He smiled. “The war.”

I must have grimaced because he pointed and laughed at me.

“You hated the war,” he told me, “but looking back… I kind of think that the war saved my life. I am almost sure of it. On an intellectual level, I am aware of the horror of the war. I am aware of the injuries and the blood and the death and all of that. I know how awful it is and before you start, yes, I know how awful the coming wars are going to be as well. But afterwards?” He shook his head.

“The first Nilfgaardian invasion happened before we were born. The second happened when you and I were too young to understand what was going on and the biggest impact that it had on us is that Grandfather was able to buy a vacant minor title in Redania.”

“I thought it was Father that did that.”

“No, he built the castle and lifted us from being merchants into being proper nobles. Grandfather was a merchant and just bought the title. Father made us fit the role.”

I’m not sure that Sam is right there but that is a fight that isn’t worth having.

“In the intervening years. I know that Cousin Kalayn, Edmund and the rest, I know that their cult, that we now know was an off-shoot of the real one, was growing. After a while, another person was invited to make use of me. Then I was taken to Oxenfurt where I was put into a cellar in some building… I think it’s been torn down since. But it was in a basement where a few people had their way with me. To them, I was a toy that had been passed around but eventually, they were growing bored of it and wanted more of the buzz that came with it. I still had no idea about the cult up in the North and now that I know more, what they were doing with me was building me to the point that when I did know about the cult in the North, I wouldn’t react to it. That it would just be another thing that they were doing as part of their games.

“I never saw them going so far as to kill someone at that time. Looking back, I think that that was kept for special occasions back then. You liberated a wagon of children during your attack on the cult. Well… That was later but at the time. I was like that. I was a toy to be passed around, the same way that you might pass a bottle of something strong to the person next to you at the party.

“The fact that I was, due to training, becoming big and strong made them feel powerful, but eventually, there were new toys to play with and I was relegated to the position of servant. I would pass the wine and the drugs around as well as help chain up the latest plaything.

“I learnt to lie properly and to be able to tell truth in thought and lie with words as well as vice versa when the time came. I learnt how to swear in the name of the Flame while I really left my devotions to The God.”

“Yeah, I have a question about that.” I jumped in. “Do you believe in The God? Or is it just something that you spout out to maintain… I don’t know… your cover.”

He smiled. “Freddie, The God is real. We call him that because he likes to be called that and keeping him happy is… a factor. Is he a God on the same level as Kreve or the Eternal Flame? That I don’t know. I suspect that you would need to speak to a priest or someone. Phineas is dead and we are following some of his playbooks on this so…”

“So Phineas is definitely dead?”

“Oh yes.” He laughed. “Definitely dead. I checked and he did not escape the noose this time. Stupid ass. But again, that’s getting ahead in the story. He was a true believer though, ‘only one true God and all of that nonsense. But still…

“So then the war started and finally, finally, I escaped all of the depredations that I was being subjected to. I was Knighted because Redania wanted Knights. I served, I fought and I did my duty. I know that it was awful and I know that it was horrible, but Freddie…”

He shook his head.

“Freddie, I have never been happier. I was free. Edmund was off performing the stupid little duty that Father had found for him where he could be kept out of harm's way. I knew enough by now to know that I was disposable and I was there so that you could all say that the family had done their part.

“I was fifteen when the war broke out. I know that you went into the logistics and intelligence divisions and I cannot resent you for that. And I may say that when my comrades gave you all grief I stood up for you, say that if you had come out with us then you would have been dead weight. Which was true?” He checked to see if I was going to be offended by that.

“No that was true, at that time and that place, I knew which end of the sword to hold, but that was it.”

“And I would guess that you didn’t have the heart to strike home. Nothing to be ashamed of but in being where you were, I knew that the intelligence we were getting was good and that we could trust it. I knew that wars were won according to logistics and intelligence so I routinely got into fights with men who told us that you lot weren’t real soldiers. I never stood for that. Ever.”

“Thank you.”

“So I was away from Edmund. None of the other people that might know my secret was anywhere near me. Cousin Kalayn actively hid somewhere so that he wouldn’t end up serving. I don’t know but I think he commanded some garrison off in the arse end of fuck knows where. But for the first time, I had friends and comrades. Men that literally died saving my life and would fight for me. I remember weeping with gratitude that a man passed me a drink and told stories of my exploits around the campfire to the other men there.

“I remember a superior sharing our last food out equally so that we could all have something to eat. The way we huddled together in the cold as we went over the mountains against Kaedwen and thinking, ‘This is what brotherhood should be about.’”

He shook his head at the memory. And I shook my head at the horror implied that a man of fifteen would rather be at war than at home with his family.

“I learned how to lead during the war. I became a man during the war and not just in the way of having my first woman. She was a camp follower that helped out in the surgeon’s tent and charged ten crowns a time. She was very kind to me and when I wept afterwards, she held me gently. But they taught me how to be a man. How to act, how to behave. To only give your word when you meant it. To set yourself a set of behaviours and stick to them. To know where your line of morals is and to stick to those as well. Not this bullshit masculinity that I hear about in the taverns and the brothels around the world. But real… When you take all of the bullshit that the world gives to you, all of the pain and the hardship and the unfairness and then you do your duty. Even when you know you might be thought less of for it, or that it might kill you.

“I learned how to think as well, to see things for how they are rather than what people want you to see or what you think you see. I learned the same things that you did, which was that the leader is not always the person with the fanciest armour or the one that shouts the loudest, and I learned that there is a difference between being intelligent and being well-educated. I owe my life to a Sergeant called Keef. It’s dreadfully classist of me but I never knew his first name. When we were in a situation where it was impossible to charge our noble steeds.”

He chuckled at something that I presumed was some kind of old military joke.

“... We were spread out amongst the infantry to provide, heh, ‘leadership’. Fortunately, I soon learned that the real leadership came from within the unit itself and that they knew their jobs better than I did. Not all of my fellows were as clever as I was or learned that lesson as quickly. Funny how they didn’t survive.

“But there was a Sergeant called Keef. He didn’t give orders, he gave me suggestions and when he did so, he did it in such a way that it was clear to see the good sense in those words and as such, as is the way with good leaders, I was doing things because he told me to rather than because I saw the sense.”

“What happened to him?”

“What?... Oh, he died. The black ones killed him. But he taught me so much in the intervening time. I owe my life to him and the lessons that he taught me, multiple times over.

“After we had taken Kaedwen and joined their forces to ours, we fought the Nilfgaardians to a standstill. I know that military historians are still arguing about various things but we fought them to a standstill and kept them on the other side of the Pontar. People can argue about holding choke points and this and that but are you honestly telling me that the Imperial war machine couldn’t mount a river invasion? A pontoon bridge or get a bunch of mages to create a land bridge wherever the fuck they wanted? No, we had them to a stalemate in preparing for the winter.

“And then…”

I swear to the Holy Flame, he shed a tear.

“And then it was all over. Djikstra and Roche and whoever the fuck else… Fucking Eilhart… You have no idea how hard it was to nod and smile when she turned up for Ariadne’s party. They killed Radovid and it was all over. Three years of our lives and it was done. All of that blood, all of those lives, all of that sacrifice and for sweet fuck all. God but I wish that Djikstra were still alive so that I could kill him again. I mean, I hate Nilfgaard as a whole but they were doing their jobs. We were supposed to trust Djikstra, Roche and the rest.”

There was a pause in our conversation then. Sam poured himself a drink and went to look out the window to collect his thoughts and I scribbled a couple of notes down. A soldier took that moment to come in with a sheaf of papers that Sam read through, surprisingly quickly given what I knew of him. He scribbled some things down on the paper and then he came back to his desk.

“Are you ready to continue?” He asked me.

“I should ask you the same thing,” I replied and he shrugged.

“So the war ended.” He told me. “You came out of the logistics tent and into Father’s bad graces as you were unable to be useful and lock down a wife. I can easily imagine the situation. I only avoided it because I was stationed elsewhere. But I came back and it was as though my eyes were opened and I could see things for being the way they actually were rather than what I thought they were.

“Shortly after I returned, Edmund came to get me and took me to a place in Oxenfurt. The other members of that little circle were there and I had to struggle to keep from laughing. First of all, it was clear that these people thought of themselves as a cult. But they weren’t a cult. They were just a group of people that got their pleasure by causing sexual pain to those weaker than themselves. It helped if the victim was younger, pretty and female but many could be heard expressing the opinion that ‘providing that the ass is young enough, it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl,”

I shuddered.

“I know,” Sam said. “I have a dim feeling that they wanted to exert their dominance over me now that I was back. But I was eighteen, in the prime of good health, and my strength, speed and technique had been honed against the best that Nilfgaard had to offer. Edmund was twenty-eight and had spent the war in some kind of cushy Garrison duty away North. He had spent the war drinking, whoring and spending time with his friends and conspirators. His hair was greying and he was clearly going bald. He had grown a beard to hide his double chin and wore make-up to hide some of the splotches and blemishes that were cropping up from whatever pox he had most recently contracted.

“He was still quick. Lightening fast even and he knew how to hold that speed back ready for when his opponent would leave a hole in their defences and then Edmund could strike. He would stand there looking bored and nonchalant until his opponent panicked. Edmund knew his reputation and knew how to use it. He also knew how to get his friends involved to erode his opponent’s confidence. Again, you said something similar yourself in Toussaint. There is a difference between a duel and a fight.

“So they took me into that room and I saw Edmund for what he was. He went to order me to do something and he must have seen in my eyes that I had no intention of doing what he said and would react with violence if he forced it. So he backed down.

“Edmund had fallen out of favour with the group at that point. He was often in favour and out of favour with them all I think. He was not alone in that as discipline seems to have been something that happened to other people in that group. How no-one caught them before you got to it, I will never know. But Edmund was struggling to keep things quiet and knowing what we found out later, I suspect that it was around then that Father finally figured out what was going on and told him to stop. Edmund was afraid and the other people were reluctant to trust him.

“So Cousin Kalayn tried to belittle him a bit and the others were jeering and catcalling. And just as I had been taught in the army, I looked at the big picture, I saw the situation, formed the plan and implemented it. I picked one of the stronger henchmen that were jeering at my brother and smacked him in the mouth.

“You know these kinds of people too. I know that you have written about this. It takes something to just start violence. Most people have to work themselves up to it. So if you can just start with the violence and then be so utterly violent that they can never recover from it. That normally works.

“The man fell and was up on his feet, his hand going for his sword, challenging me to a duel. I slapped him, took him out to the backyard by his hair, drew my sword and told him that I was ready and that I was going to kill him. I was, in fact, going to geld him and choke him to death on his own manhood. He saw murder in my eyes and I was honestly disappointed when he apologised. But I swallowed that disappointment and told him to apologise to Edmund instead. He was horrified but I held my sword point at his crotch and he fell to his knees to apologise to Edmund.

“Then I told the rest of them that if I heard about anyone bad-mouthing my brother, or planning his downfall then I would kill them. I made no extravagant threats about what I was going to do to them. I just told them that I would kill them and that they would not live to regret their actions.

“For some reason, this was more effective.

“Then I went and stood behind Edmund to make my stance clear and he was in a position of prestige again in their little circle. I had to keep from laughing. I still intended to destroy them all and now that I had been in an army at war, the plan started to form itself.

“Over and over again, I was astonished at how stupid they all were. So secure in their arrogance and their image of their self-worth and the immunity that their prestige gave them. It did not occur to them that they would be caught, let alone punished for their crimes. But now, wherever Edmund went in those circles, I went with him.

“Through those circles, I finally learnt about the cult of the First-Born as you call them in the North. And at first, I despaired. I thought that I was just up against this small circle of ass-hats and I reckoned that my crusade could be over and done by the time I was twenty-one. But that was not the case. After a moment, I decided that the decision had not changed but that I needed more information to work with.

“It was not hard to manipulate what they were doing or what they were thinking. In much the same way that I have no doubt Sergeant Keef had manipulated me, so too did I manipulate those… people. I object to calling them, cultists. They were ass-holes. So I arranged, through them and their family contacts to be stationed north so that I could go and meet the full cult of which my little group of ass-holes were a branch. I met Uncle Kalayn who was a weaker man that was trapped in the family business, the same as you or I am really. I met Lord Cavil who was increasingly becoming the power behind the throne.”

“Did you meet Phineas?”

“I think I saw him once at the back somewhere, but he was hardly there. He was in Angral working on his plot and his experiments at that time. Don’t worry, we will get to him.”

I nodded.

“As big a nest of vipers I have never met, They were all after the top job and they schemed and fought against each other. To the lower ranks like Poor Arthur that you met, They seemed united, but to the upper ranks?”

I searched for the name “Arthur” in my memory.

“Cavil’s bastard.” Sam clarified and I nodded as I remembered the tall, powerful, charming but utterly deluded man.

“The top guys were united in their schemes but amongst each other, it was clear that the higher up you were the more powerful you felt and if there was one drug that got them all off, more than the power of the God, it was that power. In the same way that the ass-holes felt power over those weaker than themselves, the cultists felt power over lesser cultists. I know for a fact that the higher cultists got off on this power. At the time Uncle Kalayn was in charge but it was clear to me that his power was waning and that Cavil was sniffing at his heels.

“Not least of the reasons for this was the fact that Cousin Kalayn was further south getting his rocks off by torturing and kidnapping children and young people. The cult in the North chose their targets carefully. But in the South, they did it far too often and indiscriminately. The Northern cult was terrified of discovery and what they were afraid of was that in their misfounded zeal, someone from the southern off-shoot would get caught who didn’t want to go to the executioner’s block and tell everything in return for their own survival.

“All of that courtier training that you have mentioned, including the stuff that the army taught me, came to the fore and I realised that my planned destruction of the cult was a multi-stage plan.

“It wasn’t just the cult in the North, nor was it the cult of thrill-seekers in the south.”

“I thought we had agreed to call them ass-holes.” I put in.

Sam barked with laughter at that.

“Yes, sorry, the assholes.”

He chuckled at the image for far longer than the joke deserved before he leaned forward and poured himself another drink. This time, he reached into a drawer and seemed to open a box that was within the drawer before pulling what looked like a twist of paper. He untwisted one end of the paper and poured the contents into the drink before picking up the cup and swirling the liquid around for a moment.

“Sam?”

He took a long swallow and grimaced at the taste.

“Yes, Freddie?”

“Are you sick? Don’t joke with me now, or dismiss this as metaphor, are you ill?”

He considered the question.

“Yes and no.” He told me with a smile as I made a face at the answer.

“I’m not being deliberately ambivalent.” He told me. “Yes, I am sick. I have done things and am continuing to do things that are making me ill in both body and mind.”

“Such as meaning that you can’t, or are unable to father any children?” I wondered.

A shadow passed over his face of remembered horror, disgust and self-loathing. Then he nodded.

“And some of the things that you are seeing me drink are to mitigate that sickness. Others are to prepare me for what is to come.”

“What is to come?”

He laughed.

“Admit something for me first.” He told me, pointing a finger at me. “You are just as much a storyteller as you are a historian. Is that not so?”

“That is so,” I admitted, accepting the offer of another cup of wine as I spoke. “The purpose of my articles is to educate. But if the text is just a dry recitation of facts, then the reader will become bored and wander off. And even if, by some horrific circumstance, my writing is studied as part of some mandatory text in schools or universities, meaning that the reading is mandatory, then if the writing is boring then the facts will not be remembered.”

He grinned and nodded before he stared into space for a long moment and his humour seemed to retreat from his face.

“I have done many things, Freddie. I have seen even more things and I can feel those things scrabbling at the edges of my sanity. I can feel the weakness in my limbs because of some of the things that I have had to do. What your bitch told you about the creation of the means of controlling her is true. To do that alone, I have done things that would challenge my sanity and well-being and that is not the worst of what I have done.”

A glint of humour appeared in his eyes.

“Although it is pretty bad.”

“For fuck’s sake Sam.”

“But it must be told in its proper order. You, and your eventual readers, will probably hate me anyway but I refuse to be judged without the knowledge of the proper context.”

I nodded and dipped my quill.

“So…” I prompted. “A multi-stage plan.”

“Yes. I knew that I wanted to destroy these things and these people and…”

“Hold on.” I jumped in and we both smiled at the interruption. “Just a quick question. You were a much more powerful man and your reputation would guarantee that you would be heard. Or you would be much more likely to get heard. After the war, the church was falling over itself to try and prove its usefulness to prevent assimilation and destruction from the cult of the great sun. Why didn’t you go to the church and explain the heresy that you had seen? They would have done your destruction for you.”

“I have thought about that although if the truth be told, it just didn’t occur to me at the time. Not because I was so fixated on my vengeance, although that was certainly part of my thinking at the time. Nor was it because I hated the institution, although I kind of did.”

“Why? Mark might have let you down by not listening to what you said, or taking it to Father, but why hate the church?”

“You remember what the church was like at the time.” He gave a sneer, more at the church than at me I thought. “I served alongside Witch-hunters and Knights of the Flaming turd or whatever it was that they called themselves. Pompous, self-righteous pricks that they were.”

He sighed and with the breath, his dislike and vehemence seemed to drain out of him.

“Part of it is learned.” He told me after a long moment. “I spent so much time with the ass-holes and the cultists that I have to guard my own thinning. You have written that if you tell a young person the same falsehood over and over again, then sooner or later they will begin to believe it.”

“I don’t think that I was that flowery but…”

He allowed himself a small smile at that.

“They taught me that the God of the cult was right, that he gave pleasure and power while the Eternal Flame gave pain and suffering. To not be punished, I had to believe what they were telling me and after a while, that belief became… permanent.”

He shifted in his seat and took a deep breath. It was not the first time that I saw the body in front of me as an empty suit of clothes that was suddenly filled as my brother returned to it.

“I am a heretic out of survival. Which was another factor. In that time and place, if I had told the church that I had been inducted into a cult, then I would have been burnt at the stake to purify my soul. They would have come for the cult to be sure, but they would also have come for my friends and family, after all, they had the perfect excuse to come after the Coulthard’s now. And although I would have cheerfully watched our parents and older siblings burn, then that focus would have come onto you and Francesca. I still had that big brotherly feeling and I wanted to protect you.

“And that leads me to the most rational explanation. I had spent time in the North and fought alongside the church troops in the war on the front line. Sent there by Radovid so that his political enemies, which included me I would later realise, could be destroyed. In the North, I learned just how corrupt the church of the Eternal Flame was, and still is in many ways.

“I hate Mark for his negligence in looking at the family properly, but he is doing his best to drag the church of the Eternal Flame into the modern age, working to stamp out corruption and return the church to a church of service rather than the rule. But back then…”

He shook his head.

“You have to understand that the cult of the First-Born was made up of prominent noblemen of the old school. Men that could trace their bloodlines back to the founding of Redania. Many of them had funded Radovid and his family and many still had donated vast sums to the Church of the Eternal Flame. If I had gone and argued that they were heretics, the political entities in the church would have torn me down. And then used that excuse to tear down the Coulthard family for my impertinence.

“So all of these factors are true, and I like to think that I considered them in the back of my brain somewhere. But the truth is that it just didn’t occur to me.

“I did consider bringing you into it then though.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because you were… Out of all the people on the continent Freddie, I love you the most. But you were not yet ready for serious things. You were not yet yourself. You were still trying to be what Father made you and even I could see that it wasn’t working. To my mind, you needed your war, whatever that might be. Looking back, that process started when you went to university in defiance of what Father wanted and then was finished when you started travelling with the witcher.

“But I had no idea how long that process would take at the time, or even if it would happen at all. And I was keen to get started before I lost the will to do the thing myself.”

“And Francesca?”

“She was young, and besides everything else, she was a girl too.” He sniffed in dismissal.

I decided not to push that particular line of conversation.

“The biggest problem was the cult in the North, and for that, I would need a power base. It logically occurred to me that the best power base that I could have was if I was Lord Coulthard rather than Edmund. I mean, I already intended to destroy Edmund anyway but if I was Lord Coulthard then I could have a base. So I needed to destroy Edmund and take steps to ensure that I would be made Lord Coulthard.

“So while messing around in the North. My stationing there amounted to little more than hunting bandits and doing the bidding of the Cult really. I wanted to perform military exercises to keep the wartime edge that our troops needed but my superiors in both the feudal sense and the military sense were lazy and as such, didn’t see the point.

“Now, as I was saying, while I was in the North, I met several important people. I met Lord Cavil again, as a grown up this time so I like to think I met him properly this time…

“By the way, I thought it was incredibly sweet that every time he talked about that traitorous Lord Kalayn, you didn’t follow it to its natural conclusion. You thought of it as some kind of natural assumption of superiority over the position of Lord Kalayn, rather than the possibility that I had once worked for him and was actually a traitor.”

I had no words for that.

“I mean, from his point of view, I was a traitor but from mine, I had always aimed for his destruction. I also re-met Lord Kalayn at the height of his miserable glory. I allowed myself to backslide a little in his presence, and the presence of Lord Cavil to let them think that I was bowing before them.”

“When strong…” I said.

“Pretend weakness.” Sam finished for me. “They both knew about the off-shoot in the south and they were in the process of cutting them off. Cousin Kalayn believed that he was indispensable as he was both an elder son and his father’s heir. But Uncle Kalayn was a cold bastard. Mother described him as a lapsed heretic but he wasn’t. He was just… I think he was tired. He was not a healthy man because he had already been poisoned by his son to hasten him on his way…”

“Poisoned?”

“Oh yes. Like Edmund with Father, our cousin wanted the perceived money, status and power that came with actually being the Lord rather than waiting his turn. Uncle Kalayn had spotted the poisoning and had taken preventative measures but it had left him weak when the weather was cold.

“It was one of the few things that Cavil and Kalayn agreed on which was that the off-shoot needed to be dealt with so that it didn’t attract attention from the growing faction in the church that might follow through on it. So, having come from that off-shoot, I persuaded them to send me to curb their… zeal until the older lords could arrange for the thing to die out with the older sons returning to the fold.

“I took several steps there. I saw the opportunity to add some more to my potential holdings and persuaded Uncle Kalayn to change his will to put it so that it was more ambiguous as to who the heir would be should anything happen to his son. It was already written so that it would be Edmund as the eldest surviving male heir. But I intended to kill Edmund….

“So I pointed out that no plan is perfect and that as a younger son and an initiate from them both, they might run roughshod over me. As such, it might even be prudent for one or the other to die. Uncle Kalayn saw the danger of his will, meaning that his estate would go to Mark and therefore the church. Cavil wanted the title for himself and one of his sons to consolidate his power as part of his scheming to be the next head of the cult. And Kalayn didn’t want that, more out of spite rather than anything. So he adjusted his will and fairly clicking my heels together, I headed back south.”

He chuckled at a memory.

“I remember them being so concerned about their power.”

He chuckled again.

“But I met some other people.”

“Phineas?” I wondered again.

“No, he would come later. I saw him and essentially thought he was one of Cavil’s equivalents…. What I was to Edmund, I thought he was one of those to Cavil. He stood in the background of things. Taking care not to step into the ritual circles or take part in any of the rites at that time. I remember him at that stage as a nervous man, rubbing his hands and licking his lips. I certainly didn’t talk to him. He left the North before I did anyway.

“I met Gregoire. Like me, he was a younger son of one of the Lords up there and had been brought in. Like me, he saw the hypocrisy and the stupidity of it all. He was a military man and was disgusted by the entire thing. I didn’t talk to him about it but I pegged him as a possible ally for the future.

“I also met Ella, the Elven Alchemist. Do you remember her?”

“I do.” I sighed. “She was always working for you?”

“Yes and no. I took over her masterhood shortly after you let her go. It was not hard. She was addicted to her own potions and some of the things that came with it.”

He shook his head at me and he almost smirked as he said it.

“You should not have let her go, Freddie. For all of the evil that I have committed, she has done much worse. And if you had killed her, I would have found what came later far more difficult. She made all of my potions and powders and she does so so that I can still keep feeding her, her little green bottles.”

“I was trying to be kind. That cult forced her to do…”

“Yes they did.” he agreed. “They made her evil, they forced her to do evil. And I agree that that, in turn, made her evil. It drove her mad. Even now, she still justifies everything she has done by way of it being forced. She promises herself that things are not as bad as we think they are and that she is a good person.

“But when I heard her story, I thought of any number of ways that she could have fled, or could have utterly destroyed the cult. One good batch of poison in some of the drugs that she administered and the leadership of the cult would have been decimated. Or she could have given the cult’s victims a quick acting poison so that they died painlessly, or any number of things to support my, and supposedly her, enemies.

“The cult taught me to hate women, it did and those scars are carrying forwards. But I have yet to meet a woman that would tell me that the cult was wrong. Women are weak, pathetic, stupid creatures. And of all that I have met, Ella is among the worst. She has committed so much evil because of her weakness and… ”

He shook his head and fixed me with a stare.

“You should not have let her go, Freddie.”

I took a breath. “Is she here?”

“She’s in the castle. She’s looking forward to seeing you again. You should thank her for the fact that the infection in your hand hasn’t spread up to your heart and killed you yet.”

“I will remember to thank her.”

I was taking care to breathe deeply to keep myself calm. I had tried to help that woman.

“But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Because of my elevated position I also met The God. I was given a woman and I carried out the rites. I tried to minimise the required cruelty, but I felt The God’s presence.”

He looked at me with a haunted expression.

“He is very real Freddie.”

I heard many things in my brother’s voice then. Hate certainly, a deeply buried rage, a touch of scorn and more than a little bit of fear.

“What was it like?” I heard myself ask.

I felt strange. I maintain a devout outlook on the Eternal Flame. It has been a while since I’ve really considered things but it has always struck me that I prefer the Eternal Flame itself to the church of the Eternal Flame. I absolutely believe in the Eternal Flame but I cannot help but struggle with all of the evil that I have seen and heard of coming out of the church itself.

Having said that, other than a strange sense of peace that comes over me in certain holy places of the Eternal Flame. My family’s chapel being the most obvious, the small wooden church in the village of the unicorn with the priest… Father Anchor and his wife, is another.

I found the cathedral at the top of Novigrad to be oppressive more than anything.

Other than that peace though, I have not felt the religious ecstasy that I have seen in the faces of some of the other members of the congregations when I have attended the various church services and sometimes that leaves me feeling as though I am missing out on something.

And in my weaker moments, I am jealous of those people that have felt something.

So I was intrigued. And Sam saw it.

He smiled slightly.

“I would flatter you Freddie, and I do mean that I would flatter you. This is a compliment. But I would flatter you and tell you that this would not be a religion for you. You are too good a person.

“It was like a hook on your soul. When you start the… I’m going to call it a rite. When you start the rite you can feel this kind of tugging feeling. I can only imagine that this must be what a fish feels like when it has been hooked. You can feel this tugging feeling. It is not unpleasant and my reaction to it all was fairly weak.

“It is not unpleasant but it is frightening. Or it was to me. It felt as though my sense of self was being tugged out of me by this strange hook and the more it tugged, the more pleasurable it was. The pleasure that can be found just this side of pain. But as well as that, it hurts. With a soul-deep pain and discomfort but within the depths of that pain is the most glorious pleasure that I can describe. And then, when the moment of climax comes, time seems to elongate out in front of you. And at that moment, I was aware of a presence that was there, watching me and approving of what I was doing. It seemed to me that it took pleasure from my pleasure and the pain that I was causing others in the heart of the rite. And then afterwards, there was a pleasure so profound that I passed out.

“It was like a beautiful but marred thing. Like a beautiful woman with a scar. Or blood running through an otherwise clear and pure stream.

“And as I came out through that euphoria, I knew that I was being promised more. There was more of that feeling available if I would just do a bit more, go that bit further, cause that bit more pain. It was revolting.

“But even now, I still feel that tug to feel that feeling again.”

He shuddered and I may say that it was a similar shudder to what I was feeling. He looked up into my eyes.

“I would not introduce you to the God Freddie. I would give you many things, anything that is within my power to give you providing it does not go against my plans, but I will not give you that. When I am done with The God, I mean to take steps to ensure that no one will ever be able to contact him again. Including me.”

He stiffened for a moment and then smiled.

“But I am getting ahead in my story again.” He laughed and pointed at me accusingly. “You must be very good at your job Freddie.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Published on a continental style.” I boasted and we both laughed.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. I felt a pang of horrible guilt. He was still my brother and I still loved him. While my broken sister worked feverishly at a desk behind me. While my best friend lay mouldering in a pit somewhere and while the woman I loved was being used as a weapon to subjugate the countryside, here I was sitting and laughing with the man who had made it all happen.

I swallowed and hung my head for a moment. Silence existed in the room but for the scratching of my sister’s pen.

“So I was sent South.” Sam continued his story, ignoring the moment of kinship that had existed between us. “My goal according to the cult in the North was to curtail the excesses of Edmund and Cousin Kalayn and to minimise the dangers that this was subjecting to the North. My own goal was to destroy the pair of them and have all of the rest of them killed. Preferably as part of some kind of legal thing where they could also be tried for heresy.

“The difficulty was being able to do all of that without being outed as part of their heresy myself. I could, and would, argue that I had been forced to become a heretic, but I rather thought that I would be burnt at the stake as ‘better safe than sorry’ and the church would love to stick one to Father.

“The easiest thing to do was to get them to destroy themselves of course and that was the course of action that I took. They all knew why I was there and I had to do some horrible things to guarantee, to them, my loyalty which involved doing some things that were dreadfully recriminating and distasteful. I will not go into them with you now. But with the philosophy that we used in the war which was that sometimes, a few dozen have to die for hundreds to be saved and hundreds of our enemies to be slaughtered instead.

“The men that forced that decision on me are all dead now anyway.

“So I sold myself to Edmund and Cousin Kalayn as a last lifeline. I played on their fears that sooner or later they might be caught and sold them the idea that, failing all else, I would be able to get word to the cult in the North so that Cavil and Uncle Kalayn could ride down here and save everyone. I insisted that it, therefore, be safer that I not partake in any of their little parties where they tortured and did horrific things to people. I also insisted that should anything happen, the only way towards safety was if I remained free.

“They accepted the plan, mainly because I managed to make it seem as though it was their idea. Cousin Kalayn especially was susceptible to only accepting a smart idea if it came from himself. And if he thought he was depriving me of something that I wanted for his good then that was all to help.

“So suddenly, I was the power behind the throne in that group of cultists. Sorry, the Ass-holes. Indeed, many of them that had joined since the war didn’t even know that I existed. Some of those that had passed me around like a full bottle of spirits had moved on, realising the horror of what they were doing or having died in the war. So the secret was relatively safe.

“And I could start to scheme.

“I was not the only person that was doing so as I soon found out.”

“Such as whom?”

“Father for one. I don’t know when he realised that Edmund was still doing what he was doing. I do know that Father had tried to send him away to separate him from his more harmful friends and that the pair of them had had a knockdown fight about the matter. Edmund admitted as much as our fool of an elder brother had a loose tongue when he had had a couple of drinks.”

I nodded at that.

“It was not a small source of worry for everyone.” Sam continued. “The organisation of the ass-holes was that Cousin Kalayn was in charge, and a man called Derain was in charge of scouting. He died on the bonfired in case you were wondering. But it was Edmund that furnished their lifestyle.

“Edmund’s tastes for debauchery were getting worse and more extreme. Increasingly he was getting his kicks elsewhere as well as within the assholes and Father was beginning to shake the branches underneath Edmund.”

“Where was I during this time?”

“I think that this was somewhere towards the back half of your university career, maybe just before you were setting out with The Witcher. That might be why you didn’t know much about what was going on there as you were taking pains to avoid contact with the family. But Edmund would have a pattern. He would fund his own habit as well as the habits of some of his friends. He would do more of what he wanted before he would be brought back in line by an unknowing combination of Father and Cousin Kalayn. But I was the one egging him on.

“Edmund was afraid. As well as being chatty in his cups, he became paranoid about it too. He would often ask me for advice and help with tears in his eyes and a tremor on his lips. And it was at this stage that I started to flex my muscles.

“I quickly found out that Father was aware of Edmund’s extra activities and that he was adjusting his will in stages. I know that the first thing he did was to protect Francesca, you and me. He had already sent Francesca to court to protect her. I understand that there had been an incident at home between Edmund and Francesca that had frightened both of our parents. This was actually the main reason that Francesca went south. I mean, there were all of the other ones as well, ambition, self-preservation and the hope of Imperial influence. But apparently, there was a moment in the castle between the two of them where Father interrupted Edmund being inappropriate with Francesca.

“According to some of the servants, our Father’s temper was something to behold that day.

So after Father had protected Francesca, he took steps to protect the two of us. Then, in smaller stages, he took steps to protect Emma and as much of the family's fortune and business as he could. The weakness in all of that was that he was specifically protecting them from Edmund, not me. Legally, he could do nothing to prevent his son from inheriting land and title without completely disowning Edmund which he saw as a last resort because of the obvious scandal that would ensue and therefore, the amount of damage that it would do to us all.

“So in talking with Edmund, I started to play off his paranoia that Father was going to cut him out of the will. I backed it up with evidence of the gossip that I had heard that Edmund knew was true and that meant that I could exaggerate and increase. He swore me to secrecy as he was just as aware and frightened that the Ass-holes could cut him off.”

“Would they have done that?”

“Oh yes. If he couldn’t get the money then he was actively dangerous to them. His exploits in the field of decadence were legendary and it was only by issuing huge bribes that some of that was already kept quiet.

“But, given all of the things that Edmund had done to me, I had no guilt at all of passing it all onto Cousin Kalayn and our friends in the North.

“And one night, after what passed for a rite among the ass-holes, Edmund had beaten a prisoner to death when some of the other assholes had still wanted a turn. They had moaned to Cousin Kalayn and in turn, as was his practice, our “high priest” was moaning to me.

“I remember it very precisely.

“‘What we need,’ I told him. ‘Is some way that we would get the money without having Edmund in the way? That way we wouldn’t have to be quite so accommodating of his mistakes’

“He nodded. Sometimes, he could be incredibly stupid.

“‘But the wealth of your family is such that we cannot set it aside.’ He commented. I can picture him clearly. He liked to sit in an armchair that he imagined as being like a bishop’s throne. He would sit there in those laughable excuses for robes while he had some victim pleasure him as he sat there.

“There was no victim that night though. I could almost see the thought process and it took me everything that I had not to laugh into his face. He was staring into his wine cup. Then he looked up at me as I topped up his cup and added some of the white powder that he liked. He stared at me for a long moment.

“‘What would happen,’ he began carefully, looking at me for a long moment while I waited for the thought to occur to him. ‘What would happen if Edmund died?’”

“I was playing for time at that point. I pretended to consider the question but I already knew the answer. I had long ago set up an arrangement with one of our lawyer’s clerks to ensure that I knew about any changes to Father’s will.

“‘Title, money and land would go to Mark.’ I said. ‘Emma would keep the business but that would be true, even if Edmund inherited.’

“‘Isn’t there a law meaning that churchmen can’t inherit?’ he wondered.

“‘I will have to find out.’ I told him. There is, there was, but I didn’t want Kalayn to become suspicious. In truth, Father would never have allowed Mark to inherit, he would want his title to pass down to his sons and if Mark got it all, then our lands would end up in the hands of the church. And the church would make efforts to take that money and land, even if the will said that the money and business went to the rest of us.”

“‘So the chances are that you would inherit?’ Cousin Kalayn asked. It was laughable really. Truly laughable. He was weighing me up and I could see my chance coming.

“‘There might be a need for some steps to be taken to ensure that, I told him. ‘But the chances are good that that could happen.” He looked at me for a long time. Then he nodded and I saw it in his eyes that the matter had been decided. Edmund was a dead man walking from that time on. But I wasn’t entirely ready yet. I needed to make sure that I could destroy all of them at the same time. Just taking care of Edmund wasn’t enough. A quiet stabbing in the alleyway was not going to cut it. I needed Edmund disgraced and destroyed. And although that first part of the plan would be relatively trivial, I also needed to make sure that the following steps were properly in place.

“Destroying Edmund would be easy, destroying the assholes would be equally easy really. But that would not bring me any closer to forming my own powerbase with which to strike out at the North. Being Uncle Kalayn’s heir was good if I could arrange for Edmund and Cousin Kalayn to be killed but Castle Kalayn alone would not give me the power needed to take on the cult.

“I needed the backing of the Coulthard fortune, title and money. So I needed to delay Cousin Kalayn.

“‘We need to be careful though,’ I told him. ‘If we just have Edmund murdered then everyone will be aware that they are all expendable when it comes down to it. We need to wait until he does something so foolish that you obviously have no choice but to cast him out and destroy him. If we leak some of the information about what he’s doing to Father then Father will eventually disown him. Then it will be clear that you have no choice.’

“‘How long will that take though?’ He wanted to know.

“‘Let’s be honest with each other,’ I told him. ‘Not that long,’

“He looked at me sharply. ‘Do you truly hate your brother so much?’

“I allowed a little bit of my true feelings to show through. ‘When I was nine.’ I told him. ‘My brother held me, face down in a pile of his own excrement while he took me from behind.’

“Cousin Kalayn took that in silence but I saw his acceptance in his face. And just like that, I was my cousin’s man and he absolutely depended on me and trusted me.”

I was trying to swallow bile.

“Did…?” I had to clear my throat. The fact that Sam had told that story with such a lack of passion was quite… awful. That’s the word that I’m looking for. It was awful.

“Did that really happen?” I asked. “The thing with Edmund I mean?”

“Oh yes.” Sam nodded. That he said it without any kind of inflection and without shame made it all that much more believable to me. “That, and much worse but to a man like Cousin Kalayn, he would take that harder and understand that kind of degradation much more than some of the inflicting of pain.”

I nodded.

“So now the plan was in place.” Sam went on. “Mark was an issue and we had to deal with him.” Sam went on, and I must say that it played out almost perfectly. I will admit that ideally, I would have been the one that figured out that Edmund killed Father but…”

“Hold on,” I said. “You missed some steps there. How did it all happen and where was Mark involved?”

Sam scratched the side of his head.

“You’re not going to like it.” He told me. “Then again, maybe…” He shook his head and leaned forward. “The plan was that I would gently coax Edmund on to eventually disgrace himself to the point where it was beyond the pale for Father to be able to allow him to continue. There were two possibilities there. The first was that Father would threaten Edmund and then Edmund would be able to be manipulated through his fear. The second would be that Father would just cut to the chase and cut Edmund off. This would mean that Edmund would be murdered and Father could be manipulated through his fear of all of that coming to light. Then it would not be difficult to orchestrate the moment where it all did come to light and Father’s death could be made to look like a suicide. I would inherit and be able to carry the fight to the cult.”

I felt my anger come back to me then for a while as Sam talked about disposing of the family so easily.

“And Father had to die for all of that?” I wondered.

Sam’s rage was sudden. He crashed his hand on the table. And leapt to his feet as he did so.

“Father knew. He knew everything that was going on with the cult and he did absolutely nothing about it. He didn’t take any steps, he just warned Edmund to stop. I told him what had happened when we were younger. Mother had told him and when Uncle Kalayn had been a jack-ass and you can’t tell me that he didn’t know that something was going wrong while he was wooing her. He knew Freddie and he did nothing. Complacency is no excuse.

“And even if that wasn’t the case, I was at war. And after everything else, Father was expendable.”

“And how would you have disposed of the rest of us?” I asked.

He calmed a little.

“Mother would have gone to an abbey to become a nun. We all knew that she wanted that anyway. I would have liked to punish her a bit more but that was unlikely to happen. Mark was locked off into his ambitions as his enemies wouldn’t allow him to climb any higher and although I was angry with him, I would be able to live with it if he didn’t have any further issues. I would have married Emma off and that would have meant that I could carry on my crusade. I even had some hopes that I would be able to bring you into my efforts there, maybe even bring Mark in on it too. Francesca was in the South and so nothing was going on there.”

I nodded.

He sat back in the chair.

“So…” He said after a while. “Satisfied?”

“I do not… I have never enjoyed being disposed of in Father’s ambitions.” I told him. “I did not appreciate it when he was trying to marry me off to this or that and I do not enjoy the fact that you were doing the same thing. Father had his flaws, I am the first to admit, and I am dismayed that he did not do more to protect you. But I remember all of the steps that he took to protect Edmund’s other victims, the orphanage, the charitable causes and…”

“ALL OF WHICH WERE DONE AFTER THE FACT.” Sam roared. “He could have… He should have done something to prevent all of that. Not wait until afterwards and mop it up in a way to make himself look better.

“Oh, he was protecting something alright,” Sam went on. “He was protecting his stupid family company. He was protecting his name and protecting his heir from scandal. He just thought it was a minor thing and he refused to look deeper. Because if he had looked deeper he would soon have found out that the problem was far deeper rooted than all of that.

“What was it he kept asking us? ‘Ask the next question, Frederick?’ Well, why didn’t he ask the next question?”

An insidious thought entered my mind then and I did not like it. I was agreeing with my brother. I did my best to squash that feeling and that thought as hard as I could. I did not want to agree with him. It was only one step after that that he would be able to have my sympathy, and then…

“What happened?” I forced myself to ask through gritted teeth.

I tried to remind myself what Sam had done. I pictured Kerrass’ dead face. The agony on Ariadne’s face as she had been tortured herself and the dead expression she had as she tortured Emma.

It was easy to find my hate and I tried to make a shield of that hate so that it would protect me. But Sam is my brother and I love him.

“What happened?” He asked. “Mark was a good man as it turned out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he was far too trusting and a traitor to boot. Father had told him not to worry about Edmund and the rest and he had trusted that. Another case of not wanting to look further or ask the next question. But then he made his little speech, criticising those that would call the then Empress Elect a harlot and a… whatever else the other church hierarchy called her. And suddenly, his root to higher church office was open.

“And therefore, if Edmund died, and Father died before or after, then Mark could not be allowed to inherit. Because if he did, then he would use the money, title, prestige and the rest to further his goals. Whatever else can be said that we all have in common as part of the family is our ambition. And Mark was no different. He had a vision about the change that the Church of the Eternal Flame had. And to be fair to him, he was and is right at that. But he got there by ignoring the heresy of his brother and by supporting the foul blackness that comes from the south so…”

He shrugged.

I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. “Sam, what did you do?”

“Mark needed to be removed as well.”

“Sam what did you do?” I repeated.

“First, I checked to make sure that Mark needed to die. I checked as to how hard and fast the rule about churchmen inheriting was and it turned out to be fairly malleable. It meant that Mark could inherit but he would be removed from church rank and have to become secular. That would not be a problem with my plans. Mark knew less about money and the running of the business and so it would be the place of the dutiful little brother to help him. But Mark was far too religious to allow that to happen. He was invested in what was going to happen in the church and he would not allow himself to be removed.

“So either Mark needed to die, or Father needed to properly insulate the fortune from Mark to ensure that I inherited rather than Mark. To do that, Mark would need to make his intentions plain for all to see. Or I would need to disgrace Mark and ensure that he never rose higher in the church.

“What did you do Sam?” I tried to keep my voice calm but I could tell that I was not entirely successful.

“I decided to make Mark ill. Something suitably degenerative but incurable unless through magic. The church was still…”

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE SAM,” I demanded before taking as deep a breath as I could manage. “What did you do?”

He looked at me steadily. “I poisoned Mark.” He told me. “It was not hard. I went to see Ella about my problem and she gave me poison that could damage his heart if introduced to the bloodstream. Mark had plenty of enemies because of his politics and who he was, so it wasn’t hard to get someone to scratch him with a poisoned needle ring.”

I got up from my chair and stomped a small distance away.

“It was curable,” Sam told me, just a hint of protest in his voice. “I didn’t want to kill Mark, I didn’t. I swear it, Freddie. I was quite happy with him being in the church, I even thought he might be useful in place there in helping root out the heresy in the North. I thought he might be able to give me the names of reliable inquisitors that I could use. It was curable. He would need to speak to a mage and I figured that the use of magical healing would seal the deal for him and kill his ambition. No church hierarchy would allow him to be promoted if he had been healed magically, as consorting with magic was still a crime in the priesthood. They tolerated magic users but they were holding themselves to a higher standard. And the stupid bastard got stubborn didn’t he.”

There was genuine disappointment in Sam’s voice.

I took a while to breathe in and out.

“Father found out he was sick,” Sam said. “I don’t know how. I had meant to leak it to him in some way later. But Father found out on his own and was one of the first to confront Mark with it. Father knew about Laurelen and knew that something could be done, but Mark wouldn’t have it and chased Father away. Mark was actually on worse terms with Father than you were at the time of Father’s death. Because Mark had seen through Mark and took steps to preserve everything that Father had built. Thus stymying Mark and ensuring my power base.”

There was a pause.

“Look at me, Freddie,” Sam ordered and at first, I wanted to refuse.

“LOOK at me, Freddie.” He ordered again and I turned.

“I regret what is happening to Mark.” He told me. “I do. Believe it. He has become a better man for his sickness and even he will admit that. But I did not want to kill him. In the end, though, I would do it again. I searched for alternatives to the problem, but the person who is truly responsible for Mark’s death is Mark.”

“Fuck that Sam,” I told him. “You could have done so many other things.”

“At the time of Father’s death, Mark could have done any number of things. It was still curable then. Laurelen was in the open. Ariadne was making her presence felt in the family and Kerrass had confronted him with it, but he refused. He was sick and he ignored it. In his determination to be more holy than the next fucker, he actively made the problem worse. I did not mean to kill Mark. But I would do it again.”

He meant it too. He was not ashamed of this.

“Who are you trying to convince Sam?” I wondered. “Are you trying to convince me? Or yourself?”

He sank back into himself and once again he was my brother. Whatever it was that he became to kill his brother, torture his sister, her lover and all of the other things that he had done, that part of him seemed to sink back and he seemed so like my brother again. I suddenly had to fight to keep myself from feeling sorry for him.

“Mostly you.” He admitted. “But only mostly. It’s one of those things that when I have a quiet moment, it rears its head up and I go over the argument again. It’s a thing of long marches and rides. It’s a thought process for garrison duty. Did I really need to do the thing that I did to Mark?”

He considered as he moved back around the desk to sit down. He had come out from behind it while we were both being angry with each other.

“What do I think now?” He said. “It’s easy to see, with the benefit of hindsight, that I might have done things differently and that would have been more beneficial in the long run. But at that time and in that place, with what I knew then rather than what I know now? I would have done the same thing.

“I needed, I still need, the Coulthard fortune to finance my liberation of the North. At the time I needed it to finance my campaign against the cult in the North. If everything went to plan, then Kalayn lands would be my forward base while Castle Coulthard would be my home base. Mark’s reignited ambition and the new route to the top jeopardised that effort. I didn’t mean to kill him and I would even argue that he killed himself through his own…”

He shrugged and let the matter go.

“I did not mean to kill him.” He said. “I am sad that he is going to die. But I would do it again.”

He stared up at me from where he had sat down.

“Sit down Freddie.” He told me. “We have much more work to do.”

I thought about it for a while. I didn’t want to sit down. I wanted to rage and shout and complain and scream and most of all, I wanted to smash his stupid self-righteous face in. But he was still in armour and I was still in my shirt sleeves. I looked at my brother. He was still the same Sam, with the same strong face, a strong jaw and handsome cheekbones. All of the features on my face contributed to me being ungainly and less than attractive, on him managed to make him seem handsome and charming.

There was a hardness in his eyes now that I did not recognise. I wondered if it had always been there and that I had chosen not to see it. I have thought a lot about what Chireadean told me about how lots of people have tried to warn me about the darkness that hides in my brother’s heart and I have defended him. Was that because I didn’t see it? Didn’t want to see it? Or was it because he wore a mask to hide it from me?

As I lay on the cot in my cell overnight, that is the question that haunts me while I think of it.

In the end, I sat down.

“So what happened after that?” I wondered, taking up my pen again.

“You pretty much know it.” Sam said, “or at least, you have guessed it, or you were there at the time. Both Edmund and Cousin Kalayn were depending on me, both thought that I belonged to them and no other and both thought that I was spying on the other for themselves. In doing that, I was able to feed Cousin Kalayn’s disgust at Edmunds's excesses and I was able to feed Edmund’s paranoia.

“I was, sometimes openly, spiking Edmund’s drinks to drive him to higher and higher heights. Edmund was not stupid though. He realised that he was out on a limb and that that limb was creaking under him. He started doing his sincere best to ingratiate himself with Father and the other members of the castle. I do not doubt that this was when he started keeping that code journal that you and Kerrass found.”

“Did you know about the journal?” I wondered.

“No.” Sam grinned at a thought. “After you found it, I spent a couple of sleepless nights waiting for you to find my name in it or otherwise figure out that I was involved. I don’t know why I wasn’t. I have to assume that Edmund either thought that my name wasn’t worth recording or that he was trying to keep me safe if he was hung out to dry so that I could come to his rescue or something. I don’t know.”

“Given what you have said. I think it’s more likely to be the former.” I commented. I think I was trying to hurt Sam’s pride or something. The comments about Mark were still smarting. He didn’t rise to the bait though.

“I tend to agree,” Sam commented. “I had certainly tried to be that insignificant to him, to them both.

“In the end, it was Father that broke first. Edmund had gotten drunk and he, along with a couple of cronies, had done something unspeakable to a travelling band of pilgrims. I was rarely involved in this kind of thing anymore. I had never had the taste for it and the little contact that I had had with The God had left me afraid that if I partook in those activities, then The God would be more likely to get to me. I was powerful enough and had the ear of enough people to be able to argue that it would be better in my role of being able to get them all out of trouble if I would not be seen at such things. I played up to my role as a younger son and truth be told, it was not hard to do the persuading.

“So Edmund did something unspeakable and Father summoned him. Edmund told me what happened. He wasn’t a perfect narrator in that his narrative was often interrupted by pleas for me to help him, to argue with Father and to keep things from Cousin Kalayn. But also with self-righteous assholery. Where he would insist that he was the eldest son and that Father couldn’t possibly exile him and so on and on.

“The truth, as far as I can tell, is that Edmund and some of the other cronies had come across a band of pilgrims. Edmund had been drunk, high or both and had determined to have some fun. Our cousin wasn’t there but some of the other assholes were and they did their thing with Edmund leading the rites. However, they were sloppy. One of the pilgrims was the youngest daughter of one of Father’s assorted minor merchants. You know, the merchant families that are part of the greater company?”

I nodded to show that I understood and Sam continued.

“The girl was a homely gal and was on a pilgrimage to either get away from her father, pray for a husband or to find a calling in the church. Things are uncertain. But she was important enough that her disappearance was noted, she was searched for and her remains were discovered. The local investigation found some bandits that were nearby that had seen the whole thing. The bandits owned up to what they saw, fairly easily I understand, and Father arranged for them to be found employment far away.

“Edmund had been summoned and Father, matter of factly, told him that this would be the last time that he, Father, would bail his son out. And that if anything happened again, then Edmund would be disowned and disinherited. Apparently, a quote was ‘I have more than one son for a reason.”

Sam’s impression of Father was still quite good and I could easily imagine Father saying something like that. I could not help but laugh and when I realised what had happened, I hated myself for it.

Sam seemed to ignore my brief moment of hilarity and carried on speaking.

“You pretty much know, or can guess what happened then. Edmund panicked and wanted to know what to do. He came to Cousin Kalayn and me and between the two of us, we had a big conference about the problem. The assholes all shared the problem because there was no one else that could provide the amount of money for bribes and debauchery that Edmund could. Therefore it was something of a crisis. I don’t know, but I rather think that if it had been any other person that had been caught to quite that extent, then they would have been hung out to dry long before that.

“The situation was quite fluid and no one came up with an idea. It was quickly agreed that it would be better for everyone if Father just died so that Edmund could inherit, but no one wanted to be the first to say it. I stayed out of it. Just sitting in the background as my plan fell into place. The plan would be that if Edmund killed Father, I could leave it to ferment for a bit until I turned up on a more “official” basis.

“Then I would use my knowledge of the murder to “figure out” what had happened and hang Edmund out to dry. Then I would be able to pursue the assholes. Their protests that I was one of them would have been dismissed as blame displacement as I would have been able to prove that Edmund had done the murder. I needed to keep my hands off.

“So in the larger meeting, I stayed out of it. Everyone knew what had to be done for the survival of the assholes. But no one wanted to say it. Let alone come up with a plan. So I waited until Edmund got desperate and we were alone and then I just told him what he needed to do. The plan for sabotaging Father’s riding equipment came to him quite naturally so all I had to do was to offer some practical points and insist that Edmund would need to force the issue so that Father would be careless.

“The job was done, Father had his “accident” all according to plan. It didn’t kill him but he was injured enough. I persuaded Edmund to go and be the dutiful son and when Edmund suggested that the problem was that Father wasn’t dying, I got him the stuff that he would need to poison the bandages and help Father shuffle off the mortal coil.”

I noted all of this with an effort to contain my disgust.

“A brief problem for Edmund turned into a benefit for me in that Byarby figured out that Edmund had done it and fled, causing Edmund to panic and kill Byarby and his wife. A bit extreme but that was not something that I had any part in. I did feel sorry for Byarby as I had a lot of fondness for the stupid old man. I was kind of hoping that I could use Byarby as an expert witness in it all. But…”

He shrugged.

I shook my head. “You dispose of these lives so easily,” I commented. “Byarby was one of the men that helped you to be who you are.”

“That’s right.” He told me. “Byarby did. I regret his death, but I was at war. I did not kill Byarby or his wife. I was furious when Edmund told me what had happened and I think that was the first time that Edmund realised how much danger he was in from me. The first time he had really seen me I think.”

He gazed at me steadily.

“You don’t understand.” He decided.

“No.” I admitted, “I do not.”

He nodded a little sadly. “I envy you your innocence. I say again, I was at war. My enemies were the cult and, to a lesser extent, the assholes. There is always collateral damage in war. That was what happened to Byarby.

“I “arrived” from where I was stationed further to the North, but the truth is that I had been camping in a deserted village just outside of our lands. I understand that Emma has turned it into an industrial brewing centre now. But at the time, we didn’t have authority there. And then…”

He shrugged again.

“Mother killed Edmund,” I commented.

“Yes. Mother killed Edmund. I was still figuring out how to turn all of that to my advantage when you turned up.”

“Did you know that Mother killed him?”

“I really didn’t.” He admitted. “No, you did that on your own. I thought that I had lost control somewhere and agreed with the whole theory that it was vengeance from someone. Maybe from someone that he had victimised or otherwise abused, or maybe it was someone from the assholes that were trying to go up in the world. I honestly had no idea.

“But you and Kerrass went through all of the stuff. I literally could not have done a better job of it all myself and I knew where all the skeletons were buried. I mean, I didn’t know about the code and the diary and you two figured that out.”

He laughed.

“Oh, I wish I could have seen the look on Cousin Kalayn’s face when you found all of that. I really do. I received a whole bunch of messages from him that told me to get my arse in gear to come and free him along with all of the others after you had caught him. I had to take them off somewhere private so that I could keep myself from crying with laughter as I read them.”

He shifted in his seat to make himself comfortable.

“I still have many of them. I keep them in a chest up at Kalayn castle so that I can take them out whenever I need a good laugh.

“What you don’t know is that you had been dismissed from both our brother’s mind and Cousin Kalayn’s mind as being the weaker brother. I had done my best to emphasise that to be fair, to protect you so that you wouldn’t be recruited into the cult yourself. By that point, of course, you were far too strong to be recruited. You were too settled in your own morals and codes of behaviour and more power to you for it. But I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when they realised that it was you that was systematically destroying their organisation.”

“I remember Cousin Kalayn telling me that he had often been told about my weakness,” I commented. “Was that you or Edmund that he was talking about?”

“To be fair, it could have been both of us. They still thought of you as lesser and if you had become a threat, then they would have not paused in the decision to kill you for it. Edmund genuinely thought you were too weak to be considered as being worthwhile.

“I would say that it was more likely to be Edmund though.”

“What about the sigils that we found?”

Sam cackled. “The inverted ankh and the Lionhead.” He laughed again. “As I understand it, it’s a genuine heresy. And it does have power similar to The God. It might even be the same thing, I have no idea and the people that know are dead or gone. My understanding though, was that it was just another taboo that Edmund and the rest got off on. Certainly, the folks in the North never used that sigil. It was one of those things…”

He considered.

“It had power. It did have power and we all knew that. But at the same time… It was almost like the hand of destiny or a more asshole way of placing the executioner’s axe over your head. We had it, we did things on or near it and we would assign it to people for it to be looked after.”

He sighed and his smile seemed to fade.

“I jest, but we empowered the thing with our rites. Was it connected to The God? Or was it connected to something else? I have no idea. I am glad you destroyed the thing. It was… unpleasant to be around.”

“I remember having to keep you away from coming to the arrest though,” I argued. “If you had come you would have been given away.”

“I remember the same conversation.” Sam grinned. “It was whether or not I would be involved in the arrest when you all went into the clearing to capture the cultists. You didn’t want me to come and Mark and the rest agreed so I played the dutiful vengeful son and protested that I should go along before allowing myself to be placated. If you had all said that I should have been there, I would have argued that someone should stay behind and protect the castle. That it might have been dangerous to leave the castle undefended.”

I nodded, it would have worked too. We didn’t know how serious the threat had been at the time.

Sam continued.

“I remember being convinced that someone in the arrested cultists would either admit, or would be forced to admit, that they were the ones that killed Edmund. So when Kerrass turned up, gathered everyone and told us about Mother while you went off and confronted her. I was genuinely astonished. As were Mark and Emma for that matter.”

“How much did you know of her past?”

“Oh, all of it. Uncle Kalayn used to boast to me about it. About how he had had my mother before my Father had. He was establishing dominance over me and, although I don’t think he realised it. I think he was considering himself in competition with Father. He was always angry that Father had made more money, was more famous and had more influence than he did. Regardless of whether or not he was a cultist and an asshole. He still had that whole superior thing over the new money of Father.”

I nodded, all of that made sense.

“So when we came to the sentencing of Mother?” I prompted.

Sam nodded. “I think I know a little bit more about what was going on there than you do. I know that Edmund had tried several inappropriate things with Emma and Emma knew about a lot of what Edmund had done to the servants and things. Emma was stronger… I mean physically, more than Francesca was when Edmund had tried the same thing and they were closer in age. So her knowledge of what had happened to Francesca was an extra thing for her.

“My fury was ignited by that though. Emma and Francesca had been believed where I had been ignored. There was something about that that struck me as unfair. I don’t know why one was more believable than the other and knowing that my mother knew about the cult and had more intimate knowledge of it all meant that my story should have been just as believable as either Emma’s or Francesca’s story. Yet I was ignored.”

“So your sentencing of Mother was out of vengeance?”

He winced at the phrasing. “Yes and no. Everything that I said in that meeting is and was true. If that had happened to anyone else, they would have been strung up. You have lived a rarified existence in that you have rarely had the opportunity to listen to the criticism that has been levelled against the family. But it is true that if anyone else had done what Mother had done, then she would barely have had time to gather her wits before she would have been taken to the headsman, or the gallows for that matter. Or… given her history, burnt at the stake.

“She could have done so much, but she didn’t. She could have burnt out the cult before Edmund could have been corrupted and it’s even possible that if she had done that, then she could have prevented Edmund from being corrupted, and although Edmund would still have been an asshole, lazy and entitled, he might not have been as bad. Maybe someone could have gotten through to him. I don’t know. And that is, for me, her real crime.

“I do not blame myself, but I killed Mark and I have been a party to other deaths. But every death that I have been a party to, every death in the North, every death that can be described there. She could have done something about all of it. She would have been believed as well. So this fight would not have been mine. It would have been fought before I was even remotely aware that the fight even existed. Mark would still be alive and all of those people that the cult, and the assholes, have killed and tortured over the years, would not have had to go through all of that horror.

“For that, I hate her and for that, she deserved to die and she still deserves to die.”

Not for the first time, I was dismayed by the anger and hate in his voice.

It was beginning to get late in the day by that point, the sun was setting through the windows and the natural light was turning red. Someone had come in and lit torches on all of the walls. Sam held his hand up.

“I know you have more questions Freddie and I intend to answer them. Next comes the night of the bonfires and the night that I properly met Phineas for the first time. And that will take more time than we have at the moment. So get some rest, and write up your notes. I will see to your comfort and the comfort of your assistant.”

I nodded and went to pack up but Sam proved that he was still similar to my brother after all.

“What do you think?” He asked me as I was bundling things up to be taken off.

“About what?” I wondered as a memory occurred. I sniggered. “You know that Kerrass once asked me the same thing after he had told me his story?”

“You told him that it would not be your place to judge. Because you were too close to the subject.”

“And what was true for him is true to you as well. There is a difference though.”

“What’s that?”

“Where Kerrass was a stranger who saved my life multiple times and had became a friend. You are my brother, my closest friend and my relative from my younger years. And it turns out that all of that was a lie. You have not saved my life, you have endangered it, stolen and tortured the woman I love and other members of our family and caused untold destruction. Kerrass saved me and rose to the occasion. You have destroyed me and sunk much lower than I could have thought possible.”

Sam actually laughed. “Yes, but other than that.”

I sighed and rubbed my head as I thought. “I think it’s a very sad story so far. I still don’t see how you went from that to where you are now, leading a rebellion against an empire that has only benefitted us. To a man that has betrayed and murdered…”

I forced myself to take a deep breath and consider things logically.

“I am forced to try and put myself in your place. What would I have done if those things had happened to me? Would I have risen to the occasion? Or would I have been destroyed?”

“There is no way of knowing,” Sam told me

“Which is true. I would need to think about it. But otherwise, I am forced to admit that I can understand your actions. I don’t agree with them, I don’t like them and I would like to think that I would have done things differently. But we don’t know. I can understand your anger against Father and Mother. And to a certain extent, I can understand your rage against Emma and Mark.”

Sam nodded as I spoke.

“I do think,” I carried on. “I do think you didn’t know all of what was happening in the middle of all of that though. I wonder if your story set Father to thinking. You were, as you admitted, Seven, you did not see everything that happened behind the scenes and maybe that was the thing that set Father to looking at Edmund properly. But like people keep telling me that Father was proud of me, we will never know now.”

I could not help but put some steel in my voice, some hurt and some of my own rage.

“We will never know because you had him killed.”

Sam accepted that point.

“I also wonder if what you remember is actually what happened. Memory is a fickle and imperfect thing. There are whole things that I don’t remember. I only remember some of what happened during my journey with Kerrass because I forced myself to write them down. So did those things that you describe actually happen? Or have you just forced yourself to remember them one way in order to justify what you have done. You did say that you cannot remember everything that happened in those early years and with the presence of the rites that you have taken and the drugs that you are continuing to take, medicinal or not, is your memory of the matter perfect?

“Again though,” I told him. “I can understand your anger. I can even understand your reasons for not wanting to use the proper authorities in that they would tear down the accuser and the accuser’s family just as much as they would tear down the intended victim.”

I shook my head.

“These are the things that we will never know now though. As I say, I think it’s a very sad story. I am sorry that you had to go through all of that and I’m sorry that you were forced to make those decisions when you should have been protected by those stronger than you. Emma, Father, Mark and Mother included.”

I thought for a bit longer.

“I wish I could have known, I don’t know what I would have done to help. It’s more than likely, if we follow your logic, that I would have got us all killed by church inquisitors and the rest. But we can’t know that. I am still a bit more hopeful about that. I rather think that the Inquisition would have relished an opportunity to tear down some old money and exert some dominance over them. Especially when trying to prove themselves to the newly conquering Empire and Emperor, Empress.”

He nodded his acceptance of this point as well.

“If I’m honest though?” I decided. “The thing that damns you is the death of Mark. You can make all of the excuses that you want, and you can justify it all you want, but you murdered your brother. He might still be walking around and being Mark. But you murdered him instead and so, have killed someone that could have been a powerful ally to you. He might have shared your outrage and used the crusade against the cult as a way towards his ambitions. Instead, you ensured that you would get the money, power and prestige.”

“Do I not deserve some reward for all of the things that I have been through?” He wondered, not aggressively, more curious as to what I thought.

“Duty is not done in anticipation of reward,” I told him. “Mark could have been your strongest ally and instead, you killed him. When you look back and wonder, that is the moment of your damnation I think. He had done nothing to you other than to trust his Father would take care of it. Which is what he was supposed to do in that place. That is what has damned you.”

He smiled a little sadly.

“Oh, Freddie. If by the time we are done with all of this, you still think of that as the least of my crimes, then I will be doing well.”

“I meant…”

“It doesn’t matter.” He said, waving the point away. “But you should know that Mark is not the only sacrifice I have made towards my goals.

He looked at me sternly, forcing me to meet his gaze. This was the leader, the torturer and the fanatic version of Sam. He made sure that he had my eyes before he spoke clearly and precisely, the way you do when you want to convince someone of the importance of your words.

“ In case you are wondering,” he said, “my goals have been the liberation of the North and the destruction of the cult and its off-shoots. Know this Freddie. Remember it and write it down.”

He saw me hesitate and he gestured. “I’m serious, write it down.”

I found a blank piece of paper and dipped my quill.

“In the pursuit of my goals. There is no coin that I will not spend. There is no blood that I will not spill and no life that I will not sacrifice in the pursuit of that. And before you accuse me of hypocrisy and tell me that if I was so sure of my ideals, then my own life and blood would be spilt, let alone my own fortune…

“Right now Emma is liquifying the Coulthard company to fund the rebellion. Mercenaries, arms, supplies and all of the rest. I have already spilt plenty of my own blood and eventually, I will spend my own sanity, life and maybe even my soul will be sacrificed towards that goal. I know that and I mean every word, Freddie. The only person that will survive to reap the benefits of all of this, is you.”

“Why me?” I asked, feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the determination in his voice.

“Because you are my brother Freddie. You are a far better man than me and while I remake the world, I would have you ensure that we do not then lose it afterwards.”

I nodded, not knowing how to answer that.

“Write up your notes Freddie. I will read them and then we will continue the story. The night of the bonfires and the entrance of Phineas onto the stage.”

“I would like to say that I look forward to it,” I told him.

“But you don’t?”

I shook my head and left.

(A/N: Sam’s story of his early life is not based on my life, but some of the sentiments that were expressed by him have been taken from accounts that I am aware of. As is the reaction of Sam’s parents and how various people reacted. If you, or anyone else you know, has suffered any of this or if any of it resonates with you, know that you are not alone and it is never shaming to seek help. In fact, that might be the bravest thing you can do.

Thanks for reading.)