It is a shame what is going to happen to Sir Aleksy. As I say, I liked him.

I made a mistake at one point and asked him what, if anything, I could do to help him. He asked me if I could find a way to look after his sister. He kept saying, over and over again, that she was a good girl and didn’t deserve to die a traitor’s death. I said that I would do my best but I was unable to keep from pointing out that the reason that she would die a traitor’s death was that her brother had been a fool.

He shrugged at that and asked me to help anyway. I told him that the best I could probably do for her was to find her an abbey to go away to and he told me he would be happy with that.

So what went wrong with the plan?

Several things really. Not least of which was the fact that the storm broke early. The logistical situation of the matter was not secured in advance so the storm slowed down the gathering rebels just as much as it slowed down the Imperial response.

The third thing that brought the rebellion to its knees was the sailing prowess of the Skelligan fleet.

Taking things in order though.

It needs to be stressed that we don’t know what happened with the storm. From conversations with Sir Aleksy, it would seem that the storm was supposed to be a big, breaking thing that would trap people here during and after the wedding. So it was actually supposed to break afterwards or even on the day of the wedding itself. The fact that it didn’t was the thing that caused all of the issues.

So why did that happen? There are still plenty of Sorceresses and Mages around so I asked to be referred to an authority on weather magic to see if they could tell me why it might be the case and the answer I got back was rather… Well, most of it went over my head. So when I replied that I wanted something that I could put in a more populist work to appeal to the average person on the street, instead I received a very amused letter from the mage in question telling me that most of it went over their head as well. But they would send someone who was more able to explain things in less technical language.

I won’t lie to you, dear reader, I felt more than a little bit called out by that.

What I didn’t expect was that the person that would turn up would be the Rectress of the Aretuza magical academy herself Margarita Laux-Antille. I have no idea what that surname stands for and she jokes that she doesn’t either.

Margarita, as she insists on being called, is one of the Sorceresses that I know the least. I know that she took over the project of salvaging the library of Pula, Saffron and Sally and what little interaction we have with each other was to suggest that she was absolutely aware of the moral implications of what the Non-humans were afraid of. We didn’t talk much beyond that acceptance and a general letter that told me that salvaging the vast amount of documents was going “better than we feared but worse than we hoped.”

The book-burners of the Eternal Flame, Radovid and Kreve have a lot to answer for when it comes to lost knowledge on the continent. In the centuries to come, we will regret that loss and the time that we have wasted just getting ourselves back to the levels of our forebears.

To say that Margarita is beautiful is, of course, rather redundant. She is a Sorceress and therefore she is beautiful. Long, golden curly hair and although, in theory, she wore among the slightest of dresses with the lowest of necklines. She is by far the least aggressive Sorceress about her sexuality that I have ever met. It is an odd contrast to be sure. Her beauty is one of kindness, you kind of feel as though you want to lay your head in her lap and for her to stroke your hair and tell you that everything is going to be alright. Very similar to Sleeping Beauty in that regard.

It is no surprise to me that she is the head of an academic institution and further to that, it would not surprise me to learn that she is really good at that and that students find it really easy to take their problems to her from the most complex magical problems down to the most insignificant of personal issues.

Today though, she came in with a shawl wrapped around herself against the early Spring chill and greeted me with a small hug. She waved off my apology for not getting up to greet her and asked me if we were any closer to finding anything out about Ariadne.

Which we hadn’t.

She sighed and put her hand on my arm in sympathy before sitting down. We spoke about several small things. She asked me what it felt like to suddenly be elevated from the dungeon and into the position of one of the most powerful nobles on the continent. She wondered if I could be persuaded to help sponsor a magical school and whether or not I could provide a scholarship or two for those students that couldn’t afford the necessary school fees to provide a magical education and the like.

I asked her how the rebuilding of Aretuza was going after years of destruction hate and neglect. It might sound as though we were discussing dark subjects but the truth is that I remember a lot of laughter from those exchanges. Despite her revealing clothing, I found that I didn’t think of her as a sexual creature at all. It was kind of odd.

We were not avoiding the topic deliberately but I rather think that Margarita was putting me at my ease before she would tell me something that I would not enjoy. As it happened though, neither she, nor I needed to have worried about it.

I am sorry that I wasn’t here to help during the rebellion. I was afraid that, given the obvious magical nature of what was happening, I was rather concerned that people might want to take things out on my students. I would have been here for the wedding of course so I rather think that the storm breaking early saved my life, if not completely saving the North from another disaster. But I wish I could have been here to help.

Not that I would have been much help in a crisis. Give me a problem to untangle or a hysterical student to set down, then I can help you but when daggers are drawn and people start shouting, then I fall apart or worse, I freeze in the face of…

Well…

You would be much better served by Phillipa or Yenna than with me. Triss would be better if you want sheer destructive power but for me?

But that’s not what you wanted to talk about is it.

Yes, the weather and what happened with the storm.

I can’t prove it of course but I rather think that the storm was sabotaged in some way and… when you find her (Freddie: I was grateful that she didn’t say ‘if’ there) I suspect that is what you will find out. I wonder how she did it given that she was so clearly in the thrall of that… horrible fetish. I would normally hold that there is no such thing as bad knowledge, only the bad interpretation or application of that knowledge but that seems to be to be a particularly bleak…

If ever there was and is an argument for knowledge to be controlled then I think that that bag is going to be one of the principal arguments in the case for the control of certain pieces of knowledge.

But it would seem that the item had a rather thorough control of Ariadne and as such… It was not the control of the Master and Slave, it was the control of a master and a tool. It completely subsumed her will. So I wonder how she found a way to fight through that control to sabotage…

Oh yes, I think we can be pretty sure that it was her that caused the storm. It’s easy to look back on the matter and see the necessary markers that would constitute a magical signature but the problem with the art of weather control is that it is so chaotic in the first place that it is hard to see the patterns and easy to see patterns where there is none.

People might claim that they can predict weather patterns but the truth is that we can look a couple of days into the future and make a few educated guesses but beyond that, it is anyone’s guess.

The druids of Skellige can make small changes and bring rain down occasionally but even they will admit that they only dare make small changes because to make massive changes is to seriously affect the weather patterns of vast swathes of the continent. Droughts and famines have happened that way because a mage wanted to make sure his herb garden was properly watered.

The way it’s done is slow build-up. Incremental changes to the temperature in certain areas. Lowering the temperature of certain other areas. Increasing the pressure of the air in still more areas and lessening it in others.

Yes… The pressure of the air.

Does it sound so ridiculous? Have you ever had a day where the air seems thick and heavy and you struggle to move around as everything seems to take so much more effort than it would normally? But then there will be a rain storm and the effect will lessen. Or have you had other days where the air seems so thin that you have felt it echoing in your chest and scouring the back of your throat? Where you feel light-headed and dizzy.

Think also of the effects of climbing a mountain. We know that the higher up the mountain that you go, the less air there is. That if you go too far, then things start to break down. You need to gasp for air to get more into your lungs.

So with hindsight, it is easy to see that the storm that broke before your wedding day was a magical event. In this case, although the better weather mages than I would need to look into it, it would seem certain that things were fortuitous that they wanted a storm in Autumn as it would be a good time to have a storm. Or Spring I suppose. But in this case, it would not have needed to make a completely new storm it would be closer to just building on an existing storm.

Holding it back until you wanted it to go so that the storm would gain more momentum and therefore be more powerful when the time for the storm to break came.

You yourself have noted that there was a time of intense heat and mugginess in the days immediately before the storm.

So yes, I think it was artificial and magical. I think that an otherwise regular autumn storm was built up to vast degrees and then it was unleashed.

And I would also judge, given the chaotic nature of magic and the weather in general… That it was set off early.

Look at how the storm was so utterly disastrous for the rebels when it could have gone so catastrophically the other way. That is no coincidence in my mind.

And she was right. The storm was a catastrophe and if it had just waited a day or two further then some of the important people would not have needed to have been at Coulthard castle to have been lost.

There is a group of us that gather to talk all of this kind of thing over. Father Anchor is one. Sir Guillaume and Sir Gregoire have insisted on staying nearby and helping out with the hunting of leftover “beasts and brigands”...

There is a lot of guilt flying around and the two men remain appalled at the state that they found me in and feel guilty that they could not have come to me sooner. They exorcise that guilt by helping with the formation of the Duchy of the Pontar by force of arms.

Another of the many things that I wish I could see and help with but Samantha and Tulip frown at me whenever I suggest it.

Seriously though, I am better now but I can only just manage an hour’s worth of work before I have to stop and take a breather.

But I’m off-topic again.

Svein has had to return to his duties but Kar likes to be nearby, grinning at people evilly when he’s decided that I am being mistreated and am doing too much work. So we, and others and a lot of the people hereabouts like to gather and eat together. I like to do it outside where I can see the sky and feel the fresh air. We sit and talk and one of the topics of conversation is the inevitability of “what if…”. What if this had happened or that had happened or the other things had happened?

And one of the regular topics has been what if the storm had broken just a few days later. The Skelligan fleet would have been at sea. With the prowess of Helfdan at the tiller then it was all but certain that the Queen would have made it to harbour but what would she have found there? Especially if she had made it to Novigrad. Would she have found unfriendly eyes and armed men with dubious numbers of warriors at her back?

Even if she had made it home, the pride of the Skelligan fleet would have been damaged and who knows how many longships and good men would have been lost at sea.

The other one that regularly comes up is that the Imperial delegation would have been on the roads. They would have been coming up through Velen and making the crossing of the Pontar at Oxenfurt. The roads in Velen have improved since the war, especially the main ones to cross at Novigrad and Oxenfurt, but they are, by no means perfect, and it would be far too easy to imagine the vastness of the Imperial delegation ending up mired in some kind of swamp that they would need to dig themselves out of. The pride of Nilfgaardian chivalry would have been swamped down. And yes, the Empress can teleport out in times of danger but again, the damage that would have done could have been catastrophic.

I know the psychology of why we talk in such a way. In talking about how much worse things could have gone we are reminding ourselves that they didn’t go that badly and re-emphasising to ourselves that we are alive and making our own way.

But it could have gone a lot better too. I could be married now, so many people could still be alive and…

I always find that topic of conversation depressing.

Fuck

How did the rebels take it? Again, I refer to my interviews with Sir Aleksy.

Some people might criticize how much I depend on Sir Aleksy here and it is true that I am using his words a lot. But he is one of the few surviving enemy Knights and commanders from the Rebellion. Many did not survive. That number gets even smaller when you are talking about those men that survived the siege of Coulthard castle where the number of superiors is vanishingly small. Of that pool of men, the number of people that have been willing to talk to me to any degree is smaller still and they are not reliable enough.

They are the kind of men that are protesting their innocence. Protesting that they were forced to take part and are blaming everyone but themselves. It might be true that there are better and more reliable sources of information out there. But the other truth is that that process might take time.

The other extreme of course is those people that call me a traitor and have actually tried to attack me when they are anywhere remotely close to me.

Sir Aleksy was rare in that he was kind of resigned to his fate.

“Oh, it was a disaster old boy. An absolute disaster,” he would say. Over and over again.

I don’t know when it happened but we had reached the point of no return. It was one of those things… I don’t know if you know what I mean, me old cock, but there comes a moment where you try and figure out where the point was that you could have, where you SHOULD have, backed out of the entire thing. There is a point where you have no choice but to move forwards with the matter.

Sometimes that happens with courting a wench when you are thinking with your nether regions and the half a bottle of wine that you drank the night before and you wake up the following morning. You see her properly for the first time and then you try and talk to her. You wonder to yourself if there were any warning signs or if there had been a point in the recent past where you should have seen what you were getting yourself into and you could have gotten out. But then you realise that there were plenty of warnings but the fact that you have been out in the field with the men for several weeks, and you have had a bottle of wine to erode your willpower starts to tell.

It was like that.

I should have seen it for the disaster that it became but I had been seduced. The promise of a powerful mage on MY side this time. The promise of armies of disposable monsters. The prospect of the hero’s welcome as we liberated Redania. You know the thing I mean don’t you old boy? Cheering in the streets, flowers thrown under our horse's shoes, women throwing their undergarments, that kind of thing.

As I have sat here, waiting for the headsman, I have had a lot of time to think about when I should have backed out and the truth was, that it was clear that it was going to be a disaster.

But one of them was when I looked out of the manor house that I was staying in with my little unit of men and I saw the clouds forming up. I saw the towering, terrifying piles of blackness against the otherwise blue sky and I saw the distant haziness that suggested that there was rain in the distance. It was early, far too early and I should have known that we were lost.

I remember telling myself that it might not be anything important. That it might just be a shower, the equivalent of the warning before the storm. The flag being waved before the Knights start to come together.

And then I felt that first drop of rain.

I should have seen it then.

There’s more of course.

We were committed. We knew that the rain would have just as much an impact on us as it would have had on the Imperials and the rest. But our advantage there was that we could plan for it. So we already had to be in the field. But also, we had to gather in ways that we weren’t going to be seen to be gathering. Yes, we had a man in Imperial Intelligence that could obfuscate things for us, but even so.

We had a lot of men in Novigrad and the general confusion around Coulthard castle with all of the additional armed forces that were performing “security” for the wedding meant that we had lots of people there that could move quickly. But those of us in the field? There were groups of us. Twenty, thirty at a time. I think that at most, there were a couple of farms that housed a company of men. Old ruined watch towers and ruined farms from the war that no one has bothered repairing in the meantime. There was a certain autonomy to do what we needed to do and I do not doubt that there were some groups that were looking forward to doing some banditry at the time.

But there we were.

And the rain came.

Our Commander in Chief was embedded. He was in Coulthard castle so he couldn’t get much word out and we couldn’t get many messages to him. Our commanders in Novigrad could not entirely be depended on.

I stress that we knew that this was going to happen. We knew that there was a moment of dangerv before it all kicked off and we were out of touch with each other. The danger that whole bunches of us would get cold feet and just give up. But we all believed that the inertia behind it all would carry the day. Once the rebellion had started, the patriotism that we all felt would burst forth and we would carry the day like that.

We were already committed. We were already out there. Armed, supplied and ready.

The fight would start. Novigrad docks and Coulthard Castle would be taken while we rushed for the borders, to secure the crossings and to ensure that the countryside was safe so that those less reliable people such as your de Radford…

He was your enemy which makes him yours. I know you like to say that he was not “your” de Radford but that’s the way it works old man. I thought you would know this.

Oh, I hated him. As did any right-thinking idiot amongst us.

He was just so punchable you know? He had this expression that just made you want to slap his lips off.

We were committed and the rain fell.

Another problem was that we had no idea what was going on.

When I asked him why they had no idea what was going on, Sir Aleksy got a little bit defensive. I think that this was the bit that he was kind of ashamed of as though he knew that this was a colossal mistake. He danced around the topic a lot and eventually, I moved on to other things, resolving to come back to the topic.

Later interviews fleshed this topic out however and although there is no real, useful, block of transcript that would say it all, there were a couple of bits that shed some light on it.

I have never been to the Imperial War College. Nor do I know anyone that has ever gone there. But you hear rumours don’t you old man? There are always rumours. They say that there is a wargame scenario that was invented after their loss at Brenna. They would split the classes into pairs and then they would give them a model battlefield. There was some artistry to it. Hills, rivers, bridges, all of the exciting little features and bits of terrain that you could find on your average battlefield.

Then the opponents would be given an army in a series of models that would represent the various armed forces of the world. It would randomly be determined who entered the battlefield from which direction. Then the two opponents would be taken into separate rooms where the fields that they were presented with were given to them in stylised drawn maps on bits of parchment. They would deploy their forces on this map before separate judges would look at the greater model.

The judges would decide what intelligence would be given to the two “generals” regarding opposing forces and then each general had to give three orders based on this. The orders would be given so that they would be implemented and then both generals would be taken back into the actual room with the actual battlefields and the orders would be carried out.

I remember thinking it was remarkably cruel that they would have to stand there and watch as all of their careful plans would fall apart when the two armies met up with each other and there was no way to change those first sets of orders. It’s meant to signify the confusion of those early parts of battle.

But that was what it was like. We were committed. The orders had been given and now it was simply our duty to carry them out. Why didn’t we adjust things in the wake of the storm going early? Because we had no messages to say what had happened. And because there were no messages, there was no way of knowing how badly it had gone.

Why didn’t we send any messages?

Because we were afraid. No one wanted to be the man who got the whole scheme found out. No one wanted to be the man that messed it all up so badly.

Nor did we want to be the man that backed out. Speaking personally, I was afraid of that too. If I backed out then I was surrounded by loyalists. And if I backed out and the rebellion worked, then I would be a traitor. I had been in some of those rooms where we had discussed what would happen to those people that had not followed through on their promises. It would not have been pretty.

But yes, it is true, when the storm broke early and the last couple of days before the wedding dawn was bright and rainless. I was left with a slow sinking sensation in the pit of my belly. But there was nothing I could do then. We were committed and we had to go.

So we went.

So there it was. The three prongs of the Rebellion. The one was obviously in and around Coulthard Castle. Commanded in person by Sam and Kristoff and again, I must acknowledge a blinding game was played by those men in putting that together. They deliberately played on the antipathy that Rickard, Kerrass and I all felt for Kristoff in particular and as a result, the pair of them allowed it to happen where he was stationed outside the castle with the rest of their forces.

So Kristoff was the second in command with frontline access to the people that he needed to have access to. They also played off the growing rifts that had been growing between Emma and Sam so that every time Sam made some kind of concession, we saw it as this great and generous effort by him to try and reconcile. Therefore we did not look at the matter too closely.

The biggest and best example of that was when he didn’t care about the fact that his personal guard was forced to stay and bivouac outside the castle walls. I remember being worried about that and my own diaries bear that out. We had expected him to kick up a fuss about that, even though we could argue that The Empress, the Queen of Skellige, The King of Kovir & Poviss alone all needed to have their personal guards on hand. We had those arguments locked and loaded and ready to go should he have kicked up a fuss. We were so ready for a fight that when it just didn’t materialise, we were so relieved that we didn’t look at it too closely.

That was not the only factor either and this time, you don’t even need to take my word for it. I had a conversation on the matter with a Captain Thierry Polmert.

Captain Polmert is a strategist. By his own admission, he would be useless in leading men or coming up with small unit tactics. He will cheerfully admit that he comes across as a bit of a wet fish and struggles to get people to listen to him. He freezes in military situations and in combat, he barely knows which end of the sword to grip. He and I commiserated on the problems with learning to use a sword as he shared the same problem with me in that he always overthought the use of the sword. He liked my suggestion of trying a spear or a stave of some kind before he got distracted.

He is a cheerful man but quite impossible to like. He’s one of those people whose brain operates on a different level from the rest of us but he is arrogant with that. He looks down on people for not being able to keep up with him. As I say, he is a strategist and analyst. He can look at a situation, or a battlefield and tell you what happened. I suspect that if he had been born in a village he would have ended up being a tracker or some kind of detective. He comes up with larger plans for armies, far-reaching plans and ideas. He sees things and puts things together where you and I just can’t make the connection.

It was a brilliant strategy, quite quite brilliant. So much so that I am surprised that it didn’t work better. The human aspect I suppose.

But it was brilliant. So brilliant that I think it might change military tactics and overall strategies for these large state events. It will bear considering in the future about how to circumvent the large controls that are put on certain groups when the issues come up.

The problem with the coming wedding was that there was no single person that could have known and vouched for everyone that turned up. So all your brother had to do was turn up with a large body of men. Then, if all of them had several spare uniforms in their packs those uniforms could be distributed to everyone and sundry. Your brother goes up to the castle and declares in a loud voice that he will be dispersing his men out onto the roads to help police them and do all of the small jobs that need doing on lands like yours.

You and your sister are grateful, because of course you are, and then his men scatter. The uniforms are distributed to the enemy forces that are hiding in the bushes and any time that a visitor or a peasant in the fields sees a group of men training, fortifying a position or stock-piling supplies. They see the uniform and go “Ah yes, that must be the Kalayn people. Aren’t they doing a good job and isn’t Lord Kalayn a good man for helping out his family in this, their hour of need.”

In this way, more and more men were able to sneak into Coulthard lands and no one could be the wiser that those men that they could see were anything other than they looked like. It seems clear to me that Kalayn had six or seven times the number of men that he turned up with, operating in Coulthard lands by the day of the Equinox. And it would also not be too much to suppose that he was not the only person that used this ruse.

It has disturbing implications for future state events. Very disturbing implications indeed.

Exciting isn’t it?

It takes a special kind of man to be excited about the possibility of such over-arching change. I am glad that I do not have to be the one to come up with a solution to such a thing.

So there were the forces in and around Coulthard lands that were poised to take Coulthard castle. Then there were the forces that were there to take Novigrad docks. And again, Sam played this really really well. He took advantage of the general kinds of dislike and open hatred that people had and have for the Coulthard family.

For those unaware, there was a faction in Novigrad docks that was led by Sir Robart de Radford. This faction, fuelled by their jealousy, disdain and dislike of the Coulthard trading company as well as Emma, Mark and myself in particular, did everything in their power to disadvantage the family where they could. Mark was all but immune to this because of his rank in the church. He used to joke that he had achieved that state where to talk against him was to talk against the church as a whole and was therefore blasphemous. He found it funny, but also a little bit terrifying.

I sometimes wonder what he would make of the fact that he was going to be sainted.

They also struggled to do anything that might impact me. I didn’t care, I was going to be a Count of Angral, I had no control, nor did I want any control over the family's mercantile efforts. I was so rarely in Novigrad itself as I find the place rather off-putting.

I keep wandering down the street and the historian in me looks at the square surrounded by flowers and traders and with children playing while minstrels play and find myself wondering just how many good people burned on the pyres in that square.

It’s stuff like that. I can spend a few days there to enjoy the amenities and obviously, the docks and I are old friends. But I stay in the Rosemary and Thyme and there is no pressure that can be applied there to make my life difficult so I don’t tend to get in any kind of trouble.

So the faction went after Emma and they did that by attacking the trading concerns. They planted evidence, they charged extra tariffs, forbade the ships from docking and charged exorbitant fees to use the warehouses. Emma complained to the city and port authorities and the authorities laughed at her, wondering where she would go if she didn’t use the docks in Novigrad. According to her, the fact that they all stood there with their hands held out for expected bribes was rather telling.

Instead, Emma swallowed the loss and started to renovate and expand Oxenfurt docks. She built warehouses and hired work crews that could load and unload trading ships in a fraction of the time. With Oxenfurt being further down the road and river for trade to head South and inland, Coulthard shipping was not the only loss that Novigrad had to swallow.

What this means is that there are, or were, lots of empty warehouses and buildings sitting on the waterfront of Novigrad docks. All the rebellion had to do was to pay the owners any kind of rent at all and when they told the owners that in opening their doors, they would be sticking it to the Coulthard family and many people let the troops stay there for free.

There are remarkably few documents from this time in Novigrad as those docks soon realised which way the wind was blowing and destroyed any records that they might have kept in the first place.

I do have some records about what happened on the docks but that comes later.

And then there was the third group, the group that Sir Aleksy belonged to. This was the weak link in the Rebellion’s deployment and they knew it. The same storm that they knew was going to delay the reinforcement of the Imperial loyalists was also going to delay the coming reinforcement of the rebellion. They knew that. But they also couldn’t have a large army in the field, close to where they needed to be, because it is all but impossible to keep that kind of thing hidden. The only way to do that kind of thing was by magic or to have subverted the man to whom the reports would be going.

Which the Rebellion had done.

But they were not confident in that.

There are a few of the betrayals from the rebellion that have hurt me personally. Obviously Sam and a couple of old friends of the family. There are plenty of people who betrayed me, but I find I am not really that surprised over. Some of those betrayals are still things that I am coming to terms with. I am furious at the fact that there was a significant faction of the Church of the Eternal Flame that knew that this rebellion was coming and did nothing.

I know, I know that these were men that wanted to return to the glory days of having all the power, where people would tremble as a priest of the Eternal Flame would be walking down the streets. Where a priest of the eternal flame only had to extend a finger and then another man or woman would end up on the pyre. There are the people that hated Mark and detested the reforms that were being brought into the church at Mark’s insistence. They fed the rebellion and I cannot deny that I hate them.

There is a fury there that I cannot easily comprehend and I am going to have to decide, at some point, what I want to do about that. The Hierarch promises me that…

And that’s a strange sentence for me to write. Any sentence where I can write a letter to the Hierarch and have absolute confidence that it will be delivered. And that he will write me a return.

How my life has changed.

But he has promised me that he is aware of the problem and shares my dismay that I have never been anything other than a faithful son of the flame and for this, I am hated.

But one of the betrayals that hurts the most is the now-former head of Imperial Intelligence for the North. I worked with that man. I respected that man. I sat in his office and he lied to my face about what he knew regarding the night of the bonfires.

He wished me luck and offered me advice on how to have a happy marriage and he knew what was going to happen on my wedding day.

I didn’t trust myself to be part of any interrogation of that man so I am relying on the transcripts of other people here. When it comes to discussing this particular period of the rebellion, he had a bit to say that might be relevant.

There are, or were, several mythical figures in the Imperial Forces that we all feared and respected. One of those was Lord Morvran Voorhis. Over the last… year really since it became clear that a rebellion was forming and I realised that my sympathies lay with the rebels I have… been terrified that I would be discovered. Voorhis looms over me like a spectre.

He has done things and made logical leaps that beggar the mind.

All the time that I have been sitting in my office, carefully filing the different reports away so that none of them would catch anyone’s eye or cause anything to be reported up and above my head. It beggar’s my belief that no one knew what was going on as it seems inconceivable to me. There were armed rebels and mercenaries in the docks. An untold number of people out near Coulthard Castle and even more people out in the countryside waiting to see which way someone would jump.

And no one would see that.

Our idea was that we had to mitigate the risk as much as possible and one of the ways that we did that was to minimise messages between the different cells. I was not too heavily involved with that as the less I knew the better but we were afraid that if runners and riders were going this way and that way throughout the countryside.

There were plenty of messages flying this way and that way as it was what with all of the logistical matters to do with the wedding, but there was only so much camouflaging that we could do. And those people that we would be hiding in amongst all of that would not be the kind of creative brains that could improvise excuses.

So we had to keep it quiet and so that what reports that I DID get in could easily be explained by too much activity from the wedding or just generally to do with traffic. But I was terrified of a report going direct to Voorhis in Vizima so we had to keep that quiet.

There are a lot of reasons why Lord Voorhis didn’t identify what was going on. He and I have talked about many of them and it is true, that some of those reasons do not paint him in the best light. But it is also true that some of them paint him in the best light.

The reason that he didn’t see the betrayal coming was because he was trusting the traitor to do their job. He was trusting that the Commander of the Intelligence service in the North to do what they had been assigned to do. As to the chain of trust and why they trusted this and not that and why he was allowed to get into such a situation in the first place… Well…

Someone else can do that analysis as I am not unbiased enough to do that. Nilfgaard conquered the North. The fact that they did that by negotiation and treaty just as much as they were doing that by the sword and axe is not important.

But what do you do when you have conquered that place? Do you install your own people in all the important positions? Or do you trust some of the people that were from the area that you have conquered to do the job for you?

I don’t know the answer to that one. On the one end of the scale, that would turn you into a conquering tyrant. The other end of the scale is the route of painful naivete.

So it would suggest that the truth is somewhere in the middle. The now-former commander of Imperial Intelligence was trusted and recommended to the post by several people, including me. He had not been political, he had been military only. He was not nobly born and had no suggestion of political ambition. That kind of personal profile is the kind of thing that is vital for that kind of work. It means that you don’t have to worry about personal politics interfering with the given reports.

In this case though, what we had was what Sam had once talked about. We had a soldier that had been defeated and was angry with the way that he had been defeated.

So why didn’t Voorhis catch it? because he had been ordered to be nice and had trusted someone that he shouldn’t have. That is why treachery is so insidious.

It also means that the next head of Imperial Intelligence is going to be a Southern Man born and bred and he will be strict and take nothing for granted. There are going to be talks of secret police, secret informers, knives in the dark and all kinds of unpleasantness over the next few years in Temeria and Redania and one of the reasons for all of that is because this man betrayed us.

I’m sorry, my anger got through a bit there.

I’m going to take a break here.

.

It has now been a few days since the Queen of Dorn left. I am still sitting here in my pavilion as I watch the workers put the walls of Coulthard Castle back together. I still feel too much like a fucking invalid for my liking, but I can feel my strength returning. The frustrations of it all are no longer about my being frustrated at not having the strength to continue with my physical training and reconditioning. It is more to do with the fact that sometimes I need to stop.

I need to stop so that I don’t overstretch or overexert myself. Now my medical people are telling me that I need to stop and not go too far or over-exert myself because they are concerned that I will do myself a mischief. Or trigger a relapse which, at the moment, seems to be a fate worse than death.

So instead I sit here, my walking stick having taken the place of my spear in that I must, now, always know where it is at any given time. I watch my home being all but rebuilt and I watch the people scurrying around and think that I should be down there working with them rather than up here, answering letters, meeting with people and working on this giant series of articles and I hate myself a little bit.

I am not sure that I am going to enjoy having this much power.

I mean… I have a carriage now for Flame’s sake.

I re-met the Baroness of Crow’s Perch today. I like her and I hope that the two of us will be able to come to a working arrangement, Although rather disappointingly, she didn’t remember me.

I was not the only suitor that tried to get her to marry me with an eye on her barony, but I told her some stories about what I had been like at the time and she admits that I will have been amongst those that she would have just dismissed out of hand as being unsuitable.

She is an interesting woman. She takes advantage of the fact that the Empress is well known to occasionally wear an arming jacket and trousers as well as carrying a sword. She keeps her hair in a shock of frizziness that leaves me wondering if she has someone that can work on it to make it look quite as frightful as it does. I wondered of her if she puts that kind of atmosphere across so that she can discourage suitors so that she can be left alone.

She said nothing although I rather thought I saw a glint of amusement in her eyes.

She also admitted that she is beleaguered. On her western border lies the Cidaris & Vergen alliance and they often raid over into Vergen for various things as well as to keep the Baronesses forces on the jump. Temerians and Northern Redanians both send raiders into her lands and act with impunity. She is pretty convinced that they do that so that they can convince her that it is all getting too much and so that if she would just marry one of them then the problems would go away. While at the same time, she still has monster problems while being unable to afford a proper Witcher, and her land is mostly swamp land.

I arranged for her to have an appointment with Emma who can make any land profitable if she puts her mind to it and then I also managed to persuade her that we needed to have a Nilfgaardian garrison situated on her lands. She balked at that but I pointed out that it was either Nilfgaardians or… someone else. The someone else would be Temerians or Redanians, which would leave her with the same problems that she had before, or it would be mercenaries. She liked none of those options.

It is also true that she needs to get married, or otherwise make provision for her lands and people should anything happen to her.

She didn’t like this either.

I can understand why as she is fed up with people telling her what to be, who to worship and so on. There are always rumours of something that happened between her and her parents, but I am reluctant to take up the matter if it would make her uncomfortable.

Not until I have to of course.

But I explained to her why this level of security is important for her people as well as her lands. It had the feel of an old conversation for her as though she has heard it all before, but all I can do is put the words together in a new way and hope that this time they take hold.

I did make a joke about how I have to give the same advice to the Empress as well, which she liked. I also pointed out that her net is now a lot wider than it had been for the hunting out of a spouse. I can easily set her up with a correspondence with a young Knight from Toussaint who would be too busy wanting to right wrongs in the lands to be trying to wrest governance away from her.

She looked as though she might consider the idea but I got more of the feeling that my ideas were not interesting any more. She is specifically wanting a man of the Eternal Flame. She seems to be of more of the “burning evil doer” flavour of Eternal Flame worshipper and I wonder if that is going to be a problem between us.

She diverted me by suggesting that the two of us should be married.

I don’t know what happened then but her eyes widened and she climbed down from the joke quickly, apologising profusely.

I told her that there was nothing to apologise for and we went back to trying to make some plans for the greater Pontar region. She left to go and see Emma.

I took up the thread of what happened to Samantha later while she was making me take my medicine and rubbing cream into my stumps. I struggle to get the cream into my legs properly. The arm stump is fine but the legs are still awkward.

“At the risk of sticking my head into the Griffin’s mouth,” Samantha began. “She made a joke about you marrying someone else?”

I nodded and she laughed at my face.

“You get this look about you when someone even drifts close to the idea,” she commented. “You get all… intense.”

“Do I?”

She looked at me sharply for a moment and I realised that I had snarled the question.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Yes,” she told me calmly. “You do.”

I carefully put the pot of cream aside and the gnawing fear that I have felt for a while got a hold of me and I started to sob.

“What if she doesn’t come back?” I wailed.

“Fuck,” Samantha swore and put her arms around me.

Later, after I had calmed down and eaten and done some other chores, Samantha came and stood in front of me. She had been doing some small jobs around the immediate area rather than going down to the worksite and helping to bandage bruised sores and rub ointment into calluses.

“You know that there is a possibility that she might not come back?” She told me.

I carefully set my pen aside.

“Yes,” I told her. “Yes, I know that there is a possibility. Intellectually I know that she might not come back. Yes, I know that some judging panel somewhere is deciding whether or not she should be allowed back or whether she is going to be found guilty of… whatever. Yes, I know that she might be hurt, weak or otherwise upset that I haven’t found her yet or she may have found some way of harming myself.

“She might even be upset that I haven’t found some way of making contact with her or she might be upset that I haven’t gone to her yet.

“I also know that I am possibly the most eligible bachelor on the continent at the moment. I know that marrying a mere Baroness is somehow lower than I should expect. I know many people could try and marry me for my position and that my marriage would be a political one. There is even the possibility that I could be considered in the same breath as those people that might want to marry the Empress.

“I know all of those things, Samantha but I don’t know them. I don’t feel them. In here. In my heart, I don’t feel them. I love her. I still love her and I want her back.”

I realised that I had been yelling and had pushed myself to my feet. It was not the first time that I had realised that I was standing on my prosthetics without consciously doing so and I fell back into my chair, turning to one side as I rubbed at my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t mean to yell. I’m sorry.”

I think she nodded and her voice wobbled when she spoke again.

“You have to remember that you are no longer silly Freddie Coulthard. If you lose your temper, people can die.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Yeah, I’m going to have to watch it so I don’t become a tyrant.”

I had meant it as a joke, but as I said the thing, I realised how true it was.

“You had better warn people to avoid the topic,” I told her. “You are exempt, as is Father Anchor, Emma, Laurelen too and… Oh, I don’t know. I still need some people to talk truth to me, especially on this, but that is a truth I am not ready for from just anyone.”

Samantha watched me for a while before nodding.

“I will see to it,” she said. “And I will send for Father Anchor.”

I nodded.

“We loved her and miss her too.” She added before fleeing.

And that was another day’s business ruined.

For her part, Emma is now semi-permanently living in the Coulthard residence of Novigrad. Her offices there are almost as complete as the office was in the castle. From there she is untying the knot that she made with the Coulthard trading company. Apparently, it is going well but I wish that I could say the same for Emma herself.

I have not sat in on any of her meetings as it is increasingly clear that with my new position, I can no longer just sit quietly off to one side and listen. The meeting rapidly becomes about me.

Laurelen and some of the other people that have dealt with her and then come to deal with me, including the Baroness of Velen, describe an intense, expressive, expansive woman. Charming and driven, which makes me think of the woman that I think of as my sister. And it is true that whenever we meet up and are talking about trade and the doings of the company, that is who she is.

But the instant, the very moment that something else is mentioned in conversation, or if someone tries to take the topic of conversation around to a topic that is dealing with someone or something else, then she just closes off. Laurelen says that it’s like a cloud covering the sun and I feel much the same way.

On those occasions where it is just the two of us, Emma and I, sitting quietly in a room, then we do little more than weep. I talk. I have talked about Ariadne and the fear about what and who I am going to become with all of this extra power. I quote the philosopher and say things like “Absolute power corrupts.”

She tries to speak, she does but then nothing comes out of her mouth. She croaks, she just opens and closes her mouth before she becomes frustrated and upset. We tell her that it’s ok and that her voice will come back. But more and more Laurelen and I catch ourselves wanting to exclude Emma from a conversation to not upset her or make her uncomfortable.

Which is the worst thing that we could be doing.

Kerrass still hasn’t returned. I know that he’s received my messages, but he will emerge from the undergrowth, and deposit his trophies, before taking on supplies and just heading back out into the wild. He has now ignored four messages and therefore requests, from me, to come and see me. Including the one sent by Sleeping Beauty.

Apparently, he took the message, read it carefully and told the messenger that he would attend upon me forthwith.

Which is messenger speak for “I’ve read the message now leave me alone.”

I don’t know what to do about that. I’m desperate to see him and talk to him but it would seem that he doesn’t want to see or speak to me. Before too much longer, I am going to have to just send for him, making me even closer to being a tyrant.

I know that this will just make me another in a long line of uppitty nobles that he has encountered on the path that thinks they are entitled to a Witcher’s presence.

But dammit, I rather think that I deserve better than to be treated like that.

Ok, that’s enough self-pity. Time to get back to work.

So, we left the rebellion poised and ready to start their endeavour on the day of the Autumnal Equinox. There is one last thing that needs to be talked about in this period and that is regarding the now infamous “Dearest Cousin” letter.

I am well aware that historians are going to be picking over this period in our continental history for years, if not decades and centuries. Certainly long after we who lived through it are dead. It will be cited as the reason why the Empire had to tighten its grip over the North because the North showed everyone that it was not to be trusted. It will talk about the Pontar region from its source up near Loc Muinne all the way down to the sea and how vital it was to the continental political landscape for these years around it. Much is going to be debated regarding the importance of the different players and what we all got up to, the decisions we made, our motivations and why we did what we did and how important each of those decisions were.

But one of the things that is being the most debated, even as I write these words, is the role that Queen Regent Adda played in these events.

It is the kind of thing that even as I sit here writing this, I can hear the men that are assigned to guard me, gossiping over what she did, when she did it and whose side she was on really. I do not doubt that question is being asked down where the work crews are working on rebuilding the castle and amongst the military patrols that I spent hours discussing the patrol routes of with my new and shiny Imperial Adjunct.

And I do not doubt that these things are asked in the courtrooms all over the North and a significant part of the South. And just as many questions that are being asked, there are going to be just as many theories offered as to why this might have been the case, or that might have been the case.

People are saying that if the Queen had thrown her full support behind the Rebellion then maybe we would have thrown off the Imperial oppression. Whereas the opposite is also suggested, where if she had acted properly against the Rebellion then all of those lives would have been saved.

I have yet to have my first formal meeting with the Queen Regent and her council, just as I have yet to properly meet Queen Anais and the other members of her Regency Council. I am not looking forward to either event. History has taught me that any time there is a regency council, it is always too large and filled with overly ambitious men that want to use the position for their own ends rather than for the benefit of the realm or the monarch that they are seeking to serve.

For our Southern readers who might be less aware of Queen Adda’s full history, I will do a quick summary although this falls far short of the actual events. For a full recounting, I can recommend the biography simply titled “Queen Adda” by Sir Franz Golzen. It is tricky to find in Redania as the Queen finds it offensive due to her opinion that the book portrays her as a weak woman that needed looking after.

She is not entirely unfair in her assessment of the work. Speaking as an academic for a moment, I wonder if the writer was more than a little bit in love with the Queen and as a result built her into the damsel of distress that, from a certain point of view, the events of her life portray her as. He has since fled to somewhere in Aedirn and we haven’t heard from him since.

Queen Adda was born as the child of King Foltest’s infatuation with his own sister. Although there is plenty of evidence to show that Foltest was hopelessly besotted with his sister, also called Adda, there is no real evidence to suggest that his ardour was reciprocated and records from that period are sketchy given that the young King’s courtiers did their best to hush the scandal up.

Adda died in childbirth and to all intents and purposes, the child was stillborn and badly disfigured, this was due to a curse that had been enacted by a Count Ostrit who had loved Princess Adda the elder and was incensed at his perception that the King had raped her.

Foltest was insane with grief and promptly found his solace in the arms of any pretty woman that he could get his hands on. But in the meantime, he insisted that the still-born horror and the dead Princess were interred in the family crypt. The still-born child was named Adda after her mother.

Over time, the still-born Adda, due to the curse of Count Ostrit, turned into a Striga. She was returned to being a human some fourteen years after she was born by the efforts of Lord Geralt. I refer you to the works of the bard as to what happened there.

When she came to herself, she was still, essentially an infant in the body of a young girl. Her Father seems to have done well despite this. She was given access to the best tutors and soon grew into a strong-willed young woman. There are many tales of her beauty and her escapades from this period.

Lord Geralt had warned the King that the danger of the Princess Adda turning back into a Striga did exist but conspirators of the Flaming Rose saw to it that the precautions as recommended by then Witcher Geralt were set aside and the Princess started to show signs of a bestial and angry nature.

She started to be more predatory of a sexual nature and developed a taste for all but rare meat. Her ambition was fed as well until it got to the point where her own nascent rebellion against her Father, while allied with the Burning Rose faction of Jacques de Aldesbourg boiled over as the Princess returned to the form of the striga.

Again, Lord Geralt came to the rescue and lifted the curse.

Commentators argue as to her character from this period. Some say that the resurgent curse had made her predatory, rebellious and headstrong and that when the curse was lifted for a second time, she became a properly meek, obedient and doting daughter to her Father. Others say that this was always her character and she was merely presenting those virtues to keep herself safe from her Father’s wrath.

But regardless, it was determined by her Father that Adda’s rebellion was instigated by magical means and people didn’t want to argue with him. Foltest had already entered negotiations with the young King Radovid of Redania for a marriage alliance and, as is the way with a certain kind of male, it was generally thought that a wedding would calm the girl down.

For a while, all indications were that it was a happy marriage. The ambitious nature of both members of the couple fed each other and it looked as though it was all going to work out.

Foltest realised though, that he had no heir and he had no intention of Radovid crowning himself King of Redania and Temeria and it was during his efforts to secure himself heirs, that he was assassinated and the third war against Nilfgaard began.

Why Radovid started to go mad, I don’t think we will ever really know. But go mad he did. The stress of the war against the South, the less-than-ideal upbringing and the feeding of that madness by the Hierarch Hemmelfart of the Eternal Flame certainly all own some of the blame. But it was the last part of the matter that made Adda’s life awful.

The thing that saved her was that she fell pregnant quickly and no matter how much the church people wanted to convince the King that she was cursed, the prompt production of an heir to the throne is seen as a blessing.

But the church got into the King's ear. As well as preaching hate of magic users which fed Radovid’s own feelings on the matter, and as well as preaching the hate of the non-humans, they taught him to hate his wife.

Their public reasons were that she had been cursed and was therefore evil. The political reasons were undoubtedly the fact that Queen Adda had an understandable distrust of the Eternal Flame after everything that they had put her through and advised her husband against trusting the holy men too much. So the church wanted a Queen at the King’s side that was more biddable and more of an advocate for the church.

The King, being wiser in his madness than some give him credit for, kept his heir and was aware of how much this endeared the Queen to the everyday person on the street. But there is also little doubt that Radovid became abusive towards his wife.

After the peace was signed, Radovid’s heir was declared client King of Redania on behalf of the Greater Empire and finally getting the power that she craved, Adda was made the Queen Regent.

Her proponents argue that she is using her power to protect herself and her son from all of the people that have tried to disadvantage her in the pest. Detractors cite her earlier ambition and wonder if she will turn into a Striga again and just eat her young son.

So she is, and has always been, a woman under siege.

The survivors of the Rebellion are in no doubt as to whose side the Queen was on. And the problem that I have there is that their arguments are believable. The Queen has always been ambitious, that is true and she has always wanted to protect her son. That is also true. It is all too believable that she wants a free Redania that she can rule and so that later her son can rule where they don’t have to run every decision that is made past an imperial overlord. It is also possible that she doesn’t want the same for Temeria, the country of her birth.

I can absolutely believe that.

But I can also absolutely believe those people that argue that the Queen would never have put her name behind the rebellion. Why? Because the rebellion was led by women-hating men who believe that women should be seen and not heard. From Sam’s own mouth, no sooner would the rebellion have been won than Adda would have been married off, possibly to me and she would then have turned into a baby-making automaton while the groom would then be King and rule accordingly.

And her infant son would, almost certainly, never be allowed to survive.

All of this to say that speaking as an observer that is free from the potential wrath of the Queen should she, or any of her courtiers ready this, it is more than believable to me that the Queen would have been on either side.

Which side was she on?

I have no idea.

But during this period of the Rebellion, the calm after the storm contrary to the common saying, a message was carried into the Imperial presence.

How the message made its way from, presumably, wherever Queen Adda was at the time of the rebellion which we know to have been in her castle in the heart of the capital, surrounded by her most trusted guards, into the royal palace at Vizima, we don’t know.

We know that the messenger was a man and that he was of martial bearing. He was courteous and he was properly trained in matters of etiquette when it comes to the Imperial Court. He wore a sword but had no problem handing it over to the guards when required. He was instructed to give the message to the hands of The Empress but there were other surrogates that he was prepared to accept, including Duchess Anna-Henrietta of Toussaint, Lord Morvran Voorhis, the Imperial Secretary and a couple of others including Lady Yennefer, Lord Geralt and Lady Eilhart. He had no problem with the sealed message being checked for enchantments or poisons providing that the testing did not damage the paper or the seal.

Lady Eilhart served as the tester and it was the Imperial Secretary that carried the message from the messenger's hand to Lady Eilhart’s prepared miniature laboratory where she performed the magical tests.

Then the letter was carried to the Empress where Lord Voorhis opened it for her as the Empress put gloves on and Lord Voorhis held the letter while the Empress read it.

The original letter is being kept under lock and key by Lord Voorhis now although I have a copy for reference and I have seen the original.

The messenger himself waited politely for the message to be read whereupon he politely asked if there was any return message.

According to the witnesses, his tones were precise, educated with an accent from somewhere in Redania with a slight hint to the accent that suggested that he had been educated in the Empire at some stage.

After the message was read, he was dismissed to wait while the Imperial council discussed what to do about the message and when the messenger was summoned back, he was no longer in the room where he had been deposited to wait.

Who was he? Well… No one can remember his face. Lady Eilhart in particular is furious about this development because it means that the face was almost certainly secured by some kind of enchantment, which she didn’t spot. How did he get out?

Two theories hold water, the first is that he was a magical creature of some kind, whether human originally and therefore with access to magic, or a non-human that would go beyond the normal Human, elf, or dwarf branches of description, and could slip out through the cracks.

The second is that he was an experienced scholar of the royal palace of Vizima. Few people are going to know that place better than the Queen Regent herself or one of the servants. And therefore, he knew something that his guards didn’t.

That is a question that we are not likely to know the answer to for some time yet, if ever.

The letter itself was on thick and expensive paper. The handwriting is large and flowing. It was the handwriting of a person that doesn’t need to worry about how much paper they’re using. Paper is expensive and even those of us with access to a lot of it write small to not waste it.

And the letter was signed by, simply, “Adda”.

The letter takes its name from the opening line.

Dearest Cousin.

We write to you with the gravest of tidings.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to write to you or greet you personally, with news of prosperity in Redania and with the fealty, love and honour which I owe you. But alas this is not the case and instead, it is down to my pen to warn you of this grievous thing that, even as I write this and, I fear, as you read it, it is possibly too late.

We have heard rumblings over recent weeks and months regarding the flags of rebellion being raised in Redania.

At first, we did those things that we are supposed to do in these circumstances, I set trusted men to investigate the matters and passed on the reports that came to my ear to the representatives of Imperial Intelligence.

Later, as those rumours became closer and closer to the fact I made another mistake in that I expressed my concerns to those men that surrounded me in council and trusted that they acted in good faith. They told me that they had informed you of the situation and that the best thing that I could do to serve the Empire was to play stupid and let the plot ripen so that all aspects of the plot could be exposed.

Later still, men came to me and tried to extract my blessing regarding these efforts, as though my seal to this rebellion might give it some kind of shell of legitimacy. Again, I took the news to my closest advisors and the head of Imperial Intelligences to the North and still nothing has happened.

Now I am pushed to this last extreme in writing to you. The rebellion means to strike on or around the Autumn Equinox using the marriage of Lord Frederick Coulthard, our vassal and yours, to Countess Ariadne du Angral as a shield for all of their activities.

I implore you not to attend these events so that you and your fellows may be safe from this treachery and I beg that you take the proper steps to defend yourself, Redania and finally the Empire from these traitors that besiege us.

For my part, I can only hope that my message reaches you in time. I am surrounded by men in the red coats of my husband and the black coats of the Empire that were placed in my court to aid in my governance. I do not know who to trust given that it is now clear that at least some of those black coated men are involved in the plot just as much as any man in red coats. Also it is clear that my closest advisors are not MY closest advisors at all but are the advisors of my late husband who never thought I was fit to rule, and now the Rebellion.

Not to mention the problem where such men are reluctant to follow the orders of a woman.

I especially draw your attention to the head of Imperial Intelligence for the North as this matter could not have proceeded as far as I fear it has without his knowledge and dare I say, his blessing.

I hope that this letter arrives with you in time for you to be able to act as is needed and please be in no doubt as to my firmest loyalty to you.

May the Great Sun keep us in light, and the Eternal Flame keep us in warmth so that they may guide us home.

Your loving cousin

Adda.

-

Fascinating isn’t it?

In years to come, long after my works intended to record the history of these events, I rather think that the “Dearest Cousin” letter will survive long after any of us. I think our children and our children’s children will be talking about that letter. There is so much to unpack here and I even think that, at some point in the future, there will be entire volumes devoted to this letter alone. There will be a couple of chapters beforehand to establish context and then a few chapters afterwards to discuss results, but there are going to be chapters on handwriting, style, content, what the words said, what was unsaid, what was written between the words, what the intent of the letter was and so on.

I am too close to the subject to be able to answer any of those questions. I am still too angry and too disappointed by everything. I am sceptical and bitter and I cannot pretend otherwise.

At the time of writing these words I have yet to meet with the Regency Council of Redania and the Queen and I am not looking forward to it. I suspect that there are going to be powerplays. There are going to be games of dominance and superiority. So bear these things in mind when I say what I think happened here.

To my mind, the letter is the letter of a woman that was playing both sides against the middle. I think that people had talked to the Queen about the Rebellion and she was generally and distantly supportive. The Queen is more than capable of a politician to leave someone thinking one thing when she said something completely different. Then, when she knew a bit more about the conspirators and the men that she was dealing with, I think she started to be a little reluctant.

After all, given what we know about the foundation of the rebellion and its roots in the Cult of the First-Born, the Queen would not have had any power in the new regime.

So she was almost certainly waiting to see if the matter could be turned to her advantage. When it became clear that the matter might be going wrong when the storm went early or maybe there was some other telltale thing that meant that she realised… I don’t know… something was wrong. She decided to hedge her bets and write to the Empress.

It is even possible that the letter was written when she first heard about the Rebellion and then kept somewhere secret and safe, so that it could be dispatched at any moment, on the receipt of a codeword in court if she realised that she was being watched and her letters were being read.

But the arrival of the letter, which was a mere couple of days before the Equinox itself is, to me, the most telling detail. Late enough to not really affect the outcome but early enough for the letter to be noted.

Also, right now, Imperial Intelligence is tearing itself apart trying to find out how the messenger knew where the Empress was to deliver the message. After all, she should have been in Coulthard Castle itself at the time and only the coming of the storm prevented that.

Onto the letter itself.

As I say, I have a copy. And when I say I have a copy, it’s not the kind of copy where someone just noted down the words for me. This is the kind of copy where a trained monk was summoned and copied the words exactly. Every quill stroke of the pen was copied to the point that it’s as close a facsimile to the original as I can get.

The letter itself was written quickly. The handwriting is large and flowing but that doesn’t tell us much. I am reassured that the handwriting does indeed match and the paper is the same kind of paper that has since been found in Queen Adda’s private study. But that paper is bought in a proper dwarven paper-making press in Tretogor so all of that is above board and believable.

The Queen herself says that she wrote it shortly before it was delivered and that she handed it to a trusted messenger. She used to use one of her maids to find a messenger and the maid was the one who found the person who actually carried the message. It was a system that the Queen had used before on other occasions.

What were those other occasions I hear you ask?

I certainly asked.

There is no concrete evidence of that. The suggestion is that she used this system to arrange trysts with lovers although that cannot be proven. It is also suggested that she used this system back when Radovid’s depredations were at their most extreme and the Queen was most in fear for her life.

The maid-servant can no longer be found and there, I think, the Queen is protecting her agent. I can understand her on that regard even when I don’t approve of it.

The contents of the letter are equally as fascinating. The first detail that leaps out to me is that no names are mentioned. Surely you would do so. You would mention to the Empress who it was that was rebelling and what they were rebelling for. The Queen didn’t do that.

The second thing that leapt out to me as I have read this letter over and over again, is that the Queen does a lot to point out that although she knew about the Rebellion, she had taken pains to pass that knowledge on to the relevant and correct authorities. Neither she, nor we, can prove that one way or another. The head of Imperial Intelligence for the North is still being debriefed in detail on the promise of having his wife sent to a nunnery and for a quick, merciful and private beheading for himself. According to the transcripts of those conversations that I have access to, and they are certainly not finished yet, he knows nothing of this.

The Queen’s counter to that is obvious. The man is an obvious traitor so why would we believe him? Especially over her who did her best to warn the Empress and blah blah blah.

The other defence is that the Queen was passing messages so it could easily be dismissed as “I told the head of Intelligence” when the truth is that the Queen passed it to a servant who passed it to the messenger who passed it to another messenger who passed it to a clerk who passed it to the head of Intelligence.

Please note that this doesn’t mean that the Queen is lying. It just means that what she thinks of “I sent a message” is different from what you or I might mean when we send a message.

There are a couple more things to take from this letter.

The first is about the placement of the people around her. She talks about men in black coats and men in red coats meaning Imperial men and Redanian men respectively. She mentions that the Red coated advisors are men that obeyed her husband and with that comes the suggestion that they are not serving her, but are more supporting the words of her late husband, or what they think Radovid would have wanted from beyond the grave.

When she talks about the men in black coats she makes a point of saying that these men were “were placed in my court to aid in (her) governance”. So she’s also calling out those people that the Empire put with her as part of helping to govern a client nation.

In short, “this would never have happened if everyone would just leave me the hell alone and let me do what I want and need to do”. If that comes across as being angry and bitter then you are probably right.

I also notice that she only talks about men and the line about following the orders of a woman. I remain certain that that phrase is there to try and associate herself with the Empress herself.

Does the Empress have the problem that the men in her life try to rule her rather than the other way around? Of course, she does so that is what I think that line was for and is, for me, the clumsiest line in the letter.

So that is the “Dearest Cousin” letter and if you hear other people talking about it, that is what they are talking about.

So yes, The Empress was warned a couple of days in advance as to what was happening. So why didn’t anything happen?

Believe me, I asked that question myself and the answer is, unfortunately, all too believable.

She couldn’t.

The letter arrived shortly after she would have returned from Ariadne’s hen do. Something happened at the castle at that point which meant that large-scale action was impossible. So the only thing that The Empress could do was to teleport in herself and start shouting at people.

According to witnesses, Lord Voorhis and a couple of other people risked their heads by all but sitting on the Empress to prevent her from doing precisely that.

Remember that the letter said absolutely nothing about the names of the people involved. All it says is that my wedding was going to be some kind of smoke screen and distraction. So it might even have been that nothing was going to happen at Coulthard Castle itself.

Or, it was the residents of Coulthard Castle itself that were at the root of the Rebellion. The Court could not know that one way or the other.

So for all they knew, Ciri could have turned up and started shouting only for someone to shoot her in the back. It would have been difficult given the Empress’ abilities but she can only do that trick so much before she gets tired and she has the same peripheral vision as everyone else.

Also, bear in mind that she can only transport one person, herself. She claims to be working on getting more than one person through, but that this is more difficult and in this instance, would not be useful.

So… why did she not do something else. Why didn’t she order a half dozen Imperial Mages to open gates and have the Imperial Guard march through?

Leaving aside the problem that the Guard would still have to properly martial and arrange themselves, before dropping themselves into a situation that they knew nothing about which is the worst thing you can do on a military scale, it turns out that Coulthard castle was defended.

The Rebellion was quite aware that this was a risk and so they took steps. As far as they knew, Ariadne was working for them and in this case, it would seem that there was no wiggle room in what they had told her.

Coulthard castle has long had an enchantment over it to prevent enemy assault. It is true that to protect yourself from magic, you must use magic. When Father took over the ownership of what is now Coulthard castle, he hired a mage to defend it from everything that his paranoid mind could concoct. So there was a shield that protected unknown teleportations in and out. This shield extends for a good distance around the castle and certainly, the large gates that would transport armed forces would go catastrophically awry. To get in and out, a mage must attune themselves to the protective spells.

Apparently, this is called a teleport ward and is considered an elementary way of protecting yourself from industrial-grade espionage and sabotage.

What Ariadne did was to adjust this shield to prevent people from spying in as well as teleporting in. Laurelen had worked on the… I understand that the term is “wards” for an extended time after she was outed and then, while she was in and around the area, Ariadne adjust these same words so that when the time came, she would be in sole control over those wards. Anyone scrying in would suffer consequences and anyone trying to teleport or gate into the surrounding area would end up coming through a mile above, or below, ground.

What the Empress did do was order scouts out. She sent messengers to those armed forces in the field to try and ascertain who was loyal and who wasn’t while also ordering the mobilisation of the forces that were there in Temeria itself, including a large number of Temerians.

But this is where the rain had done its job. That mobilisation took longer than was intended. Far longer than was intended. I understand that things are being worked on now to circumvent these problems in the future, but that is no consolation to me, or to the people that lost their lives or…Worse…As part of the rebellion.

So that takes us up to the day of the Rebellion itself. I hope it was interesting reading and I hope you join me soon for the day of the Equinox itself.

-

Something has happened and I want to have it recorded as it’s the kind of thing that people might try and use against me in the future.

Firstly, for those people that want to hear about the reunion that I had with Carys, Chireadean and Padraig then I was planning on that to go with the chapter that talks about what actually happened on the day of the Equinox which you will hopefully be reading before too much time has elapsed. Safe to say that we were reunited, they did survive although the reunion was bittersweet given everything that has happened to all of us.

But that is relevant because, on the day that the event occurred that I am about to describe, Carys was with me. She is now the leader of my personal guard. Not by any real virtue although she has been, and will be, outstanding at the job.

But because a couple of officers from both sides of the divide, Northern and Southern, tried to tell her that it was inappropriate for, essentially, an Elven bandit, murderer and assassin to be guarding so prominent a Northern Noble.

They cited things like her flagrant disrespect for me and the people around me and things might have been unpleasant before her husband, who WILL become the new Knight Captain of my home forces whether he wants it or not, told the offending knights in his broad Skelligan accent that they can try to stop her, but to make sure that their funerals are paid for in advance.

So the message came to me on a sunny Spring afternoon.

Since my incarceration in the dungeons of Coulthard castle, the Cathedral complex on temple island in Novigrad and then later in the Rosemary and Thyme, I have a preference for being outdoors. I currently live in a pavilion that is set up on a small rise near what was and will be again, Coulthard Castle. When the weather draws in, the side flaps of the pavilion are dropped down other than by the entrance and I sit and look out over the wind and rain-swept countryside.

When the weather is nicer I will either stay there and all the flaps are lifted so that I enjoy the sunshine. But even then, sometimes having even that small covering is too much and I will stagger outsides to sit out beneath the sky where I stay until someone or another chases me back inside for the good of my health.

On particularly good days I can work and receive people like this and on those days, I have developed a habit of sitting with my nearest friends where we sit, talk, debate, argue, play cards or dice, reminisce, make each other laugh, eat, drink and generally be merry. Sir Hugh, my oldest friend, now knighted much to his wife’s delight, has made jokes about this being the beginnings of what will become known as my “court”. I threatened to have Carys slit his throat for me.

And it was on one of those warm spring afternoons that all of this occurred. It had been a good day. The business that I had, was taken care of. People were waiting to see me but then again there are always people waiting to see me. Generally, I’m finding that it’s the kind of thing where people think that they will get further if they come straight to the top to see me when matters would be far more efficient if they had gone somewhere else first. They seem to think that coming to see me will cut through a lot of bureaucracy when they misunderstand that the bureaucracy is there for a reason and cannot be circumvented.

So I had done my work, written my letters and listened to some of my advisors when it came to a decision that was going to come up regarding the amount of trade that was going to be divided between the Novigrad docks and the Oxenfurt docks. One of those decisions for which I am vastly unsuited but only I can seem to have the authority to make.

I had exercised and was beginning to feel a lot better about my overall physical health so I had taken the chance and banished the scribes and the hangers-on and told them that my work was done for the day. I intended to sit out on the grass and under the blue sky. I wanted to listen to my friends laugh and the birds sing and just for a moment I would be able to set aside the worries that plague me.

I am rarely alone in these kinds of situations.

Sir Guillaume and Sir Gregoire were both there. Knight Commander Syanna had returned to Toussaint now that things were calming down, but had left Lady Vivienne here to represent Toussaint interests in the… I have to get this bit right… “fluid nature of events in the north” and so where Lady Vivienne goes then so too goes her husband. Where Sir Guillaume goes then Gregoire is bound to follow and he had brought his wife with him, both in her official capacity and as some friendly company for me. When she was around she joined the legion of people that were worried about my health and wellbeing which is always lovely if sometimes stifling.

Carys was there of course and she was whittling something with an intense frown on her face. Her, sword, knives, bow and a quiver of arrows were next to her and periodically she would look up and examine the surrounding area to see if there was anything that needed murdering in the near vicinity before she returned to her work.

Sir Hugh was there and his wife would be joining us later. The pair of them, husband and wife, have become invaluable advisors to me. Not least because they remember me as a snot-nosed, desperately lonely little boy that they shepherded through the process of becoming a man. They have seen me at my best and at my worst and they can cut me down to the quick whenever they feel that I am being pompous. Also, their professional qualifications are invaluable too, but the first thing was the most important.

Also present were Lady Yennefer who is in the North so that she can, “sit on the Empress when she needs sitting on”.

The Skelligans were often there in ones or twos. Helfdan was still governing Novigrad although we had hopes that we would be able to hand that over to the proper mayoral office soon once we were sure that we had candidates that would be loyal to me and through me to the Empress rather than slaves to the Merchants, Redania, Temeria, the church or the rebellion in no particular order. They also had to be remotely competent and finding someone that fits into all of those boxes was being harder than I thought it could ever be.

On that afternoon, Thorvald, Sigurd, Sigurd’s wife and Kar were there. Helfdan wanted Svein near him as he was feeling “fragile” which is Helfdan speech for either warning everyone that he might have to kill someone soon or that he is beginning to feel overwhelmed. Father Anchor was there although Tulip and Samantha were otherwise engaged in the work site. The young priest was mostly enjoying a nap in the sunshine.

We were just talking about something, possibly enjoying teasing Sigurd for how in love with his wife he was while he protested that he was not alone in that particular vice.

I remember leaning back in my chair and resting my hand behind my head. The prosthetic still works for this process. I was warm and happy and the air was clear in my lungs. I have to enjoy these moments when I find them as so much of my brain is still trapped in the dungeon or in Sam’s study.

I am having the study redesigned by the way.

I was just letting things wash over me, listening to people laugh and enjoy each other’s company and enjoy the small social rules that develop in groups such as this.

Such as to never, ever tease Lady Yennefer about her wardrobe choices.

I was in the middle of enjoying this good stretch when I was startled by someone calling me.

“Your Grace?”

I opened my eyes and examined the offensive oaf that had disturbed my doze and realised that I was being unfair. He was an Imperial Messenger and had been escorted to my little hilltop by a pair of guards. He looked tired, sweat plastering his hair to his skull.

I sighed and decided that my rest was interrupted. I climbed to what I am getting used to calling my feet and picked up my cane. I need it less and less now, but it’s in those moments where I am overconfident that I need it the most. Full mobility is still a long way off though.

I waited for Carys to take the leather scroll case off him before she examined the insides and brought it over to me.

“Thank you.” I told the messenger. I always try to be polite to the messengers as it is never their fault. “Whatever you have to do next can wait until you have had something to drink and something to eat. After that, I am sure there are some more messages somewhere for you to carry.”

I nodded to the guards who took the grateful young man off somewhere for a bowl of stew, a hunk of bread and a cup of wine. Then, if I am any judge, he will spend some time at the jacks before climbing back on his horse with a fresh bundle of papers.

If there is one thing that being a Duke does now, it is creating paperwork.

I opened the scroll case and took out the papers inside. It was not a small bundle as I sat down and began to read.

Yennefer broke first.

“What is it?” She asked innocently.

“Can’t be anything important.” Hugh put in, he is becoming increasingly comfortable around the people that I associate with. “The messenger was sweaty but not panicked.”

“Probably another invitation to a ball.” Gregoire rumbled.

That is code for an invitation for me to meet an eligible young lady. It is now well-known how I feel about people suggesting that I begin looking at other candidates for a spouse.

“It is the judgement regarding Ariadne,” I told them.

All lightness left the area as I read.

The top parchment was a summary that I passed to Yennefer who began reading while pretending that she was not as interested as she is.

“She’s been found innocent,” she declared. “A closer judgement than some but not as close as others.”

“Closer than mine,” I commented. I wanted to pace while I read but experience has taught me that I am not up to that just yet. “And to my reading, there is a lot more politics in these choices.

The papers started to head around in a chain. From Yennefer to Hugh and onto Guillaume. Gregoired read over Guillaume’s shoulder while the Skelligans couldn’t give a fuck. I think Father Anchor was watching me carefully.

“The main dispute,” Yennefer commented. “Seems to be just how much control she had over her actions and the language involved. Some people want to call her a slave but others are arguing that even slaves can choose to disobey.”

“They would not survive or they would be punished if that were the case.” Carys spat, reminding everyone of her past history.

“Yes, but they can still choose,” Yennefer told her. “Or that’s the legal argument anyway.”

She ignored Cary’s bristling at that suggestion. For those who have forgotten, Carys was once, essentially, a sex slave. There was legal wording preventing prosecution but her status as a non-human meant that her rights were not as protected as they should have been. She escaped by murdering her keepers and joined us when we were fleeing from the Cult of the First-Born. She was pardoned for her “crimes” when Emma and Mark got her back to Coulthard lands and had her sign up to the guard.

“That’s flawed.” Hugh opined. “From everything I have heard, she was more like a sword or a dagger being wielded. She literally could not choose to do nothing. Not even to end her own life which is… Sorry, Carys… The last refuge of the slave.”

“Which seems to have been the argument of those judges that are on her side,” Yennefer told everyone. “The other problem that keeps coming up is that she is both a “monster” of the old school and a mage.”

“What?” Thorvald wondered curiously.

“Legally in Novigrad,” Hugh began, “There is human, non-human which means Elf, dwarf, halfling and Gnome. Then there is everything else which counts as “monster”. Even sentient and reasoning beings are, legally, monsters in Novigrad.”

He sniffed. Hugh would not be cross with me if I described him as being a little bit racist. He is the kind of racist that regularly checks his behaviour to make sure that he is not being racist. So he sometimes checks to see if what he says is being racist to people like Carys who will then tell him that she didn’t think he was being racist until he pointed it out.

To be clear, I am often that kind of racist. So are many people of my acquaintance. It’s a step up but there is still a long way to go.

“She’s also a mage.” Yennefer sneered. “The judge from the Eternal Fire in particular sounds like he was having a stroke in deciding how he was supposed to vote. On the one hand, she’s a monster magic user. But on the other hand, she is baptised and confirmed in the worship of the flame. By a bishop and a cardinal, no less.”

“A cardinal that is about to become a saint in your foolish religion.” Thorvald, a follower of Hemdall laughed.

“There’s a lot more politics here.” Guillaume was ordering the notes. “Nilfgaard’s judge voted to execute her because, and I quote, there are no such thing as vampires and this pretence of control is just an excuse.”

Everyone snorted.

“There’s also something here that I noticed,” Hugh said, gesturing to Guillaume. “Pass me that page from… I think it was the Melitele judge?”

Guillaume did so.

“Yeah, here it is. Quote ‘Although I agree that the lady in question was innocent of these charges and I will remain disappointed if she is found guilty, I am concerned about the legal precedent that this will set. If we defend this woman because she was… we need a better word than enslaved for circumstances like this one. We run the risk of that becoming a legal defence in the future. Any person that is caught will argue before the judges that they were magically, or monstrously controlled to commit the crimes of which they are guilty. There will need to be some way to govern that, as to my eyes, it will be used as a defence often and then, once again, any passing and innocent mage, Sorceress, Priest, priestess, non-human or “monster” will be blamed as they must have been the one controlling the criminal.’ End quote.”

“Not an invalid fear.” Gregoire rumbled.

“Phil’s response is very typical of her, I wonder how she keeps managing to get assigned to these cases,” Yennefer smirked. “Ahem, ‘the answer to the concern of using a defence as to whether or not the accused was controlled by magic is simple. A short consultation by a mage, properly licenced, of course, would be able to answer the question as to whether or not the accused was controlled or whether they acted of their own volition. The simplest solution is often the best and moving forward, that is the case.”

Yennefer’s impression of Lady Eilhart is uncanny.

“That would just take us back to, can we trust magical testimony in court? though,” Hugh argued, as I guessed he would. “How trustworthy is the mage and would they be biased on a case-by-case basis? How available would “properly licensed mages be?”

“Or how expensive?” Guillaume commented.

The conversation died down for a moment.

“So…” Guillaume finished up. “Mage representative voted Innocent along with Melitele, Eternal Flame, Skellige and… Kreve of all people. Redania, Nilfgaard, Great Sun voted Guilty. Overall, found Innocent. There will be a follow-up order confirming her in all her titles and… blah blah blah.”

He shuffled the papers back together and put them in their proper order before sliding them back into the diplomatic tube. He looked to give them to me but I had wandered off a little bit. My feelings were complicated, relief certainly but now I had a hunger to see the woman that I loved that was threatening to overtake me.

“So she’s innocent.” Hugh sighed, seemingly relieved. “Now all we have to do is find her.”

“Easier said than done.” Yennefer gave an answering sigh. “She doesn’t want to be found. I’ve tried and once upon a time, I was one of the foremost mage trackers on the continent. Ariadne is no Necromancer which was my speciality but the principle was the same. Ida and Enid report no luck either.”

“What about whosername?” Gregoire rumbled. “The dragon.”

“Maleficent is looking,” Yennefer said. “But she is, as you say, a dragon. Flighty is not the word for it. She keeps being distracted by the latest proverbial shiny object. A pretty young man to ravish or be ravished by. A new magical project that has just occurred to her. And as for more terrestrial tracking?”

Everyone kind of moaned in dismay.

“Sorry,” Hugh began. “I know I have the least experience in these matters, but why can’t the Imperial forces track her?”

“She can turn into a swarm of spiders,” Thorvald told him.

“Or a cloud of smoke,” Guillaume added.

“Or she can simply teleport.” Yennefer finished.

“Oh.” Hugh looked at me with a newfound respect.

The silence stretched. After a long moment, I forced myself to return to the group and lowered myself back into my chair. Father Anchor poured me a drink and handed it to me. I pretended not to notice how strong he had made it.

“Sorry Freddie,” he whispered.

I nodded my thanks.

“I may…” Carys blew some of the sawdust from whatever it was that she was carving and took a cloth to brush it away. “Be being particularly stupid. But why not send Kerrass to hunt her? After ‘is Grace here, who else knows her best? Why is Kerrass not out there combing the countryside for her?”

“Is that what he’s doing out there already?” Gregoire’s face was absurdly hopeful and others started to pick up the fantasy of Kerrass finding her and bringing her back to me.

The romance of the image was certainly attractive but I knew that it was false.

“Kerrass is not helping me,” I told them. My voice sounded harsh and cut across everyone’s speech as they all turned to look at me.

The moment lengthened.

“Why not?” Kar wondered, speaking carefully in the same tones that he uses when he’s edging around a fragile Helfdan.

“I have not heard from Kerrass since the night in the basement where Sam died.” I told them all. “He is out there at the moment, vanishing into the wilderness and occasionally surfacing to collect bounties on the necrophages and carrion eaters that the battles have attracted.”

I wasn’t looking at anyone, staring into my lap as I spoke.

“I have sent messages to him to ask him to come back. To come and see me so that we can talk and so that I can have his help and he has ignored every message. I’ve begged him even as I miss him almost as much as I miss Ariadne,” I shook my head. “I even know that he ignored the letter that the Queen of Dorn sent.” I shook my head again, this time with a bit more force and determination so that I could banish the tears that threatened me.

“Other than the return of a happy and healthy Ariadne there is nothing I want more than my friend at my side. But Kerrass is dealing with his own stuff at the moment. Sleeping Beauty thinks that he is dealing with guilt and I think I agree with her. He will not help me.”

I looked up and no one was meeting my gaze or each other’s gaze. Some stared into drinks that had been passed around while others stared off into the distance.

The moment lengthened again.

After a long moment, I realised what was happening.

“What?” I demanded. “What is it? The last time I ignored everyone else’s opinions the man turned into a traitor that nearly brought the North to its knees. What?”

Still, no-one would meet my gaze.

After a long moment, Guillaume set his cup aside.

“I will say it,” he declared as he rose to his feet, armour clanking.

“Lord Frederick,” he began formally. “It is my honour, and my privilege to call you my friend and sometimes it is the duty of a friend to say the uncomfortable truth, even while knowing that it would hurt our friend more than we would wish it to. I am sorry for that but I feel that this must be said.”

“Spit it out,” Someone muttered. I suspected Carys.

“That,” Guillaume gestured, “... What you describe is not the action of a friend. Let alone a swordbrother such as yourself. If a friend needed me then even if armies of monsters stood in my way, I would be at that friend’s side through their hardest days and it would be my honour to fetch them a drink and help them to the Jacks, let alone rescue or find their loved one while they are unable.”

I was astonished when I looked into his face and saw how outraged he was. He took a moment to breathe and master himself.

“I am sorry if I have overstepped,” he said and he returned to his seat. “If you wish me to leave then…”

“Stop with your martyrdom,” Yennefer teased the big man before she turned to me. “I’m sorry Freddie. Geralt tells me that Kerrass is as good a Witcher as ever came out of the Feline school. But Guillaume is right in this.”

“He does rather seem to run away from you when you need him the most,” Hugh added his voice to the matter.

“The thing after the Goddess?” Gregoire muttered.

“Is the best example of it, yes.” Hugh agreed, “but it is far from the only instance. I would not have left a friend with the Kingslayer for instance.”

“And if I knew about…”

That was enough for me. I groaned a little and shrugged.

“So what do I do?” I begged of them. “I can summon him, send troops to drag him here. But that would make me little more than every asshole that thinks that they are entitled to the Witcher’s service. I don’t want to be that man. I have sat next to campfires with Kerrass while we bitch and moan about nobles like that.”

“Not any Witcher though.” Father Anchor said. “This Witcher. If it was Lord Geralt or any of the others then yes, I would agree, if you ordered his attendance or dragged him here, you would become the tyrant that you fear becoming. But in this case. I rather think he owes you an explanation for his behaviour, even if he won’t help you. And I agree that he has not treated you well here. He promised you that he would return to that basement. So where is he?”

“He does owe you that much.” Yennefer agreed. “At least that much.”

I looked around. Now they were all meeting my gaze in agreement.

I looked at Carys who was watching me carefully.

I nodded to her.

“Do it,” I ordered more formally. “Send men and bring me Kerrass.”