regiment. They’re all angry that they have to be there. Angry at the soldier that fucked up and meant that they had to be dragged from the arms of their squires or the nice warm mistresses that they have hidden in the wagon train. And they’re bored with it all and just want it to be over. He looked like that.”

That was interesting.

“Anyway, he saw his kid was being brought out. The kid protested. He was telling the lads that were bringing him out that they would pay for this and didn’t they know who he was and all of the normal shite. Kalayn tried but those guards had some religious fuckwits with ‘em and so Kalayn was pushed aside and the kid was pushed up onto the pyre and was tied there.

“It was about this point when the kid pissed himself. They always do, you know?”

“I know.”

“I mean, they try not to. Thinking that they’ll be men on the day. Even the ones for whom it’s kind of a mercy. But they always piss themselves.

“Anyway,

“Kid calls to his dad and the dad tells him to die like a man. That he brought this on ‘imself and that he should have seen this coming. Which he should but I thought it was a bit cruel. They were lighting the pyres at that point and the kid started screaming. I think I would have been taking good hard lungfuls of the smoke if it were me.”

“So would I,” I commented. What does it say about the times that we live in that we had both honestly considered how we would deal with being burnt at the stake.

“And then this other pair walks up to Kalayn.”

“What other pair?” That feeling where you feel all of your senses pick up and stay at full mast.

Traiser scratched his chin.

“They certainly caught the eye like? One of them wasn’t wearing a hood, as though he didn’t care what the rest of us thought. He was walking around, all interested like? He didn’t seem to care about the people screaming. Didn’t seem to recognise people. Didn’t seem to give a shit you know? He looked at the world as though it was something that he was kind of curious about. He wasn’t angry, wasn’t sad, just… curious. Like a man accompanying his wife into a dress shop.”

I decided not to pick up on the man’s metaphor. It was a good one though.

“What did he look like?”

Traiser thought about it.

“Hard to tell in the firelight. It was dark and… well… you know. But…” His face lit up as a thought occurred to him. “You ever been to see some street theatre?”

“I have,” I replied.

“Well, you know when they produce the villain, and everyone knows that he’s the villain ‘cause he’s dressed like a villain. And he walks onto stage and you everyone starts to hiss and boo and things.”

Oh it was that kind of street theatre that he was talking about.

“I think I get it.” I told him, trying not to smile.

“He looked like that. I didn’t trust him, I didn’t like him and if he turned up to the watch I would have gone to get the Sergeant rather than deal with the fucker meself. You know? He was the kind of fucker that enjoyed having the power of life and death over the people under his command.”

I blinked as I tried to remember what his terminology was.

“Fucker?” I wondered.

He laughed.

“Yeah. There are two kinds of leaders. Not idiots. Leaders. These are the men that give the orders, including to the idiots. One type of them will send you to your death to help the majority to survive. To protect the civilians, guarantee victory, cover a retreat. We called them ‘bastards’ in my regiment. The other type, do it because they can, for politics and for themselves. This fucker looked to be the kind of fucker that enjoyed it too.”

“What did he look like?” I wondered.

“He was wearing a robe of some kind. Not one of those religious robes….”

“A mage's robe?” I guessed.

He started to nod.

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“Yeah, only without any of the sparkles and shit that the mages wear. You know, a lot of mages like to show off to the world that they’re mages. Especially after ‘is nibs and ‘er ladyship have declared that it’s legal to be a mage. Not that I’ve got anything against mages meself. I just think it’s unnatural is all. Not something that we should dabble in if you follow me.”

I do and I did. I guessed that “‘is nibs’ was the Emperor and “‘er ladyship” was the Empress. Northerners have a certain sense of amused tolerance for the Empress. They know that she’s one of them, Cintran, and as such feel that they can treat her with a proprietary contemptful respect. You watch what happens though when people bad mouth her on the street. The other possibility is that he was referring to Mark and Emma. It could go either way.

I also know that although people are more understanding of magic and magic users, they still don’t like it.

“But mages,” he went on. “They like to lord it over folk. I mean… I’ve seen that lady up at the castle, the one that’s knockin’ off your sister, beggin’ your pardon and if that’s what you’re into then good luck to ya. None of my business who takes who to bed and I would be lying if I didn’t want someone warm in me blankets on campaign but even so.

But the lady up at the castle, she’s one of the better sort. Minds ‘er Ps and Qs and always speaks respectful like. But the majority of em, they think that their piss is like wine and that we should be grateful when they spray our faces with it.

“And they want us to know who they are.

“But this one, he didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit, yeah? He were just… bored. Kind of bored looking. Both above and separate from anything.”

I took a deep breath as the insight took me and I described Phineas Tordril.

“Did he look like that?”

“I dunno,” Traiser said. “I mean, it sounds like ‘im. It were dark and there was a lot of fire and smoke. You know?”

“I know.”

“But it could have been him. In fact, yeah… Probably was him. Sounds like the fucker.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to leap to conclusions but it would track. I would get onto the rest of the guard and see if anyone else remembered seeing the mystery man that night.

“What about the other man?” I asked. “The hooded one?”

“I never saw ‘is face.” He warned me. “Sorry and all but I never saw ‘is face.”

“I understand, it’s ok.”

“And after all the drama, I looked but either he had gone or he changed his cloak or…”

“It’s perfectly ok.”

He subsided.

“Captain gave me a bit of grief for losing track of him is all. But I was too busy seeing if I could pull fucker Kalayn off the fire weren’t I?”

“You were.”

“He screamed so horribly. They always do when they’re burning alive.”

He shook his head. I shake my head like that too sometimes, when the memory of something refuses to be set aside.

“What was he like?” I asked. “The hooded man, I mean.

“He were a proper military man,” Traiser said. “I mean, proper. He walked like he knew what he were doin’. He had a sword on him and a set of good boots. You can always tell the quality of an idiot by the way they wear their boots and this one wore good boots. Not flashy like some and he weren’t wearing spurs neither. They were good, all-purpose boots so that he could ride in the saddle but also get off is horse and get stuck in with the rest of us, yeah?”

“I know the type,” I told him. I was wearing a set myself.

“And he knew how to hold his sword.” Traiser went on. “So many of them, they don’t know you see. They know how to carry a sword or have one on a horse, but wearing it? That’s a different thing. Not the dress swords that they wear to balls and brothels, the ones that are designed to look shiny and tell everyone how pretty they are. This was a proper sword. A sword meant for killing folk.

“And they don’t know what to do with it, most of em anyway. He held it properly, properly away from the legs so that they don’t trip over it.”

I nodded. A proper Knight. A proper soldier. It was interesting but it didn’t narrow it down much. Plenty of people wear boots like that, including me, Kerrass, Rickard, Sam and all of the other Bastards that were there that night.

“Were the two of them together?”

“They were, I think so anyway. The sword boy was leading and the other was kind of following behind. Kind of paying attention but not really caring, you know what I mean?”

I nodded to show that I did.

“Sword boy spoke to Kalayn. Kalyan was unhappy about something. Mage-cunt stood nearby listening but watching the people starting to burn. It didn’t look dangerous so I looked away. Didn’t seem as though it was going to burst into violence yeah? So not really something that I needed to worry about.

“They talked for a while, time enough for me to check on them a couple of times. Kalyan was looking at his son being burned. He looked sad and sword boy was telling him things. I looked away again and then someone screamed. I run over but Kalayn was already on the fire, thrashing around, his cloak had gone up in smoke and the fire was too hot for me to get near him.”

I nodded.

“How far into the fire was he?”

“What?” he seemed startled.

“How far had he gone? Did he jump, was he pushed?”

“I don’t know?” He protested, a little horrified. “He was there, he was on fire. I didn’t have time to get a measuring stick out.”

“Ok, ok.” I placated him. “Did his clothes… you say they were on fire. Had someone doused him oil or something?”

“And how would I tell that?” He was getting angry now and I needed to make sure that I didn’t lose him.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was just a thought. What happened then?”

“I called for help but by the time anyone came, it was too late. Kalyan was a goner weren’t he. Stupid fucker.”

He didn’t really have anything more to say. He tried to fetch water, sand or anything that had been set aside to prevent the fires from spreading. It had been, after all, a hot summer. Funny how in my memory, it is always raining when it comes to my Father’s death but the truth was that it was mid to late summer. After all, Kerrass and I still had time to go south and wake Sleeping Beauty.

By the time he had come back though, it was clear that Kalayn was dead and there was no way that anyone was going to be able to save him. Yes, he was sure that no-one could have switched places with the man on the fire and yes he was sure that it really was Kalayn that had died. The clothing was the same apparently, as was the sword and the other accoutrements.

I left Traiser with my best wishes and an instruction to let the castle know when the wedding was going to be. He didn’t seem particularly enthralled by the prospect of that but there you go. One exchange stuck out to me.

“What we did that night,” he told me, staring down at his cup that he was twisting round and round. “What we did that night was evil. Don’t get me wrong, it was necessary and I agree that sometimes a necessary evil needs to be done to help those that we love to sleep at night. And the people that we murdered were doing worse than what we did. But at the same time, what we did was evil. The church, you, the Cap’n and all the rest can tell me that it was justified. They can tell me that we did the right thing. I agree. We did do the right thing. But that doesn’t stop it from being evil.”

There were flaws in his argument of course. But they are clever philosophical tricks that leave me feeling kind of dirty. I didn’t use them on Traiser. He was already struggling to like me and I feel as though I deserved his mistrust. I have, historically, made light of that night. I have, of course, claimed on a regular basis that it was a spontaneous display of right minded individuals. I have also claimed that I was never there. But in doing so, I wonder if I lessened the people that were there. The people that did the necessary thing to make sure that that shit was not done again.

I will talk with Ariadne on this subject

I left with an odd sense of excitement but also a bitter disappointment. It was a lead but it was also a fairly paltry one. The interesting figure in the story was whoever it was that had been with Phineas, presuming that it was Phineas at all. The problem being that that man could be anyone, almost literally, it could have been anyone.

The most likely outcome was that it was Lord Cavil or some other fellow parent from someone that had been caught and was being burnt at one of the other stakes that night. Someone from the cult or someone that was associated with the cult. Someone that, most likely, had burnt on another pyre somewhere to the north, or had died in the cave when it was assaulted by the forces of the Inquisition. There was simply no way to know.

Having said that, I did know more now than I had earlier that day. I wrote to the head of the Imperial garrison in Novigrad to request an appointment. And I wrote to the guard commander to ask if anyone could remember the movements of Phineas on the night in question and who, if anyone, had seen who he was in the company of that same night.

I have a lecture to prepare for and a meal to have with my mother now.

The lecture I will quite enjoy, the meal…?

-

Entry 91

I’ve just looked over my notes from my conversation with Traiser today. Then I looked back at the notes that I took with the old investigator. I write these things as though I’m still annotating articles for the magazine. This says something about me. I mean, I’m not sure what it says, but it says something.

Mother didn’t show up for dinner. She sent a message to say that she was having a headache, something about too much too soon.

I feel… let down.

Off to bed now.

-

Entry 92

I didn’t sleep well last night.

I feel guilty. I…

No, this feels wrong. Like I’m starting an article in the wrong place or that I don’t have the chapter of the book properly planned before I sit down to start.

It is the day of the fourth Witcher lecture. It describes the fall of the Witchers schools, to outside influences, natural disaster and also internal strife. It will be a bleak lecture and it is an important one about how we left the people who saved us out in the cold to starve and die because we didn’t care about them and didn’t want to know about them.

It’s a vital lecture and I can get properly angry in it which is something that I was looking forward to.

So it should be taking all my focus, all of my… drive and energy. I shouldn’t be thinking of other things. But I can’t stop thinking about my mother.

She didn’t come for dinner last night and I don’t know why.

The reason that she gave me in her little message was that she had tried to do too much too soon. That after two years, give or take, of quiet contemplation, prayer and service to the people around her, to suddenly go from that to having to be the Dowager Baroness of the region had been too much. It had been exhilarating and terrifying and…

It was just too much for her.

And it’s a good reason. It is. I remember that first year back when I wintered in Oxenfurt after my first year on the path with Kerrass. That break before an article had been published, no-one knew who we were, Father was still alive and we still hated each other. I remember coming back after nearly a year of sleeping rough or in shitty beds that I paid through the nose for. I remember coming back to a snow covered Oxenfurt where the food was good, the music was loud, the women were beautiful and the bed was comfortable and warm. I had no idea what to do with myself.

Where previously I had spent hours or days at a time staring at books or my own work, I could no longer spend more than a couple of hours in place per day otherwise I would get a headache. I had to space my things out and work cleverly rather than indiscriminately.

I remember struggling to sleep and giving into the temptation to sleep on my own couch or on the floor more than once. I remember going out to see a friend’s play and feeling hemmed in by all the people that were around me, pressing against me and hemming me in. I remember being in a tavern and someone dropped a tray of drinks and the crowd laughed and jeered. I remember automatically reaching for a spear that had been left in my rooms and standing there, shivering and breathing hard until a friend pointed out how ridiculous I was being and calmed me down.

I remember the headaches and the yearning for some fresh air, some peace and quiet. It took me a week to calm down and settle and I had not been as far away as my mother had been.

I had not had to change my entire identity.

So the excuse was a good one as to why she hadn’t been there. The need to stay in a quiet and dark room where there were no noises. I remember feeling the same.

But I also cannot deny the gratitude I felt when she messaged me. It meant that I didn’t have to worry about our extended conversation for another day.

And now I feel guilty about the fact that I was glad that my own mother couldn’t make a dinner appointment.

And I have to go and give a lecture

-

Entry 93

The lecture went well. I am so glad as I was honestly worried that I was going to flub it there for a while. I went into it, not quite at my best. I was tired, grouchy and I wanted to fight someone and as it turned out, that was exactly the mood that I needed in order to deliver the material.

I remember discussing it once, this will have been back when I was first starting to give lectures and deliver seminar material. I was offering a seminar on Witchers… This will have been the break in the journey after Sleeping Beauty had woken up. I remember discussing it with my tutor who was assessing me, even though he now admits that he had already decided that I needed a pass so that I could sit on the faculty, but I remember expressing a concern that I wasn’t exactly impartial when it came to discussing this material. I told him that I had been out on the road with a Witcher. That the Witcher was my friend and that I, therefore, couldn’t really talk about it.

He laughed at me and told me that it is all but impossible to separate ourselves from the material that we are talking about.

“We can get close but we will never be perfect in that regard.” He told me. “Even when we are looking at secondary sources or writing about a series of primary sources, sooner or later, our own opinion will become part of the analysis. There is nothing wrong with that until we start twisting the facts to suit our own opinion. Are you going to do that?”

“No,”

“Well then.”

“So what do I do?”

“In this case? I would suggest that you lean into it. It will lend passion and excitement to your words. That will make people remember it.”

So today, I remembered that advice and I went all in. I did not hesitate to hold back my scorn for the cowards that had murdered children when they had gone to destroy the school of the Wolf at Kaer Morhen. Nor was I sparing of my disdain for the Emperor using the Viper school, manipulating their sense of pride in their school and their skills. Using their desire for a family and the safety of their friends in order to turn them into assassins and, in the end, getting them all wiped out.

I expressed sadness at the destruction of that most noble of schools, the Griffin in natural disasters and I expressed scorn against those that had moved against the Bear school out of fear. And just when the Redanians in the audience were beginning to feel a bit more secure I also went after the Redanian military for attacking the Cat, for the purposes of trying to, essentially, make a regiment of supersoldiers in order to terrify the continent. Thus proving those ancient fears of the Witchers correct.

I took no quarter and I held nothing back. When someone tried to get aggressive with me I destroyed them. When Temerians tried to protest my comments on the Viper school, I tore them apart and pointed out that it was the precursor to war. And that those self-same Temerians had been saved by a Witcher, on several different occasions but the first time something goes wrong, they fell into the stereotype and blamed the Witcher.

At first, people were mortified. People laughed and cheered when I went after their rivals before they became sheepish when I turned on them. The many sins of the North against the people that had done their best to save them came back to roost in that room and all of them went away, thinking about it. Some of them might hate me for it, they might but I honestly, don’t feel remotely guilty.

They had it coming.

And then mother attended.

I had been expecting her. She had, after all, told me that she was going to be there and that she was looking forward to it. But where I had expected her to be sitting in one of those seats that were reserved for the guests of honour, instead, she sat somewhere near the back. She was hooded and cloaked in disguise and only approached me when she was sure that she wasn’t going to be getting in the way of anyone else.

She came to see me afterwards and told me that she would be happier speaking to me somewhere private. My tutor intervened and after he shook my hand with words to the tune of “amongst your best work” he offered mother his arm and they strode off. I still had other people to see but I received a message to tell me that they were in my tutor’s office.

It is always the way after a big lecture that people want to talk to you. They want to shake you by the hand and ask you questions and do this and that and the other thing. In this case, there were also a few people who wanted to challenge me on a couple of my conclusions which I was ok with, I was quite enjoying the prospect of a good fight. And a few people that offered warnings that I might upset someone powerful. I told them that I didn’t care about that either, which was true. My favourite was Lady Eilhart who came up to me towards the end, still scribbling in her notebook.

“Interesting.” She told me, “very interesting indeed. Well researched and a few things that even I wasn’t aware of. I would possibly suggest some discretion when it comes to a couple of points but your passion is unmistakable and even admirable.”

I thanked her. Lady Eilhart is sometimes a struggle, there is always this urge to turn everything that she says to me over in my head to see if it’s a compliment or a threat.

“I look forward to the final lecture.” She told me before moving off, the crowd parting before her like… well… I don’t know really.

I finally got rid of the other hangers on and went off to find my mother. When I walked in, I passed my tutor on the way out who had all the attitude and feeling of a man that was beating a retreat. He gave me a significant glance and clapped me on the shoulder before leaving.

Mother was in tears.

“Oh flame,” I began, “What did I do?”

She laughed, the tears still running down her face. She had a rag pressed to her eyes and she scrubbed at her face to clean it. Another change in my mother. She used to wrap the handkerchief round a finger so that she could carefully dab at the eyes in order to not smudge her makeup. But now she was actively scrubbing as though she didn’t care for her appearance.

Time in Ellander was good for her.

“I know that you won’t want to hear this.” She told me. “I even know that there’s a better than evens chance that you will hate me for saying it. But you reminded me so much of your father.”

She was right. I didn’t want to hear it.

“Flame,” she went on. “But I loved your father. Even at the height of his rage and his passion, he was an incredible man and I squandered him. I threw it away I just… I miss him so much. I know that you and he had a difficult… I miss him though.”

Fuck it.

I knelt next to her and put my arms around her, astonished to feel tears on my own cheeks.

We wept together for a while and as we did so, I felt something in my chest give way. It started slow and after a while, I started to really weep, sobbing into my mother’s arms.

Later, much later, when we had both calmed down. She pulled away and scrubbed at her face again. I was suddenly struck with the absurd fear that she was going to scrub my face, the same as she did when I was little, where she would grab my chin and tilt my head to the light so that she could clean the muck off me.

I think she saw it in me somewhere and she pulled away.

“Flame, but I was a terrible mother.” She declared.

I wanted to deny it, I really did but the traitorous words stayed in my throat, unsaid.

She climbed to her feet and smoothed her skirts down.

“I apologise for chickening out yesterday.” She told me, a little formally. “Dinner this evening? Emma has given me a generous budget for my needs and I feel the need to treat my son as I try and teach him that it was a compliment to be compared to his father.”

Something in her face, combined with the words made me giggle, then I laughed and she laughed with me.

“Sounds good,” I said.

-Entry 94

Mother was in charge of dinner.

It turned out that we ate at one of those up-market taverns that I never ate at while I was a student because I could never afford it and when I could afford it later, I didn’t eat there because it kind of didn’t appeal, or it looked a bit… being fancy for the sake of being fancy.

They employ a troll bouncer who has to wear a cravat for crying out loud.

He’s an amiable soul though and as is the way with such creatures, he sits there and looks you up and down whenever you walk up and if you are not dressed up to the code of the management, he simply leans over and puts his arm in front of the door and there is no-one that gets past that.

It’s the kind of place where you need to have a reservation and be properly dressed and Mother had gotten a reservation. As it turns out, she really was one of those people that knew the owner. There are always people that try and pretend that they know the owner, but in this case, she really did.

“Your Father brought me here when I first came down to Oxenfurt.” She told me as we were seated. “It was much quieter then and not as popular. It was a new place and it turned out that your father had gotten the owner a good deal on some particularly fancy meat which the owner then used to make his name. As a result…” She shrugged.

Having said all of that, we had been ushered straight to our table rather than waiting around in the entrance way of the restaurant where anyone could see us and we were sitting at a small table way back from the main eating area.

On the one hand, that meant that we would have the privacy to talk and on the other hand, it meant that people couldn’t see us. It was the kind of thing where we out of sight and out of mind.

There was a candle on the table.

“Well this is awkward,” I said.

“Why?”

I gestured at the candle.

“They think we’re a couple.”

She looked down at the candle and she laughed.

“You mean you’ve never brought your young lady here?”

“I would remind you that she stopped counting her years of birth and only celebrates the decades now.”

“Ah yes. So she said in one of her letters.”

That was a blow.

“You mean the two of you have kept in touch?”

“Oh yes. I can’t know my daughter-in-law in person but I made it my business to know who she was otherwise. She strikes me as a good woman, if reluctant to speak about herself. She always seems to have questions.”

“That is a thing that she likes to do.” I agreed.

Mother looked good. She was dressing simply which suited her far more than the overly ornate gowns that Father used to make her wear when they were trying to be the new couple at court. Her hair was tied back in a working braid, the same way that Ariadne wears hers when she is planning to do some extended work in the lab, although much to my relief, Mother wore her braid down her back.

Not that I would have been attracted to my mother, but if Ariadne had copied that gesture from my Mother then… I don’t know how I would feel about that.

She was wearing a simple pair of ear-rings and she still wore that Griffin Witcher symbol around her neck. She had a habit of taking it out and playing with it whenever she was thinking or otherwise allowing herself to rest idle. It seemed to have a settling effect on her, the same way that I feel better whenever I can take hold of my spear and hold onto it firmly.

She looked good.

“So…” I began after the wine had been ordered and we had both chosen the chestnut soup to begin. “How are you going to convince me that it is a good thing to be called my Father’s son. And I warn you, that if you talk about his hard work or his success in bringing the Coulthard family to prominence, I may vomit.”

“Not at the table I trust.” She told me with a raised eyebrow.

“Jokes,” I commented sourly. “My mother is making jokes.”

“So surprised?”

“You were never one for joking.”

Her eyes became vacant. “No, no I wasn’t. You don’t realise the things you have lost until they are gone. I was never a joker and now that I have spent two years in the presence of women that don’t have to stand for my nonsense. Women that have to shovel horse doings or they get drowned in the stuff…”

“You mean that they shovel horse-shit mother?”

“Yes, precisely. Although kindly do not swear at the table.”

“Sorry Mother.”

“They might be earthy women but that doesn’t mean that they ignore things about the use of language. Remember that.”

“Yes, mother,”

“Don’t you ‘Yes mother’ me.”

“No mother.”

We laughed. The wine turned up and mother’s eyebrows rose when I knew how to test the wine properly.

“You don’t travel to Toussaint without learning some things about wine.” I told her.

She shrugged at that and the conversation lapsed again as we both looked at our hands.

“You aren’t going to like me for saying this.” She said, “But I used to tell people that if they wanted to know what your Father was like when he was a younger man, they should walk up to you and shake you by the hand.”

“You understand that that’s not a compliment to me.”

“I know and it saddens me to know it. Although it is very like your father. You, Emma and Mark were your Father’s children. Edmund, for my sins, Samuel and Francesca were mine.”

I said nothing. I was not enjoying this.

“The thing that your Father did was that he became interested in things and that is what you all had in common, you, Mark and Emma. You become fixated on things and you dive into them with both feet. To the point where you only come up for breath when someone reminds you. Your thing was history and therefore becoming a scholar. Mark’s was religion and philosophy, therefore becoming a priest while Emma and your Father shared a fascination with money and the taking of that money and making the amount grow.

“Make no mistake that the family’s growth into what it is is because your Father realised that to make his wealth grow, he needed a noble title to protect himself from just being taxed back down to being a dirt farmer. He needed to invest that wealth in order to keep it safe and to do that, he needed to be nobility.”

“I always thought that his ambition was to grow the family.”

“It was although that was more his Father, your Grandfather’s ambition. Your Grandmother and I would talk about it a lot. The point was to grow the wealth so that we could grow the family so that we could grow the wealth. And even more than that, your Father enjoyed that process, he was fascinated by that. Before he earned the King’s displeasure, he would stand at court and just watch the goings on. I would have to teach him about it and explain the bits that he didn’t understand but still. He loved it. He loved growing the family and making it wealthy.

“The reason that you and he didn’t get on was because he didn’t understand, or see the use for your passions. You are interested in why things are the way they are. That is the root of you really. You want to take things apart and look at them. You were obviously never going to be an engineer or a craftsman of some kind.”

“Obviously.”

Mother ignored my sarcasm in the face of her background, deeply ingrained classism.

“Nor did you have any kind of artistic talent. But you wanted to know how things worked. I remember you asking your sister why things were the way that they were. You would ask why people hated us, she would explain and then you would ask why, then why again. Sometimes children do that to wind people up, but you were genuinely interested.

Your love of history comes partially out of that. You want to know why Redania is the way it is. Why did King Vizimir treat his son the way he did and why oh why are Witchers the way they are.”

I smirked at that. It is sometimes disquieting to be broken down to your most basic components but parents are almost uniquely suited to be able to do that.

“Your Father wanted to grow the family and continue to increase our wealth so that none of us would have to live with the back breaking poverty that his father used to tell us all tales about over the dinner table. He was terrified of it. And the rest of the family that followed his outlook played along with it. Mark was the second son so he was going to be the churchman. We were helped there because when he was born, I was still so happy with my new life. I read from the stories and the writings of the Prophet and he loved those stories so all I had to do was to keep going. We hired the best tutors and the best… well… you know the rest. So he became fascinated with that and given that he never showed any interest in the pleasures of the body, he was suited to go to the cloister.”

She sighed. “I was so proud of him. My little priest. Poor Mark.”

On that we could agree at least.

“Where I had a son to dress in a cassock and we had an eldest son to carry on the line. Your Father was overjoyed when a girl was produced. The old thing about fathers and their daughters carried true and she followed your Father around everywhere with her little serious face and her sharp mind. Flame but I loved her and I loved the way that your Father’s face would light up every time she asked a clever question or pointed out a pattern in all of the trading information that we had access to at the time.

“Flame but he loved his trading reports.

“But then there was you. You weren’t supposed to be born and we were astonished when you came along. Overjoyed but astonished. And we didn’t really have anywhere to put you. Edmund, Mark and Sam had fulfilled their roles so we didn’t know what to do with you. It was and is unfair to call you a spare, but that is what you became. And although we failed you in that, and we did. It allowed you to become the man that you are.

“We realised our mistake too late though. You were not trained the way that we wanted, you weren’t interested in just being a spare Coulthard, or growing the family, or any of that. You had found a passion without our influence and then… You had escaped your Father’s grasp… which makes it sound more sinister than it was. But you were outside of his plans and he didn’t understand why you weren’t conforming to his wishes.

“I tried to tell him on a couple of occasions but we had drifted apart by then and he didn’t want to listen.”

Her face fell.

We sat in silence for a while before she suddenly moved.

“I suppose you want to ask me about the cult and things. Why didn’t I warn anyone about my Father’s cult and about my brother’s shenanigans.”

“I do,” I admitted. “But we have time for that. I’m too busy being fascinated by your assessments as to the family.”

She laughed at me. “See, you want to know why things are the way that they are. You want to know why Edmund was the way he was.”

“I do,” I admitted. “But also about Francesca. You say that Edmund, Sam and Francesca are all your children. Forgive me but I don’t see the similarities. Especially if you put…” My throat caught for a moment and I swallowed. “Especially if you put Frannie and Edmund together. Two more different people you could never imagine.”

“You have a little, and a big brotherly bias.”

She took a drink and stared off into the distance.

“One of the things that I have enjoyed about your articles is the number of times that you emphasised that education is not the same thing as intelligence. I am better educated than your Father but your Father was, by far, the more intelligent of the two of us.

“I am a creature of instinct. I look around me and I see the way that I can turn things to my advantage. It was because of my family and their awful, awful cult… They taught me that I could only depend on myself if I wanted to survive. Not just survive, but have even a little bit of a life. I looked for the easy route, the advantageous route. What was around me, what could I say or do to turn the situation to my advantage. What could I fixate on to make my life a little bit easier.

“Your Father did the same thing by sheer intelligence. He thought things through, I just did it by instinct.”

She sipped from her wineglass and made a face of pleasant surprise.

“Edmund took that quality and made it a vice. He took it and as he looked at everything that your Father showed him about his future and what he would have access to, he only took the things that he wanted from it. The rest of it just seemed to bounce off him. There were other factors of course, the cult and my damn brother coming to interfere made things worse. But all of that taught your brother what he had access to for the parts of his life that he wanted to enjoy.

“It didn’t help that we were first time parents and didn’t really know what we were doing. So we just… assumed that your brother would follow by example and take after your Father the way we wanted him to. By the time we realised that wasn’t working?.. I don’t know, I just think it was too late.”

The soup arrived, a creamy chestnut soup. Chestnut soup is one of those things that I always struggled with. When it’s served, it never fails to be delicious, but I can’t help but feel for all the people that have to take their time to peel the chestnuts in order to provide the soup. It strikes me as being incredibly hard work for so little result when other soups can be made, far easier and without all of the nonsense that goes with it.

And as is true with all of these kinds of eating establishments, there wasn’t quite enough there to properly satisfy me. I felt as though I had just gotten a taste of the soup before I was scraping the bottom of the bowl. I looked up to find my mother watching me, humour sparkling in her eyes as when she was sure she had my gaze, she picked up the bowl and licked it.

I was caught between outraged horror and amusement. The number of times that Father had yelled at one of us for doing precisely that at the dinner table.

The staff took our bowls away with our compliments and we were warned that it might be a little wait for our main course. Mother was gracious and made noises about “that’s how we know it’s properly cooked”

“Mark and Emma did better, it was easy to find their interests and then act on them, making sure that they had access to the things that they needed in order to become good at what they were interested in and then just, let them get on with it.

“I think, looking back, that we were lucky with Sam. He was good at what he was assigned to. He didn’t need to be much more than shown a weapon or a skill that was involved and then he would be a master of that armament. He picked up the physical movements so easily. He could also pick up on his opponents habits and figure out how to defeat them. It was an instinctual thing. ‘A soldier’s instinct’ his weapons tutor called it. But on the other hand, once it penetrated his young mind that he was going to be a soldier. He stopped working on the other things. They just weren’t important to him.

“Many of your friends have commented that despite Sam’s eligibility, which he is, they find Sam to be… a little off-putting. That doesn’t surprise me. He stopped working on the parts of his character that needed working on in order to be socially capable. He will be a good lord I think, I hope, and I have no doubt that he is a good leader. But unless something changes, he will make a poor husband. Don’t tell him I said that of course.”

“Oh of course.” I was unhappy with that. I didn’t like keeping things from Sam, there were times when all that the two of us had were each other.

“I mean, I’m looking forward to seeing him and I mean to talk to him about this, but he took only the things he needed to be good at being a knight and a soldier. He didn’t see the point in the rest of it and so…”

“Mum,” I began carefully. “I love you, but I am not a priest. You cannot gain absolution from me. I am not the person to apologise to and I cannot take away your guilt.”

She looked at me a little in horror. Before becoming thoughtful. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.”

Then she sighed and shook herself.

“I will talk to Sam and see if we can put a few things right. Having said that, I still need to get back. I have a deadline after all.”

“I understand.”

“Fortunately,” she changed the subject quickly. “Everything we got wrong with Edmund, and to a lesser extent with Sam, we got right with Francesca and in every way that Edmund was selfish, Francesca was… not. The instincts that he used to gather things for himself and be selfish, she used to make others feel good and be generous. We taught her to be good in court and she sucked up all of the things that she needed to be good at that. She saw that the Empress needed a friend and then she took the things she needed to provide that lady with that. I’m glad. At one stage, she was just going to be some man’s wife and that would have been a disaster, for her and for him I think.”

We chuckled at that. We had often joked that Francesca would dominate any man that she married. Then, as it always does when thoughts of Francesca came up, we both turned towards the melancholy. A mood that we were saved from by the arrival of our palate cleansers.

When we were done with the sharp, clean, fruity ices, I sat waiting to see if Mother was going to say something. When she didn’t I decided that this was my time.

“Mother, I have questions.”

She looked up at me. “Yes, I thought you might. Emma warned me.”

“Of course she did. What did she tell you?”

“She told me that you were worried. That there were some unanswered questions left over from when the cult was discovered and I killed… I killed my son.”

I nodded and gave her a moment to correct herself and feel better. I spoke again when she nodded.

“It is clear to everyone.” I began. “That your brother would not have thrown himself on Cousin Kalayn’s pyre. Most people that met him, or knew him, suggested that he would have, if not fought, then he would have got himself another heir, if he didn’t have someone in mind already. Or he would have stayed alive for as long as possible just to spite… whoever.”

“This is true. Although, didn’t he name Sam as his heir?”

“Yes,” I thought back. “But he didn’t do that by name. He didn’t say, ‘Sam Coulthard is my heir’, he wrapped it up in legalese.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Mother agreed.

“So you cannot tell me that this was his plan,” I said. “Why would he make the son of his rival, the son of someone who, I understand, had refused monetary assistance?..”

I stopped talking, hoping that Mother would want to fill in the gaps.

“Yes. That was the visit that first caused your Father to stop loving me.” She took a deep shuddering breath.

“I think that that’s untrue,” I told her.

Her face hardened. “I was there.”

“He kept that portrait of you in his rooms mother. He didn’t take it down. He loved you, even if he was angry, or… I don’t know. But he wanted to look at your face and he didn’t let you take holy orders because he wanted to keep you around. You don’t do that kind of thing to spite someone.”

She didn’t believe me.

“My brother came.” She began. “Your Father had been wanting to tie our family together for a while. The addition of the older name of Kalayn would add legitimacy to the Coulthard… brand and your Father wanted that. Now that my Father was dead, who your Father had disliked. Although I had never told your Father what had happened, it was still true that something about Father had set your father on edge. But now that the old man was removed, your father had some hopes that things could progress now.

“So Your Father was often inviting my brother and his family to come and visit us. I tried to tell him that it was pointless but your father insisted. And then one day, your cousin, who was slightly older, took Edmund out to induct him into the family religion.

“They went out one day for a ride. Your brother was no saint but your cousin was evil. Edmund would have been, not very old, just at the point when his body was becoming fit for purpose and your cousin took him out. They destroyed a family between them. Edmund was already good with a sword and your Cousin was no slouch. I was pleased when you beat him.”

“I have seen that kind of thing before,” I told her. “Men who think that the talent and capability of their younger years will keep them safe in their later ones. I train every day to be merely… good. He was overconfident and he underestimated me.”

“Still…” She said, “I would have liked to see that. Dreadful wretch that he was. But they came back and although they were old enough to do the deed, they were too young to keep it secret. They were proud Freddie.”

She shuddered and I thought I heard a sob in their voice.

“I have never seen your Father so angry. Never. I knew his rage as a cold thing, a narrowing of his eyes, a slight tightness to his jaw and a certain clipped nature to his voice. Even when he yelled at all of you, I knew when he was angry and when he was just putting his anger on like an overcoat in order to teach you all what he wanted.

“He flogged your cousin and turned my brother out at the point of a sword. My brother wasn’t prepared for that. I think… I mean, I don’t know. I was still beneath my brother’s notice so I don’t know, he never talked to me about it. But I think that my brother thought to blackmail your father with the information of what had happened. He intended to keep that knowledge over your Father in order to get the Coulthard’s to bankroll the Kalayn resurgence. Both at court and in the cult.

“I think your cousin was encouraged to corrupt Edmund. I think he did it deliberately.

“But those without integrity do not understand those people with integrity. Your Father neutralised the blackmail at a stroke. He countered that he would simply tell the church what the Kalayns were up to and my brother, who was a coward…”

“Another reason that he wouldn’t kill himself.” I interrupted.

“Yes.” Mother agreed. “His malevolence turned to fear and he fled your Father’s wrath. But the damage was done. Edmund was corrupted by the power that he had been shown. He felt… good about it, he enjoyed it and to learn that there was a god out there that applauded these displays of power. Not the, in his eyes, weak powers of the Eternal Flame.

“The other damage was that a wedge was driven between your Father and I for a long time. I hated that and I hated my brother for it. I never loved your Father more than when he did that. And he was never more attractive to me than when he was clothed in that righteous fury against my brother and nephew. But he demanded of me to know what was going on and I told him.

“He hated me for a long time after that.”

We sat in silence for a while.

“How did you…” I had to clear my throat. “This was before Sam, right? So how did the two of you come back together.”

She laughed, her bad mood forgotten.

“A common enemy. You remember de Radford.”

“Yes I remember him. And dinner with my mother is not a good time for me to say exactly what I think of him.”

She laughed at that. “And you claim that you are not like your Father.” She commented with relish. “We were at court for some reason or other and Radford’s father tried to seduce me. He did it so insultingly that I was outraged and your Father came to my rescue. Not only did your Father defend me on the day, but then he gleefully set about destroying the Radford family fortune which resulted in the family being little more than a name and an old castle that was falling apart.”

“Our castle?”

“Flame no. I would not have lived in anything that the Radfords had anything to do with.” She shuddered theatrically. No, our castle was chosen carefully. But the night of that insult, for the first time in a long time, he came to my chamber and apologised to me for Radford’s insult. I of course told him that he didn’t need to apologise and then… well…

“Sam was born nine months later and our marriage was renewed. Then you were born and eventually, Francesca.”

“But then you and Father started to drift apart?”

“Yes. Edmund’s… activities were getting too big to ignore. Your Father was dealing with the matter as best he could and we just… started to, as you say, drift apart.”

I nodded.

“We have gotten off topic though.”

“Yes, my brother throwing himself on his son’s pyre.” She said it with not a small amount of relish.

“You knew him as well as anyone else.” I began carefully. I had no idea how inflammatory these questions would be. “Would he do that? Would he throw himself on a pyre?”

“No.” She said definitively. “No he wouldn’t… Ummm,” She tilted her head to one side before nodding. “No, he definitely wouldn’t have done that.”

I nodded my confirmation. I remember not really thinking of it in the past but at the here and now of the matter, the fact that Kalayn had died seemed to be of vital importance.

“So the next question is,” I began. “If he didn’t jump, he would have been pushed.”

Mother nodded.

“I should say,” she began. “That my memories of my younger years are… not entirely defined. Mother Nenneke calls it repression. I call it not wanting to remember but she tells me that it’s the same kind of thing and who am I to argue with so venerable a woman.”

“She does seem to have done you good.”

“She has. More than I can say. I only wish that the woman I am now would have had a chance to be a mother to all of you and a wife to your Father. I can look back and see all of the things that I did wrong. Not least of which was to not stand up to your Father in matters of your education. And Edmunds for that matter. But that is a rant for a different day.

“No, my brother would not have jumped onto the fire. He would have had to be pushed. You couldn’t even compel him, or force him to do it. I remember little but the culture of the area that we were in… and I don’t know if it is because of the cult of the first-born as you called them, or whether the first-born practice of the cult grew out of local culture. But my brother was the first born son. Therefore, he was all but a god in the face of our father. He could do no wrong and he was taught to believe that he was the centre of the universe. A lot like Edmund though… See what I mean about Edmund being my son, my brother didn’t see all the parts of the responsibilities that that brought him. He just saw the benefits.

“There is a reason why your cousin came south to found his own little branch of culting.”

She laughed suddenly.

“People always rebel at their parents. It was a fifty-fifty chance that his measure of rebelling would be to become this kind of saintly figure, healing people and taking care of small animals, or he would find an even worse form of cultish, dark religion behaviour to follow.”

I kind of laughed with her until we both kind of realised what we were laughing at and were appalled.

“That was pretty dark Mother.” I told her.

“Yes, yes it was.”

We sat in silence for a while until the main course came. It was delicious.

“Was my brother dead before he hit the flames?” Mother asked. “Not that I would be angry with whoever did that, but it would strike me that that would be a good way to obscure the crime.”

“It would.” I admitted, carefully swallowing a mushroom before I answered. “Unfortunately, we don’t know because, body on fire.”

She caught herself smirking at that before she stopped herself.

“The other problem there,” I went on, “is not trying to figure out a motive, but rather, it was figuring out who didn’t have a motive that is more difficult. That night was a vigilante action. The courts were going to let a significant portion of those conspirators go. Church and secular soldiers and guards were on our side but as well as the families that had come to protest the executions and the religious pyres that were being used. There were also a lot of families that were there. Friends and relatives of the victims. People had come to see those people die. And any one of which could have seen the opportunity to stick a knife into a man that they hate. A man who was trying to get his son released for reasons of, they had more money,”

Mother nodded sadly. “I can’t say that I blame them.”

“Nor can I. I have another question though.”

“Go on.”

“Given that your memory of your… I’m going to call them ‘formative years’ because calling them your childhood seems a bit redundant. But your memory of them is a bit patchy. Do you have any memory of a mage called Phineas Tordril?”

She nodded. “I do not think so. I have been thinking about that since Emma wrote to me with what you had found regarding the disappearance of Francesca. Give me some context.”

“He was a mage, rather full of himself. We know that he was dissatisfied with the amount of power that he could command through his existing abilities. So he had taken to pursuing alternative methods to become more powerful. We know that he was working with Lord Dorme, the guy that was trying to unearth Ariadne in an effort to use her against his enemies.

“We also know that he was in the North, advising Lord Cavil who, we understand, was your Father’s successor to the top position of the cult of the first born. We know that he kidnapped Francesca and that his stated goal in kidnapping Francesca was partially in revenge for Kerrass and my accidentally on purpose destroying his scheme with Angral and to blackmail, force our family into doing things for him. He didn’t realise how much of a shitstorm that he had called down however.”

Mother nodded at that.

“So instead… Well, I’m sure you know.”

“Yes.” She said, “I know.”

It has been a long time since I have seen my mother angry. It is not nice and I do not like it. Even as I agreed with it.

“The reason I bring him up is that he has recently come back to prominence in this entire situation.”

“Why?”

“I have a witness that places Phineas, accompanying a man who was talking to your brother just before he died. My witness had many things to look at at the time and as such, has no idea what else can be discussed or what they were talking about, other than it definitely happened.”

“Who was the other man?”

“I have no idea. And to be honest, you are the first person I’ve talked about it with. Working with a Witcher who, among other things, is also a private detective. The man was hooded and cloaked which means that, not only did he want to obscure his appearance, but he was afraid that he might be recognised. Which are two different things.”

Mother smiled at that.

“Also, it was a man and he was military in bearing. He was wearing a sword which makes him fairly rich all things considered and my witness described him as “knowing how to walk with a sword,” which means that he was no slouch with it.

“The other thing that we know about him was that his boots were built for both walking on the ground but could also be used for horseback. But even though they were horse riding boots, there were no spurs on his boots.”

She nodded again. “Your Father used to insist that any rider who used spurs was not a real rider.”

“That is certainly what he insisted on teaching me. Which is why we think he was a real nobleman.

“The problem being that… we don’t know who this person is and if he was a noble and associating with Phineas, it is just as likely that he was already working with Lord Cavil in the north. So we might be making this swordsman out to be some kind of bogeyman when, in fact, we have already killed this man. That would also fit with what we know of the timeline of events.”

Mother was not bothering to hide the fact that she was enjoying my discourse.

“Phineas left Angral and then came west while Kerrass and I were pissing about in the North. We don’t know if he was already in contact with the cult of the first-born or if he had just made contact and was therefore doing his best to make some waves. I am not fond of either interpretation.

“So it is true that he could have made contact with the cult and come south because he was already annoyed with how Kerrass and I had interfered with his plans. Or that he was recognised while in Oxenfurt and recruited to the cult by… whoever.”

“So what you are telling me, is that all of this is about you wanting to finish putting the jigsaw pieces together. That you know what the picture is but that you are unsatisfied with it until it is finished.”

“Pretty much.”

I had leant forward at some point in the conversation and now leant back with a huff.

“Except that there’s this niggle in the back of my mind.” I said. “Just a little itch. It is true that my life on the road has damaged me in more ways than I can easily explain. More ways than I understand myself. It is also true that paranoia is a very real consequence of all of that. I know that and I’m comfortable with that…”

“Liar,” she said with a smile, pouring us both some more wine. “I am your Mother Freddie and you can’t hide it from me.”

“Ok,” I admitted, “I am coming to terms with that.”

“That’s better.”

“And it is true that I am possibly seeing something that isn’t there. Or wanting to prolong the puzzle when there aren't any more pieces left.”

“You don’t want the game to end.”

“That’s the possibility. But it is also true that Kerrass has taught me to mind my instincts. To guard my thoughts and feelings and to listen to them. He taught me that these instincts are the last leftovers from our primal lives before we knew about things like the written word and the like.

“The itch is there. It’s the same itch that made me insist on investigating Edmund’s death. It’s the same one that helped me figure out the sleeping beauty riddle and helped push us towards the unmasking of the Jack conspirators. That itch tells me that I’m missing something. I don’t know what it is and I am dreadfully concerned that it’s going to bite me on the ass. Bite all of us on the ass.”

She nodded. “I can understand. What are you doing about this armed man?”

“The watch commander is canvassing the men that were there that night. Sam, Kerrass and Rickard were all there as well so I’m going to talk to them when they get back.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry Freddie. I don’t remember this Phineas person that you speak of. When I read about your adventures in the North, I did remember that Elven alchemist.”

“Ella?”

“That’s her name. Poor woman. She was a torturer and victim at the same time. I hated her and felt sorry for her. So very sorry. What happened to her?”

“Chireadean would never tell me,” I replied. “So the last I saw of her was her going off with the Elves after she had killed your sister-in-law.”

“Another victim and enabler both.” Mother shuddered. “So many people were turned into monsters by that damned cult. Although I cannot mourn the loss of my sister in law. She and I both had the thing in common that we could have done, or said something. And yet we didn’t.”

She sighed.

“It would seem that I still have a lot of work to do with Mother Nenneke.”

“If it helps, I think Ella would have survived. Chireadean is a good man and I think he would have let her go if she showed genuine contrition.”

“Hmmm.” Mother was unconvinced. “That doesn’t change the fact that she drugged children so that their elders could abuse them. Far from entirely… She is far from being the root of evil but she is also far from innocent and I would not weep if Chireadean and the others put her out of her misery. And out of my misery as well for that matter.”

Mother’s venom left me feeling a little bit dismayed and so silence fell over our table for a while. Mother realised my discomfort and we pushed around the last morsels of food on the plate that were now cold. .

Mercifully, one of the serving staff appeared out of thin air and asked us if we were done and whether or not we might need some more wine or whether or not we would like to look at the menu for dessert. Mother has this running joke whenever she gets asked this question and it is to hold up her wineglass and demonstrate how much wine there was left with a finger and tell the staff that she will be ready for the desert in that amount of time. She finds the joke endlessly funny whereas I find it kind of boring having heard it several times now.

And the waiting staff always give this kind of weak little smirk of a smile as though they have heard the same thing multiple times over now and are not amused by it.

But in this case it seemed to put her back in a good mood.

“So what other questions do you have left over from that time, what else is worrying you?”

“Unfortunately, again, I’m not sure how to get an answer to this,” I told her.

“A spare pair of eyes never hurts.” She told me.

“That’s true.” I considered where to start. “Ok, it starts like this. Who gave Edmund the plan to kill Father. Who put the idea in his head in the first place?”

“Edmund was a clever man.”

“Sometimes.” I agreed. “Sometimes he was and he needed to put his mind to something which he wasn’t often inclined to do. Sometimes he was a clever man. But the other thing to be said about Edmund is that he was a fairly direct man whereas the plan to kill Father was quite subtle. It involved planning and careful implementation. It was not exactly something that could be rushed. It took time and effort and… above all, patience. For all of the virtues that Edmund possessed, patience was not one of them.”

“No,” Mother looked troubled. “No he was not.”

“So why that plan? Who came up with the idea and who convinced Edmund to implement it in the first place. We know that it wasn’t Cousin Kalayn because he swore that it was not him. AND he also gave all of the reasons as to why having Father murdered was a bad idea. Kalayn and Edmund’s branch of the cult were out, by themselves and isolated. Father was withholding inheritance or threatening to, but that is a long way from actually doing that. All that had to happen was that Edmund and Kalayn needed to go to ground for a while. They could even have been really clever about it and arranged things so that it was provable that they were innocent of the matter. But it is also described that someone got to Edmund and advised him about the method to kill Father. Drugs were provided, methods were provided and very possibly support was given.

“And further to that, we also know that when things went badly, Edmund was prone to panic. When Byarby, the old stable-master had realised that Father’s gear had been tampered with, he went to Edmund and realised that Edmund was in on the problem. Then he fled, Edmund chased and murdered him. Edmund was about as subtle as a rock to the face.”

Mother smirked at the metaphor but I could tell that she was troubled by what I was telling her.

“The other thing is this. Everything starts with Edmund’s attack on Father. Or rather it’s not, the other possibility is that the reason that this started is because I disrupted Phineas’ plans in Angral but that’s a different point.

“The downfall of everything starts with Edmund deciding to kill Father. Everything comes back to that moment. From that moment, the cult in the local area is destroyed. Edmund is killed. Cousin Kalayn is caught along with his fellow cultists. Redania changed that night. Many of us think for the better but there were a lot of sons and people that died on those pyres or were given notice that the people in the streets are not going to settle for putting up with this kind of bullshit any more.”

“Language.” Mother warned but her heart wasn’t really in it.

“From Edmund deciding that he was going to kill Father… That led to his death. But following on from that, it led to Sam inheriting in the North, which, in turn, led to the overall destruction of the Cult of the First-Born. Again, a lot of nobles, and a lot of first-born sons were killed in that series of events. The face of the Redanian nobility has changed.”

“Do you think that Sam going up there was by design?” She wondered.

“No, I don’t.” I told her. “I think that Uncle Kalayn meant for Edmund to inherit. Off the top of my head, the wording was “The next legitimate male heir that can … There was some wording to say that Mark couldn’t inherit for reasons that I think are fairly obvious now. But there was no way that Uncle Kalayn could have known that you… that Edmund would have been killed.”

“It’s an odd wording though.” Mother said. “It would be perfectly easy to just have Edmund named in the will. You know, by name.”

“Yes. But…”

I felt my mind wanting to flow into a whirlpool of mysteries.

“We’re not going to find that out now,” I said. “Not unless we know which lawyer your brother used to set it up and even then, my understanding is that the lawyer couldn’t tell us what was going on anyway.

“But Edmund’s actions there, arguably, led to the destruction of the cult of the first-born and the reshaping of the Redanian nobility. Without that, Sam wouldn’t have gone north. Kerrass and I along with Rickard and the others would not have gone north. The cult wouldn’t have been fully investigated and therefore, some of them might have escaped to continue carrying out their evil bullshit elsewhere. It all comes from that decision of Edmund.”

Mother frowned, looking into her wine cup.

“It’s a leap.” She told me. “It’s a big leap to assume that someone was thinking of all of that when they came up with that idea. It could still have been Edmund that did it.”

“It wasn’t.” I declared.

Mother sighed.

“No, I suppose you are right. But on the other hand… It could have either been a very clever manoeuvre, or a very stupid one. If this mastermind was a member of the cult from day one then it was extraordinarily stupid of them to put all of that in place.”

“But we know that the plan, or the schemer was not stupid. The only reason that we know that Father was murdered was because you…”

“Because I killed him. And you forced the investigation.”

She sighed.

“I will admit,” she began. “I will admit that I don’t like the idea of all of this falling at the feet of one person.”

“Neither do I,” I admitted. “And it is a reach. But everything did start here. We know that the plan was a clever one. But who was it that came up with it? Who gave Edmund that push. I don’t know.”

“Do you have any suspects?”

“Several unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?” She smirked.

“Yeah, because most of them will be dead by now. The most likely suspects are another member of the cult who was cleverer than Edmund and Cousin Kalayn. Someone who came up with the idea in order to prove themselves to their superiors, but they were all stoned, drunk or otherwise off their faces with this or that or the other thing going through their systems. Someone who didn’t like the idea of lying low for a while and wanted to keep the party going.

“Another option is that it was a member of the cult from the North. Someone who had been sent by Cavil or whoever, to get Cousin Kalayn back into line and stop raising the profile of the cult with these regular attacks. All while also being aware that the North needed money and that Father was the quickest and easiest way of being able to fund the cult with all of the bribes and whatever that it needed to be able to keep it running. They would have an interest in having Edmund inherit sooner rather than later and they might have had the brain power to come up with that without properly knowing about the consequences.”

“Hmmm.” Mother grunted. “But both of those options are dead or dying at the moment. Do you have anyone else?”

“I do, but he is no better. It might have been Phineas again. We know that he hated us, or hated me and that his desire for revenge had been passed on to the rest of the family. So if Edmund was part of the cult, he could have seen this as one of the ways to get leverage over the family by implicating Edmund and blackmailing him.”

“But again, he’s dead.”

“Yes he is.”

We paused again for Mother to order dessert. I ordered some cheese and crackers on the grounds that whatever they had there would be better than anything else that they might have. Mother ordered some kind of fruity concoction that made my teeth ache to look at it.

We ate and made some other talk about the coming wedding and similar kinds of small family talk. She talked a bit about her time in the abbey and told me some small anecdotes about the famed Mother Nenneke. We finished dessert and then we came to the alcoholic hot drinks part of the conversation.

“I must say,” Mother began carefully. “That it would be all too easy to dismiss all of this as being out of our hands. That the questions are beyond us on the grounds that the enemies that you are paranoid about are either already dead or otherwise indisposed.”

“Not unfair,” I commented. “But I need to know. I’m sure of it. I’m sure that this is not over. I’m certain of it but I don’t know… I can’t prove it. Phineas is another thing.

“The inquisition of three churches and Imperial intelligence have been looking for Phineas Tordril since Kerrass and I came out of the North with the stories of that asshats evil. He’s been a fugitive from the council of mages and the Lodge of Sorceresses since long before that as well. But somehow, we just randomly found him after Kerrass found word that he had been involved back in Angral. A witness, in passing at that. And now there he is, we catch him really easily and quickly, we question him and then he is the root of all of the evil that we have suffered. That seems…”

“Too easy.” Mother nodded unhappily. “But what can we do about that?”

“I am going to Novigrad after the last of my Witcher lectures,” I told her. “Letters have been sent and I am awaiting positive receipts. Emma’s meddling made Novigrad really angry for a while but now they are becoming desperate so we expect that their civil authorities will be falling over themselves in an effort to help me. Which is good. I’m going to talk to people, spend some time looking for his house and see if he had a lair or something.”

Mother nodded.

“Why so sure something is going on though?” She asked. “I know you’ve been unwell and all of this might be…”

“It might be that I am looking for a problem that doesn’t exist out of boredom, paranoia and nostalgia?”

She nodded.

“The thought has occurred. One way or another, the wedding is happening. Less than a couple of months away now. After which…?”

I shrugged.

“After which, your world will look very different.” Mother agreed before she raised her cup. “Here’s to that.”

I clinked my cup with hers.