(A/N: So folks, it has finally happened. I’m not quitting but I do have a real-world job that is almost certainly going to interrupt my work rate on the story. I mean, I know that I’m nearly finished and I am certainly going to try not to lose a step, but it is a bit naive to hope that I am going to remain unaffected by this. And while I do have plans to start trying to make some money from my writing, I am deliberately leaving that until after this work is finished for a variety of reasons.

So if the rate of uploading slows down, don’t panic, I’m not done. Believe me that I haven’t come this far to quit at the last moment. But it just might take me a little bit longer than I, or you would have liked. Believe me when I tell you that you will know when it’s all over.

Thanks for reading)

So now you have the context.

The truth that context is King, Queen, Lord, Lady, God and Goddess of any given situation is a rule that I was taught when I first started to study history. I think I must have been around the age of nine and it was a rule that was given to me by my earliest tutors.

The rule has been reinforced as my life has continued. Some of those realisations have only come long after the fact when I look back at the activities of my Father and what life was like when I was growing up. The time spent around his own father’s dining table could not have been entirely pleasant. But the rule remains the same.

Back when I worked in the Redanian logistics division, the rule was reinforced there as well. When the order came down to send a certain number of supplies to this unit or that company, what was the context? Were the enemy even in that area and did the noble that was requisitioning that amount of axe-heads have a habit of selling those supplies on the black market?

When we decoded Nilfgaardian orders, what was the context of the orders as they came in? What actions had been fought, what was the terrain of that area like and so on?

It was true again as I got more into the history of things and then again, it was proven true when I travelled out on the road with Kerrass. What was the context of why this spirit was haunting that particular field? Because the lesser known part of the Witcher’s task is to ensure that the monster, or the spirit or the… whatever, doesn’t come back. And you can only do that if you know the context of the situation.

And it is true here. If you are going to properly take in everything that I say here. If you are going to take the facts as I see them and the evidence that I have collected, then it is only fair that you are aware of the context of the situation. This was the mindset that I was in as I started to compile this work. This was the place that I was in and this was the background of why I even started work in the first place.

Because the history of the rebellion and the account of what happened is not my style of recording or writing about history.

Whatever else can be said, I am far from an unbiased source. I was there in the middle of it. The rebellion tortured me, killed and tortured a lot of the people that I love and have responsibility for. It is all but impossible for me to be able to recount what happened without any kind of bias.

I also, as a habit and up until now, have recorded events from a first-person perspective as I write about what I have seen and done, before letting other people judge accordingly. But I didn’t see all of what happened at the siege of Coulthard castle.

I wish I had. I wish I had seen the fall of Gregoire and the charge of the Knights of Saint Francesca. I wish I had seen the dragon fire and the emergence of the Armies from the mist.

I don’t think it’s possible that any one person could have seen all of it. So it is the responsibility of someone to compile everything, all the accounts… including mine, and then talk about them in a written format for everyone to see it.

But I do not think I am the man to do it. It is not my style of thinking, not my style of writing and it is not my…

However, the Empress has ordered that it be done and therefore I must do it.

So I start with the context of why I come to be writing what you now already have in your hand and as a means to explain why it will not read the same way my normal work does. Why it might be lacking in the quality that you have come to expect and why you might not be imagining the undertones of bitterness that you might be imagining.

I am writing these words from within my Pavillion as I watch people work on demolishing and rebuilding Coulthard Castle. I have elected to use Ariadne’s old methods of working in the open in that I have this pavilion where the sides can be rolled up or down according to weather factors. I long to be down there, in the middle of the people and working as well. Both to be doing something that I can think of as being useful but also to be seen to be doing something useful

Even though working on my mobility and still, painfully, working on my recovery takes all my energy, I sit here and work, I feel very pointless and superfluous to the entire situation.

The problem is that I am an important and powerful man now, which means that the work that you are reading is often interrupted so that makes for another change.

My habit in the past is to compile things in one go. To take notes as events happen and then write it all out in a frenzy for my transcribers and publishers to break it down into the appropriate chunks.

But here, there are also interviews to do, research to conduct and all kinds of things to be done that are only to do with writing out this history. And that is nothing to do with the other feudal duties. So although I started this effort shortly after I was made Duke I am now at the stage where I work on this whenever I have a spare moment. So what is true now, as I write these words, and what might be true when I come to the end of things might be two different things.

For instance, I still haven’t spoken to Kerrass.

I am beginning to dread that eventual meeting. It feels like he is avoiding me, is angry with me and I don’t know why.

But by the end of the work, it might be true that I will have had that conversation.

It is also true that some of the events that I am supposed to be recording are still ongoing. I can’t wait until the end and make sure that everything is true before publishing. The consequences of these events are still being felt and rippling out from where I am, even as I sit here. History is like that, you can’t find a beginning and an end to tie it all up in a pretty bow.

I realise that I am procrastinating but it is vital that you, the reader, know that I am far from comfortable about any of this. I am terrified that all this is going to be is just a dry recitation of facts. Or the recounting of facts that will later be identified as not being true.

There here it is. The context of the matter.

I write these words as one of the most powerful men in the Northern Continent. I write between my other feudal duties and ensuring that I will be able to serve in my current duties for years to come. I have no idea when this work will be finished, I don’t want to do this work and I think that I am among the worst possible people to record this history.

The thing about my thinking that I am the worst possible person to perform these feudal duties has sailed. I now agree with the Empress that I am the only person that can perform this role and I will do my best to serve accordingly. I can’t pretend to like it, but I will serve. But the history… I think that it would be better done by someone else.

But the Empress has ordered and so I will do my duty.

So where did the rebellion start?

And right off from the beginning of this record, we run into problems. The problem is that there is no reliable record of this. If I was properly recording this then I am supposed to need a couple of independent, reliable sources as to what happened. But I can’t get that because most of those sources are dead and/or unreliable. I have reread the record of what Sam told me, including all of my notes on the random things that were not immediately published and it is clear from reading those things that although Sam gave me the basic facts… It is also true that Sam was insane and is therefore not all that reliable a witness.

There is some corroborating evidence, but I find that I am relying on far too many assumptions to be entirely happy with it. If my old University tutor was still alive and was reading this then I do not doubt that he would take out a ruler and rap my knuckles as a sign of his displeasure at all the assumptions that I have done in the preparation of this work.

Poor old man. He was one of the people that died in the castle. There were times that I hated that old man but along with Mark, Kerrass, Emma and several others including my parents, there are few people that have had as big an impact on who I am now as that old man did.

We can, however, be sure that the Rebellion did not start with Sam. Like the matter in Toussaint, it started with a group of men who were displeased with their lot in life. Older men and younger sons had lost sons and brothers in the war and were displeased with the way that things had turned out. They shared Sam’s sentiments that they longed for another crack at the black ones to salvage their lost pride.

There were other factors and it was not just this alone. They were displeased that they were being ruled by an, at best, Regency Council and, at worst, a Queen and therefore a woman. The fact that the Queen agreed with them was another factor.

For her part of things, it seems likely that Queen Adda knew that her days were numbered. As I wrote, her life has been awful, years of her childhood were stolen from her by a curse that meant that she was a monster. Then years of spoiling turned her into a tool for other men’s hands. She had a couple of good and happy years when she married the good, clever, handsome and dashing young King of Redania but then the church of the Eternal Flame became more and more powerful. Which meant that the King’s affection turned into hatred.

So she walked the tightrope of still being Queen while also keeping herself alive and able to preserve the life of her son. Because if she fell, then so too did her son.

To be clear. She feared that the church, who increasingly had the ear of an increasingly paranoid and hate-filled King, wanted her removed so that they could replace her with a more flame-fearing woman that could more easily be manipulated. They did this by arguing that her history as a magic cursed monster meant that she was evil and corrupted and therefore not fit as a Queen. Her son, as the child of so evil and corrupted a monster, could therefore never be King and would burn on the pyre next to his mother. Therefore leaving life open for any potential new Queen to have a more holy, and therefore more biddable, heir to the throne.

It is not an invalid fear.

Why did King Radovid keep her around? I don’t know but I do know that he was advised, most strongly, to keep her around by his council because if she died, then her Father, King Foltest, Redania’s Southern border and most powerful neighbour at the time, would surely go to war.

Also, not an invalid fear.

So now that she is free of that, she wants to enjoy herself as much as possible while still being Queen. The Empire prevents this. So there are limits on her power and she resents this hugely. She also doesn’t see why she is not the Queen of Temeria. She would argue that she is the oldest daughter of King Foltest so therefore, why isn’t she in charge?

The answer is that Foltest ensured that he didn’t want future Kings of Redania to also be Kings of Temeria. I find this very ironic as it is becoming increasingly clear that the best solution for everyone when it comes to peace between the two Kingdoms is for Queen Anais of Temeria to marry the young King of Redania.

But that will have to wait.

So even those lords that might support Queen Adda were dissatisfied with Imperial rulership. I would suggest that this is only natural. After all, Redania is a conquered nation. For every Lord and Lady that knows this and can see all of the benefits that have come from being part of the Empire. There are always going to be those that think that life was better beforehand, even when plenty of their subjects might disagree.

As Sam said, they resent the loss and resent it hugely. Many cells of nobles were expressing their displeasure. Small groups of people met in back rooms and out-of-the-way castles and manor houses to express their displeasure and to optimistically plot what they would do if they could get together enough men, money and power to mount a proper revolution. History is bursting with examples of this kind of thing. Frost keep me but Imperial history is replete with examples of this kind of thing. Sometimes actual rebellions take place, born out of this kind of fertile ground as one or two of the groups get together and mount something between them. The Imperial solution to these kinds of rebellions is normally an occupying army. They have forces that are trained to deal with this kind of thing.

The reason why none of these things came to fruition in Redania, before Sam anyway, was because no one could agree on who would be in charge and what, specifically, they all wanted. I can very easily imagine lots of conversations that went like this:

“When we succeed, we shall ensure that all of those lesser peoples shall know their place.”

“Hear Hear.”

“I shall marry Queen Adda and become King and then we can ensure that the church/mages/non-humans/lesser nobles/peasants do what they are told. We shall return to the good old days when…”

“Hang on, when did we agree that you were going to be King?”

“Well I have the best claim and as such…”

“But I am the leader of this rebellion and so…”

“You are the leader? I command…”

And so on and on.

There was also a problem of decentralisation. The Imperial Intelligence Services is pretty good at snuffing these things out but what they hadn’t realised is that Redania is a pretty big place. The maps distort things but when the treaty was signed, a LOT of territories were suddenly Redanian and so policing that vast amount of land was difficult without friendly people.

So there was a lot of discontent in the courts of Redania and it was into this fertile landscape that Sam walked.

And this is really where I get into the realms of assuming things and just… outright guessing.

I think that the Rebellion was fed by Phineas.

I think Phineas knew exactly what he was doing when he went to Sam. I think there were spells cast on Sam, maybe as part of the rituals or maybe there were manipulations in place… I just don’t know. But I think that Phineas knew about Sam’s sentiments and then, when Phineas judged that the moment was ripe, he would just turn up and put the thought in Sam’s mind.

I have interviewed several experts in mind-controlling magic and it is, apparently, more than possible to read minds and influence moods and things. Outright controlling complex thought patterns is impossible. Simple commands yes but complex strategies and the like is all but impossible.

So I think that, at least in part, Phineas fed the ideas and strategies to Sam. I’m not trying to absolve Sam as my magical experts insist that the idea would have had to be in Sam’s mind in the first place. But I think it’s likely that Phineas helped just push him over the edge by adjusting his mood so that he was ready at the given times. Prompting him to come out of meetings angrier than he would have normally been.

So why did Phineas want a rebellion?

I have no answers to that question. Only theories and none of those theories are nice ones.

It is clear that the rebellion, the relevant schemes and their connections were only inside Phineas’ head. He is definitely dead, and it was definitely him that died in Novigrad. That much is certain. It is also a relevant thing to say that Phineas did not particularly care about the Rebellion. That much is also certain. International politics was not something he was interested in or cared about.

Therefore, the things that he was willing to die to protect were the methods and the things that he had given Sam for Sam to be able to pursue the rebellion.

By which we mean the production of the fetish of Vampire control, the empowering of the various troops that were performed, and the final ritual for Sam to become… I need to check my notes here from that particular interview, for Sam to become the avatar of The God.

Apparently, that means that he would become the living vessel of The God’s power on the continent.

Which sounds delightful.

So that is my guess as to Phineas’ play. He wanted Sam to be desperate enough to be able to invoke those rituals and become that vessel. He fed Sam’s anger, resentment and his paranoia, manipulating Sam into keeping Francesca around to be used and then manipulating him again into actually using Francesca and the tools that would come from that.

I imagine it a bit like a garden.

If Redania was a piece of land, well fertilised, irrigated and protected from the elements. Then Sam was like the plant pot that was the same. Phineas put the seed in the plant pot, he fed it with ambition, anger and the opportunity to do things. Then… as the seed started to germinate, he encouraged it with…

Whatever tools you use to do that. I never took to gardening as an art form.

… Before replanting it into the earth of Redania where it started to take root and the plant became a vine. At some point, the vine grew and grew and gave birth to a flower. The flower was not the result of the vine, it was not the fruit or the leaves. And after the flower had been produced, the gardener thought that the rest of the plant was unimportant. But it was also true that the gardener expected the flower to maintain its purpose and do… things of its own. I understand that botanists like to take parts of the flower and combine them with other flowers to do other things. Often in the pursuit of medicine.

So what was that flower going to turn into or be combined with?

Unfortunately, likely, we will never know. All we can say for certain is that was not going to happen.

I have these words from a mage named Kolbus Trant who made a study of this kind of problem. Like Yennefer was to Necromancy, Kolbus was to Goetia. He was permitted to study enough so that he would be able to recognise signs of it to properly police the matter from afar and prevent dangerous occurrences while tracking the goetia using mage. Lady Yennefer and he seemed to be old friends and had worked with each other at various stages.

The conversation was an interesting one given that a lot of what we talked about went clear over my head. But it seemed to me that Lady Yennefer and I would throw out theories and the other mage would just shake his head, smile benignly and tell us in detail how it was impossible.

We know that there was no way for “The God” to come through to this realm. The reasoning for this was a little chilling in that if The God could have been brought through to this realm then Phineas or one of the cultists from the North would have already done so. Or The God would have found a way through on his own, including by manipulating the cultists and people like Phineas into doing what needed to be done. The fact that that hadn’t been done was telling.

We also know that the simple question of The God giving more power to the followers was also not an end goal. Because that was already taking place and the rituals in question were not designed to do that. It gave power, yes, but it didn’t mean necessarily more power. In the mage Kolbus’ opinion, it was clear that Sam was losing his mind and sense of self towards the end, and although Phineas didn’t have a sister to build the fetish of Vampire control, he would have had the means to paint the circle and sacrifice people to it to make himself an avatar.

But he didn’t do that. Therefore just gaining more power was not the end goal.

So there are many theories to suggest what was going on here and it is unlikely we will get an answer. The principal architects in Phineas, Sam and Ella who might have been able to provide more of the methods used which might have been able to tell us more, but given that they are all dead…. There is little we can do.

The most chilling theory was that Phineas was a genuine fanatic of The God and what he was doing was trying to send more power to The God to aid in The God’s efforts towards freedom. He wasn’t satisfied with the amounts of power that the small amounts of depravity and things that the cult of the First-Born was sending to The God and as such, came up with a way to send more power than had previously been managed.

And yes, according to Kolbus, the image of the imprisoned God is more than possible, it is even likely. He also wondered if the other supernatural creatures that I had met had been steering me towards an eventual confrontation with the minions of The God to prevent his escape. I told him that they could have just told me that, instead of all of the manipulations that nearly killed me. I also said that if they needed something like this done then they could damn well do it themselves. At which point Kolbus smiled and told me that there might be catastrophic, universe-ending consequences for direct interference and that sometimes, using servants and intermediaries might have been necessary.

I was on the verge of getting really angry then and Lady Yennefer interfered and stopped the meeting.

So that’s how I think the Rebellion started.

I think we can trust Sam’s account of the matter in that he spoke to a number of his old comrades in arms who he knew to share his sentiments and the thing started to grow from there.

I spoke to one of his former comrades whom I am not going to name. He remained loyal to Redania and the Empire although by his own admission, if Sam had told him what was happening, he might well have been on the other side.

He was appalled when I told him what Sam had done and replied that he liked to think that he would not have been party to any kind of blood rituals or anything. Like me, he is spending a lot of time looking back on old conversations with Sam and his other comrades to see if there was anything that he had seen or if there was anything that he could have done to try and avert this disaster.

Also, like me, he struggles to reconcile the laughing man that he had fought alongside in the battles against Nilfgaard and the leader of so horrific a rebellion.

I have two stories from the man. I have removed any reference that might be there that might give away the Knight’s identity. As I say, he remained loyal and deserves better than to be destroyed by one side or another for perceived loyalty or disloyalty. And for whatever sins he may have committed to not seeing things beforehand, he is paying for them now by doubting himself.

We called ourselves the Spares. We were not expendable, the general had other lads for that. We were not… the elite. We were the Knights of Redania and we were pretty powerful. We called ourselves the Spares because we knew what we were.

We were the spare sons. Sent to war because if we lived, then our parents got to be all high and mighty because they had a son that was serving and if we died? Well, that was almost better, wasn’t it? Because then they had a son that died in the war. They can beat their breast and wail about the tragedy of it all before pretending to be brave and saying “At least he died doing his duty for Redania.”

Pffftt.

It doesn’t take a lot for a man to realise that he wasn’t the favourite child and your brother knew that. Same as we all did.

Oh I know, you are going to argue the whole thing about one for the land and one for the church and one for the army, but that is bullshit and you know it. You do, and you were not the least favourite.

But WE all knew it. We were there, properly equipped and trained which meant that we could do a better job than the PFI, but there is never a doubt in anyone’s mind that your parents are secretly hoping that you don’t make it home.

Then your brother comes in. I’ve seen angrier men, but not many.

I talk about him as though he’s some kind of younger brother. I called him those same condescending things. I called him “lad” and “kid” and things even though I am, at best, three years older than him. But he came and he was new and he was green so that made him younger than us.

And he was younger too. In just about all other circumstances. He was naive about gambling, naive around women, the only thing he was aged about was that he could hold his drink like a motherfucker. That’s when we could persuade him to drink. I don’t think he liked it.

One time, we got him drunk after a battle and we found him in tears afterwards. One of those things which started off as being a bit funny, then it was really funny and then it just became kind of embarrassing. He looked like a fool too. His armour was misshapen and ugly to look at. His horse might have been impressive but she was a piebald and looked ridiculous. He was bland in a field of heroes.

One thing that can be said about being a spare was that our Fathers dressed us up so that when we died, everyone could know who we were.

We all knew who he was. More than one of us had parents that owed his daddy money and they took every opportunity to take it out on him.

And then we saw our first action. I had seen your brother train and he did it with this kind of off-putting intensity. He didn’t train quickly, he trained with this kind of steady focus that most of us found off-putting. But then he went into battle that first time.

I don’t know if you’ve had it, the moment where you look at a person and wonder why they are there, what they have to offer and why people speak of them with respect. Then one day you see them in all of their power and their glory. That was what it was like for us.

It wasn’t that he was fearless. He was screaming with his fear, but he was also angry and he used that anger to fuel him. His horse did exactly what he told it to do and he was the first among us to charge home and into the enemy ranks. He broke through and what’s an armoured knight to do when the ranks in front of you open and your enemy breaks?

We followed him.

We found him later. He had his mace in his hand and he was staring at it in horror. There was a mangled… brain on it, coating the weapon and dripping off his arm. He was laughing hysterically. The kind of thing where you get scared for the person doing it when you hear them. We took him off and got him cleaned up. He seemed very young to us all at that moment and we didn’t get him drunk.

That time.

He was a natural at it. Where, off the battlefield he was this kind of naive little follower, in battle he was this instinctual beast of a man. At first, we followed him because he got results. Then he would start saying things like “Follow me” and we would because it made sound sense. Then l]ater we followed him because it was him shouting.

We lost people and he took it hard. He always took it hard. Any man that says that they don’t feel it when a comrade is lost… well… I don’t want to fight alongside such a man. But your brother always took it particularly hard. I never found out why but he was often inconsolable when one of us died and we had to take him off somewhere.

I can’t speak for all of my fellows but I was proud of the man that he was becoming. Like he was my little brother you know? And then the war was over.

Then the war was over. Just like that.

I found that story interesting. It was an interesting perspective on my brother that I had not heard elsewhere. I had seen Sam in action as a military leader, but I had no idea how those skills had developed or how that had happened. So to hear about what he was like during his army days, from a man who did not need to lie or sugarcoat his accounts one way or the other was really interesting.

When asked about how Sam had made contact to recruit him over to the side of the rebellion he seemed to grow sad and introspective. When he told me the story it had the feel of a tale that had been told a couple of times before. I knew that Imperial Intelligence had been through Sam’s former colleagues and comrades for any latent signs of rebellion so that would track with what I know. But here it is:

Like your brother, I kept my rank for a while and worked some garrison duty. Later I led a squad of guys that patrolled the roads looking for deserters and bandits. I won’t lie, the line between the two was often whatever we decided that it was going to be. I lost touch with your brother then.

Met a girl, the daughter of a Nilfgaardian merchant that had lots of money that my Father needed. Nice girl. Bit shy for my taste at first and we both had to work at it to get over the fact that she was a Black-hearted Southern Bitch and I was an ignorant and hate-filled Northern Barbarian. But we are getting there now and increasingly, I look forward to returning home at the end of the day and seeing her smile when I walk in. And there are signs that she is doing things for me that she doesn’t have to, but does them to make my life easier.

I just wish that the Southerners didn’t like their women so quiet and timid.

But we are getting there. It helps that she’s pregnant now.

So I stayed in the Redanian forces. I command one of the towers in (Left blank) and in a year or two, the commander of my part of the wall is looking to retire and we have hopes that I can get that command. We are never struggling for money given my wife’s father insists on looking after his future grandchild.

Then out of the blue, This will have been late autumn, early winter, last year. As in, the one before the Rebellion started taking place… Your brother walks up the path that leads to my house.

(Freddie’s note: This will have been somewhere in the middle of when I was recuperating in Angral after my encounters with the Goddess)

We live in a nice little townhouse in the richer part of town. We are well off enough and I have enough rank that we can have a house with a bit of a garden and a tree for the kids to climb and fall off of. There is a shed for my horse and gear and we have room for a couple of servants that clean and cook and things. My squire stays at the garrison.

So anyway, I have just come home for the night and your brother walks up to the door and knocks. He knocks you know? I remember standing guard over him while he took a shit and he knocked on my door.

Honest to flame but I was ashamed that day.

If you had asked me before the recent events, I would have thought very little of the visit. I don’t suppose that you have any… way of seeing it. But we had been closer than brothers during the war, but then you get assigned to different places. You might have different backgrounds and your politics might be different, but in the heat of the moment, firm friendships can be formed when you charge into the enemy alongside each other. It’s later that you kind of drift apart from each other.

But then, when it’s peacetime again. Life, comparative wealth and family start to return to everyone’s mind and then all you have in common are memories. Your brother came in, and we sat, talked and reminisced about old times. If he hadn’t rebelled, I wouldn’t have thought anything about that meeting. It was just… a meeting between old comrades. Old comrades don’t want to pay the price of an inn or a tavern meal and know that a former comrade is in the area. I have certainly taken advantage of such a thing in my time.

But since everything kicked off… I don’t know. I’ve thought about that night so often over the last few weeks that I can’t even tell if I’m remembering right.

I remember that my wife didn’t like him. It was one of the few times that she properly argued with me. We are getting better at that now. She used to get angry but then she would just kind of… keep it to herself but I hate the atmosphere that leaves. If I’ve done something wrong or if there is something we need to argue about, I want to have that out in the open, not bottled up.

I saw what that did to my parents.

But she didn’t like him and she couldn’t tell me why. Said she found him… repulsive. Said that she felt that she needed a bath after he had gone.

We talked about old times mostly, old friends and things of that nature. Old battles and old fights. We reminisced about the woman that I had taken to him on the night after his first battle and we talked about the first time that we had all gotten drunk together.

We talked about how we had felt invincible against our enemies and then we talked about how much we had hated the South and the Black ones. How much we had hated Djikstra, Roche and the rest for murdering Radovid and robbing us of our chance.

I wonder if I’m imagining things.

Nilfgaard is interesting to me. I know that we were conquered and I still hate Nilfgaard. I do, I still hate them and I know the resentment that he was talking about. I know that he hated Nilfgaard and that sentiment that he expressed about wanting another shot at them on the battlefield. I know that. I feel that. I still hate Nilfgaard.

I do. I still hate them.

But individual Nilfgaardians.

I care for my wife a great deal and increasingly, I would be angry if she betrayed me and left me. I still struggle to tell her that I love her, but I would miss her if she was gone and that feeling is increasing every day. Her Father is a good man and I’ve known some people that… I liked them before I knew that they were Nilfgaardian and since then… I don’t know.

We sat and we talked about how much we wished we had another go at things. And then, abruptly in the middle of the conversation. He stopped talking about that and started to speak about his plans in the North. About how he resented you a lot for keeping things from him and then he told me how proud he was of you.

My wife claims that the conversation changed when he realised that I was insisting on referring to the problems that I had with Nilfgaard in the past tense and that you were looking forward to raising my child with my Nilfgaardian wife. She claims that she has never loved me more than that moment when I told your brother that these things were in the past.

It haunts me though. I have nightmares. If I had not been married. If I had… still been single. Would I have been nursing my hate and my resentment like your brother had? And would I now be a captive, or would I be dead in the same way that all of his fellows are?

Or worse. What would have happened if he had won? Would I now be a traitor that consorted with the enemy? And would I be forced to kill my wife and child to prove my loyalty to Redania?

I loved your brother as only a comrade in arms can love another comrade. We went through the shit together and I struggle to think of him as a traitor.

I found that upsetting as well.

What was the difference between being a traitor, heretic and conspirator and how many people that are currently being tried for treason only fall one side of the line or the other by dint of small circumstances? I am thinking of people like Sir Tristam who we have since found out belongs to that kind of group. He too was a veteran. I have been unable to find anyone who can say a bad word about the man, save that he was so obviously a traitor. I’ve had people refuse what I saw him do and be a part of, to my face.

I was even challenged to a duel on the matter although the fellow in question backed down.

I also found it disquieting to think that this unnamed knight’s wife also didn’t like Sam. I can look back through my memory and remember many instances of women disliking Sam to the point that I wonder how I missed it. I have often thought of myself as the kind of man that shows proper respect to the women in my life, but looking at what has happened, I am beginning to think that I still have a long way to go on that score.

So we know, or think that we can be pretty confident that Sam was recruiting people into his conspiracy during the time while I was recovering from my ordeals. That does put an interesting spin on things as to why Sam didn’t come and support me through that illness and why he didn’t attend the Yule celebrations that year.

I mean yes, the most obvious reason for that was that he was building a conspiracy that rather depended on him doing horrible things to Emma, Mark, Ariadne and Francesca, but the other point to be made is that he was not where we thought that he was going to be.

According to Lady Eilhart and Lady Yennefer, transportation can be tracked. There are weaknesses to the tracking systems in that you need to know precisely where the site of the gate was and you need to have the ritual components easily to hand. But it can be done. It is also true to know when magic is being used in general. There is also the superstition aspect of things that many people think that the mages can do more than they say. So people don’t want to teleport around all the time in case teleporting can be tracked.

To construct the transport gate to get Sam, Ariadne, or Laurelen would have had to know where to send it to and if Sam was in Tretogor, or… anywhere other than his home in Northern Redania, then that would have led to the obvious question of “Why are you not where we were expecting you to be Sammy?”

So we can be sure that Sam was using that time to recruit those people that he would later consider to be his inner circle.

We also know that he was still constructing his vampire-controlling fetish at this point. We know that because one of the first things that was done after the rebellion was destroyed was that Lady Eilhart led a contingent of the Lodge of Sorceresses and the Council of Mages to the manse of the White Cliffs.

I am actively banned from talking about a lot of what they found there because we are working to ensure that nothing like that can ever be attempted again. But suffice it to say that what they found was awful. I have told them that they can feel free to do what they like with the land to ensure that it is safe.

When we took Angral from Lord Dorme, Ariadne and Kerrass both said that they found horrific things there in the construction of the flawed Fetish let alone what it would have been like in the production of a true fetish and as such…

The manor house is going to be raised to the ground, the physical building itself is going to be destroyed as far as physically possible and then the ground is going to be sewn with silver, salt and iron. In a few years, they think that they might be able to reclaim the land but they have warned me that this will be an optimistic guess.

But it is from speaking to the villagers and what passed for the household staff that we know more about what happened in that area.

It seems as though it was a dark area to be.

I can’t give you a perfect account of what happened in that area as what we know is jumbled together from lots of different sources. There are many areas that my brother and I didn’t agree on but one of those was regarding the education and well-being of the people that worked the fields under our care.

Whatever else can be said about Sam, he was very careful though. Phineas was the person mainly in residence. The locals were of the impression that there was some kind of curse on the manor house and as such, they didn’t go up there in pain of societal condemnation. We are pretty sure that Phineas lived and worked there on and off since shortly after he and Sam first made contact with each other.

Before that, Sam used the place when he couldn’t keep it in any more. When his rage or his… appetites became too much for him to bear, then he would go to the Manse of White Cliffs and… exorcise his urges. Sometimes there would be the sounds of whips and screams of pain from a male voice and a cloaked and hooded figure could be seen prowling around the local area which would often result in the stealing away of a young and beautiful figure.

The manse was too poor to afford a Witcher or some other means of getting rid of so obvious (to them) a curse so Sam was relatively safe in that area. But it must have occurred to him as being an obvious place to keep Francesca after he had taken her. I do not doubt that Phineas would have supported this decision as it would have meant that he could have done his work in relative peace.

The locals were now well cowed and it was from the date of Francesca’s arrival that the real… I want to say that it was then that the real evil began, but let’s be honest with one another. There had been evil going on there for a while. Phineas had set himself up a lair and as such…

But that was when the locals started to consider what was going on up on the cliff as being something dark and evil rather than just a hooded figure that prowled around meaning that it was safer for everyone if young folk just stayed indoors after dark.

All of the phenomena that I noticed going on in Castle Coulthard were exhibited up there. It was described as ebbing and flowing and given that these were people that lived on the coast, it seems only natural that they would describe the thing as a waveform. But they recount details of dreams, visual distortions and horrific appetites that would spill out of the place. Previously relatively chaste men and women would start feeling their sexual appetites increase, only in unhealthy ways that I am not going to illustrate or recount. Previously good parents would become abusive towards children and it became genuinely agreed that the place was cursed.

And that was when people weren’t going missing as part of Phineas’ experiments. Because again, he… or one of his creatures… would go into the local villages and farming houses to take someone away.

Why didn’t they all just move away? The locals couldn’t give me or anyone that had asked the questions, a proper answer. I think it was inertia more than anything else. They and their families had always stayed there and as such, they couldn't leave. There is a darker theory though which is that they, as a society, just kind of believed that this new, deeper darkness was deserved by them and as such, they needed to stay quiet and suffer the punishment that they deserved.

I don’t like the implications of that. I prefer to think that it was something that Sam or Phineas did to them but… I have a sneaking suspicion about the way things are.

So Francesca came and we can believe Sam in that it would have been then that the truly awful rituals began. The locals certainly noticed that their feudal lord was in residence more and more often. There are even several endearing accounts about how they begged him not to stay up at the house because of its cursed nature.

Apparently, he laughed and agreed before turning his horse’s head for the house.

We can be sure that those rituals came to fruition in the late Winter, or early spring of that year because that was when Sam’s visits all but ceased. I don’t know but I can guess from some of the words of some of the captives that they were all getting frustrated due to the lack of progress on the production of the fetish.

I struggle with what to call the small leather bag that allowed Sam to enslave Ariadne. Calling it a totem seems… rude somehow to those roadside totems of old and forgotten gods.

According to those same captives, Sam relaxed in their meetings in the late Winter or early springtime as it was about then that it was first noticed that Sam started wearing a small leather pouch on his belt.

The following is taken from the account of Sir Alexy Prusak who was one of the early conspirators. Sir Alexy is… as he is still alive at the time of writing… an interesting man given that I found that I kind of liked him. He acknowledges that he was on the losing side and considers everything that is coming to him as kind of the cost of doing business. He claims that he is going to meet the Eternal Flame with a clear conscience, a pure heart and feels as though he can answer for everything he did and every decision he took.

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He refuses to accept that he will be known as a traitor because of everything he did, he did for Redania. He once told me “How can I be a traitor to Nilfgaard, I have never been there, I was born in Redania, I served in Redania, I bled for Redania and I fought for Redania. So how can I be a traitor? I never once, not ever, betrayed the nation of my birth.”

He was not at Coulthard Castle and is rather appalled at the news that he is receiving of what happened there. I don’t think that he wants to believe it but at the same time, he doesn’t have a great deal of choice. As I say, I liked him quite a bit. He was cheerfully resigned, knew who I was and, helpfully, had read some of the previous chapters about what Sam had claimed had happened.

It was about the numbers you see. They had more of them than we did and that was rather putting a crimp in our plans.

I have to admit that you’re not quite what I expected old boy. I mean, you look a bit pale and pasty to me. Sam had described you as some kind of weedy little scholar that barely knew which end of a sword to grip. But I’ve seen those kinds of men and I’ve seen fighters.

You’ve seen things, haven’t you?

Of course, you have. Silly me. If even a hint of what you say is true then I can’t pretend differently.

And nor should I for all of that. Not your fault that you are on the wrong side. Your Father made you do it and then your brother, for all his virtues, was rather ignorant of the qualities that were to be found inside his own family.

Yours not least.

You’re a fighter, aren’t you? A warrior poet. Imagine what we could have made of you if he had just had the sense to use you properly. The famed Freddie, a scholar and historian. If we had been able to get you from the beginning then you could have pointed out how stupid some of it was.

And it was FUCKING stupid, wasn’t it old cock?

Not your fault. Not your fault at all. A truth that some people struggle with though. Not your fault that you were on the wrong side.

But you didn’t bring me here to allow me to lecture you or to listen to me trying to convert you to my way of thinking.

You’re a fine upstanding gentleman now. One of the most powerful men in the North I understand. I don’t suppose I can persuade you to marry me sister could I? A nice gal that one. Huge tracts of land if you follow me and she will need a strong man to stand next to her given everything that you and I both know is going to happen over the next few weeks.

Not your fault at all.

I wonder if your brother was trying to keep you out of it all. Didn’t succeed though, did he? Rather fucked that one up. And then when he realised we needed you, something that I told him of course, me and others, can’t deny it, he had to force you to let us have anything to do with you.

And then you hate us and then you’re not on our side when it should have been so easy to bring you over.

Not your fault my friend, not at all. Can you be friends with a traitor? I hope so. Otherwise, my coming time is going to be dreadfully lonely.

No, I don’t mind. We fought, we lost and now we must pay the consequences. I have to say that it is going to be much cleaner this time. This time we FOUGHT. We weren’t sent packing by a bunch of merchants and spies. This time we faced our enemies head-on. We fought and we were beaten. I actually feel better this way. When I am no longer useful to men like you I will march to the headsman or whatever is going to happen with my head held high. When I am told to say my last words I shall cry with a loud voice “LONG LIVE REDANIA” and then I shall lie my neck on the block without guilt.

Or in the noose. I don’t mind the thought of having my neck stretched. I would prefer to die by a more martial weapon though if I have a choice.

So. You were asking about…?

Ah yes.

It was about the numbers you see. We didn’t have any, the filthy Imperials had loads of them and there was no way to reconcile the two.

I would like to correct one fallacy though old man. Not your fault. You were writing the things you were being told to write. Your brother did not start the rebellion. He was instrumental but he did not start it. If we’re honest with each other, old chap, then we would probably have difficulty picking out who it was that started things. I don’t think it was like that though. I think that it's more of a mystery as to why no one had started a rebellion before that point.

There were lots of us I think. Lots of small little groups of friends and former comrades. Little barons in their insignificant holdings, dreaming of heroism in a war that they had missed altogether. All of us watched the others to see who would go for it first so that the rest of us could follow and could claim to get overwhelmed and caught up if and when it goes wrong.

The problem was. I mean… I think that the problem was that none of us were generals. The most senior military mind that we had was a Count, but he was thought of by everyone, including me, to be a nincompoop. He had guarded a castle wall like de Radford. He learned his tactics in a field.

So we all looked at each other. We all knew how to lead companies of men and I think most of us would be confident on the level of doubling it. But none of us had commanded armies and none of us had served in the logistic corps.

Says something that doesn’t it old boy.

I can laugh now. I can.

I can laugh now.

.

So your brother didn’t start it. I don’t think he could have started it if he wanted to. Not a popular man, your brother. I mean, not a popular family to begin with but your brother was not a popular man amongst those people that he needed to be popular with.

I didn’t like him for a start.

We all knew about his abilities on the battlefield.

I saw him fight once did I tell you?

Terrifying he was. There was a level of focus on him that I didn’t see elsewhere. Nothing fancy. None of the tricks that some nobleman’s sons like to think will set them apart from the men around them. Do you know the kind? Of course you do, you’ve fought men. The kind of trick that only works in the training yard with blunted swords and men that daren’t try and kill you that are wearing little more than light padding. Try that on a battlefield against armoured opponents that are trying to kill you and you’ll quickly find yourself skewered.

By men like you, for instance, old man. Men who know when to wait for the gaps and simply put their swords in the way of one of them.

But your brother would just charge his horse into the middle of them and he would lift his mace over his head and bring it crashing down. Little finesse to it, just up and down and every time it crushed a skull and caused a sickening splattering sound that made me shudder.

But anyway.

So no one liked him until he came up with the solution to the problem of numbers.

I mean. I know that the Queen’s all flighty now, trying to tell everyone that she tried to avert disaster and that she was on the Imperial side all along. There might even be evidence to prove that she was on your side all along but take it from me, old friend, that woman is a snake with tits.

I think even she was waiting for a chance to rebel. Then in strides your brother with a solution. Not that he told us what it was at first. He comes to us all with this proposition. He tells us that he can swell our ranks, that he can upgrade our existing forces so that each soldier would be worth ten Imperial foot-troops and that he can protect us from the magical storm that we would know to be coming.

I laughed at him as I recall.

But he swore that it was true and he was backed up by that Gregoire fellow. Did you meet him? Of course, you did, silly me. You wrote so, didn’t you? Humourless man. A friend of mine once joked about Gregoire that he would crawl through a perfectly good brothel to kiss Radovid’s feet.

Gregoire beat the poor sod to the point of death as I recall. Ah well. Gregoire’s dead now and I can’t say that I’m sorry. Humourless fucker that he was.

I wonder if it was part of your brother’s augmentation process. Where they forcefully remove your sense of humour.

Anyway.

Your brother comes to us with this grand solution without really telling us what it was. At first, we laughed at him. The problem with the sheer numbers of troops that you need to do the kinds of things that we needed, is that they are hard to hide. You can’t just pull them out from behind the woodshed. They need feeding and equipping and paying and training and all different kinds of things. Which in turn means that you can’t hide them. Small bands of troops are easy to hide but when you are talking about armies. You can tell where they are by the stench.

And we needed armies to do what we needed to do.

We could make up some of the shortfalls with mercenaries, of course, we all knew that and your brother did say that we would have the entire Coulthard treasury to help with that kind of thing.

Awfully decent of him. Until the money failed to arrive of course.

But anyway, he said he had a solution, we laughed at him and told him that we would look at his solution when it arrived.

And oh boy, look at it we did.

He brought us examples. The first example of it was this kind of feral beast. Like a giant, wingless bat if the bat was almost completely made out of muscle. Long arms with claws that ended in dagger blades. To be honest, I had been more than a little convinced that such things were inventions of my nursemaid when she was trying to scare me into going to sleep.

Your brother had the thing stand there while Gregoire hit it with a sword. Over and over again the big armoured bastard struck at that monster and over and over again, the thing would be marked, and it would even bleed a little, but the amount of damage done was nothing compared to the amount of damage that should have been done.

Then he had the thing tear apart an infantry breastplate. That made me sit up and take notice I can tell you.

Then he brought a woman. Not your intended, that came later. He brought this woman with long straight hair. A good-looking woman too. Kept making noises like a bird. Then he hit her and she turned into this kind of… heavily muscled woman. Imagine a woman that was built like those circus strongmen that you see sometimes. Only there was nothing funny about this. Terrifying she was. She did the same thing when she grew claws and impaled them through a chest plate.

Then he made her lie down and offered us the opportunity to fuck her.

I didn’t. But I do know that a couple of people did.

Those men can get fucked as far as I’m concerned. If they’re not dead yet and already freezing in the winds of the Eternal Frost, then they will be when the executioner is done with them.

And then, a couple of weeks after that. He brought your Countess.

-

The Queen of Dorn has just come to see me again. Some people might wonder what this has possibly got to do with history, but being as how I am living with this history now, even as I write it, then I still think it’s relevant that I write it down as soon as it happens.

The Queen and I are relatively good friends, which is an odd thing to write. I hope that I never get used to that sort of thing. I hope there is always a moment where I look at myself and think, “Hang on, what am I doing here, advising Kings and Queens and having tea with Duchesses and yelling at Empresses? I hope that this never becomes routine and even more than that, I hope that it never gets to a point where I start to feel entitled to it. I’ve never met someone who has thought that they are entitled to something that I didn’t want to smack in the mouth.

But Sleeping Beauty came to see me. Although I don’t really get to write about those moments of quiet laughter and the like, we are relatively decent friends. She has spent a good amount of time with me during my recovery from injury and sickness. As I think I have written, we play cards with each other and generally speaking, it turns out that she is better at it than me. She is a gentle presence. The physical female equivalent of a warm blanket to wrap you up when you are feeling cold and to tell you that everything is going to be ok when you are feeling upset.

We talk of small things. We laugh about her mother and talk about the various foolish things that people do in her presence when they turn around to see her and her appearance strikes them in the face. I cannot claim to be less affected by that than other people. There is a reason she is described as the most beautiful woman on the continent although I have never met Lady Francesca Findabair who some claim to rival Sleeping Beauty. But I work hard at making sure that she is not made uncomfortable by my actions.

Also, my friend loves her which means that I feel as though there would be a wall between us.

And I love Ariadne.

But she came to see me today, cloaked and hooded and prepared for a journey.

“You are looking well.” She told me as she walked into my little study pavilion.

“Liar,” I accused her and she laughed.

I am still not used to having servants. I don’t like it as I would much rather serve myself and my guests accordingly. But for two reasons. The first is a physical limitation. I am still missing an adequate left hand. I have a wooden appendage at the moment and I still find it clumsy. Also, although my movement speed and balance are improving, I still do not trust myself to carry anything that requires a sense of balance. So I would be just as likely to spill the hot honeyed drink down the Queen’s dress as I would be able to put the cup down in front of her.

The second reason is that I am a Duke now. And as I once told a certain Vampire, one of the reasons that Dukes, Kings and nobles, in general, have servants is so that they could be seen to have servants. I am doing my best to learn their names, however.

I sent for tea which she takes honeyed to a degree that would make Kerrass complain and she sat.

“You are leaving then?” I wondered.

“I am.”

I sighed and waited while the tea was served.

“I am not going to lie,” I told her. “I will miss you and our little chats.”

“And I you, Your Grace.” Her eyes twinkled. She knows that I still have the urge to check around myself to see who people are talking to when they say that. “Although I would rather it not happen the way it did, I have enjoyed building on our friendship.”

“As have I,” I told her. “Where are you going?”

“Back to Vizima to start. Then through the transport gate to the Imperial Capital. Marion has written to me to tell me that there are another gaggle of suitors that I must meet. There seem to be more of them every time I consider the matter.”

“You will find someone,” I told her.

“Great Sun but I hope not.” She told me. “I do not wish to become a baby making contraption for some prince that cannot see past my face and my cleavage.” She looked a little wistful. “Besides, I had rather hoped that I had found someone.”

“He has still not come to talk to you.”

“No.” She finished her tea and placed it back down. “I do believe that Kerrass is avoiding me.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I believe that he is avoiding me too.”

“You know, it really does not make me feel better.”

We exchanged small, frustrated and sad smiles and sat in silence for a long time, watching some workers as they took some more stones from one of the ruined walls over to where there was a team of Mages waiting in the black robes of the Imperial Legion Magica, who were testing them one by one for worthiness to be reused. Yennefer and Lady Maleficent had collaborated on a simple spell that could detect the kind of corruption that had been prevalent in the various rituals that Phineas had designed and that my brother had carried out.

One of the stones was declared problematic and was taken off to another pair of mages who gestured at it in a similar way that Kerrass casts a stream of sparks. A beam of intense heat emerged from both mages which melted and then vapourised the stone.

The first time that the process had been explained to me, I had wondered if this would make the taint airborne and as such more dangerous. The mages in question had looked at me as though I was stupid. Then, rather gratifyingly, they visibly remembered who I was and told me that the heat was hot enough to mean that the stone was broken down to the point that there was literally nothing there to breathe.

Apparently, the spell has little to no range and requires a lot of power which is why it isn’t used on battlefields. I remember leaving that meeting feeling a little faint.

“I don’t know what’s going on with him,” I said after a while. “I am surrounded by friends. Sir Guillaume is refusing to leave the area as he insists that he be allowed to act as my personal champion should the need arrive. Helfdan is busy as befits his rank but I know that there is a tribe of Skelligans that are still around to make me smile. Samantha… Father Anchor and his wife… Even Yennefer and my old university friends. So many friends and yet the one that I truly want would rather be up to his ears in swamp-muck hunting the last feral vampires and the associated Necrophages than sitting here and talking to me.

“Or talking to you for that matter. I don’t know what’s going on in his head.”

It took me a moment to realise that Sleeping Beauty was laughing at me.

“Oh Freddie,” She chuckled. She rarely laughs aloud but she is rather prone to a deep, silent chuckle. “Guilt. Guilt is what is going through his head. He feels guilty for leaving you and every time he looks at you or your sister, he sees the injuries that you have both suffered and then he curses himself for fleeing to get help when he should have come to save you. Guilt is the matter.”

“That’s…” I stopped to try and take in the implications of that.

“Really, intensely stupid?” She asked, gathering her skirts and climbing to her feet. “I agree. But we are assuming that we are dealing with an entirely rational mind.”

“That is true. But I need my friend.”

“You should tell him that. Or try to anyway. But in the meantime, much though I would love to stay here and watch you slap the stupid out of him, I have matters of state to deal with. Will you carry a message to him for me?”

“Of course.”

She handed me a small, sealed letter.

“It tells him that I miss him and that I meant to tell him that I love him.” She told me. “It says that what I had intended was that on your wedding night, I intended to try and talk to him and have it all out with just how I feel about him. He will pretend that I said less than that, and maybe the letter is written in that way. But I rather think that I was going to try and kiss him at some point before seeing which way the night went. But it seems that it was not meant to be.”

I looked up at her from behind my desk.

“He does love you,” I told her.

“I know. But sooner or later, I must marry and produce an heir. And I will not betray my husband. I had hoped that the romance of your wedding night would carry us both past our misgivings and that we could then put it behind us. Alas…” She shrugged. “I would not trade my heartbreak for yours though. Be well, my Lord Duke. Give Kerrass my love and write to me would you? Come and see us next time you have access to someone that can open a transport gate?”

“I will endeavour to try,” I told her. “And I shall speak to Kerrass. Maybe I can convince him to ride to you when he gets his head out of his ass.”

“If anyone can do that, then you can,” she told me. “But I will not hold out too much hope. From everything my people have told me, he can get his head jammed pretty far up his ass when he sets his mind to it.”

I laughed at the image and she smiled back.

“Goodbye,” I told her. “Be safe.”

“You too,” she replied.

I tried to work for a little while after that but instead, all I could do was stare at the workers. Over and over again, I tried to tell myself that I was the most powerful man in the North. I called over a messenger.

I have dedicated messengers now. Benefits of rank.

I wrote a quick note telling Kerrass that I needed to talk to him.

“The next time Guildmaster Kerrass comes out of the wilds,” I told the messenger, “see to it that he receives my note.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The messenger saluted and rode off.

I never want to get used to this.

I looked at my work pile for a long moment and decided that I didn’t want to write the next bit today and instead decided to practise walking around.

I am getting better. My stamina is improving but I still need to work on my balance. I am beginning to look forward to that moment that Lady Eilhart has promised when I can have a working left hand again. It might be magical and it might be expensive and my rank and history giving me privileges that I didn’t want... But I have been told that I am getting it and that I don’t have much choice in the matter. And if I don’t have much choice in the matter, then I can’t turn it down. So now I am looking forward to getting it.

I am looking forward to cutting up my own steak again.

Or to eat a sausage by any other method than picking it up and biting the end off. Every time I do that I can hear Sam telling the old family joke about how he had a sausage for me to put in my mouth.

Dammit all.

-

So yes, according to my witnesses, of which Sir Aleksy was one of the more reliable about this particular period of the conspiracy, Ariadne was brought into the planning stages of the conspiracy. According to Sir Aleksy, the other vampiric subjects involved were just testing the fetish and now it was getting on to dealing with the main event. What that led to was the question of just how long Ariadne was involved and how willing she was when she was involved.

I was, obviously, more concerned about the second point.

I was not involved in that part of the questioning but Sir Aleksy recounted the matter easily. He claimed to be quite sickened by the entire thing. I was allowed to ask him some more questions after the Imperial interrogators were done with him regarding Ariadne’s guilt or innocence.

There was a difference old boy. There was a difference. The other two… the bat-like one and the muscled woman with the claws were just… They were animals, old boy. Beasts. Little more than that. The woman was the closest to human appearance but even she swore, shouted and growled. She made noises like a little bird and could barely speak.

There was an edge to when he brought your Countess in. It’s hard to say exactly what it was but there was a difference. He was less cocky, more careful and less sure of himself. He was paler, sweating a bit and he was very very careful with what he told her to do.

Do you follow old chap?

With the beasts, he was off-hand with them. Uncaring and unconcerned. With her, he directed her carefully. He pointed and gave precise instructions. He would stop and spend some time properly considering what it was that he was going to say. He placed the words carefully and left little to no room for wiggling about and for the subject to get creative with their interpretations of the instructions. He was careful, the same way that you do with particularly stupid servants.

Or particularly clever ones.

I thought that he was scared of her. I didn’t suggest that, I could already see which way the wind was blowing. It was a turning point in the conspiracy that one. That was the moment, I think, where we all started looking at each other and realising that we were actually going to do this.

But she came in and he told her to keep her thoughts to herself. Her face was a mask and she moved around like a marionette. I don’t think that you can be in any doubt that she was on your side and that she was being forced. The way she looked at us when she first came in and before Lord Kalayn told her to guard her expression. I think she hated us. And the way some of them treated her, I don’t think I would blame her. If it helps you old boy, she was not on our side. She was forced. I’ve not lied yet, but you can believe that especially.

So I felt very reassured by that. Sir Aleksy seemed properly ashamed by those events. And I was reassured.

So when did Sam first make contact with Ariadne? I found the answer to that question from among the most unlikely of sources. It was actually one of the last pieces to the puzzle that I needed to find and it was when I was complaining about the lack of information on the subject while I was working on my physical recovery.

There are exercises that I have to do. Because I spend so much time on my ass and because I am still getting used to taking on proper amounts of nutrition and carrying around the extra weights of my prosthetic limbs, both the temporary arm and the more permanent legs, there are still a series of exercises that I need to do to help build the muscle up. They are hard, they hurt and the day that I don’t have to worry about those exercises in the future seems like a golden dawn that I am still moving towards.

But I have found that the best thing to do is to have people there to talk through the problems with. Not about the exercise but separate things. Samantha is among the best as she doesn’t stand for any of my bullshit and holds me to the task.

So I think that I was working on my strength with Guillaume while I was expressing my frustration with this particular missing part of the puzzle when Samantha looked at me with an expression of horror before she burst into tears and fled.

I sent someone after her although I don’t remember who. It was probably Father Anchor as I find him a good person to bounce ideas off and he knows Samantha of old whereas she and Guillaume don’t get on. He finds her sense of humour abrasive.

The news that Samantha had actually been there when my brother had first gone to Angral to try out his control of her caused a stir amongst the investigators that were still putting together the timeline of events. She was distraught. After setting the woman down and explaining that we didn’t think she had done anything wrong. Indeed, we were rather self-recriminatory that we hadn’t thought of so simple an explanation as asking some of Ariadne’s household staff about it.

The easiest solution is often the simplest and it would seem that Sam took advantage of that in this instance. So we calmed Samantha down and the following day, I had her come and be interviewed by me and a representative of the Imperial Intelligence Service so that she wouldn’t have to do the entire thing again.

I should also note that Samantha and I have a long history together and I should also stress that that history has never been romantic. Samantha is a beautiful woman, but is also happily married and still, hopelessly puppy dog style in love with her husband who is a professional wheel-wright and wagon builder for the merchant caravans. You can’t look at the pair of them when they are together and not see it radiating from the two of them.

Detractors would say that Samantha has been acting as my nurse for quite a long time now and that would not be an unfair suggestion. She was the primary giver of care that looked after me when I was recovering from the incident where I met Kerrass’ Goddess and since I came out of the castle cellar, she took over those duties as well.

Our relationship is closer to a kind of sibling rivalry than anything else though. On the outside, it can look competitive and abrasive while I hold Samantha in a great deal of affection and although she might claim differently, there have been a few shared and solemn moments between the two of us that would suggest that she feels the same way.

Not least because it was Kerrass and me who broke down the final barriers between her and her husband getting married.

I mention all of this because while you are reading from the following interview, it is worth remembering that the vocal tones that we were using with each other were a lot lighter and more comical than it reads. So please bear that in mind when you read the following excerpt.

So this is your move, is it? This is what you do when you want to talk to someone. You summon them into your tent with a full guard escort and then you have sinister armed men from Imperial Intelligence Services standing in the corner, glowering down at everyone. This is how you do it, is it? This is how you get people to tell you their deepest and innermost secrets.

I’m surprised that there isn’t some iron bowl in the corner of the tent with many interesting, long and pointy metal shapes sticking out of it.

Oh for…

OF COURSE, I KNOW THAT YOU COULD PROBABLY ARRANGE SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

But this is your move, isn’t it? This is how you conduct your interviews and this is how you get people to talk. Anyway, you’ve not been eating properly. I can tell. You look pasty and drawn. Do I need to cut your food up for you? Do you want me to hold it for you and pretend that my hand is the hound chasing the fox into the den of your mouth?

Here it comes, my lord. Here comes the fox, now open wide and swallow it whole.

Oh fuck off, would you?

To think that I would willingly serve someone like you. I could go further North you know. Or South for that matter. A woman like me with my special skills and a husband like mine. We could make a living for ourselves just about anywhere that we liked. Anywhere we wanted to. Maybe Skellige.

Oh but you’ve got friends in Skellige don’t you?

Curses.

And it would mean that I couldn’t use your money on gathering up all of the expensive herbs and things that your people have access to.

Ok, I’ll stay but if you think that means I am going to make your life easy?

YES, I KNOW.

I know.

Dammit.

When’s she coming back? The world is so much more fun when she’s around. I used to enjoy it, watching uptight little pricks demanding to see the lady of the manor and then getting her. She was amazing, always being able to deflate their over important sense of righteousness. Meeting stuffy old men with a bouncy giggle and a smile, wearing a light dress that floated around her while she danced among the flowers. Or meeting the priests with a properly demure dress and wearing that symbol of the Eternal Flame around her neck.

We used to giggle at the Noble Knights when she would wear her corset with the big fan around her neck and carrying her spider staff while they tried to suggest that she should marry them instead.

I miss her.

Yes, I know that you miss her too, that wasn’t what I was saying.

She used to wait out in the courtyard when she was expecting guests. She had this trick of turning up just as their horses would come clattering around the corner and she was always ALWAYS dressed to confound the person that was coming to see her. She knew EXACTLY what to wear and what to say and how to act to utterly disarm whoever it was and whatever they were there to do.

She would muck out stables with the stable hands when nobles would come to show them up for their laziness. She would…

Dammit.

I should have known that that one was different. I honestly thought… I swear… I would have told someone if I thought it was important. It was just… He was your brother.

I should have known that this one was different.

She wasn’t ready for him for a start. I was out helping out the head groom. He had wrenched himself with a particularly heavy load of horse manure. Nothing could have been done about it. Just one of those things that happen when you are dealing with animals. He lifted what he thought was a reasonable amount of horse crap and then it turned out that that lump was stuck to another lump and then…

Well…

It’s not important. It was an ointment that he had to spread into his back while a group of horsemen turned up. Maybe half a dozen of them all told. I had never met your brother and as such, I was really surprised to see who he was. He turned up, frowning in concentration. He looked… intense. Frowning at a point that only he could see. He was… distracted by something. Pale and sweaty. I would have thought he was ill or something, maybe a bit of a fever. He seemed to jump around at things that only he could see.

Have you ever been startled by a spider’s web? You’re walking along and the sun shines off the web and you jerk away from it before reaching out to brush it away. That’s what he looked like. As though he was being startled by the world.

There was a man with him that seemed to be there to keep him on track. A big man, large and heavily muscled. The kind of man that girls swoon over when they don’t know any better or until they have to talk to them and maintain any kind of conversation.

To be honest, though, I would have thought that he was in charge until I saw him check something with the man that would turn out to be your brother.

They all clattered into the courtyard, like they always do, and then looked around for the servants to see if someone was going to come and take care of them. Again, I always find that kind of funny. There’s just a special kind of person that wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if there weren’t servants around to look after them and tell them what to do and where to go.

Honestly, I’m not sure your lot could wipe your arse if we didn’t tell you where it was.

Eventually, though, the man I was working on called his apprentices over and sent them off to see to the matter. Messages were sent and the Lady of the house was sent which surprised me at the time because normally, she is out there and waiting for the visitor as I say.

She came out, dressed in one of her dark grey-blackish smock things and she looked at the visitors and she seemed surprised.

.

You know that thing where you have a memory and you looked, saw and acted on something that you thought it was at the time? But now that you look back you wonder if you should have seen something else. And then you examine the memory and you can’t help but wonder how you didn’t see it. And then, you wonder if you are adjusting your memory to see something else now that you have the full…

Heh,

Context of the issue.

Alright, you smug bastard. I know that Context is everything...

This time it’s true.

The Countess looked shocked and then your brother laughed in triumph. At first, I thought it was the triumph of a man that knows that he has managed to surprise an unsurprisable woman. As well he might be but now? Looking back I wonder. Was that the moment that he first put her under his spell? Had he been afraid as to whether or not the control would work until he was actually there and doing the thing?

We probably won’t know now, will we?

What?

No, I didn’t recognise any of the others. They wore blank shields and rode without banners. Only your brother was riding without a helm on.

I mean, I could try but… later?

Anyway. Your brother walked up and hugged the Countess. She wriggled like a worm on a hook before she suddenly seemed to relax into the hug.

“Well?” He asked of her as they pulled apart. “Introduce us.”

She stared at him for a moment.

“This is Lord Samuel Kalayn.” She declared in a loud voice. “Freddie’s brother.”

“We have come to talk about some matters to do with the coming wedding,” your brother said. “So it’s vital that if any of you see him in the near future, you don’t tell him about what you see here, or this meeting. Will you all promise me? We’re planning a surprise.”

His humour and his joy were infectious so of course we all laughed.

He could be charming, your brother.

He and the Countess spent a lot of time together over a couple of days. Enough so that people might have been outraged if they hadn’t known what was going on.

But we didn’t know, did we?

Goddess, poor woman.

But it all seemed happy. The Countess looked flustered but we all put that down to the fact that your brother had turned up out of nowhere. The Countess was always one that liked to make careful plans and things so his coming out of the blue like that must have been a bit of a shock.

Or at least, that’s what we told ourselves and when we asked her about it later, she would just add that onto the suppositions.

No, I didn’t like your brother. He looked at all of the women there like we were pieces of meat. He looked as though he was drooling as he looked at us to the point that my husband actively got upset. He would have said something too but then your brother would seem to realise something before looking away in disgust.

He left three days later.

When was this?

Just heading towards proper spring. We knew that you were on your way to the Black Forest so… Yeah.

After that?

No nothing that would stand out. She was always in and out at all times of the day or night. She would let people know where she was going and when so there was never any kind of alarm and so… we just didn’t worry.

And it was perfectly understandable that the groom’s brother would want to come and call upon the future bride. No one thought anything of it and it was only the other day when you said that I thought…

I could have done something. I could have said something and…

She got upset and more than a little distraught after that. We worked on the matter for a while, talking it through and making sure that she was alright. I told her that there was enough guilt going around for everyone and that we all should have seen something. We all should have done something or acted in some way.

I told her that it was just as likely that Sam had ordered Ariadne to keep silent and not say anything that might even approach giving the game away to her nearest and dearest.

There is even discussion as to whether or not she could be ordered to actively forget what she was doing when she wasn’t… you know… doing it.

We have no way of proving that one way or another until we can speak to the woman in question of course.

Samantha was taken away to work with an artist to see if she could remember any details of some of the other people that had come with Sam to visit Ariadne. There is not a great deal of hope that she will be able to tell us anything new but there is always hope that something else might be shaken loose.

There is also a team from Imperial Intelligence that are on their way to Angral now to speak to various people to see if they can find anything else out.

So that is what we know about when Sam first made contact with Ariadne.

Back to Sir Aleksy regarding the formation of the plan.

What I don’t think many people understand is that without what your brother brought to us, we didn’t stand a chance. Don’t get me wrong, other gentlemen such as myself, could provide contacts, could provide men, equipment, money and the rest. Leaving aside the rather obvious answer that your brother had all of those things in abundance, what he had?

He had the impetus and drive to use them. Until he provided those things and offered up his situation, putting his neck on the block as it were, then no one else was going to follow through. It wasn’t until he stood up and declared in a loud voice that “Gentlemen, it is time to rebel.” Until he had done that, we were all looking at each other to see who was going to be the first to jump to it.

Before your brother, we were just a collection of buffoons with plooms on our helmets toying with the thought of Rebellion and playing with our toy soldiers. Your brother was the first one who stood up and told us that it was time to put the toys away and put our money where our mouth was.

The other thing that I will say about your brother is that he played things very cleverly.

Everyone wanted to be in charge, but no one wanted to be the man out front so to speak. All of us wanted to be Kingmakers, viziers and chancellors. We wanted to advise and direct things from the shadows but no one was willing to put the money in the pot and actually risk everything.

Not the same mistake that your Father made, old man. What your Father did, which would have been almost as foolish as being the kind of man that stands forward and says “I will lead this treasonous rebellion,” is to give the King what he wanted and then expect to be recompensed out of gratitude. What is the saying?

Yes, that’s it. No one could ever say that you weren’t an educated man Lord Frederick.

“Beware the Gratitude of Kings.”

Not that there was much gratitude to go around in the grand scheme of things. Oh, the things that could have been done if Radovid had properly bound men like your Father to him rather than driving them away. Or destroying them when he had the chance.

Ah well, the benefit of perfect hindsight.

But your brother was clever enough to see what was going to happen. The leader of the rebellion was also the one with the most risk. Everyone wanted to advise the leader, to play both sides off against the middle and then, when the dust had settled, tell the victor that we were always on their side anyway.

So what your brother did was to trust his closest allies. He didn’t walk into a meeting of the rebels with your Countess in chains. Instead, he told everyone that he had the problem sorted. He said that he had tested his… bag or whatever it was and as a result, he had an army and he had magic. He received money from his family and he had access to a large amount of influence from his time in the army.

Then when people told him to prove it, he would point to a few trusted individuals and tell us that he had proven it to them and loudly asked whether or not we would accuse those famous men of lying.

Was I one of these men? Of course not. No, I was nervous for any number of reasons. I am a nobleman but I was a military man. I understand completely that if I had been born on the Southern Bank of the River Yaruga then I would have fought in the ranks of the black ones. I am a patriot to be sure but I would just as easily have been a patriot for Nilfgaard, Temeria or any of the other places where people claim to be patriots but are always asking what the country and its rulers have done for them. Rather than trying to find ways to serve the country.

That was why I liked your brother. He loved Redania. There was a bit too much hatred towards Nilfgaard in his thinking which blinded him to certain factors, but he loved Redania and was doing what he was doing to free Redania.

There were a lot of us in that branch of things but there were also a lot of people that were part of the rebellion because they had lost out, or thought that they had lost out, on power and influence because the North had lost to the South. They were in it for power, wealth and influence.

The largest faction, of course, were those people in the middle but that’s no matter.

I’m getting off track. Do you ever get off track?

Of course, you do. Not your fault though is it? Those of us that like the sounds of our voices tend to get off track because we just spend so much time talking that…

Well…

So he brought your Countess in to prove it to several people. He showed this dominance over her and then the real planning started to happen. He did that several times to an increasing number of people and I think I was there at the last one, the largest meeting. We all turned up and she teleported into the middle of us with a flash of black light. It was as though a hole had been ripped in the air and she just stepped through it with her golden staff twirling. And by the Flame sir, she hated us. Even without the expression on her face, you could feel it radiating off her.

It shames me now that when I saw that, I was excited. I had been one of the doubters regarding what your brother was capable of. But to see him there, see her there and to see him exert his dominance over her was something to see.

No, it wasn’t sexual or anything like that. A few people tried to suggest that he should allow her to service some of them in that way in the same way that they had with the other, lesser woman]. I think your friend de Radford was one of them but your brother wouldn’t have it. If I was a curious man, I would wonder why he was so comfortable letting people abuse the more bestial one but not this one.

I remember him looking at the person that suggested it with such a look of disdain that it fairly chilled us. That says something doesn’t it? The differences between the two vampires are in his head. Not sure what it says but it says something.

Then your Countess gestured and another one of those holes opened up and he, your brother, and a couple of your brother’s closest cronies stepped through the hole and vanished.

I remember it very clearly. Strangest thing, old boy.

I remember turning to my friend Sir Proznyac… Oh no, he died on the field. Caught the pointy end of a lance in his throat. He looked dreadfully surprised as I recall.

But no, I remember turning to him as everyone started to talk and I saw my thoughts on his face. I remember it so very clearly that my doubts had gone away. I remember thinking that there was hope. That the rebellion was going to happen and that we were going to win. Before that moment, I, and others, had gone to those meetings to see what could be seen and to hear what could be heard. But it was at that moment that I became a believer.

My friend and I left, bought a bottle of wine each and we went and walked through a park. I had this nervous energy in my legs and the urge to walk that energy away. I wanted to stride about the place and think. Not think, not really. I wanted to dream. We looked at all of the black flags with the golden sunburst on them and we imagined Redanian flags flying in their stead. We looked at the patrolling guards and soldiers in the city and imagined that instead of seeing black armour we saw red.

I cannot explain to you the excitement, the thrill of it, the determination and the… dreams that we had.

We were going to win.

I had visions of us coming out of the dawn, the sunlight reflecting off our shiny armour and our bright swords as our enemies were befuddled from fighting our monstrous allies and then we would cut them down in that same dawn. And then we could make plans for the future. We would form up behind our young King and make Redania great again. We would shore up the old borders and invade Temeria to punish them for their crimes of selling out Radovid. We could move East, into Aedirn and Kaedwen and then, when we had resecured the North, we could cross the Yaruga and invade the South.

Funny isn’t it, old man? I can see you smiling there as you giggle at what I say. And you are right, don’t let it be said that you are not right. We would have had to defend ourselves against the South and focus on defending our borders before we did anything else but in the right then and right there moment, we were young, we were strong, we were more than a little bit drunk and the future was going to be wonderful.

Ah well.

We played the game, and we lost. Proznyac didn’t live to see it. Bless him. You would have liked him I think. He was a man that took life by the horns. He would have resented losing a bit more than I have and I very much doubt that you would have been able to get him to talk to you as much as I would have.

Wasn’t a gambler you see.

A gambler knows that there are times when you win and there are times when you lose. Nothing worth winning comes without the requisite amount to lose. We played, we lost, that’s the result of it.

The plan started to come together after that.

Truth be told that it wasn’t that complicated a plan. But then again, plans are not supposed to be complicated, are they? What was it that Lord Jon said?

That’s it. Flame but it’s good to speak with a properly educated man. That’s the problem with guards old boy. They’ve never read the right texts.

Word of advice, if you ever find yourself on the losing side of a coup, make sure you get captured with people that you have plenty of things in common with. That way you can wait for the headsman amongst friends.

I wish I had known you sooner old bean. I think we might have been friends.

No… You’re probably right. We would have hated each other. I would have hated you for being the son of a jumped-up nobody who didn’t serve Redania in any capacity that might have made a difference and….

Yes, that’s right. You would have hated me for being an arrogant prick that thinks that only military service and strength at arms has any worth.

There is something to be said there isn't there. Something about how we are all the same when you strip everything away.

Ah well. I shall leave that for future philosophers as I don’t think there is much more that I can add to the debate.

The plan was simple. We needed to cut the head off the snake in the early part of things.

It was more accurate to say that we needed to cut off as many heads as we could. But after that, we needed time to consolidate. Get our forces together and so on. Lord Voorhis and the Imperial Intelligence folks were good and scary and we had some early luck in that it turns out that the head of Imperial Intelligence for the North was pro-Rebellion. That was a shock. Seems he was a veteran of the war and…

Oh, you know the man?

I didn’t like him. He had betrayed us once and now he was betraying his new employers as well. I rather thought that this was telling us that he couldn’t be trusted. We should have learned the lesson from King Radovid when he put all the Temerians on the front lines against Nilfgaard. Those that would walk away from their old country will feel no loyalty to their new one.

But as a result, we had a pretty good idea as to what was going on in the Intelligence community. We figured that the Empress would be at your wedding, the Duchess of Toussaint, The Queen of Skellige and The King of Kovir & Poviss because of some connection that I didn’t understand. We could also get a significant number of the Lodge of Sorceresses. So I’m afraid it was a rather simple solution to strike during your wedding celebrations. We figured that people would be drunk and vulnerable while they were all looking at you and your adoring bride. People would be relaxed and let their hair down so it was an easy answer to a lot of our concerns to strike at the wedding.

But after that, the Imperials would send their vengeance.

We couldn’t gather our forces in advance of that to strike out fast enough and take advantage of their confusion. There was only so much that our man inside the Imperial Intelligence could ignore after all and gathering that many troops would spark some comment. So we needed a way that we could strike at the head of the snake, then we would need to have time so that we could gather our forces while not being afraid of reprisals from the Imperial contingent.

So then we came in with the idea of the storm. After all, we had access to one of the most powerful mages on the continent who would do what we told her to do.

So if she conjured up this huge Autumnal storm then wecould water and mud-lock the roads which would prevent armies from moving. There would already be the delay that a lot of those forces were tied up in the west and with the harvest. So a storm. It would keep the Skelligan fleet in their harbours and if it could be moved around, then we could get our own people together and be ready to strike at those areas and against those forces that we wanted to.

From there, again, the plan was simple. We would secure Novigrad docks so that we could, in theory, sail an army to anywhere we wanted up and down the coast or along any of the larger rivers. We would also move to secure the river crossings. The storm would help us there. There would be a lot of water that would have soaked the grounds and that would then flow into the rivers and the like. That would mean that the rivers would flood and therefore, the only way that our enemies would be able to cross the Redanian border would be at one of the crossings.

Which we could secure.

Coulthard Castle would be ours. Your brother was confident that with the help of the Vampires, we would keep that castle which is one of the most heavily fortified positions in the North. Therefore we would have a forward operating centre to protect against counterattack from the South.

We were confident that many of the old Knights and the Lords that maintained their own forces would see the benefits of our cause and then things would build from there. We didn’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves.

So we would have three main forces. The first was Novigrad. We needed the docks to be able to transport troops but also so that we could bring in supplies, armour, weapons and food and so forth. Then Castle Coulthard which we would fortify. And then we had an army in the field which would march to the liberation of Tretogor. We had every faith that Tretogor and the rest of the Redanian countryside would welcome us home as heroes.

Oh yes, old boy. I don’t care what she says but Queen Adda was on our side. I know for a fact because I was one of the messengers that took the plan to her and carried her endorsement back. My Father has many friends at court and as a result, it is fairly easy to get into the royal court for me. So I was one of the messengers who acted as a go-between. She might claim that I am a traitor that would say anything to save my skin. But she knew. She knew.

She betrayed us. I am sure of it.

When you look back on all of this old boy. When you take stock and properly look back on all of this. Don’t let her off the hook. She knew. You know those false patriots that I was talking about. People that were playing both sides off against the middle… people who are patriots while thinking about how being a patriot can get you more power, wealth and influence.

Adda is one. She is no Queen of mine. Prissy little bitch that one. It’s easy to forget sometimes but she is Temerian through and through and when you say ‘Temerian’ you might as well be saying ‘traitor’.

So that was the plan. It was a good plan I think. There was enough room for us to come up with some other stuff if it all went wrong. There was flexibility there and strong points. We were confident and as the day of your wedding got closer and closer and we remained undiscovered through all of that time, our confidence grew and grew.

And then it all went wrong, didn’t it.