A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

by Spike368

Sent out to gather the knowledge of the real world. A young scholar from the University of Oxenfurt finds a wounded Witcher on the steps to the inn where he was staying. So he starts gathering the material for his journals. Rated T for language I will be publishing this story on Royal Road /profile/349358

136. Chapter 136

(A/N: Getting it out of the way at the top. I've not really been well over the last month or so, nothing covid related, more that the brain-weasels have been playing up. This has, unfortunately, meant that the work-rate has suffered. Currently trying to ease myself back onto the horse. Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy this chapter)

It would seem that the nature of waiting for something to happen has changed for me.

It might surprise some people to know that I still receive many letters on the various subjects that I discuss in these articles and writings. I have even talked about this before, that a recurring theme of these articles or other works, is the theme of waiting for things to happen. I have even talked about why this might be the case. I have mentioned things like, the fact that it is in these quiet moments where we are waiting for things to happen that a man can turn towards being reflective. It is in these times where people think about all the choices and circumstances that led them to this particular moment. Of sitting behind a tree with an alchemical explosive in their hands. Hiding in a ditch waiting for a Griffin to take the bait. Or waiting for the ambush, that you know is coming, to fall on my head.

I have also said that it is often in these moments that I jot down notes on the adventures and mysteries that have come up so far. Especially if I am waiting in an inn or a dwelling place with a table to lean on and plenty of light to read and write by. So naturally there is an urge to take that time to reflect.

But always, in waiting for these horrible things to occur. You are waiting with a certain sense of dread. I have never wanted the thing that I was waiting for to happen. In the first ever example of this phenomenon, I didn't want the sun to rise because that would mean that I would be forced to leap into action. I didn't want the sounds of Jack's laughter to intrude because that would mean that I had to rush out into the streets to face blood, horror and death.

I didn't want Kerrass to be satisfied with my appearance because I knew that then, he would leave me no choice but to go and speak to the terrifyingly beautiful figure of the Vampire that I would go on to fall in love with.

In this situation however, as I sat on a tree stump outside a cottage, the thing that I was waiting for was something that I wanted to happen. I needed it to happen. I needed to see that thing crawling through the trees. I needed to see Jack.

But that's not what I'm talking about here. The difference between waiting for something that you are afraid of and would rather go on waiting for versus the thing that you are impatient for and desperately want to happen is not that great of a leap really. Even if you don't want something to happen, there is still a sense of anticipation. A sense that it would be better for everyone involved, including me, if things would hurry up so that I could get them over and done with.

But it felt different.

Why? What was different?

There are many potential reasons as to why the waiting is different.

I am fully aware that I should stop my travels for a while, perhaps indefinitely. Reasons that are not merely limited to a pending marriage as well as the fact that my family and various people that I care about will feel better if I was provably safe and sound.

There is the fact that my moods are volatile. Not in the direction of anger although that was part of it. But because I change between being deliriously happy and suicidally depressed at the drop of the proverbial hat. It would therefore be useful if there was some kind of situation where I could call for a servant, or call on a family member or a friend to keep me company, rather than having to depend on Kerrass who might be unavailable.

Because he's asleep, in the middle of a hunt, or taking a monster sized shit for example.

There is also the fact that these mood swings are affecting my physical health as well. When I am getting a panic on, or my mood is trying to tell me that I am in imminent danger of… something… then I can get all dizzy and feel faint. I will struggle to breathe, or I will feel nauseous to the point that I will need to vomit…

Heh… Imagine trying to sneak up on some kind of monster when suddenly you start uncontrollably vomiting. "No, sorry Mr Monster sir, could you wait for a second before trying to eat my face, just while I finish heaving my guts up and the world can stop spinning."

I can also have these odd kinds of fits where I will start breathing harshly and quickly before going into a massive series of shudders while sweating profusely.

None of that would be good for spending time on the road. At best it would be inconvenient. At worst, some village priest would take the spasms and shivering as a sign that I had been possessed by some kind of evil spirit. Such as the spirit that is currently plaguing the town that Kerrass has correctly identified as being a conjuration of the imaginations of superstitious people and honed by the priest in question.

That might sound far fetched but Kerrass and I have literally been run out of villagers for suggesting that a priest of Kreve was using the spectre that haunted the woods as a goad to prevent himself from losing control of the populace. The Priest claimed that Kerrass yellow eyes were proof of the demonic possession and that we were just perpetrating the evil even further. The first victim of this priest was a girl that suffered spasms and sudden fevers as a result of some kind of childhood illness. The second was the forest Witch who was treating these symptoms with herbs. The girl, the girl's mother, the "witch" and another pretty lady that we hadn't figured out the connection to it all, had all been drowned as part of the test for Witchcraft.

Now though, I have a new and exciting thing that was, and is, happening more and more.

Ariadne calls them Flashbacks or Intrusive memories if she's feeling particularly fancy. I objected to this at first because it's the kind of thing that people talk about in bad novels or plays where someone rushes onto the stage with a card reading "Some years ago" while also, rather redundantly, shouting the same words out for those people that can't read. Then the actors come back on in different outfits with a change of wigs and removal of facial hair so as to demonstrate that these characters are younger than they were previously.

But these things just happen at the worst possible time. They are like these little flashes of memory that seem to come from nowhere. I will be walking down the street, lying in my bed, reading a book or doing something otherwise mundane and some thought will occur, some sound will happen or some series of coincidences will lead my mind to dredge up a particularly unpleasant memory.

If you want an example. When we eat as a family, Mark likes to add more salt to his food. It's a perfectly innocent, personal preference that he just happens to prefer there being more salt on his food. Father's tastes leant in the other direction. He preferred to allow the natural flavours of whatever the cook had prepared to be the only thing that would come forth and as he was the head of the household and the Lord of the manor, his way was law for obvious reasons.

So Mark would be forced to ask for the salt grinder at every family occasion when we were all eating together. Which would, if Father was in an even slightly bad mood, trigger a shouting match about how Mark was being rude to the fine men and women that had put the meal together and blah blah blah. Or it would be the single, isolated thing that would set Father off on a rant about something, or someone else that had pissed him off for some reason. Because the target of that ire would often not be present and therefore Father would take out his rage on someone who was there.

Me for example. But listening to him yell at Emma, Sam, Mark or Francesca was just as awful.

Not Edmund though, I always kind of enjoyed it when Edmund was getting yelled at and as a result, the problem was more about keeping the smile from my face when Father was in full tilt at Edmund.

So now, whenever I eat with Mark at the table, I always go out of my way to ensure that the Salt grinder is placed next to Mark, often passing it to him directly before he has a chance to ask. Because if I hear Mark asking someone to pass him the salt, I flinch.

Emma claims that I have always flinched at that particular sound, but now my reaction is becoming more violent and pronounced. I can literally see and hear my Father beginning to rant and, again according to Emma, I stop behaving like the powerful, educated man in his early twenties. A man who is about to attain a rank higher than Father ever achieved when I marry a beautiful woman that loves me and that I love her. Instead, I behave like I did when I was six. Mumbling, flinching from loud noises, shy, not offering an opinion and generally trying to be as small a presence at the table as possible.

So why is that an impact on waiting?

I can almost hear you all chomping at the bit for me to answer that question as well as to get on with telling you what I was waiting for in the first place. Another thing that people often give me in all of the wonderful feedback that you keep sending me is the fact that the many, and frequent, tangents that I go off on sometimes can become tiring.

So here's the thing. When I am waiting for something. Especially when I am unable to follow through on any of the normal activities that I would use in order to distract myself, I become distracted. My brain insists on reminding me of all of the other times that I have crouched in a darkened rural setting, or any time that I have been waiting for that matter, and then flooding me with all the adrenaline, energy and things that a body needs when it is about to be involved in some serious violence.

Even when what I am actually doing, and needing to do, is to sit quietly and wait for events to unfold properly.

I understand that this might be difficult to understand or relate to, so I am going to try and describe events as they happened to me the night that I finally saw Guillaume in action.

The now famous night where he crossed swords with Jack.

So, just to illustrate how my mind seems to work now. The situation was that we were at another one of the numerous cottages just outside of Beauclair. I have no idea what it was used for but we had chosen the site carefully. It could not be too defensible or protected, so one of the sites that had been suggested was a brewery next to the riverfront. But that would mean that it was too obviously a trap. Also, it was well known to be a regular staging ground of the guard when they were launching raids on the various smugglers of the docks.

There was an old, ruined castle from the early days of human settlements, but again, that was a regular meeting place and it was a little too far outside of Beauclair for our purposes. In the end we finally managed to choose an old stone cottage. A little way outside the city, maybe an hour's ride. It was surrounded by woodland, but it was the well tended woodland of the regular hunting ground, as used by nobles everywhere. Carefully cultivated by an army of gardeners and woodsmen to make it look wild but not actually being too wild for nobles to kill themselves on a tree branch.

It was a nice cottage, it was probably once a huntsman's cottage or a gamekeeper's cottage. The kind of place that you could imagine deer skins piling up outside the door. Where spears, arrows and things were housed.

Just the kind of place where a very important person might be sent in order to hide. Away from the city, but close enough to be recalled to court at a moment's notice.

Guillaume, Ariadne and I had arrived early by virtue of the magical transport gate. Ariadne had a sighting of the place by one of the spiders that were living in the roof. How she got that I'm not sure I wanted to know. She joked that the spider's name was Cedric, but I'm pretty sure she was joking.

Ariadne's complete task, the one and only responsibility that she had was to ensure the safety of the person that we were protecting. The very instant that something started to happen, she would grab them and teleport to Lady Vigo's personal transport gate in the bowels of the palace.

Guillaume stayed in the house. He was fully armed and armoured. His task was to entrap the attacker or attackers in order to keep them there, in the clearing in front of the cottage while our reinforcements would come in. He could not wait outside because even though it was, now, the early hours of the morning, his full armour, size and things would mean that it was far more likely that he would be seen. He was the spring of the trap. The bar that would fall across the neck of our intended victim.

Leaving me. My job was lookout. There had been some argument as to where I should be placed. It was very cold outside and as such Ariadne wanted me in the house itself so that I could stay warm. I wanted to be further out on the argument that as a look out, there is very little logic to having a lookout if you're only looking out as far as everyone else is.

"The beast is coming." I would shout only for everyone else to reply "We know, we can see it next to you."

Also, I was concerned that the firelight in the cottage would render my nightsight useless and mean that I would be completely redundant. But that was countered by the argument that I would be left vulnerable to attack, ambush, kidnapping and all kinds of other circumstances. And when the woman that you love, the Knight Commander of Toussaint and the Duchess of Toussaint herself all declare that that would not be allowed to happen, You are forced to listen.

So I was stationed next to the house, sitting on a round of wood, near the log pile. I had a good view of the house, the approach and I had sprinkled some dry leaves behind me so that no-one could sneak up on me. My spear was next to me on the ground, the blade covered in leaves so as to leave all the metal covered and unreflective in the torch light and that meant that the only way that I could not see anything, was because the cottage itself was in the way. But that direction was covered by a scree slope and we were confident that if someone came that way we would hear them.

And we were fairly confident that our target was too arrogant for the more clandestine approaches.

So just like I have a hundred times before. Hundreds of times, thousands of times even. Although I think that that amount might be a little bit much to tell the truth. I sat down, leather coat on, weapons strapped to my waist or by my side and I settled down to wait. I was among trees, I could hear a small wind in the uppermost leaves. If I really concentrated I could hear the sounds of a faint trickle of slow water from some stream, some melting ice in the mountains forming a tiny little rivulet that ran past the cottage. If I concentrated still further, I could hear the rustling of the very early small creatures that were just waking up into the dawn to go foraging for food. It was cold, but not too cold. This far south, I wondered if I could smell the faint scent of spring in the trees.

I blinked.

I was younger. I could smell the distant feeling of baking bread and the recently turned earth that smelt of rot and dampness. I could hear a distant murmering of cattle and the sound of my own heartbeat. I was so afraid. I had left the spear with Kerrass because it still felt clumsy in my hands and I wished that I had been allowed to keep my old quarterstaff. The one where I had gotten to the Quarter-finals with that Kerrass had broken.

I hated him for that. I hated him for having me out here in the cold, damp air of a middle of a late Spring night in South Eastern Redania somewhere outside a village that I couldn't point to on a map. If it actually appeared on a map for that matter. I hated him for manipulating me into offering to help him. I hated myself for lying to him when I said that of course I wanted to help. I hated the Nekkers for being just below the surface over that away. I hate the smooth metal and glass cylinder that I held that a twist, a shake and a throw would explode in a way that would collapse the tunnel.

Or so Kerrass had told me. Not that I trusted him. It was just as likely to blow me up so that he could get rid of me as it was to actually work and I hated that uncertainty.

I hated my Father for driving me out of my home. I hated my best friend for making the woman that I was crushing on fall in love with him instead of me. I hated the tutor who had turned down all of my research proposals that would keep me happy, in a library somewhere and away from all this horror. I hated the girl who had really broken my heart by throwing herself at a tough looking and talking mercenary when she had sworn that she would never leave me. The one for whom I had been driven from Oxenfurt to find a Witcher in the depths of the Wild so that I wouldn't have to see her face walking down the street, hanging off the arm of the nearest pretty man that she could ensnare with her high cut skirts and low cut tops.

I hated them all with a violent and all consuming passion.

I hated them all with as much passion as I could muster, because it was that or whimper with a terror that had already made me piss my britches.

I was so scared.

I blinked, and then I blinked again.

I was shivering with terror and could taste blood from where I had bitten my own lip to keep from crying out in fear at the Nekkers that I was so very sure were climbing out of the hole that was behind me. Just for a moment, I found myself looking for the fluttering piece of white cloth that would signal the direction that I would run in order to get to the next burrow.

Then I remembered. It had been cold that night, but that was the cold of a young man who was unused to spending his time outside in the middle of the night. I had a blade at my belt that had been used to kill people more than once. My spear was at my side and although it would occasionally be clumsy in my hands, that was more due to me than the fact that I was unused to it after several weeks and months of illness and the neglect of the skill. If I was in that situation with the Nekkers now, then not only would I not need the white cloth to show me the way, but someone would have had to pry the spear from my cold, dead hands.

I chuckled as I remembered what I had been thinking about. That village was so long ago now that I can barely remember some of the facts. I can't remember the name of the Alderman that had tried to cheat us, or the Craftsman that Kerrass had had to kill in order to save my life.

I now knew that the hatred that I felt at the time was a symptom of the abject terror that I was feeling. I did not, and I do not, hate my Father. I was scared of him back then. I lived in fear that I would find him and a men-at-arms outside my rooms before he would drag me off by the hair in order to return to the family castle. I didn't hate Kerrass, he was simply unknown to me and we always fear the unknown. Which meant that I hated him.

I can see, with more experienced eyes, that the Quarterstaff would have been utterly impractical in the life that I was coming to lead.

My tutor was simply keeping me from becoming boring and lost in a sea of other scholars that were already studying the same things that I proposed to study. I did not hate my friend and the girl that fell for him rather than me. It was clear to everyone that they loved each other to a degree that I can only hope that Ariadne and I will reach. She wanted to settle down and have babies and I can admit now that I would have found that boring in that time and place.

And as for the girl that broke my heart. It might sound bitter of me now, but she did me an enormous favour. In the end she married a guardsman, had a child and when the guardsman was stationed elsewhere he took her with him, According to a couple of people, he caught her sleeping with one of the Knights that were still part of the army and left her. She became a prostitute, got addicted to Fisstech and vanished into the Viziman underground. I feel sorry for her now.

I don't know where her child is and apparently, nor does she. She still writes to some former friends and asks for money but those people are confident that she spends it on cheap gin and expensive drugs. If she contacted me now I would try and help her, but I would not give her money. Another friend claimed that his, now betrothed, was a peer of hers in Oxenfurt. They paid for her to stay in a church hospital to get clean but she ran away early taking the donation box with her and leaping into the biggest pile of Fiss-tech she could find.

They told me that some people just don't want to be saved.

And our grand love affair that I had been convinced would last for the rest of my life had lasted a little over a fortnight.

But now I was climbing out of my pit of terror and looked about myself. The part of me that was young, scared and inexperienced was astonished to find himself in a winter wonderland of a forest next to a small cottage and the more he was surprised by what he found, the more he retreated, leaving the real me in his place.

I rubbed my face and picked up my spear. The cold from the metal haft seeped into my gloves and was an important grounding tool to keep me in the here and now.

Then I chuckled. The main thing that I was feeling now was embarrassment. Flame but I was an asshole back then. Kerrass would immediately joke that I was still an asshole now but at least I had stopped spewing shit.

He can get a bit poetic when he puts his mind to it.

The entire process of that entire flashback took maybe a couple of heartbeats to rip through my head.

I had a small skin of icy stream water nearby and I took a small drink from it. The freezing water hurt the back of my throat and finished the task of bringing me back to the here and now even more effectively. I took up my spear, ensured that the blade was kept hidden so that there would be no light reflecting from it to give away my position.

And I went back to waiting.

I saw firelight through the trees, just a dim and distant flicker, partially obscured by branches and dead leaves.

I blinked.

I was hiding in a ditch. Dirty, tired and stinking of cow piss and other smells that I could not identify. There was some kind of beast out there. I had no idea what it was but Kerrass seemed confident. He had laughed at me when I had asked him if it was a dragon before he told me that if it had been a dragon, we would be on horseback and still urging those mounts to greater speed as we fled the area.

The family that had been attacked was hiding in the ditch behind me. The mother was trying to keep a whimpering child quiet while the man was taking out his own terror on both the mother and the child that refused to stay quiet. He couldn't see that the more he yelled in a whisper, the more that the child was whimpering.

Through my fear I came to a place where I started to find the entire thing funny.

The fire moved.

But the fire didn't move back then.

I blinked.

I shook my head, muttered "This is getting serious," under my breath and blinked furiously for a few seconds. I had not gone as deep this time. I had been afraid back then, but it had been the useful kind of fear that meant I could do things about it. That kept me in the ditch rather than going off to try and chase a thing that I knew nothing about.

And the beast in question had never actually breathed fire. That was a figment of my imagination and the fact that early on in the beast's attacks, it had knocked over a flaming brand, setting fire to a haystack and store house.

Kerrass had been quite disappointed when the beast turned out to be a simple Wyvern. Not even a royal one.

This fire that I was looking at now was a small fire, almost a spot of light moving through the trees. And it was expected. I had known they were coming. If we were right, at some point along the journey, someone had been looking for that flame and was checking for its presence. They had followed it and watched which path it had taken.

What it was coming from was a torch, carefully oiled so that the smell of the burning pitch would carry and it would produce lots of smoke. It was carried by a guardsman. One of the older guardsmen of the City guard that Captain de La Tour had promised us all that he was a steady veteran and that he would play his part properly rather than try to be a hero. This too was essential.

He was also wearing armour that was far too big for him. Which also meant that it would jingle and clank much more than properly fitted and measured armour would. The result was quite comical. The effect of faint comedy was further emphasised when he came into view. He was wearing such a look of nervous and exaggerated terror that I thought it was far too obvious. He might as well have been playing a farce on stage. He was leaping in fear at every noise, every crack of a branch and every bird call that was coming with the dawn.

And as he came into view. his companion for the night was also coming into sight. Her hair newly, if hurriedly, cleaned so that it would shine in the torch light. Her cloak was a lovely shade of cream that shone in the same. This was not a girl that was trying to hide in the forest. The bright colour of the cloak practically glowed as the young Countess Vasseur came into the clearing.

I prayed that we were right. Otherwise, another woman would die tonight.

The young lady was doing well though. Arguably, she was doing better than the Guardsman was. She was playing her part beautifully. Walking calmly and quietly despite her obvious fear with hands clasped in front of her in the perfect configuration of a young lady out for a stroll in the woods. As I watched, she literally held her hand out to be helped over something that I couldn't see from my own perspective. She bestowed this beatific smile on the guardsman who, I was certain, blushed from the attention. Her hair shone, her eyes sparkled and her face was flushed. I did wonder whether it was anything to do with the cold or the excitement.

Or both.

If I didn't know better, I would be prepared to swear that she was enjoying herself. I knew that feeling though. The thought that she was actually taking the fight to her enemies is an intoxicating feeling. Something that I know all too well from various escapades.

We weren't there yet here though. We knew who one of the Conspirators was in the figure of Alain Moineau. But as for the others, all we had was guesswork, no matter how educated that guesswork might be.

I watched and wondered who had taught the Countess how to behave so magnanimously and regally. It was possible, of course, that her Father had taken steps to ensure that the girl was properly educated and prepared for her coming adulthood. But I had a strong suspicion that someone, probably the Duchess, Syanna or even Ariadne, had taken the girl aside and had a few discreet words followed by a few quick lessons.

She seemed to shift in my perceptions of her. On the one hand she would do or say something or behave in a way that would remind me of Francesca just before I had left home, leaving me thinking of her as a girl. Then she would shift. A trick of the body language, a tone of voice, a change in the facial expression and then I could no longer avoid thinking of her as a woman. Countess Vasseur and although, at that time, it had not been made public, it was more than likely that she was the presumptive heir to the Ducal throne of Toussaint.

I blinked.

This time I did not fight the images that flashed before my eyes. This time I did not fight the emotions that welled up within my heart and I did not flee from the memories that came up on me. They were far more recent after all and like all of the things that had happened over the last few days, I was convinced that there were clues here that would lead me to the solution to all of these problems. So spending a few moments, just a few, going over things was not a wasted period of time.

It had not taken Guillaume and I long to decide that the disposition of the possible daughter of the Duchess was above our paygrade and that we would be better off discussing matters with people other than ourselves. Ariadne contacted Lady Vigo who was at the palace in order to arrange that we wouldn't be jumped by a whole host of palace guards when we just appeared in the middle of the great hall. Also so that the other Sorceress could appraise the Duchess of exactly what we were bringing to her in the middle of the night.

I had no idea what time it was by that point. It was far too close to the morning for my comfort and I could feel the slight jumpiness in my fingers and my toes that meant that normal energy had been replaced by adrenaline to get me through the rest of the night. I had been doing this too often of late and I would pay the price. I was alright with that though. A few days in bed being ministered to by Anne and Ariadne between them along with some nice drugs provided by Sir Walther, the Ducal surgeon, actually sounded rather pleasant about then.

Ariadne received the nod and bid the three of us to come closer to her. The teleport gate opened which caused a little consternation from the young lady at our side, turning her from the lady back into the girl for a moment. We appeared in a small, nondescript room in the palace, to my eyes it looked like one of the basement rooms judging by the more Elven nature of the architecture on display. Lady Vigo met us and we waited for a short while as the corridors were secured to ensure that no one would see us coming and going. Even despite this, we were wrapped in voluminous cloaks as we moved through to the antechamber.

It is not a small thing to note that rulers often have several receiving rooms. There is the main "court" room that holds the throne of the area in it where a feudal lord might receive guests or judge matters accordingly. Then there will be several other rooms to take various meetings in it with variable levels of discretion. I had never seen the room that we went into before but I soon guessed as to what it was. The art on the walls was tasteful and refined showing various scenes from Toussaint history. They lacked the somewhat exaggerated nature of some of the other paintings that I saw in my time in Toussaint and going along with the new look of the palace, they were all framed in simple wooden constructs. So I took them as commemorative pieces instead.

They showed battles, courtrooms, a siege and a few pictures of Knights in shining armour charging down nameless, faceless hordes in black armour.

The "hero" Knights were not wearing Golden armour I noticed. The painting looked old and if I had time and was in more of a "historian" frame of mind, I might have investigated as to when Knights started to wear Golden armour.

Something in all of that suggested that there might be something significant going on.

The Duchess was already waiting for us. If this was a standard court session then that would not be a good sign but in the here and now, and given that we had arrived as fast as we could, it more suggested that if there was any anger here, it would not be directed at us. The Duchess had all the appearances of a woman that hadn't really slept. She looked as though she was all but dressed for bed with a simple mantle over her shoulders for warmth and to distract from that. Her hair was done up for bed in a similar style to how Emma likes to keep her hair out of the way when she goes to sleep. There was just the hint of some makeup around the eyes which rather suggested that she had been weeping.

There were also another two men in the room. One of which I knew to be the Ducal Herald.

The Duchess turned towards us from where she was having a conversation with the other man and smiled at us. It was not instantly reassuring. It was the cold, cautious smile that a ruler bestows on a person when they haven't decided what the next step was going to be. You can see identical smiles on the faces of cats when they have cornered a mouse and are deciding whether to eat the thing or let it go for another chase and play later on.

"Countess Angral." The Duchess nodded as the large cloaks were taken off us by a servant and placed on a nearby chair. "I must thank you for coming as well as for the service that you have, doubtlessly, performed for me and my house this night. The details of which I am positively vibrating with anticipation to hear."

Ariadne curtseyed.

"Sir Guillaume, Lord Frederick. I must greet you also and, as I say, I am looking forward to hearing what brings you to my door, again, in the middle of the night. Again."

"Your Grace," I began with a bow but she held her hand up. "Not yet. Do not get me wrong but I have heard you speak before and I am sure that your story will be a tiresomely long one and as I have no desire to listen to it more than once, I wish to wait until certain other matters have been dealt with."

I nodded. Taking it as the dismissal that it was.

"Now," The Duchess' voice became warmer, the smile a little more genuine. "Lady Vasseur. Let us start simply as though we are two strangers who are only just meeting. I stress that my pending anger that is already too long postponed will not be directed at you. Do you know who I am?"

"Yes Your Grace." The young lady sunk into a deep curtsy.

"Please rise Lady Vasseur. I am relieved that you are aware of that at least." She literally took a breath. I have only recently heard of your Father's death, you have my deepest sorrows. Your Father and I were close friends once and although I could not maintain that friendship as much as I would have liked in the years since the incident, I am shocked, appalled and saddened by news of his death."

Caroline bowed her head, on the edge of tears again, once again looking as though she was much younger than she was.

"In a short while," The Duchess went on in a slightly sterner voice, prompting the girl to banish her tears again "and before witnesses, you and I shall discuss what is to happen about your future. But first, I must beg for your patience. If these two gentlemen are involved then I must deal with that matter first as it might deal with matters of security regarding the future of Toussaint."

The young lady curtseyed again with the air of someone who had no idea what to do other than to curtsy.

"Now gentlemen." The Duchess snarled. "I beg you to tell me exactly who I need to be angry at. I require your story sirs, spare no detail. If it is you that I need to be angry at then you should know that my anger will be swift and merciless. However it will be nothing compared to the amount of manure that will be shovelled down your throat if I later find out that you lied to me. Do you understand?"

"Yes Your Grace." We echoed accordingly. Guillaume appeared unperturbed but I was too busy thinking about all the stories that I had heard about the Duchess' temper when she got riled.

She nodded and took a deep breath, rather theatrically to be honest, leaving me thinking that it was a gesture that she was telling us about.

"Do I guess that this is regarding the matter of Jack and the fact that your companion, the Witcher is currently in my dungeon accused of being Jack?"

"What?" Countess Vasseur demanded. "That is impossible, the Witcher did his best to…"

The Duchess held out her hand and the young lady quietened. As I looked into the Duchess' face, I wondered if I could see a certain fond… exasperation there.

"I will take that as a yes." The Duchess said. "Very well," She turned to the two attending men. "Gentlemen, I must ask you to excuse us for a short while. Lord Herald, If you could wait in the corridor as I will need your services eventually and I would rather not roust you out of bed again."

"Yes Your Grace."

"And Mister Secretary. Kindly find someone to summon our…" Her face twisted nastily. "Beloved sister…"

It would seem that it would not just be ourselves that were about to be subjected to the Duchess' wrath.

"... and tell her to get her fat ass out of bed and over here, right…. Fucking…. Now."

"Yes Your Grace."

I had to turn away and use a brief coughing fit to disguise my sudden burst of amusement as Lady Vasseur gave a little gasp of shock at the Duchess' profanity. It would seem that I was in one of those moods. The kind that will historically, either get me tortured or married. I would need to guard my tongue carefully.

"Your Grace, if I may." I began carefully, ignoring my own advice.

"Go ahead Lord Frederick."

"The Lady Vasseur has already had a trying day and I would be astonished if she has eaten anything since breakfast. Also, given that she has already delivered her story of the events to myself and Sir Guillaume, who by his nature will keep me honest, regarding her account. Might I recommend that she be allowed to freshen up and maybe have something to eat?"

The Duchess gazed at me levelly. "Very well." She rang a small handbell that I had not noticed and a guard entered from a side door. "My compliments to Lady Vivienne de Launfal and if she could attend upon us forthwith."

The guard nodded and in short enough order that I suspected that Guillaume's wife had already been waiting for the summons, the lady herself entered. Her expression, serious.

Lady de Tabris de Launfal is beautiful but saying that is redundant. What elevates her is the intelligence and the humour that normally glitters in her eyes. There was none of that today, instead she looked tired although she was obviously pleased to see Guillaume.

"Lady de Launfal." The Duchess began. "It is my honour to present Lady Caroline de Vasseur. She has had a difficult day and could do with something to eat and possibly a change of clothes. We will have need of her before the end of the night however."

Lady Vivienne bowed and ushered Lady Caroline out of the door.

"A good thought Lord Frederick." The Duchess said. "I will remember it should it transpire that you are at fault."

"Ummm. Thank you Your Grace."

There was a long moment after that when the Duchess paced up and down. Guillaume, by some method of super-human effort, managed to stay calm. I assume it is something that you learn while you are training to be a Knight. I was beginning to get a little frightened.

Then Syanna came into the room. I am noticing this sort of thing more and more now that I come to think of it. It was Syanna at the moment, not the Knight Commander. She was dressed in a simple blue tunic and hose with some light boots and a sword tied to her waist. It looked like the kind of thing you could sleep in while waiting for some important news and it was also easy to imagine her climbing out of bed and belting the sword round her waist as she walked over.

"You bellowed?" She began with a huge yawn.

Then she realised that she had misread the room.

"Syanna." The Duchess smiled sweetly. "I love you. I love you more than I can say." Her tone shifted. "But when I give an order, I expect that order to be followed to the letter."

Syanna frowned slightly and she was the Knight Commander again. "And which order have I disobeyed?"

"I specifically ordered that Lord Frederick would be removed from the investigation regarding the "Jack" matter. It was even your suggestion as I recall. I told you to assign a trustworthy Knight in order to ensure that when everything kicks off, then Lord Frederick would be above reproach."

"I remember the matter well." The Knight Commander growled. "And I too would like an answer as to what they are both doing in this room."

"Lord Frederick?" The Duchess turned on me. "I require your oath on the matter that everything you say here and now is the truth."

"And you have it." I said. "By whatever sign you deem prudent."

"And mine." Guillaume said. "I swear by the saint and by my sword."

I felt my own anger rising a little and decided that it would not hurt to allow that to colour my own words. "But while we are on the matter, I would ask what action that I have ever taken that would suggest that my word would ever be in doubt?"

"The Knight Commander should have told you not to investigate the Jack matter any further."

"And she did." I growled. "What I was investigating was the matter of my friend and comrade's supposed guilt. Which was nothing to do with the overall investigation. He was being framed. That could have been done by anyone and I seek to clear his name. He is my friend, my comrade and it would not be amiss to call him my brother. He is innocent of the crimes of which he was accused. I know that. You know that too, as does the Knight Commander. So this is a frame up. I was investigating that, which at the start, was nothing to do with Jack. It still might have nothing to do with Jack.

"But while I am on the subject, if you both know that Kerrass had nothing to do with the Jack killings, then why did you seek to see him imprisoned. Especially when he and I have done our absolute utmost to help. Indeed we have unearthed more truths and patterns to the killings since we started to help than you had managed by yourself. And now you question my integrity?"

"Freddie?" Guillaume warned.

But it seemed that I was not yet done.

"You insinuate that I might do anything that would risk the lives of an innocent young lady. By what right do you do so? If I choose, my family and I can, and will, leave you all here to the mess that you've made for yourselves and be damned to you for it all. And from there, when people ask me why I left you all in the middle of the crisis, I shall tell them that I did everything in my power to help you, a favour for which you reward me by insulting me. I will even include into my journals about how the public face of Toussaint does not match the arrogance and disdain that they show in private. All of this you would absolutely deserve. How dare you suggest that I have done anything but do my best to help you out of this situation. Which, by the way, involves a plot to overthrow both of you. How dare you question my integrity?"

I realised that my hands were shaking.

"I would remind you that you are a guest here…"

"Precisely I am a guest." My anger was clearly no longer feigned, if it had ever been. "And as a guest, I am able to leave whenever I like. Along with my entourage which were visiting as guests. All that is happening now is that you are proving that you are no better than the petty Lords that look for someone to blame in order to salvage your own pride. And you find that person in the body of a Witcher and anyone that tries to help that Witcher. Well you will not stain me with that. Nor will you stain Kerrass who, also, has done everything he can do to help."

My words echoed around the room and I suddenly felt dizzy.

"Woah that was way too far." I said.

"No," Sir Guillaume said. "No it wasn't."

"Do you feel better for getting that off your chest there Freddie?" Syanna asked, smirking slightly.

"I could do with a chair." I said. "You know before my legs give out."

Ariadne was there and provided one before pouring me a cup of wine.

The Duchess herself seemed to be quite calm. "It is always pleasant to hear genuine righteous anger coming from a person rather than the feigned thing that I am forced to listen to in the courtroom." She said to the room. "That Witcher Kerrass is innocent is obvious to anyone with half a brain. I am told that even Sir Alain is down there, right now, arguing for his immediate release as well as riling up everyone he can get his hands on in court to mount a protest. According to some reports, Sir Morgan has told him that it is time to get some rest."

I felt my mind begin to work the problem again after my outburst.

"You also," The Duchess went on, chiding gently. "Seem to have forgotten that sometimes these things need to be done and said aloud as a matter of record. Even when we know them to be true, they need to be said aloud and recorded. Your oath and Sir Guillaume's are a matter of record now. As is my anger. Now, I am still angry but I am inclined to forgive your outburst. But time grows short. I understand that there is still no Jack attack this night?"

"There is not." The Knight Commander put in.

"So either there won't be which will be damning evidence against Kerrass, or that there is still a death to come."

"I think that the intended target is in the other room with my Wife." Guillaume said. "I would ask that the guard on them be doubled with known men."

The Duchess nodded towards the Knight Commander. "So ordered."

The Knight Commander went to the door and said something to someone outside before coming back in.

Then I started my story. As instructed, I left nothing out. At the beginning, the Duchess found a chair and lowered herself into it. She didn't stay in the chair for the entire story though. When we came to describe the death of the Count Vasseur she shot out of her chair and went to the window. Syanna came round us and motioned me into silence for a while as she stood near her sister, the two of them just standing together.

I described with as much detail as I could remember what happened between us and the Witch of Lynx Crag, which prompted another brief moment where Syanna went to the door and spoke to the person outside the room before coming back in. And then we came to the part of the story where we told the two sisters that ruled Toussaint between them, what the young Lady Vasseur told us.

There was one brief moment where Syanna wondered. "Would it not be better for us to have this conversation with the young lady herself."

"That would be ideal." I said, "but the young lady is tired, injured and heart sick. She has already told the story once tonight and although i do not know young women well, I would suggest that she is holding onto her self-control with her fingernails."

Ariadne and Guillaume agreed.

The Duchess motioned us to continue. As we began to recount the part of the tale that had to do with the seduction of so young a lady by Sir Alain, the Duchess got back up to pace. When we got to the part where she came to the realisation that she was little more than Sir Alain's mistress, the Duchess shed a tear and Syanna turned away to hide her face. By the time the tale had come to a close. The Duchess was standing, facing away from us and her voice shook when she spoke.

"Lord Frederick." She said. "Earlier you threatened us with the prospect of your recounting these events in your journals for publication."

"I did."

"That is no longer a threat." She said. "When all of this is over, and this cadre of men, as I agree that they must be men to arrange this plot, are brought to justice and dance on the end of a noose, I would charge you, no…. I beg you to recount this entire series of events for your journals. I would ask that you spare no detail and that you show the ugliness that lurks underneath the surface in Toussaint. Spare no detail. Will you do that for us?"

"I would rather preserve the girl's dignity." I began.

"I will speak to her." The Duchess said as she turned back around. Her face was a terrible mask of shame and rage. "We will turn her disgrace into a weapon that we will thrust into the hearts of our enemies and in doing so we shall prove that we are far stronger than they think we are. We will turn her shame into the shame of all that would do the same to others and we will ensure that she is all the stronger for it."

She nodded to herself.

"We did this to her." She said to her sister, who had also shed tears of rage. "We did this to her. Her shame is our shame."

Syanna nodded.

The Duchess was suddenly back in the room, thus adding further fuel to my growing theory that we are different people when we take on the mantle of our professions and positions.

"Send for Lady Vivienne, her young charge, my Secretary and the Herald." She said. We had to wait for a few moments. The Herald came in through the main door while the Secretary came in through a side door where he had either been listening in or seeing to some other chores. It took Lady Vivienne a good ten minutes to return with the young Lady Caroline and when she came in, Sir Guillaume beamed with pride.

Lady Vivienne had done us proud. In the time that she had been out of the room, it was clear that Caroline Vasseur had wept, eaten, bathed, rested a little and been clothed and made up ready to face whatever was to come next. Her hair hung long down her back and it shone in the candle and torch light. She walked forwards towards the Duchess and sunk into a deep Curtsy. "Your Grace." She said in a small voice. "You have summoned me and as such, I come."

Lady Vivienne positively glowed with pride having sent the young Lady into the room with a gesture almost exactly the same as the way a Falconer releases the bird of prey at it's target.

The Duchess was wearing her court face. We all have one, it's the same face that you wear when you stand before an authority figure. When a Watchman demands to know what you are doing outside at this time of the night, or when a parent demands to know why the chore that they have told you to do remains unfinished. Of course, people who play at the level that the Duchess plays at are far more skilled at it. The Duchess was doing this deliberately and just for a moment, I felt that the difficulties in the life of young Caroline Vasseur had only just begun.

"Lady Caroline," The Duchess began. It turns out that there is also a court voice. "We have spent the time between when you left our presence and the moment you returned discussing your recent life with Lord Frederick von Coulthard and he has brought us up to date in your recent comings and goings as well as the deeds that you have performed."

"Yes Your Grace." She hung her head.

"Some of the things that he has told us are rather extreme in nature," The Duchess went on and I felt the desire to shift in discomfort. I couldn't tell if the Duchess was teasing the girl.

"Yes Your Grace."

"Look at me child."

Slowly, the girl raised her head to look the Duchess full in the face. Something that she saw there caused destroyed the props that kept her self-control in place and she fell to her knees before sobbing. "I'm sorry." She wailed. "I'm so sorry. I thought he loved me and… and I tried so hard to make him and…. And Father encouraged me in…"

I was watching carefully, trying to keep my temper in check at what I saw as more than a little bit of cruelty here. What I was watching was tainted by my own experiences at my Father's table or, even worse, in his study. Because I was watching carefully, I saw the Duchess glance at her sister. Just a small shifting of the gaze and I was not fast enough to see Syanna acknowledge it, but the look was eloquent.

"Oh hush child," Syanna snickered. "One day, someday soon, I shall tell you of some of the misadventures of a certain red-haired minx that is standing not so very far away from you now."

It was like watching a choreographed dance.

"What?" The girl was startled.

"I don't know what you mean." The Duchess replied, still in her court voice.

"The Nilfgaardian ambassador and the rotten eggs?" Syanna said with a smile.

"I don't see what that has to…."

"He's soooooo handsome." Syanna mimicked a young girls enchantment with a pretty boy, clasping her hands next to her face theatrically. "And if he loves me then…"

"He was very attractive." Lady Vivienne added to the conversation. "I remember him well."

"He was also twenty years older than us." Syanna added.

"At least." Vivienne agreed.

"And already married." Syanna finished.

"That's enough." The Duchess responded, a little waspishly. "I could tell her worse stories about another raven haired girl that is much closer to me, and from much more recent circumstances as well involving the squire of a certain Knight that we don't talk about anymore."

"Hey that's not fair." Syanna protested. "He was very pretty, excellent in the haystack and that Dipshit of a Knight who is, thankfully, no longer a problem, deserved to have his pride punctured."

The girl was appalled. "That's not how ladies are supposed to behave."

"That's your Father speaking." The Duchess told her gently.

"And who said I was a Lady." Syanna sniffed derisively. "I started taking much more enjoyment out of life when I stopped trying to conform to what society thinks of as being ladylike."

"Your Father was a good man." The Duchess told the girl. "A very good man and he was a good friend to me when it seemed that all other friends had left me. I cared for him deeply and I am heart-broken that he is gone. I was unable to maintain that friendship given what happened, but he has always been close to my heart and although you and I have not really spoken, he would occasionally write to me to keep me apprised of your progress."

The girl hung her head again.

"Alas," The Duchess went on. "There are some aspects of your education that you are missing. Your father provided for your education in reading, penmanship and other such feminine arts I would imagine."

"As well as music, dancing, poetry, embroidery and all other things that we are supposed to learn to attract a husband." Syanna recited in a sing-song voice.

The Duchess glared daggers at her sister. "All of which are useful skills."

Syanna snorted. "Embroidery?" She queried.

"However," The Duchess went on, ignoring her sister. "They are the things that a father would expect of his daughter. Thus missing out the part of a young ladie's education that can only be provided by a mother."

"Or an elder sister." Syanna put in.

"Or a properly trained Lady in Waiting… or Handmaiden." Lady Vivienne added with a twinkle in her eye.

It might have been my imagination but the Duchess' face reddened slightly. I was not the only person who noticed and Syanna's eyebrows shot up as she appraised her sister carefully.

I completely missed the reference though. Probably for the best.

"The point being." The Duchess was glaring at the other women, including Ariadne who was doing her best to be diplomatic. "The point being that there are certain parts of your education that are missing. The fault is not yours. Nor is it really your Father's…"

"I would tend to disagree with that…" Syanna tried.

"... as he would not know that it would be something that you would need to learn. I am interested to know why he would think that Sir Alain would be a good match for you as it would be extremely unlikely that your Father would not know everything there was to know about him. But you should have been able to recognise the efforts to seduce you, as well as being able to critique what he was doing…"

"As it would seem that he was being rather clumsy." Syanna wasn't letting up.

"... and thus be able to tell the difference between a genuine declaration of love and affection from a false one. They both have their uses of course but that is getting into more advanced knowledge than I judge that you are ready for."

"But how am I to be married when I am so soiled?" Caroline wailed. "I am not a virgin and after my marriage night, when it is clear that I was in no pain and there is no blood on the sheets, who will marry so used a… a whore as..."

"That's enough." The Duchess snapped. Rightly so in my opinion. "Your education is in my hands directly now rather than simply paying for your schooling."

Interesting.

"What was done to you was not your fault." THe Duchess told her. "If Lord Frederick's story is accurate, and I have no reason to suspect that it is not, you had little choice in the matter. You did what you needed to do to survive. Never beat yourself up for that. And while I'm on the subject, Self-pity is a luxury that we cannot always indulge and now is one of those nights where we do not have time for it. But as you bring it up. Men will ignore your lack of pain and think of it as a reflection on their own prowess. They will be proud of themselves for it rather than seeing the implied criticism involved in the matter of it not hurting."

Caroline glanced at me in astonishment. I shrugged. "Not unfair."

"Criticisim? What Criticism?" She wondered.

"If it didn't hurt, then they can't have been very big, it's a criticism of their manhood." Syanna supplied helpfully.

Caroline reddened.

"And as for the rest," The Duchess went on. "A small clean pin can achieve wonderful things if properly used at the right time. And that is if we, and by "we" I mean you and I, do not decide to use all of this as a weapon in our efforts against the people that would use someone in your position in the way that they have. Now…"

The Duchess gestured and the Secretary and the Herald came forward.

"You and I have a lot to talk about. You will have questions, I have no doubt. Many questions and most of them I will not be able to answer. Including the question regarding your proper parentage."

"Father made me aware of that." She said in a quiet voice.

"Yes." The Duchess' eyes narrowed. "I'm sure he did. But that is now different. There is now the fact that we need to avoid piling further disgrace on your father's head. He will have thought of the problem in terms of your pending marriage. About people who would seek to take advantage of you, something that I note he did nothing to prevent."

That last was meant for Syanna, who nodded without surprise. She too had noticed that aspect of the story.

"But the truth," The Duchess went on, "is more complicated than that. Before we go into that however we must dispose of your immediate future and status, therefore it is with no small amount of pleasure, along with the grief that it comes to you given the circumstances. But I hereby confirm the title of Countess Vasseur to you with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities that come with that rank."

The Secretary had been laying out a paper with quill, ink and wax. The Duchess went over and signed the paper with a flourish before adding wax and stamping the wax with her signet ring.

"I sign my name and attach my seal and thus, by the power invested in me by the people of Toussaint and by the grace of our cousin, the Empress of Nilfgaard to whom we owe our allegiance, I declare you Countess of our realm before the witnesses in this room."

The secretary took the piece of paper and handed it over to the Herald who placed it between two sheets of prepared wood.

"Now I know what you are thinking." The Duchess went on while the Secretary prepared another piece of paper. "You are thinking that the title of Countess is all well and good when there are no lands, goods or wealth attached to it."

Judging by the expression on the girl's face, she hadn't been thinking anything of the kind.

"It is a fair thought." The Duchess told her. "And if that is all it was then I would point out that there are plenty of good men that we could find that would marry you for your title, before loving and caring for you as a man should love and care for a wife. But there are other considerations that it is now prudent to deal with.

"Your Father and I were friends. Good friends. As I have said, he was a friend to me when my sister had been sent away by uncaring and ambitious parents and what friends I had left had been driven away by an uncaring and lazy husband. That friendship was forcibly removed from me when the scandal struck your father and the matters of law were manipulated to ensure that he would not receive the justice that he deserved. I could not help him with that, nor could I do so in the intervening time.

"But early on over the course of matters, we did, briefly, discuss your position should anything happen to him. I agreed with him that your position would be tenuous in that event and I swore to him that I would do everything in my power to see to matters regarding your future."

She sighed sadly.

"I am sorry that I cannot confirm nor deny matters regarding your mother. If it were me then I would be proud of the woman that you are becoming, if you were otherwise, then that woman could call herself proud. I cannot acknowledge you as my own as that would lead to disaster in this time of change. If I did so I would number both my days and yours, as what happened to me would happen to you in that you would be married to someone, and then you would die so that you could not control the will of the people when you came to inherit the ducal crown and that would be if you were lucky. You would also be condemned by the scandal that would have led you to your birth. They would call you bastard and base-born. A rebellion would rise against us and then your body would join mine as we swung from the top of the nearest tree.

"If I name you otherwise, you will be condemned even further than that. You will be called all the names under the sun and you will be lost, alone and neglected. You would be disgraced as little more than the result of your father taking advantage of some peasant girl's sympathy at best. Still a bastard, still base-born and as a result, utterly worthless. I cannot allow that and I promised that I would not.

"Therefore, by the power invested in me, I formally adopt you into my family as my daughter. I will warn you that this will still make you a target for people, both good and bad. It will also put you in the line of succession to the Ducal throne although you would be eclipsed should either I, or my sister…"

Syanna stuck her tongue out at the Duchess.

"... produce natural, true born children as a result of a formal wedding."

The newly formalised Countess Vasseur was gaping.

"I will not require you to call me mother. Nor will I call you daughter, I do not deserve that privilege. Instead I shall call you by your title until things settle down a bit further when you and I can have a proper talk. So…"

The Duchess turned back to the table and affixed another signature and seal.

"I sign my name and attach my seal and thus, by the power invested in me by the people of Toussaint and by the grace of our cousin, the Empress of Nilfgaard to whom we owe our allegiance, I declare you my adopted daughter and welcome you to our family, the properly anointed rulers of our realm before the witnesses in this room."

The Countess did us all proud then as she curtseyed low. "I have no words." She said. "I thank you now and I will thank you again when my mind has settled."

"I understand." The Duchess allowed some softness into her voice. "One of our first duties as mother and daughter will be to arrange for the funeral rites of your father. In the meantime however, there are certainly elements of your education that are sadly lacking."

The Countess changed into the girl again as her disappointment was obvious.

"I understand that you already know how to ride." The Duchess said. "However, it is also vital that you know how to defend yourself. I charge you to go with the Knight Commander who, after you have rested, will have you escorted to the House of the Knights where you will be properly trained in those things that might be required of the Duchess of Toussaint, should you find yourself called to that duty. You will learn of strategy, tactics, leadership, courtly matters, swordplay, proper use of a dagger and anything else that she might deem fit to teach you in order to ensure your survival. She is far better at the art of Survival than I and I can think of no better teacher."

Syanna's eyes glowed. "You're giving me a Niece to corrupt?" She crowed with triumph.

"Wait," The Duchess groaned. "I've changed my mind. I will find a nice Governess or something and they can see to her proper…"

"No no." Syanna wagged her finger at her sister. "No take backs. You told me that I can see to her education. Come with me oh niece of mine. You and I are going to have such fun."

There was much laughter as the new Countess looked both excited and scared at the same time. I rather think she will do fine.

"Commander?" The Duchess finished with a little more formality. "Come back soon as there are other matters we need to discuss."

The mirth left Syanna as quickly as it had come and she bowed formally before leading the new Countess out.

I blinked.

It was quiet in the clearing in front of the Cottage now, cold too. I envied the guardsman standing out there in the open, another necessary part of the entire plan. We needed proper bait for the trap. Not that it was much of a trap but when it comes to this kind of thing, beggars can't be choosers. The guard had his instructions. When Jack came out of the shadows, which we were confident that he would, the guard was going to run. He was going to drop the torch onto the ground and run for it. We had tried to emphasise that he wouldn't need to do much more than that, but the problem with Toussaint as a whole was that it provoked a desire to be a hero in just about everyone.

Including me.

I probably shouldn't have been there. It would almost certainly be a much better idea for my health and wellbeing that I be in bed. A nice warm woman, a proper meal, a fire in the hearth and a bedwarmer having prepared the way for me. Some nice mulled wine would not have gone amiss too, or some equally mulled mead for that matter. Not that they serve mead in Toussaint. They seem to think that it's beneath them.

I wish Kerrass was with us. Just something about his presence that made it seem all that much the safer. Something about him standing beside me or behind me that led me to that feeling of indomitable safety. I would be confident then. I would feel certain that we would win. His heightened senses would warn us of danger that much the quicker. His potion enhanced reflexes would mean that we would be more sure of victory. True, Guillaume had his armour and everything but I had seen what a skilled swordsman could do to a man in full armour.

I blinked.

I was in a clearing. I could hear the wind in the trees and the air smelled of Troll, an odd, slightly spicy kind of leathery smell. I could hear a young woman's moan as the Knight, her champion, collapsed with a crash of metal clashing and grinding against metal. I saw Kerrass dancing out of the reach of the Knight's flailing sword and laughing, the slightly maniacal edge in his voice that I knew that I should be worried about. The glint in his eye that told me that he wanted blood.

They spoke, the girl shrieked and Kerrass stabbed down through the eye slit of the visor. He looked up at the girl, who stood, unspeakably beautiful in a way that could inspire lust and a desire to worship in equal measures. She shrieked and her rage and arrogance made her ugly. I wanted to turn away but Kerrass had already killed once. I wanted him to kill her too. She deserved it. She needed it. The world would be a better place for so many people if I just let Kerrass give in to the murder that was already glittering in his eyes.

After everything that she had done. After everything that she had made me feel and say and do. I wanted her death too.

I blinked and shook my head hard.

Not my best memory, all things considered.

I was a different person back then. I know that now. I was moving from that boy that I had been into the man that I hope I have become. Or am still becoming. I wonder, looking back, how many people would say that I was better then or whether I am better now. And sometimes, even now, I wonder how far I still have to go.

I remember the self-loathing I had felt when I had made a joke over the corpse of the dead troll. I remember the shock and violence of Kerrass' hatred and disdain. I remember realising that I was wrong and for a moment, that memory nearly pulled me down into the depths just as surely as the last one did.

I thought of Ariadne and the way that firelight dances in her eyes and on her skin. So very similar to the way it dances on the face of a human, but at the same time, slightly different. As though her skin absorbed the light rather than reflected it, only to give off a strange glow of her own.

Or that might be just how I feel about her.

"It is true that my skin works differently to that of a human." She said in my mind. "It is less permeable, slightly more translucent and it reacts to sunlight differently which undoubtedly led to the myth that Vampires can't walk around in sunlight. We can of course, although some types of Vampire are better at it than others."

"Thank you." I smiled. "I needed the distraction."

"I know." I could feel her answering grin. "I am looking forward to showing you all the other ways that my body reacts to light. You have seem me in candlelight, but not in full sunlight after all."

She was feeling mischievous.

"That might be a little more distraction than I need."

She mewled in disappointed agreement.

"Still looking out for me?" I wondered.

"Always. I shall see you soon."

And she was gone. I felt an immense desire to wrap myself in a blanket and burrow into a warm pit made of blankets and cushions. Not because I was particularly cold or tired, because I wasn't. Not really. I just wanted the comfort of being wrapped up and if I couldn't be wrapped up in the arms of the woman I loved, then I would take a set of blankets.

I blinked.

"How did you know?" The Duchess wondered.

"What?" Ariadne looked up from where she had placed a piece of warm ham on a slice of bread and was smearing it with the grainy mustard that the people of Toussaint seem to love so much.

"How did you know that Freddie and Guillaume needed rescuing?"

I felt my cheeks redden as I lowered my gaze, hoping that Ariadne would keep herself quiet and to the point.

No such luck of course.

"Do you want to tell them all Freddie or shall I do it?" I could hear the laughter in her voice as she bit into the hot food.

Syanna still wasn't back, not that she had gone very far or for very long. I assumed it was all part of the effort to take the newly formal part of the Ducal household and settle in. The Duchess had decided that Guillaume and I, and therefore she and Ariadne needed some food inside ourselves. She was not wrong to be fair and I needed the extra sustenance. Lady Vivienne had declined with a shake of her head, promising her husband that she would have some proper breakfast later, but that she was still hoping that she would be able to head back to her bed before too much longer.

The Duchess had snorted at that.

Some servants brought up some newly hot ham that had been glazed in honey, some warm bread and the usual other . Toussaint accompaniments. There was no wine for which I was grateful, instead there was coffee. Good, strong coffee which was like nectar of the Gods. Even Ariadne's eyebrows rose in appreciation of the blend. It had been brewed strong and I could already feel the faint sparkle of the false energy that Coffee can bring, dancing in the ends of my fingers.

I too noticed that Lady Vivienne was drinking the coffee with relish. Guillaume noticed and sighed. He was not drinking the coffee and was instead drinking some spiced milk.

"My beloved wife claims that the Duchess' coffee is the finest in the land." He stage whispered to me.

"And she would be correct." The Duchess responded.

"She also claims that Toussaint runs on the stuff." He pulled a face of disgust.

"And she would be correct about that too." The Duchess replied. "You have no idea just how much boring courtly work is completed thanks to a pot of good coffee."

"I do." Ariadne said.

There was a need to talk in the air. I had no idea what time it was. It was winter though so there were several hours until dawn. Time was doing that thing it does when you have not had enough sleep recently. It seemed to be a fluid state that would sometimes seem to run long and sometimes it seemed to pass by in an instant. What had seemed to be a relatively small period of time in the clearing outside the Witch's cottage now seemed to be a vast ocean of time, leaving us plenty of space to be able to make our plans and discuss the matters.

It's like when you cannot sleep and you feel sure that dawn cannot be too far off. But then you hear a church bell or a guardsman calling the watch and realise that only an hour or so has passed.

But it seemed to me that we were in a bubble of space. The world seemed to be distant and far away. A frozen wilderness that was out of sight and out of mind. Filled with horrors and danger whereas in the here and now, we were safe, warm, fed and surrounded by friends. The conversation was part of that and the Duchess wanted it to continue.

"How did you know?" The Duchess asked again.

"I think you should tell her sweetie." I told Ariadne, doing my best to put some sense of foreboding in my voice. "After all, it was your idea and your manufacture that arranged it."

'And I get to embarrass you as well." She smiled happily. "The answer, Your Grace, is that it has to do with the link that exists between Freddie and myself. As you know, we have a way that the two of us can communicate."

"I was aware. Yes. I also know that you have changed it since certain people read about it and were therefore able to neutralise the link."

"Yes," Ariadne's face darkened. "Although our link is not perfect, society still forbids us from taking that necessary step."

The Duchess' eyes glittered in amusement as my face grew hot at the memory of how we would set about doing that. Judging by the smirk on Ariadne's face, she was well aware of just how uncomfortable she was making me.

"Since that loss as well as certain recent events and Freddie's, still developing, illness and symptoms. I have added certain aspects to the link. Certain alarm bells if you will, that go off if Freddie is in certain circumstances."

"How do the two of you contact each other?" Lady Vivienne wondered. "I have often wondered. It would certainly be a useful thing. Especially when Guillaume is off somewhere and I want to talk to him."

"Alas, it is magical in nature and I am unwilling to discuss the method." Ariadne told her. "One person can keep a secret, but after that, people start being able to study the method and circumvent it. But to activate it, one of the things that you can do is to think of the other in an erotic way."

"Or romantic way." I protested.

"Or both." Ariadne agreed. "It has to be said that Freddie's images of me are rather sweetly erotic rather than the utter filth that I send down the link towards him."

There was some laughter at my expense.

"He imagines things like the curve of my neck, my smile and the feel of my skin from the few times he has plucked up the courage to touch me. His more filthy thoughts tend to come when he is just on the verge of falling asleep or in the early hours of the morning."

"I wish there was someone who thought of me like that." The Duchess sighed plaintively. It would seem that we had become informal.

"Like what?" Ariadne asked innocently.

"With sweet romance and occasional erotic bursts."

"There is." Lady Vivienne had taken out an embroidery hoop that she worked on with fast, automatic fingers that moved seemingly of their own accord and without attention from the lady. Guillaume would later tell me that she does it to keep her hands busy because otherwise she fidgets, or bites her nails. A childhood habit apparently. "But you have forbidden Lord Dandelion from returning to Toussaint."

The Duchess' eyes darkened a little. "As I recall, I threatened to take the next person who mentioned that name in my presence and break them on the wheel."

"No you didn't." Lady Vivienne answered reasonably and without fear. "What you actually said was "The next man to speak the name Julien Alfred Pankratz in my presence, recites his poetry or plays his music will be broken on the wheel." As I am neither a man, nor did I say that name, my life is safe. We can check the court record if you wish."

"You have just said his name." The Duchess crowed in triumph and laughter. "Guards, take this woman away." The Guards didn't materialise.

"I merely say that to illustrate my defence. Of course, if you wish to be known as a tyrant instead." Lady Vivienne hadn't flinched, moved or changed her tone of voice.

The Duchess sighed. "Why do I keep you around again?" She wondered.

"Because not only do I know where all the skeletons are buried." Vivienne told her reasonably. "But I helped you bury them."

"True." The Duchess admitted before turning back on Ariadne. "But don't think that lets you off the hook. How did you know?"

Ariadne shrugged. "The Witch was forcing Freddie to feel arousal." She said. "She was manipulating his body with her spells and her own, not inconsiderable charms. He had little choice in the matter and he fought the effort by thinking of me. He does that regularly when women try to seduce him which is happening more and more often to my eyes, even when he himself doesn't notice it. He thinks of me and moves on. When the woman is being particularly insistent or amorous, he puts me in her place. I felt this, recognised the magic in question and…" She shrugged.

"Are you more powerful than her?" Guillaume wondered. "You did seem to beat her but it also looked as though you were on the ropes for a while."

"Our disparate power would depend on the circumstances." Ariadne replied, making herself another open sandwich. "If I got between her and a man that she wanted, or needed her vengeance on, I rather think that she would be able to take me as that is her old magic and the circumstances of her power. The magic that made her who she is. On any other day? I would be confident that I can better marry skill to power. She has a temper on her which means her control is somewhat lacking. In this case, she was angry, she had no cause to declare that either of you had wronged her. She was angry because you both denied her. A rare feat in and of itself."

"So why did you look as though you were being beaten?" Guillaume wondered. Completely missing the compliment about him being able to deny the Witch. His wife didn't though, and preened.

Ariadne laughed.

"It was a trick that Freddie and Kerrass taught me actually. Back from the account regarding the Flaming sword Knights?"

The Duchess looked curious.

"When Freddie was pretending to be weak, he was actually strong. He drew the attention to himself so that Kerrass could do what he needed to do. Then Kerrass drew the attention back to himself in order to allow Freddie to free himself. One of the ruses that they used was to pretend to be weaker than they actually were. So what I was doing was to pull the Witch's attention to me while the boys freed Countess Vasseur, by pretending to make a strategic mistake. By summoning light when I, normally, should have been mounting an attack or shoring up my defences."

"But what it did," I joined in, "was to give us light to see by and make the Witch overconfident."

"And then I could draw her in, thinking that I was being beaten. When I was actually ensuring that Freddy and Sir Guillaume had time to get the Countess free."

Guillaume was frowning in thought. "In strength, pretend weakness."

"Exactly."

"Interesting." He literally stroked his chin and I had to restrain myself from laughing. I like Guillaume an awful lot but sometimes he is such a caricature of a Knight and of himself that he becomes a figure of comedy. Vivienne caught me laughing and winked at me. "So it really does have many applications, not just in combat and war."

I manfully managed to keep a straight face as I said "It really can."

Vivienne hid her snort of laughter in her coffee cup.

The door opened and Syanna came back into the room.

"How is she doing?" The Duchess wondered.

"You're not going to like it." Syanna told her.

"That sounds ominous."

"She wants to know what she can do to help." Syanna came to the table and quickly made herself a sandwich with ham and cheese before eating it at a pace that would have resulted in me getting yelled at at the family dining table. It was made worse by the fact that she drank a coffee that was still at scalding level, at a gulp. "I don't think that she has the language to cope with it yet, and rage is a new emotion to her I think, but if we give her the chance?" She poured herself another cup of coffee. "I think she would cheerfully rip Sir Alain's balls off with her bare hands and dance on them before tearing his lungs out and doing the same thing."

"Not his heart?" I wondered aloud before I could stop myself.

"No." Syanna flopped into one of the more comfortable chairs. "She still loves him, unfortunately."

"Love feeds rage," Guillaume mused.

"Especially when you are a sixteen year old girl." Syanna agreed. "And that girl has all the capability of rage that we could want. Maybe too much even."

"How do you know?" The Duchess wondered. There was a tone to the question, as though she already knew the answer.

"Because I remember feeling the same way myself. When all this is over, we are going to need to find a way for her to channel that rage into something else or we risk that rage turning back on us."

The Duchess mused a bit and nodded.

I blinked.

The Countess had gone inside the cottage now. She was in there somewhere, moving around, making sure that she was in sight of some of the windows. Not too long. She was probably making a big song and dance about going to bed and getting some rest. We had checked the cottage out beforehand and there was everything that she would need, to do so in privacy. There was a changing screen for her to get "changed for bed" behind. She had made a show of building a fire even though there was a fire pot in there that meant it was all nice and glowy, she had made a big show of shuttering the windows.

All the while she was doing this, Guillaume and Ariadne were in there with her.

The brief for them was simple. Ariadne was cloaked in a spell of invisibility. Either that or it was some kind of Vampiric ability that she had never told me about up till this point, but still. Guillaume was there as well and if everything went to plan, when "Jack" emerged and was nice and close to the cottage, Ariadne would teleport herself and the Countess off back to the Palace while Guillaume emerged to fight, and entrap the assailant.

It was the nature of the assailant that we still didn't really know about.

If it had been me acting as the assailant, I would have surrounded the cottage with hired men, which we presumed the conspirators had access to in order to ensure that the target would not escape and to provide backup should things go wrong, and then I would have advanced incognito to ensure that the Countess was actually inside the cottage. Then, I could have backed up, changed into a Jack costume and done the deed. Possibly with the help of some of the flunkies, remembering what had happened during the attack on Lady Vivienne.

Then I would have fled as if the Hounds of the Hunt were after my blood to ensure that a few people would see "Jack" fleeing from the scene so that the story would continue to spread, before darting around a rock and changing into normal clothes to claim that I had seen Jack sneak off round that corner over there.

That is what I would have done. Syanna rather thought that something else would happen, she thought that people would be cautious. She thought that some people in the conspiracy would be aware that this was a trap. So they would send someone disposable, someone who could get caught and it wouldn't damage the rest of them. Either that or the conspiracy were so tied into their arrogance that they thought that they were simply immune to this kind of thing happening. Therefore, a more formidable Jack would approach.

Either way, she thought that the Conspiracy would send one man who would be an excellent swordsman, on a fast horse to get the deed done quickly. Where the girl would be dead, disfigured afterwards. She thought that the actual witnessing of Jack's presence would be done before the deed, keeping everyone nice and afraid so that they wouldn't sound the alarm.

Guillaume did not care. He had his task and as soon as that task started, he was consumed with the preparations for what was to come.

Neither of these options were our worst case scenario.

The Duchess disagreed of course. The Duchess' worst case scenario was that the assailants would get through our defences and be able to slay her newly adopted daughter. Syanna would later joke, after the Duchess had left the room of course, that the Duchess wanted enough time for her daughter to really begin hating her. Syanna herself claimed she was looking forward to being the crazy aunt who took the girl out to get drunk and, and this is a quote, "properly laid by someone who knew what they were doing." I wondered whether the Duchess would allow that to happen and Syanna had looked haunted for a moment before her impish smile came back. "What my sister doesn't know…" She began before walking off.

We were confident that the Duchess' fears were unfounded. Due to the layout of the cottage, the shutters were hardened so anyone trying to get through them would warn of their arrival. Guillaume was standing between the Countess and any attacker that came from any other avenue and Ariadne was standing, invisible, next to the Countess with the teleportation spell already on her lips.

There was no way, barring her tripping and falling to break her neck, or Ariadne's transport gate being miscast (a possibility that I dismissed) that the Countess was in any danger.

Our worst case scenario was that we had misjudged. That we had made such a cataclysmic mistake in believing that the new Countess was a target and that the conspiracy was actually targeting somewhere else. That in the morning, there would be a report that some other lady had been killed in a horrible way and that Jack had been seen in the vicinity. That was our worst case scenario and by "our" I meant, Guillaume, Syanna, Ariadne and myself.

But I had another worst case scenario.

At the time, I had buried this deep. Deep in the depths of my own fears. So deep that it was barely there and that I had even denied the possibility to myself.

So deep that I wasn't aware of it.

That possibility? Was that Jack himself walked out of the trees.

I knew it wasn't him that was killing these people. I knew it. Everything that I had learned about the figure of Jack told me that it wasn't Jack that was committing these atrocities. Everything that he had told me himself told me that that wasn't what was happening. It wasn't Jack, it couldn't be Jack.

But I was afraid that it was Jack. That unreasoning part of me. The small, terrified, trembling thing in the back of my throat was afraid of that possibility. That Jack would come out of the darkness.

I knew it wasn't Jack. But what if I was wrong?

What if I was wrong.

Guillaume would be dead. I had no doubts as to the capabilities of Guillaume as a fighter. There is a reason that he is one of the top swordsman in Toussaint with only Alain and maybe Raoul and Gregoire able to beat him in the duelling circle. It had been made clear to me though that one of the reasons for this was not natural talent. It was more that Guillaume had spent more time out in the field hunting monsters of the magical and human variety which had meant that his "Duelling" skills were neglected in favour of being able to survive when a giant centipede burst from the ground, or when a murderer tried to shoot him in the back.

But Jack was on a whole different level. When Jack had last been in Toussaint, it had taken four Witchers to subdue him. They did it by ambush and magic as much as by sheer skill with a sword and even then, there was more than a little analysis that would argue that Jack let them win because of all of the other controls that were going on at the time.

He had literally carved his way through the majority of the ranks of the Knights Errant. This was not someone, or something, that could be stood up to by a solitary Knight in armour. No matter how good he was.

No matter how hard I tried, now matter how hard I concentrated. That image would implant itself behind my eyes.

It would start with the cold. Where I got that from I have no idea, but in my imagination, the presence of Jack was always heralded with the onset of cold.

How foolish was this? It was the middle of the Winter, in the dark, dawn still a little while off. Of course it was cold, but as a result of that, my imagination started wondering. Is it cold because it's the middle of winter and I'm out in the open when I'm not particularly well anyway. Or is it cold because Jack is coming.

It would start with the cold. It would seep out in a wave from over where his feet fell. The branches would part before his presence, would part in fear before him as the leaves withered in their own fear and fell from the branches.

And yes, I know that it was winter and that the leaves had already fallen. Do not bother me with these details, it was my imagination.

He would announce his presence by laughing. I have made a lot of studies of the subject of Jack and the times that he laughed as he killed or announced his presence is actually surprisingly rare. The most common one is the most recent when he was personified as Laughing Jack when he came to Toussaint. But otherwise, he was the private, faceless killer. Sinister, silent and utterly devoid of emotion. His amusement was obvious in the nature of the way he killed. The way he seemed to toy with his victims. The way he chuckled, quietly, at the people that he allowed to survive.

But in my nightmares, he laughs. When he strides forwards out of the shadows by the side of the road. Or when that frightening looking tough on the other side of the street produces that strange hat that Jack prefers to wear so that his face is shadowed when I see him in my mind's eye. He just starts to laugh as he strides forward to where I am frozen in terror.

If it is Jack, then everything that I have done would be for nothing. Every effort to save… well… everyone would be for nothing. He would simply laugh as he toyed with Guillaume, dancing just out of the reach of his blade and bleeding him slowly from small cuts that would all but ignore the Knight's armour. Then just before our intended and expected reinforcements would arrive, he would slay Guillaume before rushing into the cottage to where he would kill Ariadne as she tried to protect the young Countess, and then he would literally tear the Countess apart.

And he would laugh while he was doing it. He would laugh as the reinforcements from the guards and the Knights arrived in the clearing and spread out to try and corner him. He would laugh as he danced between the glittering spear points, the weighted nets and the barbed polearms and behind him he would leave a mess of injured, mutilated and maimed men who would scream in agony before begging for water, a swift blade to end their misery or calling for their mother.

He would leave Syanna alone. He would let her see the mess that he had made of her command and as he did so, he would be laughing as she desperately tried to get a hold of him. As she desperately tried to find some small measure of justice for the men that lay at his feet that were howling their agony into the night's sky.

Then finally, after he rendered her unconscious with a blow from the pommel of his sword, he would turn to me, still hiding behind the woodpile and shivering in fear and he would stride towards me. I would be frozen, trembling, like the young woodland animal that is just waiting for the final blow to fall from the executioner. The way a rabbit will just stand there and stare at the horse that is bearing down upon them, knowing that it must mean their death.

I would look up at him as I clutched my spear, quaking before my death and he would look down at me with frightening eyes.

"This is what happens." He would say. "This is what happens when I am denied."

Then he would reach out and….

The unknown is always more terrifying.

I blinked.

"Is it always like this?" Sam wondered from the safety of the inn. "I am used to the waiting for a battle but this seems different in some way."

"What do you mean?" I asked, playing with the bottle of wine that I desperately wanted to drown my sorrows in the depths of.

"Well, battle is always organised. You know when it is going to hit its peak. You can see it, smell it, hear it. I was once standing next to an old Sergeant who took out a length of sausage from a pocket as we saw the enemy advancing on his position. He finished his lunch and had time to draw his sword, crack a joke to the young soldier next to him and shout some orders before the two fighting lines crashed together hard enough to shake my teeth. But this?..."

He shook his head. "This is different. This is worse."

I blinked and shook my head furiously trying to shake the images from my sight. Now was not the time for it. Now was not the time to be sinking into this dream or that memory. We would be waiting now, waiting for a long time maybe. Given the winter months, dawn was still a long time off. My body was telling me that it was nearly dawn now and that it was really time to be waking up and getting dressed. Given the fact that I was outside and the smell of the trees and the earth as well as the woodsmoke, my limbs were feeling as though it was time to be on my way. To be moving on and getting underway.

But instead I forced myself to wait. The plan was a good one. It was sound, some of the finest strategic and tactical minds in the Duchy had been working on it and now it was time to see if we were right or not. We had planned for this. Even if it was Jack, Ariadne would teleport the Countess away and so the pair of them, at least, would be safe.

Guillaume was not as impetuous as the other Knights had been. He would defend himself. He would not allow himself to get drawn into the situation. The trap of thinking that he could take on the impossible task. He was too clever for that. He was too collected for that. He had too much to live for to allow himself to be drawn into that.

He would also have the benefit that he would not be confined by the press of all the other Knights that would force their way forward with righteous indignation at the indignity of what Jack was doing to them and to their way of life.

But it wasn't Jack. It wasn't. It couldn't be. As I said all that time ago… These killings were too specific and the manner of the deaths was too… too crude. Jack was capable of cruelty and horror. I knew that, we all knew that, but this was too… thoughtless. Jack was cruel and yes, his manner of killing could and often would display a horrific kind of humour. He would torment his victims and their families as well as the people that were chasing him in the mistaken delusion that Jack was a normal, run of the mill, monstrous human rather than something else.

But these killings… There was a glee about them. There was a deliberate chasing of the gore, of the shock and of the sexual nature of the killings and the torture that went with it all.

When the killers had the chance of course. Torture takes time.

And that was one of the main reasons that I didn't think it was Jack. It was inconceivable to me that Jack would be found with his pants around his ankles and his dick hanging out while standing over his purported victim. That just wouldn't happen. If Jack has decided to kill you, torture you and leave you in a place where you will eventually be found by the surrounding people. Then he will do that. No amount of planning on our part, no sudden burst of ingenuity was going to save anyone. If Jack wanted you dead then he was going to kill you. He would not be caught.

That was why it wasn't Jack.

Kerrass once joked about me and the way I speak about Jack. I can't remember where this was. It was probably in Novigrad while we were waiting for our ship to come in, or on one of the other sailing voyages where we were sitting around with nothing much to do. I will have been sitting down, ordering my notes and my research and he told me that he rather thought I was in love with Jack. That I admired him. I remember pausing for thought and saying the following. I even put it into the book as part of my closing remarks at the end.

"I do not love Jack. Nor do I particularly fear Jack. I certainly do not revere or worship Jack in the way that I would revere or worship the Eternal Flame. Jack would find such things amusing. However, I do respect Jack. In the same way as I respect the storm at sea, the avalanche on the mountain, the forest fire and the tidal wave. Jack simply is. You can admire such a thing while also being absolutely aware of how awful, how terrifying such a thing is. You stand before Jack at your peril, you defy him at your own risk. Just as you cannot protect yourself from the tide by hiding behind a shield or fend of an avalanche with a lantern."

It wasn't Jack. My fantasies about what it would be like if Jack himself walked into the clearing intending to slay the Countess were just that. Fantasies. My mind, spinning increasingly complex things in order to occupy itself. The fear of the unknown that is always there when this kind of thing would happen. The very real and utterly normal fear of "Is this the time that I lose a limb, am blinded, crippled, maimed or even killed. My imagination spun off into all the things that this monster could do to me.

I blinked.

"Is it always like this?" Mark asked me as we leant against the tree. Flame but he looked so young then. So young and healthy. I felt like I was watching the scene from inside the body of my own younger and far more naive self. He looked young, vital and energetic. But as I examined him closer with the benefit of hindsight, I could see those early signs of the illness that was taking him from us and I berated the younger me for not seeing it. For not doing something about it so that we could have our older brother that bit the longer.

Emma and Laurelen were nearby as well. Sat, holding hands and talking. Mark was avoiding looking at them because they made him feel so uncomfortable. Then, as I did now, I felt a certain frustration with Mark. There she was, our sister, better than both of us, sitting with the woman that she loved and Mark just could not get past the dogma that had poisoned his mind. It was no consolation to know that he would get past that.

All that was clear was that we had missed out. We could have been closer. We could have been better. And if we had done so then maybe Mother wouldn't have had to leave, Mark wouldn't be dying, Sam would not be becoming increasingly estranged and Francesca would not have disappeared."

I blinked.

Flame but I hoped that something would happen soon. This was beginning to get tedious.

I hunted around my mind for something to think about. Something small that my mind could latch on to that would be safe for me to think about rather than becoming obsessed or sinking into the past. Normally in this kind of instance I might entertain myself with small fantasies about what life was going to be like in the future. I would imagine the horror that Kerrass is going to put me through on the night of my Bachelor's party. I would entertain myself with small erotic fantasies about what Ariadne and I could get up to after we were married but I was avoiding such things at the moment in order to prevent the lady herself from gettind distracted.

But there was no avoiding it. Sooner or later my thoughts were pulled back towards the place that we were in. The situation that we had found ourselves part of and wondering what was going to happen next.

I was sure that someone was going to come. I was certain of it. After all, we had left enough of a trail for people to follow that even a child would know where the Countess was hiding.

So I allowed my mind to diversify for a bit. Because there was a question that we could try and answer. Who was it going to be that would be wearing the costume and hiding under the mask of the killer. Who would be wearing the hat and carrying the stick, wielding the sword and billowing the cape.

It was a good puzzle to be occupying myself with. Mostly because there was no easy answer to go with. We knew that it wouldn't be Alain. If he wasn't stupid enough to realise that he was now a suspect in the killings then the people that were around him would certainly be aware of such matters. They would also, probably, be aware that this was a trap.

So who would they send.

We knew that Jack would be a skilled swordsman. He would have to be because otherwise the whole pretense of it being Jack would have fallen apart. He would need to be skilled with a sword. He would need to be acrobatic, quick on his feet and strong as well. In the face of all of those things it meant that we were all but certain that it would be someone, or several someones that had proper knightly training. The murders or the sneaky bits could be done by anyone. They could even be done by patsy's or people that had no idea who they were working for.

But the people beneath the mask and hat would need to be Knights. I was all but certain of it. I was also certain that although we knew that Alain had not been the man that had killed his wife, it had certainly been him that had carried out one, or more, of the other attacks. He had all the characteristics that were required of a person to be able to do that.

But who did that leave?

Personal prejudices were a problem and I was as guilty of this as anyone. The more traditionally minded of the people that we were working with, wanted it to be Gregoire because he was the villain of modern Toussaint in the Knightly arenas. So there was just something fundamental in their makeup that made them want it to be Gregoire. They couldn't help it.

But I didn't think that it fit with his character or his… life. I don't think he cared enough to make an effort to overthrow the Knights of Saint Francesca. He had carved out a life for himself and seemed satisfied with it. I was of the opinion that he was desperately unhappy with his lot in life but I rather thought that this was because he was tired of being the villain. He would not be the one to do this.

I wanted it to be Raoul. He too had all the capabilities to be Jack. But even though I wanted it to be him, I didn't think it was. I was confident that he was involved, but Raoul had that animal intelligence, the low cunning that meant that he would know what would happen to anyone that tried to pretend to be Jack. He would be that kind of person. He would not leave it to chance. He was the kind of person that I was kind of expecting to be the mastermind behind it all. But I couldn't see him taking the risk of wearing the costume.

So who was it?

If we didn't catch him tonight and find out, there were only limited ways that we could bring all of this into the light, none of them were safe and none of them guaranteed success. The weak thread, the one person that we knew about was Alain…

I blinked.

The Duchess was in full flow. It is always interesting to see people when they are beside themselves with fury. You can tell a lot about a person when they are angry and in this case, she reminded me a lot of Ciri when she was doing one of her tirades.

The Duchess was pacing up and down while the rest of us were sat in comfortable chairs. And by the rest of us I mean myself, Guillaume, Syanna, de la Tour and Lady Vivienne who sat out of the way and in the corner. My impression was that she would jump in if there was a political concern but otherwise would want to stay out of the entire situation.

The Duchess had been ranting for a solid ten minutes now. Enough time for me to pour a cup of coffee, wait for it to cool enough to a temperature that it could be easily drunk and then drinking it.

The temper and contrary nature of the Duchess is famous and it would seem that we were getting a whole bunch of it in the face.

She stopped abruptly and spun to glare at the lot of us with her hands on her hips.

May the Eternal Flame and the lady in question forgive me, but it was in that moment that I knew why Professor Dandelion calls her his "Little Weasel" and why he was so convinced that she was never more beautiful than when she was absolutely furious with him.

The fact that he claimed that this was the real reason that he would go out of his way to be unfaithful to her is neither here nor there. He may have pushed that too far.

"Can any of you." She growled at us. "Give me one good reason. Just ONE good reason. Why I shouldn't haul that son of a bitching bastard out of his bed and in front of my torturer to find out what he knows before I hang him in a cage over the top of the Palace walls so that he can die of exposure. Just one good reason?"

There was a small pause.

"The question was not rhetorical." She snarled.

She was talking about Alain.

"I have a reason," Syanna began. "That reason being that you don't have a torturer any more since the last one retired. As I recall, you even said that torture is best used in the moment, that all a man needs to torture is some imagination and that having a specialised torturer was a waste of money."

"Sweet sister." The Duchess hissed with the smile of a cat that has just heard that the mice have organised a revolt. "There is a time for your jokes. There is a time for irreverence and there is a time where the tension of the moment needs to be deflated. But in case you were wondering. That moment is not here."

Syanna subsided, much to my astonishment.

"I mean it." The Duchess snapped. "Any single one of you. If my newly adopted daughter is to be believed, and I do believe her, then Alain is in this up to his filthy neck. He has seduced her, abused her, taken advantage of her, I could even argue that he raped her and all this time she was being groomed into a position where she could take my place in an effort to subvert the duchy to other forms. He will give me the names of those other conspirators at the point of a knife or the tip of the red hot poker that I will have inserted up the eye of his penis. I will, in fact, have that particular hole stretched by other red hot implements so that it can make way for the poker that is to follow."

She carried on like this for a while. For long enough that I won't carry on using the paper to make the use of it. I winced at the thought of all of those things, Guillaume crossed his legs, Syanna seemed bored and De La Tour could clearly not give a damn.

"So explain to me." The Duchess seemed to finally be coming to the point. "Tell me, why should I not do this thing? Give me a reason. Just one reason, but make it a good one because I will not be able to stand for any paltry excuse of things like "morals" or "honour" after everything that he has done. After everything that that man has done he deserves everything that I have described and more. He deserves..."

And she was off again. I was forced to stop listening as things got particularly graphic.

I've had some of those things done to me and I was learning that if I was going to have to live with sudden memories darting into my consciousness without control or warning, then I would have to learn to sidestep these moments whenever possible.

So I was honestly startled when I realised that she had stopped.

"Well?" She demanded.

There was a pause. "There is a lot of attraction to your idea." Syanna began slowly. "And speaking for myself, I would more than happily hold him down while someone did all of those things to him. What my… newly adopted niece has told me is enough to make me hate him."

"Stop dancing around the subject Syanna. Spit it out."

"Your idea would be catastrophic."

"Why?"

"All he would do would be to demand trial by combat in order to prove that your… daughter and my niece is lying."

Guillaume nodded. "There is no-one to beat him in that field Your Grace. No-one at all. So all of a sudden, your adopted daughter is in the same state as her father. Everyone knows that she is right. Everyone knows that she is innocent of all the horrible things that he will, undoubtedly, say about her. But by the rules of trial by combat he will be right and she will be nothing more than…. Words fail me."

"A liar." De La Tour suggested quietly.

"Whore." Syanna said less quietly. "A silly little girl with a crush. A silly little girl that has delusions of grandeur. That lived in the woods and was fed lies by a father who was disgruntled at all the things that were done to him when he was found guilty of having tried to molest the young Duchess of the realm which will drag that old scandal out into the open again."

"I have seen you both fight." The Duchess told Guillaume. "You are by far the better fighter."

"Yes I am." Guillaume said without pride in his voice. "In armour, on a battlefield, certainly on horseback. Where rules are that anything goes and the winner takes all. That I would win. But in the duelling fields, where rules are carefully curated, rituals properly observed and honour is the primary virtue. Where witnesses will be called, swords inspected and proper breaks can be called for and given. He is the better swordsman. He would dissect me piece by piece and he would do so carefully, slowly and in a way to torment those watching."

Not Guillaume I noticed. His own pain was dismissed as unimportant.

The Duchess waved her hand. "The truth will…"

"Oh come on Anna." Syanna protested. "You don't believe that any more than I do."

"Honour is no protection in the face of… Guillaume began.

"He will still be… De La Tour tried to rise above it and be calm.

"Are you telling me that you are not willing to face him?" The Duchess demanded of Guillaume. The atmosphere in the room shifted. "If you are not then I say that you are a coward and that you dishonour yourself and your entire line."

De La Tour stiffened.

"ANNA," Syanna protested. She almost screeched in her horror.

Guillaume said nothing for a long moment. The air seemed to crystallise. Then the Knight stood, the face of the normally happy, animated young Knight was a mask as he rose to his feet. "It is no dishonour to say that a man is better than he. It is in fact a mark of the honourable man to acknowledge a superior opponent. It is no dishonour to protest that such an action would only result in disaster for the Duchess herself, her daughter, her sister and Toussaint as a whole, which is what I am doing."

I was watching the Duchess carefully. Neither her expression or her posture had changed but I thought that there was just a hint around her eyes that suggested that she was aware that she had gone too far.

"If the Duchess wants my death, then she has only to ask for it." Guillaume continued. "If she orders it, I shall march to his door from here and I will demand that he face me in order to answer for his crimes, even knowing that I am going to my death. I would ask only that the Duchess make some kind of provision for my wife when my, inevitable, death leads to her disgrace. But my duty is also to the realm, and that duty prompts me to say, again, that I cannot beat him. That strength of arms will have proven him innocent. That…"

The Duchess finally relented and waved him off.

"I apologise Sir Guillaume. Lady Vivienne. I am angry at the things that have been done to my family and to Toussaint as a whole and I forget myself."

"The Duchess has no need to apologise to me." Guillaume said a little stiffly, despite his words. "My life belongs to the Duchess." He sat down.

Lady Vivienne got up and left the room. The Duchess watched her go before rubbing her eyes "Dammit," She muttered before looking up at us. "Is there anyone that can beat him in that arena?" She demanded.

"I have been thinking about that." Guillaume told her, speaking more comfortably now that he was on matters of his own expertise. "I have not met every Knight that claims the vows, but those are far too young. The only person that could be depended on to defeat Alain in the duelling circle would be Lord Geralt."

Syanna nodded. "I would concur."

"But he is in Cintra." The Duchess was starting to get frustrated again. "What about Raoul?"

Everyone in the room shifted uncomfortably, including me.

"You are suggesting that he is not involved?" De La Tour put to words what the rest of us were thinking. "But even if he is not, you will not persuade him to fight on your behalf. But even if you did, LeBlanc is the better with a horse and a lance, but Alain would win with a sword."

Guillaume spoke up. "I draw the Duchess' attention to the fact that Raoul no longer competes with the sword. He is on the lance only since Alain came to the fore. My feeling is that he would want to be in the stands and watch this contest."

"If Geralt could do it, what about Witcher Kerrass?"

Syanna shrugged. "I have not seen enough of Kerrass' bladework to comment. I do know that he would admit that he is not the swordsman that he was before his arms were mangled in the north. He has said so over dinner."

"He might manage it." Guillaume said. "But again, there is a difference between a duel and a fight. Kerrass would not be able to use all of his tricks. Lord Frederick has admitted in his works that in a contest between Geralt and Kerrass, then even Kerrass would admit that Geralt is the better sword."

"By a country mile." I agreed. "His words, not mine."

"To play the duelling game the way that Alain does for just a moment." Guillaume continued. "Kerrass would have a shot. But it is a long one and the outcome would be far from certain. We would be pinning all our hopes on a tricky prospect."

"He is also a prisoner." Syanna said. "Currently accused of being the killer that we want to prove Alain is. We know that he isn't, just as we know that Alain was not the one that killed his wife, but it would seem odd to everyone if we backtracked on everything. We arrested him properly, so to free him on no evidence, because we don't have it yet, to have him fight Alain as our champion will mean that…"

"Alright alright. We'll keep Kerrass in reserve for now. What about Sir Morgan?" The Duchess suggested.

"Again," Syanna responded. "If he is not involved in the conspiracy, which is a big "if", he would take Alain's side on this anyway." She switched into a remarkably accurate impression of the older Knight. "The word of a Knight Errant over some illegitimate daughter of a disgraced man with no lands, no wealth and barely any title. If we defended that kind of thing then we would be fighting off claims from every daughter of every peasant within the realms of Toussaint who demand justice. Justice that would eventually take the form of a fat purse."

"Your Morgan is getting better." De La TOur commented dryly.

"Thank you."

"But also," Guillaume piped up, a little annoyed at the levity. "Sir Morgan has passed the peak of his ability. Two years ago, three even, then yes. I would give better odds on Morgan versus Alain. Sir Morgan at the height of his powers was as good as any. But now?" He shook his head.

"What about Gregoire?" I heard myself suggest. In my defence, it made sense at the time.

The Duchess shook her head. "I do not trust Gregoire."

"What kind of man would allow himself to be portrayed as the villain of every piece of propaganda." De La Tour growled.

"A man who knew his place." I suggested. "A man who never realised that he could be anything different."

Guillaume jumped in. "Speaking just as a swordsman here. Gregoire's fighting style is unique. But in this particular instance I don't think that it would work out. Leaving aside all of the moral questions and capabilities as to who was in charge and who would be right and under what circumstances. In a duel to the death then yes, Gregoire might edge it. But Gregoire needs to wind himself up to get into his pattern. Everyone knows how Gregoire fights. Everyone, including me. And everyone knows that the way to beat it is to be fast, get in, injure and get out before that awful sword comes round and kills with a single blow. It's just that the only person, to date, that has been quick enough to do that is Geralt. In the duelling field, I think you could persuade Gregoire to fight."

"A large enough purse of money will do that." Syanna agreed.

"But," Guillaume was a little annoyed at the fact that people kept interrupting his assessments. I could relate. When you are holding forth on the subject that you know more about than any of the other people assembled, it is always annoying when people interrupt to remind everyone of their importance. Even worse when you know that they are doing it to assuage their own feelings and are not doing it intentionally.

"But… Gregoire would be a champion and everyone would know it. Alain would push for first blood so that "he would not be forced to kill the champion of the state" and then he would wear little to no armour. He would wield a rapier or something else sharp and absurdly fast in the air. Then while Gregoire is still winding up to start those patterns of his, Alain will dart forward and with a small nick to something exposed, the duel would be over. He is good enough to do that."

"There is also the political view of that." Syanna said unhappily. "Lord Frederick's determination to see something in Sir Gregoire that none of the rest of us can see notwithstanding. He has been the villain for so long and now he is the champion of justice for the realm. People will automatically see the realm as being in the wrong."

"So we don't do it like that." The Duchess said. "We arrange for Alain to disappear. We have some people take him off somewhere in secret and have him questioned. Can we do that?"

"We can certainly do that." De La Tour said with the air of someone that has done exactly that many times before. "But it would be a mistake." He finished.

"I agree." Syanna added.

Guillaume looked uncomfortable at the prospect.

"Why?" The Duchess demanded. "Why would it be a mistake? I cannot have a man like that walking around and doing the things he's doing without a damn good reason. So why shouldn't I have Damien go out there, arrest him, take him off to one of the hidden caves that Lord Geralt cleaned out for us a couple of years ago and beat him until he gives up the plot? He deserves nothing less."

There was a long moment there, where the four of us desperately avoided looking the Duchess, or each other, in the eye.

It was like… It was like that moment when a tutor lines you up and asks you all a question, or a parent is standing over the wreckage of some expensive broken item, or a master is standing over some kind of botched piece of construction. They look at each of you and demand to know what the answer is. Who the perpetrator was or what happened.

There is a moment there where the future stretches out in front of you as your, often young, brain figures out all of the possibilities, all the possible consequences of what happens next. Because you all know the answer. You all know who broke the vase, who messed up the project and you all know the answer to the question. The problem is wondering what happens next.

Sam and I would often be in the same classroom as we worked together because, depending on who you speak to, I was too clever for my lessons and needed more advanced work, or Sam was unable to deal with the older lessons and needed to work "on the fundamentals a bit more." But if I answered too fast, especially when Sam didn't know the answer. Then I knew that Sam would feel humiliated and take it out on me later when we were on the practice field later when our talents and skills were reversed.

Or standing over the broken item. We all knew that Edmund had broken it in an effort to get one of the rest of us, or a castle servant, into trouble, but if we told Father, or Mother or whoever, that. Then Edmund's vengeance would be rather… unpleasant.

It's one of those universal experiences that we can all relate to. Whether we are born to the highest or the lowest station, people always ask us what the right answer is and then we are scared of answering it in case we get into trouble.

In this case, we all had some form of why just preemptively arresting Alain was a bad idea. We all had"part of the analysis" as my tutors would say. But if we volunteered that information then the woman that we were talking to had every power that she needed in order to have our heads removed from their necks.

In courtier lessons, if that is the sort of thing that you are after and apparently, I am told that were I to write a book on the subject then that book would be quite marketable...

I can't think of a subject I would less like to talk about. There are far more gifted teachers and works on the subject than what I could provide.

In the courtroom the term for this moment is called "speaking truth to power." Those same works, specifically I am thinking of "The Courtier's worth" by Proffessor Stefan Darga will tell the powerful that it is vital to surround yourself with people that are willing and capable of doing this. It stresses the need not to drive these people away on the grounds that your enemy will have no qualms about picking those people up and using their advice. It also stresses the need to refrain from killing them when they give you advice that you don't like. On the grounds that surrounding yourself with people that only tell you what you want to hear can lead you down a path of inevitable self-destruction.

Unfortunately, Professor Darga was killed when he told King Radovid that the Eternal Flame had a dangerous propensity towards fanatcisim and mob building. That he should keep himself separate from them lest the mob turn against him.

Such are the perils of speaking truth to power. Especially in a world where monarchs have the direct power of life and death over the people around them.

But then there is another moment that follows the first. It is the moment where the class, or family group, realises that the authority figure is quite content to wait until they have an answer, whether it's true or not, and that someone needs to answer. Sometimes people manage to restrain themselves but there is an awful moment, a truly awful moment, thankfully much shorter than the situation that led to ir, where you realise that no-one else is going to respond to the question and you realise that you are going to be the one that answers it and that has to live with the consequences of all of that are going to fall on your head.

I sighed, attracting the Duchess' attention to me.

"Alain is not the head of the snake." I said. "He is a buffoon and everyone that is involved in this entire enterprise knows that. I would even suggest, in fact it is more than possible, that he has been deliberately kept apart from certain details because they are aware that he will be under suspicion and that if we take him down, then he will spew everything forth in order to save his own skin. He is precisely that kind of bully. Same as you accuse Gregoire of being and that Crawthorne was.

"He can get away with anything in your culture because his skill with a sword is unmatched. He can seduce, assault and do what he likes because the instant anyone complains then he can challenge them to a duel in the sure knowledge that he will get away with it.

"But your enemies, his companions, are aware of that. They know that you are not stupid, even as they think that they are stronger and better than you, so they will have taken that into account. They will have taken into account that your first urge is going to be to arrest and interrogate the man. Therefore they will have minimised his exposure to the rest of the conspiracy. They will have told him something foolish like "compartmentalisation" or "cell structure" so that they can justify to him why they are keeping things from him. Why he is not as aware of what is going on as part of the conspiracy as he would like.

"And conspiracy it is. Your… Daughter's account tells us that. It is a conspiracy and some form of this has been in the planning stage for months, if not years. Alain's role in this has been to be the skilled sword arm and the pretty face that they can hide behind. He is the most exposed in that his wife has been killed as part of the plot, and because the target of his seduction has fled. So to them, he is also the most disposable. His part of the plan was the riskiest and now it is all but defunct."

The Duchess was standing in front of me now. Staring at me, her eyes wide and blazing, the full force of her anger, will and intelligence was falling on my head. I wanted to hide behind something.

I could see the entire white's of her eyes around the iris.

"So let's play this out." I told her. "You arrest him and have him taken off somewhere to be questioned. Fair enough. What does he tell you? Let's assume that he tells you everything in a short, to the point series of answers. Speaking as someone who has been tortured, that is the least likely of possibilities but let's play this optimistically.

"Say he gives you a series of names, that are all true instead of lies or being inaccurate. That aren't enemies that he wants disposed of. I would tend to agree that he isn't that clever but he may have been coached. Sorry, I am supposed to be being optimistic here. Say he gives you those names and tells you those plans. What are you going to do with him, and them, afterwards.

"Do you arrest all the conspirators. I can already tell you what they will say. They will say that you are arresting them on the basis of a man, already found guilty, who will say anything that he can in order to save his own skin. If he survives he will be portrayed as the wounded martyr, victim of your feminine and emotional need for some form of vengeance."

I saw that one strike home and had time to wonder if that would be the sentence that would kill me. Then my mouth started working again.

"The other men will portray themselves as innocent. They will say something like "Obviously we disagree with the Duchess on matters of Knighthood and the proper uses of authority in order to keep the peace. There are many things that we disagree with the Duchess on but we would never be disloyal. Never. We are hurt, wounded and distraught that she could even consider that we would sink to such levels." And then they are the martyrs and you are the tyrant. Proving everything that they have ever said about you and their cause, when they gather to try again because they will, their cause will attract new followers who do not want to find themselves victimised the way that you victimised them.

"But let's tilt the thing in the other direction just a little bit. Let's assume that things don't entirely go to plan. What happens when Alain feeds you some false names. The conspiracy has already proven that they have redundancies in place. I wasn't involved in that part of the investigation but I would be prepared to bet a considerable amount of my… sister's money… Not my money, I don't gamble with anything more than a few copper."

"Very wise," Syanna commented.

"But Alain had an alibi for the night that his wife was killed didn't he? I bet it was a really good one too. Something unassailable."

"He did." De La Tour admitted.

"So even if he gives you true names then there will be men who have alibis that they will be able to hide behind. You say that it is all a conspiracy and again you are a tyrant.

"But what happens then. While you are desperately trying to find proof that all of these men are in it together, while you search their residences, hunting lodges and the homes of their mistresses for something, anything, that might prove that they have been working together in an effort to undermine the Knights Francesca, then the others, because you won't get them all at the same time, are hiding or destroying the evidence that incriminates them. They will set their own alibis in stone and then they will retreat. They will hang Alain out to dry saying something like…"

I reached for the words and stared at the ceiling.

"No." I began. "No, Alain came to us with this far fetched and treasonous scheme to undermine and blah blah blah treason. We were horrified, mortified, shocked, appalled and so on at the prospect that he would think that we would do such a thing regarding the Empress and the Duchy that we love. We threw him out and brought it to the attention of the proper authorities. What? You mean the proper authorities know nothing about it? Well, that was back when Nilfgaard were in charge of security wasn't it. Obviously the Knights Francesca, or the Knights Errant before them would have handled things differently."

I looked back down to the Duchess whose face was stony.

"And then you have driven the conspiracy further underground. They will come back, stronger, more sure of themselves and much more cautiously. You might catch them that time but it is just as likely, if not far more likely that you do not catch them until they have already won. The people in charge of this conspiracy are clever men, even as they use stupid men like Alain."

Silence fell for a moment while I fought the urge to breathe heavily.

"So what would you have us do Lord Frederick?" Syanna asked carefully. One eye on me, the other on her sister. "There is still no proof that you have read any of these situations right although I notice that they did try to drive us all apart when you predicted they would."

"And succeeded." De La Tour said. "Kerrass is still in prison and we cannot get him out without proving his innocence. He is far safer in there than he would be out here. There is also the question about why Alain is trying to have him freed, that is a question that picks at my brain."

"Indeed." Syanna said, still watching her sister. "But your theories fit the facts far better than mine Lord Frederick. So what would you suggest we do? What strategy are you leaning towards?"

I took another deep breath and went back to staring at the ceiling.

"Strategy." I mused. "Strategy...Ummmm. Ok. It's about pressure. We know about Alain. We know about his presence and we know about what he is doing. He is like…. Ok.

"He is like…" I cleared my throat. "If this conspiracy is like a gigantic snarl of twine. If they all come together in this tangled ball of… stuff… then how do you untangle the ball of twine?"

"This is a long way away from…" De La Tour protested. "People are dying and…"

"Leave him alone Damien." Syanna said sharply.

"You don't untangle the snarl by pulling on the thread." I told them, letting the thoughts come as they would. I tried to find the anger, or the pain, or the fear that would motivate my mouth to do that thing where it just starts speaking. It wasn't there though.

Flame but I was tired.

"You coax it gently." I said, answering my own question. "You tease it out, pulling at the other loops equally as gently until it all unravels in your hand. The thing here is that the tangle is all made up of the same coloured wool with one line of wool in the middle that is coloured red. So we can see where that thread is and using that we can untangle the rest. We use that thread for our own purposes.

"We know that they are using Alain. We do. We can keep that going, we can watch them. We can feed him false information. We know that there is more than just one person being Jack. We know that there are multiple people but so far, we have not given anyone else the impression that we know that. So from the conspiracies perspective, they have provided the alibi. If we can continue to pretend stupidity then we can use what we know against them,"

There was a beat of silence. "Ok." Syanna said carefully. "I'm not sure I understood any of that."

"I do." Guillaume said. "It's one of Freddie…. Lord Frederick's I should say, favourite strategies. When Strong, pretend weakness."

"Precisely." I said, grinning at him with what I hoped was obvious gratitude. "We apply pressure to Alain, we expose him slowly so that he starts to unravel and make more mistakes. Then, when it becomes clear that he is making those mistakes, he will become desperate, he may even come to us of his own accord so that we will protect him from his former comrades. In the meantime we pull on other strings until another one pops free."

I looked down. The Duchess was still looking at me. "So what you are saying is that we turn our knowledge of Alain's guilt into a tool for our own hands."

"Yes. We cannot just remove Alain. If we do that, then the conspiracy retreats, only to come back stronger. Because of him, they are exposed and for a conspiracy, exposure means weakness. They think they know more than us which, in turn, makes them arrogant. If we can increase that arrogance before shattering it utterly, then we make them desperate. Desperate people make mistakes. And when they do, we capitalise on them."

I considered what I just said. "Yes," I mused. "That makes more sense."

Syanna sniggered.

The Duchess nodded. "Knight Commander?"

"Lord Frederick is correct." She said. "Speaking as someone who has been part of a conspiracy before, I started to make mistakes when I felt that success was in my grasp. If I had just kept my head down and done nothing then I would have gotten away with it. But I was here, success was so close and I felt over-confident. And when that overconfidence made me take liberties, Damien, Geralt and Your Grace were able to apply more pressure so that I made more mistakes. And then I was caught. Deservedly so. This conspiracy has made their mistakes in choosing targets so obviously to benefit one of them which has led to another target. Now we apply pressure.

The Duchess looked disappointed. "Damien?"

"I am a simple soldier." He began.

Syanna snorted and muttered something that might have been "Fuck that."

"I know tactics more than I know strategy." Damien went on, glaring at Syanna. "But I do know about pretending weakness in strength. If they are still ignorant of what we know, then we should use that rather than showing our hand too early."

"I didn't know you played Gwent Damien." Syanna was smiling.

"Lord Geralt taught me."

"We shall have to lay them down sometime."

The Duchess cleared her throat. "Sir Guillaume?"

"It causes me pain to disagree with the Duchess. But in this case, I can't see an alternative. I can't claim to entirely see where Lord Frederick is leading. Like Captain De La Tour, I prefer following orders and formulating tactics rather than discussing overall strategy. But I do know that if we go after Alain in strength, then our own laws and traditions will be used to hang us. We should exhaust all other possibilities before we go down that route and if we do find ourselves forced into that choice, we should be careful who we choose to cross swords with him."

The Duchess nodded once more before staring at the heavens for a moment. "I so dearly wanted to watch someone punch that smug bastard in the mouth until every. Single. One. Of his teeth…. Fell out. Did you know he once made a pass at me?"

From the general intakes of breath around the room, I guessed that people did not.

"The part I hated about the entire thing the most was that I was genuinely tempted." The Duchess sighed again. "I knew what he was doing. I knew every trick that he was employing and even despite all that, I could feel myself responding. It would have been… Jaskier all over again."

"I thought we weren't supposed to mention that name again." Syanna teased.

The Duchess glared at her sister. "I was a grown woman, experienced in such matters. Caroline had no defences and so I cannot blame her for what happened."

We all nodded.

"Lord Frederick." She turned back to me.

I took a deep breath. "Yes your grace."

"Were you aware that there is a price on your head?"

I considered this. "As far as I know, there have been several prices on my head over the course of various times. I have resolved to take each one as it comes."

"Very wise." Syanna muttered.

"In this case." The Duchess ignored her sister. "The bounty comes from the Imperial palace."

"Oh?" I would like to say that a chill ran down my spine, but the truth was that I was too tired.

"Yes. Lord Voorhis has issued a reward to any person who is able to recruit you to be an advisor to the Empress. Apparently you are one of the few people that she is willing to listen to."

"I had heard."

"I wondered what quality it was that recommended you to Lord Voorhis' thoughts and now I am aware and I agree that the Empress, indeed all heads of state could do with someone like you hanging onto their coat tails. Thank you."

"Ummm. You're welcome?"

She nodded.

"So what do we do now?" She wondered.

"What?"

"We are going with your strategy Lord Frederick. So what is your plan for how we proceed from here?"

"We need to put them on the defensive." I said promptly and without thinking. We need to deprive them of a victory."

"That's lovely and everything," Some of the Duchess' frustrations were shining through again. "But how do we do that?"

I thought for a moment before realisation hit me in the face with a club.

"Oh." I said. It was suddenly clear that everyone was looking at me. "I do have an idea. But you won't like it."

The Duchess leant forward.

"Tell me." She ordered.

I blinked and frantically rubbed my face in an effort to banish the memory back to wherever it came from.

He was here. I have no idea what it was that had told me this. I don't know if it was a twig snapping or the sound of some unseen horse moving up the pass. I don't know what it was that I heard, or saw or felt.

But he was here and the last of my fear that this might really be Jack after all vanished in the pre-dawn darkness. The relief was enough to make me dizzy and I had to grip my spear tightly, the cold metal keeping me from drifting off into a daze with the sheer, heart stopping wave of that relief. I was right. We were right. We had read the circumstances correctly and now we were going to be able to take the fight back to our enemies. The enemies that we still didn't know who they were or what they looked like. But now we could begin to fight back. There was still some way to go. Still some things to take care of. But we were going to make it. I knew that now.

He was here. It wasn't Jack.

I forced myself to breathe evenly and to calm down, taking care that my breath didn't whistle between my teeth as I waited.

It wasn't Jack. If it was Jack then I would never have heard him coming. I would never have seen him coming. He would simply be there, probably perching on the eaves of the cottage like some kind of gargoyle that would normally be seen on the side of a cathedral. I would have had enough time to see that he was there before his blade would have flashed in the night, then there would be pain, wetness and death.

But I had heard him and I strained to hear something else.

There it was. I nearly sobbed with the feeling of the weight lifting off my shoulders.

There was some horse tack jingling. It might have been a stirrup, or it might have been some reins or something equally as innocuous if we hadn't been waiting for it. But it was there. He was coming. There was no other reason for anyone, or anything to come to this cottage, at this time. The loose net of the Knights and guards that were watching would make sure of that. So it was him.

And then I saw it. A horse, being led cautiously forward and even more than that. I could see the figure that was leading it up the path and I almost laughed with it.

This was no supernatural being. This was just a man.

The shadows that the light from the cottage, that danced and flickered were just shadows. There were no wraiths waiting to jump out. They were just shadows cast by the dancing leaves in the wind and the guttering of the flame.

The rustling of things in the undergrowth were the early morning rodents looking for something to eat. Not arachnomorphs, kikkimores, Endregas or any of the other things that might skitter round in the darkness.

I felt the hunger in myself, the need for combat. I wanted to laugh, jump forward and attack this man, this… thing that was causing so much fear in Toussaint and I wanted to punish him for everything that had happened.

But that was not my role.

I reached out for Ariadne.

"He is here." I said, sending an image of what I could see.

She didn't respond. I simply felt her acknowledging the contact and the statement before she was gone. Off to make her own part clear.

I watched. The figure led his horse forward. He was bundled up against the cold and, I assumed, to preserve his anonymity. I cursed the lack of light that meant that I could not see his face. The guard was stamping his feet against the cold and was deliberately facing away. I couldn't tell if he had seen or heard anything yet but the figure was being cautious. He retreated when he saw the guard and led the horse to a tree. I watched carefully in the half light. The figure took something from behind the saddle and pulled it over his head and I cursed again. He was putting his mask on so that we couldn't see him. So even if the guard spotted something then…

But there was time.

The figure… I refused to think of him as Jack. The figure moved to his horse's head and stroked the horses nose. So, a war-trained horse. A scout's horse. Something that knew how to be quiet. Important information.

Then I watched as the figure crept towards the house. He took his time, he went round the side so that there were always obstacles between him and the guard. He moved with the wind so that there was no overt sound of movement. He was careful and he did indeed have a mask on. A hood of sackcloth with large holes cut for his eyes and mouth.

I had to stop myself from laughing again as he kept having to straighten the mask so that he could see out of it properly.

In this way, he crept up to the house and one of the windows so that he could peer through the cracks, tugging the mask tight so that he could see clearly.

As I watched, the sound of a young woman humming could be heard. It was a song that I had heard before. A song about young love and chaste kisses underneath the apple-blossoms.

I watched the figure carefully.

He was mostly already in his Jack costume. He was only missing the hat. He had a sword at his side although it was lacking the cane-sword aspect of the weapons that Jack traditionally carried. But a sword and a well made scabbard would do the trick. He was well dressed in dark clothes although he kept his dark cloak across his chest. That was another sign of his cleverness. There should be a white tunic or vest under there, maybe even in the pattern of a ribcage. He had hidden it so that it didn't reflect the light. But he was prepared in case he needed to be Jack suddenly.

He watched through the window for a little while before he retreated, the same way as he had come.

So… one man. Sent forward and by himself. One man who could be denied and easily sacrificed. Unless there were other men waiting in the trees. But I rather thought that this man was prepared to run. If it was a trap, he would fight his way clear before fleeing. That horse was going to be bred for speed and stamina, not for fighting.

The figure went back to his horse, changed his heavy cloak for a cape so as to look more flashy. I finally got a glimpse of his chest. Just a white tunic, no bone pattern.

I was oddly disappointed. If they were going to pretend to be Jack then the least they could do was to do the job properly.

He pulled out the hat and placed it firmly on his head before he literally did some limbering up exercises.

Then he turned back towards the cottage.

"Here we go." I sent towards Ariadne.

It started with laughter. Of course it did.

And if there had been any suspicion in my mind that it was actually Jack that we were dealing with, it would have dissolved in that moment. There was laughter but the laughter was not sinister. It was not scary or dramatic. It did not echo off the trees or seem to come from all around like some kind of omnipresent demon. It was kind of flat. The kind of laughter that happens when a superior officer or employer makes a joke and all the subordinates realise that they are expected to laugh.

It was not special laughter either and it was uncomfortably false. Like at a party when a man misreads the situation, starts laughing because everyone else is laughing and then doesn't stop in time. So that everyone else has stopped and he keeps laughing. Only, even worse, he then decides to double down and keeps on laughing.

It was embarrassing. I found myself feeling sorry for the person that was putting that… noise out. And then I wondered how this sort of thing would have actually worked for real. How would people fall for this kind of thing?

That is a question for wiser heads than my own. But I suppose it would start with admitting that people that are already terrified, do not need much of a suggestion to descend into panic and terror.

It started with laughter. A laughter which fell dead as it arrived.

The guard made us proud.

"Who's there?" He shouted into the night, brandishing his torch and managing to draw his sword on the second attempt. "Show yourself. Who's there, damn your eyes."

The laughter actually got an edge of genuine amusement to it. I was frantically trying to recognise the voice. If I could put a face and a name to it, it would make life all the easier. Again, we knew it wasn't Alain so…

"I demand that you show yourself." The guard was doing a passable impression of someone who was in the grips of a proper panic. Waving the torch around so much that it nearly guttered and went out. The kind of thing which would make it impossible to actually see if there was anything out there at all.

The laughter increased. "You know who's here." The voice said. I didn't recognise it, it was muffled and distorted in a way. "Jack" was disguising his voice which was interesting in and of itself. It meant that he was worried that his voice would be recognised.

"I am your worst nightmare." Jack called. A phrase that I always found a little funny. I've lived through some of my worst nightmares so that nowadays, my worst nightmare is Ariadne lying naked on a bed and beckoning to me, only for me to realise that I have been castrated and am bleeding to death from the injury.

That's my worst nightmare. Don't get me wrong, Jack emerging from some shadow with burning eyes and a hungry smile is right up there though. With blade dripping gore and my own severed head dangling from his other hand is a favourite. Part of the problem is that it often occurs when I am dreaming of something rather pleasant. Walking through Oxenfurt, sleeping in a lover's arms or something and then I will see Jack unfolding from the depths that are just behind the curtain.

But a man, a normal man, coming out of the woods in the dark was not even close to the top of my nightmares.

Having said all of that though, he was feeding off the fear in the guard's face. His laughter was becoming more maniacal, his language was becoming more purple and he was enjoying himself by darting around in the undergrowth so that his voice seemed to be coming from all over.

It was one of those things, now that I have some distance from these events, It reminds me of the way that the cult of the First-born kept the local villagers in line. When you removed the fear and the toxic gas that they put out as part of their attacks. What they actually looked like with their silly leather costumes and their drug-addled minds. With their shitty weapons and badly nourished horses. They actually looked quite ridiculous.

So watching this figure darting around in the undergrowth was rather comical. But if I was a villager, if I didn't know that it was just a man and that all I could hear was the voice calling out to me. Then it would be terrifying.

Suddenly, it was no longer as funny as it had been. I gripped my spear tightly and leant forward eagerly.

"I am going to kill you little guardsman. I am going to tear your guts out and string them from tree to tree. I am going to cut out your heart and consume it whole so that you can live in the underworld, far from the rays of the Golden sun, far from the redemptive light of any of your other puny gods and you will exist as my plaything. I shall keep you in the darkness where you will join all of the others that I have killed where a heartbeat is as long as years and when I grow bored with you, I shall return to this world and take your family as well. Do you have a family?"

The guard was whimpering now as he spun in place. I could no longer tell if he was acting or not.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" the guard screamed.

"Here." The voice called.

Sure enough, he was standing on the edge of the trees now. Jack had chosen the spot of his emergence well. The deepest and darkest hollow of trees was behind him and with the right amount of theatricality, it would appear as though he had emerged from the very depths of hell itself in order to torment the innocent.

He had his sword drawn, a slim, fast looking blade that glittered menacingly in the torchlight. There was a club held as an off-hand weapon and he stood there for a moment.

"I am torment." Jack told the guard. "I am pain and I am your death. You will not stand before me for I am Jack, come to…"

The guard dropped his sword and fled, his footsteps echoing through the night, crunching the dried dead leaves that littered his path.

Just for a moment, the comedy returned as Jack held his ready pose for a moment and then relaxed. As body language goes, this particular one was rather eloquent. "Oh." It said. "Well that was easy."

Then he shrugged and rolled his shoulders to resettle his cape around his shoulders before moving up towards the cottage.

The menace was back. He went low and quiet. Stealth that seemed a little bit redundant to me, especially after all the shouting and screaming there had been recently but again, I was being unfair. It is easy to think that you would do something sensible like "running the fuck away" when the intense situation comes up on you. But I am here to tell you that it is just as likely that in the heat of the terrifying moment, you will freeze in place and be unable to move. You will literally be shivering in terror, hoping against all reasonable expectation that the danger will have just gone away all by itself while you were worrying about something else.

But the danger never goes away. The monster really is still out there.

Jack approached the windows of the cottage and peered in before moving back on course towards the front door.

He levelled his blade for a quick lunge forward, planted his feet so that he could spring forward and then slowly, painfully slowly to my eyes, he reached forward and put his hand on the door.

Which exploded outwards under the impact of Guillaume charging through it in his full plate harness, broadsword drawn and shield properly seated on his arm.

It all happened fast. I scraped the blade of my spear into the flint at my feet which sent sparks into the oiled brush that we had circled the clearing with in advance. The fear that the, to us, rather pungent smell would give the game away to the attacking conspiracy was long forgotten as the fire raced round forming a ring of fire giving light and enclosure so that "Jack" had nowhere to go.

At the same time, there was the thunderclap, whooshing, sucking noise of a magical portal being opened. That would be Ariadne taking Countess off and back to the palace where she would be safe.

"SURRENDER VILLAIN." Guillaume yelled and yes, he really did yell that. "Surrender and you will be spared."

I caught up my spear and used the woodpile that I had been hiding behind as a platform and springboard to clear the flames and enter the circle to stand with Guillaume.

The fire was the signal. There were lookouts posted who would see the flame. They in turn would pass the word to where the Knight Commander was waiting with her hand-picked cadre of Knights and the trap was sprung.

I blinked,

"NOT NOW." I screamed at myself.

I blinked again, and the memory was on me.

I had been right. The Duchess had not liked my plan. She had sworn at me briefly and with venom. Her mood was not helped by the fact that Syanna agreed with me and said it was a good idea. But the Duchess had support this time.

"That's preposterous." De La Tour protested. "It cannot be allowed."

"Why not?" Syanna demanded. "Why is it preposterous and why can it not be allowed? She is a citizen of Toussaint."

"And as a citizen of Toussaint it is our duty to protect her and keep her safe. The Prophet preserve me but she is now the presumptive heir to the Ducal throne. Even if the Duchess does have another heir in mind."

"The Duchess doesn't have another heir in mind." I said. I know it was me because everyone turned to look at me. "Or at least if she does, they are much further down the list than young Countess Vasseur."

The pall of silence that greeted that statement was profound. It fell over the room more suddenly and more completely than if someone had dropped a Witcher bomb.

"Fuck," I said. "Did I say that out loud? I really need to get some more sleep."

The Duchess had turned away at some point although I don't know when.

"Explain." She said. "Finish your thought Lord Frederick."

I sighed.

"It's masterful really." I said. "It has fallen even better because of what recent circumstances have led to. If anything her torment plays into your hands, and hers for that matter in the long run."

The Duchess used the oldest trick in the book. The same trick that I have commented on in the past, the same trick that I have used myself in order to get what I wanted out of someone. She said nothing. And I was compelled to fill in the silence.

"In court, you have been telling people for ages that you have an heir and that she agrees with you. It might be that you said that "they" agree with you on your various policies and things but I don't think that that matters. Everyone would easily assume that your heir is the Knight Commander but I don't think that works. With all due respect to the Knight Commander, she is a known traitor to the Duchy and although many have forgiven her and though she works to redeem herself in the eyes of the populace…"

"And in my own eyes." Syanna muttered.

"There is no way that the Lords, even the ones that agree with you. Would stand for a Duchess that actually set out to overthrow her predecessor.

"So I think that you have always had an alternative waiting in the wings as it were. It was even commented on earlier when we were talking about the young Countess. It is a very Toussaint story. She's out there, in the woods, the long forgotten princess and heir to the throne. Learning how the common people work, learning how the nobility used to be from her father. Her mother, heart-broken at the distance that was forced on her by the corruption of the existing system who is, nevertheless, paving the path ready for her daughter's return while seeing to her needs of education.

"And now comes the moment, the big reveal. She is brought back to court, circumstances dictate that she is a little early to return but still, brought back to court in the wake of the tragedy of her father's death. It's a powerful story.

"Or it would be if it wasn't also exactly the same story that your enemies were telling to the public as a whole. I don't know what Alain, or… whoever, had on the late Count. Maybe they were able to play on the bitterness that the Count still feels or felt towards the court. Or maybe they were able to convince him that they were part of the circumstances that would bring his daughter to the throne. Or maybe they were able to convince him that they were on board, but that if she married one of theirs before she was sent to court. Then that would be the revenge on the Duchess that deserted him."

"If the girl is of the Ducal family and blood." Damien said.

"I don't think that matters any more." I replied. "Especially with what the Duchess has just done. Those people that want to believe that Lady Caroline is the Duchess' daughter will not believe or entertain anything that suggests anything to the contrary. Nor will anyone who believes that she is not. Such is the mark of a good conspiracy theory. There is evidence that the Duchess is just seeing to the promise that was once made to an old friend, no matter whether she wishes to honour that promise or not. There is also evidence that proves that she is a caring mother who is finally righting an old wrong, reuniting her with her long lost daughter.

"People see what they want to see. If I was being particularly paranoid, I would even make some predictions. The Duchess will be a remote, but caring mother, seeing to her daughter's every need and being loving when she can be together with her. In the meantime, the Knight Commander is going to be the affectionate big sister role. She will be taught about life and then, in a few years, the young adopted daughter will travel to the Nilfgaardian capital where she will learn at the feet of her "cousin" the Empress. I would further predict that she will come back from that with several foreign suitors on the hook, master of her own destiny and more than capable of smacking the shit out of any uppity Knights who want to bring up old scandals. Literally with sword and dagger, and figuratively in court and banquet.

"She is the Duchess' daughter now and that is the end of the matter. Even if it is only by adoption. And anyone who insults or doubts that, tries to play it off as being somehow lesser, will face the full wrath of the Duchess, the Knights Francesca who will, by that point, be utterly devoted to her, the Knight Commander herself and the Empress. An Empress who has already upended Toussaint culture once in her reign."

Damien grunted.

"The Knight Commander will have her charmed by the end of the week." I went on. "Especially if we are able to help the, forgive me, help the girl to get some justice, or failing that, some revenge. And the future of the Knights Francesca is assured. The future that the Empress, and yourself Your Grace, set in motion last year will be continued in the way that you want it to be continued. The heir will even be properly outraged at the seduction and assault of her person. She will be furious that it is perfectly possible for people to take advantage of young women in her position. I would imagine that the next stage of things will be that fathers of bastard children must be held accountable for the bastard children that they father. That a noble "taking advantage" of the young women or the families that work his fields will be called the rape that it is and treated with the proper criminal degrees. And before she's done, whoever the Lady Caroline will marry will be called "Ducal Consort" rather than Duke, and Toussaint will become a Matriarchy."

Silence fell again.

Of all people, it was Guillaume that cleared his throat.

"Speaking as a man who is happily, and knowingly, married to a woman that is considerably smarter than me. That's not necessarily a bad thing. After all, before we worshipped the Prophet and the sun, we worshipped the "Lady" in the lake. It was she that gave us the tenets of Knighthood and the cup that graces our flag. It was also she that gave the Aerondight to those first Knights that scoured the lands of evil and have since given it to the heroes that deserve it."

"Why Guillaume." Syanna grinned. "I never knew you had it in you."

"I am a simple man and I like simple things. Some men have the mind for this kind of nonsense, but I find that the good ones hate it, even when they do."

"Even if everything you say is true." Damien said, bringing us back to the topic at hand. "There is still the problem that faces us. You want us to use that young girl who, as you suggest, is very possibly the future of Toussaint, as bait for the trap?"

""Want" is a strong word." I said. ""Need" is better. The conspiracy will kill a girl tonight. I think they want to kill this one. If they come after the one that we know about,then we can defend her, ensure her safety and possibly catch the attempted killer. If we just have her vanish, then they will look for someone else and find them. There are plenty to choose from after all."

"How do we set the trap?" Damien wondered and I nearly cheered with delight. They agreed with me.

"We use their exposed thread." Syanna told him. "Alain is still downstairs, trading between the dungeon demanding that Kerrass should be released and the courtroom, trying to find someone who will believe him when he says that Kerrass should be released."

"Yes, why is he trying to get Kerrass released I wonder." De La Tour mused before shaking his head. "I know a good place for an ambush though. A local gamekeeper's cottage is often empty over the winter. We can leak it to Alain that we are hiding the Countess there."

"How?" Syanna wondered.

"I'll do it." Guillaume climbed to his feet. "I will moan about the status of everything and about how we can't pursue things to their proper lengths without the proper back up. I will say that an important witness that we want to talk to regarding the murders is in that cottage, and I think I know which cottage Damien is talking about. He will ask what witness and so I will give a physical description, he will take the bait."

"Lying Guillaume." I teased. "To another Knight no less."

Guillaume shrugged. "To an enemy Freddie. Deceiving an enemy is perfectly acceptable."

"Knights and their honour." Syanna snorted. "You sure you can carry that off Guillaume?"

"I can lie to a traitor Commander."

"Will the girl agree to the trap?"

"I have only spent a short amount of time with her Captain." Guillaume told him."But I note two things. First, she is a lady of Toussaint, no matter her birth, and is of sterner stuff than her enemies have credited her with. Second, she is angry and wants to take the fight to her enemy. In fact, angry is not the right word. Furious would be closer. She is too well mannered and educated in the ways of being a proper lady to be hissing and spitting like a cat, but she's not far off. If we offer her a chance to be part of the destruction of her enemies, she will jump at the task. She will literally snap our hands off in her eagerness."

Syanna was nodding. "I had the same impression. Reminded me of her mother in that way." She tried to catch her sister's eye who hadn't moved. Syanna shrugged. "Alright, let's get this done."

"Wait." The Duchess spoke for the first time since I had told everyone my plan. Then she turned on me. She looked like she had aged. "Every work Freddie." She said. "Print every word."

Then she turned on her sister.

"Caroline's safety is your first, second, third, fourth and every priority." She ordered. There is a difference between her "ordering voice" and her normal voice. "Catching whoever is masquerading as Jack is a bonus. If even one hair…"

"I know." Syanna told her sister. "I know." Then she was the Commander again. "But I will not be held responsible if that means that we lose Jack."

"Preventing an attack is just as much a victory." The Duchess said.

"Alright. But you get to convince Sir Morgan and the rest of the court that."

"Bring her back safely." The Duchess snarled, overriding the genial atmosphere. "Or hope that the passes are clear enough for you to escape my anger."

I blinked.

Barely a heartbeat had passed.

Guillaume was just finishing settling himself. He was fighting with a shield which meant that he led with his left rather than his right. He had just finished swinging his blade round in a forehand swipe and back with a speed that made the air scream with the passage and he settled into a position with the sword held high above the shield.

"I mean it," he called over the sound of the roaring flame. "I am authorised by the Duchess and by the Knight Commander to make a deal for clemency and mercy if you put up your sword and come along with us. However this offer exp…"

Jack had started laughing. This was genuine laughter now, not the false, faked, forced laughter that he had been using earlier. This was the real, belly laughter. He literally bent over at the waist with it.

"I see." Guillaume said. "Then I'm afraid…"

Jack attacked him. He dropped the off-hand weapon, presumably so that he could focus on the blade. His sword was blindingly fast, flickering in the light of the flame as it swept forward towards Guillaume's neck.

I put away some more information. Even as it was clear that I was outmatched and that the best thing I could do during this confrontation was to stay out of the way. I would only interfere with what Guillaume was trying to do. I would be an obstacle, a distraction and maybe even a hostage.

But this man, this… imposter that was masquerading as Jack. He was already a fascinating figure. He could obviously move with lightning speed. Helped by the fact that he wore no armour that I could see and that his sword was light and flexible. It did not need to be wound up in the same way that Guillaume's broadsword did. Which implied a sabre or rapier style weapon.

Kerrass had once told me of these weapons. "Easy to learn," he said. "Impossible to master. A wound from such a thing can usually be ignored for long enough to get a man to healer, unless the swordsman is good enough to be fatal with it and strike something that will cause you to bleed to death, or to stike at the heart, brain or any of the other things that can lead to instant weakness or death. Be wary of such men, they are faster than you."

I also marked him as having some kind of martial training. This man was experienced at the killing. He knew what he was doing and I would guess that he had killed a number of people before, many even with a blade in his, and their, hands. I knew this because it takes a particular kind of mind to attack someone else when they are talking. Guillaume knew this which is why he had tried to keep his opponent talking giving enough time for the reinforcements to arrive.

I don't know if "Jack" had spotted the ruse or had simply attacked because he believed that Guillaume would not be ready. But he attacked anyway.

I would have been caught if that had happened to me. I sometimes take pride in the fact that I am not as hardened a killer as some. I would prefer to not have to fight and I would certainly rather not have to kill. I had gone to some bad places and I had fallen a long way from the early days when I collected the names of every man that I had killed during my journeys with Kerrass. But I still, would far rather not have to kill anyone.

But I would have died there and then. I would have been caught out. I would have assumed that I was well out of range of even the most… athletic of fighters.

Kerrass would have been prepared. It was easy for me to imagine an explosion of golden light as his shield would have exploded in a shower of sparks while he would already have been moving into his own attack.

Guillaume simply twisted slightly and the blade skittered off his gorget.

Jack had expected this though and followed on with several other strikes at what I would guess would have been vulnerable spots. I remembered way back when Kerrass had fought against William the Ram and how he had defeated the young Knight by attacking the joints of the armour and those places where the body was weakest. I could not see, given my angle as to where the strikes were aimed, but if I had to guess, it would have been eyes, armpit, groin and back to the neck again. It was blindingly fast. The effect was made worse by the flames dancing in the metal.

To my eyes, Guillaume didn't seem to move. Just small shifts in posture. Tiny little things, a twist of the body, a shift of the shield. The strike aimed at his eyes I knew about because Guillaume literally ducked into it so that the blade glanced off the top of his helmet.

Jack was still laughing as he danced backwards. Kerrass' training was paying off. I saw the "warrior's tell" where Jack, whoever he was, realised that he was not up against some simple soldier but against someone skilled and experienced. He rolled his shoulder and spun his sword. The laughter had shifted into one of delight.

"I meant it." Guillaume said, keeping well out of range of the other man. "And I still mean it. Except that this is your last chance. You have yet to do lasting harm to yourself or to others. Surrender now and I will speak to the Duchess on your behalf. Continue to fight and I cannot be responsible for your safety."

I could feel Jack grin. I knew it, I sensed it. I felt it. He leant forward into a resting position, a traditional "guard" posture for a man with a rapier. Hilt high, blade almost parallel with the point just down from the horizontal. Off hand ready and parallel to the blade, ready to catch a rist and parry a weapon.

Yes, if you are skilled, you can parry a sword with a hand or a sword arm. It's risky, especially if you are not carrying an arming glove which would be traditional in that situation.

The off hand twisted until the hand could beckon Guillaume forward.

"Very well." Guillaume said as he himself moved forward.

And they were off.

I have only, really, seen two examples of Knights with all of their equipment on, properly fighting. Those men who can afford full plate armour are rare and far between anyway so that many men, and some women in these more modern times, can call themselves Knights, but few have the capability to carry the full and expected weight of that title. By which I mean, segmented plate and chainmail harness. It's an impressive thing. Impossibly heavy unless you are trained into it and even those people that have the stuff very rarely get the opportunity to… show it off, as it were. This is because when the enemies are attacking, there is not really enough time to go through all the faff of putting the stuff on.

Far simpler to shrug into a shirt of chain mail and hop to it. Harness comes on for battles when the two armies have lined up the night before and men have time to get properly geared up.

So I have seen, and fought, men in armour before and they generally move around much like men without armour. Trusting that when they miss a block, or a parry, that there will be enough leather, fur or whatever to prevent the resulting injury from being deadly. There is even a school of thought that, with improvements to metal working and the sciences of proper smelting making armour more affordable and common, that there will soon be a need for the science of war to counter the increasingly common protections.

But I am digressing again. So I have seen two men in full harness properly fighting. And by properly fighting I mean fighting for their lives. The fight of the Knights Errant versus Jack was not a proper fight. That was a mob, a massacre and a massive travesty. Those men didn't fight properly. They were reaching for glory and… well… Glory came for them.

The first was William the Ram, all that time ago. At the time, I remember thinking that it was an impressive sight. I remember thinking that this was how all Knights fought and I remember thinking that they would be an impressive force on the battlefield. The people around me at the time certainly seemed to believe that the results of that formal duel between William and Kerrass was a foregone conclusion.

Now that I look back, I wonder about it. Especially in the light of comparison to seeing Guillaume (and others but we will get to that) fight. I have also been in a number of fights myself since then and am forced to wonder if I could go back and watch that fight again, would I see the same things.

Now I feel as though what I saw was an arrogant young man. Undoubtedly talented but arrogant with it. He had every reason to as well. He was better than the majority of his peers. He was the favoured suitor of the woman that he desired. His armour was expensive and well made and his sword would probably cleave through the average man.

He also had the arrogance of his caste. He had been brought up to believe that common born men were lesser to him. That Witchers were filthy mutants that would not and could not stand up to a proper Knight in proper armour. No more could a farmer with a scythe and a pitchfork.

And Kerrass had shown him the error of that. Guillaume had spoken of the moment when arrogance had fled, except William had not seen that.

And now I had someone to compare it to.

The major difference was the economy of movement which was startling and it wasn't until I figured out what was happening that I could see the sense of it. I had been thinking in terms of his sword and his shield being the weapons and the method of defence. But in the body of Guillaume, he was using his armour as well. His armour became a shield and weapon in and of itself. The odd shapes in the vambraces and gauntlets started to make more sense. The ridge on the elbows would make elbow strikes deadly. The sake with the sharpened toes on the boots and the knees.

The odd angles and curves were designed so that weapons glanced off rather than struck home and caused bruises.

For his part, Jack moved with a lightning degree of speed. His flickering blade struck sparks off Guillaume's armour, gouging marks and dents into the heavy metal but at the same time. I wondered if Guillaume even felt any of them. I wonder if he could even hear anything. (He had taught himself to lip read so that he could understand it when people try to surrender)

And he moved towards "Jack" with the inexorable, unstoppable force of a boulder rolling down hill.

Jack was everything that I had expected. Moving, dancing, striking in and falling back with a speed that dazzled the eye. Shifting out of the reach of Guillaume's blade, sometimes by inches. He was no longer laughing now as, I presumed, he was saving all of his breath and concentration for the fight.

There was a different feel to their movements. When Kerrass fights, every attack is a parry and every parry is an attack. I am told that this is a good philosophy for most weapons. It is certainly how I think with my spear.

But these men didn't do that. The only clash of metal was when Jack's sword struck armour or shield. Jack never parried Guillaume's movements which seemed slow in comparison. Slow, but far from clumsy.

The only way I can describe it is watching the fight... It was like a young child dancing with an elderly grandmother. The child was all bouncing around with energy and drama while the older woman still knew all the movements but moved slowly and with astonishing grace.

A lot of this analysis came afterwards. The fight moved so quickly that I could barely see it.

Jack was keeping his blade out of the way of Guillaume's. If he tried to parry, or even block, Guillaume's much larger sword, then it might break.

And that was the difference.

I followed them around the circle of fire, spear ready and in guard. But at a careful distance. I wanted to be there in order to leap forward and support Guillaume if I needed to, if he mistimed his own steps in the movements and Jack's blade found something deadly. But not so close that Jack could change direction and get to me.

I don't know when the shift in the fight was. I didn't catch the movement but something happened. Guillaume was constantly trying to close the distance with Jack and Jack was always dancing out of the way. It had become a meeting of minds as they tried to out-think each other and watching it, I could not tell you who was winning. I don't think that Jack could hurt Guillaume, but I also couldn't see how Guillaume would close without Jack making a mistake.

The balance was on Guillaume's side. The way Guillaume moved, suggested that he could keep this going all day, and night. But Jack? His way of fighting was acrobatic and time was not on his side. The Knights on our side would be closing in. I don't know if he knew this or what, but it started to become clear that Jack was hurt.

There was no blood or anything. I didn't see what caused it but I realised that Jack was not being as acrobatic as he had been. He was moving awkwardly, limping slightly. Some kind of muscle thing happening. Maybe a twist or a strain or any of the other things that can happen when your body doesn't quite do as it's told.

Guillaume saw it too.

"Surrender." He called again. "Surrender now."

Jack tried to move to the attack again, but even I could see that his lunge was not as steady as it had been nor was it as accurate.

And finally, at last, I could see the shape of the fight. I could feel the difference and the things that were happening. It was no longer a mystery to me what the gambits were and the moves and the countermoves. I could understand.

"Jack" knew what was going on now. He knew that he had been trapped and he also knew that Guillaume was delaying him. He knew that every move, every parry and every thrust were about keeping him in one place so that he could be properly captured. He knew that. So his strikes, parries and thrusts were all based around trying to make enough room between Guillaume and himself so that he could get away.

If he just turned and ran straight away then the danger was that Guillaume would be able to get a good clean cut into the man's side, some kind of flat of the blade thing into the legs or some other kind of… non fatal injury that could be patched up by a field surgeon, which was undoubtedly on the way.

Guillaume was the opposite player in this and more of his previous style of fighting came into shape. He was not fighting to kill his opponent, which always leaves a person at a disadvantage, he was fighting to contain him. He was fighting to keep him on his toes and keep him engaged. So all of his movements were about conserving energy while keeping him close enough to his enemy for it to still be a threat. Now that I was looking for it, I could see that he was primed to spring. Ready so that if "Jack" just turned and made a run for it, that Guillaume could cast his weapons aside and tackle the other man to the ground. In another situation it might be risky. In any other situation it might be risky. But if "Jack" was armoured at all, then it was only light armour. There was no sign of a secondary weapon…

As a note: Always carry a secondary weapon for precisely this reason. If someone tackles you to the ground then your weapon might go flying. Which is not great. And if it's an armoured man on top of you then you need to get that dagger out and start working on the gaps in the armour. You would be astonished as to how many real fights and battlefield "Knightly" duels are finished in exactly this way. There is even a problem that is well known in certain circles which is the balancing act between number of secondary weapons against the amount of weight that that entails. No, I'm not going to tell you how many weapons I carry.

… So If Guillaume would tackle him to the ground, then all the advantages would be in favour of Guillaume. He would be heavier, more protected from random flailing and all he would have to do would be to hold tight until the support turned up. He couldn't just cast things aside now and go for it. THat would be far too dangerous on the grounds that if he missed then he would be lying on his face listening to Jack's laughter. Or, "Jack" had proven that he was fast and accurate with that sword, casting aside the defences could lead leaving Jack an open shot into any of the weaknesses in the armour of a Knight.

Yes, there are always some. A Knight has to move of course.

And time was on Guillaume's side. Capturing Jack was not his problem any more. It was the problem of the incoming reinforcements to try and capture him.

And I finally found a way that I could be useful. I started to edge forward and around. Spear extended, held solidly at just below the level of "Jack's Face so that to get to me, he would need to run almost directly onto the spear. It takes a lot for a man to force himself to do that.

And then I edged slowly towards him and at an angle to try and steer him away from the direct line towards his horse.

It also meant that he had someone else that he was having to pay attention to. The entire thing could fall apart if Jack heard the people that were coming to help us. If he realised that and managed to get away before the net was properly tight. So the more weights on his mind the better.

But I was not fooled into false confidence. This man could still run me through without really thinking about it.

So I crept forward. Slowly and surely. Just as I wanted to distract "Jack". I didn't want to distract Guillaume.

I don't know who it was. I don't know what it was that gave it all away.

Jack's head jerked up suddenly but he had to scramble backwards from Guillaume who was still coming for him after the distraction. He parried and dodged desperately for a moment or two, his limp increasing exponentially. He was good. Very good. I could not have avoided those sword movements. Even Kerrass would have struggled I think, but "Jack" managed it. Dodging aside quickly, bending at angles that I would have thought impossible so that Guillaume's sword spun over his head.

I sprang forward. Some instinct told me that this was the decisive moment and that if we were going to take this man alive then now was the time. I tried to come at Jack from the right angles on Guillaume's left so that I could use the shield and I was in less danger from Guillaume's own blade.

Jack saw the movement and Guillaume's blade finally managed to strike flesh. There was a spray of dark blood in the firelight. Not much but there was some certainly and Jack staggered away. Spinning, he tore his own cloak from his back and hurled it over Guillaume in an effort to foul the blade.

Now I know that, in theory, this sounds like a move of genius. I also know that there is a school of fencing developing in one of the small city states that make up the Hengfors league that is trying to come up with a way of fighting with a sword in one hand and a cloak in the other. The purpose of the cloak is to try and foul the blade and distract the fighter. To put them off their game or to otherwise bewilder them with the flashing, flapping cloth and the snapping sounds that a man can make.

Kerrass' assessment of that kind of technique was that it would be an interesting technique if you are dealing with a rapier or a polearm of some kind. But a sharp, a really sharp sword would cut through the cloth. He suggested that it would be much more useful for a cloak to be wrapped around the forearm to aid in the parrying of a weapon so that the fighter could get in nice and close.

It was a move of desperation. The move of a desperate man but bugger me if it didn't work. Guillaume lost a precious two heartbeats clearing the fouled weapon. He moved sideways as he did so, leaving me room to strike as I ran forward.

"Jack" whistled and his horse screamed, snapping the branch that it was tied to before barrelling through the undergrowth towards it's master. And when a warhorse was trying to get toward's it's master, it barely noticed the skinny little scholar that was in the way.

There was plenty of luck flying around that night. Plenty of luck. "Jack" had his share, Guillaume had his shaire in that Jack did not bother wasting time in stabbing Guillaume while his weapon was fouled. My luck? I was struck by the shoulder of the horse which meant that I was sent to the side rather than under the hooves. I owe my survival to that piece of sheer luck and good fortune.

I had enough time to see Jack swing into the saddle in what had to have been a practised maneuver. Even to the point where he didn't use his injured leg.

Guillaume leapt forward, desperately reaching for the horse, the rider, anything that he could get his hands on but the horse danced sideways. Jack threw us an ironic salute before turning his horse and diving away.

Guillaume sighed and sheathed his sword before bellowing.

"Blood trail." Into the night. Someone must have heard it because there was some answering shouting. He nodded and came over to me.

"Are you alright?" He wondered.

I gasped at him. The breath having been driven out of me by an impact. I have no idea which one. The horse or the impact with the ground were equal suspects.

He checked me over before nodding. "Maybe a bruised rib or something."

"Ariadne will be thrilled. "I wheezed. "More excuses to keep me in bed. Did we get him?"

"Too early to tell." Guillaume said, staring off into the night. "Prophet's balls but I enjoyed that."

"He was good." I muttered.

"Very good." Guillaume agreed happily. "Trained, and experienced. If I hadn't had to take him alive then I could even have had some fun with that. The added challenge of keeping him alive though added some spice to the mixture."

"He got away." I moaned.

"Possibly." Guillaume told me. "Although if he did, you and I are not to blame. We did well, all things told. Syanna will agree with us and protect us from the Duchess' wrath."

"Will she be angry? The Duchess I mean.

"Furious." Guillaume grinned at me. "The more so because of all the people that were involved in tonight's planning. She was the one that wouldn't let us commit to it properly. She will be angry with herself and that will fall onto someone else."

"Something to look forward to."

After that, there was nothing for the pair of us to do really other than to sit and wait for everything to come in. Also for me to get my breath back and for the bruise to start to appear on my side. I was right, Ariadne was going to be furious with me.

Almost as furious as the Knight Commander was when she arrived, ranting at another Knight who was still wearing their full face plate.

"I want to find out which idiot it was that gave the game away. I want to know who it was and I want them to stand in front of me while they explain to me why it was necessary to stand on the dry twig in that particular instance."

"It can't have been a twig ma'am." The Knight protested. "The forest is well curated and…"

"Then someone farted. Find out who it was and bring them here. Because if they don't end up facing me then they are going to end up facing my sister and the difference between the two of us is that I'm not allowed to execute people."

The Knight fled.

"You two alright?" She demanded as she walked up.

"Bruised." I said.

"I'm fine." Guillaume said. "He was good though. Very good."

"How good?"

"He was trained." Guilllaume said. "A normal horse wouldn't break the branch it was tied to to get to it's master if it wasn't trained to it. He fought well. He wasn't perfect and I think that if he had the choice then he would have used a different sword. Certainly unused to off-hand weapons. And he was hampered by a few things. I think he has some form of old injury that plays up if he fights for too long."

Syanna was nodding, taking in the information for relay.

Much like I was.

"Good horseman too. He knew what he was doing. He recognised the plays and was brave enough to play for time. Not many people would stand up to me in a straight fight. Let alone without armour or proper arms."

Syanna nodded at this too. One of those things that just seemed as though everyone knew. Don't fuck with Sir Guillaume kiddies.

"What else?"

"I think he was older." Guillaume said. "A man who depended on past abilities but whose body has begun to fail him. And…" Guillaume paused before nodding. "I don't think he was from Toussaint. He moved differently and I have fought all the men that could do what he did in Toussaint. I didn't recognise his style."

Syanna nodded. "A ringer then. A hired sword?"

"Maybe." Guillaume mused. "We should see if any of them are in town."

Syanna stood there for a while staring into the growing dawn.

"He got away." She decided. "If we haven't caught him by now…"

She swore and kicked the floor before swearing a bit more. "If my sister had allowed us to set up the ambush inside the house we would have had him. More men, freeing up Fringilla for the use..."

"She didn't want to risk…"

"I know who she didn't want to risk." Syanna snarled. Guillaume visibly decided that discretion was the better part of valour. "We could have had him and the risk to Caroline would have been minimal at best. Fuck, we could have done a disguise or Ariadne could have done an illusion."

"You cannot blame a woman for protecting…" I tried. Not being able to help myself.

"No." Syanna calmed instantly. "No, I suppose not."

She sighed. "What are we going to do now?"

"First." I said, climbing to my feet. "We get Kerrass out of prison. With that many witnesses, we can prove that Kerrass wasn't Jack."

"We know that there are probably multiple people out there being Jack." Guillaume warned.

"Yes, but neither our enemies, nor the rest of the people know that we know that. So we have proven his innocence and Kerrass has skills that we need. He might have suggestions but after that." I allowed myself a small smile. "I have an idea or two."

(A/N: Believe it or not, there is no commentary on world politics in this chapter. Thanks for reading and I will see you all soon)