“I thought that they didn't come here any more.” She took a drink and moved back to the drinks table. This time returning with the bottle. “Saves me having to go back,” she explained when she saw my eyebrows rise.

I thought it politic not to comment.

“Apparently she's been here for some years. Travels with a Cat Witcher called Schrodinger. She came here by accident and the two fell in together.”

“Schrodinger. Cat Witcher,” she mused as she poured some more spirits into her cup. “Yes, he's one of the few Witchers that we can't keep track of.”

“There's a magical effect somewhere.”

“Heh. That'll please Philippa.” It took me a moment to realise that she was talking about Madame Eilhart. “But what was it that brought you to Skellige?”

“Two things. The first was that I've always wanted to see the Skeleton Ship. Ever since I first heard about it and the effect that it has on shipping in the area. But the other thing is that Kerrass and I wanted to speak to the druids.”

“Why?” I really was a little put off with the amount that she was drinking without any apparent adverse effects.

“You will have read about the Cult of the First-born?”

“In the north, Yes?” I nodded in response. “I had heard. I understand that it's well in hand now although I'm told that I will need to keep an eye on it. You know, in case the churches of Kreve and the Eternal Flame start fighting over the privilege of setting fire to heretics. I also heard that it got quite tough.”

“It did.”

“And that you upset a lot of people due to your defence of an Elf and a “Jump up”?”

“Jump up?” I had not heart the term.

“What hoighty toighty idiots call people that have been elevated to the nobility by way of battlefield promotions.”

“Oh, Sir Rickard.”

“That's the very animal. You want some more?” She waggled the bottle at me. “It's unlikely that you will get a chance to drink the royal mead again any time soon. Cerys is rather cross with me as it is.”

“How much do you want to wager that that bad mood will evaporate once you formally declare that you want nothing to do with the Skeleton ship, other than to see it float off into the night? I'd better not though, I'm feeling rather ill.”

“It's good for you. Made from honey. I once found a bee in a cup that I was served at the highest table. A sign of good luck apparently.”

The sensible thing to do would have been to turn the offer down. I was tired, sick, sore and emotionally wrung out. But then I thought, how often am I going to get the opportunity to get boozy with the Empress. Yes, I'm writing a memoir at the moment, but it might come up in the future.

I allowed myself to be persuaded and held the cup out. She poured me rather more than I was expecting and it was not lost on me that her hands didn't shake and she did not spill a drop.

“So, yes. I upset some people but that....What was it you called him?”

“Jolly Jump Up is the term apparently.”

“Yes, well, without him and his men, many of whom died for me, Kerrass and I would not have made it back to safety and the cult would have dug in and gone to ground. The Elves in question did the same while challenging some of my preconceptions about their race. Then when we got back, people were looking for someone to blame and Rickard had not made himself very popular.”

“Why not? I mean I know, but I was hoping for a different perspective.”

“He is supremely confident in his own skills and the skills of his men. He knows exactly what they are capable of and he won't take it when people challenge him on that. He refused to join the official chain of command as he technically worked for Emma and his mission was to protect me. So he told them all to fuck off whenever they ordered him to do something. They wanted to try him for desertion when he had actually just done as he was originally ordered in following me when I left the castle. A man named Kristoff wanted to order him around a bit and exert some authority but then Rickard had left. He's a good man but at the end of the day, to the other knights and nobles, he just isn't one of them and they hate him for it.”

“The other knights. Including your brother?”

“My brother was trying to be diplomatic.”

“So, yes. It was including your brother.”

I said nothing.

“The Elves?”

“Oh. After days of fighting and dying for our cause, the same nobles that disliked Rickard and tried to hang him out to dry, just wanted to ignore the sacrifices of the Elves. They were turned away from food supplies, blankets and healing supplies and essentially barred from the castle under threat of being run off. I didn't react too well to that as I recall.”

“You did not.” She smiled. “I received several letters demanding your censure and arrest from various places including the Church of the Eternal Flame as well as several other nobles and knights of the North for your behaviour.”

“Oh good.” I muttered.

“The Church of the Eternal Flame is debating the subject, on the one hand you are a proud follower of the Eternal Flame and unearthed the largest nest of dangerous heretics that the North has seen in years, if not decades. But on the other hand, your staunch defence of non-humans has set you against the modernists.”

“My feeling was that the modernists hate me because I'm Mark's brother. What with Mark trying to take the church back to it's more traditional values.”

“Correct.” The way she said it made me feel as though I was back at University and I had just said something clever in a seminar. “But your stance for the non-humans has not made you popular.”

I looked her straight in the eyes.

“Darn.” I said.

She laughed as I had wanted her to.

“On the other hand, the southern Lords think that you've done well. So on the one hand, some of the Northerners who have had problems with Elves and are now demanding your head while the Southern Lords are threatening repercussions if you aren't promoted.”

“Which way are you leaning? Speaking as an interested party of course.”

“Oh of course. I was going to be gentle, but then you walked in here and started yelling at me.”

“So anyway, to get us back on track.” I said quickly in an effort to divert the topic. “During the entire thing we had something of an... episode where we were told that the magic that was used to take Francesca was ancient and alien.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“We reasoned that if the traditional magic users of the world...”

“The Lodge,”

“Yes, if they didn't know what it was after Toussaint, then we needed to explore other options and the druids were the first thoughts that came to mind. We've got some other irons in the fire. Kerrass wants to take me somewhere to consult something when we leave Skellige and Ariadne says that she has an avenue that she is exploring with a view to us looking at that over the winter.”

The Empress nodded but I got the sense that I was losing her again as she stared into her drinking cup.

“Ciri?” I asked her. “Sorry, am I allowed to call you Ciri again? Or are we back to Majesty?”

“Ciri is fine when there's no-one present. You were the one that pointed that out to me as I recall.”

“Yes well. As I recall it, that was during a period when I had my head jammed up my own arse.”

She laughed and I let her subside back into silence before I spoke again.

“What happened Ciri? What's going on here?”

She looked up sharply, her eyes glittering strangely. Echoes of an old anger shone out at me as she set her cup aside. Then she looked back at me for a long moment. A very long moment before she leant back, stretching her legs out in front of her and raised her arms above her head, yawning hugely.

“How much do you know about the Ghost Ship?”

“Just what little Lord Voorhis told me. That and one listen through of the saga from one of the masters outside.”

She nodded. “So not very much then.”

“Sounds about right.”

She stared into space for a long time which was when I realised that I was using the old interview techniques that Kerrass had once shown me. I was waiting for her to fill the silence that I was leaving for her.

“I've known about the Skeleton Ship for many years. Grandmother Calanthe had me share my upbringing between Skellige and Cintra so I've been here many many times, Cerys and her brother were as close to me at the time as if they were my own siblings and one of my regrets is that we grew apart over the years, At one point Hjalmar even proposed marriage to me. We were far too young to understand how dangerous that was but there we go. Grandmother was furious but by that point, I had seen the Ghost Ship twice.

“You can only really see it when it travels through the harbour. There is a cold that comes off it that can shatter bone in other times so you can only really see it in the distance.”

Her voice had taken on a similar kind of resonance to the Saga master and I could hear echoes of his voice in her words.

“You can only see it as a rough shape, a speck really, with the even smaller speck of the Albatross flying above it. But then when it comes into harbour it's like, it's like the dead themselves are reaching out to you. The last time I saw the ship.... I haven't had time to see it since I became Empress. But the last time I saw it was after my mother had died and as that great, dark shape sailed through the harbour it was almost as though I could feel her standing next to me. I wept for days, one of the few times that neither Crach nor my Grandmother yelled at me for tears. Normally they would tell me that Queens don't shed tears and that I needed to be strong, but in this instance, They wrapped me warm and held me tight.

“I often wondered what Grandmother saw and felt when she saw the Ghost Ship.”

She shook herself again, just like a cat might after waking up.

“You haven't seen it yet so there is absolutely no way that you can possibly know how profound the experience is. It's like... You've been in some pretty hairy situations now haven't you. Fleeing from the cult, the business over in Angral that brought you and Ariadne together. I'm not thinking about the stuff that happened in Toussaint because that was all happening so fast that it got a bit silly. But when you and Kerrass killed that priest....

“Which is another thing that we might have to talk about by the way,” She said it with a smile though which left me feeling a little better.

“I shall look forward to it.”

“Mmm,” she commented with some amusement in her eyes and pursed lips before carrying on.

“But there's a catharsis afterwards isn't there. There's a moment when you realise that you've survived and that you're happy that you've survived. This is sometimes interchangeable with a sense of loss. You've called it “reaction” in some of your writings which is absolutely true. It is a reaction to the same thing. But there is a moment where you remember that you're alive and feel glad about that. You weep for those you've lost and tears, that you haven't known that you are holding in, suddenly start coming out of you as there's no holding back. It's like your life is affirmed in the most powerful way while also being so sad for those that have been lost.”

“I often find the process of Catharsis incredibly depressing.” I commented.

“That's because you have trained yourself to be apart from it all. To watch and to see the negatives as well as the positive. Instead of being happy with your survival, you see the mistreatment of the Elves. On the one hand it is the mark of a good man to wish that you had done more but on the other...”

She shrugged.

“But even then.... You get combat nightmares don't you? I think I read that somewhere.”

“I do. Normally for a few days afterwards where I dream about the fight or the circumstances and my brain runs through all the ways that it could have gone wrong.”

“But then there's a night where you sleep without dreams isn't there.”

I couldn't help but grin. “Yes there is, and it feels glorious.”

“And then you go and get drunk, possibly get laid and things don't you?”

“We do.”

“The passage of the Ghost Ship, the Skeleton Ship I should say, is like that. It's like a reminder that you've survived along with the reminder of everything that you've lost.”

She drifted off, back to staring into space.

“Majesty...Ciri. With all due respect. I'm sure that was the answer to a question, just not an answer to mine.”

She smiled and nodded to concede the point before peering into her cup.

“I'm gonna need more alcohol for this conversation.”

“How can you drink that stuff? I'm already a little drunk and you've had a lot more than me.”

“Mead and it's variations is an interesting drink. You have to build up a tolerance for it as, for some reason, it doesn't seem to work like beer or wine.”

“Well, you learn something new every day.”

“Are you alright. You're looking a little pasty.”

“Nothing that a week off wouldn't fix.”

“Do you want to carry this on later?” She looked a little hopeful.

“Answer me honestly. Would you be this eager to talk if we put this off until later or would we end up screaming at each other again?”

She considered this.

“Not an unfair comment.”

She took another drink.

“There are two things to say.” She told me. I got the feeling that she was rushing on ahead before she lost her nerve. “The first is that I had not realised how much I depended on your sister until she was gone.” She didn't look at me. “The second is that, without her, this is just no fun any more.”

She sobbed.

“I used to have so much fun with it.” She told me. “I used to take such delight in bringing pompous ass-hats in to see me, pretending to be all weak and female, letting them drone on and on and on before skewering them with a point of logic or a question that they just hadn't considered. Or I would drive home a point that they thought they would get away with given that I am a weak woman rather than a proper male Emperor. I used to enjoy the endless discussions about what I should wear with the barbed insults and veiled threats that could be made with the colour of the dress that I was wearing or a piece of ornamentation. I used to take so much pleasure in seeing small people brought down to the size that they actually are rather than the puffed up self-important ignorant cocks that they think they are.

“I liked confounding people with things that they thought I had forgotten. I enjoyed getting into the nitty gritty of running an empire and wondering where this had gone, or that had gone, or why this person wasn't paying enough tax or why this person was paying too much. I could reward my loyal friends and punish the backstabbing men who thought to rob me and the rest of my subjects in order to line their own pockets. I enjoyed having people like Philippa trying to tell me what to do and just taking the time, every so often, to remind her that she works for me, not the other way round.

“Not that I ever had to do that too much. She actually talks a lot of sense most of the time but she has this overwhelming sense that magical talent should make a person a higher class of citizen. Last time she was making those arguments I threatened that anyone with a magical talent would be conscripted into service of the Empire and the crown. That they would be paid a stipend in order to live but that their lives would be subject to the Imperial whim.”

She laughed at the memory and I laughed with her. As I say, Lady Eilhart is a scary woman and it is occasionally pleasant to imagine people like that being taken down a peg or two.

“I take it she didn't like that.” I commented.

“I thought that her head was going to explode.” The sight of an Empress giggling like a little girl is not something you ever forget. Then she sighed. Like the air being let out of a bag, or the sound that you make when you finish a delicious meal but realise that you're still hungry.

“But I don't laugh about it any more. It isn't fun. There's still plenty of egos that need deflating. Still plenty of dipshits who want to get one over on me because I don't have testicles between my legs. But I just don't care. I don't give a crap. My Empire is full of things that need doing. I know that they need doing and the only one that can do anything about them is me. That I have to buckle down and get to it. That no-one else is going to do it for me. That I have to do it.

“Did you know there's a famine in Aedirn at the moment?” She asked suddenly.

“I did not.” I admitted.

“Northern Aedirn is still being squabbled over by Kaedwen and the remains of Aedirn. The truth is that it's Aedirn's breadbasket. The rest of it's industry had been destroyed because Demavend wasn't properly supported by his lords. So Nilfgaard rolled over it and destroyed and looted everything. Then when we retreated, Kaedwen did the same. Back and forth it went, all the time the Aedirnians just waited for Demavend to crack so that they could take over and claim the throne without realising that it was Demavend's genius that kept them in power for so long.”

“I thought Demavend was a drunk and an idiot.”

“He was. But he only became that when it became clear to him that the lords weren't going to lift a finger to help him and that the country's destruction and conquering by Nilfgaard was inevitable. But now they're back to fighting over the only fertile, well farmed bit of Aedirn and so Aedirn is starving.

“I really should do something about that but what do I do. I try and come up with a scheme. Just something small. Something as easy as securing the Princess Dorn's Kingdom was. A nice military movement that would have all the other folks quaking in their boots. But I just can't seem to summon up the wherewithal to do it. I just can't seem to.... think.”

She was turning in on herself now. She had screwed up her eyes, tears of bitter frustration standing out in her eyes and she had her head in her hands.

“So why was it fun before?” I prompted. Just occasionally you need to give the person that you're talking to a little push to get her to move forward.

“Your sister. You're sister made it fun. She had this trick of sitting just out of sight of the idiot that was trying to manipulate me and pulling faces. We would get together in my quarters, or hers depending on who had the most petitioners waiting outside our doors.”

“I had heard that you generally prefer simple sleeping quarters. Things that are cut off from everything else with just a simple bed.”

“Generally yes. I hate these huge, oversized beds that are too soft to sleep in. I have these nightmares where I feel as though I'm drowning when I sleep in one of those. After the years on the road I just want a nice simple bed with a straw mattress. A hearth is nice but other than that...”

“So, you and my sister...”

“Ah yes. She would help me to laugh at all the ridiculous things that I had seen. All the stupid, stupid bits of nonsense that people tried to feed me about stupid, stupid things. She could make a joke about any of them and brought a smile to my face. Every. Single Time. She made it fun. She made me laugh. When I needed it most, she could take the worst days. The very worst days and make me laugh.”

She sobbed again.

“Oh, I miss her. And I'm sorry, I know that I can't possibly miss her as much as you do but...”

“Hey... Let's not go there. If we spend all day arguing about who has the toughest time then we'll still be here in a year.”

“I suppose. I am sorry though.”

“That still doesn't explain to me what's going...”

“I know, I know and I'm getting to it. Here's the problem with being me. How do I know whether I'm doing the right thing or not?”

“What?”

“Seriously. That thing with Aedirn. Who is going to tell me whether I'm doing the right thing. Who can confirm for me whether I'm doing evil or good? It used to be Francesca but now?”

She shook her head.

“I know about leadership. I've read all the books and I've seen it all happen. I know about things like “Expect hight standards and meet them yourself.” I've heard of “Punish privately, praise publicly.” But how do I know I've done the right thing?”

“No-one ever knows...” I began.

“Yes, but not everyone's the Empress.” She snapped, her mood changing again like lightening. “Not everyone could declare war on Zerrikania or Ofieri for that matter. It was Francesca that kept me honest, she kept me on the straight line. But now... Who do I confide in? Mother and Father?” she eyed me sidelong. “Geralt and Yennefer I mean.”

“Yes, I got that.”

“They tell me that so long as I'm true to myself then it's fine. But they still want to order me round. They still struggle to see me as anything other than a lost little girl that needs rescuing.”

“Are they wrong?”

I was glad to see some fire in the gaze she levelled at me there. She ignored the comment.

“The other members of the lodge are the same. They want to guide me towards their own ends. Not one of them wants to advise me without having their own agenda which they try and bend me towards. Even Triss is now telling me to do things in order to help Kovir and Povis, despite the fact that I dwarf them militarily, as well as financially now and that they depend on me for food. If I wanted to conquer them I could do it by just, not feeding them but Triss keeps wanting me to treat with them as an equal. She even wants me to marry the King despite the fact that he would expect to rule over me which the Southern Lords will not accept. I just don't know what I'm doing and I don't know what's right.

“The religious leaders want me to expel all other religions other than them. Lord Voorhis, though possibly my most faithful vassal is just someone I find I can't trust as technically, he's also my heir. Who do I listen to?”

“Empress, Ciri...”

“I told you that Ciri is fine.”

“Yes, but I feel it's important to hedge my bets. You're still not telling me what's really going on. I don't believe that you're not passionate about the work that you're doing. You've spent this time talking to me about the things that face you and your subjects with clear thought processes in place. You know how you feel about the different things, you know about the crisis in Aedirn and I be that if I sat down with you and a map, you could tell me what's going on in any individual area. You're passionate and you care. Your tears themselves prove that. So what's going on?”

She looked at me for a long time. I felt my eyelids wanting to droop towards being closed. My stomach was churning and I felt the beginnings of a headache.

“I think I made the wrong choice.” She whispered, her eyes shone with unshed tears.

“What choice Ciri?” I whispered back.

She almost groaned. I suppose I had realised what I was doing some time before. I was being a Witcher. I was trying to get to the bottom of a situation and I was employing all the tricks and skills that I had seen Kerrass use in order to confront someone who knew something. We had used the same techniques against Maleficent in order to get to the truth about the Pricness Dorn. We had used those techniques in miniature many times, in order to get to the bottom of what was going on with my family specifically, when I talked to my sister or Mark in his office.

I was manipulating the Empress but now I was doing it for a different reason. It was clear now that this person was desperately unhappy. Not a good place to be given that she was essentially the ruler of the continent. Unhappy rulers tend to become tyrants, go mad or become neglectful. It seemed that Ciri was falling into the third category, if she wasn't there already, and she needed to be taken out of that.

This entire technique always makes me feel a little sick when I am using it to force information out of people. When it's something that they want to tell me or want to communicate then that's fine but when it's a case of forcing someone to give me the information then I hate it. Making them betray a trust or betray a rule, a law or a moral. That shit is awful and leaves me wanting a bath.

I wanted a bath anyway but this was making it worse.

The problem here was that I'm not even sure that Ciri knew what the problem was. Not really. Or at least, she had never thought it through herself. Not properly. Not out in the open where she could examine it from all angles.

So I was dragging a secret from her. A secret that she didn't want to tell me, that she possibly didn't know but that, at the same time, was possibly driving her towards madness.

No pressure at all Freddie, no pressure at all.

Lord Voorhis and I were going to have some serious words when all of this was done. Presuming I survived of course.

“What choice Ciri?” I asked again. A little more forcefully as I got the sense that she was drifting away a little.

She took a moment to get herself back under control. The flush retreated from her cheeks and she swallowed back the tears.

“Did you know?” She began before swallowing a couple of times and starting again. “Did you know how I came to the throne?”

“I read Professor Dandelion's account of the matter.” I told her. “I heard that your Father Emhyr hired your other Father to track you down in order to make that happen. I understand that there was a conversation behind closed doors that no-one else was party to and that neither you, nor your father ever spoke of what was said.”

“It's close. Geralt was hired to bring me to the Emperor. At first I was furious about that. That he had needed hiring to come and find me and then to find out that he had been hired by the Emperor, my father. A man who, the last time I saw him, had wanted to marry me in order to further his own line.”

She shuddered. As well she might.

“Is it possible to loathe a man as well as to respect him at the same time?” She wondered.

“I would say so.”

“But I was so angry with the pair of them when Geralt took me into the palace at Temeria to present me to the Emperor my father. I wanted nothing more to claw both their eyes out. But my father had changed. Not his politics, methods or his ruthlessness but some have suggested, including Lord Voorhis, that he had fallen in love with the woman who was supposed to be my double. That that love had changed him in some way.”

“I'm not sure I believe that.” I told her. “But who knows. They say love can change a person.”

“Your intended certainly claims so.” Her sudden burst of sly humour was startling. It always surprises me how quickly her mood can change from one thing to the next without warning.

“I love Ariadne a great deal.” I responded with some asperity. “But she also told me that vampires emotions work differently than human ones do. That love is like an overwhelming passion for them that they cannot contain.”

“That would track with what she told me.”

“What did she tell you?” I couldn't help myself.

“That she has to physically restrain herself from tearing all your clothes off and having her way with you whenever she sees you.”

“Interesting.” I said shifting in my seat a little uncomfortably. “But I'm not sure I can imagine your father doing that, so stop trying to change the subject.”

She sighed and subsided a little bit. “But he called me in to the room and told me that he intended to retire. That the only person that he could trust to hand the Empire over to, was me. He told me that I was not his only option. He told me that there were other people he could choose as his heir, also that he could just carry on doing the job himself. But that that ran the risk of leading to catastrophe and was therefore to be avoided. But that he wanted me to do it.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and I guessed that I wasn't the only one of us that was coming down with a headache.

“I was in the middle of some stuff at the time.” She went on. “Believe it or not, I was in the middle of saving the world, or at least this version of it. An uncle of mine had died and I was grieving, I wanted vengeance for him and some other friends that had lost their lives in their efforts to keep me safe. I did everything that I had to do, we fought off the wild hunt and I managed to stop the Eternal Frost from encroaching too far into our world and then... it was all over.

“I was sat, over on Hindersfjall to the west and it occurred to me that it was all over. I could stop running. The Wild Hunt were dead along with their desire to use me as some kind of Brood mare for whomever wore the crown of their people at the time.”

She shuddered at the thought. I had no idea what she was talking about but I thought that we had got to the point where I just needed to step back and let her do the talking.

“So there I was. Sat in the snow, there was a form of the Conjunction of the Spheres happening and monsters were leaping out of portals but the Nilfgaardiansa and the Sklligans seemed to have it under control. So I just found a little cave to wait it out. I was very tired. Not tired as in wanting to sleep, but tired as in the fact that I was so weary. It was the conclusion of so much that I had wanted to do. So much that I had wanted to work towards that I was just feeling...empty.

So I was sat in my little cave. I knew that Geralt and Yennefer would be looking for me. Them and Avallac'h who was my tutor in saving the world. Also the Emperor and others but I just wanted this moment to myself.

It occurred to me then that I was away. That I could do anything that I wanted to do. There are small boats all around Skellige and I had learned to sail one when I was much younger so I could just wait, teleport through the search parties, find myself a boat and sail off. I could do anything. Go south and become a bandit again. I could go north and be a Witcher. Find a ship to take me overseas. Travel. Learn. Study. Find a lover. Find a whole heap of Lovers, a veritable fuck-pile of lovers that I could use till I was sore from it.”

Not the sort of conversation that you ever expect to have with your ruler.

“I sat in that cave for a long time. I don't really know how long though. Days maybe. But then it came to me that I could do none of those things. One lesson that had been given to me early was the idea of service. Grandmother Calanthe had done her job too well in instilling that quality to me. I lived to serve those lesser than me and now I was free to do what I wanted.

“That thing that I always wanted to be was to be a Witcher.

“Ever since I first knew that I was tied by destiny to Geralt, I had started to read up on the subject. After the massacre of Cintra I remember being alone, frightened and lost. At the whims of those stronger than me so that when my training began I took to it with a vengeance. All of this so that I could be strong. The Witchers are no less insistent that they learn to use their weapons in the service of others, so the lesson was reinforced.

“I was young and naïve, so I saw the Witchers as travelling knight Errants, righting wrongs and protecting people. I learned the truth of course but that basic desire to be a Witcher never really left me. I wanted to travel. I wanted to help people. When I left my cave I set out to find Geralt and Yennefer and told them that I would be a travelling Witcher. I told them that I had had my fill of politics and magic and world saving. That I wanted a fight that I could understand. Me, a sword, a monster, payment. Even the nasty side of life as a Witcher didn't seem too bad to me then and as for being recognised. I reasoned that hair dye is an easy thing to find. I think they understood, Geralt and Yennefer between them although I think Yennefer disapproved.

“I sometimes find it hard to tell though. She seems to disapprove of everything before later telling me that I made the right choice.

“But my father, the Emperor, is a sly old dog. He had known exactly how to get inside my skull. Exactly how to get inside my heart and mind. In one ten minute chat, he had told me of all the things that I could do to help people. He told me about all the good I could do. About the evil that I could prevent. But most of all, he told me about how I would feel. That feeling of knowing that I could have done something and yet, that I did nothing. That I could have saved those people had I been Empress.

“I was still travelling with Geralt and Yennefer at the time. I still needed training as I would be the first to admit that my swordsmanship was lacking a little. I made up for it with my teleporting skills and magic but those things can become crutches if you let them and the sword is vital. I still got too distracted by small things and was lacking in focus. This was made worse by my father the Emperor's invitation.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She poured herself a large drink, having finished the last one.

“My teleporting doesn't turn up on the magical scale unless you know what you're looking for. I can teleport through wards and things easily because I don't use gates so I soon learned that Yennefer couldn't pick up on my teleporting unless she was looking for it. I went out for a walk one day and teleported to the Imperial palace. My father was still in Vizima at the time. It was late and he was eating alone. I know him better now and I guess that he was missing my stepmother who was still away down south, under guard for her own protection.

“He didn't seem surprised to see me as I recall.

“I asked him what it would look like. How it would work with my taking up my post as his heir and why should I do what he told me?

“He passed me the letter that he was reading. It was some kind of intelligence report on some small matter. He asked me what I thought he should do. I read the paper and I gave him my opinion. He didn't react at all. Instead he asked me whether or not I could live with myself knowing that such decisions get made every day and that the people that make them are...?” She raised her eyebrows in the question to see if I knew the answer.

“Someone else.” I whispered and she nodded sadly.

“He was right. I could not. I could not live with knowing that I could be at the mercy of someone else. That the people around me would be at the mercy of someone else. I made my decision that day. That very night even.”

I know a person caught up in a memory when I see one. She sat for a long time, staring at a thing that only she could see. “Even then,” she whispered. “It took me an age to tell people what was going to happen. The first that Geralt knew about it was when Lord Voorhis turned up with my contingent of royal guard to take me off to begin my training.

“Training.” She harrumphed. “It was more a case of learning. That horrid kind of book learning as to what kinds of colours different people wear and what kinds of imports and exports the different duchies and different county's had. Let alone what the different countries had. I hated it but I also understood why it was absolutely necessary. Much to my astonishment my father, the Emperor...”

“You always do that.” I interrupted.

“Do what?”

“Point out which father you're talking about. Your father the Emperor or your father the Witcher.”

“Yes well, sometimes people get confused.”

“Sorry. You were saying? You were astonished?”

“Yes. My father turned out to be quite a good teacher. He just explained why it was important and let me get on with it. He turned out to be a fairly good storyteller and could recount an instance, from his own memory, where the person or piece of land had tried to get one over on the Imperial court. About how all of the other members of the Civil Service had completely missed the problem until it had actively arrived on the Emperor's desk itself for checking and he had had to point out the error, or the sabotage depending on your point of view.

“He told me that it was like a puzzle, or some kind of grand tapestry or piece of artwork where everyone was so focused on completing their bit that they weren't paying attention to what everyone else was doing. They're also all trying to keep all the expensive materials for themselves rather than letting others get any of the glory. Continuing the tapestry metaphor, the man working on the corner wants to keep all the gold thread for himself as he has this idea for doing his bit. But the man down at the bottom needs that gold thread to finish his bit because the gold thread is stronger and as a result is required to keep the entire tapestry together in the first place.”

“So the Emperor is really an overseer, making sure that all the bits come together and no one bit is better off than all of the other bits.”

“Precisely. Which is why all of this knowledge was vitally important. If duller than dishwater. That didn't stop me hating it though. Then gradually, I started to take over governing from him. Bit by bit and piece by piece I started to take over.

“I enjoyed it too. With the help of your sister to keep things light as well as some other women who could keep me serious when I needed to focus. Even better than that, I was good at it too.”

“So what happened? You talk as though it was something that has passed. As though you are no longer good at it.”

“Because I'm not.” She sighed in frustration. “I don't know when it started. I don't know when it began to go wrong. I started off with these big ideas and all of these things that I could do. I could do it all. I gave orders and signed laws and stood astride the world and laughed as I set about making the world a better place than the state in which I found it.

“But now?” She shook her head.

“What's the comment. That a bad leader isn't a bad leader because they make shitty decisions. A bad leader is a bad leader because they make no decisions. That's how it started. People came to me with things and I just didn't know the answer. I didn't know what to do and worse, I realised that I didn't really care that much. Saying that I had lost the fun of it is only part of it but the greater part is also true. I'm just....

“It's relentless. It never stops. There's a famine in Aedirn, an outbreak of the plague, which some people are worried might be another case of Catriona, in Lyria. Toussaint is increasing it's prices on all the wine it's sending out in order to keep up with the Duchess' spending on the new Knights Errant.

“Not that she's being unfair, the new prices are more than worth it. Competition between the different vineyards has been enough to keep prices low for decades so that the prices have remained the same for years despite the rising costs for everything else on the continent. So a price rise is actually well within reasonable limits but can you tell the other lords that?

“And who can I talk to about this? Everyone has an agenda. Advisors often give contradictory advice which is so painfully obviously mired in self interest that it's untrue. But who do I trust. Who can I talk it through with without being led astray. Who do I trust?”

She suddenly raised her eyes to look at me. Skewering me with her Emerald gaze.

“And it never stops. It never stops. So a little while ago, I was sitting before my dresser while someone was doing my hair and I remember thinking to myself. I wouldn't have to do this shite if I was a Witcher. If I was still a Witcher, I could rise when I like, eat when and what I like. Life would be simple and direct and... Oh so free.

“That was how it started. Now, I'm sitting in my throne room, or in my study or receiving room or wherever. Trying to read correspondence, trying to make decisions and things. But in the meantime. All I can think about is that I would rather be on the road. Riding up to villages. Asking if they need anything. Asking if I can do anything for them or if there is a monster that they need me to fight. Some coin and then I can move on.”

She closed her eyes. “Oh, I want it so badly right now that I can almost taste it. The smell of rain on the wind. That same wind echoing in my ears and I pull my woollen cloak that little bit tighter around me to keep in the warmth. To preserve that little bubble of cosy heat that keeps the chill at bay. Then the smell of a camp-fire. The sounds of wind in the trees and the songs of birds above me. The simple meal in my stomach. Maybe some clay baked rabbit with some wild onions and garlic. A slightly stale piece of bread from the last village to dip into the gravy and a skin of wine. Cheap and coarse with nothing to recommend it other than the fact that it has alcohol in it.

“I want to be that now. So badly. So very badly and now that I sit here. Looking at the desperation in the eyes of people like Lord Voorhis and the other advisers. They want their Empress back. They need their Empress back. I know it. I know it in my soul. But I can't just... I don't know that I'm doing the right thing any more. I just don't know. I used to have so much faith. So much confidence but now?” She shook her head. “So what do I do now?”

She looked at me sharply.

“That question wasn't rhetorical Freddie. What do I do?”

I had to jerk myself into a state of wakefulness. I was dangerously close to falling asleep. Her voice was musical and just sitting there was so relaxing. I stared at her for a while.

“You once asked me to treat you like my sister right?” I asked her.

“I did.”

“Then I'm going to ask a couple of questions, you ready?”

She squared her shoulders, took another long drink and drew herself up before nodding. “I'm ready.”

“When was the last time you had a break?”

“A what?”

“When was the last time you took your horse out riding. Went hunting with those hunting falcons that my sister gave you. Or the hounds that the Imperial kennels boast about. When did you last get drunk with someone?”

“Who could I possibly drink with?”

“Whomever you choose.” I told her. “Pick someone. Ban them from talking about politics and have at it. What do you like to do for fun?”

“Fun?” She was stricken by the question. Utterly dumbfounded. “Fun.” She said again as though it was some kind of alien concept.

“I thought so.” I told her. You might be the Empress but you're also human.”

“An Empress must be more than human.” She snapped back immediately. So fast that I wondered if it was a learned response. A calculated statement that she had been taught over time. Something her father had taught her perhaps. “An Empress must be the ideal.” She went on. “An Empress must be the very personification of everything else that the Empire might want and need out of their lives. I must be the very pinnacle because I am.”

She subsided. “Look,” She went on in a more normal tone of voice. “I understand what you're saying but in Nilfgaard....Right, look.”

She stood up and started moving around. I recognised the gesture, she wanted to get the blood moving round herself again.

“In the north, the monarchs are chosen by their bloodline so that in the North, they are described as having been “chosen by divine providence” aren't they?”

“Yes. Often by whichever local religion is fashionable.”

“So to the North, Kings are chosen by Gods. But in the South, the Emperor is literally the head of the church. The personification of the divine sun on earth. I am that part of the sun that is sent to the continent in order to teach and to govern because Nilfgaard believes that it is required. They need to be looked after by the sun. They need to be looked after by God and I am that thing. I can't go around drinking, having affairs and carrying on. I am the Empress.”

There is an element of my character that I am not entirely proud of. Even though we were being diverted, I couldn't help myself and threw myself into the debate. A proper debate on any subject is one of those things that I just can't help but enjoy. In an ideal world we would be able to debate everything in a friendly fashion. You think we should do one thing, they think we should do another thing and both sides learn from the other's point of view. Wars start because, as a society, we haven't mastered this technique yet.

I enjoy a good debate. It's my preferred way of learning things now, a way of challenging my own views and ideals in the fire of what the other person thinks. It's almost like a way of examining your own thoughts through the eyes of someone else.

Unfortunately, it's not always the best way forward as not everyone gets the same amount of enjoyment out of a good argument as I do and it can offend people when I just throw myself into these things.

“But,” I said with a smile, feeling myself almost rising to the moment, waking up as I went. “You are the Empress. You are the thing that everyone looks towards. Everything you do is a statement. When you change clothes, you set fashions. What you eat starts to be eaten on tables all over the Empire. In the North, women are starting to wear clothing that would traditionally have been considered masculine. Leggings, riding coats and boots have become fashionable except in moments of high society. Your refusal to ride side-saddle means that other, and I use the term with some care, “ladies” feel that they can point out that it is perfectly ladylike to ride a horse astride the beast and that they can do that because the Empress does it.”

“So? The Sorceresses have been doing that for years.”

“Yes, but the average woman doesn't aspire to be a Sorceress. They know that Sorceresses are born, not made whereas women all over the world from the lowliest pig-farmers daughter to the daughter of the highest lady in the land, dream of catching the eye of a King, or Emperor, as they walk by.”

“But that just proves my point. I am the ideal. I am that dreamed about example. I can't afford to be taking time off.”

“But what does your enjoying your down time say to others? Does it say that you are weak and in need of respite as you fear. Or does it tell people that the opportunity to rest a little bit in the company of friends is a necessary and vital part of their well-being. In fact, could you use that as an opportunity to emphasise to industrial owners and land owners that their workers need time off to, you know, live.”

“It's possible certainly.” She commented with a shrug.

Have you ever tried to teach anyone anything? I have. I've delivered a few lectures now in Oxenfurt as well as taking a number of different Seminars. Often when I'm in the local area and the faculty want me to talk on a number of prospects. But every so often you come across someone who doesn't want to learn. Someone who will just, not be convinced by anything that you do, or say. Nothing can get through to them no matter how many times you turn the language round in your head. No matter how often you say the words in a different order or put them together in a different way.

It's very easy, as a teacher, to do one of two things. Neither is correct. The first is to blame the person that you are trying to teach. You hear about it far too often where people are described as being too ignorant, too lazy and too stupid to learn what you are trying to teach them. This is wrong because it's making assumptions about the pupil or student in question. In my experience, only the very worst teachers and lecturers do this but it is a very easy trap to fall into as a teacher.

The next one is to blame yourself. If the student doesn't want to learn then it must be something that you, the teacher, are doing wrong. I had to be chastised against doing this. I argued, “But if a student doesn't want to learn then it's my job to make the lesson more interesting right?” No. This would only be a factor if the majority, or all, of the students don't want to learn. But if it's just one or two out of a group then there is something else going on.

It might be something more fundamental. Indeed, it often is something more fundamental. It might be that the student is struggling with their love lives. There might be a problem at home. They might be stressed about their student fees. Any or all of the matters might conspire to be giving someone a bad day. The truly great teachers are those that find ways to help the student with those problems before helping them learn.

I am not a great teacher. I haven't been doing it long enough. If you want an example of a great teacher then here is one.

I once talked about a professor of Oxenfurt that went out of his way to argue about everything that I had found. He threw out theories and false facts that were tailor made and designed to shoot down my own observations and to ridicule my findings. He sat on my viva board when they were vetting my doctor's thesis and I was astonished when he voted to credit me and give me the title of Professor because he had disagreed with everything I said.

We will never be friends but we do correspond occasionally when I have nothing better to do. It turns out that he had recognised my urge to argue with everything that moved and had used that trait of mine in order to force me to think through my statements more clearly. He dismissed my theories to force me to examine them. He dismissed my evidence so that I would go through it in more detail and he criticised my findings in order to force me to make sure that my case was absolutely rock solid.

I hated him. But he might have taught me as much as Kerrass has. Not in the field that I work, but more about what it means to be a scholar and how to be a good one as I am undoubtedly a better scholar now than I ever was before him.

But that was what I was facing now. The Empress had lost her drive to be Empress, her ambition for the Empire and the determination to succeed. I couldn't talk about social reform to her without addressing the route cause of the problem. She was tired, that was part of it. She had taken too much onto her own shoulders. That was part of it too.

It was also clear that she was lonely.

“What happened to the rest of your companions?” I asked, suddenly realising that the pair of us had sat in silence for a long time now.

“What?” She seemed startled as well.

“Frannie wasn't alone. Weren't there other women who looked after you, that followed you around and did their best to make you smile? Lord Voorhis wanted to train them in the use of the crossbow that I gave you and they were going to form a distinct core of people that were going to be around you as your defence. I remember that you used to insist that they keep up with you. Which is why Francesca went from being a delicate wall-flower to being a formidable warrior woman when she came to court.”

“Yes there were...” She petered off and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Yes there were. It ummm... Dammit.” She scrubbed at a tear that rolled gently down her cheek. “I never get used to thinking about it. As it turned out. Francesca was the glue that held them all together. She was the one that made it an adventure for them. She was the one who led them around, arm in arm, laughing at all the stupid courtiers that tried to seduce them in order to get to me. She was far from the most senior of the ladies but she was the leader amongst them. She could make anything fun and none of us knew it until she was gone. She was the heart of it all really. Then she was gone and the fun had gone out of it. Not just from me but from all of us.

“One girl was seduced into spying on me for one of the rival houses and I was forced to have her executed. Another fell in love with a Northern Lord and I wasn't harsh enough to insist that she stay. Another seemed to miss Francesca more than I did and would spend her days in tears.

“We turned inwards. Instead of a group of young women, setting out to make the world a better place. We became a group of individuals. It's my fault too. The betrayals and the losses hurt me more than I expected them to and I could no longer bring myself to … It's fucking stupid I know but I didn't want to let anyone else get close. I haven't been able to shake the suspicion that what happened to Francesca was my fault. That in some way, what happened was because she was close to me and that I brought it on her. I encouraged the others to leave because I wanted them to be safe. I didn't want to be worrying about them all the time.”

So she was broken hearted as well as lonely. The loss of a friend can do that just as easily as the loss of a romantic love.

“So I have women now,” she hadn't stopped talking. “but am not really close to any of them. I struggle to trust any of them or let them get near me. I just can't...”

“What about friends?” I asked her. “Who are your friends?”

“Oh I have friends.” She told me. “But how many of them can just drop everything to come and see me. Of those, how many will treat me as an equal, rather than some impossibly high social structure?”

“Ariadne.” I said promptly. “I know that I am biased but there is no-one truer. Plus she can gate to you wherever you are at a moments notice.”

“I suppose...” But again, she wasn't convinced.

“Any of the other members of the Lodge?” I prompted.

“Most of them are too locked into their own ambitions. Philippa wants to make magic users pre-eminant. She wants me to make them all Lords and ladies with feudal rights and privileges. Yennefer, I love her but she still thinks of me as a daughter first. She knows that and tried not to interfere but that doesn't stop her from doing it. Triss is the same and struggles with the fact that she represents a Kingdom now when I want a friend, not an ambassador. Keira is too flighty and locked into her research and desire for luxury. Ida and Francesca remind me of my time with the Aen Aelle and keep looking at me as though they're expecting me to change my mind and kill them all. Fringilla is absent a lot of the time, Margarita is too locked up in the education of others that she finds it all a bit too frustrating and Maleficant?”

She shrugged. “Maleficant is nomadic. She would come to me if she had nothing better to do but she is a solitary creature.”

“Emma, who would come with Laurelen.”

“Too attached with scandal.” She said. “Emma is auditing the treasury for me at the moment and so the politics of that is dangerous. And her relationship with Laurelen, although personally I can sympathise as...well... both Emma and Laurelen are more than attractive, the more conservative lords of the North would think they were leading me astray.”

“Since when have you cared what Lords think?”

She wouldn't meet my gaze.

“What about the Princess Dorn?” I asked. “Or Queen Cerys. Strong female rulers. They must have some idea what you are going through.”

“All representatives of their nation. How can I trust them? How can I know that they're not just getting close to me so that they can represent their countries?”

“Trust takes time. But you know that.”

I carefully didn't tell her that the reason that she didn't trust them is because she didn't want to trust them. My little image of the Empress' knitting circle of powerful women putting the world to rights over tea and cake was vanishing in the mist.

She sighed. “I do know that. I do. But I just can't bring myself to start.”

I nodded and echoed her sigh with one of my own. “What happened to you Ciri? When I met you you were a dynamic, aggressive, ambitious woman. You had goals, passions and things that you wanted to do But now you seem as though you're wandering through your life as though you don't want to be here.”

She looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“You don't need to answer that.” I told her. “I know the answer. You don't know. Just to be clear, that's not a criticism.”

She hung her head.

“Can you remember when it started to go wrong?” I asked as gently as I could manage. I got the feeling that she had had enough of people yelling at her about picking herself up and moving on with life. The problem was that she didn't really want to.

“I don't really know.” She claimed but I thought that that might have been an untruth. Not that she was lying to me, but that she was lying to herself or that she wasn't really willing to confront that truth yet.

“Was it when Frannie disappeared?” I prompted.

“Yes....” She began as though she was a drowning person leaping for a rescue rope or a life belt. But then she realised what was happening and subsided. “No.” She decided. “No it wasn't that. That was part of it but it started afterwards. I couldn't tell you where or when it started

We sat in silence for a long time. I was watching her. She was sat on her little chair leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees and staring into space.

When did I become an Imperial Councillor?

“Lets change the subject for a while.” I told her. “Why the ship? Leaving aside what I think you should do or shouldn't do. Leaving aside why it might be right, wrong or the other. Ignoring the odds of survival. Why do you want to board the Skeleton ship? What's in it for you?”

She took a long deep breath. “Certainty,” She told me before raising her gaze to meet mine.

“Can you be more specific?” I asked, forcing my mouth into a tired smile. I levered myself to my feet and forced my legs to move. I needed fuel and found it on the table in the form of an apple. “I would remind her majesty, that I arrived in Skellige earlier today and that I have no idea what, why or how the Skeleton ship. What does it do? Why are so many people so desperate to climb aboard given that so few survive? The Skald outside claimed that none had survived in his living memory and he was far from young”

“Wouldn't you climb aboard?”

“I have no idea. What's in it for me?”

“An answer. As I say, certainty.”

She took a deep breath and as I watched her, the ghost of pain started to leave her eyes. She started to relax a bit now that she felt as though she was on firmer ground.

“If you study it properly.” She told me leaning back and stretching. “As in, you listen to more than one version of the story...”

“Which, in my understanding, is the only way to study such things in Skellige.”

“Quite so. You will find that those people who have made it back from the deck of the ship alive, have all become legendary heroes. The founder of the An Craite clan, supposedly did it.”

“As well as the first real Skelligan naval navigator and various famous warriors and builders.”

“Correct which is why the vast majority of people that climb aboard want to do so. They are hoping that they will become strong. They will become heroes of legend who will write their names across the stars so that they will be talked about for years, if not centuries to come.”

“Ok, sounds a little shallow to me. The best stories always seem to be about men that did it for themselves rather than taking their strength and power from others.”

“And you would be right. If you look a bit deeper you will find that what actually happens is that the person climbs aboard with a question in mind, a question that they need answering.”

“So that navigator asked how he could steer ships to the continent and come back safely?”

“Yes, and the founder of Clan An Craite asked how he could set about building the most defensible castle on the islands. The man-breaker asked what the secret was to combat.”

She stopped and closed her eyes and when she opened them again it was as though she was looking at something a long way off, or a long time ago.

“They play dice for the lives of the boarders.” She said. In the same sing-song voice kind of voice that the Skald had used. Her voice was higher, less vibrant and less hypnotic but it certainly had the same cadence that the other man had had. It still had that weight that meant that it would be remembered. “Some say that they dice for the boarder's souls but how can you tell.

“They say that the robed figure is death. That he is the reaper of souls. Some call him the ferryman who carries the dead from one state to the next, who guides them on their way. For the Church of the Eternal Fire, he is the tender of the flame and the scatterer of ashes so that when people die and their souls are burnt in the light of the Eternal Flame, it is he that takes the ashes and fertilises his garden with them so that the dead can be reborn.

“To the church of the Sky-Father he is the horseman. He carries the dead from those places where they fell in battle and takes them off to the Sky-Father's halls among the stars.

“For the Nilfgaardians and their cult of the Sun, he is the sunset and the lord of Winter, the end of the harvest and the cycle of seasons. Where the cold is part of the ending of all things. For how can new things come into the world without the old things having died. How can a new day begin without the last one having ended.

“The stories of him go on and on. Some say that the druids have the truest opinion of him. That he is simply death, that when a creature has lived their span or when the body can no longer support life, he arrives to carry the soul away to wherever it goes next. He is the harvester. He is not cruel, or kind. He cannot be reasoned with. He cannot be bought or bribed. He is patient for he knows that all must bow before him in the end. King, Emperor or lowly street-sweeper. Sooner or later they'll be dancing with the reaper.

“She is different though. Far more mysterious and she does not exist in myth, song or religion. No-one knows who she is but all claim to know her. As though they have met her before. We all love her but do not lust after her. We want to join her for a drink. Fight beside her in battle. Climb beside her, run beside her. Some claim that the ankh round her neck means that she is life because she always loses to death and she never complains because she knows that he will take all from her in the end. No-one knows who she is.

“But,

“Every so often, when she really decides to play rather than to just throw the dice for the sake of it, she will win.

“Who is she? It is impossible to know. But when she does win, Death backs down from her. As though he knows his place. He bows deeply before he gazes into the eyes of the person that she has just won, and now it is his turn to shrug.

“Only one man has ever spoken about what he saw on that day. Only one person and he was far from a poet, far from a thinker and he said that Death's face is that of a skull. When he shrugs, the survivor thought he saw something in the depths of the skull's sockets and the thing that he saw was like the flaring of a star before it dies. The woman smiled and asked him what question he wanted answering and like a fool, he told her. She laughed at him. He said it was a gentle, almost mocking sound. A teasing sound. Like a sister would tease a younger brother. She wondered if he would pay the price for that knowledge. But what that price was, the survivor would never say.

“That man was Svein the Manbreaker. A man so strong that he could lift a troll above his head and break the creature over his knee. But he never said anything more about what he saw or heard aboard the deck of the Skeleton Ship. He would simply tell his brothers, and his lord, that he lacked the words to speak it and begged that they would never ask such questions again.

“They honoured his request. He never married, nor fathered sons. What secret he was given, went with him to the grave.”

When the Empress finished I found that I was sat on a bench watching her. She was not a Skald but she had some of that power.

“So...” I coughed and had to clear my throat. It felt like a form of sacrilege to break the silence that followed her little speech. “So. What question do you want to ask?”

“Can't you guess?” She smiled, a little slyly. In doing so I saw a ghost of the woman that I had once shared a meal with in Toussaint.

“You want to know whether or not you made the right choice that day. Whether you did the right thing in choosing to be Empress over being a Witcher.”

She shook her head. Not in denial but more in defiance. “Is that so wrong?”

“The answer to that question in return for an unknown price and probably your life? Especially when you already know the answer.”

“What?”

“I'm sorry Ciri. I'm trying really hard not to be critical. I don't know what's going through your head and I don't know what it feels like to go through what you're going through. Ever since Francesca disappeared I've had people coming up to me to tell me that they know what I'm going through and every time someone tells me that I want to punch them in the face.”

She smirked and I guessed that I had hit the nail on the head a bit.

“How could they possibly know what it's like?” She asked with a slight smile. “To have your younger sister taken from you. A younger sister who you acknowledge is a better person than you. More intelligent, more charming, better looking, more graceful, more loving. Stronger and kinder than you in every way and then for her to be taken away. How can they know what it's like to lose her to deep and sinister magics that no-one else can quantify and that, to this day, no sign of her has ever been found? How can they know?” She finished with a small amount of smugness.

I answered with my own smile.

“Similarly, how can they know what it's like to spend most of your entire life on the run. Running from dryads. Running from unhappy betrothals and a formidable Grandmother.”

“Grandmother Calanthe was a great woman and Queen.” The Empress protested.

“Yes, but you can't tell me that life in her castle was entirely pleasant all the time.”

She said nothing.

“Then you were running from the Nilfgaardians and the man with the raven helmet if Dandelion is to be believed.”

Ciri's eyes glittered in memory.

“Then you had to run from judgemental Witchers. Elves, the power growing in your own head, Elves again, Sorceresses and Sorcerers who wanted to use you for their own ends. Elves, yet again. Thief-takers and bounty Hunters. Ancient Elves, your own past, Unicorns and then the Wild Hunt itself. Your own father, the Lodge of Sorceresses and the mob. And that's if only half the stories about you are true. How can they know what it's like? To stop, to choose a role for yourself that you wonder if you are suited for and to then cram all of that learning into your skull, only to be placed on the highest pedestal in the land for all to look at. This before they all turn to you with one voice and say, “Well?” Only for them to be disgusted when you answer with “Well what?””

Her gaze sank again.

“You lost your friends. You lost your sense of being and sense of self and then you lost your confidence. How can they know what it's like” I finished. “You don't need to board the ship Ciri. You know the answer to your question.”

“Do I?” Her eyes flashed with an echo of her older anger. “But even if I do, or think I do. It's not an answer that I want. I want the certainty. I want to know that this answer or that answer is the right answer. I want to know. And before you get all high and mighty, ask yourself what question you want the answer to. What question would you pay any price for? Perhaps the location and identity of your sister's kidnappers? Not a lead. Not another link in the chain. But their actual location and their actual identity as well as all their motives and methods. What price wouldn't you pay?”

She was not wrong. The temptation was definitely there. But it was a temptation that was easy to ignore.

“I would not break Ariadne's heart.” I told her. “I want to know, yes. I am desperate to know, yes. But I would not put my family through that. I would not force them to go through that. I love them too much and I hope they love me the same.”

I hardened my heart a little.

“I would not be so selfish.” I finished, but it was not the winning card that I had hoped it would be.

“Who would mourn me?” She wondered.

I laughed bitterly. “You're joking right. The Empire would...”

“No, I don't mean, who would mourn me. Not mourning the Empress, who would mourn me? Ciri, the woman.”

“I would.” I told her. “I dare say that all the people that were in here earlier would. I know that because they were in here trying to talk you out of risking your life. How about Lord Geralt. Yennefer. Emma would weep as well. Those ladies who you gave the strength to carry on like Princess Dorn, she would definitely mourn. There are plenty of people who would mourn you Ciri. But, if you can't trust that, then trust that I would.

“I would mourn the woman that came to try and console me in my grief before my departure from Toussaint, the woman that sat and told me stories about my sister when my brain was trying to destroy itself. I would mourn the woman that told me to be her brother and who has already become part of my family enough that she is involved in my wedding celebration and not just as a guest. I would miss you. I would weep.”

You've never known guilt until you've made a woman cry by being kind to her.

“You know the answer to your own question.” I repeated. Trying to make my voice gentler than I had last time. “Don't you?”

She wouldn't look at me, so again, I knew that I was right.

“There is no certainty here.” I went on. “There is no certainty to be had. If you had chosen differently, you would now be a Witcher on the road. You would have slain many monsters and you would be enjoying life on the path. But then, one day, you would have come to a village that is being terrorised by Necromorphs or something similar. They're a mining town, working the local silver mine that the lord of, I don't know, let's call it Aedirn, is using that Silver to rebuild after the war efforts but also to keep himself and his young wife in the manner that they have become accustomed to. Importing food from Lyria, wine from Toussaint and silks from Novigrad. So that the rebuilding has all but stopped, but the lord and his guards cannot allow the villagers to leave.

“Oh, yeah, forgot to mention his guards. Guards that need to be maintained in order to protect the Lord's income because otherwise his neighbours might be tempted to take the silver for themselves, let alone other bandits. But their other function is to keep the villagers and miners subdued in order to make sure that the mine continues to be worked.

“But these same guards are useless when it comes to hunting Necromorphs. Indeed, more money is being wasted in hiring and equipping new guards to replace those that have been torn apart by Alghouls. So the village steals a bit of silver from the mine and hires you. You do the job but it is plain to see that the Lord will want to know where the villagers got the money to hire a Witcher and absolutely intends to flog and torture his way through his population until he finds the thieves. That he will probably try to confiscate the silver that they gave you because he's the lord of the local area and he can do what he wants.

“Or at least he thinks he can. You can probably escape fairly easily but you are also aware that the Lord will take that out on the villagers too. He's not a bad man really, he just has his priorities the wrong way round and has been brought up and trained that this is the way that the world works.

“So you'll look at this situation and think to yourself. “Why isn't the King, Duke, Baron or whatever dealing with this little upstart?”

“Then you will think “Because the Emperor doesn't care enough.”

“Then, after a while another thought will occur. You will think... “I could have been Empress and I could have done something about that.”

“You will suddenly be reminded of all of the other little injustices that you see on the road. Every tear in a woman's eyes. Every peasant driven to cannibalism because of starvation. Every child that is sent into the woods to “collect mushrooms” to stave off the overall hunger of the family. Every dead Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Dryad or Gnome that is burnt in ignorance. You will remember them all and think “If I was Empress, I could have done something about that.”

“Then you will start to feel that lack and recriminate yourself for not doing something about that. You would begin to hate yourself for not being the Empress and you would be wondering whether you should have chosen a different path.

“Fuck, maybe you would even be here, now, determined to climb aboard the Skeleton Ship in order to ask the woman whether you should have been the Empress.”

She still wouldn't look at me. She still wouldn't argue with me. So I was still right.

I realised that I was stiff and rubbed the back of my neck before I carried on.

“You know all of this as well but I shall say it. Uncertainty is good. Especially in moral situations. It makes you question yourself. It makes you examine what you have done in an effort to be better. Doubt and uncertainty and a determination to do better next time are what makes us better people in the long run. It makes me a better scholar. It makes Kerrass a better Witcher when he has to look at what happened in the past and set about thinking how he's going to do things differently in the future. It will make you a better Empress if you let it. But you can't let it cripple you.

“I don't believe that you no longer care about what happens to your people. I don't believe it. You would not know about that situation in Aedirn, or the potential outbreak of plague or that people are questioning the rising price of Toussaint wine. You wouldn't know about these things and you wouldn't be upset about the fact that you haven't been able to think about anything to do about them if you didn't care. But you've paralysed yourself with doubt and uncertainty and the desire to be certain when that is impossible. You can never know whether we are doing the right thing. We can't. It's what makes us human.”

She nodded. It seemed as though that nod cost her everything that she had. As though it had come from a long distance and took the effort of everything she had.

“Majesty.” I said, deliberately using the title and drawing it out, tasting each syllable as I did so. “As we speak, Imperial forces are protecting the Brokilon forest from encroaching foresters meaning that, for the first time in centuries, a villager can walk the paths near the trees without fear of being shot by a dryad's arrows from the undergrowth. My understanding that the tree planting efforts mean that some men of the surrounding villagers have even been graced with the sight of a dryad and some hope that their sons might even be working alongside the dryads in the future.

“Although personally I think that this is optimistic.

“Under your decree. Non-humans all over the continent can walk the roads in peace, knowing that they will not be dragged in front of a magistrates court and persecuted in an effort to cover up other crimes, or for the crime of simply not being human.

“By your order, the churches of the Eternal Fire and the church of Kreve the sky-father can no longer persecute village herbalists and healers on the suspicion of being a Witch. Accusations of religious crimes must now be proven before civilian courts before sentence must be passed.”

She was nodding now. It was a slow thing but I was relentless.

“The Elves of Dol Blathanna have a hard border that they can defend with the backing of the full might of the Nilfgaardian army and their territory is expanding due to the Aedirnian crown being unable to govern what they have. Humans and Elves live in harmony in that place now. It might be harmony at the point of an Imperial sword but from such beginnings, mighty things can grow.

“What else?” I pretended to be reaching for an answer but the truth was that I was making a ploy.

“Magic users all over the land, no longer live in fear.” I went on. “From village witches that know a little bit about something and can predict the weather with some degree of accuracy down to the mightiest Sorceress can walk without fear of persecution and even better than that. Those same magic users stand and work among society without fear. Towards the betterment of that self same society.

“What else?” She wasn't quite ready yet.

“The Imperial messenger service has shrunk the world.” I told her. “Now a message can be carried from the southern tip of the Empire to the Northern tip of Kaedwen within a couple of weeks. Fast horses, hard riders and the symbol of the Empress' authority gives them free passage under the knowledge that, if anyone attacks an Imperial messenger then the full weight of Imperial wrath will come crashing down on their heads.

“What else?” She was staring off into space. “What else Ciri?” I asked her.

It took her a moment. Then she cleared her throat. “The isles of Skellige are now part of the Empire. No longer do Skelligan raiders pillage and plunder shipping and the coasts of our land mass.” Her eyes glinted. “While still providing enough of a focus to keep our captains on their toes.”

“What else?” I prompted.

“Witchers have gained the status of Guildmasters. They are now protected from persecution.”

“What else?”

“The amount of corruption in the Imperial Tax system has been reduced so that our annual tax income has increased by over 75%. Enough to mean that we do not have to raise taxes again for several years to come.”

“What else?”

“We have begun a building program in some of the harder hit parts of the North, using the increased tax revenue in order to give people jobs after all of the losses in the recent wars.”

“Good. What else?”

“Banditry is down. Imperial patrols have caught and hung vast numbers of bandits meaning that our roads and highways are safer than they have been for years.”

“Good. What else?”

“Peace.” She said. “Raids and skirmishes? Yes. But otherwise there is peace in my lands since my coronation. Princess Dorn and her people remain independent. Kaedwen has not taken advantage of Aedirn's weakened state, nor has it sought reprisals on Redania's actions in the war.”

“No small achievement.” I told her. “All of these things and your reign is only seven months old.”

“Well, I was making the decisions for a few months before that.” She commented slyly.

“True.” I smiled back. “But think about what you can do tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that. How many more problems can you fix and how many problems can you fix after that?”

She was nodding now.

“I think you're tired Ciri.” I told her. “I think you're tired and you've taken on so much onto yourself that you can barely stand. I think you've forgotten how to delegate, if you ever knew how to do it in the first place, and you are reluctant to learn because you don't know who to trust. Which means that you're lonely. You need a friend. More than that, you need friends, plural. Yes, it might be awkward at first. Yes, you might miss them when their other duties take them elsewhere. You might be afraid for them and it might make them targets but the good ones will know, understand and then, not care. Yes, some of them might remember you when you were substantially younger and talk down to you a bit. But you can soon teach them the errors of their ways. You can start with me if you like.”

She laughed suddenly. “You are my brother Lord Frederick.” But then she sighed, but I was reassured. For just that moment, the Empress had been back in the room.

“What should I do now?” She asked.

“Well, I'm not your advisor.” She laughed.

“Then what the fuck have you been doing for the last hour or so?”

“Fair point. But I think that the other problem is that you've lost your confidence. So be a bit easier on yourself. You've made many big changes so you can afford to rest a bit. You have a, flame willing, long reign ahead of you. You can make some more big decisions later. For now, call Lord Voorhis back in and tell him that he can stop worrying.”

She nodded.

“And mean it Ciri. Tell him that you're not jumping on the back of a ghost ship.”

She nodded.

“How did your father tell you to make decisions?” I asked.

“He told me to listen to the advice of the best and most knowledgeable people and to then make a decision.”

“So pick a small one. Pick something that you can do something about and then do it. I don't know, decide what you want for lunch, or dinner or whatever. Then make a choice about policy but then, go and listen to the bards sing. Have a drink, you've earned it. Then tomorrow? Do something else. You're going to be here for the festival anyway so take this time to collect yourself, enjoy the holiday such as it is. It's a festival after all so use it to reconnect with old friends and take the time to remember who you are.”

She nodded and climbed to her feet. She was wobbly, possibly a little bit drunk but you could see her mind working. She was a ghost of her former self, the woman that, at the stroke of a pen, had destroyed the knights errant of Toussaint, but she was there. She looked around, decided that she wasn't quite ready and so took another long drink from one of the Queen's drinks bottles before grimacing at the taste.

“Phooey.” She said. “I don't know how they drink that crap.” Before taking another slug of it. Squaring her shoulders and marched to the door.

“Lord Voorhis.” She called before turning back. The door opened instantly and Lord Voorhis entered. I got the sense of other people in the corridor outside kind of scampering out of the way to avoid being seen.

“Queen Cerys too please.” The Empress added. Because, much to my joy, she was the Empress again. Wobbly and shaky but she was the Empress again.

Queen Cerys also came in to stand next to Lord Voorhis.

“Queen Cerys, I'm afraid that my adopted brother and friend, Lord Frederick have done rather a lot of damage to your drinks table. I hope that you will forgive us.”

Something in the Queen's eyes flickered. I don't know what it was though as I didn't and don't know her well enough.

“Of course, majesty.” The woman said.

“With your permission, We would like to ask to be allowed to stay here during the time of the Skeleton Ship. We remember that time fondly from our childhood and would like to witness it again, from wherever you deem it safe and fitting.” Note the royal we had come back.

I might have been imagining it but I thought I saw Lord Voorhis' eyes widen and a whoop coming from the corridor outside.

“Of course, Majesty.” Queen Cerys said again.

“Lord Voorhis?” The Empress turned her attention to him.

“My Empress?”

“We will be staying here to witness the passing of the Skeleton ship through the harbour of Kaer Trolde. After that, we wish to see the state of affairs in Aedirn so that we might take steps to correcting the situation in the Pontar delta.”

“Yes, Imperial Majesty.”

“Kindly ensure that we have enough escort to ensure that there will be no difficulties.”

“Yes, Imperial Majesty. Thank you Imperial Majesty.”

“Then I think I would like some lunch. After lunch I will wish to discuss what we can do about this outbreak of plague. I would like to see Druid Ermion if he's available as well as Lady Eilhart and have my personal Surgeon attend to discuss the matter.”

“Yes Imperial Majesty.”

“Lady Yennefer?” The Empress raised her voice a little. Yennefer had slipped into the room unnoticed and now stood forward. “Lord Frederick is rather ill having over-exerted himself. Would you see to it that he gets some rest as he has quite a bit to do.”

“Gladly your Majesty,” Yennefer smiled slightly. “Come along Freddie.”

The small, dark haired Sorceress led me through the labyrinthine fortress before we came to a quiet corridor. She caught hold of my arm and held on until we stopped. Very carefully, she checked one way, then the other. Then abruptly she threw her arms around me and hugged me.

Hard.

“Thank you Lord Frederick.” She whispered.

Gratitude from Lady Yennefer. Will wonders never cease.