“Given that response.” Lady Eilhart’s voice spoke coldly and with a certain amount of disdain. “A response that I am utterly unsurprised with hearing, do we really need to prolong this any further?”

“I agree,” The Cardinal of the Eternal Flame added, presumably to make his voice heard.

“Time for a final vote then,” Queen Cerys said before making her voice that little bit more formal. “In the case of Frederick von Coulthard and the accusations of Treason and Heresy, how do we find the accused?”

“Innocent of both charges.” The Cardinal of the Eternal Flame answered promptly.

“Innocent of both charges.” Mother Nenneke said, speaking as though the matter was a foregone conclusion.

“I concur, innocent. Utterly innocent.” The priest of the Great Sun spoke for the first time. His voice was warm and rich.

“Innocent.” Lady Eilhart said, “As I said from the beginning.

“Guilty of both charges and you are fools for not seeing it.” The Redanian spoke. I have since had reason to examine him and have wondered if he was speaking for someone else.

“Innocent of both.” The priest of Kreve seemed bored.

“Guilty of treason,” the head of Imperial Intelligence said, “But I abstain from the vote of heresy.”

The Imperial officer made a play of winking at me. “Innocent.” He said, simply.

Queen Cerys nodded.

“Clear innocence and as such, given that my vote is not needed, the chair shall remain in abstention. Thank you for your service gentlemen, Lord Frederick you will be taken from this place to a place where your convalescence can continue. I understand that the Empress will be in touch when it comes to your future and…”

I don’t remember much else of it that can easily be recounted with any kind of faithful interpretation.

I swear that as the Eternal Flame is my witness and may it burn me if I tell a lie. I swear that I heard them call me guilty. And I was alright with that. I was even rather looking forward to it. A nice execution, something public where I could stand… figuratively speaking of course… and stand before the world to apologise for my sins before I go onto whatever comes next. Then I could rest, or do… I don’t know. Life would be over, I would be able to stop worrying. I didn’t really want to die, but also… I didn’t really want to live. I’ve said that before as well and it just seemed like it would be all over.

I would be happy with that. Regardless of society’s, or my friend’s judgement, I knew that I had planted Father Gardan’s axe in the back of my enemy and that I had helped kill him. I had done my part in gaining justice for all the wrongs and all of the evils that had been committed against me and mine and now… and now… I felt as though I could go to my death with that and be happy about it.

If that had been all I had done, then I would be happy with that.

I was at peace with that. I was happy with that. And then those bastards took it away from me.

I have no useful memory of what happened in that little amphitheatre when it was made clear that I wasn’t going to be taken from that place to a place of execution. I remember a cry of pain and I remember trying to hurl myself into my restraints. I had a feeling of the light and warmth of the flame in front of me and it was taken away from me.

I have the transcripts of the court reports now as part of my role… I have astonishing powers when it comes to demanding that kind of thing and what the transcript reports are that a cry of anguish escaped me where I pleaded with the assembled panel that I was guilty and how dare they take this away from me. I begged them to kill me and told them that I was supposed to be standing before the flame’s judgement today.

“I was to be with Francesca today,” I said.

Queen Cerys didn’t stand for much more and ordered Lady Eilhart to put me to sleep before she decreed that court proceedings were over which is the end of the transcript.

For me… I was back into the same kinds of realms that I had been in immediately after I had been taken from the basement of Coulthard castle. The difference was that I was in less pain now than I had been.

I felt as though I was walking in a desert of red sand. There were the steady impacts of footfall but I also lacked the strain in the legs that say that I was walking on soft sand. I was walking without fatigue. It was nighttime, peaceful and as I looked up into the sky, I could see twin moons spinning there.

There were other dreams. Given the nature of the things that I have been seeing in my dreams since I was taken into the basement of Coulthard castle by Sam, I have consulted a dream mage named Corinne Tilly who has interpreted the dreams for me and she is “as confident as I (she) can be that the dreams are just dreams.”

I remember feeling as though I was lying in a bed and a woman’s arms wrapped around me. It wasn’t Ariadne as the hair was blonde, even as I didn’t see a face.

“It’s ok,” she said. “It’s ok. Rest.”

And I did. I have rarely felt so rested.

I stood, again, on the prow of a ship that was floating just off the shore of some forested land. I could hear the sounds of the seagulls cawing in the air and as I looked at the shore, I could make out figures standing there. Mother, Father, Mark, Francesca and Edmund. The last time that I had stood in this place, listening to the sounds of the gentle waves splashing against the side of the hull and causing the boat to bob around in the water, those people on the shore were looking at me with expectation, they were beckoning to me as they welcomed Mark to stand amongst them.

This time though, this time was different. They were waving to me. Their faces seemed sad but pleased. Happy even. Francesca rested her head on Mark’s shoulder as they waved.

I remember waving back and turning away.

It took me a long time to wake up. This was the slow returning of the senses rather than the springing open of the eyes or the sudden realisation that I was thirsty or needed to piss.

I heard a woman’s voice and I recognised it although I have no idea who that voice belonged to.

“It’s alright Freddie, you’re safe and it’s time to wake up now.”

At first, all I could see were blobs of colour.

“It’s alright Freddie,” said the voice again. “It’s ok, but we need you to wake up now. It won’t be long, I promise and then we can let you rest again. We need to get some liquid in you and… It’s alright.

I struggled to make my eyes focus. Someone got their hand under my neck and lifted me up. I had the dim feeling that others were around me as they worked and I felt a cup at my lips. I drank and it was the sweetest, most wonderful-tasting pure water that I have ever tasted. After that, the cup was replaced by a spoon and I was fed some of the most delicious chicken broth. It was as though my body cried out in relief at what I was being fed.

I ate as much as I could which seemed dismayingly small before a different, smaller cup was placed at my lips and I drank something bitter. This time, I tried to pull away but I was made to drink.

“It’s alright Freddie, it’s medicine. You were sick again after that foolishness of a trial but now you’re…”

The words petered out as I fell backwards into unconsciousness.

I didn’t dream that time, or if I did, I remember nothing of those dreams.

The next time I woke up, there was a guard in my room. My vision was blurry with sleep but the room seemed warmer somehow. Less cold stone and more wooden panelling.

The guard noticed that I was awake and opened a door to say something to the person who was waiting and again, someone was fetched. I didn’t know this person but they seemed cheerful. They were dressed in grey, a big buxom woman who manhandled me with deceptive ease as she moved me around, fed me, cleaned me, wiped my arse and brought a bottle for me to piss in.

“The faster we get this done, the faster we can get on with pretending it didn’t happen.” She told me cheerfully as she worked and that was more than enough to quench my embarrassment.

When she was done she sat with me and told me childish stories for a while until some kind of signal was given and she poured me another small cup and made me drink it.

This time I protested.

“You need to rest in your condition.” She told me. “That means sleep. So drink up…”

She was strong enough to make my feeble protests pointless and her tone of voice made it clear that if I didn’t drink it of my own free will, then she intended to take steps to make it so.

Again, I slept and the sleep was as dreamless as it gets.

The next time I woke up, I was not alone. It was more of a standard waking-up kind of feeling. The slow realisation that there was a before time and an after time. I woke abruptly and then took a moment to calm down, forcing myself to breathe in and out.

“It’s always interesting to me,” said a woman’s voice, “that these Doctor people can predict with relative accuracy just what time sick people are going to wake up from a drugged sleep.”

I blinked into the gloom.

“From my own experiences,” the voice went on as I forced myself to try and put a name to the voice… I felt sure that I recognised the voice but couldn’t quite remember the name.

“From my own experiences, I know that bright lights can hurt when waking up from a long convalescence so I closed the blinds and things. Do you want me to lift you so you can sit?”

I took a couple of more moments to breathe in and out before I nodded.

A strong but slim woman bent and rather expertly lifted me into a sitting position. Pillows were fetched and placed so that I could sit relatively comfortably.

“Let me know if you are slipping but in the meantime, I shall light some candles and things so that we can see each other properly and so you can work up to fresh air and sunlight.”

As she worked, what light there was shone on the ashen blonde hair of The Empress. She was wearing a long dark coat as is fairly standard for her while carrying a sword in her off-hand. She held it ready to draw in her left hand while her right lit tapers and transferred flames to candles, lamps and lanterns.

When she came back, she stood over me and looked down at me for a long moment.

I stared up at her, blinking.

“Water?” She asked and I nodded.

She poured, still with one hand and passed me the cup before sitting back down. She held her sword tightly to her chest in the same way that she might hold a cat or a friend.

“I am… so sorry Freddie,” she said after a long moment. “So sorry that I can’t easily speak it.”

It was so silent then that other sounds started to filter through. I was in the city now I thought I could hear people moving around in the street outside. But in the here and now, I could hear the candle flames guttering.

My thoughts seemed to echo from a long distance and take their sweet fucking time to get to my mouth.

“Where am I?” my voice was raspy and I took a drink of water. I didn’t trust my ability to swallow so I was only sipping the water.

Ciri shifted, as though I had woken her up.

“You are in the Rosemary and Thyme.” She told me. “As soon as you were declared innocent, I wanted you out of that damn cathedral. They would have kept you up there but I wanted you to be surrounded by…” She sighed. “Friends,” she said after a moment.

There was another long moment as she stilled before she suddenly started moving again.

“It would seem though, that we rushed your trial and recovery and you relapsed a bit. There was still a bit of infection in your body that was not caught, your fever came back and there was pus in your wounds again. Nothing particularly life-threatening as now that you were proven innocent, they could use proper resources to make you well again but…”

“Am I?” I wondered.

“Are you what?”

I opened my mouth to speak but she saw what I was saying.

“Oh… Yes. Yes, you are. For certain. For someone of your rank, I would have judged it myself but I recused myself deliberately so that there could be no accusations of… So no one would think that I pulled strings.” There was a smile in her voice then. “We had to work a bit to find people that were neutral to you and we didn’t entirely succeed as there was still some politics going on in that room. But even taking out the politics that we know about, you were still found innocent.”

I nodded and I felt tears on my face.

“Freddie.” The crack of authority was in her voice. “Look at me.”

I did and her eyes shone in the candlelight.

“You are innocent.” She told me. “As I understand the Inquisitor said. You are only guilty of ignorance, a little stupidity and the blindness towards the faults in our friends and our loved ones. If we burned people for that, then the entire continent would be aflame and I would be one of the first on the pyre.”

She rearranged the sword in the crook of her arm.

“You are innocent Freddie. I believe that so does everyone who matters, including the church hierarchies. You are innocent.”

I nodded and the tears fell from my eyes.

“What happened?” I asked after a moment.

“A lot.” She told me. “A lot happened. Some of it is still coming to light. But in very broad strokes, your brother rebelled, we cut him off from his power base in a fairly standard divide and conquer manoeuvre and then we laid siege to himself. There was one battle and then a siege and the castle fell quickly due to some clever tactics from our side. Since then, we are doing our best to heal the sick and to try and convict the guilty. But in the meantime, we are still working to properly find out what happened.”

I nodded. There was another long pause.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” I whispered before taking another drink.

She snorted. “I don’t want to belittle what you went through Freddie, but I was never in any real danger.”

I snorted as well and a cramp went through my chest.

“Emma?” I asked.

Ciri grimaced. “She’s… damaged Freddie. Physically she has some small injuries, and it is entirely possible that we will look back on all of this and say that she was the hero of it all. But she is speaking less and less and is now all but silent. She can speak but Laurelen, who is also still alright, seems to be the only person that she will speak to.”

I nodded. The next question was easier.

“Kerrass?”

“He’s fine as well. He would be here but he is frantically helping put down the feral Vampires and Arachnomorphs that have come to the surface in your Family’s lands and surroundings. They are no longer being controlled so they are mostly angry and afraid so they are lashing out.”

I nodded.

It took a long while to ask the next question. I knew what it was but I couldn’t get the words out.

“A…Aria…Dammit.”

“She’s gone, Freddie. We don’t know where she is. No one does.”

I heard myself sob.

“Your messengers survived,” Ciri said, doing her best to ignore the sobbing. “Chireadean is making loud noises about choosing a site for a new inn although I think his wife has left him as she is nowhere to be seen. Carys and Padraig were able to be back in time to help with the assault and…” I waved her off.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Now?...” her voice juddered and she wiped her hand across her face before turning to the window. “Lots of things Freddie. Lots of things…. Sorry. It’s my first rebellion and I didn’t know that I was going to take it this much to heart.”

Something in that struck me as funny and I felt myself smirk. She saw and smirked back for a moment before her face went still.

“You are now….”

She stopped and rested her forehead on her hand as she looked at me. She seemed to be considering a lot of things.

Then she nodded.

“There’s a lot of politics still happening Freddie,” she told me. “A lot of politics. But I have the bonus that not only do I trust you, but the Imperial we trust you as well. The court found you innocent and therefore your story is true, you gave the most of yourself to try and prevent the rebellion from succeeding.

“The Empress needs someone that she can trust in the Pontar region and I want to make it all up to you. So…”

She nodded again and leaned forward, resting her sword on the ground and leaning on it while she still used her right hand to gesture as she started to get excited.

“Your surgeon tells me that you are getting better but that you still need a while, possibly a long while before you can start… doing things. When you are cleared, which will give us plenty of time to root out who is guilty and who is not, I will call you to court where I will formally name you Lord Coulthard.”

“I am hardly in any fit state to serve…”

I raised my shortened left arm to illustrate but she shook her head.

“I need your mind and you still have a good right hand and a good brain on you. As for the rest of it. The dissolution of those rebellious Lords is paying for an awful lot. Amongst other things I mean to see to it that you have the best prosthetics for your feet and left hand that can be provided. It might take some time to learn to use them before you get full mobility back but then again, you are going to be Lord Coulthard, you will mostly be on horseback anyway.”

“But…”

“And I think… Every time you have been sick after an adventure… I think people make mistakes with you. I think that they always try to get you to rest. I don’t think you’re good at resting. I think you need work. So I am going to give it to you…”

She was building up to something, she wasn’t meeting my gaze.

“But I need something.” She told me.

I said nothing.

“I uh… I need you to write what happened in that basement.”

“What?”

“I need you to record it. I need you to write down how Sam died and I need you to record it.”

“Why me?” I croaked out. “Ask Kerrass, he was there.”

“Yes….” Ciri started before pausing. “But he is not you.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have your diary.” She told me. “The one that talks about those events that lead up to the rebellion itself. We have the documents that you wrote while you were Kalayn’s prisoner up to the moment when you thought you saw Kerrass. What we don’t have is what happened after that.”

“I barely know what happened after that…”

“Freddie…” Ciri pulled her chair closer. “People want to know. People need to know. Samuel Kalayn is the new villain. There were others but Samuel is the new… People need to know that he’s dead and no matter how much we tell them that he is, they won’t believe us because we are Nilfgaard and we have been wrong before. We need it to come from you. We need the record of the Rebellion and how it ended and what comes after.”

“Ciri…” I tried. “Ciri I can't, I can't remember that. I can’t…”

She looked me in the eye.

“You can.” She told me and it was suddenly the Empress speaking. “You must, you can and you will.”

“Or what?” I demanded.

She took a deep breath and stood up.

“I love you like a brother Frederick.” She told me. “I will not make threats. But we need you to do this, therefore you will do it. We need you and if we don’t have you then there is a whole lot of disaster coming. Therefore, I order you to do it. I request and require to perform this task. As Empress I order it.”

Silence fell after that order as she stared down at me.

I turned away from her. It was my acknowledgement I think, looking back even as I fought it.

“We need you, Freddie.” She was trying to make me feel better. “We need your voice because people trust you.”

I cleared my throat.

“If you have read my notes you will know that Sam demanded the same thing.”

“I know.”

“He also gave the same reason as to why it had to be me.”

“I know that too.”

“He tortured me to make me do it.”

“He did.”

I felt hot tears on my cheeks and I brushed them away angrily.

“The irony is not lost on me,” I began carefully. “That I am doing the same thing for my friends, as I did for my enemies, and the same reasons and under the same threats.”

“Freddie…”

“Get the fuck out of here Ciri.” My fury was sudden and consuming. “Get the fuck out of here or I swear to the flame, with one hand and no feet, I will kill you. I will tear your throat out with my teeth if I have to.”

I sobbed.

At some point, I dropped my goblet of water and the liquid soaked my sheets.

“I had expected better,” I told her.

“I will send for…” She began, her voice was rough. “I will send someone.” I heard footsteps retreating as I started to weep.

It felt like hours before someone finally emerged into the room and in the reduced light, it took me a while to remember my old nurse Samantha from Angral. The water had soaked me much to my disgust and grief so I felt particularly wretched.

Samantha looked awful. She had lost weight and for a beautiful woman, she looked exhausted. She was pale and pasty with huge dark rings under her eyes. It was the face of a person that had been crying almost constantly for several days and she was exhausted from it.

She looked at me for a moment and I saw a certain level of anger that I felt was a background feeling that was all that was keeping her going over the recent times. She looked around the room, looking for someone to be angry at and then she seemed to see me properly for the first time. Her eyes widened after a long moment, her mouth fell open and she covered her mouth with her right hand.

“Oh my lord, what have they done to you?” She moaned.

From somewhere deep within me my voice answered automatically.

“‘My Lord’ is it now?” I wondered.

A sudden bark of laughter escaped around the hand that was covering her mouth and her shoulders shook for a moment, whether with sobbing or giggles, I couldn’t tell.

But the professional mask came over her and she came to the bedside.

“Your bed clothes are wet.” She accused.

“I had noticed.”

“Did you piss yourself?”

“I don’t think so, it’s just water.”

She nodded.

“Right then, let’s have a look at you.”

And she did. It was oddly reassuring to be looked after by someone I knew. There was no embarrassment between the two of us now and I just let her manhandle me. She examined my stumps, took my temperature, listened to my heartbeat and took my pulse while staring off into the distance with a vacant expression and counting under her breath.

“Well,” she said. “You’re horrifically weak and we have a lot of work to do.”

She ordered me a bath and left to arrange things. After Ciri, she was the first person that I knew that had turned up. It was good to see her. I didn’t ask her what was happening or what had happened. She told me that she had been summoned and that was that. She had a couple of orderlies to help her out with my physical movements of me. I bathed, cleaned myself up, used the chamber pot and climbed back into a clean bed.

“Do I need to hold your nose to make you take your medicine?” Samantha demanded as she stood over me. Her smile was weak and watery and her voice trembled but I appreciated the effort. I shook my head and drank what she gave me. Right then and there, I would just as easily have drunk poison.

I had a nightmare that night although I didn’t remember it in the morning.

Samantha spent the day fussing over me. She had a different ointment that she had made that was rubbed into my stumps which became warm and tingling. There was regular food as well. Small portions, well spread out. Very tasty but I became full quickly and then they were moved on.

I spent a lot of time staring into space in the middle of all of that until at some point, Samantha tapped me on the arm.

“You have a visitor.” She said with a grin,

“Who is it?” I demanded, looking over towards the door, “because if it’s…”

“I don’t know who you’re expecting,” said a warm voice. “But I doubt it’s me.”

Stepping through the door was a priest. He had a bearded face and a long ponytail which he had tied back with a bit of twine. He wore a simple cassock with a symbol of the Eternal Flame hanging around his neck and he walked into the room with a smile.

“Do you remember me?” He asked. “I ask because, since the incident with the Unicorn, I find that far too many people have forgotten that I even exist.”

I remembered him then. It was the smile that reminded me.

“Father Anchor,” I told him. “Of course, I remember you. After a while, the Unicorn just seems to fade into the distance.”

“She does at that.”

“How is your wife Tulip?” I wondered.

“She’s here.” He admitted, taking a chair from the wall and pulling it over to be situated next to the bed before turning to address a delighted-looking Samantha. “She’s downstairs and wants to see your nurse.”

Samantha squealed in delight and left the room.

“I didn’t want her to come back to Novigrad given what happened to her when we were last here.” Father Anchor said as he sat down with a sigh. “But when she heard what was going on back here, she insisted and I can never refuse her so…”

He laughed and I began to feel my mood lift.

“So…” he said. “You must feel fucking awful.”

“I don’t feel great,” I admit. “How did you get here? How have you been since I saw you last?”

He grimaced.

“I’ve not been bad really. The village didn’t really survive past the winter. We strapped everything down but the hunting dried up as it always does. There was a caravan that came through which energised everyone for a while but in the spring of this year, it became clear that things were at an end. The loss of Charlotte, the innkeeper’s wife was a blow. Given that meant there was no beer or not even any good food, it became certain after that.”

He grimaced but then he smiled.

“Your write-up did me good though. We wrote to ask for a new posting and I was sent to another, similar but larger and more prosperous village where I worked with an old man who wanted to retire and die in post. He was a grumpy old bastard and hated Tulip but I liked him and I all but took over his responsibilities while Tulip became his nursemaid. He died in the summer and we burnt him, scattering his ashes in the nearby orchards.”

I nodded along as he told me his tale. At some point, someone in grey turned up and handed us both a cup of something tasty.

“Tulip’s chicken soup.” He grinned, “I can always tell when it’s hers. Get that inside you and we’ll have you dancing a jig.”

“I doubt it,” I told him. “I don’t have any feet.”

He shrugged.

“You can slap your thigh and sway then, I don’t know.”

For some reason, we both found that funny.

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“Anyway,” he went on. “The old priest had been there for something like fifty years. He had gone there as a young man and then stayed. Entire generations of the locals had known him as their priest and as a result, I turn up, a young priest with a wife no less and the locals could barely contain their disdain. They were angry with themselves just as much as they were angry with me. One of those instances where they were aware of their hypocrisy and they hated themselves just as much as they hated me.”

He laughed and I smirked with them.

“Anyhoo,” he set his cup aside on a nearby table. “We were just becoming sure that I was going to make some headway there… It was a thing of slow decisions we thought. Saving souls one at a time was the rule. They were bemused when I would go and work in the fields or turn up to help with the work crews and buy everyone drinks. Tulip helped out where she could with the healing of the sick and injured. Turned out Samantha had shown her a thing or two but as you so kindly pointed out. She has a way with words and where people tolerated me, they loved her. More than one young man had decided that our marriage was a fake and tried to seduce her away from me, much to her amusement and my terror.”

We both laughed at that.

“So anyway… I keep getting off topic… There we were, minding our own business, waiting for news as to what was happening up in Redania… You have to understand that we were stationed in Temeria at this point.”

I nodded to show that I understood.

“And then out of nowhere, a black and swirling pool of nothingness appears in front of the church and half a dozen black armoured soldiers arrive… This would have been yesterday. Along with them comes this terrifying woman dressed in a black doublet with a silver lining, black trousers and boots with a white shirt and black-furred shoulders. She had wild black hair and violet eyes. Do you know the lady in question?”

“I do.” I had a sinking sensation of dread but couldn’t deny being amused at the image.

“Coming with her comes another woman with white hair although she was maybe my age. Only a bit older than you. She was wearing a black coat with a golden sunburst on her chest and was carrying a red scabbarded sword as though it was something precious.”

My suspicions had proven true.

“Anyway. The guards formed up around my little church. There was a crowd of watchers by this point as THE EMPRESS OF THE FUCKING CONTINENT walked up to me, where I was doing some work in the garden of remembrance and then she asks if we could talk somewhere privately, all politely like.”

He sniffed happily.

“That’ll have them talking about things down the tavern for a week and a bit.”

He cackled.

“So then she asks me if I know you, which I said that I did, and then she asked me if I would be willing to help you out but that I had to go, right then and there. Tulip had come running as we had been told that we would need changes of clothing for a couple of days. I asked about a replacement priest to take up my duties while I was gone and the black-haired woman cackled as the Empress waved her hand as though it was unimportant and told me that she would send a bishop or something.”

He peered at me.

“I’ve never travelled by mage gate before. Is it always like that?”

“Yes,” I told him. “It’s always like that.”

“Huh.” He commented thoughtfully. “Anyway. We appeared here behind the building and we were let in through the back door past the giant, terrifying Skelligans that were guarding the place and then they told me briefly what had happened and what the problem was.”

“They told you that I was refusing to do what the Empress wanted me to do.”

“Pretty much.” He said happily.

“Did they tell you why?”

“Yep. I’ve spent a couple of hours reading your notes while Tulip made herself useful. She’s really good at that. She only squealed when she found out that Samantha was here but Sammi has made it clear that no one’s to interrupt you when she’s with you. Sammi’s got the place marching to her tune already. Even the dwarf, the bard and the Skelligans are terrified of our Samantha. I’m trying not to think about who that bard and dwarf are by the way.”

He said that last point with pride.

“So that’s that and here I am.”

He leant back contentedly.

“So have you come here to talk me into…”

He waved his hand in front of my face in a negative gesture.

“No no no, before we get to that…” He rooted around in a pouch that was tied to his belt to produce his stole which he wrapped around his neck. “I wondered if you would like to pray with me. How long has it been since you last properly offered praises to the Eternal Flame?”

“The Eternal Flame has not done such a good job of…”

“The Eternal Flame is a guide.” He told me gently, it is not a shield, or some warrior standing between you and danger. It is a guide and whatever else might be true, it did guide you through. Now when was the last time you prayed?”

He settled the stole around his neck.

“It’s been a while,” I admitted.

He nodded, the laughter vanishing from his eyes to be replaced with kindness.

“Then pray with me now.”

And we did. He led me through it. The big prayers, the regular prayers and then at the end, he gave thanks for my survival and asked that the Flame carried the dead home.

I am not ashamed to say that I wept after that. Not the tears of sickness or the tears of being overwhelmed by this or that or the other thing. These were tears of grief and they felt…

It was like a wound was lanced so that all of the pain and pus and infection could come out.

“There now,” he said when I was done. “Feel better?”

“Fuck no.” I sobbed. “I’m under threat. They want me to…”

“That’s right.” He snapped his fingers. You were wondering what I was doing here.”

“You’re here to try and talk me into…”

“I’m here to offer you some spiritual guidance. There was a big furore of it. Do you know what the Empress has in mind for you by the way?”

“I know that she wants me to…”

“Yes yes, apart from that. She wants to make you important. She wants to make you powerful. That terrifying black-haired woman explained it to me… By the way,” he leaned forward to me. “Is she who I think she is?”

“Probably,” I told him, his changing of the subject was keeping me off-centre. But where Sam had done it to disorient me and keep me like that, the priest was doing it to keep me away from terrifying subjects.

“Lady Yennefer,” he breathed in something approaching awe. “Fuck me.”

“I thought you were married.” My mouth was doing that thing where it was talking again without me actively being involved in the conversation.

“I am. But do you know what’s terrifying? My wife and she seem to get on really well. Something to do with the foolishness of men folk.”

I almost chuckled at that.

“But I’m not here to talk you into doing anything,” he told me. “I am here to hear your confession when you’re ready. There was some furore about that too. Apparently, someone in your position should be attended by someone that’s at least an Arch-Bishop, or a Bishop at the very least.

“I barely qualify as being a priest in these days but there you go.” He said that last with a sideways glance at me and amusement in his voice.

“There are important church people downstairs that are all but fighting for the privilege of hearing your confession but… Lady Yennefer…” He paused and swallowed. “Flame but that takes some saying doesn’t it.”

“You get used to it,” I told him.

“Flame I hope not.” it was almost a prayer the way he said it. “But she laughed at them. The Empress seemed to agree with her. There was some other argument from some black-robed priest of the great sun. He was a cheerless fucker. Not allowed to eat anything but bread or drink anything but milk or water. ‘Thus to properly cleanse the mind for worship of the sun’, or whatever that means. Charming enough, happy enough but he had that kind of ethereal holiness about himself that made me want to throw rotten eggs and fruit at him.”

I laughed. It was hard to stand before this youngish priest's charm offensive. There was something about his eyes that said he knew exactly what he was doing but the charm was inexorable.

“Proper worship, proper… Godliness is not found in some… remote sense of holiness. It’s found in the streets with the common man. It’s found in the fields with the workers dragging the food and nourishment out of the earth. It’s found in those people that stand there, after rain and wind and storm batter their houses down, or the sun scorches the earth into a barren wasteland. Men and women that stand there and look at all that before sighing and starting the work again.”

He looked at me sidelong and I thought that this was where a point was coming from.

“The Flame is found in those Elves that took in the human refugees as they fled before your brother’s depredations. It was found in your father and your sister when they helped the mages escape from Novigrad. It was found in you when you stood before an ancient vampire and told her that the world had moved on and you taught her to love.”

And then he moved away from the point.

“Godliness… Holiness is not found in some remote, ascetic form. But I digress.” He grinned at me. “Then an unlikely ally turned up. Do you know a man called Danzig?”

It took me a while to make the connection as Father Anchor continued to speak.

“Tall chap, heavily muscled. Always smiling but his eyes are always watching.”

“Priest of Kreve?” I wondered.

“That’s the fucker. Says he served with you in the North. He’s downstairs as well, waiting to see you. There are a lot of very famous, very powerful people downstairs waiting to speak to you by the way. I might be the least popular man on the continent given that I got up here first.”

“They can live with their disappointment,” I muttered bitterly. He ignored the comment.

“Anyway,” he went on. “That Danzig fellow stands up and tells the esteemed priest of the Great Sun to shut the fuck up, something that I enjoyed a great deal, but even my fellow Eternal Flame chaps were put off by that and he gave a big speech. Let me see if I get it right.”

He cleared his throat and came out with a passable attempt at an impression of Knight-Father Danzig, Inquisitor of Kreve.

“‘Lord Frederick is an inestimable man,’ he said. He has a big booming voice I noticed. ‘And despite many people’s best efforts, including the best efforts of his own church, he steadfastly refuses to change his religion. He is called to the Eternal Flame and that should be respected. Having said that, he has positive experiences with maybe three priests that I know of. One of which is his brother, another of which is dead and the third of which is this man…’ he pointed at me. ‘I say, let the boy try. From everything that I have heard, it is a miracle that Frederick hasn’t broken like glass or a badly forged blade. If you send the wrong man, or someone that is going to start yelling at him, then he will shatter and you will be worse off than when you started. He knows Father Anchor, he is the right choice’.”

Anchor smiled at me.

“Lady… ahem… Yennefer then agreed and gestured at Danzig with a nod. Then the Empress stood up, told everyone that she had shit to do… Another shock. You don’t often imagine someone like that swearing like a sailor, no matter how tired she looks at the moment, and that was the end of it. Up here I came. Before waiting for Samantha to tell me that I could go in. If there is one woman that I am almost as afraid of as my wife, then it’s Samantha.”

He checked to see if I was caught up.

“So are you not going to try and convince me to do what the Empress wants?” I complained.

“No.” he smiled. “Not because I disagree with her, or because I agree with you. But you are not ready to think rationally about the entire situation yet. You still want to scream, shout, weep and throw things. Entirely understandable if you ask me.”

He sighed and got back to his feet.

“How are you feeling?” he smiled a little. “Other than tired I mean. In my experience, everyone feels as though they’re always tired after big events. After the battle with the unicorn, it took everything I had to get out of bed for a week and I spent most of my time just looking at my wife. And nothing very much had happened to me.”

“I seem to remember an injured shoulder,” I told him.

“Yes well… I can still feel it when it rains. But stop dodging the question or I’ll get Tulip to come up here and sit on you.”

“Truly a fate worse than death.”

He smiled at me and the moment lengthened.

“Freddie…” he said calmly.

And the words spilled out of me.

“I’m tired,” I admitted. “Also angrier than I can easily comprehend being. So sad that it’s a shock to me that I can even speak let alone stop weeping. I want to hide and I want to cry and I want to be alone and the two people that I want to see the most are missing and busy respectively. And after that, they are either dead or more broken than I am from what I’ve been told.”

He nodded and scratched at his chin, dislodging some dry flakes of skin before turning for the door.

“I shall call on you tomorrow Lord Frederick.” He told me.

And he did. This time, we began with a prayer and then he produced a dice board. He did suggest that we play Gwent but this was easier to play with one hand. I was just on the verge of descending into self-pity when he laughed at it as though I had made a joke before setting up the board.

We played several rounds and I felt my brain being drawn into the thought pattern of the game. The same thing happened the following day. After a prayer in the morning, we would play dice and chat about small things, books and the like, and then just as we were entering our fourth go around of dice, he asked the question.

“So… Are you ready to talk yet?”

I was in a relatively good mood at that point so I decided to make a joke of it.

“Sure,” I began. “What do you want to talk about?”

He laughed. “Not me.” He shuddered. “This has the stink of world politics and the like. I’m just a simple priest.”

“Hardly simple.”

“Oh Flame,” he shook his head unhappily. “After all of that, I’ve really worked hard at just being a simple priest.”

We both chuckled at that.

“No,” he said. “They wanted me to but I refused.” He was rubbing his hands together as he spoke, appraising the dice and the layout of it all. “You need spiritual guidance. That was what I was brought here for and so that is what I am going to do.”

He let the mask of forced cheerfulness slip for a moment, which is how I knew it was a mask. The mask of a man speaking to an invalid whose grip on their sanity is weak at best.

“A lot of the evils of the world at the moment, are down to the various churches getting involved in politics.” His gaze became haunted for a moment. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to advise a political or powerful man with anything other than the well-being of his soul.”

He shuddered theatrically before looking up at me and smiling.

“Besides, there are plenty of other people downstairs who are far better qualified to talk about that kind of thing than me.”

“How many people are downstairs?”

“A lot.” He sighed. “I’m not going to tell you everyone who is down there because the small team of doctors that are in charge of your case and the cases of some of the other “guests” of the inn that you are staying in have ordered me not to.” He grinned at the thought. “Samantha, not least. I will tell you that one of those people is an Imperial Mage of some kind who has a direct link to the Empress. The moment that you agree to talk to her, that mage is to teleport to the Empress’ side and inform her of your decision.”

“Who can you tell me about?” I wondered.

“There are… I can talk about generalities. The worry is that if I tell you that suchandsuch is here then you might hurt yourself in trying to get to them, or that they might hurt themselves trying to get to you. I can tell you that at the moment, the inn, and you, is guarded by a terrifying gentleman who was introduced to me as Lord Roary the Red of the Black Boar.”

He chuckled at a memory.

“He was actually quite polite and well-spoken, even as he spoke about all of the horrible things that he intended to do to anyone that hurt you. Apparently, he is under orders to protect you and yours and that he is allowed to take… ahem… whatever means necessary to get the job done. As I recall, he leered at me when he said it.”

I was forced to laugh. I remembered Roary the red. A terrifying man who knew exactly what effect he had on the people around him and was one of the first men to proclaim Helfdan as the new Jarl.

“You are served by his Thralls and all of them are armed. I saw some of them train in the yard out the back the other day.”

Father Anchor shuddered theatrically.

“But anyway, there are many people that want to see you, I cannot tell you all but I do know that the personage that is waiting outside was allowed past Lady Yennefer. It is not Lady Yennefer and my understanding is that she is not a Sorceress either.”

“Do I know her?”

“I am as confident as I can be that you do. If you do not, then I must discount all of your writings as filthy lies.”

“You are trying to engage my curiosity so that I let this person in.”

“Curses,” he exclaimed. “You have seen through my cunning plan.”

He took the board and set it aside.

“I will go and let her in.” He told me. “And I will be right outside.”

“I don’t recall agreeing to see anyone,” I argued.

“That’s because you weren’t paying attention,” he retorted.

He left and as he did, he bowed low as the most beautiful woman on the continent entered the room.

“It has been some time since I last saw Sleeping Beauty and when I did see her, neither of us was really at our best. At the time she was grieving a good man and was sick with love for a man that was misguided in his affections. She was also, a seventeen-year-old girl dealing with things that would intimidate someone twice her age and twice her experience. She was the sort of person where people said ‘She’s bearing up well… considering…’

It was a little shaming to me that it was now nearly two years since I had seen her last. She is Eighteen now at the time of writing, leaving her youth behind and turning into the woman that she will become. Of course, she is still beautiful but where some beauties are hard such as Lady Eilhart, or terrifying as in Lady Yennefer. Hers is a soft beauty. It is kind and gentle which is slightly misleading because I know for a fact that she is becoming hard. She is good and kind and decent and all of the things that the good “fairies” blessed her with. But she is also a Queen.

She still wears her hair the same way, a long Golden blanket that falls down her back in a perfectly straight curtain. Her eyes would normally contain a certain amount of mischief dancing in their blue depths and her face is the kind of thing where sculptors and painters will break their chisels and snap their brushes out of despair that they could capture a fraction of what she looks like in the meantime.

She was wearing a long Blue dress, thick, fur-lined and well-made. She wore a small circlet in her hair that acted both as proof that she was a Queen and also meant that her hair was kept back and out of her eyes. But her customary gloves had gone.

She looked at me for a long moment as she came into the room and her face seemed to soften for a moment before she shook her head slightly and firmly walked towards me before sitting in the same seat that Father Anchor had left.

She sat there looking at me.

“I hope,” I began, finding the silence oppressive. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I hope that you don’t take this untoward when I tell you that you look far better than you did last time I saw you.”

I saw her expression melt a little as the memory came to her.

“And I hope…” her voice deepened a little in the intervening time. “That you will not take it untowards that you look a thousand times worse. It is good to see you alive, Lord Frederick.”

“Freddie, please Your Highness. Please call me Freddie.”

“Then, given the circumstances,” she winked at me, “I hope that you will call me Rose.”

“I would be honoured,” I told her. “I would get up to bow but…”

I gestured at the stumps of my legs and she laughed.

“It is good to laugh,” she told me. “Especially in hard times and you have been through the hardest. You helped me through mine and set me on the path to friendship and strength and now I hope to do the same for you, even if our friendship is not as firm as I would like it to be.”

“I am sorry You…” I began.

“Ah,” she held a finger up in warning and smiled gently. Everything that she does is gentle.

I smiled, it is impossible to be unhappy in this woman’s presence.

“I am sorry Rose,” I told her. “But I am…”

‘No no.” She told me. “The blame lies entirely with me and I shall be exceedingly cross with you if you try and take the blame for yourself.” She furrowed her nose to pretend to be cross with me before she laughed and continued.

“I have read your account of the time and I thought that I was very cruel to you. I have taken up my pen a thousand times to apologise to you and a thousand times more have I set the pen aside and found some other task with which to occupy myself. But I know that you went through horrific things that year, not least with trying to save the life of the Witcher that I love and that made you sick. I am sorry for my part in rendering you ill, Lord Frederick and I intend to make it up to you in any way that I can.”

I looked at her for a long moment.

“You can nail down that Witcher we speak of and make him listen to reason for a start,” I told her and she laughed again.

“Would you believe that I have been trying?” She played with one of her earrings as she spoke. “I think he’s avoiding me. He is in the wilds around the battle dealing with Necrophages and Vampires at the moment. I sent him a message and contrived to be nearby when he returned for goods and services. However, he does all but outright flee from me.”

I nodded.

“How long have you been in the area?” I wondered.

“I was due to travel to the wedding as part of the Imperial party.” She told me. “I was looking forward to it. I had, and have, resigned myself to a conversation with Kerrass that will not slake my heart’s desires but I intended to have fun with it all the same.” She smiled as she said that.

I nodded, not yet willing to dive into some of the topics.

“But now, the wretch has the gall to avoid me.” She laughed. “I understand that there was a plot to lock him and me up in the same room with several bottles of wine.”

“There was…” I remembered that Ariadne had suggested the plot and I had to force the wave of sadness away.

She saw that and didn’t push me any further.

We sat in silence for a while before the next topic of conversation occurred.

“Marion says hello. She hoped that you would understand why she didn’t come.”

“I understand. Is she still down in Dorne?”

“She is. She is essentially my regent now. Not that there is much regenting to do. When I am not at home she sends all the correspondence to me but otherwise, she directs work parties. She says that it mostly comes down to telling entitled idiots ‘No’ on a regular basis.”

“She will be good at that.”

“She is.”

Again, we lapsed into silence.

“Have you come to talk me into…”

She grimaced. She even grimaces beautifully. Every so often the thought occurs that it must be awful to live like that. To be beautiful in everything that you do whether you want to be or not.

“Before we get into that.” She told me. “I have several messages for you.” She reached into her skirts and pulled out a bundle of papers. “I took notes to make sure that I forgot none of them. First of all…”

She opened the top piece of paper.

“Did you know that you are being protected by quite the most frightening men I have ever seen?”

“I had heard,” I told her.

“I have rarely been treated with more courtesy however but even so. Roary the Red… Is that really his name?”

“It is,” I replied.

“Yes, well. After suggesting that he would take me back to the islands and make a woman out of me by fucking me until I couldn’t walk, he went all serious, the majority of his accent vanished and he told me to tell you that if you just say the word, then you can be at sea by the end of the day. Four days later you will be in Skellige and no one will ever find you.”

I took that in for a moment.

“His plan is endorsed by his Lord which is endorsed by his… Lord. He leered as he said that and told me that you would know what he meant. Do you know what he meant? I don’t know what he meant.”

She was lying. She knew exactly what he meant.

“I see,” I said carefully.

She set the piece of paper off to one side.

“Then…” She opened the next piece of paper. “I was approached by possibly the most beautiful couple I have ever seen in my life. Golden-haired they were and he wore an armour that shined so bright that it hurt my eyes to look upon it. She was wearing a formal dress and looked absolutely beautiful. I would have been jealous but I have also rarely seen a couple more in love with each other than that pair. Do you know who I am talking about?”

“I think so.”

“He told me that if you needed it, he would carve a path to freedom through the heart of the Imperial army if need be. That he would use a mutual friend of yours who also owes you a great deal to do so and that… ahem… ‘none would dare stand before them.’ Do you know what he is referring to?”

Her impression of Guillaume was quite good.

“I do.” I told her.

“Good. The woman also said that the matter would be made right. She wouldn’t tell me how though.”

“She wouldn’t,” I replied.

She nodded and carefully set the piece of paper aside along with the other.

“Let’s see, who else have we got here? Another Witcher met me. I have not met the man before as he was not at the Imperial Coronation. Tall man, terrifying in his way. Looked like a brute and ridiculously muscled. Spoke in a drawl. He told me that he could see why the kitten liked me. Do you know who I am referring to…?”

“I think so.”

“He told me to tell you that you did alright by him and that he was content. Then he leered at me before walking away.”

She looked up from the paper and skewered me with a look.

“I wonder who that was.” She said,

“I wonder.” I replied.

“There is a lot of guilt going around… Freddie… Do you know, it feels quite wrong of me not to call you Lord Frederick?”

“I know the feeling.” I told her.

“But nevertheless. There are a lot of people around that think that they owe you in some kind of small but significant way.”

I grunted as I found that I could not look at her any more. She got up, collected the papers and dumped them in the fire.

“I am one of those people.” She told me. “I am no longer as young as I was and I am still young. Both Eighteen and… A hundred and forty-something years old. But I have not shown proper gratitude towards you for your kindness when you woke me up. Even though there are some days where I wish that you hadn’t.”

I still didn’t look at her.

“So…” I prompted. “Is now the moment where you try to tell me that you think I should do what the Empress wants me to do.”

“Great sun no.” She exclaimed. “What an awful thing to say. No. No, Sun no. No.”

I looked at her in surprise and realised that she was angry.

“No, she told me what she wanted you to do and I told her that she was evil to ask you to do that. I told her that she was even more evil to ask me to ask you to do that. To be the young and beautiful ingenue to ask you with pleading eyes to perform the most awful service.”

She shuddered.

“It’s shameful is what it is. It is cruel. I completely understand your rage, your…. Your fury at being told that you must go back into the memory of what happened. Sun but the horror of that. I cannot even imagine…”

She paused and for one awful moment, I wondered if her anger was genuine or whether she was putting on some kind of display for my benefit.

“I told her that she should ask Kerrass. Kerrass was there. I have read their best attempts at translating your shorthand. The record that they already have is there up until the moment where you recognise Kerrass. From there, Kerrass can answer for it surely. He can give them the account that they want, the account that they need. He can answer that. And they can, and should, be happy with whatever he gives them.”

I decided that she was genuinely agitated, genuinely angry on my behalf as she got up and paced up and down a few times.

“Fuck her Freddie.” She told me. “Fuck her in her stupid, scarred, white-haired face. It is cruel and evil. The thing that your brother made you do under the point of torture and horror is what the Empress is now ordering you to do under the pain of treason and all the horror that goes with that kind of disobedience. It’s awful and everyone knows it. Everyone.

She sat down again after a long moment and took my right hand.

“Everyone knows that it is the cruellest irony, Frederick. Look at me.”

I did and not for the first time I wondered how it was even remotely possible that Kerrass could avoid diving into those blue eyes.

“Everyone knows Freddie.”

I nodded.

“Including her.” I whispered.

We sat like that for a long moment.

“You say the word,” she told me. “You say the word and I will distract the Imperials so that the Skelligans, the Knights and the Witchers can get you out of here. You say the word and I will get it done, we will get it done. You will, by the sun that shines down upon us, suffer this horror no more. You deserve better than to have to sit at a desk and relive everything that you went through in that cellar over the prolonged period of time that it takes you to write it all out. You deserve better.”

She sighed and her eyes stopped being angry and started to be sad.

“How dare she ask you to do that. How dare she.” She held my gaze. “But I understand why she did it.”

I nodded to show that I accepted that but I couldn't help but pull my hand out of her grip.

“You deserve better.” She said, “But so too do the people that have suffered under your brother’s grip. You know that he’s dead. But do they?”

I said nothing and looked back down at my blanket-covered legs.

“You don’t know what’s going on out there.” She said as she let go of my hand. I let it fall so that it just lay there in my lap, looking uncomfortably like a dead spider. The thought made me want Ariadne in a way that was so bad that iI could taste it.

“You don’t know what’s going on out there Freddie. That’s another one of her orders and I agree with it. Her orders and the orders of your doctors and nurses because if you knew what was going on out there you would be out there and getting involved in it. And doing something like that may damage your health irrevocably and as it is, your health is possibly damaged beyond repair.

“But I don’t think people can be so cross with me if I tell you that even as I sit here and tell you this, Imperial Riders are riding up and down the lands telling people that the Kalayn Rebellion has ended with the death of the last son of Kalayn.”

“But he isn’t the last son of…”

“Hush now Freddie, I am explaining things. Imperial Riders are telling people these things, nailing proclamations at crossroads and notice boards to let people know that the rebellion is over. But the countryside is not rejoicing.

“They look at these riders in their black armour and they think to themselves that the rider is Nilfgaardian and of course the southerners want everyone to believe that the crisis is over. They look at them and wonder why they should trust the conqueror.

“Of course, the rebellion stirred up the evil in the hearts of certain people in the North, but the really insidious thing that it has done is to remind the average person in the street that the North was conquered. Redanian, Temerian and Aedirnian national pride is newly awakened. They didn’t like your brother. But at the same time, they remember that they are a conquered people so why should they trust the Southerners?

“Think of them, Freddie.

“Think of the Farmer in Temeria who took in the wounded Nilfgaardian soldier who saved his life at the battle of White Orchard. He is now terrified at the prospect that the secret that was finally allowed into the open is now ready to take him to the headsman for treason. He deserves to know that this is over, indeed, it was almost over before it began.

“Think of the common folk who are wondering who they will be paying their taxes to in the near future, will they just be trading one tyrant for the other and will their money be going to fund the hatred against the dwarf that sold him iron, or the old herb-woman that mixed the medicine that saved his little girl. He doesn’t know the answer to that. The black-clad riders are trying to tell him that it is all over but how can he be sure? The Black-clad riders have said the same things before and it hasn’t worked out, so who is he to believe?

“Think of the Elf hiding in the woods. Just as the Elves were beginning to emerge from hiding to find jobs and places to belong. Think of them. They know that the rebellion was centred and founded on the hatred of non-humans. They know that and so they look at these Black armoured riders going this way and that way and they wonder if those riders are simply men that have put on the black armour in order to entrap the unwary. They deserve to know that it is all over.

“Think of the townsman. You don’t know it yet but there are several sources regarding the self-destruction of places like Oxenfurt when it comes to the wedge that the rebellion drove into the hearts of the populace. They deserve to know that the next tyrant is dead.

“Think of the other Northern Lords. They might not have joined your brother’s rebellion but that doesn’t mean that the thought of rebellion has not occurred to them. It doesn’t mean that they are not thinking about things even now and wondering if the Rebellion might have succeeded if they had dared to join forces. They have to be told what happens when people do that. They need to be warned off before even more bloodshed and even more, death is forced onto the people in the fields and the towns.

“Think of the merchants who even now are doing their best to restart things. It is winter now and, fortunately, the rebellion has been and gone at a time when the trade of the continent had mostly come to a close. But you, of all people, know that the world runs on trade and commerce more than it does on the whims of Kings and Queens. They have to know what is going on. And they are just as guilty of not being comfortable accepting propaganda as the next person. They have to know and who else are they going to trust?

“The people of the South. Those men and women who live in my Kingdom. Or further south even. People might only think of Redania as letters on a map. But they know you because you helped wake me from my slumber and you made contact with The Schattenmann. A figure so shrouded in darkness and horror that even I remember being told to keep my feet inside the covers of my bedclothes in case the Schattenmann comes to bite them off.

“They look to the North and they wonder at the madness and the pain that they visit on each other. The Empress tells them that it’s all over but then they look at each other and they remember that the Empress herself comes from that region. So of course they think that she might be in on it. That she might be involved and that it all might be some elaborate plot to bring down the Empire from within.

“This is her first rebellion after all and they are looking to see how she will react. Will she act with the ruthless, cruel strength of her Father? Or will she be weak and merciful? They don’t know and even now they look to her to see how she is going to react. Is the rebellion over? Or is it just the beginning and whatever the Empress is telling them just some blind, Imperial propaganda?

“And who is the voice that those people will trust? It is not the Imperial Messenger, it is the Northern Lord who came south to see what it was all like down here in the depths of the Empire.

“Who will the Skelligans trust other than the Scribbler that stood on the battle decks of their warships and fought against the Ice giants?

“And who will the other Redanians believe other than Lord Frederick Coulthard? Not Kalayn, but Coulthard. The man that was in the fire. The man that has proven himself to be their advocate time and time again. Your sister is the trader Queen but she rarely gets a chance to shine to the common folk and whatever else has to be said for her, she is still a woman and there are always people, in all walks of life, who will look down on her simply because she is a woman.

“It has to be you, Freddie. It has to be you, it can be no one else. You were there, your voice is powerful and believed. You have a reputation for honesty and self-examination that is not equalled by anyone else. Who else are all of these people going to believe? The Witcher?”

The silence dragged on.

I could hear my heartbeat and I tried to count the beats.

“Your brother is going to be the boogeyman. If you don’t do this, your brother is going to be the shadow that lurks. The ghost of rebellion, hiding in ditches. Small rebellions and cults will be founded in his name and they will always tell each other that Samuel Kalayn is out there somewhere. He will become a figure of myth. A freedom fighter. Long after the facts of the matter have been forgotten, all that they will remember is that Samuel Kalayn stood against the mighty South and tried to forge a new freedom from tyranny and then, even though he is dead, Samuel Kalayn will have won.

“You and Kerrass killed the man and I, for one, believe it. But now you must help us kill the ghost of him. You must make it so that no one fears another Samuel Kalayn rising up, further to the North where there are fewer armed forces. Where a rebellion could gather for weeks and months without anyone actually knowing that. And only you can do this thing. Only you can make it so that the ghost of Kalayn never rises again.

“That is why it has to be you. You were there. You saw it, you did it, and your voice will be believed. That is why she ordered you to do it. That is why it needs to be done. You are enough a student of history to know that a rebellion, a… a war is not over after the last battle is fought. Wars don’t start in isolated moments, nor do they end. They are not racehorses leaping forth from the starting lines, nor do they end like the fall of the headsman’s axe.

“They take time, time for things to start, but time for things to end. In order for this rebellion to end, even though the fighting is over, the story of what happened during the Kalayn Rebellion needs to be told and it needs to be told by a man that everyone trusts. That everyone trusts Freddie.

“It can only be you. It is only you that can do this thing. It’s awful. I know it and so does everyone else. But at the end of all things, this must be done. I am sorry.”

And she was right. I knew it too. I think I had known it from the moment that Ciri had first told me that it needed to be done. But at the same time…

I even knew that it might be good for me. Mark, resting with the flame, once told me that I should write things down when I was getting over the situation with the Goddess. So there was even that suggestion that I might need to do it for myself.

So I wept. I wanted to be done with all of this but I couldn’t. So I wept. There was a shuffling of cloth and the Queen of Dorn came and wrapped her arms around me. My weeping intensified until I was full-on howling into the embrace and she held me and stroked my hair until I calmed and fell back exhausted.

“I will leave you now.” She told me, rising to her feet and dabbing a cloth where I had soaked her dress with my tears and snot. “I will send a message to the Empress that you will do as she has asked but that for now, I shall send your nurse, the formidable Samantha, to you with something to help you sleep.”

I nodded, My eyes felt hot and I did not think I would need much to send me drowsing.

“One day.” Sleeping Beauty told me with a sad smile. “One day, you and I will have a long conversation that does not involve me being cruel to you, or you upset me in some way. That will send you smiling and me laughing and we will look forward to the next time that we see each other.”

“One day,” I said and she nodded.

Samantha came, looking red-eyed and sad herself before she gave me some medicine-laced wine and I slept quickly.

When I woke up at some point later I demanded that the curtains be opened so that I could see daylight. And I demanded fresh air, even if it was cold. I could hear the sounds of the city beneath me and I could feel the cool breeze. The scent of the docks is never far away when you are in the city of Novigrad and I looked out of the window from where I sat in bed. There was not much to see, row after row of chimneys, weather vanes and the tops of rooftops. I could smell woodsmoke and see the plumes rising from those chimneys and I thought I could hear the cries of gulls.

When all of that had been done and I had been draped in more blankets and the fire in my room had consumed more wood than could reasonably be expected I sat and looked out of the window.

I had the sense that people were gathering around me, waiting to see if I was going to fall over or tip myself into some kind of new illness or sense of despair.

Instead, I called for a table that could be placed across my lap. Samantha looked confused for a long moment until I told her that if I was going to perform a chore, then it would be better if it was done quickly. The ink was called for, paper, quills and blotting sands. They were nervous enough that they didn’t let me have a knife to sharpen my own quills and I felt the first stirrings of genuine humour as I watched Tulip, Father Anchor’s wife, sharpen the quill with her tongue tucked firmly between her teeth.

And I began to write what they wanted of me.