It was a couple of weeks later that I remember the thought occurring for the first moment. In the meantime, those two moments were just spinning around in my head. Two ideas that I didn’t have room for. Several times while riding through the trees of my lands or on the roads in my neighbours while I tried to get excited about the latest breakthrough in the hunt for the last vestiges of the cult and hunting them down, I tried to consider the matter of Francesca but my mind kept drifting away from the topic. There was no… satisfaction with any of the possibilities involved, no sense of rightness.

And I could see no route forward with the matter of the Imperial forces that were occupying my lands either. I was an Imperial Garrison now. Not even a Kalayn castle. I started to hear the officers of the forces there starting to talk about the castle as “The Kalayn Garrison.” They even gave it a number. “Border Garrison 327.”

I had to find someone to explain to me what the difference was between a border garrison and a normal garrison. It took me several attempts too and those attempts were not the kinds of things that made me feel better about my lot. The officers in question wouldn’t meet my eyes and would refer me to their boss and superior officer before I was eventually fobbed off to one of the commanders out in the field.

In the end, it was a Sergeant that explained it to me. He was a good man, not the stereotypical Sergeant in that he was neither large and heavily muscled, nor was he given to fat. He was a thin, wiry man who had been given some learning at some point. He was softly spoken and gave the impression of what the men used to call a “pussycat” in that he would just let people get on with things and generally ignored them. But I once saw him catch someone doing something wrong and he tore strips off them.

“Sorry sir,” he said, he had a pair of those spectacles that he used to read documents. He lifted them off his nose and rubbed at his eyes. “I thought you would have known. A border garrison is the kind of garrison where you put an armed force in it and then they stay there. They conduct large-scale patrols and keep an eye on the countryside in case of rebellion. Never shook the name from back when the Empire was still relatively small. They garrison fortifications that are too small to be particularly strategically important but are too large to be left behind. They are small places, hard to reach and even harder to assault.”

I remember nodding as I listened to this and he continued.

“It’s the kind of place that an attacking army might bottle up so that they can prevent armed forces from sneaking up on them and sending troops out to end up behind the main force.”

“I understand Sergeant, thank you.”

I considered the matter for a bit longer.

“I have to ask Sergeant,” I said, “but what happens if the owner of the castle decides that he doesn’t want to be an Imperial Garrison? If he wants to run the castle himself and have his own people patrolling the walls.”

He did, at least, have the good grace to look a bit sheepish as he said the next line.

“But we are your own people, sir.” He told me before he found an excuse to go elsewhere and do a task that took him out of the nearby reach of the potentially irate lord that sounds like he was about to say or do something that a good, Sun fearing Sergeant would need to do something about.

A couple of days later, it wasn’t a situation where one thing followed another and then another. But I found myself in the main camp of the campaign against the cult. My impression of the effort was that it was getting to the point where the main purpose of the Nilfgaardian presence was to keep the majority of the Inquisition in check. The Colonel in charge still looked busy and there were still lots of maps and officers and knights moving around. Self-important little men think that their particular crisis was far more important than the crisis of the man standing next to them.

Come to think of it, remembering what you wrote about the various courtrooms of the land, it’s a lot like that. There are more than a few people on both sides of the debate, military and political, that would not enjoy that comparison.

But I was waiting my turn and turned up with a report about the states of the wounded and to report on the whereabouts of the supplies, that kind of thing and I found myself alone with the Colonel.

“If I may ask Colonel?” I began carefully.

He looked up from whatever piece of paper he was reading.

“Yes, Sir Samuel?” He had the practice of addressing people by their military rank if any. I think it was an effort to remind people that rank and bloodline meant nothing to him.

“I was wondering.” I had to clear my throat and I hated that I was nervous in the face of this man. He smiled at me encouragingly. I have not felt so condescended to since I stood before Father at the dinner table. I took a breath to quell the anger.

“I was wondering at what stage I would be able to take full command of my home castle,” I said. “I understand that my lands and fortifications were useful in the early days of the campaign but I find that I would like to start turning the place into my home. And given that the front is now some distance away.”

He nodded and seemed to consider the matter. I have no idea if he was really considering the matter or if he was merely pretending as a way to make me feel as though he was seriously considering the matter.

“Castle Kalayn is an invaluable fall-back position and is a good place for us to defend our wounded.” He told me, re-iterating the old arguments. “The other point, as the churches are so quick to remind me…”

He sighed and gazed at me knowingly in a way to try and bring me into his way of thinking. That trick of the eyes that people use to try and say that they are on your side.

“… This is not a standard campaign. It is more than likely that we have missed some of our enemies and as such, we need to ensure that we have not been circled around. For the moment, I would like to keep our wounded where they are and it would only be fair to those wounded men that have made among the ultimate sacrifices for Redania…”

Nice touch.

“... and the Empire that they are protected from further harm.”

“Kalayn men could do that,” I argued, I found that I did not want to give up quite so easily.

“It is also the symbol of the matter.” He told me leaning back in his chair. “They were soldiers of the Empire and as such, they should feel as though the Empire is looking after them.”

“But my men are soldiers of the Empire are they not? Therefore…”

“But they are not Black.” He told me. “Look, I understand how you feel Sir Samuel. I too would be resentful of foreign soldiers taking up barack space in my own lands. But for the here and now of the matter, I must insist that the Imperial Garrison remains in situation. I will make some efforts to ensure that we are having as little impact on Kalayn lands as we can and I will make some enquiries as to when you can begin to expect to have your home back.”

He leaned forwards and picked up his paper. It was a dismissal and one of the survival skills that you learn as a soldier, serving in any military, is what constitutes a dismissal.

I left, and I felt like a coward as I did so.

I don’t know when the idea struck me. But that moment in the tent with the Colonel kind of… solidified my resentment into something tangible. Something that I could take hold of.

It must only have been a week later when I was handed an Imperial decree. It came on thick, expensive-looking parchment by way of an Imperial courier. He turned up and handed me this thing that was sealed with the blue-black wax of the Imperial seal. It was a decree that told me that the Empire required the use of Castle Kalayn for the foreseeable future and that I should not expect the castle to be handed back to me any time soon.

I mean, there was some more flowery language in it than that, phrases like “Eternal Gratitude” and “we must all make our sacrifices in the cause of the greater Empire” and other shit like that. There was also some logistical stuff about how the castle was still mine and that there was no intention to interfere with the governing of my lands. All with the ignorance of the fact that the very presence of soldiers wearing black uniforms with sunburst symbols on their chests was more than enough interference.

It was not signed by the Empress. I remember that much. Nor the Colonel in question to be fair but it looked to be the signature of some secretary on the behalf of the Empress. I have been angrier, but not by much though. It took everything I had to carefully roll the message up as I know for a fact that simply tearing up an Imperial decree is considered treason. I even know that receiving an Imperial decree is considered a high honour.

I didn’t feel honoured though. I felt insulted. I felt as though I was beneath everyone’s notice. As though people could just pass me over and that I wasn’t even worth courting. My obedience was assumed and derided as natural because “what else was I going to do?”

But as well as those two things. I found that I was angry about a third, much more petty thing. WE had done this, you and I and some other people. WE had destroyed the cult. But that effort was being taken away from us. WE had done this. Where was OUR promotion? Where were OUR honour and glory? I had found the cult and brought in the experts, YOU had sacrificed so much to bring word back and to prove where our enemies were. Where were the parades? The rewards? The fealty? The honour? Why weren’t people falling over themselves to heap praise about our feet?

I know the answer, but it doesn’t stop things from hurting the less.

They didn’t honour us because we had brought their shame to light. We had done a great thing, you and to a lesser extent, I. But in doing so, we had shown everyone up. They wanted the glory and the praise because they should have been the ones to do it and as such, they didn’t want to heap praise on the people that had done their job for them. If they had praised us, they would have needed to explain to people what they were praising us for and they couldn’t bring themselves to do that.

I didn’t decide to rebel at first. It was not a sudden thing. I didn’t send a message to Phineas to ask what I needed to do. It was quite a slow decision. There was no single moment.

First, there was listening out for other people that might share my sentiments. Then there was the beginning of the conversations. Then there became a moment where we started to gather allies. I don’t know when we tipped over from there just a few friends talking about how angry we were at the Empire for being in a situation where we were actively plotting a rebellion. But that’s how it worked. Suddenly, there we were, making plans.

Who were those early conspirators?

It started with Kristoff. He, too, was looking forward to a bit of peace and downtime. He had no interest in getting married and was looking forward to a quiet life. He wanted a small house somewhere. He was looking forward to not going to bed with a list of tasks that he had not gotten around to doing and waking up to a new list of things that needed his immediate attention.

There were others as well, if I started naming them all now then we would still be here in a year. It started with the same kinds of younger sons that had once been associated with the cult. Those men had managed to break free of the cult’s influence by going to war and staying away. Men that found marriage at court and stayed in Ban Ard and the like, were too far away for the cult to influence them.

Then it turned out that they had friends and they had friends.

We spoke to old comrades and sounded them out and you would be surprised how many of them were as angry as we were. There was a sense about the entire thing that everyone had been waiting for everyone else to start a rebellion. At the very least, we had all been waiting to invade Temeria for their betrayal. We had been allies but they hung us out to dry and…

Sorry. Still angry as it turns out.

I wanted to be careful. I was well aware that the situation was such that, it grew fast. Too fast for my comfort but it grew. Veterans from the war with the South who, like me, resented the way that the Empire had won.

Do you remember my little speech on the walls above Kalayn castle? About how it was a soldier’s pride that drives us into the enemy lines? About how we resented the fact that the politicians and the spies had sold out our nation from underneath us?

All of that was still true and had not gone away.

It was even almost condescending about how the South had taken our pride from us. And Temeria. TEMERIA was the place that was given an independent status.

Fuck them.

So we attracted old comrades and later we attracted those younger, bitter men that had lost families to the war that had seen their old family castles and lands being taken up by Imperial Vassals and loyalists. And yes, there were those men that lauded me because they saw Emma, and you, as being collaborators with the Invader. They came too and made me a hero for being the one that was starting this whole thing.

It is worth admitting that I bought into that a bit. I’m only human after all and when all of your friends and comrades are standing around telling you how much of a hero you are for standing against your more famous and profitable siblings, it has a way of climbing inside your skull.

I always defended you to those people. You were making your own way in a world that did not value your own skills and expertise. You were making your way, the only way that you knew how and when people called you collaborator, I would point out that you were an educator. I would point out that you were blinded by grief with the loss of Francesca and that you were not a fighter and therefore not in the same position that the rest of us were.

But unfortunately, their attitudes towards Emma fed into my resentment of Emma. She was still trying to dictate what I did and when I was doing it. She would arrange for me to meet eligible women and it kept striking me that the women that she was introducing me to were all Imperial ladies. No matter how often I told her that I wasn’t interested in any bride really as I was too busy, but even if I was looking for a wife, then I would certainly not be choosing one from South of the Yaruga.

She took offence to this and spun me the same old bullshit about her only looking out for me and wanting the best for me but I saw through her. She was looking out for herself and her “business interests”. It was never lost on me that the brides that she chose for me when she was listing their virtues including looks, which always seemed to come first as if I was quite that shallow, there would come, second or third on the list, the fact that she would bring in good things for the business end of the scale. They would bring good concerns in the local quarries, or the wool that those sheep produced was particularly fine, or the barley harvests were…

You get the idea. And coupled with the constant rumour that Emma was going to be attached to the Imperial treasury it all just…

With you, I always thought of you as my ally and friend whereas Emma became increasingly combined with the Empire in my head.

And that sentiment was growing in my heart during this particular period. She was just as angry with me as I was with her. Every time that I turned her plans down or declined to meet whatever suitable woman that she suggested. Even when I did meet one or two of them because I was in the local area, I found that I didn’t like the lady in question by simple virtue of the fact that Emma had made the introduction.

She would contact me about this or that, telling me that we needed to start talking about what was going on in Kalayn lands and how we would best set about monetizing that piece of land and multiple times I would lose my temper and just tell her to fuck off. Or she would tell me to sit down and shut up, literally telling me to stop acting like a child which did not do my temper any good at all.

.

But there was a problem. As we started the process of shaking out some form of command structure. A way of making cells and not letting anyone get too hot-headed and then ruining it for the rest of us. There was a council of sorts where all of the problems that you have mentioned before came up.

The overwhelming numerical odds. The lack of stockpiles of food and arms. The fact that we are occupied. The differences in technological advantages. The alliances of magic users see the Empress as being their new hope of being able to be powerful and influential. The Witchers and the like.

We were confident that the churches would come to our side out of fear of the Great Sun becoming the major power. But after that, even the power of the Empress herself. The Allies and the like...

Those early meetings were gloomy, I will not lie.

And then I went to see Phineas who had been waiting for me.

He smiled when I arrived.

“You look stressed,” he told me. This would have been, roughly speaking, when you were leaving Skellige, not that much less than a year ago.

My overall feeling of him at that point was that he had been in the same place for a while. He was secure, comfortable and contented with his lot in life. I think he knew which way the world was going and was not dissatisfied with things being the way they were. He had a cottage in the wilds of Kaedwen. Our method of contacting each other was by virtue of us having drop boxes around various places that he would check whenever he remembered which seemed to be on a semi-regular basis.

Then a message would turn up telling me when a portal would arrive next to me and all I had to do to get to wherever he was at the time was to simply step through it. It wasn’t a bad system but the danger was in making sure that I was in a private enough place when the gate arrived. There were a lot of people in the rebellious conspiracy by this point and I didn’t have much faith that I would be able to explain away the presence of one of the main people that were involved in the cult being one of my chief advisors.

There was also an unwritten, unacknowledged point that the way we defeat all of the problems that faced us was by harnessing our magic. Finding a few patriotic mages and getting them to work for us. But too many of us were part of the old, church factions that were dismayed by the influence that the mages and Sorceresses, in particular, had over the monarchs of the North.

But the time came and I stepped through the portal.

Phineas liked the simple life with a couple of exceptions. He claimed that it was the years that he had spent on the run from the Council of Mages that had made him that particular way out and that it was now a habit that he struggled to shake. He liked expensive clothes, or more accurately he liked his clothes to be made out of expensive fabrics. He once told me that when you were used to the feeling of expensive silk against your skin, then anything else is like shards of glass.

He also liked good wine. He would be the first to say that there was often a difference between something being “good” wine and being “expensive” wine. He also liked good food but he claimed that that was less important as given that he could teleport wherever he wanted, then if he fancied this meal or that meal then he could simply teleport himself into the alley behind the restaurant and walk in.

But otherwise, he quite enjoyed the simple life. He would work and then he would enjoy sitting out and watching the sunsets and the like. I suspect that he would have made a good poet, or a painter maybe but, like with his magical education, he would have needed to apply himself for that, more than he had been doing anyway.

“I have a problem.” I told him as he gestured to invite me to sit down before he found a glass and poured me some of his wine.

He really did have good taste in that kind of thing. I remember that it was a crisp and clear white wine that was more refreshing than it was alcoholic. I have no idea what it was and Phineas would resist any attempts to ask him.

“Let me guess.” He told me with the sly smile that I always wanted to slap off the side of his face. “You have decided that you want to throw off the yoke of Imperial tyranny but you are beginning to realise that such an issue is easier said than done.”

I could not help but laugh at him.

“One day,” I said, “One day, I will stop being surprised at how well you realise this about me.

“Not this day though.” He told me. “Your more intelligent comrades are talking about things like logistics. They are arguing that you are already an occupied force and that therefore it would be all but impossible to build an army without someone noticing. The same for if you started to stockpile arms, armour and all of the other things that are escaping me at the moment, that an army might need.”

I nodded in agreement.

“But even if I could do that,” I told him. “There are simply not enough troops. My less intelligent friends are saying that the fighting spirit of the North is not diminished and that if we fought, then courage, faith in the Eternal Flame and the quality of the men of the North would see us through. They are saying that the Southerners are cowards and that one stiff fight would see them off.”

Phineas laughed with me at that.

“I swear,” I told him. “That I caught one young man insisting that the Nilfgaardians had never been in a proper fight and that… I swear this is true… That, and I quote, “once they taste good Northern Steel then they will flee like the dogs they are,”

I remember that we both considered this.

“I don’t know.” He mused. “Would Northern steel taste better with a little garlic?”

He laughed, I laughed, and it felt good to laugh but these asshats did believe that kind of thing.

“Then there will be the other factors, as well.” He took up from me after we had calmed down a bit. All of the things that your brother once used to argue with an Elder Vampire.”

“Those are the very problems.” I admitted, giving in to the urge to take a long drink from the cup in front of me.

Phineas nodded, letting the silence lengthen.

You have talked before about how Kerrass goes about asking questions of people. About how he just allows the silence to lengthen until the pressure of that silence makes people keep speaking.

Phineas did the same thing until eventually, I snapped.

“Can you help me?” I asked.

He looked at me carefully.

“Yes.” He told me. “Yes I can help you and before you start with questions, in helping you, I will be helping The God and as such, there needs to be no question as to how much it will cost or what I get in return. The answers to that are that it will cost you everything and I will need to have nothing in return.”

“What can you do?” I asked.

“The same thing that I was going to do when you wanted my help to destroy the cult.”

“I know,” I told him. “But I want to hear it again.”

He nodded and took a slow sip of his wine.

“I can show you how to empower your troops with the power of The God so that they can become bigger, stronger, faster and more obedient to your will while also having enough intelligence to be able to think on their own.

“I can give you an item of command that will allow you to control all of the vampiric slave race that are in the local vicinity so that you will have an army that is immune to normal weapons that will spring up, almost literally, out of the ground to fight your enemies.

“And I can tell you how to empower yourself so that your power will equal that of the Lady of Time and Space.”

I was shaken by that last. It was not something that I had heard before.

“The cost for that is high. But remember that her power is over that, time and space. So what you have to do is make it so that when she is in your time and your space… You can destroy her before she can react. Before she even has the chance to react. Before she even knows that she is destroyed.

“In doing so, you will have ended that line and so one of The God’s enemies will have been destroyed, never to return. That will be my payment and it will be our reward, yours and mine. Mine for helping you to do that, and yours for the doing.”

I nodded.

“What must I do?”

“Well… Like I said last time. There is a cost, there is a price to pay, sacrifices to be made.”

“My life?” I sneered. “I have been willing to sacrifice my own life to destroy the Nilfgaardians since I first put on armour.”

He laughed and sneered again.

“No, it is easy to sacrifice one’s own life and blood. You must do worse than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“The God does not give his power freely. He guards it carefully because he needs it to be able to break out of the prison that he is part of. So he needs a demonstration of how far you are willing to go. You must go further than the others, you must do more than the others.”

“This is about Francesca isn’t it?” I told him. “I need to sacrifice Francesca.”

“Yes.” He told me.

For a moment, I remember hesitating. But the answer had been obvious. I had taken Francesca to destroy the cult but since the destruction of the cult, that goal had seemed quite small. As it turned out, I had been able to facilitate the destruction of the cult without her. But there was no way that I could overcome the obstacles that faced me now.

I nodded. But that didn’t seem enough.

“I will sacrifice her,” I told him. “She is a noble, we are taught that the day may come when we must sacrifice ourselves for the good of the nation or whatever cause it is that we need to do.”

Phineas sighed.

“You are thinking that you must sacrifice her on some altar. You are imagining an altar with arcane symbols on it. Maybe a misshapen spire, robes and a strange, impractical dagger that you will use to cut her throat so that she can die a relatively painless death.”

I nodded, “I thought that that was the way that things worked.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“You must do much worse than that.” He told me.

***

Sam stopped talking. And by every power that exists, I wish that he had not gone any further and that I had not asked the next question.

“What did you do Sam?” There was a rushing in my ears and Sam wouldn’t look at me.

“What did you do Sam?” I asked again.

He swallowed.

“Do you remember…” He began and swallowed. “Do you remember the totem that was meant to control the slave in Angral?”

I nodded.

“Do you remember what it was made out of?”

“I do.” I said. “I remember that the totem was a bag made out of human skin. The bag contained the bones of a baby that had been forced to cannibalise its own mother while rituals had been conducted upon it. The skin was the baby’s own skin. I seem to remember that the baby was the result of…”

I didn’t say it. I couldn’t put those words and Francesca’s name in the same place.

Sam nodded. “Yes, it was.”

“But there had been something missing,” I said. “What was missing Sam?”

Sam still wouldn’t look at me.

“Sam…”

“The baby had to be the product of incest.” He told me. “The most disgusting thing, the thing that showed The God that I was willing to go further than anyone else and…”

***

I lost the rest of the words that he was saying. The sound of whooshing in my ears increased.

For seven heartbreaking heartbeats, I didn’t know what he meant.

They say that time is relative. It’s the kind of thing that Ciri says when you get a couple of beers in her. She likes to bend people’s minds by telling them that time is a bendable, fluid thing. That time changes and is not absolute and we all know that. That we have all experienced some hours that have gone by with breathtaking speed while there have been other hours that have dragged on.

For seven heartbeats, I didn’t know what he meant.

And then the answer appeared in the front of my skull written in letters of fire and there was not enough air in the room. I have a distinct memory of the feeling of the wood grain in the chair underneath my fingers. My feet felt a long way away from the rest of my body and the room felt incredibly hot.

I couldn’t breathe, it was a struggle to get my mouth open and the air into my lungs and it was as though the walls themselves were pressing down on me.

I could not have done other than what I did. I got my feet under me and hurled the chair at the nearest guard before I leapt up onto the desk in front of me and threw myself forward. I wanted to put Sam’s eyes out with my thumbs.

I absolutely intended to throttle him and jump on his chest until his rib cage shattered. At that moment, I intended to die there if it meant that Sam would also be dead. I was going to rip what remained of his manhood off with my teeth and I was going to keep ramming my forehead into his face until it caved in. I was going to dig my fingers into his throat until I could tear it out. I was going to stamp on his limbs until they were powder. In fact, I was trying to remember some old anatomy charts so that I could figure out exactly how many bones he had so that I could break every single one of them.

I didn’t make it to Sam. I didn’t even get to grips with his shirt.

An impact hit me in the side like a battering ram and I was carried from my feet. An iron grip was around my throat and I couldn’t breathe. I remembered lots of different moments as they flashed before my eyes. I was in the courtyard of Sleeping Beauty’s castle being held up by the throat by Maleficent. Again, in the caves under Toussaint where I was being held up by the throat by the Unseen Elder and then, again in Angral when I was gripped by the throat by a furious and hurt Ariadne.

All of those people were angry, all of them furious.

I felt the impact as my back slammed into one of the bookshelves. From what seemed like a distant tunnel, I heard Emma scream briefly. There was a crash and all of the air whistled between my teeth in an explosive burst and I looked into the eyes of the woman I loved. Ariadne, and this time, as she throttled the life from me, she looked at me with dead eyes rather tha furious ones.

It was just a fraction of a heartbeat and I felt myself give up. If I was going to die, at least it was her that was killing me. The last embrace of love that she could give me.

“That’s enough,” Sam called. “Let him go.”

Ariadne let go instantly and I fell to the ground, my legs collapsing under me. I screamed in agony at the jarring motion as my ribs had been bruised in the impact.

One of the guards came over and I think that he mistook my scrabbling left hand as if I was going for a weapon of some kind. If I was, I have no memory of it. Whether there was a lump of wood that I could have turned into a club or not. I was barely conscious with the pain and the horror of it. But he saw a threat and in a mirror of what Sam had complained about, in being shown up by the skinny scholar and the Vampire’s saving his Lord. The guard stamped down onto my left hand in a display of righteous anger that probably crippled my left hand for life.

I have dim memories of Sam ordering them off but I was screaming, full-on howling the place down and I have no idea what he said. But there was a glow around Ariadne and I slept.

That night, was the first time that they forced a tube down my throat to get some food in me.

Those seven heartbeats haunt me. Even now, as I sit here and write these words they haunt me. Seven heartbeats. The amount of time it takes a young child to count to seven. The amount of time it takes for someone of Kerrass’ skill to kill a man and the amount of time it takes an archer who is aiming carefully, to shoot his target.

Seven seconds where I just sat there, in the chair that my brother had provided for me and I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I just accepted what my brother told me…

No, not my brother. I refuse to accept it.

Ariadne once told me and a room full of people that the action of creating a totem that would control the Vampires would create madness inside the people doing it. She used the phrase, howling at the moon and throwing their own faeces around to escribe it.

That is not my brother. I refuse to see it. I refuse to believe it. It is not my brother. My brother would never do that. It didn’t happen. I can see, even understand and even… in the darkest moments of what passes for the night in the depths of the castle that I am held prisoner in. I can even understand why he did everything that he did up until that point. I might have done things differently. I might even like to think that I would do things differently. But I wasn’t there. I was not in the same situation that he was and as such, I cannot tell what kind of damage would have been done to me. I cannot tell what decisions I would make in those moments.

That is going to haunt me, that in his place, I might have done the same thing. Kerrass has often told me that we do what we need to do to be able to survive and that when we are in a place of safety, we can take all the time we need to remonstrate with ourselves and be angry with ourselves. We can confess to the awful things that we did and we can seek forgiveness.

I can understand what he did even though I hope that I would have done things differently. But for two things.

I remember standing as I left the study. The moment when I told Sam that the moment where he damned himself. The thing that he did that was irredeemable to me was that he poisoned Mark and therefore he killed his brother. That he was involved in the deaths of Father and Edmund was by the by. And the fact that I cannot hate Sam for that is something else that haunts me. But that he killed Mark, that was the thing that I thought damned him in the eyes of the Eternal Flame. It certainly damned him in my eyes.

Mark was…. IS a flawed man and he was back then and when we were younger. But now he is…

Flame but I remember feeling so righteous at that moment. So… proud that I stood there and hurled that sin into my brother’s face so that he could know how doomed he was.

I look back at that now and wonder how naive I was as I said that. The things he did later were far worse. FAR worse.

I thought he would be damned before. Now…?

But there is something worse and I don’t know how to…

There had been shame in the thing that wore my brother’s skin when he told me about what happened to Francesca. There was a shame there. But at the same time, he was more ashamed of what he had done to Mark. I cannot comprehend that. I cannot even…

Flame.

I refused to eat that night but Sam…

Flame curse me but I still have to call him that.

Sam ordered that I needed my strength. So when I took the tray that they gave me to eat, I hurled it at them and told them that I would sooner die than eat the slop that they fed me. That I did, in fact, intend to die rather than play their games anymore.

So men came into the room and slipped the tube made out of pig gut into my belly so that they could pour food into it. When they left, I stuck two fingers down my throat and vomited up as much as I could. So they simply repeated the process.

I was helpless with outrage, frustration and grief by this point. I couldn’t stand still or sit still and what remained of my logical brain was flushing itself out of my tear ducts. I was sobbing with it, my breath whistling between my teeth and I screamed until eventually, I must have slumped somewhere and fallen asleep.

The following morning the guards came for me and I tried to kill myself by guard. I hurled myself at them and did my very best to cause enough damage that they would injure me to the point of death. They refused to oblige of course but it did mean that they didn’t take me anywhere.

I did consider trying to dash my brains out against the wall but I could not work the courage up to do that yet. I was not thinking clearly and an act like that would require a certain, cold amount of thought and determination which I didn’t have.

Not until the following day.

I was betrayed by the fact that the stone on the wall was carved flat and as such, it was far more difficult. If I could have found a sharp edge or something. But instead, I only managed to cut my head open and knock myself insensible. When I did wake up I was tied to my bed.

And that was the extent of what I could get away with.

I had also lost what little autonomy I had.

Three days, as best as I can tell, after the point where Sam had told me what had happened to Francesca and how she had died, I was lifted from my bed while still recovering from my breakfast. I struggled as best as I could but I was taken to another room where my piss, vomit and shit stains were cleaned from me by tying me in a spread-eagled position and then I was given a sponge bath by two men that looked at me with haunted eyes.

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I was clothed again before I was manacled with much heavier bindings around my wrists although I noted that they did not bind my feet and they dragged me to Sam’s office.

They forced me into the chair and then tied me to it. They did it properly as well, there was little that I could do to struggle or make any space in my bonds.

Sam was watching me. He looked better than he did the previous time. He looked tall, powerful and strong, even if he was sweating in the cool air of what must be the dying days of Autumn.

“Are you done with your little tantrum?” He asked.

I said nothing as a guard approached and put some papers underneath my writing hand before he put a pen nearby and a small pot of ink. I wanted to throw them all at Sam but the best I could manage was to sweep them onto the floor.

“Ah Frederick,” he said. “You assume that you have a choice in the matter.”

“More torture?” I wanted to throw the words back into his face with defiance. But looking back I wonder if it was going to be a whimper.

“No.” He said, sitting down, absently picking up a sheaf of papers that were on his desk and fanning himself with them to keep himself cool.

I looked around. Ariadne was still there and I looked for some sign that the woman that I loved was still under there somewhere. But I saw nothing. I didn’t even hope anymore. I could hear Emma working away and the gentle murmurings of people having their little meetings over the huge map.

It occurred to me that I wasn’t far from breaking apart like shattered glass.

“There is no shame in breaking Frederick,” Sam told me. “Everyone breaks, sooner or later, there is no shame in it.”

“Fuck off.” I told him but my voice lacked strength.

He smirked.

“Well Freddie,” he began and he was not the only person that noticed that I didn’t try and correct him, “there will be no torture. I don’t need to because I know what you are going to do. I am going to speak and you will not be able to help but listen. That’s not your fault. But you are a historian and you cannot help yourself.

“Whether you like it or not. It’s history that is happening here and you will want to record it. Again, there is no shame in that. That is your duty. Your call to arms. In the same way that I must fight, you must record the things that you see. It is inevitable.”

He sighed and nodded to a guard that was standing near my shoulder who placed the paper beneath my hand again along with the ink pot and the pen and Sam started to speak.

I really did try to ignore him. But his words were inexorable in boring into my skull. I would like to think that there was some kind of magic in his words that made my listening to them inevitable and unavoidable. But the truth is that Sam was right. There was no way that I could avoid listening to him and if I couldn’t avoid listening to him, then I could not avoid recording what he was saying. There were parts of that meeting that I didn’t listen to and that I didn’t record because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. But over and over again, he drew me back. In the end, I just couldn’t not listen to him.

BUT, I could not look at him.

“So I did the deed.” He told me, settling into his chair. “Luckily, I only had to do that thing twice before Phineas declared that what needed to be done had been done. Then there were rituals and I will not go into those. They were awful and they tugged at my sanity. They were not as bad as what I did to our sister but they were still pretty bad. The upshot of all of that is that I am now, functionally impotent. The things that I did in those moments are seared into my brain and now… the thought of a woman, or a man getting anywhere near me makes me physically sick.

“Yes, I know that I took a woman with me into the chambers during your party. And she was very understanding when I ‘passed out drunk’ since she was getting paid enough anyway. So there was that... My main challenge that night as we moved into the brothel was keeping the dinner down.”

“That was the hardest part? Not lying to me?” I said bitterly. “Nor lying to the other men there that loved you. Or the friends that have literally fought beside you. Keeping your dinner down at the sight of genuine people genuinely loving each other, THAT was the thing that gave you the most difficulty?”

Sam gazed at me levelly for a while before he took a deep breath.

“I have said it before and I will say it again. There is no price that I will not pay to see this done Freddie. Your respect and your love is a small price to pay for a free Redania and a world that is rid of the black scourge.”

I said nothing to that and he continued.

“In the meantime, while the magical element ripened, we started to make the logistical plans that we needed to make to actually rebel. The plan was that we had to damage the Empress’ aura of invincibility and that when we had done that, we would have more and more people flocking to our banner. The other objective was to cut as many of the heads from the snake as we could in one fell swoop.

“It was Kristoff’s idea to strike on the night of your wedding. He argued that all of the people that we needed to kill would be there. At a stroke, we would be able to kill a significant number of the Lodge of Sorceresses, the monarch of Skellige and a number of the commanders of the enemy armed forces. The totem of control of Vampires would be constructed by then so Phineas suggested the idea of a storm that would prevent other troops from being able to reach us and it would also prevent people from escaping.

“We would kill Emma and use the trading company to be able to fund the rest of the Rebellion. Mark would name me as the heir of everything and then… We would lead our rebellion into Temeria which would give us the benefits of the harvest. After that, we would need to be a bit more fluid.

“We intended to make friends with the people of Aedirn by simply promising them food. Those poor fuckers have been in the right state since the war and we figured that their loyalty would be easy to buy. Cidaris and Vergen would join us as we liberated them. We intended to offer them allegiance against Nilfgaard and primary logging rights on the Brokilon. Temeria would want a piece of that of course but… War, and we can always turn on Temeria later. I intend to destroy Temeria for their crimes. The reversal of the foolish pro-non-human laws would be another reason that people in Aedirn and Kaedwen would come to our side and then…

“Well, we didn’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves.

“Originally, Phineas planned to be the one to create the storm, but circumstances did not permit.

“Don’t worry, I’m getting to that.

“This was all before winter though and all we were doing was planning and testing the extent of our capabilities. Then the major problem was thrown into our work.

“That problem was that Kerrass found signs of Phineas in Angral.”

He sighed and rubbed at his eyes.

“I want you to know that I knew that you were sick. I read about your breakdown under the rock while travelling and looking for the cult. I read about your adventures with the Unicorn and your time in Skellige, it was easy for me to read between the lines and acknowledge that you were ill. I have seen similar signs of similar illness in friends that we fought with against Nilfgaard and when we crossed the mountains against Kaedwen. Men who have fought so much and put themselves through so much that their own body starts to rebel against the strain.

“Not all of us are meant to do that or do the things that you have done. Not all of us have the capabilities to be soldiers, or we can but under smaller periods. And you have done so much more than that. So I knew that you were ill. I wanted to come and support you through it, as I have done with many of my comrades. But I didn’t.

“The first reason was that there were more than enough people gathered around you as it was and I thought that if I just added another voice or another body then you might be overwhelmed. It is also true that Emma and I were fighting badly at the time.

“I will admit that I was asking for things under false pretences. I needed money and it wasn’t just for the set up of Kalayn lands as I was claiming. It was partially for that but it wasn’t solely for that. I needed to be able to show the people that were around me that I had the money and the power to be able to do the things that I was promising that I would be able to do.

“There was a period and it spilt over on both sides of the winter, where we were gathering allies but we had to do it carefully. If we had gone too far or too fast then we recognised that we might end up giving ourselves away to the wrong person and letting our enemies know what we were doing. But we also had to prove that we weren’t just making things up. We had to prove that we were real about our determination and that we weren’t just… just empty suits of armour.

“So I was busy. And if I had given you the time that I knew that you needed, I would have lost so many potential allies. Or I would have been flitting in and out to the point that I might actually have been harmful.

“Another reason was that I had already been through some magical rituals and I was not convinced that I could keep up appearances for any real length of time. Nor that I could hide the magical influence from the magical people that were around you. In Toussaint, when that started to happen, I thought I could explain it away with everything else that was going on but when it was just the family and loved ones?

“But yes, I knew that you were sick and yes, I know that I am making excuses for the fact that I wasn’t there when you needed me. I am sorry for that.

“I told myself that you had Kerrass with you, something that I later found out was a lie. You had Emma and Mark and the slave who were all there to look after you and care for you. You were warm and safe and I also told myself that I would see you in Toussaint.

“There was also the other factor that you had essentially hung me out to dry with the thing with the Elves. Now don’t get me wrong, I would later find that that actually helped me with some of the Lords and courtiers that I was dealing with. A certain amount of non-human hate is almost required in those circles and… well… to be called a racist by one of the most famously pro-non-human was a boon.

“But there was another thing. I have been reading your journals. I read them when I heard that you had started keeping them and I kept up with them through all the time that we were estranged. And at the time, I was reading, with increasing disbelief as all of these powerful people told you that they didn’t like me and I kind of knew why. But also, now, all these big and powerful supernatural beings were telling you that you were hiding the answer from yourself. That the answer to everything that you were looking for was directly in front of you, but that you were ignoring it.

“I kept waiting for black armoured men with serious faces to turn up and arrest me for treason. Black armoured men, groups of Sorceresses with magical power dripping from their fingers. I was so sure that it was going to happen that I spent a good amount of time putting my affairs in order.

“But you continued not to realise what was happening. Over and over again… God but I love you, Freddie. I mean, I was keeping you in the dark and deceiving you but it is clear to me that the reason that you fell for my deceptions, over and over again was because you love me, or loved me as the case may be, and you refused to see my faults while you built up my virtues.”

He was fishing for me to comment but I refused, still not looking at him.

“So you went to Toussaint.” Sam went on. “It actively makes me shiver at how close we came to complete disaster. If you could connect Phineas to what had happened in Angral then you could figure out what he was going to do. He would later admit that he was not as careful as he might have been when he had left Angral and as a result, there might have been things…

“But also, the Sorceresses and the Inquisition had only been looking for him in connection with the cult. As of yet, there was no connection between him and what had happened with Francesca or with Father or any of the other things that he had been involved in. But then you had found out about him in Angral which meant that he would have had the motive to get his vengeance on the family before the generally believed narrative had him doing things.

“I mean, that wasn’t the purpose, but suddenly, this would mean that he was relevant from long before you had found him in connection to the cult.

“I still shiver with all of that. Because not only had you found him, you had also done the sensible thing in that you had informed Imperial Intelligence about his presence. Therefore the trained paranoids of the Intelligence services would put together that train of thought. If you had just dropped everything and gone after him yourself, dragging Kerrass with you, then I would have been less concerned, but you didn’t. You were sick and Kerrass took the necessary steps to keep you safe.

“Something that he should have done a long time ago.

“And we knew none of this. Absolutely none of it. So Imperial Intelligence would put it together.” Sam ticked the points off his fingers. “You had inadvertently thwarted the plans that Phineas had been involved in. He would have been angry and would have sought to carry out his vengeance against you. He used a different kind of magic from a different source rather than the standard chaos that other mages did which meant that he had the motive and the expertise to carry out the kidnapping meaning that he would now be one of the foremost suspects in the disappearance of Francesca.

“So now, instead of just the agents of the Inquisition and the Sorcerous people looking for him… And I know that Imperial Intelligence was looking for him as well but now they would have the full wrath of the Empress cracking the whip behind them to find him.

“And I, and we, knew that none of this was going to happen. Not until you took me aside in Toussaint and told me.”

He sighed and I think he shook his head. I was too mired in self-loathing to be able to comment any further. The possibility that if I had actually opened my eyes to see what was in front of my fucking face while also just keeping my stupid mouth shut was beating my skull in. If I had shared Emma’s anger about everything that Sam had done and had not done. If I had just tried to be less reasonable…

Then all of this could have been averted. We could have… I don’t know…

What I wanted to do was to make a big and grand gesture of rage. I wanted to tip my desk over, hurl the papers that I had been writing on around and stomp away. The words of my Father echoed down to me from years past.

‘Stop being such a teenaged cliche, Frederick.’ He told me from the years gone by. So I wanted to. I wanted to stand up and slap myself in the face. I wanted to rant and rave and scream at how thoughtless, how stupid and blind and foolish I had been. I wanted to do all of these things but it would have been pointless. I knew that.

After all, I was tied to a chair.

And not only that but Sam was speaking. His words seemed muffled as though he was talking through a bedsheet.

“There have been several times over the years.” Sam kept speaking. “Several times where I have thought that you were on my side and that you would come over to my way of thinking. Most obviously when we stood on the parapet of Kalayn castle and I told you about the immense anger that I felt regarding the Nilfgaardian invaders. I nearly told you then what was happening as I could see my own thoughts and my own rage mirrored in your eyes.

“I nearly told you everything that day. You had not gone North and I would have been able to throw myself on your mercy and I now, looking back, I honestly believe that you would have forgiven me.”

I considered that. He was probably right. I would have.

“But the second time was in that tavern in Toussaint. After everything that you had seen and heard and been told, I was astonished that you could not have figured out what was happening. I was even a little convinced that you knew what was happening and that what you were doing was telling me, in as subtle a way as possible, that you knew what was happening and that you wanted to warn me about the danger that I was in and the danger that Phineas was in.

“Those were among the longest days of my life. As I stayed in Toussaint, I wanted to rush off and warn Phineas and discuss what we were going to do about the entire situation, but if I had done that, then it would have been plain to everyone watching that the two of us were in some kind of…

“It would have been too suspicious if you were entrapping me in some way, or if I dashed straight off and it put you into suspicion or any of the other things that could happen.

“So I played my role. I watched as the truly grotesque things were done. The obscene worship of Francesca that the people of Toussaint were performing towards her. Doing their best to assuage their guilt in the face of their negligence in letting Francesca be taken.”

One of the things that almost made me sick was that Sam seemed genuinely angry about this. The hypocrisy was astonishing.

“And then when it was all done, I fled North and demanded a meeting with Phineas.”

For the first time in a while, I found my own interest sparked up by what Sam was telling me.

“What happened?” I heard myself ask and hated myself for wanting to interact.

He smirked a little.

“It’s alright Freddie.” He told me.

“Frederick.” I corrected and he smirked.

“Alright, Frederick. But it’s alright to be interested, even if you hate me and you hated Phineas. It’s alright to be interested in the death of an enemy.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“I was very lucky.” He told me. “Lucky in that, Phineas was a true believer and he had given me that weapon against him early. He was a genuine martyr to the cause and the moment that I told him that he was a risk to the overall plan? That he was going to bring down the full weight of the Imperial Intelligence Services onto our heads he did exactly what I knew he would do. He told me that what was happening was bigger than him and that therefore, he would have to die for it.”

I gaped at Sam and he laughed at my expression. I couldn’t help but laugh as well and just like that, I was involved again.

Moving back into Sam’s direct narrative now then.

This time he came to me. Kalyan castle was well and truly my domain now. There were still Imperial troops there of course but they had their barracks and I was able to forbid them from entering the keep itself. The hard part of this was that I still had to make various excuses to travel around the countryside to meet with my allies and talk with them on this subject or that. It would have been a lot easier if I was just able to live in my own home without having to deal with a lot of this… subterfuge.

Oh but I am looking forward to that day.

Solitude has been vital for me over the last few months. Absolutely vital. The things that I have done, the things that I have had to do. Not just the things that I did to Francesca but… the other rituals to prepare myself for what is to come and to learn all of the things and gain the tools to do what needs to be done. Such things leave scars on the mind and I have found that to deal with these things, I have had to spend large amounts of time by myself.

Sometimes I have done that on the walls of Kalayn castle in that sheltered and secret spot that I told you about before. Sometimes I descend into the basement of the castle which is where they used to hold the old rituals. Nothing is remaining of the cult there now. Just the dressed, many times cleaned and cleansed stone. I sometimes sit there in the cool and the dark while I work on becoming used to the things that I have done and the things that I am still going to do.

I collect these places now. These are places of quiet and calm. I looked for your rock by the way. The rock where you spoke to Kerrass and came to your own realisation. I wanted that connection to you. I wanted to be able to share that with you to see if it would have as much an effect on me as it did on you.

Truth be told, I was somewhere on the road in a camp when Phineas came to see me that time. I was in a panic so when I had gone through the gate to take me home, I all but ran to my study to send a message to him to let him know that I wanted to speak to him. Then I took to horse and rode off.

It occurs to me that I am lucky. The commander of the Imperial Garrison was remarkably stupid. I get the feeling that the posting as garrison commander of Kalayn castle had become the kind of derelict posting. The place where people get posted when they have upset some superior officer. This one was a martinet. He insisted on drills and regulations which meant that his training of his troops was detrimental to their overall practices. He would drill them on the textbook strokes of the sword which are useless in a proper fight.

So he had been given command of the hospital where devotion to regulations and cleanliness meant that he was useful and he couldn’t ruin good men with his training demands because they were all injured. And when they were well enough to return to duty, then he wouldn’t hold on to them. I could not avoid him all the time, but I found that I could wind him up with certain expectations and as a result, he would leap into absurd recitations of battles that he should have been involved with and how it would have gone much better if people had just listened to him.

He was a cretin, but on the other hand, if he had been even remotely competent, then I would not have managed to get away with half of the stuff that I have managed. If events transpire the way that you suggest that they will, I strongly suspect that he will be one of the people that loses rank and devotion for incompetence.

But I am allowing myself to be led off the subject.

I had fled the castle because although the leader of the Imperial Garrison was an idiot, some of his subordinates had some brains and might have been able to think it through.

So I was a few hour’s ride on one of the paths to nowhere in particular. I doubt that I could even find the place on a map if you asked me to. I had travelled off the path a little way to hide the fire. I was feeling especially paranoid and I didn’t want to be seen from the road. The local Endregas had been beaten down and I was no longer quite as concerned as I might have been at one point so I just headed off-road, built a small campfire and just sat there. I was probably rocking backwards and forwards with my eyes closed.

My imagination played games with me as I waited for Phineas to arrive. Imagining the worst possible scenario possible if he didn’t arrive sooner rather than later. I was imagining what would have happened if someone had already found him. I raged at the fact that you had waited so long to tell me about the fact that the Imperial Forces were aware of what was happening. I literally shook with the fear of it. What if he was caught? What if he was already being tied to the rack? What if the Lodge of Sorceresses had already figured out a way to counter his new form of magic from The God and whether or not that meant that he could not be…

I was desperate, scared and not for the first time since that first day when Edmund took me out to a clearing in the woods, I thought of taking all my belongings, dumping them in the woods and just riding off in a random direction. Or, even more than that, taking a sharp knife and ending it all. Because then I would, at least, have some respite from all of the stress and I would be free from all of the increasing expectations.

And then there was that strange swirling, popping noise of a fresh portal opening up next to me. You know the one. I am sure.

I literally sobbed with the relief of it.

As always, he had a skin of wine with him and he just sat down next to the fire and waited for me to calm down. As I was reaching more of a state of equilibrium he just passed me the wineskin.

“Whatever disaster is happening, there is a way through it.” He told me. “You are alive and still free which means that our goals are still within our reach. For me, The God will become more powerful and take another important step towards securing his freedom and for you, you are all that much the closer to being able to prove your quality before the rest of the world while throwing off the… whatever it is you are throwing off.”

I think he meant it as a joke but I was enraged.

“Do we mean so little to you?” I demanded, the spittle flying from my lips.

“Ah, Samuel.” He said, taking the wine back from my slackened grip. “My goal has always been the same. It has never changed and in comparison, all of your smaller goals seem petty.”

“Well…” I began. “In this case, it is you that is the risk.”

He frowned at me for a long moment.

“How so?”

I explained the fact that Kerrass had found word of him in Angral. All things being equal, he took it quite well to my mind.

“That was always a risk,” he admitted. “I left Angral too quickly. That fool Dorme had not covered his tracks properly and it was clear that he was going to lose. So I fled too quickly and left too much undone.”

He sighed and took a long drink.

“Ah well.” He said. “It was not entirely unexpected. Such a thing has always been a risk.”

“So what do we do?” I pleaded. You have often commented about how you can hear the childishness of what you have been saying and doing in your voice. To the point that you are almost enraged by it and this was an example for me. I sounded like a petulant child, pleading with a father figure to fix the irretrievably broken toy that I broke on purpose so that my Father would pay attention to me. I heard that note in my voice and I hated it.

I knew what needed to happen, Phineas needed to die so that he could not be tracked. But I wanted him to think of it. I was afraid that if I suggested this solution, he would become irate.

“I think…” Phineas tugged on his lip. “I think it is time that I go to meet The God. They will not stop until I am caught and in doing so, all the sacrifices you have made will have been in vain and I would not do that to you.” He took a deep breath while I worked not to cheer in triumph. “I will turn myself in to distract everyone from you and confess to taking your sister. I will spin some yarn about…”

“But…” I hated myself for the manipulation. One of the earliest allies in my campaigns against my enemies was talking about dying and things to save me and my plans. But all I could think right then and there was about how relieved I was that I wouldn’t need to worry about things.

“But they will torture you for the rest?” I demanded. I don’t know if I was hoping that he would decide that his plan was a bad one and that he would need to do something else, or if he had a way around my objection.

In the end, he waved his hand as a negative.

“Where there is a will there is a way. I will bite my tongue off and drown myself in my blood, or choke or… whichever the best solution is.”

I winced in the expected agony of it and he laughed at me.

“There are tricks to it.” He told me. “It will not hurt as much as you are expecting. Truth be told, my mind will have gone to The God long before I allow myself to be captured, which is a much better solution than just turning myself in. I must let them catch me. My body will do what it needs to do and my soul will already be shooting towards The God where I will be rewarded for my long years of service.”

“But…” I had felt the rush of relief that my problems were all going to be solved. Now I was on to mourning the plan, the coming rebellion because if Phineas was not around to cast the spells and perform the rituals then…

But he had seen it and he laughed.

“Ah, my friend.” He began. “You have done more for the betterment of The God than all of those foolish cultists put together. But in some ways, you are still just as shallow as them. I will teach you the rituals that you need to perform. You do not need to be magical to do so. I will write detailed instructions as to how to empower the soldiers that you need and how to empower yourself to be able to destroy the lady of time and space. Do not worry.”

And I didn’t.

“Why would you do this for me?” It was not the first time that I asked this question, nor would it be the last and the answer was always the same.

“You had something that the rest of us never had. You had a sister and the willingness to do what needed to be done. In performing these rituals and doing these things you will empower The God to a greater extent than he has ever been empowered before. The prison that holds him will shake with your actions. In showing you this, I will be rewarded. All you need to do is to do the things that I teach you. Follow through on your goals. Do not step aside or you damn your soul and mine to be one of the figures that the slave race will torture and torment to further free The God.”

“There are things that we need the magic for though.” I protested.

He laughed.

“In just a few short months now, you have a magical slave at your disposal who will be able to do everything that you require and more. You can even order her to forget that you have instructed her to do these things.”

And just like that, the problem was solved. I didn’t need to worry about it again.

And he did as he promised, he wrote it all down and I hid those journals in the white cliff manor because if people searched there then I was already doomed. I learnt my part and Phineas went to perform his act of martyrdom.

Sam sighed when he finished speaking and had to take one of his small bottles of medicine.

“From there, he went, was found, rendered himself unable to answer anything. There was a brief fear that the Lodge would be able to figure something out to ensure that they could get the answers that they wanted out of him. But as the days and weeks passed and there failed to be a group of Imperial Guards and a few angry Sorceresses turning up at my door, we reasoned that we were safe.”

I nodded and he seemed to sink into himself a little.

“So what happened then?” I asked.

He jerked himself awake. I had seen him coming out of these drug-induced stages that he had been putting himself through in the meantime. I had seen him recover and had all the needles pulled out of his arms and things. But now I suspected that what I was watching was a person that was sinking back into the throes of whatever drug-induced illness he was putting himself through.

“What?” He demanded as though I had slapped him. It was the defence of someone who had been insulted in the bar and was trying to make sure that he had heard correctly before he went out of his way to pick a fight with an innocent party.

“What happened after that?” I asked. “Phineas was captured, he had told you about what he wanted doing after that and what you needed to do to carry out your plans. So what did you do then?”

He put his hand to his head and rubbed at his forehead. A sweat had sprung up on his brows and it was not lost on me that his hand was trembling.

“Do you need someone to be sent for?” I asked, astonished at the concern that I heard in my voice.

“No.” He said firmly before sighing. “No, it’s alright. She will be along shortly. All of this is pretty much happening according to how we expect it to go with an acceptable margin for conversation. I had hoped, now that you had come to me of your own free will that I might be able to tell you some of my plans for the future and to give you some incentive to come over to my side, but it would seem that we are not going to have time to do that today.”

“Any cause that people must be bribed into following is not worth following in the first place.” I quoted from somewhere. I can’t check the reference now.

He laughed and the laughter started him off to coughing.

“Nonsense.” He said. “That’s all we ever do. We persuade people to come around to our manner of thinking with debate and similar. Kings give away awards to lords and favourites to get them to do what the King wants them to do even though they are the King and the whole situation is for the betterment of the nation that we are all supposed to be loyal to. It is only suckers and the uneducated that join causes out of some kind of misplaced… I don’t know… sense of duty?”

“Isn’t that why you fought against Nilfgaard?” I argued, some of what he had said cut a bit close to the bone and hurt more than it should have.

“Nonsense. I fought Nilfgaard because that was where I was sent. I hate Nilfgaard because of the way that they won, without honour. They didn’t beat us on the field so they beat us in the courtroom. I hate Djikstra and Roche just as much for the parts that they played.

‘What I am is a patriot.” He finished and leant back gasping for breath.

“But that proves my point doesn’t it,” I told him. “You are fighting for your cause, you have raised your banners in defiance of the Empire for a cause. Because you believe in Redania and that the Empire as a whole is a pack of honourless dogs.”

His eyes blazed a bit but I wasn’t done.

“I could argue those points of course,” I told him. “I could point out that the Empress has done nothing but treat the North with respect and honour and that all of the people that arranged the fall of Redania, Radovid not least, are now dead and gone. But it is still the factor that you are doing this because you believe in a cause. And you can’t tell me that this is all because you wanted to be able to have sole control of your own castle.

“If it was true, what you said about needing to be bribed to one side or another, then you would be on my side. You would be working with Emma, Mark and me to gain favour with the Empress so that we can get the things that we want from them. To make ourselves so important that she has to bribe us to keep the peace.”

At first, I could see his rage painted clearly on his face and then he laughed suddenly. There was a wetness in the laughter and a wheezing to the cough.

“Ah, Freddie. I have concealed my intelligence for a long time but even despite that, it is clear that you are more intelligent than I am. I would worry about that more if I hadn’t arranged everything too well so far.

“You are right of course. Speaking purely from the stance of being pragmatic, I would be supporting the Empress. I would make my case that you can’t trust a traitor and be working towards having Vernon Roche’s head delivered to Queen Adda’s feet. I would even go so far as to admit that Redania has, historically, treated our family badly. There is no getting away from that fact. And part of the reason that I am rebelling is so that I, so that we, including you, can put our own imprint on the face of Redania for the future.”

He sucked on his teeth for a moment before laughing again.

“I cannot claim to be uneducated so I suppose I must admit to being some kind of sucker, or a fool.” He admitted. “But to answer your question. Certain elements of our plans were made harder, some elements of our plans were made easier and still more of our plan had to be made more elaborate.”

I nodded and took up my pen again.

“What was more difficult?” I asked.

“We no longer had a mage,” Sam said. Some of our various hangers-on had access to mages, but their first loyalty was always to the council of mages, or the Lodge, or whatever the fuck the central governing body of magic is nowadays. And they support the Empress because she was the one that started to make waves and insist that magic users be more widely accepted. So we could not trust any mage that we might be able to recruit. Any, even remotely, intelligent mage would wonder if there was some kind of risk that once we were done with Nilfgaard we would start to want to control and oppress the magic users again.

“And that splitting of the loyalties is one of the reasons that the Kings hated them so much but that’s a different debate for a different day.”

“No debate actually,” I said. “History would tend to agree with you on that point.”

He laughed at that before flopping backwards in his chair.

“We had wanted a storm.” He told me. “We wanted it to break when all the guests were here so that the castle would be isolated. The Skelligan fleet would be unable to make landfall and the mud and the destruction to the roads in the local area would mean that reinforcements from the land would struggle to get here. We could isolate our enemies and then pick their forces off. That is still the plan and we have seen some success in that regard.

“That could only be done by a mage. Phineas’ contingency for that was that we would finish the totem and then make contact with the slave in advance of the wedding so that she could do the deed. The fact that she would often be away from the castle played into our hands significantly. But the amount of time we had was limited and she warned us that because she was having to do so much to the weather in such a short period of time, there was a danger that the storm would be less precise than what we wanted it to be. She told us a lot of science about wind currents, humidity and airflow that I didn’t understand.

“I punished her of course, but not too much. It was more for the sake of the thing rather than to punish her. Some of my followers were angry that she had failed and wanted her killed. They didn’t understand things.

“And before you start to feel guilty for not spotting her duplicity, I forbade her from telling you and ordered her to continue to act like the doting fiancee that she was. She knew something was wrong and she tried to warn you several times. But I always knew and I always punished her for it.”

He shook his head in wonder. “Remarkable thing this totem.”

,

The bag in question is still strapped to his belt. He tapped it proudly and smugly.

I looked over at Ariadne who hadn’t moved still, her eyes were staring straight ahead. So now I had another thought process to worry about. How often in the months and weeks leading up to my marriage had Ariadne tried to warn me and would I, could I, should I have been able to identify those warnings and therefore would I have been able to avert disaster?

“Well,” I muttered. “That’s another few sleepless nights then.”

“What was that?” he wondered.

“Nothing. So Ariadne provided the magic for the storm?”

I was dimly aware that a guard had walked to the entrance to the room and opened it to allow Ella entry who was wheeling some kind of metal cart into the room that was laden down with glass flasks and various other contraptions that reminded me of the kinds of things that I have seen in Ariadne’s labs over the years.

“And some other smaller things that we needed. Some magical armour and a few magical swords. That kind of thing. Nothing much. Some baubles to make friends with some people. You really should get used to calling her ‘Slave’ Frederick. It will help you with the transition.”

“On the whole,” I said carefully as I watched Ella work. “I would rather saw off my own testicles with a rusty wood saw.”

“Don’t do that,” Sam told me. “At the risk of this sounding a bit problematic, I need your testicles intact. And I need you to be able to use them, enthusiastically as well.”

I shuddered as theatrically as I could manage.

Ella had pushed her little cart over to where Sam was sitting and she started to unpack it, moving carefully and precisely but I also rather thought that she knew what she was doing. She was setting up tripods and large stands where she hung leather bags. The bags were colour coded with splashes of paint on the sides and they hung so that the stopper was on the bottom. If I wasn’t quite as angry as I had been, I might even have been fascinated.

“The part that was easier.” Sam continued to speak. “Was that I now had some tricks that I could perform to prove that I could do the things that I told people that I could do.

“Phineas had already done the same by manipulating Kristoff’s makeup to prove to me what my future forces would be capable of. I hid it from you in Toussaint by getting him to pick a fight with someone and then I could send him away without him taking his helmet off or standing up to too much scrutiny. But that way, he could still act as my guard and it wouldn’t raise any concerns.”

I nodded, I dimly remembered the episode that Sam was talking about.

“So that brought more people to our side.” He told me. “It certainly helped to convince Adda that we were going to be able to do the things that we had promised. I was always careful to obscure the method that such things were done and I also hid the fact that these improved men are always loyal to me.”

“So you have several, big and strong armoured men in the royal court of Redania to ensure Adda’s loyalty?”

“Yes.” Sam said, a little smugly. “Also guarding her son.”

“Has she tested the bounds of that yet?”

“No, and I rather thought that she would have done so by now but it doesn’t seem to have happened,” Sam admitted. “She is, as I say, supporting us. She’s on our side.”

I managed to keep my scepticism quiet.

Sam leaned forward to speak.

“The part that…

Ella put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his seat with a grimace. Sam flashed a look of annoyance at her which she seemed to flinch away from for a moment before she seemed to realise that she was right and squared her shoulders in front of him.

He sighed and leaned back as instructed while she continued to swab various pulse points of his with some chemical that smelled of strong alcohol.

When Sam spoke again, he did so with a feeling of forced calm.

“The part that is new,” he winced as Ella pushed the first needle into the crook of his left elbow. “Is that the knowledge of these rituals and the knowledge of The God must die with me. Those men, like Kristoff and a couple of the other younger sons that are left over from the old days, agree. The knowledge about The God dies with us.”

Again, he leaned forward, it seemed to be an automatic action, and I even believe that it was, but I also know that leaning forward when speaking is a common technique to impress upon someone that the thing being discussed is important.

This time, Ella was in the middle of inserting a needle. The needle broke with the movement and blood spurted. The blood was disturbingly dark. Sam looked up at Ella, no pain on his face and again, she flinched.

Sam nodded and forced himself to lean back.

“It is vital that this happens,” he told me. “Absolutely vital. It is an important tool for now and it will guarantee the freedom of the North. But after that…”

He leant back and nodded at Ella again to allow her to restart her work.

“After that… There is so much that needs to be done. For a start, no one should ever have to go through what we went through. And by we, I mean those of us that were inducted into the cult by force and that is how The God starts his influence. The cult, that… religion must never be allowed to grow again.”

He considered something for a moment.

“Truth be told, I rather a think that humanity would be better off without organised religion as a whole but I rather think that that crusade would be impossible.

“But after that, the improved soldiers must not become a force. It’s for the same reason… Isn’t it one of the thoughts that the reason that Witchers and Sorcerers are sterilised is to limit the spread of those super-humans? So that normal humans could never be supplanted?”

“It is,” I replied. “It’s also suggested that the potential for catastrophic disasters of magical energies are more likely to happen the more magic users there are.”

“Precisely my point,” Sam said excitedly. This time, Ella didn’t need to look at him. Sam just looked up at her with a small expression of apology.

“That is why knowledge of The God must be suppressed. So that people can’t do the things that Phineas taught me to do. Those soldiers cannot become widespread as then, they will become the master soldier and there will be a new arms race about who can breed the better human. It was the danger of the Flaming Rose all over again.”

I took that in. Sam wanted… almost needed me to agree with him on this point.

“But also.” He continued. “The actions that we have taken. The actions that I have taken in the time since all of this began. The God knows about us now. He sees us and he will direct more of his will upon us. We must prevent that. We must remain quiet and beneath his notice until such a time as he has forgotten us and then we must take steps to ensure that we never attract his attention to us again.

“He is… awful Freddie.”

I let him have that lapse in the name. There was real fear on his face.

I thought about my next question carefully.

“How do you know this Sam?” I asked and shook my head.

“It sounds like, from what you are telling me, that Phineas was a fanatic for this God of yours. That he was willing to give his life for you to be able to perform this ritual or whatever it was you are doing. If that’s the case, surely that is terrifying enough to warn you not to perform these rituals.”

Sam went to protest but I had the bit between my teeth now.

“Phineas,” I went on, “who ran and hid for a good percentage of his life out of fear of what would happen if he was caught. But he gave himself up. First of all, are we sure about that and it wasn’t just some other kind of…”

Sam was nodding. “He definitely gave himself up and it was definitely him that died.

“Fair enough. But if he was willing to go that far, for what he believed in, surely that’s a warning of danger in and of itself?”

“It is.” Sam agreed. “But you have not seen what I have seen Freddie. In the performing of the rituals to have this knowledge imparted to me. I have felt the direct presence of The God. I have felt the enormous weight of his mind upon my own. An intelligence so vast and so incomprehensible that I cannot encompass it with words. It is a feeling, a thing that starts in the pit of your stomach and then I realised that what I was feeling was only a small part of it. It even wanted to keep itself contained so that it wouldn’t overwhelm me.

“I call it The God because that’s how we conceive of it. Phineas was mad, certainly. I agree with you on that. It has served my purpose to use him for my ends and now that things are coming to a close…

“I was sad to lose one of my only allies in all of this. But at the same time, I am glad that he is dead. Because after all of this, what else would he have done?

“I cannot deny the possibility that he manipulated me into doing what he wanted me to do and if he manipulated me that far, am I still being manipulated into taking these actions for his ends which means the ends of The God? Which in turn means that I must also thwart that desire.”

More needles had been thrust into his flesh now and more chemicals were flowing through him. His skin was becoming paler and I could see the veins on his arm standing out again with all of the strange colours. The shadows under his eyes were beginning to grow again and the sweat stood out on his skin.

He leaned his head back against the chair and grimaced at me.

“I’m afraid that this talk of ours is beginning to draw to a close.” He told me. “It will not be long now before I must rest and just focus on being able to take in all of the things that I need to take in to do what must be done.”

“What must be done?” I promptly asked.

He smirked tiredly.

“I want to tell you my plans for the future.” He said, ignoring my questions. “And about how you fit into them. But we will do that in a future conversation. For now, know that it is in this third factor that I most need your help. When all of this is over and when we have fought and defeated the Empire and reclaimed what is ours. I must also be destroyed.”

He winced as some flash of pain shot through him.

“I can already feel the pressure of what has been done and what I will be doing and I can feel the madness scrabbling at the corner of my mind. It’s worse when I am tired, but what I am, what I will become? That must be destroyed. It HAS to be. When all of this is done, I want it to be you, Freddie. I want you to be the man that lights the pyre. I hope that I will be able to go willingly and with the knowledge of what I am doing. I will teach you how it will be done.

“It will be you that sees to the fact that I must die, that I must be destroyed and that everything that I have done will go with me. I need you for this Freddie. It might even be argued that the reason that you have been through everything that you have been through is to prepare you for this purpose. I will need you in the years to come. The continent will need you.”

He let his head sink back onto the cushions that were placed there for that reason.

It felt like a dismissal so I rose to my feet and turned to go. But I found that there was a part of me that couldn’t just let it lie like that and I turned back to him.

“No,” I said. “I am not going to help you. After everything you have done, to me and to others including the women that I care about. I am never going to help you.”

He opened his eyes and gazed at me steadily.

“I am aware of the arguments that you can make Sam,” I said. “I know that you can tell me that… If I do not help you then a greater evil will be unleashed and if I do not help you in that regard, then I am complicit in allowing that evil to exist on the Continent. I know that to be true. But the simple fact of the matter is that the best way for this danger, the best way for this evil to be averted is for you to simply… stop.”

He didn’t react to that and I kept going.

“Stop this… whatever it is. Destroy that totem and release your slaves. Don’t perform the rituals that you are planning and therefore, do not bring the gaze of The God upon us at all. That would solve every problem that you have described and then we would not be in this situation. At all.

“Not a single problem, regarding The God, that you have described would not be averted by you just… stopping. From here, the authorities who will have more power now than they will if you win, will be able to back-trace Phineas and snuff out anything that he was part of. You can even start to redeem yourself by telling everything that you know to the church.

“But I will not help you. Maybe Mark will be able to forgive you. Maybe… Maybe… no I don’t even think Emma would forgive you. But Mother might.

“I will not help you, Sam. I will never help you.”

“You will.” He wheezed. He sounded like a dying man. “I know you, Freddie. You will help me. You will not be able to stop yourself. Phineas was a true believer, but so are you. So are you. You will help me. I will tell you about my plans for our future, yours and mine, and I will give you things… my long-promised surprise. You will help me. You will not allow yourself to do otherwise.”

He leaned his head back again.

“I will see you again soon Freddie. Maybe tomorrow if I am feeling better.”

“You will not,” I told him. “I will not come. I will kill myself rather than come.”

He outright laughed at me. Laughing before he started coughing.

“No, you won’t.” He said. “You might try, but you won’t. You are too filled with hate to kill yourself. You will want your hate to be fulfilled and you cannot do that if you are dead.

“I will see you soon Freddie. Maybe not tomorrow, I will grant you that. But I will see you again, probably several times before the end comes.

He leant his head back and grimaced.

“I will see you soon.”

(A/N: This chapter grew a bit. Just two characters talking and getting drawn off into long conversations but it means that some events that were meant to happen in this chapter are being put off until next time as the feel of the chapter changed as I wrote. Thanks for your patience and thank you for reading. Despite the grim subject matter, I hope people are well and having a good time.)