(A/N: So…. yeah.

Shit continues to be horrific in this chapter although it’s not a case of things immediately happening to people. But it turns out that there are skeletons in the Coulthard family closet that Freddie knew nothing about. So….

(WARNING: Contains a character talking about sexual abuse that he suffered at a young age from a family member. This happens at the outset of the chapter. I have tried not to be explicit but at the same time, things get pretty dark. This is just the author’s opinion, but if you want to skip the worst bits, then just skip to the end of the bit in italics, but that is not the limit of the horror)

As always, thank you for reading)

I am writing this first because it’s fresh in my memory. Quoting from Sam.

I was Seven years old when Edmund baptised me into the family religion.

I remember it very clearly because we were still in that stage of our schooling where they were teaching us how to remember things and the night after it happened, I spent the time in pain and with a strange kind of horrible pride as well as an anger and a terror that I did not recognise…

I knew that something important had happened, something vital, something that would fundamentally change who I was and what I was going to do with the rest of my life. So as I lay there, under my blankets at night, shivering and shaking as I tried to ignore the pain, I used all of the mental exercises that we were being taught to remember the heraldry of our local neighbours to remember what had happened and fix it into my memory.

I don’t know when it was exactly, not the date or anything like that. I know that it was in the late spring or early Summer because of how old we were, but I remember everything about that day. I remember that it was a nice day. The kind of day where small puffy clouds are rolling across the sky in an otherwise ocean of blue. The birds were singing and the guards were scraping the greenery off the castle walls. A task that seemed to take longer and longer every year. I know that Father eventually hired someone with an alchemical mixture to deal with that but the ivy was still a problem at the time.

It was in the afternoon because you had been taken off for your afternoon nap, which I knew that you resented and I was enjoying my freedom from those kinds of things. I was doing what I thought of as ‘training’ in the yard. I look back on it now, almost with amusement. It wasn’t training. It wasn’t even anything remotely to do with training. I had one of my practice swords out and I was taking a training dummy to task.

In my imagination, the dummy transformed itself into a Nilfgaardian warrior. There was a fair maiden behind me that needed protecting and I was doing my best to save her from the nefarious intent of the black knight that stood before me.

Heh.

I had no idea what made a lady “fair” although I thought it was something to do with not cheating at games. Which was fair enough for me… I just didn’t understand why properly grown-up Knights would value such a thing to risk their lives against the enemies for that purpose.

I also didn’t know what nefarious meant, what intent was or what the two words meant together but these are the things that you remember when your nanny reads you stories late at night.

So I was “training” when Edmund came up to me.

You were right in what you said when you wrote about him after he died. By the time he died he had had one or other kinds of pox that he had cured by this alchemist or that mage that could be paid for the service. He had dined on too much rich food and too much strong alcohol. He had stopped his strenuous training and as such, he had started to become fat and overweight, depending on his speed, experience and reputation to win the many duels that he was challenged to.

Even though by that point, it was for the insults offered rather than the cuckolding of men’s wives and lovers but that’s a different story for a different time.

By that point, his hair was receding, his eyes were bloodshot and he was obviously in a bad way. I know that he distrusted doctors that he couldn’t pay to say exactly what he wanted them to say and so, he had never had anyone tell him what state he was in. But I don’t think he could have lived another ten years at the rate he was going.

God, but when I think of the mess the family and our lives would be in if he had been allowed to inherit. I even know that Father made some provision to save us all from disaster but even so, Edmund could have made a real mess there. Whatever else I might think of the pus-filled bag of puke that is our mother, she did everyone a favour when she ripped his throat out with a knife.

At the time though, he was still young, fit and handsome. I remember hero-worshipping our eldest brother. He was everything that I wanted to be even though I didn’t understand half of it at the time. He looked like a hero in my eyes. The way he stood, his left hand resting on his sword pommel, one leg slightly bent, the devilish smile on his face and the glint in his eye. He liked to wear black.

Heh.

The fact that I loved my brother for wearing black while, at the same time, hating the Nilfgaardians in their black armour causes me some amusement now.

But he wore black. He had his armoured wrist guards dyed black. His tunic was black and he had his armour painted black as well.

When he bothered to wear the thing.

I remember all of those stories about knightly heroes and although the hero is always in this shiny plate mail that his squires must have spent hours scouring and polishing to get it to look like that, there is always a black knight that turns up to interfere. They twist the fight in one way or another, being a blessing or a curse in equal measure with obscure motives.

I wanted to be the hero, but looking back, I wonder if Edmund wanted to be the black knight. Certainly, his persona leaned in that direction.

I didn’t understand why the fact that he was able to turn the heads of the servant girls was important but it seemed to be something that people spoke of with pride.

.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about myself and working on myself and it occurs to me that I am trying to avoid telling you what happened.

Edmund came to me as I trained in the yard. He was dressed as though he was going for a ride. A sword on his belt, hat on his head, smile on his lips. He walked up to me and gave me his most charming smile.

“Well, little brother?” He began with. “How is the training going?”

That was the first time really that I had felt his presence fall upon me. You might not remember this, but Edmund could turn on the charm better than anyone I have ever met. If he talked to you, you were the very centre of the continent to him and it made you feel like you were walking on clouds.

I’ve seen it happen, before the drink, the pox and the drugs started to get hold, a room would seem empty when he was out of the room but when he walked in, the entire party was about him. As well as his blade, Edmund knew how to use that charisma of his like a weapon. If he had wanted to, that man could have led nations.

I remember being almost dazzled by him as though I was looking into the sun.

I stuttered out a response. Something foolish sounding I have no doubt. In response, he took his sword from his belt and leaned it against a wall before picking up a training sword.

“Then I challenge you to a duel, sir.” He shouted in a loud and expressive voice.

We all know what you’re supposed to do in this instance, you let the child win don’t you? Or at the very least, you let them get at least one touch on you so that they don’t feel utterly humiliated and so that they feel as though there is a foundation to work with.

Edmund thrashed me up and down the yard. I could barely get hold of him.

Froggart was furious later but that comes later in the story. Another piece of scum if you ask me, should have known better.

But Edmund knew his craft. His pride wouldn’t let him even appear to have lost to his little brother, but as we finished, him breathing easily and my breathing hard, all but sobbing with frustration and anger. Edmund looked down at me and made everything better.

“Not bad.” He told me. The condescending puke.

But I was seven and he was Seventeen and my hero. He said that and it was as though the sun had come out from behind a cloud for my seven-year-old self.

“I’m going out for a ride,” he told me after he had put his practice sword away and strapped his sword back on his belt. “Do you want to come?”

Of course, I said yes. I was enticed by the idea of getting closer to my older brother. I had visions of a brotherly bond where we would go adventuring together, saving the innocent and standing together on some battlefield against the black tides of Southern Darkness.

Now, I wonder what he would have done if I had said no. Probably done his best to lay on the charm. But in that time and in that place, I could not say no.

So I went with him.

He selected our horses. Well… his horse and my pony. We saddled up and led us out at a gallop. Something that I was in no way skilled enough for. I was, at best, walking my pony around the practice yard and I know that Byarby, the old groom, was furious but the Eldest son was in charge.

I can’t remember what Father was doing and why…

Never mind.

We got out of the castle and a little way down the paths. Edmund was laughing and I was just holding on to my horse’s reins with all of my strength to keep from falling off.

“It is time that you become a man.” He told me. I had no idea what that meant but it sounded marvellous. In the end, it became clear that riding my pony was impractical for his intended day's activities. So he put me on his horse and we rode off. My poor pony trailed after us before giving up and returning to the stable.

Something else I caught heat for despite being powerless in the face of Edmund’s charisma.

We went to a nearby tavern that has been through several owners since then. He bought me half a pint of ale and looking back, I wonder if he spiked it with something. I was seven and was well used to wine in my water and half a cup of ale shouldn’t have been so bad.

I remember not liking it and that it made me feel sick.

Afterwards, we rode for a little while. We rode slowly and carefully, far more careful than we had been going all morning until we came to a clearing. It’s not there anymore as the land around it has been developed better into some orchards I think. Carefully manicured apple trees.

But he took me there and told me that he was going to tell me a secret.

I used to waste a, not particularly small amount of time, thinking about how my life would be different if he hadn’t, or if I had escaped or been prevented from going.

Edmund told me about The God. He told me that The God was responsible for the family’s fortunes and that The God was far less strict than the Eternal Flame. He told me that Father knew about The God but that Mark and Emma did not. Mark because he had to worship the false god of the Eternal Flame to keep the family safe and Emma because she was weak and that the God was a MAN’s religion. But that he, as the older brother, had decided that it was time that I learned about The God and that I was inducted into his mysteries.

I remember being scared but also kind of excited. The idea of this other God was exciting and interesting. The encouragement to be able to do what I wanted, when I wanted and to whom I wanted was strong in my ideas. But the fear of the Eternal Flame was strong in me. I was afraid of the Endless Frost and of being cold in all eternity. Mark and his tutors had done their job well.

But on the other hand, here was my brother, the man that I idolised, wanting to tell me a secret. And it suddenly made sense. The unpleasant, harshness that Mark and his tutors were telling me about, versus this, far more pleasant God.

The prospect of not having to tell someone when I had sinned, even though those sins always seemed to be fairly minor in my eyes, the fact that the things that I got punished for were unfair and this new God offered by my brother…. It appealed to my childish urges and as I say. Edmund was my superior.

So when he asked me if I wanted to be inducted into this new religion, I said yes.

Another thing that I sometimes wonder is what would have happened if I said no.

We were in a clearing. I remember the long grass blowing around. I remember the noises of Edmund’s horse and I remember the impossibly bright sunlight. There is some symbolism in there somewhere but I can’t tell what it means.

Edmund went and got a blanket from his saddlebags and laid it out on the ground. He told me to undress as he took all of his clothes off before he took a flask from his saddlebags and downed a good percentage of it before telling me I was to take a couple of swallows as, and I quote, “I wasn’t ready for the full secrets yet.”

He needn’t have bothered. I have no idea what it was, but it tasted vile and turned my stomach, even more than the beer had.

He told me to lie down and he lay down next to me.

At first, it was not unpleasant. Almost peaceful there in the woodland while lying in my brother’s arms. I remember feeling safe and warm.

Then the pain came.

When he was done he told me to get up and get dressed and to wait for him a moment. I have no idea why but he turned away from me and curled into a ball so that he couldn’t see or even look at me. I wonder if it was pain or shame or some other emotion. There is enough there for me to hope that it was one of those things.

But in the end, he rose and dressed before he took me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes.

I remember having to blink back tears and being ashamed of having been weeping.

“Remember. Tell no one of this.” He told me.

“But what about the secret?” I wailed at him. “You were going to tell me the secret.” I was… in no small amount of pain and I remember having to struggle to hold back any tears.

“That will come in time.” He told me, there was scorn in his voice as he said that. He put me on the horse, in front of himself this time and we rode away. He said nothing and rebuked me when I tried to hold onto him. We got back to the castle where Byarby the stablemaster was waiting to yell at me about my pony having come back on its own. I remember looking for Edmund to make some excuses on my behalf or to defend me in some way, but he was already gone.

I went to sleep that night with horrible pain and in the morning I had to tell everyone that I was sick, claiming a stomach upset because I had no fever and my nose wasn’t running. Eventually, it was put down to be something that… Edmund had taken me off and fed me something, probably alcoholic and it had made me sick.

Not entirely untrue.

But the decision was that it was something that I just had to get over and although at the time, I thought that the pain was so severe, it would never pass, it did eventually. I wanted to know where my brother was and why he wasn’t helping me through all of this. But he had fled.

Looking back and knowing what I learned later about him. He was worried that I was going to tell someone and he fled so that he didn’t have to face someone’s wrath.

I was still in bed when I heard that he had gone. I had asked for my brother to visit my bedside. I had questions for him that I wanted to be answered. I wanted to know why, if this new God of his was so wonderful, then why did it hurt so much and why did we have to keep it so secret?

My nanny came to tell me that he had left the castle which was when I realised that my brother had deserted me.

I was young. I didn’t know about words like ‘betrayal’ and ‘rage’ and ‘hate’ as being much more than words on the page. I definitely didn’t know about words like ‘hypocrisy’ but I saw it that night. The night after Edmund left.

I was worse that night than I had been before. The previous night there had been blood on the blankets and in my chamber pot that I had carefully hidden and emptied myself so that it wouldn’t betray Edmund. I still did the same that night. But as well as that, I wept tears from these horrible new emotions and I wondered what I was going to do about it.

Believe me, it was just as appalling to listen to as it must have been for you to read it.

So now I’m writing a biography and these are my notes regarding that biography.

I mean…

I really must laugh or I really will cry. This shit is getting ridiculous.

Talking about laughing, I’ve just caught myself wondering about this question from an absolutely serious academic perspective and using these last few lines as an introduction to the work.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, people of every race and every religion. I give you my brother Samuel Coulthard. Lord Kalayn as is. The most utterly evil son of a bitch in the history of the continent”

Not evil in general of course. I mean, I suppose that if evil is in the eye of the beholder, then there must be someone somewhere that finds his actions understandable, patriotic or one of the other things that he is claiming.

I suppose that someone might find the actions sane. Although I doubt it.

There are still critics behind me and Johann is still sitting across from me, speaking my words aloud. Despite being so utterly ridiculous, the situation has now become routine for all of us. Therefore, it is beginning to become boring. Strange how that can come to pass.

Kerrass is, I’m told, still in the ditch into which he was tossed but I remember one of the conversations that he and I had early on in our friendship.

It never gets easier to talk about those that we have lost but I have found that with enough practice, you can get better at talking about people so that you don’t end up weeping for them.

I remember that he told me that although there have been songs written about the exploits of a Witcher. Although people think it’s romantic to be travelling on the road, rescuing people and slaying monsters, the truth is rather mundane. That he saw the romance in having a little house somewhere with a good woman to care for him and to be cared for by him. Maybe a small patch of land where he could grow specialised herbs that he could sell to apothecaries. That was strange to him, that would have a romantic edge.

Of course, he told me that before I had met the Princess that he was in love with. Before I even knew of her existence even. But the point is a valid one and remains the same.

Sooner or later, even the most bizarre of circumstances can become mundane.

And that is where we are now. I am sitting in my workroom and I am writing down what I am instructed to write down. The critics have relaxed a bit now, they lean on the walls and gossip with each other and while one still holds the whip and the other holds the bar, they have barely looked over at Johann and me. The scribes that are here are still nervous, but at the same time, there is a kind of… Anticipatory air to that nervousness. They are handling it much better.

Johann is doing better. He is still thin and pasty and the sweat still runs down his face freely, but there is less of a feverish glint in his eyes. He now wears a shirt and we are both regularly told to stop work so that his injuries can be taken care of and his bindings re-wrapped.

I am no longer quite as concerned that he’s just going to expire in front of me.

I, however, am not doing as well. While I waited for my account of the night of the Autumnal Equinox and the conversations that happened afterwards were being “reviewed” by the powers that are in charge of this insanity, the infection in my hand got worse and I started to suffer from the fever.

As far as I can tell, it took me several days to recover but given that I haven’t seen sunlight since I was in Sam’s…

I notice how the changes creep in. It took me months, even a year, to come to terms with the fact that it was no longer Father’s office and that it was now Emma’s office. But after one conversation with the thing that reminds me of my brother, it has become Sam’s office.

And he is not my brother any longer. I cast him aside and I hope that one day soon I will be able to piss on his corpse after everything that he’s done and everything that he’s still intending to do. I can disown him for that.

I can well imagine that he will read these words and chuckle. He has this new chuckle that I can’t stand. It’s this wry kind of condescending chuckle that he gives off when he sees someone as foolish or childish. It’s similar to the chuckle that Father used to use when one of his children was being idiotic and childish and I can’t stand it.

But I was talking about what was wrong with me.

I haven’t seen sunlight since I was last in Sam’s office but I get the feeling from whatever internal hourglass that we all carry, that I was sick for several days. I have been force-fed potions and other alchemical things and although the infection is still there, it seems to be burning itself out and is no longer quite as threatening.

But now, as well as all of the other routines that I have to live by, I must regularly take a potion that tastes… surprisingly good actually. Whichever alchemist that is brewing it, they are better than the masters that you can find in Novigrad. I have seen those red lines running underneath the skin of people before and it never, ever, ever bodes entirely well.

But I am better. My hand has started itching now rather than throbbing. I get tired easily and all of that but I feel as though, physically at least, I might be on the mend.

Of course, this might be the calm before the storm. I’m still a prisoner and although Sam has spoken many times about how he longs to get to the point where he can trust me and let me out of the constraints, I just don’t see it happening. I can’t be trusted. If I get the chance, I am going to kill him, do my best to free Ariadne from her bounds and then do my best to get some vengeance before I get taken down.

I have no idea how I am going to achieve this, but the intent is there nonetheless.

And now, it would seem, the word has been passed down that the people in charge of all of this, have agreed with my statements about how all of this lunacy began, from my perspective at least, and now we move onto the next stage of my usefulness.

I was picked up from my cell and given the same pantomime of them trying to disguise where it was that I have been kept. I mean, it was my childhood castle, Emma, Sam himself, Francesca and I would all regularly play hide and seek around the place to stay out of trouble and I’m pretty sure I know where I am now.

The critics remain unconcerned by this.

I was taken through the castle and shown into the office where, once again, I was coming in at the end of a meeting. Serious-looking men were just finishing an in-depth discussion but as I walked in, Sam gave a signal and they all stopped talking.

I am getting used to the size of these men now as well. They are all, to a man, tall, well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered and heavily muscled. They move quickly with it as well. Very quickly when they put their minds to it. I would dearly like to know which Armorsmith they managed to arrange to make the ridiculous amount of armour that they all have. Because men of that proportion cannot exactly wear armour “off-the-rack” as it were. So somewhere a smith is working flat out to make all of this work.

But they straightened when I walked in and started to file out.

I tried to see if I recognised any of them, but the sheer size of them as well as the strange, misshapen bulk of their heads made recognition all but impossible. Huge heads with sloping brows, massive cheekbones, sunken eyes and huge, grotesque jawlines.

They nodded to Sam, and one or two of them even saluted. All of them were wearing that Redanian uniform of dark crimson and there was a sense of pride about it. They didn’t look at me as they walked past though.

Fuck ‘em.

There is also a new sense in the air from this other part of the castle. It feels like I am at the edge of a storm. My teeth are itchy, the hairs on the back of my arms are standing up and… I find that I am having an increasing urge to swallow. The sense of pressure in my ears is growing.

When they had all gone out, I was left with just Sam and Emma in the room. I have no idea where Laurelen is and I am also beginning to fall into the trap of not noticing the guards and things that are around the place. There were two on the doors behind me and then another two further in the room.

The guards that had brought me into the room removed my manacles, the ones from my ankles first and then my wrists and Sam watched as they did so.

Emma didn’t look up. She was still sitting at the desk in the back of the room, writing furiously, ignoring everything else that was going on.

Sam spent a bit of time watching me.

We were being childish. That game that people play where they are both waiting for the other to start speaking. Then someone gets stubborn and there is an extended pause while you wait for the thing to happen. Sam was finding it amusing.

I did not.

“So what happens now?” I asked. “I have done as you asked and given that no one has come and has asked me to rewrite what I have worked on, I guess that you are all satisfied with what I have managed to get down onto paper.”

Sam gave his little chuckle.

I just glared at him. I wasn’t feeling very witty, still feeling a little bit weak from my small period of sickness.

“First I should check.” He asked, pouring himself a drink of wine and mixing it with a lot of water. “Are you well? Have you recovered yet?”

“My hand itches,” I told him. “It’s two fingers light. Not the kind of thing that you can recover from. Other than that, if you want to know if I’m well, then I should tell you that there is nothing wrong with me that you falling off a high cliff or onto my dagger wouldn’t fix.”

I think that the guards were a bit outraged but Sam laughed and as such, they couldn’t do anything about it.

“You feel better.” He decided and moved to sit behind his desk.

There was another small writing chair sitting there. The kind with a large flat arm that can be folded down in front of it for someone to work on. Students use them a lot. It’s also an efficient way to keep someone prisoner.

“What are we doing here Sam?” I asked.

“In general?” He wondered. I hadn’t meant that, I wanted the specific but he answered that bit anyway. “In general, we are beginning a rebellion to throw the black ones out of the North and to do so for good. In the long run, of course, we will need to take our military ambitions across the Yaruga and into the Empire, but for now, I will settle for a free Redania.”

He leant back in his chair and smiled contentedly. It occurred to me that he might be high on some substance or another. No alcohol but there was a glint in his eye that wasn’t entirely…

I don’t know. I don’t recognise my brother anymore so for all I know, that relaxed humour is perfectly natural.

“I mean, Queen Adda wants us to free Temeria as well so that she can rule over her half-sister, but in the confines of these four walls, that is much lower on my list of priorities. I think she wants to marry her son by Radovid to the Queen… whatshername…. Anais? Of Temeria.”

“That would make them Aunt and Nephew,” I commented. “Not the wisest choice, breeding so close. Radovid himself was a warning that such intermarrying was not entirely healthy. So did Foltest for that matter.”

Sam was laughing. “I know. Delicious isn’t it, but she’s the Queen and we do what she tells us.”

He laughed at his own joke.

“God but it’s good to talk to you.” He told me. “All lies and pretences and masks put aside. I’ve had to pretend to be someone else for so long. So very long that… well… That’s getting ahead of myself. And I see that you were asking me what we are doing here. Wondering why I brought you back to my office so that you can wonder what my purpose is in keeping you alive?”

“Pretty much.” I agreed. The sad thing is that I kind of knew how he felt. He felt more genuine in some way, more true. There was a tightness about him that was missing. I hadn’t known it was there until that tightness was gone.

“We…” He got up from his chair and moved over to the jugs of wine and water. “You and I are going to kill two birds with one stone.”

“That rarely works,” I told him. “And I’ve tried to kill two birds with one stone.”

He stared at me for a long moment, brotherly scepticism radiating from his eyes.

“In the North,” I told him. “When Kerrass and I were starving and running away from the cult.”

“Ah,” he nodded. “Do you want a drink by the way?”

“Why the hell not,” I told him. “The worst you could do is poison it and hurry my demise.”

He laughed, and I found that I was laughing with him.

“Oh, and by the way,” I went on, trying to reach some form of anger that I could hold onto. “Were you in on that, because if you were in on all of that… You and some of the others keep swearing in the name of ‘The God’ and the only people who talk like that are from the South,”

“Which I hate,” he put the cup on the writing chair, making me sit down in it.

“Which you hate. You wouldn’t start this lunacy if you didn’t.”

“Is it lunacy?” He asked with all the air of a scholar who knows something I don’t.

“Definitely,” I told him with as much confidence as I could summon. “But swearing and cursing in the name of some God rather than a name… it’s a phrase used by Southerners, or it’s a phrase used by the cult of the First-Born. Were you involved in making me sick and breaking Kerrass’ arms and chasing us through the undergrowth?”

He took his time before answering, walking around the desk and sitting back down. He sat in his chair and I followed the gesture to sit in mine. He looked at me and held my gaze.

He wanted me to believe this, which meant that he was lying, or it was absolutely the truth and he knew that I would struggle to trust him.

“No Freddie.” He told me. “That wasn’t me. No one was happier than I was when you and Kerrass turned up alive in the North.”

I found that I believed him. I picked up the cup that he had poured for me and tasted it. I nearly coughed. Not because the wine was bad, but because it was good. Sam had watered it down to almost pointlessness.

He was watching me, amusement dancing in his eyes.

“This is Father’s special stock,” I told him.

“I know,” he giggled.

“He would be furious.”

“I know,” he said again. “And part of the pleasure of doing that is that I know just how angry he would be.”

He giggled, a lot like a child and again, his laughter was infectious, even while I was appalled that that was something he was doing.

He subsided.

“We will talk about the cult of the First-Born and what happened up there.” He told me. “But we need to address things in turn. You say that context is king and we will get there, but other things need to be talked about first. I told you that we are here to kill two birds with one stone.”

“Yes?”

“The first bird is that I promised you that I would answer all of your questions. And I intend to do as I promised.”

“Ok?”

“And the second thing is that I need you to write my biography.”

“Right… uh… what?”

He smiled.

I was surprised by how happy he seemed to be.

“My biography.” He told me. “I am well aware that…”

I held my hand up to stop him in mid-flow. I did my best to copy the gesture of Father’s that he had so enjoyed employing on me the other day and he gradually just petered out and glared at me.

“What?” He demanded.

“I can’t do that Sam,” I told him.

“What? Why not?” He was annoyed.

“Because…”

“It needs to be done.” He told me, annoyance in his voice. “I am well aware that the things I have done will be examined and re-examined in the future.”

“‘By historians and the readers of historians’ you said yesterday. Yes, I understand that bit.”

“And although I make no effort to try and excuse these actions as to my mind, they are justified. I am well aware that these actions will be considered evil by those people that come after that.”

“I tend to agree, but…”

“And people deserve an explanation. You, not least.”

I had no answer to that. He was hurt by my refusal and I was astonished at this hurt that he was feeling.

“You have offered…” He started strongly before taking a moment. He placed his palms flat on the desk before taking a deep breath. Again, he reached into one of the drawers on the desk and pulled out a small green bottle before pouring the contents into the wine cup. I carefully did not ask him what was in the bottle.

He took several large gulps from the cup before wincing.

“Another thing that Father would disapprove of.” He told me. “Mixing medicine with wine.”

“Are you sick?” I wondered.

I don’t know what I had expected but the attack of hilarity, full-on, tears rolling down his face, hilarity was astonishing.

“Oh yes.” He told me, wiping the tears from his face. “Very sick.”

He giggled for a while, occasionally staring into space before a thought occurred to him and then he would start laughing again.

When he eventually calmed, his hand jerked towards me and he leaned forward in his seat.

“That is why you are so essential to my plans Freddie.”

“What?”

A shadow passed over his face and he was suddenly solemn. Afraid even.

“I have made sacrifices Freddie. I have done terrible things and although I went into them with open eyes, fully willing to pay the price… That price will eventually come due. When that happens, I need to make sure that everything I have built, everything that we have built, including you hopefully… I need to make sure that it doesn’t all just fall into dust and ruin around us.”

He spoke with passion and certainty, and more charisma than I have ever seen him use.

“And…” I heard myself say. “That is where I come in?”

He grinned, boyish and young again.

“Yes, that is where you come in.”

“But Sam, I don’t agree with what you’re doing here. It’s madness.”

He gave a little shrug.

“Let's pretend.” He said, leaning forwards and leaning on the desk. “Let’s pretend that all is as it appears to be for the moment. Leaving aside, just for a moment, why you don’t agree with what I’m doing. Why is it madness?”

I threw my hands up in the air in exasperation.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Humour me, Freddie. Why is it madness?”

I took a deep breath and tried to marshall my thoughts. Whatever else he might be, he was my brother and I owed it to him to try and bring him out of the madness that he was embroiled in.

“Because… Ok. Let's start with the Empire itself. On a sheer numbers scale, the Empire has multiple armies the size of that which invaded the North. Two of them are experienced and trained to put down rebellions like the one that you are starting here.”

He was nodding. I took that as a hopeful sign and strode on.

“Secondly, the Empress is popular and secure on her throne. If she orders it, there won’t just be armies coming North, NATIONS will be signing up to her crusade.”

Sam hid a smile at that.

“And when it comes to the North. I can accept that Adda might be ambitious. She’s well known for it although I would go so far as to suggest that she will be playing both sides in this conflict and that you and your allies should beware of her stabbing you in the back.”

“That thought had occurred to us.” Sam agreed. “Adda, so close to the snake, Adder.”

It was an old joke and I couldn’t help but grin at it.

“But Temeria?” I argued. “Queen Anais has been on her throne for a couple of years now. I don’t know off hand how old she is but I do know that she is popular, that she is intelligent, and most of all, she has two heroes of the last war on her side. Lord Roche and Lord Natalis. And they were the ones that arranged the peace signing in the first place.”

Sam nodded in agreement with all of my points, but he was still smiling infuriatingly.

“Aedirn is in shambles.” I went on, “And they will never field anyone to support you. Kaedwen is pretty much the same although their client kings were put there by the Empire as well, so owing the Empire everything that they are. The Hengfors league, Kovir and Poviss have lucrative trade with the Empire so they will only support you so long as the war is profitable to them.

“And as for Skellige?” I shook my head.

“Lyria and Rivia are still under Queen Meve and she would not support anything like this. She would object to being your shield as she knows that any army getting to you would have to come, at least in part, through her.

“So geographically speaking. The only people that you could count on are Cidaris and Vergen who are both already embattled by land and sea and wouldn’t be able to help you even if they wanted to.”

“All valid points Freddie, go on.”

“You are trying to harness the anti-human and anti-magic user sentiment again. Mark and those like him have done their jobs too well and you won’t be able to get as much use out of that as you might have done three or four years ago. The church might support you, but so many of them are tied up with the Empire as well and will be afraid that when the Empire comes North again, which they will, this time, it will mean the death of any religion that isn’t them.”

I reached for something else.

“And Magic. The Lodge of Sorceresses and the Chapter of Mages owe their existence to the Empire relaxing their laws.”

“All of this is true Freddie and well done. I was not led to understand that you had quite as strategic a mind as you are demonstrating.”

“Fuck you. It’s essentially the same speech that I gave to Ariadne when she emerged from the tower. Look it up.”

He laughed at me. He is doing that a lot and I don’t like it.

“All of the things that you have said are true.” He told me. “All of them. I won’t deny it. But they are all things that I have taken into account. The plan hasn’t gone perfectly so far, but at the same time, it could have gone a lot worse and we have still succeeded at the most vital parts. There is a plan and the first thing that we have to do is to puncture the aura of invulnerability around the Empire and the Empress. Once we have proven that she can be defeated, people will remember that they hate the Southern invader, don’t you worry.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked instantly.

He smiled. “All in good time.”

“You promised.” I did not enjoy how petulant I sounded.

“Yes I did, and I meant it, but what I am doing means nothing without the lead-up to it. As you say, context is key.”

I sighed. He had me there.

“Then what are your plans for me?” I wondered. “The problem that I disagree with what you are doing is a valid one. I won’t help you.”

He smiled. “I think I can convince you.”

“More torture?” I growled, trying to sound more confident than I was.

“No. My plan there is not perfect, but I do think it’s necessary. Apart from anything else, I just want you on my side. I need you by my side. You’re the only one out of this awful family that we have, that I even remotely feel connected to. You are the only one that is worth anything and I refuse to just give up on the brother that I love because he’s having a fit of temper.”

“You killed my friend Sam,” I told him. “You have enslaved the woman that I love, tortured our sister and her lover. I don’t know how many people died on the night of the Equinox, but there is no way that you have done all of this bloodlessly. There were friends in that room Sam. And how many more people will die before it’s all over? How many people are still alive Sam? Mark? Mother? Rickard? Aunt…?”

“They are all still alive Freddie,” He told me, his voice less friendly and sterner... “First of all, I appreciate that there were some things in there that have angered you. Kerrass was your friend but, as you rightly guessed in your work, he was the largest threat on the ground for what we have to do next. So he had to die. Ariadne is a monster, Freddie. Her race was created to fight wars and to act as slaves. And even if that wasn’t the case, there is no way that I would allow my brother to marry a non-human. I might let you have your way with her and use her occasionally when I don’t require her, but we can’t legitimise that kind of thing. Apart from anything else we need heirs Freddie…”

“I assume that you can…”

“No. No, I cannot.”

His eyes clouded over for a moment.

“Sam,” I began. “What did you do? What has happened? What have you done to yourself?”

He was startled “Many things Freddie.” He shook his head again.

“We need heirs Freddie, and now you are the only man that can do that. And as for the rest?” His lips peeled back from his mouth. “Mark? Emma? Mother? Those people are worthless Freddie, worse than that even. I am glad that they are alive because I have a use for them, but I would not be sad if they had died that night. I would be happy. The only one in that lot that I have any time for is Rickard. He is a good soldier, among the best but he won’t agree with what I need to do, so he must go. Not yet though.”

“I don’t agree with what you’re doing either.” I was appalled at the hate that was in his voice as he talked about the others in the family. “Does that mean that I have to go too?”

He smiled.

“No Freddie, you stay. I love you.”

“So why do you hate all of the others?”

He opened his mouth to answer before he raised his hand in the negative.

“Ah ah. You haven’t promised to write my Biography yet.”

“I can’t write the biography.”

“I thought you realised what happens when you refuse to do something that I want.”

“It’s not that I won’t, I can’t. I can’t write your Biography. I’m too close to it. And I hate you. Hardly an unbiased view.”

He looked disappointed.

“You have offered to write about the lives of people far worse than me. You sit or stand before them and offer yourself as an advocate, as a way of recording the things that they are saying and to provide context for the actions that they are taking and have taken. You did so for Kerrass.”

“He was my friend.”

“Not when you wrote about his past you weren’t. And I am your brother. You offered Ariadne?”

“I was trying to get her onto my side and to convince her not to eat me.”

He stopped with that one and granted it with a nod.

“I suppose that also counts for when you did the same for Maleficent as well. But tell me, Freddie, are you doing any the less with me? Convincing me not to eat you?”

“Also Sam…” I said quietly, “I didn’t hate them.”

Those words fell into the silence with a clang.

After a while, Sam started to nod.

“I deserve that.” He told me. “And I hope that I can rectify it and help you understand. One of the ways that I intend to do that is by telling you my story. I need a biography. I need people to know what has happened so that they can judge me, and condemn me if necessary. I want you to write it.”

“Why should I?” Again with the petulance.

“Because I ask you to. If there is anything there that you feel left for me as your brother. Then do it because I ask you to.”

He meant it. There were other ways, other things that he could use to get me on your side and we both knew it. The threat continued to hang in the air but that was not what he was playing with.

I did not remember him being this good a manipulator.

Of course, if he could keep up a pretence for so long without anyone knowing, then maybe he was better than I thought he was.

I found myself nodding.

“Good.” He said. “Then as an additional carrot, I will have a gift for you when we are done. I have a surprise for you.”

“What gift?” I wondered. “What could you possibly give me that…”

“Later Freddie.”

“When shall we begin?” I asked.

“Why not now? I will send for food. If I am needed suddenly, then you might have to go. Do not fight them, Freddie, it would go badly for you.”

I nodded.

“I will need some things.”

He dumped a pile of blank paper on the table along with a sheaf of quills and a bottle of ink.

“But if you need your quill sharpening, then I have to do it. I saw you train with that dagger of yours and I’m not giving you a knife Freddie.”

“Fair enough. I also have some questions first.”

“Such as?”

“Is Emma alright?”

I looked over at her. It would seem that she was still focused on what she was writing. She didn’t look up, she barely moved except to scribble on an endless stack of paper.

“I’m afraid that I might have broken her,” Sam admitted. “Her bitch tells me that she will be fine though. It doesn’t matter though, she is still doing the work that I need her to do.”

I swallowed a retort to that.

“And Ariadne?”

“She’s busy for me at the moment,” Sam told me with a sigh. “Look Freddie, I know that you love the slave and I understand that. I do, even while I am disgusted and appalled by it. She certainly appeared as a comely wench when she wanted to.” He took a deep breath. “But you should work towards forgetting her.”

“Why?”

“Because even you know that in our social strata, we marry for name, lineage and wealth rather than love and that is what I need you to do.”

“I would be a Count,” I told him.

“And I would make you a King.” He retorted.

I had nothing to say to that. I looked at him for a long time, but it seemed that he was not joking. It seemed as though he meant every word. My mind struggled with that and eventually, I just… moved past it, setting it aside to think about later.

“Do you know what’s involved in the writing of a Biography though Sam?”

“I have some ideas, yes.”

“So there will be a series of interviews between you and me where I will need to take copious amounts of notes. When I have done that, those notes will need to be written up so that I can reread them, check them and compare them with the other interviews that I will need to carry out.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Speaking of other interviews, there are many people that I will need to speak to.”

“Do you know who?”

“Not off the top of my head, I would imagine that some of that is going to come out of our interviews.” I pointed between the two of us. “But Mother, Mark and Emma would need to be involved I think. As well as some of the servants that were around you at the earlier parts of your life.”

He made a face of distaste. The standard one that looks as though you have bitten into a lemon, or licked salt when someone told you it was crystallised honey.

“I will have to consider the timetable of that.” He said carefully, considering. I tried to guess whether or not he was stalling before deciding that he wasn’t. “We would need to get to work, as there are things that I need both Mother and Mark for.” He told me. “Just as I have plans for you and Emma, so too have I got plans for them.”

I found that reassuring.

“Well, I can always talk to them afterwards,” I told him. I was trying to get him to calm down. He was nervous, as the subjects of these kinds of things often are when you are starting to ask them a series of questions.

“But as we talk,” he went on, “make your lists and we will see what can be done.”

I nodded. “Also, I will work at my own pace and with my own format. Things cannot be produced quickly just because you say them. Writing is not something that you can just sit down and do, you need to read the research, do the research, and think about how to write, what to write and how to phrase it. You need to get the words in the right order for them to be effective. Format and the like are just as important. So if I am lying in my cell, staring at the ceiling, that’s just as important to the process as sitting at the desk writing.”

Sam nodded in his understanding.

“I can appreciate that Freddie, but at the same time, I cannot have you shirking or pretending to be “working” when you are not.”

“There will be a minimum output that needs to happen every day. And it will be some time before I start the proper writing of the book. There will be many interviews as well. You will still see lots of note-taking, lots of interviews and lots of physical, me at a desk, writing.”

He nodded.

“Also, I need Johann,” I told him. “I know that it’s… This is outside of your expertise, but my clerk is just as important to the work as I am, or as you are. If you want this done quickly then I need Johann to be working at his optimum rate. Which means that he needs to be fit and healthy.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Because your guards have been flogging him to keep me in line. He needs proper medical care to be able to do the things that I need him to do.”

“I will see to it.”

He turned to one of the guards and nodded to them. The guard left the room for a moment, giving me a moment of brief hope that with the loss of that one guard, I might be able to do something. But it was a fool’s hope and we all knew it.

Besides, he came back in less than a minute and took up his former space.

“I also need to warn you.” He told me. “Emma is busy and is likely to be busy for some time. She is not an appropriate source for you to work with.”

“She has a vital point of view regarding your early life.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam said. There was a look on his face when he said that, leaving me thinking that this wasn’t an argument that I was going to win.

“Also, I am not stupid. I need the truth and I know it when I see it. You can exaggerate if you like but I will be checking with alternative people.” He smiled at that. “And if I think you are lying to me Sam, I will just stop.”

His smile grew.

“You will speak,” I went on. “I will listen. I may ask questions and I might comment to get you back on track if you leave the narrative for a long period.”

“Where do we begin?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “At the beginning,” I told him. “Where else?”

He laughed at my joke.

“More seriously though,” I told him. There is little doubt in anyone’s mind that the reason that we’re all here or why this biography is being written is because of this rebellion that you have started. And that is certainly where my curiosity starts. What led you to this madness Sam? How did it start?”

He smiled a little as he thought about the answer to that question. He turned to stare out the window. I looked to see where he was looking and all I could see were some distant clouds. Some normal castle noises were coming from the window. There was the sound of horses and men moving about.

I decided he wasn’t looking at anything and instead, got my ink and papers in order.

“I was Seven.” He said eventually. “I think it was Seven although I can’t remember for sure. It was in the magical time when I was two years older than you, rather than one year. I know that you normally write that I am only a year older but the truth is that I am a year and a bit older. What was it, two months?”

“Yes.” I told him. “You were born in the Spring whereas I was born in the Summer.”

He nodded.

I know that it was in the gap because at that point and at that time, I would feel so much older than you that it gave me a sense of responsibility over you.”

He laughed at a thought.

“You know, I’ve always envied you a bit.”

I didn’t respond to that.

“You have always said that you envied me. My looks, my muscles and my physical gifts but there was a payoff. I always envied your freedom.”

“My freedom?”

“Yeah. There was never any doubt as to who I was going to be. There was never any doubt that I was going to be a soldier, a Knight, a warrior. From my earliest days, I was told that that was what I was going to be. Edmund was going to inherit the lands, the title and the money. Mark was going to the church so that we could all get into heaven, but I was going to be a soldier so that Father and Mother could say that the family was doing its duty.

“I would like to say that I hated it, that I always resented that choice. But that would be a lie and you have warned me not to lie.

“I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the stories that they told me, talking about standing up for right and wrong. Learning about famous warrior knights and the made-up stories about their exploits.”

He laughed suddenly.

“There are many regrets,” he went on. “But one of the big ones is that I never got to meet Father Gardan, the crazy old priest on my lands that you encountered. He was one of my heroes as a kid. I mean, he was the hero of everyone my age who had an interest in what I had an interest in.

“Poor old man.

“But I liked it. I liked being strong and fast and handsome. I liked it when people came by and told me that I was going to be a lady killer and things like “what a handsome boy?” and all that shit. I enjoyed the fact that there was never any doubt as to what I was going to do and who I was going to be when I got older.

“It was only later that I thought that I might have been happier, that all of this might have been avoided if I had gone into the priesthood. Or if you and I had swapped places or something.”

“Speaking as your brother, I think you would have been bored.”

“Ha, you are probably right. But I had that surety growing up and that was a power that I… I cannot even pretend to think that I might have been better elsewhere.”

He stopped and went silent for a long time. Long enough that I had to dip my quill into the ink a couple of times to keep it fresh.

Suddenly, he got up and strode to the jug of wine that was on a nearby table and, using a separate cup, he drank several swallows of the wine without any water mixed in.

“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I am not ashamed of what happened. I didn’t do it, it was done to me. But at the same time, I haven’t spoken about this in years. Not to anyone. I tried, immediately after it happened but no one believed me.”

“What happened Sam?”

“I was Seven years old when Edmund inducted me into the family religion.”

I knew what he was talking about instantly.

“Fuck.” I swore but I don’t think he heard me as I stared at him in horror.

He nodded along to whatever thoughts were going through his head, his eyes darting around in the sockets of his eyes, looking at nothing. He might have claimed that he wasn’t ashamed and for all I knew, he might believe that about himself. But still

“The strangest thing about it.” he almost smiled. “Is that before I realised what had happened, I kind of liked it. I had never been closer to my older brother than at that moment. I felt as though he was inducting me into some kind of secret club that would just be between the two of us. We were still young enough to not realise that he was a bully and a tyrant, we were still young enough to look up to Edmund.

“Speaking personally, I was a soldier and learning to be a swordsman and I had seen him train. Back then when he was at his peak, he was so fast with a blade and I wanted that speed. I remember training at it for hours to try and get that speed, even a fraction of it.

“I didn’t like the pain, of course not. But that sense of intimacy, the thing that he and I had shared at that moment… I liked it. Does that sound awful?”

It took me a moment to realise that the question was not a rhetorical one.

“Yes,” I told him. “It sounds awful.”

He nodded his acceptance of that.

“I was Seven.” He said. “You were five and the difference in our ages seemed huge. Francesca will have been… God, not even two yet. So that would put Emma at…”

He tried to think about it.

“She would have been twelve,” I told him.

He chuckled at the memory.

“Yeah, twelve which means that she was just getting to the point where Mother was making her wear dresses and learn about makeup and hair and all of the other nonsense that women do. I know that Mark was away at one or other Monastary to earn his priesthood and “study” at the feet of… whoever the fuck.”

“So Edmund will have been Seventeen.” I had been doing the maths in my head. “Flame preserve us. Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He told me. “You didn’t do it.”

Then he told me his story about how and what happened. He told his story in a kind of dull monotone, staring off into space. He looked like a statue as he spoke and I was reminded of those stories that you hear about the golems in Wizard laboratories that act as recording devices or who dispense warnings about going any further.

When he was finished, he sat there, staring into space for a long moment before he took a deep breath and with that breath, it was as though he sucked the life back into himself. He looked up and smiled at me, a little sheepishly.

“I’ve never told anyone that story before.”

“I can see why,” I told him.

“I am not ashamed of it.” He told me again and the words struck me as though they had long echoed around his head. Repeated to himself on longcold nights. “It was something that was done to me and as such, it is not something that I am ashamed of.”

I took the cup of watered wine he had poured for me and drank it all, down to the last drop.

“I am sorry that happened Sam,” I told him after I had finished gasping for breath.

“Don’t be,” he told me. “You didn’t do it.” Another repeated phrase.

He nearly sank back into his thoughtful stare again before he shook himself and gestured to me.

“You will have questions?”

“Errrr. I must do,” I told him and he laughed at me.”

“Shocked Freddie?”

“What’s a man supposed to do? How am I supposed to react after you tell me something like that?”

He took that and made a thoughtful face.

After a moment, my first question seemed obvious.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? Was it really just because Edmund told you not to?”

“At first, yes.” Sam got up and poured us both some more drinks. He also summoned a servant and told them to fetch us some pastries. The servant was a soldier who was wearing a full plate and chain mail.

“At first,” Sam continued. “Yes, it was. My brother had sworn me to secrecy and so I didn’t break that code. He was away from the castle for a couple of months or so and then he came back briefly. I have insight now that I didn’t have at the time and he came back like a regularly kicked dog who slunk back in knowing that he was in trouble but not knowing when the blow would fall again.

“Then he must have realised that I hadn’t told anyone and he started to become more confident. Then we went out again. I was more careful this time about doing things with my donkey and made Edmund tie it to his horse before we rode off, forcing him to slow down. At first, he was dismissive but I pointed out that if I consistently let the donkey go then sooner or later, someone would realise that things were not entirely ok on our rides together.

“That got through to him and he did as I told him. Which, looking back, is what established our later dynamic. Edmund wasn’t stupid. But he was lazy enough that he always wanted the easy path, the lazy path and the path of least resistance. He would do things to avoid the argument and his opinion was always the same as the opinion of the last person he spoke to.

“The same thing happened although this time, he was less ashamed I think. This time he hung around at the castle to see what I did. I don’t know if I was used to the pain, but this time I recovered overnight.”

“You said ‘At first. Did you tell someone later?”

Sam smirked. “Yes and no. I tried to tell someone. I tried to tell many people.

“Something happened, which made me realise that what was happening to me was wrong and I have no idea what it was.

“Edmund would leave and come back and by now it was a semi-regular thing that he would take me out riding periodically. He liked to think of himself as a martial man and when he was asked as to why he went out with me rather than with you, he would tell those that listened that it was because I was going to be a knight and a soldier where you were of no interest. I think that was true. He viewed me as being a future power and something that he could use to tie me to him. He dismissed you as unimportant.

“Or someone told him that, I suppose we will never know but I do know that Cousin Kalayn was a regular fixture in Edmund’s life by this point and that’s what I suspect was going on.

“A connection was made in my head. Some piece of information was given to me… I don’t know how. Some story that I had been told, some of our etiquette training, martial training or even religious training got into my brain. Some seed implanted itself and just needed the water to grow and spring into life. I have no idea what that seed was or where it comes from but I do know what the water was.”

He smiled unhappily at me.

“Edmund brought Cousin Kalayn to our clearing.”

“Fuck,” I whispered again. My vocabulary seemed to be rather limited.

“Pretty much.” Sam agreed.

Then we both saw the truly hideous pun and winced before we giggled at each other.

Sam subsided after me and I guess that I am not the only person that must laugh or they will weep.

“I knew that something was different because Edmund was serious when he came to get me. I was nine when this happened and it was in the late Summer so you will have been eight. And he came to get me in the morning. So things had been going on for a little over two years. I have no idea how often Edmund took me off for a ride. It was a surprisingly small number and I have reason to believe that I have forgotten some of them. The mind can play horrific tricks on you in that regard.

“I know that things had almost gotten routine by that point. But this time was different. I was not taken to a tavern instead. I was taken straight to the clearing. Cousin Kalayn, another bastard that I am glad we killed, by the way, was waiting for us and he was wearing these horrible robes that I remember you writing about. He had another set of robes for Edmund.

‘This time was different. Whereas my times spent with Edmund were softer, almost… I want to say loving but that’s far too gentle a word to describe something that horrific. With Edmund, it was about the act. With Cousin Kalayn, it was about humiliation. They shared me and they made me do things to both of them that I won’t repeat now. But it was worse than I can say and far worse than you can imagine. They were drunk, they used some narcotic herb that I still don’t know the name of and by the time Cousin Kalayn left, I was a weeping mess that he left on the floor.

“Edmund took me to a stream and cleaned me up. He tried to hug me as I remember and I kicked him in the balls. This means I activated his rage and that was the first time that he hit me, I mean really hit me. I saw a white light and then I was looking up at him. I remember seeing horror and shame and worry on his face. Doubtlessly worrying that he had marked me now and there would be questions. Why he said what he said next, I don’t know but my guess is that it was a tactic that had worked on him in the past.

“‘Tell people that you fell off your donkey,’ he told me to say. Personally speaking, it would have been more believable if the lie was that we had been training together and I had messed up a parry and as a result, I got hit. But I suppose that this would still get him some portion of the blame. ‘You are my little brother and as part of the society and the religion, you will do what I say or suffer the consequences. Tell anyone and you will not be believed. Mother and Father need me as their heir. Mark will punish you just as much as he will punish me because he will think that what we are doing is heresy and Emma is just a weak, frigid bitch. No one will believe you over me and I will see to it that you are destroyed. Do you understand?’”

“He must have seen some of the rage and the hate on my face because he stepped back with a look of shock on his face. It was not the last time that Edmund would be afraid of me. But then he stepped forward again with a snarl on his face and kicked me in the gut so that it wouldn’t leave a mark.

“‘ANSWER ME,’ he roared and I nodded, not trusting my voice to speak.

“He dropped me off at the castle and sure enough, I was given a good yelling at by everyone about falling off my horse. Edmund stood next to me and got into a fight with Father about why he was allowing me to fall. The logic was that everyone thought that Edmund must have been riding too fast and in my effort to catch up, I had made a mistake and fallen. Edmund stormed off in a huff, leaving me to face the music before he left the castle for another week.

“I spent the rest of the day being bathed. Someone, although I can’t remember who examined my injuries, which is another reason that I feel so angry about it all. It can’t have been hard to figure out what happened to me but for whatever reason, they just decided not to comment. I wish I did remember who that was. That nurse, or whoever it was, deserves…

“Well…

“I have the most distinct memory of that night. The night after Cousin Kalayn joined Edmund in my “induction”.

Something had changed in my head. I was in pain, certainly, but it was more pain of the mind than of the body. I read your diaries about the moment that you can remember changing, where you were in your room after a big fight with Father about how he wanted you to become something that you were not. About how you read a book, an old book that you had read several times and that was the moment that you decided that you were going to be a scholar?”

“That’s right.” I replied. “I couldn’t have put words to it at the time and I still don’t know if that’s true or not. But that’s what I’ve increasingly come to think. It was that moment that shaped me.”

“Well, it was that moment, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, having wept to the point that my tear ducts were dry and no more tears would come. I remember lying there… In my memory, the pain that I felt had receded to a kind of dull ache and I had been weeping as quietly as I could so that I wouldn’t attract any attention that I would then have to answer for. It was at that moment that the anger and the pain and the resentment and the frustration kind of solidified in me to a point and formed something deep within my soul. I remember feeding that point with the memories of the humiliations that Cousin Kalayn and Edmund between them made me endure, crawling through the mud and the filth that they had laid on the floor to pleasure their drunken, drug-addled bodies and minds. I remembered the laughter and the jeering and the insults and it all seemed to be sucked into that point.

“In the end, it seemed to me that it formed a diamond of hate and I remember gritting my teeth with it. I wasn’t weeping with the pain or the hurt anymore, I was weeping with the hate and the rage. I remember it so clearly, my breath hissing between my teeth until it whistled. I remember biting down on my blankets so that people couldn’t hear until I couldn’t take that anymore either as all of this… this feeling seemed to come out of me and I lay there, sweating and shaking as I just lay there on the bed and one thought echoed through my mind.

“I was going to destroy them. Everyone was responsible for what had happened, I was going to destroy them all.

“They had both told me that there were more people out there that followed the same God and knew the same secrets that they had known and I decided, lying on my bed, panting with the leftover emotion, that I was going to destroy them.”

He laughed suddenly and shook his head, allowing me to hide just how appalled I was by his narrative. He looked up at me after his brief surge of hilarity.

“I do believe that after I made that decision, I fell asleep almost instantly.”

“I can believe it,” I told him. “There is a release after you have made a decision like that. One of those cross-roads decisions where you know that your life could go one way or another and that now the decision is made you can rest.”

He nodded as I spoke before we lapsed into stillness and silence.

Then he shook himself and started to speak again.

“In the morning, I didn’t pretend to be sick, instead I went to the chapel to think and to plan. The most obvious course of action was to let people know what had happened and that would be the solution to everything. I mean, that’s what you do right? Tell the adults and then trust that they were going to sort it out.

“I went down the list. Emma was discounted in my head. She was fourteen and just a dizzy young girl to my mind. I mean, now, despite being a woman, she is one of the most intelligent people that we know. But she was just getting to the point where she was rebelling at all of the feminine things that Mother and Father were trying to get her to do like wear dresses and receive people to take on potential suitors and arrange marriages for her. So she was out of the question. And no matter how much I now hated Edmund, his opinions on women had lodged into me and I may say that they have been proven right over the years.

“Mark will have been sixteen at that point and I was terrified of him. I had an instinctive feeling that what I was doing with Edmund was wrong and that Mark would be angry that I had kept it to myself for so long so I was afraid that I was going to be punished more than Edmund was. I thought that I was going to be punished for keeping the secret and not confessing when I had the chance.

“Byarby would have been appalled that I was lying about my brother, Froggart would have done the same. The thought of going to Father was just absurd at the time and so first, I tried Mother.”

“I think,” I began. “I think you might have been a bit unfair in your assessments about some of those people.”

Sam smiled sadly. “Not really.”

I just stared at him and he continued to speak.

“So I found Mother in the flower gardens. She had Francesca with her and Frannie was tottering around between the bushes, pricking her fingers on the rose thorns and scuffing her knees up.”

I smiled at the shared memories. I remember Frannie doing the same things as well.

“So I went to Mother and I told her that I had something serious to tell her about why I had been so ill recently. She didn’t ignore me, not really but she also didn’t take her eyes off Frannie. ‘Can it wait?’ She asked. Another short phrase that I added to my diamond of hate. Never say that to me, Freddie, ever.”

“I will remember,” I told him. I could easily imagine what had happened next.

“I started to try and tell mother what had happened about how Edmund had come and taken me off for a ride and about how he had given me a beer that first time and abruptly, she just stopped me.”

His eyes darkened and his lips peeled back from his teeth with an old rage. There was a hurt there, an old childish hurt that tugged at my heartstrings enough that I felt for him. Felt for him enough that I had to remind myself that this man had ordered the death of my friend and had enslaved the woman I love. Let alone that he had tortured my sister and the woman that she loves.

“‘Take the blame like a man.’ She told me. ‘It is unbecoming to shift the blame onto others for your carelessness. Remember that a true leader will take all of the blame for himself but will pass the credit onto those that follow him. I tried desperately to tell her that there was more to the story and that it wasn’t finished but she had made her mind up as to what was going through my head. At that point, Francesca fell into a patch of thorns and Mother leapt up to care for darling Francesca and left me behind. I was dismissed and that… That hurt, I won’t lie to you, Freddie.”

“It was another day before I plucked up the courage to talk to Captain Froggart and he assumed something similar, that I was lying to get myself out of the disgrace that I was in for having been neglectful in my behaviour and following my brother off on some wild horse ride. After that, I didn’t even try and talk to Byarby who would have been even more outraged at the prospect of having had my donkey hurt.”

Sam snorted in amusement before continuing.

“I did not want to confront Father about this so I went to Mark next.”

I didn’t want to hear this. I respect and admire Mark a great deal. He has turned the most awful thing that I can imagine happening and turned it into something positive. It is true that at this point in his life, he was getting ready to join the priesthood and as such was on more than a little bit of a holier-than-thou kick. But even so, I did not want to hear about how Mark had ignored his younger brother.

“Unfortunately,” Sam said. “Mark listened carefully and took my story away. Out of all the people that I tried to talk to, Mark took it the best I think. But then he went away. I had great hope that he would be able to do something about what was happening and what had happened. But a week later, Edmund came back and took me out for a ride again.

Nothing had changed except that Edmund was a bit more brazen and treated me that bit rougher.

“In desperation, I tried to talk to Emma but she was too busy with the feminine stuff that she barely paid attention to me. She thought it was some game that I was playing with you, or with some of the other young men of the castle at the time.

“She laughed at me and told me not to be silly.”

I didn’t believe that that was true. I don’t believe that that is true.

“I can see you don’t believe me, Freddie,” he said. “But it’s true. Explain it away all you wish but the simple fact of the matter is that I tried to take the problem to my big sister and she ignored me. Where she has always been a kind and generous mentor and friend to you, she has always all but ignored me and that has never changed, ever. In you, she saw an equal, an ally and a friend. In me, she saw something lesser that she looked down on and was better than.”

I wondered then that I had never seen the amount of anger, hate and disdain that Sam has for our sister.

“In the end, there was nothing else to be done except to go to Father. I have to admit that I was expecting to be yelled at, to be told that I was lying and that I was a disgrace and all of those other kinds of things. What I didn’t expect was that he simply didn’t seem to care.

“‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your brothers and your sister have warned me that you have this new fantasy going through your mind. A fantasy about how you are the victim in some kind of heretical conspiracy headed up by Edmund your brother.’

“I remember that my own words all but seemed to peter out in the face of his disapproving glare.

“He sighed and looked over his hands at me. ‘It is only natural for you to be jealous of your brother.’ I honestly think he was trying to be kind. ‘The truth of the matter is that one day your brother Edmund will be the Lord of these lands and you will serve him. It will disgrace you to say these things about him and in turn, it will disgrace the family and we will be destroyed. It is vital that we present a unified front before our enemies and that we do not allow anyone to drive a wedge between us, even from within the family. Never forget that.’

“I told him that I wouldn’t.

“‘Promise me,’ he ordered and when I did so, he made me write to apologise to Edmund. I had to write it out and show it to Father before he took it from me and posted it.”

“Two days later, Edmund arrived and took me for a ride.”

The bitterness in Sam was awful. I wondered, and I still wonder, if things had transpired exactly as Sam remembered them. The easiest one to believe was the story about how Mother had handled things. I could also understand how Byarby, Froggart and Emma…. Even Mark had behaved. After all, Mark and Emma had simply spoken to Father and asked him to sort it out, or at least, I think that’s what happened.

I wondered though if this was the first indicator that Father had that something was still going on with Edmund after Uncle Kalayn had come to visit and Edmund himself had been baptised into the family religion.

Sam continued to speak.

“After that, I went to my room and sat down, staring into space to think. I had done the things that you are supposed to do in this instance. I was aware enough to realise that Edmund had taken some steps to poison the well against me and to cover his own back. Not least by telling me, early on, that Father knew about all of this.”

“Which he did.” I interrupted.

“Which he did,” Sam agreed. “But I had done what you are supposed to do. I had told my parents, my brother, my authority figures and a priest.

“I was already being trained as a soldier, a Knight and a warrior and I loved the stories about the lone hero taking on insurmountable odds by himself. And I decided that this was my role. If no one were going to help me, then I would do it myself. And that night, I started to plot out my campaign.”

He laughed again.

“The way I say it makes it sound as though this is all some grand scheme that played out since that night but that is just not the case. There were certainly some decisions that I made that night that have carried me through, but it’s been more of an evolving thing.

“I decided that what Father, Mother and Mark were doing was protecting the heir. Edmund was going to be Lord Coulthard when Father died; as such, he was simply more important than me. The scandal that this would cause would destroy everything that Father had worked for all of these years. So that’s what they were doing. And I suppose that, from their point of view, it made a certain amount of sense. I didn’t hate them all, any the less for it but even so. I think that the objective for Father was for me to keep it quiet. The heartbreaking thing for me is that if he had told me that he would take care of it and that I just needed to keep it quiet. I would have believed him.

“But of course, Edmund came back and continued having his way with me.

“I just dismissed Emma as being weak then and there. Her task in the family was to sit there, be educated, look pretty and attract a powerful husband. Hers was the balance between being pretty enough to attract a husband that would bring power to the family, but not so much that the expected dowry would be crippling to us. That was what she did, that was what she was doing and being trained for and that was all that she was good for.

“It astonishes me that Father trusted her with everything else that he trusted her with, let alone that he taught her how to run the company. Ah well, I nearly made a mistake there as I was going to remove her completely and once again, I thank you for rescuing me from it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him. “By that point, I would have been seven, or more likely eight.”

Sam smiled.

“I wanted to, but I decided to protect you instead.” He gave a little chuckle. “There was one lesson that our parents gave us over and over again that I never forgot. Not ever. That you were my little brother and that it was my responsibility to look after you and take care of you and all of that nonsense. Also… what would you have done? You would have, not incorrectly, gone to Mother, or Father and then I would have been punished for lying to you as well so…” He shrugged.

“I could have supported you Sam. I could have been your friend.”

“No Freddie. No you could not, you would not have been allowed.”

I decided not to fight him on that. His words had the ring of surety and I rather supposed that he thought such things fanatically.

“Before you go on as well. I loved Francesca just as much as anyone else at that time and she… she was the fragile and perfect flower that we all wanted to protect and look after so I didn’t want to ruin that for her either. I started to view the knowledge that I had as a kind of taint, that it lessened me and it lessened the people that I spoke to about it. That it would adjust and taint the image that people had of me and as such, I should do my best to continue to keep it secret.

“I did try again a little while later. I tried to tell our tactics teacher. The man that taught us about Military history, remember him?”

I searched my memory.

“Claudius something,” I recalled. “Short man, bald head?”

“That’s the fellow. I wonder where he is now. He saw that something was wrong with me and asked me about what that might be. I must have been sitting awkwardly or something. I don’t know if he recognised what was happening or had seen something like it before but he took me aside and asked me some very searching questions, almost leading questions. He was so kind and so gentle with it that sooner or later I just broke. I have never, ever, ever been physically affectionate with any of our tutors before or since that moment but he put his arms around me and told me that he would deal with the matter.

“A week later he was gone and I was thrashed for lying.”

“Flame, Sam.”

He shook his head and held his hand up.

“I don’t want your pity, Freddie. They were protecting themselves and for all I know, they were doing something to protect me as well. I don’t know what was going on and why they didn’t act on it or even investigate it. Of course, after what happened later, we know that Father was well aware of Edmund’s depredations and was taking certain steps, while still taking steps to protect the family and the company. Leaving the company to Emma to manage, ensuring that you and I would have money to live off that neither Edmund nor Mark, could touch. He couldn’t keep the castle and the lands out of Edmund’s hands but I notice that he did manage that out of Mark…. But we are getting ahead in the story there.

“So I started to formulate my plan. One of the lessons that I remember from that earliest time is the courtier one and I know that it’s a lesson that you have taken to heart as well. That when you are strong, you pretend weakness and when you are weak, you pretend strength.

“So I started to downplay how good I was in certain areas. There was no hiding how good I was with weapons at that age. You have to be really good with weapons to believably pretend to be bad. I could throw a fight but our tutors could easily see that I wasn’t putting the effort into it. But with regards to my other tutoring, My writing, my reading and all of the courtier work. I took all of that information in but deliberately pretended to be bad at it.”

He laughed.

“I love you for how hard you worked to try and help me with all of that Freddie and I longed to tell you that you didn’t need to try so hard but, it was so endearing and it was a good distraction from what was going on. I loved you for how much you cared, Freddie and I still love you for that. I will never stop. You are the only one in this awful family that ever really tried to care for me in that period and I love you for it.”

We sat in silence for a while after that declaration.

“I won’t lie, Sammy,” I told him. “I don’t know how to take that. I think I will need to go away and think on that for a while.”

“I understand,” he told me.

“I am…” I considered what I wanted to say. “I’m hurt that you lied to me though. I don’t like that, even your affection for me was built on lies. I was genuinely trying to help and that time was wasted.”

“It wasn’t, it worked in solidifying…”

“No Sam. You’re not following. If I had not been doing that, we could have spent our time being genuinely closer. Our brotherly relationship could have been built on trust and truth rather than lies and pretence.”

I was hurt and I could not hide from it.

“No more lies Freddie,” he told me after a while. “I’m sorry.”

“I mean… I understand why you did it.” I told him. “I understand that the lie is easier, that you were trying to protect me and all of that but even so…”

He nodded.

After a moment, some food was brought and we ate. Little more than plain bread, some butter and some cheese. Edmund cut the cheese for me and buttered the slices of bread that I was given. I noticed that someone had done the same for Emma and she ate mechanically and automatically, not lifting her head, just reaching for the plate and eating while not stopping writing.

I finished my food and set the plate aside before taking up my quill.

“What happened next?” I asked.