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

146. Chapter 146

(Warning: Anecdotal recounting of suicide along with anecdotal scenes of people dying in some quite grisly ways

A/N: Sorry for the delay. I am aware that I seem to be saying that a lot recently, but there is a lot of life happening at the moment. Added to that is that there are actually two chapters coming as part of the aftermath. The second will come when it is edited and formatted. Thanks for your patience.)

I have something to say before I talk about the closing stages of the investigation into Jack and before I detail the, frankly, disturbing and horrific events that took place in the weeks after the night of Colonel Duberton's capture.

There is something that I want to say and it concerns the fate of one of the victims of the Jack conspiracy. Specifically, about the girl who was masquerading as the wife of Colonel Duberton in the lead up to the final, climactic events. The girl who was there to throw us off the scent. The girl who was murdered in a way so horrible, that my vampiric betrothed had to remove herself from the presence of those people who committed those acts. Why? She feared that she would lose her composure and tear out the spines of the people responsible.

The girl who was there, just as a body, because she was the right height, the right body shape and because she had the right colour hair. The conspirators didn't care about who she was. They didn't care about her history, where she came from or what she was doing before she was forced to play her part in what happened. She fit a physical requirement for them and when they no longer needed her, or rather when they found a purpose for her beyond her initial remit, she was disposed of in such a way that it causes nightmares.

The worst of it? The part that still keeps me up at night with self loathing and disgust?

It took us nearly two weeks to find out who she was.

Just some girl.

Two weeks. Far too long.

I have a number of regrets in my life. I know that the priests and the scholars and the philosophers tell you to live your life with no regrets. It is good advice, never regret doing something or not doing something as the case may be. However, I also think that such a directive is an, all but, impossible task to set yourself.

I have a number of regrets. I didn't reconcile with my father when he was still alive. I did not love Ariadne immediately and instead allowed myself to be ruled by fear. I have not done enough to keep my family together…

I did not save Francesca.

Those are the big ones really and people can tell me the logical reasons as to why none of those things happened. They can point out the very real truth that there is little to no chance that my Father and I would have reconciled while he was healthy. We were too different, we disagreed on too many things, the list goes on and on.

Ariadne is the first to argue that there was a deep, intense, instinctual and above all physical reaction to the presence of an Elder Vampire in my life. My entire being rebelled against the prospect of being in the same room with her, let alone being more intimate. It still does sometimes, in the deep parts of the night when all is dark and still. When the light of the Eternal Flame seems so very far away.

And my family is my family. Yes, I could have done more. I could always have done more. But it takes more than one person to break down a relationship. Sooner or later the other people need to put in some work too.

I'm not going to talk about Francesca. Soon, I hope, maybe. But not now.

Those are the big regrets. There are others. Of course there are others. An alarming amount of them are regrets of the moment. Even though if I had done the thing that I regret not doing, or not done the thing that I regret doing, then my life would be violently different now. There are girls that I look back at and think "They were into me," with the benefits of hindsight and more experience. But if I had acted on that, would I now be engaged to the most amazing woman on the continent and maybe the world?

There are friends that I have lost touch with, battles that I should have fought and others that I should have left alone. Small battles, in the halls of homes and churches, streets and gardens.

In just about every case though, there is an argument as to why this thing that I did or did not do was entirely justified. I can argue that, in that time and place, I could not have done anything other than what I did. That I am looking back with the perfect vision of hindsight and the accumulated knowledge of all that has happened since. There are people, even now, who are prepared to argue with me, that these things are the case.

Apart from this one.

It took us nearly two weeks to find out who she was.

Just some girl.

Everyone involved regrets that it took us quite as long as it did. Even more than that, we also all regret that we didn't prevent the horror that she went through. Even those of us that had no idea that there was a problem. Even those of us for whom it was not our duty to find her, protect her and see to her safety. We all felt and feel responsible that we did not do those very things. We did not find her, protect her or see her to safety.

We didn't even know her name.

Just some girl.

Like all of those other petty regrets, there are people that are climbing over themselves to tell us why it was not our fault. People telling us why we shouldn't hold ourselves responsible for what happened to "Just some Girl." Every single one of them is correct. But that doesn't stop us from feeling the guilt and the horror of what happened, why it was allowed to happen and everything that was involved.

The first excuse that we tell ourselves is a familiar one to me. The Witcher's response to this kind of thing. They say that it is impossible for a person to save everyone. If you try, then there is a real possibility that you will go mad, or that you will end up making yourself ill or injuring yourself in the effort. It is the same excuse that Kerrass tells himself every time that someone dies when he feels that he should have saved them.

The next excuse is a weaker one but it is true nonetheless. We simply didn't know that she needed our help. Although true, that is scant comfort to those people that have lost their loved one. We didn't know that she needed our help. If we had then we would have done something about it. Of course we would have.

But we didn't, and there is more than enough of an argument to be made that we should have known. We should… But we did not.

After that, it breaks down into smaller excuses and explanations. All of them true and none of them adequate in the minds of those of us who feel responsible for what happened to her. I was sick. Kerrass was dealing with his own frailties and the recovery from everything that had happened. Ariadne was focusing on me and my recovery.

Syanna, Damien, the Knights and the guard all blame themselves and regard it as their failure. But they were under the pressure of the court to find the killer. They were under pressure from the townsfolk, the merchants, the villagers and the vineyard owners to get the problem of Jack solved. All the while they were doing all of that, they were also expected to keep the lands of Toussaint free of bandits, monsters and everything else. So it is not unfair to say that they had their hands full in dealing with the minutiae of protecting a realm. When taking all of this into account, it is easy to understand that the fate of one girl would have slipped their notice.

The other officers and Knights of the 4th Alba division were heartbroken when they found out what happened. They joined the Knights and the guard in the search for "Just some girl." There was an outbreak of fights and small violence taking place as some people, not as civic minded as the rest of us, who bemoaned the effort of what was going on. The questioning and the searching. "It's just one girl" they would say. "Why are you worried about Just some girl?" and then, in a rage, the soldier of the 4th would turn on the complainer and have to be pulled off the speaker by their colleagues.

Those people that had hoped that Toussaint would return to normal after the unmasking of Jack, the many… many arrests that took place afterwards and it becoming public that there were actually multiple Jacks and that… yes, we had indeed caught them all. Those people looked around themselves at the small nation that was entering a state of mourning and sighed.

Nearly two weeks. It took nearly two weeks to find out who she was.

The Duchess took it really hard. When Francesca had been taken, she had become almost ascetic. Removing signs of wealth from the palace, wearing simple dresses and minimal makeup. I wrote, many times, that I thought she looked better for those changes.

We spoke about it a couple of times and she admitted that there had been some comfort in the Laughing Jack incident. There had obviously been some magical power in evidence there and as a result of which, it was actually quite reassuring. Laughing Jack, the night of the Long Fangs. Those things were carried out by inhuman monsters. By magical powers that were beyond the capacity of understanding for your average person.

But this? These crimes had been committed by men. Normal men with normal drives, ambitions and desires. She even admitted that she had once been skeptical of the regular trend in the works of the bard. The same bard that she still does not care to name. The works where the obvious and regular theme of the story is that the real monsters of the story are not the spirits, the beasts or the twisted abominations that climb out of the horror to do… whatever. The real monsters are the people that are involved in such things. She had always hated those themes. But now that she had seen it for herself, on multiple occasions, she was forced to admit that there was truth to be found in that sentiment.

She took to wearing black. She decreed a period of mourning. When courtiers asked her who she was mourning she would tell them that she was mourning "Just some girl." When they would then tell her that her reaction seemed a bit extreme for some nameless woman and wondered when the period of mourning would be over, she would get angry. Just for a moment, her eyes would flash and her face would become hard and stern before her eyes would fall.

"I mourn for Toussaint." She says. "For Toussaint that is not what it was, and the people within it who have lost their way. And it seems that I must add some more days to the mourning."

Nearly two weeks. It makes me sick to think about it. And that's not the really heartbreaking aspect to it all.

On the first day, riders left Beauclair and rode in all directions. Riders from every walk of life. Guards, merchants, mercenaries, knights. Syanna called up the old knightly orders and told them that for this purpose, the knights of Toussaint ride again. Once again, the words "I swear by the Heron that it shall be so." were heard to echo the halls of Beauclair palace without the irony that had begun to accompany such words.

But it was not a triumphant return. The words were not said with joy or fervor. Instead, they were howled with grief and horror. Men who had hated Syanna and the new order of knights were united with her in horror of what "Just Some Girl" had suffered. So they swore their blades and arms and all of the other Chivalric pieces of nonsense to the cause of finding out who she was.

I'm told that Syanna was ruthless, the search was coordinated and organised within an inch of its life and not a single man complained. Older knights went from door to door, younger knights rode out to the villages and the farms. Once again, golden armour was seen on the streets as they searched for her.

And still, she could not be found.

Nearly two weeks it took us and the excuses and explanations started to pile up.

On the second day after his arrest, Colonel Duberton broke. Saying it like that suggests that he was being interrogated and questioned. You might have visions of torture implements and dungeons but that could not be further from the truth. When I say that he broke, the truth is that he just started talking. For the first day, he had spent his day in chains. He had said nothing, done nothing. He had not eaten or even responded to any other kind of stimulus. I'm told that various things were tried. The Duchess tried, Damien, Syanna and the other officers of the 4th as well as anyone who had been able to claim friendship with him tried to get through to him.

Nothing worked.

In the end, he slept and ate something in the evening of that first day. On the morning of the second day, he took a deep breath and said "What do you need from me?"

Saying it was like a dam bursting would not be true. He just started speaking. Again, although I was there for some of it and… Oh boy we will get to that, he needed to be prompted and led. The story needed to be pulled out of him. So much of it was just babbling, weeping and shouting, for understandable reasons, that he needed to be directed.

But he could not tell us anything about who she was. It was him that gave her her name "Just some girl," and in doing so, damned himself in my eyes. I was not alone in my thinking either.

On the third day it became clear that the search was not a simple one. That the problem was not going to be solved overnight. There was not going to be some kind of grand national catharsis that would scourge the crime from the souls of Toussaint as a whole. More and more people signed up for the search. The vigilance committees that had formed in an effort to protect the countryside from Jack, were still active and used the search as an excuse to carry on with their activities. Only now, they weren't looking for foreigners that could be Jack. Now they were looking for people that might know something. The problem there was that the committees efforts were no less brutal and misguided.

On the fourth day of the search, the Knights of Francesca were ordered to return to their former duties of peacekeeping and law enforcement. There were some exceptions, people like Guillaume were still being used to coordinate the efforts to find out Just Some Girl's identity. Others, like Gregoire, were used as a potential punishment to keep people from going too far. Smugglers and the ever present bandits used the opportunity, the distraction, to commit their crimes under the guise of "helping the search". And it was problems like this that the Knights of Francesca were forced to deal with, diverting them from the search effort.

There was also the problem that the full investigation into the matter of this, newer, Jack conspiracy was still ongoing. Knights and Guards were needed to preserve evidence, escort and question prisoners and so on. The lawyers were already working on how to deal with the legal ramifications of what was happening.

On the fifth day, nothing really happened.

The sixth day saw Ariadne drafted into helping in any way that she could. She was reluctant to leave my side as I was still very ill, but Kerrass, Sir Walther, Ann, Lady Vivienne, Emma and Laurelen between them threatened to sit on me should I try to do anything that hadn't been approved of as part of my recovery. She revisited the corpse of Just Some Girl in order to see if there was anything more that could be gleaned from a proper and in depth investigation.

Unfortunately, what she was able to give out was far from enlightening. Just Some Girl was a couple of inches over five feet tall when standing barefoot. Her hair was definitely blonde, and comparing that hair to the hair on the corpse of Lady Duberton meant that the shade was close enough to be mistaken for the other easily.

She was young, younger than Madame Duberton who was in her late twenties. Ariadne suggested the theory that the youth was required to divert from the fact that Madame Duberton had access to proper hygiene and health care, whereas the pool of potential dopplegangers that the conspiracy had access too would have been limited. Therefore youth would have been needed to mask differences in complexion and the like.

Given her injuries, there was no way of telling what Just some girl looked like, but she would have had to have been close enough to Madame Duberton to avoid easy suspicions. Therefore, heartshaped face, small nose, slightly sad eyes that generally tilted down, strong chin. She was pale, but anyone would be pale, we were in the middle of winter. So that wasn't as much of a distinguishing effect that we thought it might be.

There were a couple of other distinguishing marks on the body but there was no way to tell whether anyone would recognise her by those marks.

So that was what the searchers had to go on. A young girl of average height, erring slightly towards the round of face and figure, pretty but not beautiful, blonde haired and pale.

You can imagine how many people in Toussaint answer to that description.

On day seven there was a minor scandal. The majority of the bureaucracy of the court was engaged in efforts to figure out what they were going to do with the conspirators. The majority of the court were able to read the situation well enough to know that protesting the conspirator's innocence was a quick way to earn the Duchess' wrath and most of those people that might protest anyway were aiding in the search. It was as though the entirety of Toussaint had come together in the face of the scandal in order to find Just Some Girl. I'm told it was heartening to see. Heartening, but also a little bit of cause for concern that it took something like this to bring people together.

The scandal was that a couple of people muttered as to when the entire situation was going to be over. The day to day business of the court had ground to a halt as everything was tied up with the search or with the conspiracy. So everything else had just kind of… frozen. Who it was that complained can't be stated for certain. Guillaume claimed it was a merchant complaining about the fact that he couldn't get anyone to talk to him regarding matters of commerce.

The fact that Velles was a Temerian merchant and had been placed under arrest meant that there was going to be a gap in the market, so people were climbing over themselves in order to plug the gap that his absence would open up.

So Guillaume claimed that it was a merchant. Having said that, the man is so obviously biased against merchants that it's almost comical. He has a hatred of the breed that is bone deep and learned from childhood. The humour comes from the fact that is well aware of the prejudice and does everything he can to work against this. Thie means that he will go out of his way to be exceedingly polite towards any merchant that he comes across in order to seem as though he does not harbour this prejudice.

Other than Emma. I literally once caught him out at this. He was moaning about merchants one day to the point that I think that Emma was getting uncomfortable and I pointed out that Emma was a merchant. And he protested, apparently without irony, that Emma was different. "She treats people with honour" was what he said. Emma just smirked at that.

Others claimed that the people who had spoken up in protest at the state of matters in Toussaint were some members of the old guard. Others claimed that it was the priesthood. It cannot be entirely certain because they did it in court and one of those strange things happened where, for no readily apparent reason, the entirety of the court heard what was said.

Three duels were fought that afternoon. Fortunately, two of them were to the first blood which resulted in an apology to the Duchess who was anything but understanding. She ordered that one of the men (a minor noble of some kind. A second son who had spoken out of turn, or expressed the words of their father in an effort to sound out the court before the father dipped his toe into the political waters) confined to their estates. The other man was a foreigner and he was exiled, never to return.

The third duel, although not to the death, still resulted int he death of one of the men. Injured at the first pass, his wound had become infected and he had died shortly afterwards.

All of this was a distraction. People were watching this when they should have been looking elsewhere.

Day seven, Syanna ordered a rotation. So that everywhere that was being searched would now be searched with fresh eyes and fresh minds in the hope that this might mean that something else was found.

Day eight. Nothing really happened. The ambassador from Nilfgaard made a formal apology on behalf of the Empress for the behaviour of the colonel of the fourth that had betrayed his mistress and betrayed the duty that he had been assigned to. The same order formalised the field promotion of those officers that that had already taken over the colonel's duties. The ambassador also declared that the duchess might do with the colonel what she wilt and that the colonel was turned over to the duchess for punishment although he would be held in the Nilfgaardian embassy until sentence was passed.

The matter of Lord Velles and his diplomatic status was still ongoing however. Temeria is a different beast and is, in theory, still an independent kingdom.

Day nine. There was a breakthrough in the situation that actually gave us nothing at all that was useful. Now that it was clear that Colonel Duberton that was selling everyone out in an effort to try and redeem himself in some small way, while also gaining some small measure of revenge for his own lost honour and the death of his wife…

Who he loved. For all that I might have complicated thoughts about the man, it should be made clear that he really did love his wife.

… some of the other conspirators started to look for ways that they might be able to save their own skins. They started to open up about various parts of their involvement when it came to what had happened. Naturally, the first question that was on the lips of the interrogators was "Who was 'Just Some Girl'?"

The answers were, at the same time, obvious and underwhelming. It turned out that she had been sought out early in the proceedings. She had been found and kept by the inner circle of the conspiracy. Because yes, they had inner circles and a hierarchy amongst themselves. These bastards were exactly the type of assholes that you might think they were.

But the girl was provided by Lord Leblanc's men. Lord Leblanc himself was still holding to the strategy of "Deny everything" and told everyone that if any of his men were involved in such a matter, then he had no knowledge of it one way or another.

The interrogations on that particular subject moved on to the mercenaries and guards that were taken alive in the efforts to rescue Captain De La Tour and his men. When we finally found out how she had been found, there was a collective groan of despair from the interrogators. That groan being that the kidnapper was one of the men that had died that night.

Of course it was. Whether that was true or not could not be proven. Those mercenaries and guards, unlike their higher born counterparts, were easily able to see that this was a matter that had raised the anger and disgust of the countryside. They knew that their lives and their skin depended on the kidnappers not being them. That the kidnappers would probably suffer a worse death than any of the other conspirators, who were bound to not die clean as it was.

So the blame was shifted onto someone who was already dead.

For a while there, we got all excited about us finding something.

But then it became clear that we had found nothing.

Day 10, the rain and the slightly raised temperature meant that the mouth fo the river that flows through Toussaint had thawed. Which in turn meant that Lord Geralt and Lady Yennefer were able to come home. It turned out that Lady Vigo had been keeping in relatively constant communication with the pair of them so they were kept well abreast of circumstances. They landed further down river and rode the rest of the way.

Lady Yennefer came to visit me shortly after getting home while Lord Geralt joined the search almost immediately. It turns out that he has a much more intricate knowledge of the backways and back roads of Toussaint than many of the Knights do and was able to point out many hidden areas and camps that might otherwise have been missed by the more conventional search.

Lady Yennefer teased him with the suggestion that he knew all the pretty girls in Toussaint and where they were and as such, should have been able to identify the missing girl almost immediately.

There was an edge to the teasing though, apparently, Lord Geralt ignored it. Guillaume claimed that the edge is often there when Lady Yennefer teases Lord Geralt She likes to keep him on his toes and remind him that the ground under his feet is not as sure as he would like to think it is.

She did come to see me. She spent some time looking down at me where I was still struggling. She looked at me for a long time before leaving and going back to work.

Day Eleven. There is a long standing debate in legal circles as to whether or not the extraction of information from a person's mind can be used in legal proceedings. The short answer is that it can't. Because if a Mage or priest goes into a person's mind and recounts what they saw there, then the court is till relying on the honesty of the priest or mage doing so. Once upon a time, that might have been enough, especially with those priests and mages that were assigned to the royal councils. But since the Kings and Queens of the North stopped putting their faith in magic as much as they used to, that practice has lessened.

It has become a truth, acknowledged through most of the North, that a priest or a mage is just as likely to warp the information until it is simply a recounting of whatever the mage or priest wanted to be true.

However, the Duchess was getting to the point where she had had enough. She directed both Lady Yennefer and Lady Vigo to delve throught he conspirators minds in order to try and find out who Just Some Girl was. This caused some problems as the use of such techniques on the wnwilling is, essentially, rape of the mind and can cause permanent damage to the people on the receiving end.

In the end, the two women were persuaded, not least because the Duchess had certain powers over them. She tried with Ariadne too but Ariadne finds the process abhorrent and said so. Loudly.

What did they find? Absolutely nothing.

Day twelve. A messenger came back from the outskirts of the Duchy. He had ridden hard and carried a message to the Knight commander who rode out herself under escort.

Day thirteen. The Knight Commander sent word back that they were as sure as they could be that they had found Just Some Girl.

Twelve days. Twelve days it took us. Just shy of two weeks. There will come a time when that doesn't sound as bad in my head as it might have been. One day. But as I write this now, safe in a guest room in the palace of Beauclair, it burns my heart and my soul to know that we let her down so badly.

We rode out. The duchess led us, wearing mourning garb she rode in a simple carriage under escort of a score of knights. They were old nights and youny, the old and the new order of Toussaint. With her rode a company of the 4th Alba division, resplendent in their full black armour that had been polished to a burnished sheen. Not a scrap of mud or rust could be found on any of their equipments. There were numerous other people that went as well. Lady Caroline rode in her adopted mother's carriage. Kerrass rode out and I rode as well in a small wagon.

I cannot remember much of the journey….

I will speak of the immediate aftermath of the cult's destruction again shortly. It is important that certain things are said before I get to it though and I did not want to let these things go un noticed.

I was still exhausted. That stage where I was suffering from massive headaches, frequent nausea and a state of being that was not unlike being in a fever. I felt the cold keenly and was wrapped in several layers of the thickest, warmest clothing that money could buy in Toussaint. Even then, every gap, every opening that could allow the passage of air into my body was enough to set me shivering.

So it was already a miserable ride out to the outskirts of the Duchy. Even taking into account the errand that took us out there. We pitched a camp outside a farming village. It was a riding stop on one of the trade roues. There was a large inn and flat area that in the summer would be used for the trading of cattle. Those people in our group that could not stay at the inn camped out in the field and that night, we watched as the campfires lit up the night's sky like so many stars.

On any other time I would have insisted on camping out in those fields too, but it was clear to me that such an insistence on my part would be ignored. And in all truth, I didn't want to. I already regretted the determination that I had in heading out there. But I also knew that I had had no other choice. That I needed to go and look into the eyes of the people that we had let down and apologise.

Ariadne saw to it that I ate plenty of hot, filling food and that I took to my bed early that night. I went without protest. I was not looking forward to the following day.

It was a presser's cottage.

I know next to nothing about the science of creating wine. It is not one of those things that has occupied my interest and I see no reason why I might change my mind now. I am well able to enjoy the proceeds of the wine making trade while I have never any need to investigate how the liquid came from the grapes, or other fruit, or flowers even, to being inside my cup.

One thing I do know is that the grapes go into a press in order for the juices to come out. Traditionally, this process is carried out by virtue of a person... preferably a beautiful woman which is a theory as to why Toussaint values physical beauty. Apparently it means that the beauty of the woman transfers into the flavour of the wine. I have no idea how but there you go.

The person is supposed to get inside a vat of grapes and jump up and down, squashing the grapes with their feet until the grapes have given up all of their goodness.

That's how it's done traditionally. And some of the vintages are still done this way. The wines that are carried to the duchess' and empress' tables are among these. However industrialisation is a growing theme in the continent. The innovations carried far and wide by dwarven travellers and merchants mean that wines and olive oil become more in demand throughout the world and more needs to be produced to satisfy the demand.

So there are wind mills dotted around Toussaint that do not drive the mills to grind grain into flour, but rather a mechanical pressing device. I know nothing about how this works, but to my amateur eyes, the difference between a grain mill and a wine press is only in the name.

The home that Syanna led us to was a cottage that was attached to one of these houses. It was not lost on me that the windmill was still working as we saw it.

We had gathered in the village square as the innkeeper brought out cauldrons of mulled wine to feed the duchess, her entourage, the knights and the soldiers that had descended on the town. The rain had stopped by this point and the sun had come out, giving the air a false sense of warmth despite the fact that there was frost on the ground and the instant that you were out of the direct sunlight, you would find yourself shivering again.

I had so many layers of wool about my person that I fairly waddled out to the meeting, The duchess stood, her hands cupped around the mug of wine to savour the warmth as she stood with her sister. Vivienne was there as well as Captain De La Tour and Sir Guillaume in his position as knightly champion. Kerrass was nearby, leaning against a wall and kicking at a lump of earth that would probably turn out to be a piece of frozen horse dung.

Ariadne was walking with me. She had been my shadow since we had caught Colonel Duberton and I was grateful for her presence every moment of every day.

Gregoire had decided not to come. He was invited, but he had argued, probably correctly, that there were still members of the outlying farms and villages that would flee at his name and that he would add nothing to what was going to happen here today.

We stood there and watched as the Nilfgaardian soldiers, and fully armoured knights climbed aboard their horses. It was taking a long time.

"Do they know we're coming?" The duchess asked her sister.

I was not the only person that jumped at the sound of the duchess' voice cutting through the silence.

"I think it is almost certain that they knew we're here." Syanna said. "A community like this, it is almost impossible to keep it secret that the duchess is abroad in her realm."

The duchess grunted at that. She looked tired. "I need to be the one to tell them," she said.

"They'll know." Kerrass had approached when I wasn't looking. "They will know what has happened the instant you turn into the lane that leads to their cottage. They will see you coming and they will know. They always know. What other reason would a duchess, a noble, a knight or a witcher turn up on their doorstep. Only in those instances of something awful having happened. They will know."

The duchess said nothing to that.

Our honour guards and escorts finally agreed that they were as ready as they were going to be and those of us that weren't really capable of riding, or didn't because of social nonsense, climbed back in our carriages and covered wagons. If I had been healthy, it is all but certain that I would have been warmer if I had been riding, but with the way my health was at that point in time, it just wasn't as practical.

Ariadne had put a small heating charm on my wagon. The duchess was in her carriage with Lady Vivienne and Lady Caroline, while Ariadne and I travelled together. Kerrass rode nearby but I didn't track that.

I just let the world pass me by, looking out onto the countryside without really taking it in.

Toussaint really is a beautiful place.

There was a row of these wind driven presses. They were built differently to the more traditional looking windmills that I had been expecting, taller, thinner and more tapered to their ends. Again, I don't know why that might be the case. But the cottage looked like any other cottage in that part of the world

It was smallish though larger than a hut. It earned the title of "cottage" in my mind. The walls were made of stone and were clearly whitewashed. The roof was thatched and the thatch was well maintained. If I had been out on the road with Kerrass, I would not have complained about staying in the building for the night.

There was a small enclosure attached to the cottage which were made into several paddocks. A couple of goats were wandering about, chewing the hay that had been left for them and looking at us with the thoughtful, slightly disdainful expressions of livestock everywhere. Another small paddock was empty while the third was carefully cultivated to grow some vegetables and herbs. Basic things I have no doubt, currently devoid of the food, waiting for a spring thaw.

Again, I could almost see the kinds of people that we were going to meet in my mind. People that were used to just getting by. People who had never complained in their lives. People who would argue that others had it much worse than they did. Where they grew vegetables rather than complain about lack of food.

I could even guess that there would be a relatively large family and that the father would spend most of his nights sleeping up at the press to ensure that there are no problems. An act that also ensure that he could get a bit of peace in order to smoke his pipe and enjoy a skin of ale or two without his wife giving him any grief about it.

The house was not far from the road. Just a small little lane. There was no farm land attached as the press would be maintained by the local vineyard rather than needing to maintain itelf. The presser himself would be paid out of that stock and would send his wife to market to ge the things that he needed.

Kerrass training was telling me things.

I could also see why it would have been easy to take someone from here. Wind powered structures of industry are built to take advantage of the thing that they need rather than for convenience of proximity to civilisation. Roads, villages and towns are built around them and to them rather than taking their presences into account.

For this reason, the mill was on a hill, far from any sheltering trees and the town would have been a good hours walk away. The cottage was at the foot of the hill. I could see a path that wound it's way up, a few steps were cut into the earth and reinforced with wooden planks.

There was a well.

There came a moment when all of the differences in class and wealth were laid out for us all. Just one of those moments where things are just made clear to you and there is… it hits you in the face like a hammer blow. If you are really very lucky, then you can see it happen. You can take it in and absorb it in the moment.

The small lane that led to the cottage was not wide enough for either the Duchess' carriage, nor the wagon that Ariadne and I were riding in.

The way it worked, apparently, was that the member of the family would go into town to order the food and supplies that they needed, along with anything else that might be needed for the running and the maintenance of the wine press. Then the stall owner, or Vineyard manager would send the goods, along with the next batch of grapes along the next time the wagon was heading out in this direction. Said goods wagon was clearly a one horse deal. It must have been a huge horse but even so, the track was not wide enough for us to get down there.

To be fair to her, the duchess didn't blink and dismounted from the carriage, picking up her skirts in one hand while she waited for her escort to form up around her. The knights and soldiers that were part of the honour guard arrayed themselves along the road and faced down towards the cottage in an attitude of respect.

It might have been respect but looking back on it, I could not help but think that the display would have been extremely intimidating if I had been on the receiving end of it.

So we dismounted and the duchess led us down the track towards the cottage.

The ground was firm under the cold which kept us from slipping and sliding about and so we were able to keep our dignity. Sir Guillaume walked at the Duchess' side in order to catch her in case she lost her footing in the, let's face it, muck. Syanna walked behind her sister with Captain de la Tour next to her. Kerrass and I, being lighter armed came next with Ariadne on the other side of me. Ariadne, who had complained bitterly when I had to stand out in the cold earlier, made no comment about the walk up to the house in the no less cold than the morning.

Lady Vivienne and the newly promoted Colonel Dunnet of the 4th Alba division brought up the rear. Colonel Dunnes was unhappy about what was happening to his friend, the colonel, and was confident that the officers and knights in his regiment would be scattered throughout the Nilfgaardian army in order to reduce any potential of rot that might have been spread out from the betrayal of the former commanding officer.

As I say, it was quite a nice little home that we walked towards. In my highly romantic idea of what this kind of life would be, I might have quite enjoyed this kind of life.

We had been seen. Half way down the track, a woman could bee seen hastily herding her children out of the house. The Children looked desperately uncomfortable and were tugging pulling at uncomfortable looking clothing. Even from this distance I balked a bit at the bright colours and flowers that were clearly embroidered on one of the boys shirts that was just as obviously too small for him.

One of the girls, around age nine I think, had lace embroidered on her dress.

They were wearing their best festival clothing. The stuff that you wear at the spring time dances. All their faces had the red flush of skin that has been hastily scrubbed with freezing cold water and a scouring soap.

There were seven children there. Five girls and two boys of varying ages. The oldest was a girl aged around fifteen and the youngest was four, I think. All of them had blonde hair of varying shades. It looked as though the children would be born with an almost white blonde set of locks before the colour would deepen in a more straw like colour. All of them seemed to carry the colouring of their father and the build and rough appearance of their mother.

As well as the Father and Mother of the brood, there was also a young man. He stared at us as we came down the track with sunken, sullen eyes and I could feel the hatred radiating off him. He stood apart from the others in that he was tall and thin with dark hair.

The Mother was shortish woman. Gravity and a lifetime of work and running after children were beginning to take a toll on her and she had something of a stoop about her as she straightened herself out of respect to the coming visitors. She had a round face and round cheeks that I guessed, in better times, would smile easily. She had the feeling of someone who liked to bake and gave out hugs frequently and to whoever needed them without question.

The Father was taller, receding hairline. He had a wiry strength about him which is not uncommon from someone who likely spends all his days trying to find new and inventive ways to unload and reload carts. Blonde haired and quick of eyes.

He and his wife stood next to each other behind the four children as if to catch them if any of them made a run for it. The other young man stood off to one side.

The mother's expression was bleak and hollowed out while the Father had obviously mastered himself from some rather extreme emotion.

The duchess approached them and came to within a couple of meters when the Mother and Father knelt, pulling their children down with them.

The other young man looked, just for a moment, as though he wanted to protest, but in the end, he allowed his knees to buckle and he went to his knees.

We all stood like that for a moment.

"Please stand, there is no need to kneel," the duchess said in a halting voice.

The family exchanged glances amongst themselves before they slowly climbed to their feet. The father had to be helped up, Sir Guillaume leapt forward to offer his hand.

"I have only just become a mother." The duchess told them all. "I came here, thinking about what to say, what I could tell you and all of the trite things I could say. Things that people said to me when I have lost someone. But the truth is, I don't know what to say."

The family didn't say anything. As Kerrass had predicted, they already knew.

I'm skipping over a lot of this because I don't want to give too much information out. Nothing that might lead to their identity becoming common knowledge. They have been through enough.

We were offered hospitality and as such, we trooped inside the cottage and drank some coarse, new mulled wine and ate some really sweet honey cakes.

The young man that I had noticed had turned out to be Just Some Girl's betrothed. He had been sent to learn the trade of being a press master from the father on the grounds that the father's eldest son would not be old enough to take over when the presser was due to retire. Apparently there was some long standing health issue that would prevent him from serving for much longer. The betrothed had come to the family and as was the way with such things, a marriage had been arranged and the two young people had decided that there were worse fates than to be married to the other.

The father told me that Just Some Girl, who was his daughter, just to be clear, had just confided in his wife and he that she was actually beginning to quite look forward to her wedding night. It was due to happen on her Eighteenth Birthday which was a couple of months away.

He had to take a break as he realised he had spoken about her as if she was still alive.

Looking back, it was kind of funny as to how we all kind of split up in order to spend time with the family including into some directions that I had not expected. Some were kind of obvious to me. Captain de La Tour politely asked if there were any small chores that he could do in order to make life easier. When the Father looked aghast at the prospect Damien stood and left, returning with several arm loads of firewood before snatching up the wood axe and going back outside where the rhythmic sound of an axe splitting logs could be heard.

Sir Guillaume took the son in law in order to be shown the wine press and how it all worked. To all intents and purposes the big knight seemed genuinely interested as to what he was being told and when they came back later, Guillaume and the son in law spent a good amount of time talking, Guillaume asking questions and the son in law answering them.

Syanna and Lady Vivienne turned out to be really good with the younger female children while Colonel Dunnet had clearly come prepared. After asking the father's permission, he produced two small training swords from his belt and set about teaching the boys how to use them. I was there for part of the whispered conversation between Colonel Dunnet and the father and it went like this.

"Young boys are always fascinated by knights and soldiers." Colonel Dunnet began. "Now would you like me to discourage, or encourage that interest?"

The Father seemed astonished by the question, not least because he was being consulted at all. "Do what you think is best," he eventually stammered out.

The Colonel took them outside and gave them a few lessons and a few exercises to do. He even came back in and gave his honest assessment that of the two boys, the older boy lacked the proper temperament for a knight or a soldier. The younger of the two had better coordination and physical gifts. Some more suggestions were made as to how the Father could encourage or discourage the attitudes in either of the boys.

Ariadne and the duchess went into the kitchen to help the mother of the household produce warm drinks and biscuits. Cakes would have been pushing it I think. That was an interesting exercise to watch. The woman was clearly mortified that the Duchess of Toussaint was in her kitchen and bustling around while another woman, who everyone clearly thought was some kind of demon of ancient darkness, calmly and politely asked where the milk and honey were kept.

The three women worked together fairly well until there was an incident. The way Ariadne described it later was that the news about her eldest daughter's death was slowly sinking in to the mother and she was getting angry. Not at us or our presence. Apparently she seemed to be quite flattered and pleased at the fact that we had turned up at all. She was looking forward to boasting to her neighbours and especially her sisters, she was the youngest, that she had served tea and biscuits to the most important lords and ladies in the land.

Then she just seemed to collapse. Being who she was, Ariadne caught the pots that the woman had been carrying using some of her vampiric speed, saving the boiling water from spilling before turning round. The duchess was already crouching next to the fallen woman with her arms round her as she sobbed for her missing daughter.

She recovered almost immediately, retreated to her room to clean up and came back to apologise to everyone. Like everyone else, I wanted to tell her that there was no need for apology, but the woman's dignity was fragile enough as it was.

Kerrass stood with me as I spoke with the father. The youngest daughter had a fascination with the Witcher and had broken away from the other group of children to sit and watch Kerrass. For his part, Kerrass pretended not to notice and amused himself, and the little girl, by lighting and extinguishing a nearby candle with a click of his fingers.

The girl then tried to copy his gesture, but couldn't get her fingers to click properly. But that amused her for a while as she sat in the corner, frowning at her fingers as she tried to get them to click.

The father looked a little concerned at one point and wondered what the danger was of her clicking her fingers together and burning the house down. Kerrass took pity on the man and told him that the only way that would have happened would have been if the girl had some kind of latent magical talent. And if she did, the Father would already be well aware of it as Lady Vigo would have come down to make her presence felt and arrange for the proper schooling. The man only just seemed to be calmed by that.

So I found myself dealing with the Father. He had heard of me and promptly asked me to keep their names out of my writings, even as he acknowledged that it would surely come up where he and his family would end up being talked about. So if you're wondering why I am avoiding naming that family then that is why. I spoke to him in much the same way that I had heard my Father speak to any number of Land owners and professional workers on our lands. I asked him how business was, asked him about the prices of things and whether or not the local lord was treating him well.

He gave me something of a withering look and I apologised for that last.

We stood in silence for a while after that as he watched his eldest daughter show Lady Vivienne her stitching hoop before his face seemed to crumple a bit. I passed my cup to Kerrass and steered the man outside so he could have a moment away from everything. He went to one of the fence posts against which he leant while he watched Colonel Dunnet showing his two sons a game.

It's a game where you have two sticks on the ground about twenty feet apart. The idea is that you run between the two, bending to touch each stick. Then you have to get faster inside a certain time period. It's a swordsman's exercise designed to teach balance, flexibility and speed. You can't really straighten between the sticks before you have to bend again which can cause you to stumble if you try to run too fast.

He watched them for a while. The two boys were laughing and joking with each other, oblivious to the grey feeling that seemed to have settled over the countryside nearby.

"She went to market." He said suddenly. "She was the oldest child and she went to market for us. She would have a list of the things that we needed and we would send her off on her way. She would go. And then one day she didn't come back."

I didn't ask him what day it was that she disappeared. I already knew and it seemed rude to interrupt him when he seemed to need to get this stuff off his chest.

"You tell yourself things." He went on. "You tell yourself that you should have gone, That we should have sent the boy, or her mother. Surely the bastards wouldn't be interested in her mother. I mean, to me she's still the beautiful girl that I took flowers to when she was washing clothes down by the river, but to everyone else…"

He shook his head.

"You tell yourselves these things. The boy was learning his craft which meant that I had to be there in case something went wrong. If her mother went then who would look after the kids. They still want their mother even after all this time, they still want their mother."

I said nothing. I was familiar with the pattern of self-recrimination and self loathing.

"She went to town one day and she never came back. She just never came back. To be honest, we didn't think anything of it. We're a busy family and to be truthful… we didn't notice until late that night. What with one thing and another."

He sniffed.

"Prophets, how could I not notice?" He demanded of himself, suddenly angry. It faded just as quickly as it came on though.

"The lad was just about to bed down up in the press and he looked around for her, hoping for a good night kiss or a quick feel behind the shed. And he wondered where she was. We realised that she hadn't come back. It took us that long to notice. All day."

He shook his head.

"We checked the next day. I sent the boy this time. He's a good lad, thinks the world of her and a man couldn't wish for a better match for his daughter. Thinks the world of her he does. He went, couldn't find word of her. Punched a guy in the nose when they made a joke about her running off with a better man. But she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't. She was as beseotted with him as he was with her. If we hadn't kept our eyes on the pair of them they would have run off to the hey rick or snuck off somewhere. The only thing that stopped them is because it's so damn cold I think."

He chuckled bitterly at the thought.

"I should have let 'em. Then she wouldn't have attracted them."

She would. I didn't tell him that though. I still wonder if I should have. I wonder if I should have told him that his daughter had been scouted out for several days before hand. I didn't because I rather thought that he would then have blamed himself for not noticing the people hanging about and watching her. If a man is determined to blame himself then he will normally find a way to do so.

"Then she didn't come back. We looked around, the vigilance people warned us of… of…" He took a deep breath. "They told us that Jack was out and about. That there might be a risk ofsomething happening to her and we waited. We waited for her to be found but she never was."

He sighed.

"We knew. We knew but… until you know, you don't know. You hope. You hope that someone will find them and that they will come home. Every time I see a girl with blonde hair given towards being a bit plump you think, that's her. But then...then we saw you all coming down the path didn't we. You don't know until you know."

He sobbed then and I held him for what it was worth. I could do at least that. I told him I was sorry and as is the way with some people, he wondered what I had to be sorry for. I told him that I should have found her before she died. He asked how long ago she had died and I told him that.

He asked how she had died. That, I did not tell him. I didn't see how it would do him any good. He won't read these works, nor will any of his family so I think the lie is relatively safe. Safe enough that anyone who tries to tell him and his family the truth will be dismissed as being cruel. I told him that she had been used as a means to guarantee a man's obedience. That she was a hostage. And that when she had stopped being useful, she had her throat cut. I didn't tell him it was a quick death. Nor did I tell him that there would have been no pain. They would have been lies too far.

He had to set aside his grief after that. One of the children was catching the mood of what was going on and had started weeping which had set off some of the others. Lady Vivienne, Syanna and Kerrass of all people had the matter in hand, but a Father who has just lost one daughter will rush to take care of those that he had left.

We stayed there for a while and arranged various things. The son in law would still take over the press when the Father was no longer able to carry on. Something that was expected to happen in a couple of years. There was some suggestion that he would get betrothed to the next daughter down the line in order to preserve the family line, but he didn't seem thrilled at the prospect.

The girl did. I sensed an un expressed crush there, developed from sisterly jealousy, but she was fifteen and still a couple of years off marriageable age.

The sons would be too young to take over. The duchess gave them a letter to say that if they needed anything then they could present that at the palace, or to any passing knight of Francesca and they would see to their needs. The family accepted this gesture as gracefully as they could manage, but it was not hard to feel the skepticism radiating off them.

The visit was over now. We could see neighbours leaning on the fences nearby. Pots were in hand, baskets of bread and carried bottles of wine. We were unneeded now. The countryside had heard what had happened and we were no longer welcome.

We bade our farewells and as we left, the duchess asked them.

"Why didn't you tell someone she was missing? We have checked and there was no reports that anyone was…"

The faces of the family went still. It was like some spell had robbed them all of feeling, animation and emotion.

"What would be the point?" The betrothed said. I would bet that he meant to say it quietly, but it seemed to echo around the small yard.

The father looked over at the young man with rage, but a broken heart will not know guilt. The mother looked at the floor as her jaw clenched to keep from wobbling. The eldest daughter's gaze fell. The other children said nothing, they did not know what had happened.

They hadn't told anyone, because they didn't believe it would get them anywhere. In that action, they admitted to a lifetime of.. Not cruelty. Not that. But more of a kind of… That's the way life is. nobles, knights, merchants and the rest. They turn up, decide to take a girl, have their way with them and then leave them by the side of the road. It's the cost of doing business.

The price of life.

We all walked up the track to where the carriage and the wagon had been turned around. I was shivering now and was looking forward to having a good shiver and a cry in Ariadne's arms. Looking around myself I don't think I was alone. Colonel Dunnet was appalled. Damien and Syanna walked close together and although they kept it from common view, I rather think they were holding hands.

Guillaume was openly weeping. I loved him for that. To be a man of action and still able to feel like that for the people in your care is a mark of the quality of the man. Lady Vivienne walked next to him, leaning into his arm.

We were halfway up the path when the duchess turned on her sister and hissed like a cat.

"Find out which lord, which knight, which…. thing was in charge of law and order in these parts. Which… person is responsible for allowing this to happen under their watch. If it was one of yours I want them kicked out of the knights in disgrace. If it was some lord then I want them removed from power, their livelihoods confiscated back to the crown. I want their heads. I want them on their knees before me. I'm going to have them bow down before that family and be made to lick their feet so that…"

Syanna held out her hands to her sister.

"We already have them in custody." She said. "They were part of the conspiracy."

"Still." The Duchess was not being placated. "When did our knights…" She stopped, her hand coming up to her mouth. "When did the commonfolk stop trusting our knights."

Syanna's eyes hardened.

"Since long before we were born." She said. "knights have been abusing their power to take what they feel as though they have earned for a long time. To these people… to me. It did not matter whether a man wore gold armour, black armour," she gestured at Colonel Dunnet. "Or plain metal armour. Men with weapons do not have our interests at heart. It's the same all over the continent and you should not think differently."

The duchess shook her head.

"We have been doing this for a year." She snarled. "And still they don't trust you."

"Forgive me madam." Colonel Dunnet stepped in. "I've been doing this job or a long time. A year is nothing when it comes to winning the trust of the people. Your commonfolk will struggle to trust men, or women, in armour for generations to come. And even then, it will only take one bad apple to ruin everything all over again. This is not a problem that you can just throw money, men and…"

The duchess waved him off and resumed her walk up to the courage where she stopped and turned back to her sister.

"Find out who it was." She said, a little calmer. "They will be flogged in public before they go to meet the headsman."

Syanna nodded

"Someone go back to that family," The duchess went on. "Tell them that their daughter will be included in the memorial to the victims of Jack and that, if they want to come to the memorial, we will send a full cavalry escort to bring them in honour. Tell them that we invite them to join us at the wake for those victims and that we would be honoured if they joined us. Tell them… Tell them that we are sorry."

"Yes Your Grace." Syanna, Damien and Sir Guillaume echoed. Lady Vivienne had produced a small book and was making a note in it.

The duchess held her hand out for a moment, which Syanna took. It was a promise. There would be a hug of mutual forgiveness later.

We rode home in silence.

You, Dear Reader, are going to hear a lot about Just Some Girl over the coming weeks, months and years if I can manage it. I am not alone in my determination either. Just Some Girl is a representative of something that, although I wish that it wasn't the case, is still happening all over the continent. Noblemen and noblewomen will ride out and seek some kind of entertainment. They find it in a travelling peddler and his family, maybe a band of entertainers, an isolated farm house or a cottage out in the woods.

They find their entertainment and then they proceed to have their fun on the bodies of the people that they find there. Said fun is not always sexual, in nature but I would be lying if I tried to claim that there wasn't a significant part of it that was sexual. Sometimes it is simply to torture something and someone to death.

And later, should the perpetrators of these… evil acts. And I will use that word, they are evil acts. Should those perpetrators be challenged on what they did then the answer is nearly always the same. "It was Just Some Girl." Is what Colonel Duberton called her. But if we are honest with ourselves, we hear those words on a greater and smaller scale.

Sometimes it is just some boy, just some traveller that we found. Just a travelling vagabond of a witcher. Just an old troll that maintains the bridge for us. No-one will notice if we torture them to death. No-one will notice if we blame them for the crime that others have committed. No-one will notice if they die in their droves due to some disease, raid over the border, or famine induced by a Lord's raids.

We all, as a continent, saw it on a huge scale when the armies of BOTH sides were travelling backwards and forwards in any of the three continental wars. Where soldiers or knights were sent to a village in order to see if there was any food there and to take it if there was.

"What's that they said? That the cow was the last one they had and they needed it in order to provide milk and cheese for the village for fear that they will starve."

"Tough, I need the steak in order to maintain my strength for the following battles. No-one will notice anyway. It's just some village."

They were just a group of Elves revering a statue of a great ancestor of theirs, in the ruins of one of their oldest cities. No-one will care if we just wipe them out and grind the statue to dust. No-one will notice if we make the dwarves a scapegoat for everything that went wrong in the campaign.

No-one will notice if we send in the mercenaries first in order to get them killed. That way, we won't have to pay them anyway. And they're only mercenaries.

Who cares?

It mounts up. This stuff has been happening on the continent for centuries. Ever since humanity first got here in fact. If I look back… I didn't intend it to be the case, but my travels seem to have that running theme.

The witcher won't care if we don't pay him properly. It's just a witcher, killing some nekkers is like breathing in and out for them.

No-one will care if we murder this stupid troll, torturing him for fun and so that we can draw the eye of that pretty nobleman's daughter.

Just one life a month. Just one life a month so that we can have enough work to put food on the table. Just one life a month. It's worth it to keep money in our pockets. Children's lives are hard enough as it is.

Useless peasant girls in order to feed our own lusts. Enslaving a force that we do not understand and killing a small family to secure a throne in order to rule over a corner of the countryside that not many other people care about. It's just a small part of the countryside to sacrifice to a Knightly order of holy warriors. No-one will notice if a few peasants are terrorised, a few magical creatures are destroyed and a few people burnt in the service of assuaging our religious guilt and paying our way into heaven.

It's just a few sailors in order to guarantee my comfort and freedom from a curse that I brought on myself.

It goes on and on and on. It shames me that I didn't notice it before now and it shames me that, just off the top of my head, I can think of times when I have done the same math in my own head. The sacrifice of a little in order to preserve my own comfort.

We intend to make Just Some Girl a figurehead. A symbol. In the same way that there are tombs to the unknown soldier to commemorate those people that fall in battle, in service to something greater than themselves, we intend for there to be shrines to Just Some Girl. To commemorate those people that have been lost in order to bring pleasure to another. To remember those people who were seen as worthless and who died to satisfy the whim of those that they looked to for protection.

And to those of you who are reading this, or who are already protesting the creation of these shrines in those cities where my sister has influence. Those people who are complaining about the fact that the shrines are dedicated to "Just Some Girl" rather than "Just some Person" or "Just Some Boy." I will say this. The ratio of people that suffer this kind of fate is so vastly out of proportion that it would be comical if it wasn't so fucking tragic.

We have spoken to the Church of Melitele and they approve of our message and intend to work with us on this. THe shrines to the Prophets have also agreed that as well as the various prophets and Saints that are already being honoured in their holy places. Another shrine to the unknown victim will not be too much of a hardship.

And to those people in Toussaint that are complaining about the adjustments to your culture and ways. People that are moaning about my family and our influence on your courts and your mercantile endeavours. Those people who think that we have undue influence on the Duchess and her sister. Then you should know two things. You should know that the tomb of Just Some Girl was actually Lady Vivienne's idea, discussed over dinner in the inn that we stayed at on our way home from visiting Just Some Girl's family.

Secondly, you should know that these things are in place because of problems that YOU allowed to take place. I feel guilty about this stuff and that these things happen. I still blame myself that we didn't rescue Just Some Girl and it breaks my heart that this is still happening in the continent. Why is it still happening?

Because you allow it to happen.

To absolutely no-one's surprise, least of all my own, I got really sick after we captured Colonel Duberton and neutered the last efforts of the conspiracy to prove their innocence. To make it worse, it was a progressive thing that got worse as the time went on. Exhaustion was only part of it and there is so much of what happened during those weeks of my recovery...

Because it took me well over a month before I began to feel like myself again.

So much that happened in that time period that I simply do not understand and cannot explain. Ariadne told me, and everyone else that would pay attention, that I was having a relapse. That I needed time, patience and love. She told us all that, sooner or later, I would climb out of the pit that I was in at the time.

The people around me were brilliant and I will tell you how wonderful they are in the process of that. I am blessed in my friends and family because without them, I'm not sure that I would have managed to even remotely get close to being in good enough health to talk about everything that happened later.

The strangest thing about it was that I felt like a prisoner in my own body as it seemed to be just getting on with things without me even remotely being involved in the decision making process.

That night, the night after Colonel Duberton was finally captured, I had been struck in the head by the man's fist. I was unconcsious for a couple of minutes which people just assumed was my passing out from exhaustion. Which would have been an understandable diagnosis under any other circumstances. And that was what they believed until Ariadne teleported into the Graveyard and started yelling at everyone there that I was about to choke on my own vomit.

She grabbed me and jammed some of the most vile smelling herbs that you can imagine under my nose so that I could wake up and aim away from myself as everything started to come out my throat.

Orders were given and as well as a prisoner wagon for the colonel, who had stopped struggling and was howling in despair and grief, there was another wagon sent for me to get me up to the Palace as fast as possible.

The rest of that night was awful because I couldn't sleep. I just couldn't sleep. At first, it was because Ariadne forbade me from sleeping. She had me lie down, facing towards a vomit bucket and she held onto me by my ear and the whiskers that make up my sideburns. Any time that I threatened to doze off or pass out, she would yank them both cruelly until I made some gesture that I was awake.

When they got me back to my rooms, Sir Walther, the Ducal Physician, was there, already waiting. They did some stuff that involved shining light into my eyes and talking about me and not to me. Which is always terrifying if medical people are doing that near you.

It seems that there were two problems. Obviously I needed sleep and rest. However, I had been struck in the head by someone who knows how to it someone in the head. As a result, sleeping could be catastrophic.

I don't know why this is the case. I just trust that people who know what they are doing were horrified at the prospect.

The second problem was that there were already too many herbal stimulants and magical stimulants in my body so that it would be dangerous to offer any more.

Gradually, the dazed feeling went away and people started to look a little less worried about me. I was brought some chicken soup and some bread to eat, again making me wonder as to why it is always chicken soup that you feed an invalid, and everyone became happy for me to lie down and go to sleep.

Except now, I couldn't actually sleep.

Frustrated is not the word.

Why couldn't I sleep? Your guess is as good as mine. As were the guesses of the various medical professionals that were involved in what was happening. It was not very complimentary to the medical profession to know that they know next to nothing about the way that the brain works and as a result, all they had was the best guess as to what was happening.

I mean, I knew that anyway. But at the same time, it's still a little upsetting to have it spelled out to you when it is your head that no-one understands how it works.

So everything combined in my head. The potent ingredients for this particular recipe include, but are not limited to, fatigue and exhaustion. Apparently these are two separate things. I can't begin to understand why that might be the case, but it is. If you can figure out the difference then I await the explanation with bated breath. To go with that was the general feeling of helplessness. This was not something that I was handling well. There was also a frustration at the fact that I was ill… Again… Frustration that I couldn't be involved in the closing stages of the investigation…

I mean, I wouldn't have added anything. We had everyone in custody, it was all to do with interrogating people and connecting the dots together until we had a cohesive picture of events. But it was immensely frustrating to not be in the middle of that. To not be the person asking questions.

I am well aware that there is an arrogance to that as well. There were plenty of experienced investigators and interrogators that were in attendance. Again, by interrogator I mean, person who asks questions. The need for any less than savoury techniques was far from anyone's mind. My understanding was that their method was to just march them all in, one by one and tell them that they were under arrest for treason, that we had the testimony of Colonel Duberton, Sir Alain and Lord Velles and then left them to it.

The way it worked was that they would protest innocence, claim immunity because of rank, noble blood, privilege and so on. Then they would trot out that they had heard that there was another Jack while they were in prison so how could he possibly be involved and then the interrogator would drop the news about Colonel Duberton.

They would then try to insult Colonel Duberton's honour. Which was countered in the labyrinthine rules of Toussaint honour, which I still don't understand, by the fact that Colonel Duberton was doing what he did to save the life of his lady wife. Therefore, his word is more believable and his testimony was the final nail in the coffin.

Then it was just a case of… Sir Guillaume and one of the Knights of Francesca who was of a more legal persuasion and knew about how to ask questions, were sat in a room near where the prisoners were being held with a pitcher of watered wine. They played cards and chatted while they waited for the prisoners to come and tell them, in detail, what the other people were doing and why they, the person doing the telling, should be let off the hook.

Colonel Duberton's interrogation was happening elsewhere.

But the fact that I wasn't involved in any of that, was a source of extreme frustration for me. The lack of ability to let the matter lie. To question what was going on. My various nursemaids would constantly find me climbing out of bed, delirious with one thing or another, and trying to get involved.

It wasn't until Ariadne sat me down and pointed out the parallels between what was happening here and what had happened with Francesca, that I calmed down on that regard. I was desperate to solve a riddle. The differences were that one riddle could not be solved and this time, the riddle had already been solved.

That utterly threw me from me horse and I spent several hours after that, sobbing.

Then there was the anger that all of this had happened in the first place, there was the disgust at what had happened as well as the intrusive memories that I experienced while fighting Jack, the parallels to what happened the last time…

And on and on it went.

So I got REALLY ill. Bouts of tears, sobbing, screaming, sweating, vomiting, blackouts, forgetting where I was, forgetting when I was and everything in between. It would not be unfair to say that I had temper tantrums followed by guilts and depressions. There were days when I got better and could function all but normally. Ariadne would let me go down to the questioning chambers and take part. But then there would be other days where I was just useless.

Nothing I could say or do would help on anything and I would just have to wrap myself up in a blanket before the fire and try to weather it out using one of the various potions that Ariadne and Sir Walther brewed up to give me.

That was a mixed bag. For those people that don't remember him, Sir Walther is the Ducal physician. However, he would admit that his primary experience lies with injuries resulting from overzealous training and tournament injuries. In as much as anyone is, he is something of an expert when it comes to head injuries.

So he and Ariadne were coming up with potions that would help me weather the worst of these symptoms. They were not always successful. Indeed, some of what was tried made me violently sick as well as some other side effects that I'm not going to talk about in what is still supposed to be an academic paper.

Their efforts were aided when Lady Yennefer arrived back and joined in the efforts to help me. The same as last time, she tried to get me involved by getting me to work. She wanted to talk about the Jack project and whether we could add an addendum to future editions of our book regarding these latest copycats. An analysis of what they did wrong and how it would have impacted the countryside. I argued that I didn't want to do such a thing as that might result in us giving an instruction manuel to anyone who wants to copy Jack in the future. She countered with saying that she considered it more as an instruction manuel in order to instruct people on how to spot copycats in the future when they inevitably come up.

Lady Yennefer was also instrumental in my cure and the proper start of my recovery, this time. But that is getting ahead of myself.

The only real link to sanity was the fact that I knew that I was sick. Once that first connection to the last time I was this ill was pointed out to me, it became almost elementary to see it. I was ill.. So that was, at the same time, reassuring and also adding even more frustration to the pile. Sitting there in a comfortable armchair while the tears stream down my face, having an in depth debate with Sir Guillaume about the relativistic morals of Imperial interventions in sovereign states, while occasionally having to take breaks to nap, puke and ensure that I was taking on the correct amount of liquids. That would be scary indeed if I didn't just know that I was also ill.

There were still some times where I needed to be reminded of this though. Ariadne and Anne were particularly good for that, stopping me dead while I was having a bout of self-pity and informing me that I was sick and that sooner or later I would get better. Even though I knew that to be the case, it was still reassuring to be told this on a regular basis.

All of this is meant to explain to you, dear reader, as to why the information that I have about the closing stages of the latest Toussaint Jack scandal is something of a disjoined affair. I know what happened but I have little to no first hand recording of it.

The other problem was that it was all somewhat jumbled. It was a long time before a cohesive narrative of events started to come together as the prisoners would leap ahead in the story, before returning back to the beginning and then jumping ahead in the story to the middle and so on and so on.

It can be said that I was not completely out of the loop. As a matter of courtesy, I was visited on a daily basis by the duchess, Syanna, Sir Guillaume and Sir Gregoire. Either by themselves or in some conversations. They would come to let me know progress, ask for input which they would have got anyway whether they wanted it or not.

Going back to the daily rundown. The day after Colonel Duberton was finally captured, which was also the day that the rest of the conspiracy was caught, lest we forget, Colonel Duberton was still senseless. By which I mean he stared straight ahead and didn't react to anything as he thought about what we had told him.

For the other conspirators, they were told what had happened and what had been found out and then they were all transported to the Toussaint prison which is an old, run down fortress on the island in the middle of the widest part of the river that the people of Beauclair refer to as their lake. This movement took several days as they were transported by prison wagon in secret and in disguise.

Colonel Duberton remained at the Nilfgaardian embassy, in secret to prevent assassins from reaching them.

The announcement as to the capture and neautralisation of the conspiracy was made in court as well as an announcement of those courtiers who were going to be appointed to run the judicial portion of the punishments. You might imagine, as I did, that these men were guilty of committing treason to further their own ends. Therefore the punishment would be death and have done with the matter. However, as is true with so much in life, it was more complicated than that.

The matter of estates, heirs, wealth, marriages, heraldry and everything in between needed to be discussed and arranged. Legal precedent needed to be consulted and all of that needed to be arranged before the sentence could be carried out. As a result, the conspirators would remain incarcerated for, potentially, some time before sentencing would be carried out.

For people like Alain, who had no heir and no surviving spouse, it was actually much simpler as his estate would revert to the Duchy. Lord Leblanc was a bit more complicated as he had distant family who could, feasibly, inherit. And so the legal process began.

Syanna didn't complain. She wanted the first, real case of the Knights of Francesca to be discussed at length so that it could be used as a learning process for future investigations. She also had to redeploy the Knights and the guards in case the patrol routes and patterns that Colonel Duberton had passed out to the conspiracy could not be used against them in the future.

For those that were interested, Syanna vetoed the immediate announcement of an engagement between herself and Captain De La Tour. She declared that she wanted to be "Wooed properly" and as such, there would be no corners cut for her.

The Duchess was delighted although personally I am left wondering whether the commander and the captain will have time to get on with all of that side of things. And whether or not nature might have something to say on the matter first.

At first, the court was outraged at all the people that had been arrested. Friends and family of those people that were taken protested loudly until the proof of Colonel Duberton's testimony was revealed.

That shut everyone up.

And after that, people returned to that part of courtly politics that means that courtiers earn the disdain and hatred of the people of the continent. They started jostling each other for position. Arguing over the wealth and land and all of the other things that would be confiscated in the coming days and weeks.

Day two was, as I say, the day that Duberton started to talk. At first, we got nothing new out of him at all. It was just a list of names and confirmations of what we already knew about who was involved and what was going on. It was a lot of yes and no without going into details. The understanding of the matter was that the Colonel was still shocked by what he had learned regarding his wife's death. There was also a small break where he got to spend some time with the body of his wife. He was under escort and things, there weren't any weapons and she was dressed formally with a scarf around her neck in order to try and preserve some of her dignity.

I made my own visit to the place where Madame Duberton lay. I felt the need to apologise, even as I also felt that her lying in state while the other victims of the killers did not get that same dignity was distasteful and insulting. But that wasn't her fault so...

Like with so much else though, there was politics involved in all of that that was way above my head. The ambassador to Nilfgaard was involved and it was all getting a bit… tense. But without being able to be on the ground, I did not know how much of it was a pretense for the other nobles of Toussaint to remind them how much clout and power the Empire has in Toussaint.

On the third day, Sir Guillaume came to visit and if it were not for the ongoing search into attempting to find the identity of the lady that would become "Just Some Girl", it would have been quite a fun conversation. He described a steady stream of conspirators coming into his little room and protesting their treatment. They were demanding writing implements so that they could summon help from relatives, contact lawyers and so on. Guillaume's response was always the same. The prisoners would be told that Colonel Duberton had confessed, was confessing and still had a lot more to confess, before anyone would be allowed to communicate with the outside world.

He went into in depth descriptions of the faces and body language of the people that he was talking about and we spent some time laughing at them. Those were some good moments I especially enjoyed the fact that Sir Raoul Leblanc had to be kept in separate parts of the prison after the first couple of days in order to prevent the other prisoners taking justice into their own hands. We had already taken the fact that Sir Alain had been part of the effort to bring everyone to justice and so he was still being kept in the palace to avoid exactly this problem.

Lord Velles was being kept in the Imperial Embassy, awaiting the decision as to who actually has custody over him between Toussaint, Nilfgaard or his native Temeria. Another matter that seemed to promise to be dragged out for months yet.

It was on the fourth day that I felt strong enough, and Ariadne agreed with my assessment, to go down and take part in the interrogation of Colonel Duberton.

As prisons go, I have seen worse. Indeed, I have been in worse prisons and I have visited Kerrass who has been held in worse still. The colonel was being kept in a guest room. Not one of the big, swanky rooms that foreign dignitaries stay in, but more the kind of thing that the entourage and courtiers of whichever state visitors were visiting might stay in.

It was a nice room, windows were small and high up in the walls, well out of reach, the bed looked relatively comfortable for a given expectation of what beds were like. The room was bare of decorations, there was a desk and a set of chairs for the interrogators to sit in and also a pair of scribes to take notes on what was going on.

Duberton himself was wearing a plain shirt and a military tunic that had been stripped of all insignia and decoration. Apparently, military law said that he was still a colonel until his court martial had taken place, but that wouldn't happen until superior officers would be convened. There also needed to be a decision made as to whether or not the civil matter might take precedence. Again, the Ambassador would need to get involved in that.

He also wore a set of leather riding trousers and some pull on boots. He looked comfortable enough, even if he looked utterly miserable.

The room was well lit, a fire in the hearth, even if I did notice the lack of fire tending implements, and a pitcher of water and a smaller jug of wine was on the table.

I was joined by one of the interrogators that had volunteered to join the Knights of Francesca. He was a thin man to the point of emaciation with a shock of grey hair at his temples and a thin look about his face that contained a pair of deep sunken eyes that glittered from underneath bristling eyebrows. He wore a tunic with the symbol of the Knightly order on his breast and a simple sword belt at his side. And he was as charming, friendly and funny a man as ever I've met.

I spent some time with him later as I was fascinated by the humour that I saw dancing in his eyes. His name was Lord Dryden and had served the ducal throne for a number of years as a Knight Errant before he had met the lady that was to become his wife. It was quite a sweet story actually, he was getting older and older and more and more despairing of ever finding anyone until one day, as a Knight, he rescued a woman from an unhappy home situation. There had been a resulting duel which Lord Dryden had won handily. Now that he was responsible for her, both as having killed her husband in a duel and as her rescuer, they had spent more time together and, perhaps inevitably, had developed affection, and later love for each other.

They had further astonished polite society by producing two children of their own which they raised together as well as the children from her first marriage. She had asked that he leave the Knights Errant to help her with her estates and he had agreed. Syanna had gone to him, asking for his expertise in the questioning of criminals, intending for him to act as a tutor, in much the same way that Lord Palmerin taught Sword techniques to the new Knights. His wife approved.

When all this was over, Ariadne and I went and dined with the couple and their family. In every way that he is tall and skeletally thin, she is short and describes herself as "pleasantly rotund". She smiles happily whenever she sees her husband and he reflects that happiness in his own eyes. Their marriage seems to involve the two of them mocking each other until one admits that the other is the victor by exchanging lewd suggestions as payment to a chorus of protests from the children.

It was a nice household. I would have liked to have had parents like that.

I met him for the first time that day. It seemed that something as important as this needed to be handled by an experienced professional and he met me with a smile.

The colonel was already sitting at the table and we got to work, starting with my telling the Colonel and Lord Dryden what we already knew. We were at the stage where the purpose of all of this was to try and find out the Colonel's part of the story.

The Colonel was not a good story teller. He was a military man and as such he was used to standing before superior officers and giving reports. Such reports were short, sharp and to the point and that was basically what he told us. It took a lot of work by Lord Dryden to try and draw the colonel out a bit on the various points. It wasn't that he had forgotten them, or that he was hiding anything from us, it was more that his military training had taught him to report the salient points from a military standpoint.

So if we had just asked him to tell us what happened he would have said:

"My wife was taken, I was told that if I did not do as I was ordered, she would be killed. I was told to answer their questions, act normally and that I would be given instructions. My final instructions were to dress as Jack, to provoke a fight with Lord Frederick and, or, Witcher Kerrass and allow myself to be killed. Then my wife would be released back towards the rest of her life. Instead, I was taken alive. You gentlemen know the rest."

Not very inspiring or filled with detail.

If you would like the full transcript of Colonel Duberton's interrogation, my understanding is that it is being made available. I have read it to remind myself of what was happening and it is a fascinating conversation between Lord Dryden and Colonel Duberton. I barely said anything. At first, because I was listening and later, because I was becoming depressed.

It should be mentioned that physical descriptions of me would still describe me as exceedingly pale and tired looking. Large bags under my eyes as well as a certain bloodshot edge to them. I also felt the cold to a rather extreme level so that even in a warm room, I was wrapped in several warm jerkins as well as a blanket in order to keep from shivering.

So this was his story. Paraphrased from the reams and reams of transcripts.

He had become aware that there was a large contingent of former Knights Errant and members of the Nobility who were dissatisfied with the way that Toussaint politics was going. In his line of work as a peacekeeper and leader of peacekeepers in foreign, conquered lands. This was not unusual and he has found that, in the main, if he just did his job then sooner or later, people's resentment at his presence would eventually be replaced with gratitude. This is because people are aware that they have been conquered and are also well aware that if the Imperial armies decided to, then the occupation could be a lot less peaceful than it is actually being.

Such matters start with teaching the common folk to trust the new black armoured patrols and that such sentiment soon filters up the ranks. Such matters were made easier here by the fact that he was also involved in training his eventual replacements which he described as already being highly skilled.

He was quite self-recriminatory about the fact that he did not take the threat quite as seriously as he should have done.

He knew that the nobility resented the fact that his people enforced stricter border policies in line with standard Imperial practice and his prime concern was from banditry, sanctioned by the nobility in order to fatten coffers that were suffering under the new regime. He also expected attempts on his life and the lives of Syanna and Damien so that their replacements could come from the old guard.

He freely stated his astonishment that the Duchess would hand over responsibility of leading the Knights of Francesca to her treacherous sister given her past activities. He also made a point of stating that he was equally astonished at the way that Syanna had taken to her new responsibilities and the way that she leapt into the matter with both feet. I will quote here from the official transcript.

"(My concerns) got less as she went on and became more confident and experienced. She would always have questions. She could read at a frightening pace and would consume the books and textbooks that I gave her from the war academy on the subject of policing and law enforcement. I would give her a text, expecting her to take a week or so to read it and come back with questions. But she would stay up all night to read it and would wake me up with a list of questions on what she had read. Then she would have more questions about how this text disagreed with the other text and questions about what the circumstances were that she would choose one tactic over another.

"She had a particular insight into the minds of bandits and guerilla fighters that I did not expect and will serve her well into the future. She is also well aware that her weaknesses will lie with her temper when it comes to investigation work. But if she is to be my last student in this kind of thing. Then I can be proud of that, at least."

His main thinking was that he was astonished that there were no actual attacks made on the Imperial guards and the nascent Knights. The worst that happened was that people would try to bribe him and his officers. The danger of corruption in the peacekeepers is real and so the Empire ensures that the officers and men of the peacekeeping units, which require more training and expertise than the rank and file, are well compensated to prevent this kind of problem.

So he described men approaching him in court to try and convince him to do this, do that, ignore this or that transgression. To lessen his grip on this border or to let through the such and such wagon train without inspections.

Again, this was not new or strange to him. Lord Dryden asked questions about these incidents and we were provided a list of names. Some of which were part of the conspiracy, others were not.

He stressed that such things are commonplace, even in regular courts that haven't been conquered recently. There are always attempts at corruption and the like, it's just one of the perils of doing business.

If he really pushed himself to think about it, then his first real contact with the conspiracy was when he was approached by Sir Morgan Tonlaire. He knew that Sir Morgan was not part of the conspiracy in the main, but he was occasionally used as a kind of buffer zone between the conspiracy and various candidates for recruitment.

He was approached in the open, in full court session and he was told that certain members of the nobility of Toussaint were concerned about the safety and security of Toussaint, after the Nilfgaardian forces had left. They invited him to a dinner at the estate of Alain de Moineau. He was told that it was a business meeting and that therefore, as was his habit, he didn't take his wife with him on the grounds that she would be bored.

This seemed to be a common determination in their marriage. If his wife would be bored of something then he left her at home. I am left wondering if she knew that this was why she had been excluded, if she had made that determination, or if she might have risen to the occasion if she had actually gone alone with her husband to one of these parties.

So he went to the party. He was plied with wonderful wine, good food and beautiful servants. He was an old enough player of the game to be able to realise what was happening. He flirted with the servants without committing to anything, saying things like "If only I was free, but I love my wife too much to…" He pretended to be drunker than he was and to be more overwhelmed by the food and the surroundings than he actually was.

He spent his time trying to separate those at the meeting who were there because they actually had a grievance, those people that might do something dangerous with their new found determination and those men that were just there because they needed to be seen to be there because of other considerations.

Political alliances, marriage contracts, business dealings and so on. All of which are the sort of thing that would lead a group of people to going to a potentially treasonous meeting when they didn't actually agree with what was happening.

That is why he thought that this was the first time that he met the conspiracy. What they were looking for was some kind of feeling from him. Some kind of statement or action that they could use to suggest the removal and replacement of Syanna and Damien so that the new Knights could be led by "men of quality."

That quote seemed to stick out in his mind.

The intention was clear in his mind that they wanted to replace the leadership of the Knights of Francesca and then allow them to simply become the older order of the Knights Errant but with a new coat of paint. He described a common sentiment being:

"We all know that the Knights Errant weren't perfect. And the opportunity to change that is certainly worthwhile, but there needs to be proper men of quality in charge of the reforms so that we can avoid the pitfalls of the past."

He made his notes, departing for home at the end of the evening, noted everything down in his log, so that he could make a proper report to be briefed to Syanna, Damien and his senior officers in the morning.

He stressed, again, that this kind of thing was not uncommon in the line of duty that the Empress had chosen for him. He had to work hard in order to maintain his soldierly readiness and not become too fat or drunk to be able to carry out his duties while attending these kinds of parties.

After that, there were two other attempts in an effort to recruit him into some kind of concern.

One was in public, a private dinner with someone where they were insisting that the methods that were being employed by the new knights would not be stood for amongst the nobility and the general populace. Another was a party at a separate estate where people tried to prove that things were not going well. He noted that Sir Morgan was not at either of these two efforts. Sir Morgan would just confine his efforts to the courtroom and try to find legal ways to confound the new Knights and their methods.

Then the day was fast approaching when the Knights of Saint Francesca would be taking over from the Nilfgaardian regiment. There were going to be games, tournaments and the like, the coulthard family showed up and the dissenting voices seemed to have fallen by the wayside. He had been of the opinion that, like they so often do, these men at these meetings and parties had come to realise that their efforts were not as well thought of as they had previously considered. There would not be enough popular support to shore up their claims and they would find themselves on the wrong side of history.

Another quote:

"Such men are not stupid. It is always always factional. They might claim to be working for the betterment of the nation or area that they represent but sooner or later, their efforts are about extending their own power. The old system gave them power, the new system gives the power to the other side, which is often the younger side. So they know that the world is turning and that night will follow day.

"But instead of getting on board with the new methods and working to curtail the more extreme efforts, or seeing the benefits of what the changes might bring about. They insist to themselves and to anyone that will listen that the old way was the best and that there was never any need to change.

"The one constant in the world is that the old people will die off and the young people will have to take over from them. The young people will have new ideas to cope with the changing times that the old would never have considered and it will work for a while. And the old resent the young for not paying them the respect that they think they are owed. And the young resent the old for sitting back and expecting the world to stay still and their refusal to believe that anything might have been wrong with what was happening before.

"Just consider what a force the Knights of Francesca would have made if Sir Morgan had been there to coach people on political maneuvering. If Alain could have taught fencing or if all of those traditional knights had formed up behind the Duchess. Think of the force that they could have become.

"Instead, Syanna and Damien must spend just as much time watching their so-called friends as they must guarding against potential enemies. Men must be taken from the borders and the patrols in order to search the houses of people that should know better and to guard the common folk against the depredations of their… betters."

He spat that last word.

Formally handing responsibility for Toussaint over to Syanna at the feast, that didn't mean that the work of the 4th Alba division was done. It simply meant that they moved into a more handover phase. The other thing that people mistake this for was that they assume that it was like using one torch to light the other before being instantly snuffed out. It wasn't like that. There was a long period leading up to the handover where Syanna was effectively in charge.

She made all the decisions regarding things, including to the Nilfgaardian officers who were well trained to not look to their commander in order to check the orders. If there was a problem, then he, the colonel, would step in beforehand and in private.

But the truth was that it never needed to happen. Syanna already knew plenty and was intelligent enough to be able to delegate when she knew that she was out of her depth. So he was confident that Toussaint was in good hands. He was looking forward to enjoying the culture and lands of Toussaint with his wife before the passes cleared and then he would be moving onto his next assignment or onto a period of furlough. He was hoping for the second originally as his wife had been pestering him to start a family.

He stopped to weep a little when he told us that.

His wife was taken from him on the same night that the young barmaid Appoline was killed. The same night that Lady Vivienne was attacked. He had taken his wife to their lodgings in Beauclair as he did when the pair of them had attended a social event together. His wife was renting a small set of rooms above a dressmakers shop in the upper part of the city, far away from the parties and the market areas.

Another quote:

"She was a timid lady of a nervous disposition and demure character. She enjoyed standing on the edge of things and watching the world with a loving gaze. She liked to see beauty in simplicity and life in Beauclair itself was often a little overwhelming for her. She would take to horse and ride out into the countryside, under escort of course, in order to watch windmills moving in the breeze. Or to watch the comings and goings of folk on the main highways.

"She was peaceful and I loved her. She had arranged it all in her head. We would retire to a small cottage on my estates. We would maintain the house for when friends and family visited, but for the main part, there was a small cottage that she was in love with. We would retire there and build a family, living a simple life. Reading, working and raising our children."

"It sounds nice." Lord Dryden said.

"I would have found it boring." The Colonel answered. "But I would have lived with it for her."

We had to take another break there.

So they returned to their lodgings and went to sleep. He had been hoping for the two of them to make love given that the pair of them were so rarely able to spend the night together but she was tired and retired to her own bed chamber immediately.

Although he wasn't drunk, he had certainly drunk enough to ensure that, although it took him a long time to fall asleep, he slept deeply when he was finally overcome.

He woke to find a sword at his throat, held by Sir Alain who was grinning in enjoyment. The hate in the Colonel's voice for Sir Alain was considerable. There were a couple of other men there, one of which was holding his wife on her knees with a fist in her hair and a dagger at her throat. Along with that there was another girl, younger than his wife although older than her years , standing behind them.

He stressed that he wanted to fight several times. That he even reached for his sword and dagger but he was wearing night clothes and his opponents were properly armed. There was no way that he would be victorious before they would slit his wife's throat, which was the threat implied

The attackers gave him his instructions then. The girl that was with them would masquerade as his wife, wearing her dresses and behaving as Madame Duberton would. He would give over the patrol routes and other tactics and strategy of the Knights and the guards. He was warned that there would be further instructions at a later date and that in the meantime, he should act as if nothing had changed. He was told that one of their number would act as a servant of the household to monitor the Colonel's behaviour.

And should even a hint of misbehaving come from the colonel, then his wife would suffer a death that would chill the hearts of men and women all over the continent.

An example of how ruthless the conspiracy was, is that the man that was masquerading as the Colonel's servant was one of those men that was killed in that time and place where Just Some Girl was killed, but we will get to that.

So he spent his days in business and when he wasn't staying out with the regiment, which he managed to arrange for a couple of days, then he and the girl lived as man and wife. They even shared a bed on those occasions at the insistence of the servant on the grounds that he, the colonel, could be sent for at any time by the authorities and as such, why would he be sleeping on the floor or the rug.

He refused to actually have sex with the girl though, he couldn't bring himself to perform in that regard.

This is when it happened.

"What was her name?" I asked.

"Who?" Colonel Duberton asked.

I felt myself frown.

"The girl who was being forced to pretend to be your wife." I prompted.

"I don't know." He said, shrugging. "Just some girl."

I have played that moment over and over in my head. It was one of those moments where I wish that I had said something. That I had slapped him, yelled at him or done something.

It was like what happens when a person says something obscene about a friend of yours. I get it a lot when people are racist and up until that point in time, I had actually quite liked the person.

Why was Colonel Duberton so dismissive?

The part of me that always takes the opposite side in a debate would say that he had just lost his wife, he was terrified for that purpose and as a result, it simply escaped his notice. Another thought would be that he didn't give the girl a name because he already suspected that she might be doomed and didn't want to name her in the same way that you don't name the lambs that are heading for the slaughter yard in order to feed your family.

There are all kinds of reasons.

He might have cared, but the simple fact of the matter is that in the grand scheme of things, his wife was more important to him. It might have been part of his military training. That part of the training where you have to dehumanise the enemy, or the people that you pass by in order to be able to do your job. It's the same part of you that has to harden your heart in order to avoid helping every single person that you pass on the street. He was at war and as such, he needed to get into that mindset.

But his uncaring attitude towards this struck something inside me. I could feel myself retreating from the room, retreating from the interrogation. I felt as though I was falling down a long dark hole.

Up until that moment, I had been thinking of Colonel Duberton as another victim of the conspiracy. He still was and I cannot deny that. I had been looking for ways to try and help him, to try and argue in public and in these writings that he wasn't a bad man so that I could redeem him in the light of the public.

But instead, he had said that.

He was… lesser now in my eyes. I was hugely disappointed in him. Massively so. I had liked both him and his wife a great deal as he seemed to be an example of the good kind of Nilfgaardian. The king of Nilfgaardian that we need more of in the North. The kind of man that does his job and does it well, is understanding of those people that have been conquered and why they might be angry or upset.

And in that moment, that moment of horror and disgust. I gave up on him. The man that could be so callous towards an innocent girl.

The day following his wife's kidnapping, while the guard and the Knights were all rushing around trying to figure out what was going on with the attack on Lady Vivienne, he was called to a meeting. It was there that he met the majority of the conspiracy. They asked him questions, lots of questions on the deployment of the Imperial forces, how the Knights would work, how the guards would work and the patrol routes. He was told nothing about what was going to be expected of him. Instead, he was allowed some time with his wife who was being kept in the basement of that house. The house in question was the house of Lord du Bas-Tyra that would later come up. The man himself was there and was an eager participant in the conspiracy.

The day after, when Miss Donnet was killed, they brought him back and had a meeting with him in the open. He met them at a tavern where the matters of the protection of the Duchess were discussed. He nearly rebelled then, it would appear that that was a line that he was not willing to cross, much to the amusement of some of the conspirators.

This was the meeting where he identified that Sir Raoul was part of the conspiracy. Raoul was sitting at an adjacent table. To all intents and purposes, he was sitting separately to the rest of the group, but he was clearly listening and as the colonel watched, members of the conspiracy would send notes to the table that Sir Raoul was drinking at, Raoul would read the note, scribble something back and have a servant pass it backwards and forwards.

It was a good system to throw off suspicion but Colonel Duberton could see it happening before his very eyes. He commented that Sir Alain, who was writing most of the notes, seemed particularly smug about the entire system.

The following day was the day that Flower of the Night was killed, which was when the Colonel started to put together the facts of what the conspiracy was doing. He couldn't entirely understand the full scope of it, he thought that it was about undermining the abilities of the Knights and the Guard. He didn't know who actually killed Flower of the Night, nor did he know who was wearing the costume of Jack at the time.

From there, the story moved quickly. He did his best to support the efforts of the guards and the Knights. But he knew that he was being watched. He claimed that he would be working his way towards telling someone or doing something to let people know what was happening, but then he would turn around and there would be a member of the conspiracy there watching him. Or the girl pretending to be his wife would be steered into his sightline to remind him of what was happening.

After the death of Flower of the Night, he was given his costume of Jack. he wasn't involved in any of the actual attacks, but he was nearby, always nearby with the costume on and a conspirator nearby, holding a dagger to his throat and a threat on the lips. It was in this way that he watched the chase of Jack through the streets when young Lady Matamara was killed.

On the night that Madame de Launfal was killed he was there, watching while they daubed the blood on the walls in order to give their message and it was then where he realised that he was the intended fall guy, so that if someone saw, or came close to actually catching any of them, then Colonel Duberton would be pushed out into the street to be caught and to take the blame.

The closest to outright rebellion that he came was when Lady Moineau was killed. He had seen Alain in a rage when it became obvious that his wife was betraying him with the Witcher and was party to a vehement argument that almost came to blows between Sir Alain and Lord Velles. It was even something that caused more than a little amusement to the Colonel as he recalled Sir Alain threatening the merchant with his swordsmanship skills. Lord Velles told him that there would never be a duel. Velles told him that he would simply punch Alain in the face repeatedly until he stopped moving.

Sir Raoul stepped in, one of the few times that he took an active hand in what was going on. Alain wanted to have Kerrass be the man who took the fall for the killings as a punishment for what had happened. Velles wanted to stick to the plan.

Of course, that was what made it clear that the plan was for Colonel Duberton to take the blame for things. He did not know how it was going to happen, but he was pretty sure as to what the result would be. He demanded to know why he should help and what would happen to his wife and so on.

In truth, I was no longer really listening by this point. The Colonel put up a bit of a fight on the matter. It was agreed that Kerrass would make a good scapegoat, the danger being what would happen if it was figured out that he was a scapegoat.

The argument went that the Knights would not expect more than one scapegoat. Therefore, if Kerrass was framed and found out to be framed, then it was more likely that they would fall for the second framing.

It would seem that the swift and decisive arrest of Kerrass meant that this plan had to be abandoned, despite the efforts of Sir Alain. Colonel Duberton had become rebellious however and it was decided that an example needed to be made.

The conspirators knew that the girl who was masquerading as Madame Duberton would need to be disposed of. They were also having some problems with Lord du Bas-Tyra who was threatening to expose the conspiracy if he didn't get a bigger piece of the pie when everything was dished out at the end.

The Colonel was ordered to make a big fuss over being invited to dinner with Lord du Bas-Tyra. To escort his wife there and then they were locked in the dining room. The Colonel was, again, forced into his Jack costume and this time he was forced to bloody his own hands. He was part of the attack, along with the three other men that were waiting in Bas-Tyra's house that night which were Alain and another two men that the Colonel didn't know. The Colonel was made to kill the guards at the front and any servants that he came across.

He made an effort to kill them quickly and as cleanly as he could in an effort to spare them the horrors that would be inflicted otherwise. He was wearing the costume in case someone escaped.

Then Alain tied the Colonel up and made him watch while Just Some Girl and Lord du Bas-Tyra were tortured to death before his eyes.

He took the warning to heart and it was then, as the blood and other fluids dripped to the floor that he was given his final instructions. He was told that he would stay in his home or in his camp and a messenger would come for him. That he would, essentially, be told "Now" and that he should take his costume and his weapons. He should then start killing people in the city until men came to stop him. When that happened he should fight for as long as he could, or until he could be killed by either Lord Frederick or by Kerrass.

When the conspiracy heard of his death, they would release his wife.

And that was the long and short of it. It was quite late in the day when the story finished. There were holes in the story that would need to be filled by further questioning later, or in future interviews. Lord Dryden just had a few questions then. He asked why he believed that the conspiracy had kept his wife alive.

Colonel Duberton sighed and replied that he believed that they were men of honour. That they believed in what they were doing and therefore why should they lie. He did also admit that it was a hope born out of despair really. Every time he asked for proof of life it was explained to him that she was being kept at the Leblanc estate and that she was too far away for that proof to be given. He was definitely angry with himself for believing them for so long.

Why didn't he tell anyone beforehand or during his torment? Beforehand, he didn't think it would go this far and during it all, he was so worried for his wife that he didn't dare risk it. That he would look back on things and think "I could have done something there and maybe he and his wife would have been rescued, but the risk at the time was too much."

I was fading quite badly by that point and when Lord Dryden declared that that would be enough for the day, I fairly shot out of my seat in order to flee.

I wanted to puke, weep and scream, preferably all at once, but I was also consumed with a concern that if I had to spend another minute in the presence of that man, then I would murder him.

"Don't judge me Lord Frederick." The Colonel said to my retreating back.

I turned.

"You were not there." He went on, spitting his despair and turning it into anger. "You did not see the woman that you loved, the woman that you swore to protect being dragged from your marital bed by her hair. You did not see the pain and despair in her eyes. Do not judge me. What would you have done in my place? What gives you the right to look at me like that?"

To be clear, in my mind, I was not consciously wearing any particular expression. I was just looking at him. I may have been fighting back tears.

I looked down at him for a long time. It was clear that he was a broken man and I looked to see if I could find a small amount of pity. I could not find it, save for the fact that the man clearly deserved an answer. I took another deep breath and instead of looking for sympathy, I looked for anger instead.

"You are right of course." I found the anger I was looking for, but I had no idea how long it would last. "There is no way of knowing how any of us would react in those circumstances. The truth, though, is that I would never be in your place. The woman I love and the woman that I am going to marry has not been trained from birth to be subservient to me. She has not been trained to be demure in every way and to be seen rather than heard.

"The woman that I love would never allow herself to be taken and used against me. I rather think that my pity would be reserved for the people that would try to do such a foolish thing. Indeed, it is far more likely, and a far more sensible thing to do, that they would take me in order to get to her. But even then, there would be no power on the continent that would stop her from rescuing me and taking me back into her arms.

"So I would never be in your position sir. It would never happen."

He stared at me defiantly.

"As to what gives me the right to judge you?" I went on. "'Just Some Girl' you said." I told him and spat on the floor. "Just Some Girl. What gives me the right? If all other things were equal. If I had been in your place and the woman I love was a trained Nilfgaardian lady of the court. If I had yet to help her to open up from her shell and become more independent?

"If I had been where you were and I had been brought a girl in an effort to keep me quiet. A strange young girl because you cannot tell me that you didn't know how young she was, or what her standing in life was. Some villager or farmer's daughter who would have been as terrified, if not more so, than the wife that has been taken from you. I would have recognised her as the hostage against my good behaviour that she was.

"I would have known her name Colonel. Even if I could not find some way to guarantee her safety or arrange her rescue, I would have known her name so that I could carry word of her to her family. It would be the least I could do for her. I would have known her name."

His gaze fell.

"Just Some Girl." I said again. "You couldn't even be bothered to learn her name, could you." I shook my head, unable to contain my disgust. "Just Some Girl."

I fled, before I committed murder.

My illness got worse after that. Much worse, frighteningly worse. Days spent in bed, screaming and weeping.

So I missed the final stage of the investigation. I missed the part of things where it all came together in one cohesive whole and we properly learned what was going on and what had happened.

For the full report that was given to the Duchess in advance of the trials beginning, I can recommend travelling to the Ducal archives and asking for a copy, or you can actually send to the palace of Toussaint and ask for a copy to see what the report actually entailed.

I have never been part of this kind of investigation before. Hunting down monsters and bad guys, certainly. I've definitely done that. But this kind of… officially sanctioned and ordered investigation. I had not realised just how much paperwork was involved.

As well as the interviews that the conspirators had to sit through, the investigators had to do the same. Kerrass and Guillaume sat in for me on the duchess' orders. On the grounds that everything I had done had been done in the company of those two men. As a result of this, all that happened for me was that some very serious looking men came into my rooms and read from the accounts of Kerrass first and Guillaume second. Then they asked if I agreed with those statements and when I did, I signed my name to say that I did and accepted that I would need to attend the trials in order to put this across to the chosen magistrates.

Who those magistrates would be was still up in the air. It seemed clear that the Nilfgaardian ambassador would be involved as this was almost certainly something that the Empress would have… views about.

But gradually, the story came out.

It was actually quite reassuring to discover how much I had gotten wrong. No-one blamed me but a lot of the justification for the various deaths was both less, and more, than what I had supposed, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The conspiracy started, or so they believed, shortly after the announcement by the Empress that the Knights Errant had been disbanded. In the weeks and months that followed the people who were complaining most vehemently against this decision of the Empress came to realise that the people complaining the loudest were always the same people.

Maybe a month into things, when the Imperial Guard were replaced by Colonel Duberton and the 4th, the conspirators realised that the Duchess was, or believed herself, essentially powerless in the face of the imperial decision. They decided that this was weakness on her part and as such, they decided that this was not going to be resolved by shouting in court.

As well as that, the brutal, heavy handed tactics of the Imperial Guard (remember that they are the elite regiment responsible for the Empress' safety. They are known to have their sense of humour removed upon recruitment and any threat is a threat against the Empress and therefore is treason.) were replaced by the experienced peacekeeping diplomacy of Colonel Duberton and his men. The initial outrage was replaced by wary and cautious acceptance.

The conspiracy… which is a little unfair of me to call them that. They weren't really a conspiracy yet and their membership was very different from what it ended up being. The conspiracy realised that popular sentiment amongst the townsfolk, villagers and field workers was going to shift more towards the alba division and the men therein.

They still, massively, resented the interference in Toussaint sovereign affairs by the empress and decided that the duchess was weak. They knew that the matter could not be pursued in court because the court massively leant towards the duchess.

So they started to meet in secret to discuss strategies as to how they could, and apparently this is a quote "wrest control of Toussaint away from the Imperial Tyranny."

Apparently, it was like an old man's club that would meet once every week to discuss courtly strategies, play cards, drink expensive drinks and ogle the pretty serving staff. They even met in the upper floor of one of the larger and more expensive taverns in Beauclair.

This club included a number of people including some that would later run afoul of the conspiracy itself. Lord Palmerin was often invited but this would have been back when he was still drinking himself to death in pity and grief at the loss of his order and from everything he had seen.

The group also included Sir Morgan, Lord Tonlaire as is, and Lord Matamara. Yes, the same Lord Matamara who lost his daughter to Jack. We'll get to that, it's really quite sickening.

There were other members as well, that I am not mentioning because they did not get involved in what the conspiracy became, did not come into this story anyway and as such, I don't want to bring their reputation down. They know who they are.

At this point, they were more a club than a conspiracy and it wasn't long at all before there came a bit of a schism in the club between the younger and older members.

A lot of the older men had brought sons and nephews who they knew to share their political point of view. After all, they had been trained to that point of view so it was suitably dependable.

So what happened was the same thing that happens over and over again in the continent. The old people assumed that they were in charge and deserved the unfailing obedience and respect of the younger generation. They expected the younger folk to wait on them, hand and foot and hang on every word.

I'm paraphrasing a lot here. Both sides of the debate would be offended to hear the way I'm telling it. The older people would argue that the matter needed delicacy and finesse that the younger folk lacked while the younger folk argued, not unfairly, that all the older generation wanted them to do was to sit around and wait while not actually doing anything.

So the club spintered. Apparently, it's still there although now it's a place where older folk come together to moan about the old days when men were men, children respected their elders and women were grateful for the attention that they received.

Some of the older generation left the club for a variety of individual reasons. Lord Matamara discovered that his lifestyle was not any worse, indeed it was quite a lot better in many ways. Sir Morgan Tonlaire realised that the club wasn't actually going to do anything useful other than sit around and moan about things and left to try and get things done in the court.

The younger generation left en masse. There were a couple of holdouts, men who were too far under their father's thumb, or who stayed to maintain their father's contacts but just about everyone else left. The smaller of the two groups of young people left to join the Knights of Francesca. Many of whom expected to find it to be an Imperial brainwashing camp and of those Knights, some are even rising up in the ranks. These were the genuine patriots that wanted to make Toussaint a better place and, so far, they seem to be working hard to make it so.

The other half left to go to Sir Alain's house and complain, not just about the Imperial Intervention but about their fathers and grandfathers who weren't giving them the respect that they felt they were owed.

It is uncertain at the time of writing which happened first, the older leavers or the younger.

I feel embarrassed as I write this as I can remember thinking much the same sort of thing about my own father. Holy Flame keep him warm.

And that might have been it. Small, dwindling groups of people who would sit around and complain about what was happening and about how the world was changing in ways that they didn't like.

This is when Lord Velles came on the scene. There is still some confusion about who Lord Velles is and what his history was before he became a merchant, which happened around six months after the signing of the peace between the North and the South. It is all but certain that he is a Temerian national and it is plainly obvious that he has some rather advanced military training. It is also clear that he was injured at some point in the past.

Try as I might though, I can't find him in any of the reference books about the Temerian peerage. He almost certainly didn't fight at the Battle of the Line but it is clear that he saw combat.

Anyway, I digress.

Lord Velles was one of many merchants who, at that time, were making a small fortune for themselves by smuggling, although there was not much subterfuge happening, goods across the border. The bribes that he paid to the Toussaint border guards was considerably lower than what he would have paid in taxes on the wine and as such, he saw that as a good thing. The Imperial Guard, and later the 4th Alba, disagreed. So Velles had seen his profits slashed.

He put together something of a merchant's concern about the heavy handedness of the new border guards and took the petition to thed. My understanding is that the petition didn't even make it past the herald's secretary, let alone onto the duchess' desk.

Velles complained to his customers and an introduction to the club was made. Velles, being a former military man, realised that what remained of the club wasn't going to get the job done and said so. One of the, now we can call it a conspiracy, who was still going to the club made an introduction to Sir Alain and the rest of the conspiracy that was meeting at the Moineau residence.

And he promptly took them in hand and started to come up with the scheme.

By all accounts it was not going well. Despite being the host of the conspiracy and therefore being the defacto leader of the conspiracy, Sir Alain was far from entirely popular. Sisters, cousins and wives of the other conspirators had all been seduced or had made eyes at the erstwhile Sir Alain and as such, he was not well liked.

Velles was good at this, his strategy about undermining the new Knightly order was well founded and showed promise but at the end of the day, he was a foreigner. No matter how much money he could throw around for the recruitment of mercenaries and guards to help with the coming efforts, he could not break that glass ceiling. So the conspiracy was still not getting anywhere beyond minor kinds of scheming.

What did that look like? They knew that they were going to make some attacks, but not against who or who was going to carry them out. They knew that there would be problems like money trails to guards and mercenaries and if everyone was being honest with each other, they just weren't ruthless enough to get the job done.

In comes Sir Raoul Le Blanc.

He had heard about the scheme because he was one of the targets for recruitment. He decided that his life was just too boring and that things needed to be shaken up. According to those people that were doing the interviewing, it was just as likely that he would have chosen the other side if matters had turned out the other way and he would have supported the progressives.

What he provided was the necessary drive. He decided about things like spreading the blame amongst themselves, he had everyone choose a target for themselves…

And it was he that added the Lady Caroline aspect to the conspiracy.

By all accounts, Raoul handled the entire thing masterfully. Even though I despise the man, he provided the necessary ruthlessness to the efforts but he also avoided fully committing himself to what was happening. He took on the guise of a royal advisor, the power behind the throne. Treating the other conspirators like chess pieces. According to the other conspirators, Raoul never attended a meeting at the estate of Sir Alain, but he could inevitably be found nearby as he hunted or trained or… I'm sure you get the idea. So the other conspirators would contact him and ask for his advice and his advice would be given.

But he never actually committed to the cause. He didn't benefit from any of the victims that were chosen. The scheme would not benefit him in any way. There were no lands that he wanted to take over. There would be no money in it and he had no need for any more power.

The brighter members of the conspiracy began to realise that this made them vulnerable and insisted that he take part in some of the activities.

The conspiracy started with the seduction of Lady Caroline, several months before the Jack attacks were going to be taking place or before the handover of power was going to happen and then things started to move accordingly.

There is something reassuring in finding out that there were bits of this entire situation that you get wrong. All of this stuff I have told you about the foundation of the club, how that turned into a conspiracy and how that conspiracy might have eventually just petered out if not for the introduction of a couple of key figures and a large sum of money. That is not a new story. History, as I'm sure that you will know, is replete with this kind of thing and the vast majority of them do actually peter out. As it turns out, talking about treason is much more enjoyable than actually committing said treason. All it takes is the introduction of a man with the necessary drive and means to make it happen to tip over the line from one thing to the other.

So all of that, I could have predicted. It's not uncommon and it certainly isn't new.

I did get two things wrong and in the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that they were quite large.

The first is that the introduction of the Jack element of the killings was always part of the plan where I had thought that it was only instituted to put Kerrass and I off the scent. A theory which, looking back, was breathtakingly arrogant. It was Velles that came up with that particular idea. As one of the outsiders in the conspiracy, he brought an external view to proceedings and was able to point out some of the things that native people of Toussaint would not necessarily see. The first is that simple attacks on people would soon get the attackers caught and killed. Why?

Because there would be witnesses.

The conspirators were honest with themselves in one significant area. They knew that the Knights of Saint Francesca, while not nearly popular enough to completely do the job, were much more popular than the average Knight Errant. Toussaint loves people that try and if someone saw something, then they would run to inform the nearest Guard, Knight of Francesca or Imperial soldier.

So they had to drive away the witnesses. They could avoid the patrols and the soldiers, the idea to use the Colonel had already occurred, but beggars or passing townsfolk? Or people that might just open a window to see what was going on. That was not something that they could guarantee to avoid and therefore it was a risk that needed minimising. So it was Velles that suggested using Jack, not Raoul as I had suspected.

He argued that the people of Toussaint are afraid, on a visceral level, of two things. The first is Vampires, the second is Jack. There was some exploration as to whether or not the attacks of a Vampire could be emulated, but it was decided that, same as she had last time, the Duchess would just hire a Witcher. A Witcher who would soon neutralise the problem.

But Jack? There is enough ambiguity in Jack to cause real fear. Jack can be a normal man preying on the vulnerable. He can be a monster, hiding their crimes behind the mask of normalcy. He can be a non-human mutant or a magic user or some kind of otherworldly spirit. They also realised that it would be much easier for them to fake an attack from Jack than it would be for them to fake an attack from a Vampire.

Also, it was well known that I would be in Toussaint at the time, and given my notoriety and the experience with the subject of Jack, then Jack would be on everyone's mind. Therefore using Jack made more sense. So it was partly about me. But I was more of an icing on the cake kind of situation.

So that was the first thing I got wrong.

The second thing I got wrong was why those particular women were chosen to be the victims. In that I assumed that the victims were chosen for their choosiness when it came to sexual encounters.

As it happens, Raoul and Velles worked quite well together, even if both of them believed that they were dominating the other. By which I mean that they both believed that they were leading the other on and manipulating them. So they both claimed credit for the plan while refusing to believe that the other person had anything to do with it.

We can be pretty sure that it was Velles who came up with the opening strategy. The opening attacks would be the most important. The main attack on Lady Vivienne was a distraction from the, actually far more important, kidnapping of Madame Duberton and the murder of Appoline the bar maid.

It was, and is, well known that the Duchess relies on a number of people for her rule of Toussaint. She relies on her sister regarding the security of the realm which is a relatively new thing. She has an older aunt that advises her on matters of the moral, traditional and etiquette nature and there is an old friend, big sister figure that advises on foreign policy.

All of them are formidable ladies, charming and terrifying in equal measure. Women whose minds work on a level that few of us dare to think. They are the Ducal equivalent of The Empress' Lord Voorhis and the rest of the Empress' advisors except that there are many Imperial positions rolled into the minds and bodies of just a few women.

Lady Vivienne's role is that of domestic policy advisor. She knows about laws, politics and personal interplay and the like.

I don't want to take away from the efforts of the other Ducal advisors or the Duchess' personal secretary. Or the Herald or any of those things. But it could almost be said that Lady Vivienne is the person that those other advisors work for. It is a rare advisor that can get to the Duchess without first having to run things past Lady Vivienne and if they do end up meeting with the Duchess, then LAdy Vivienne is also in the meeting.

The fact that the Duchess had no close male advisor was one of many points of contention in the conspiracy.

To the courtiers in the room, it might seem obvious as to why she doesn't. But for those people who don't think that way, it's because she is concerned that a powerful male advisor, no matter how loyal to her personally, would be treated as the de facto Duke by… well… the entire continent. People would just assume that he was in charge.

So the conspiracy decided to target Lady Vivienne based on that. The foreign affairs lady was set aside on the grounds that her death would not affect anything. The Etiquette lady would, likewise, not really change much. So it was down to attacking Vivienne or Syanna. They were concerned that if they attacked Syanna then she would become a martyr whereas attacking Vivienne would create a damsel in the eyes of the populace.

Which may play into everyone's hands.

So they mounted an attack on Lady Vivienne. They made it a big, flashy and organised looking affair with lots of men involved. If they actually did get to kill her, then they would be ecstatic, but even if she escaped, then the attack would still have served its purpose.

They would have been a bit happier if she had been a bit more distressed by the attack rather than taking it in her stride, but that's a different comment.

Madame Duberton was attacked at the same time to take advantage of the situation. Appoline was attacked because there needed to be an attack and a build towards more impressive targets. They knew that they wanted to start small and work towards something larger.

So why Appoline?

Each member of the conspiracy put a woman in the list of potential targets. This was both an effort to make sure that everyone was incriminated so that no one person could get away with anything. They were all equally invested in what was happening.

Why only women? Two reasons. The first was because they were under the impression that Jack only killed women. He does not. He kills to terrify and the sad truth is that the murder of women is simply more terrifying to the men that are supposed to be protecting them. Especially in Toussaint. The other reason was to provoke outrage in the populace and the court.

They knew that their conspiracy wouldn't work without the court being on side. And the people of Toussaint would be incenced if the new Knights of Saint Francesca couldn't protect the women of Toussaint. So there we are.

Why not random women? Because the conspirators also knew that it was actually quite likely that the conspiracy would not entirely work. So at the end of the day, the attacks needed to benefit them personally.

So why Appoline?

She was Velles' chosen victim.

Velles is a merchant. Even the most sympathetic person to the merchant class of the continent would say, along with admitting the fact that the world would simply not work without them, that their first, second and third concern is about making more money.

Even Emma says that.

So that was Velles' thing there. He knew that there is one inn that all trade moves through in Toussaint and that is the Cockatrice. There are other bridges over the river to be sure but none that provide such a direct route to the markets of Beauclair than the bridge of the Cockatrice.

The Ccockatrice inn and tavern has been there for centuries. There is even some myth around the place that there was an inn there when Beauclair was an Elven city, before humans had even dreamed of the nation of Toussaint. And for the longest time, the Cockatrice has beena family run business.

One of the reasons that the Cockatrice is so famous though, is because of the fish chowder that is served at the Cockatrice.

Why is this important?

The first reason is that the Cockatrice only makes it's chowder from the fish that are caught amongst the nets at the base of the bridge that the inn rests on. The fisherman who owns the exclusive rights to that fish is Appoline's ailing father.

The second reason is that the person who made and served the Chowder was Appoline herself. Appoline was one of the main attractions of the Cockatrice. Her beauty and charm meant that hopeful young men would travel for some distance in return for a chance to woo her and compliment her, undeniable, charms.

So Velle's plan was to remove Appoline. Her father would sell the fishing rights in order to be able to keep himself and his younger children in care. Velles would buy those rights and charge the Cockatrice an increasing amount of money for the fish, putting the Cockatrice under strain. Couple that with the loss of business from the fact that the Chowder would not be as good as it used to be, as well as the fact that Appoline would not be there to be charmed any more. All of that would mean that the Cockatrice would begin to struggle.

Then it wouldn't be long before Velles himself could move in and acquire the inn for himself. He would have unprecedented access to trade, merchants and all the gossip that comes with it. Those people that assign more sinister motives to Velles' actions than simple greed, also point out that he would be able to provide untold information to his masters from what he would learn in such a place.

It was a good plan, if a little overcomplicated with all the moving parts. Emma has even suggested that it might still work, only for someone else to take over. She has gone to warn the Duchess of that possibility.

Velles' chosen victim was the first to be killed on the grounds that he had put the money up for the mercenaries and guards that would be needed to mount some of the attacks that were needed. As he had the biggest investment, he stood to need a return earlier rather than risk missing out.

Or so he argued.

"Jack" was not invoked in the death of Appolline. It was a group of the most unsavoury mercenaries that carried out that particular deed. They were ordered to take her somewhere private and do the deed. They were to make it so that people who thought of Appoline's body would have nightmares for days to come. Then they would take steps to ensure that the body would be found at a later date. The men in question did their jobs well.

Miss Donnet's death was about land.

As I have written before, it was Miss Donnet's intention to go to a nunnery. She had actually wanted to go to a nunnery since she was much younger, but her parents hadn't allowed it. Her parents kept the tavern in the quarries docks. The small village next to the river with the quay that can load the stone from the quarry onto the necessary boats. There are also a couple of fishermen's huts to help feed the quarry workers, the tavern to give the workers somewhere to go to spend their wages, a boat builder who mostly maintained those barges that weren't up to the necessary standards needed in order to carry the stone down the river.

It was this whole little country within a country. The tavern had a couple of rooms as well, which were designed to keep those visiting men and women that would be ordering the stone during the negotiations. The tavern keeper was not the worst off in this situation and had bought some land with it. He had eyes for advancement and although he loved his daughter and was proud of her religious devotion, one of the reasons for her delay in heading off to the nunnery was because her parents hoped that she would change her mind and marry the younger son of a noble that lived in the local area. The land was to be her dowry, either in the physical form or the money after it being sold.

The noble in question had plans for that land. It was quite marshy and he was going to have it drained so that he could build a road over it that would be more stable and better maintained than the stone loading docks. Building a stone bearing wagon would be cheaper than building the right kind of barge and in exchange for the toll that he was hoping to charge, the little docking village would be made redundant and the noble would become rich. Eventually, he would be able to buy out the quarry completely and live off the proceeds. This, due to the fact that the quarry would still be providing stone until his grandchildren were grown.

But Miss Donnet wanted to go and join the nunnery. Which meant, according to the traditions of the area, that the money or land that would normally go to the new husband as part of the dowry, would instead go to the church. The noble in question was pretty certain that one of the church factors, who was a big customer of the quarry which provided stone for all the shrines and statues in Toussaint, had a similar idea to him and would have used the land accordingly.

The parents were sympathetic, they wanted the Lord's good graces. And given that the quarry workers would still need somewhere to spend their money and negotiating factors would still need somewhere to stay, they were not worried about loss of business.

It was more a case of, if the daughter went to the Prophets, then their souls would be safe. And if she married the nobleman's son, then their bodily comfort would be assured.

The noble, who was among the older members of the conspiracy, was a greedy, ascetic kind of man and had taken his son with him to join the conspiracy initially. It was through the son that we learned about this plot. The noble was a rich man already, far richer than you would think to look at him. The lad had gone along with it because he had found Miss Donnet attractive and the idea of all that money was seductive.

Their theory went that if Miss Donnet was dead, then the innkeeper would be inclined to sell the land for a huge profit. Therefore, Miss Donnet had to die.

"Jack" that night was just a floating of the idea. A suggestion that the conspiracy hoped would catch on. They had bigger and bigger plans for Jack, but they also wanted to build a sense of dread in the countryside. They wanted to invoke Jack without actually invoking Jack. Their reasons for this were rather wooly. The person who put the mask on and carried out the deed was one of Alain's cronies.

Alain had a habit of riding out into the countryside and seducing women. He was not so far gone as to go out looking for someone to rape in the manner of some noblemen that I could mention. Whatever else might be said of him, he liked his women, at least slightly, willing. He had ridden into the village some months prior in order to have an ale and to see how those "less fortunate" than himself lived. He had seen Miss Donnet but she had walked off when the sensible young girl had realised what he was there for. Alain didn't mind, he was young and handsome enough that there were other women that were more willing and easier targets for his charms. But one of his entourage had liked the look of her and had tried himself.

She was clever enough to spot this and went to sit in her father's common room and help out with the inn. Her parents were saving her for her hopeful marriage and the younger nobleman fled with his tail between his legs.

Then the chance came up to have his turn and salve his injured ego at the same time.

The fact that the attack only succeeded in a measurement of killing Miss Donnet was a source of some fury for the conspiracy. It completely undermined everything that they were going for. A Jack who had nearly been caught. A man left with his dick literally hanging out. Jack was in danger of becoming a complete figure of comedy. A laughing stock rather than something to be feared.

The man responsible was soundly thrashed and all but incarcerated at Alain's estate so that he couldn't mess the matter up any further.

The Conspiracy decided to up their game from there. Miss Donnet had been chosen by all the conspirators putting their chosen targets into a hat. It was understood that you couldn't kill your own target as part of the joy of all of this was that you had the perfect alibi. The person that you wanted dead would have died while you were surrounded by other people and therefore, no-one could possibly suspect you.

The conspiracy wanted something a bit flashier by this point. They wanted the notoriety and so a few of the lesser targets were set aside for a hopeful future. Although Velles would confess that there was a lot of lip service paid to the choosers of these kinds of… he called them "lesser" targets.

That says something. I'm not sure what it says, but that says something.

They chose Flower of the Night next. There were several of these noble people that would have been quite happy at the news of the death of the high level courtesan and it was the motive for her killing in which I was closest to accuracy. There were several of these men that were offended when she had turned them down and refused to accept their custom. There were some more, slightly more naive people who wanted her dead in order to protect their reputation.

One man in particular had a reputation for being pure and virginal. One of those character things that men portray in the tournaments. Also important for upcoming marriage contracts. However, if it was found out that he had engaged the services of Flower of the Night on several occasions, then that would have fallen apart. This was conveniently forgetting that the Belles brothel kept careful records of who had engaged whom and for what purposes.

Her death was actually quite carefully planned. They were not entirely confident in their scheme and were slightly overcautious. They chose their drunken beggar carefully so that the word of Jack's return would spread through the countryside. They killed Flower of the Night horribly and then arranged for the beggar and thief to be there and witness the proper return of Jack.

They couldn't have been prouder of the results. The man wearing the Jack costume that time was Lord du Bas-Tyra who was already making himself a nuisance, demanding more influence and respect while overinflating his importance. So the conspirators that were in charge of those kinds of decisions decided that if anyone was going to be caught wearing the Jack costume, then it should be him.

The conspirators were even slightly disappointed that he didn't get caught.

Then came the death of Lady Matamara on the night of the party. This one… This one hurts. Not least because I just couldn't understand it.

One of the conspirators was the younger Lord Matamara and he wanted his sister dead. Specifically, it was the older of the two brothers. The veteran of the wars who had lost his arm in combat and had become a military mind. The one who was trapped in a low ranking position as an adjunct to a general, engaged to the general's much younger daughter.

As things turned out, the young Lord was deeply resentful of this situation but could not afford to escape. His funds, even upon inheritance, would not be rich enough to attract a better marriage which would have given him the excuse of calling the wedding off. Nor would the funds secure him promotion out of the dead end posting in which he had found himself.

One of the problems here was the fact that his Father, Lord Matamara, the unofficial huntsmaster to the court, absolutely loved his daughter. She was, by far, the favourite child and had promised her a huge dowry so that she could have her free choice of the suitors that came after her.

The younger Lord Matamara resented this. That bit I can understand, it is not easy to realise that you are not your parent's favourite child. What I cannot understand is the resent that he had towards his sister. I would have told him that too if I had had the chance. From all accounts, his sister was a good, decent and wonderful young lady. A bit too proud of her youth, wealth and beauty but unlike some, she did not use these things as a bludgeon to beat people to death with.

But to him, this made the matter worse. He argued with his father that she had all the advantages anyway. Youth, charm, intelligence and beauty, why did she need money as well? The father did not listen and sent his son off in a rage.

With her death, that wealth would now revert to the estate. Lord Matamara the senior was distraught when he heard the news about his son and heir's involvement in his daughter's death. He demanded to see his son, throwing around lots of unsavoury comments about how Syanna must have framed him. How dare they besmirch the good name of his house and so on and so on. He was granted access to his son who, essentially, blamed the Father for everything.

Four days after the arrest of Colonel Duberton. Lord Matamara ran himself a nice hot bath and slit his wrists open with a hunting dagger, to be found by his youngest son.

The older son then claimed immunity on the grounds that he was now the Lord Matamara but the duchess refused and insisted that no-one could be above the law in this case. The youngest son is now Lord Matamara with land, wealth, title and responsibility that he didn't really want at a very young age. Lord Palmerin has promised that he will take care of the younger Lord and it will be admitted that if he plays his cards right, he will have a promising future. He just wishes it had come to him by any other means.

I don't understand that one and that's why it disturbs me. I can understand greed. The desire for more money is a motive that I can comprehend. I have never been poor, but I have lived without, when Father was trying to teach me a lesson. I have had to make decisions about whether to pay rent on my university rooms or being able to eat, stayed in when my friends have been out drinking and I have had to walk past when there have been things in market stalls and shops that I have not been able to afford. I know about the desire for more money.

I can also, to my shame, understand thwarted love and lust as a motive. Loneliness is hard and I have laid in my bed looking at the ceiling after a night of watching my two closest friends being wrapped in each other's arms while joined at the mouth. Only to listen to my landlord having loud sex with his chambermaid. So I can understand all of that.

But I cannot understand hating my sister enough to want her dead. But it wasn't even that really. It was the cold hearted dismissal of that family bond. By all accounts, the young Lady Matamara had loved her brother and admired his devotion to duty. For him to just have an equation in his head which would be adjusted to his benefit if his sister was removed… I don't understand that. I know that it's a common situation among families where younger siblings and children are disposed of in order to secure wealth and political alliance. But I don't understand it. I'm glad I don't understand it. I would give anything to have Francesca back.

That is one that I do not understand.

That killing was the first time that the conspiracy put on a show. They wanted to put everyone on the back foot, to convince them that Jack was involved. We don't know the intricate details of what happened that night but we do know that the chase with the guardsmen was carefully orchestrated. We know that Sir Alain was the Jack that killed Lady Matamara's guards and began the chase. We know that the chase was carried out by various people wearing a Jack costume that could be hurled aside. Little more than a mask, hat and elongated cloak that could be thrown over a wall and we know that it was Alain in the graveyard, having taken a break to get his wind back to fight the guards and actually murder Lady Matamara.

He did not complain about this and had, apparently, leapt at the opportunity. His romantic course was set with the intention to have him marry Lady Caroline but he was still looking forward to having mistresses by the dozen. He rather depended on the position of Duke to give him a certain amount of charm and allure to the opposite sex.

It probably would have worked at that.

Lady Matamara had indeed turned him away at various points and spent some time avoiding him at parties. He had been insulted by that and had decided to pursue some vengeance.

There was also a certain realisation amongst the conspirators that there were greater and lesser members of the conspiracy. Alain, Velles, Lord Matamara from the distant posting, and a couple of others. But the hierarchy was also dictated by who could wield a sword well enough to convince people that they were Jack. Velles, Alain and only a couple of others had the necessary training and experience.

Raoul refused to do that. He, at least, knew that the Jack entity is not fond of copycats and as a result, he refused to wear the costume or to be anywhere near the attacks when they were being committed. This did not sit well with some of the more junior conspirators and it was here that it was decided that he would be the one to house Madame Duberton.

We still don't know for sure when or how Madame Duberton died. My theory is that she was held captive by the others but when she was taken to Raoul's estate, he saw the risks in keeping her alive and simply ordered her throat slit on the grounds that she could never then be used as a weapon against him. He claimed, as I predicted, that he had no idea that she was in his manor house and that, by then, many members of the conspiracy that were implicating him, were lying out of jealousy of his status and skills.

The conspiracy knew that I was involved after that, along with Kerrass. The intelligence that Anne had provided through Lord and Lady Tonlaire was part of that.

According to a couple of the conspirators, it was the death of Lady de Launfal where it all started to go wrong.

They knew that I was ill due to various sources and they knew that I had had a falling out with my family on the subject. So they reasoned that if they pushed me on an emotional level then I would break. They were confident that the danger to the Jack pretense was from Kerrass and myself on the grounds that we were much more likely to see through the ruse than the investigators from Toussaint.

So the idea was born that the way to neutralise me was to push my emotional boundaries, in other words, to push me and push me and push me until I broke.

They had predicted that my getting involved in the investigation was almost certainly going to happen. There are, now, two continental experts on the Jack entity, one of which was Lady Yennefer of Vengerberg but she was out of Toussaint. And the other was me. Given that I was going to be local, it made sense for me to be contacted. So they knew that this was going to happen.

So the scheme was to start to push me to my limits. Anne was already in place and through normal mischief making, my spear was arranged to be stolen and they made sure that I would be humiliated at the party of talents. Raoul volunteered for that. Both to show that he was willing to take part in the conspiracy, but also because he hated me with a violent passion.

That, at least, he was honest about.

They also had a pool of targets that Jack could attack that would infuriate me and upset me.

More than one conspirator wanted to kill Emma. They would have preferred to have killed Ariadne or Laurelen but that would have angered the Lodge of Sorceresses. Which includes a dragon nowadays lest we forget. As well as the fact that the conspiracy were still men of Toussaint and they still had a visceral fear reaction to angering a vampire.

Emma was far too well protected as she travels under considerable escort whenever she is abroad in Toussaint. It is well known how unpopular she is in certain circles and as such, her safety is as guaranteed as it can be anyway.

Anne was another target that was suggested but her use as an informer meant that she would be safe in this regard.

So they had another couple of targets in mind.

I don't know who the other targets were. The conspiracy was aware that I was friendly with Lord Palmerin de Launfal and that they reasoned that the thought of his wife's death would upset me.

I rather thought that it made me angry but Ariadne argues that this is not necessarily mutually exclusive. "Anger can be just as overwhelming as anything else." She says. And therefore, it was not necessarily a bad idea.

Lady de Launfal was on the conspirator's list anyway because they were concerned that she would blackmail a couple of them with their sexual tastes.

I'm not going into what they liked in the bedroom that Lady de Launfal knew about.

There was also the hope that killing his wife would help to destabilize the Knights of Saint Francesca. So I did, at least, get that one right.

But instead of upsetting me and sending me over the edge into upset and despair, it galvanised me and the conspiracy watched in horror as I leapt into action and started really helping the Knights of Francesca and the guard zero in on some suspects.

Lady de Launfal was not killed by any of the big names in the conspiracy. They had all caught a bit of the fear Kerrass and I. She was killed quickly, brutally and by several people including the dead Lord du Bas-Tyra. His accomplices will probably never be known. Bas-Tyra was given the job with a resounding, "You want more rewards, then you have to take more responsibility." He was less than pleased that his target was such a Lady as he was neither attracted to her, nor did he have any particular grievance against her. He rather wanted to enjoy himself in a less than savoury way and this desire was neutralised by the fact that he was sent after Lady de Launfal.

After that, the conspiracy regrouped a little bit. They considered the possibility that the deaths and attacks would need to end sooner than any of them had wanted or anticipated. Therefore, they agreed that it was time for Alain to become a widower. They needed him to be open to marry Lady Caroline down the road. They knew that we would suspect him because of his political leanings and because he was one of the few that was capable of pretending to be Jack in the first place. So they also reasoned that if they killed his, Alain's, wife then that would provide him with the perfect avenue of protest to get away with things.

They also dreamed up the distraction that they could frame Kerrass for Lady Moineau's death.

According to the witnesses, Alain was incensed when he found out that Kerrass had been having an affair with his wife. It simply didn't occur to him that his wife's eyes might wander and he was absolutely furious. It wasn't until several people, including Raoul, sat him down and pointed out how much of a benefit this was. It meant that they had another, tailor made scapegoat in the figure of Kerrass to blame the murders on.

Alain took to this idea firmly. He had visions of Kerrass standing before the hangman and for Alain to whisper in his ear that this was revenge for what Kerrass had done.

The conspiracy expected Syanna and the guards to believe in Kerrass' innocence and to keep him out of the cells. They knew he would lack an alibi because on those nights when the other women were attacked, he was lying in the arms of a woman that would now be killed. So he seemed the perfect scapegoat. It would also help confirm the incompetence of the Knights of Francesca if they had been told about Kerrass' guilt, and then they had not arrested him when there were more deaths.

It was like a dream come true. Even more so than their initially intended scapegoat of Colonel Duberton. They also knew that I would believe in Kerrass' innocence and that I would kill myself to prove it, thus neutralising me.

Unfortunately for the conspiracy, Syanna promptly arrested the Witcher meaning that future deaths could not be blamed on him.

And there needed to be future deaths. They had realised that they had a vulnerability in the figure of Lady Caroline who had realised that something was wrong with what she was being told regarding, well, everything. So much to Sir Alain's distress, the decision was made to cut their losses and remove Lady Caroline from play.

It was Velles that was sent to do this.

Why Velles?

Because they didn't want to trust it to any lesser people who might make mistakes and unmask everything. Because they knew that we were already watching Alain. Raoul wouldn't do it and so Velles was the best remaining choice. And of course, he missed.

The conspiracy realised that we were onto them now. They could feel the noose tightening around their necks and they were afraid. Mortally afraid. Visions of Knights and guards and Imperial soldiers knocking down their doors tormented them endlessly. As well as that, Colonel Duberton was becoming fractious as it had been a while since he had seen his wife. There were also a number of conspirators that were upset and angry that their intended and desired targets had not been killed, so what was the point of it all? Lord Bas-Tyra was one of these people.

So Velles and Raoul called a meeting. They admitted that it was always going to be possible that the plot would have to end early which was why the scapegoat of Colonel Duberton had been put in place from the very start of the matter. The conspirators were told not to do anything foolish and that if some, or any of them were arrested. That they were to say nothing. Deny everything and refuse to accept the legitimacy of the investigation.

Then Colonel Duberton would be activated and everything could, and would, be pinned on him.

The inner circle had a more private meeting where they agreed that some examples needed to be made. The "lesser" conspirators needed to be warned about the consequences of making noise and Colonel Duberton needed to be reminded of what was at stake. So they came up with the slaying of "Madame Duberton".

They arranged for the Colonel and the girl who was masquerading as Madame Duberton to be invited to dinner at the house of Lord du Bas-Tyra. The Colonel was convinced that this would be a moment where he would see his wife for the first time in a long time. When they got to the house, the conspirators emerged, forcing the deaths of the other servants and guards, much to the horror of Lord du Bas-Tyra. Then they beat du Bas-Tyra to death before forcing the Colonel to watch while they did… horrible things to the nameless girl that they had sent to live with him.

Horrible things, all the time warning that he would need to play his part, or the same things would be done to his wife. He was instructed that should he hear of the arrests of any of the conspirators, that he would take his costume and cause a massive scene until he should allow himself to be killed by either me, or Kerrass.

Why me or Kerrass? So that it could not be claimed that it was the Knights of Francesca that brought an end to the Jack crisis. It was outside help.

The killing of Lord Bas-Tyra did exactly what it was supposed to do in that not a one of the conspirators complained after that and they all fell in line. Not that they had much time to formulate any kind of idea about rebelling against the orders that they received.

Just about all of the conspirators, to a man, including Velles, Alain and Raoul, were absolutely astonished at the "Throw the elbow" gambit of Captain De La Tour. Not one of them thought that the guard, or the Knights had that kind of thing in them. That willingness to go beyond honour and to do whatever it took, completely blindsided them and more than one of the conspirators were actually really impressed with it.

Their account of the day was that they knew that the plan regarding Colonel Duberton was in place. They rather thought that one or two of them might be arrested as part fo the coming things. It was almost certain that Alain was going to be arrested and the opinion of him was falling amongst the conspirators. He did not exactly inspire confidence or loyalty after all.

They heard about the duel where Kerrass challenged Alain. Apparently, it had been some time since anyone had had the nerve to challenge Alain regarding his antics. There had even been some surprise that Alain himself hadn't challenged Kerrass on the grounds of Kerrass' affair with Lady Moineau. So many looked forward to hearing about Kerrass' destruction. Many even complained that they did not dare attend the duel for fear of being too heavily associated with Alain and as a result stayed away.

All of them, with the exception of Sir Raoul, were astonished when the Knights and guards came to arrest them. The only thing that varied between all of them was the degree to which they protested.

Velles was pretty sure that the game was up almost immediately. He was only invested in certain aspects of the scheme, he was confident that it could not be entirely proven that he was involved. The only time that he had been directly involved himself was when he had attacked the cottage containing Lady Caroline and because no-one else had been involved in the raid, he could easily claim that it was only hearsay and the like that would put him there. He was not guilty of treason given that he was not a native to Toussaint…

That point is in contention. Even though the matter has been resolved, there is an argument that because we are all part of the greater Empire of Nilfgaard, plotting against a foreign client Kingdom is still plotting against Nilfgaard and is therefore treason. The legal arguments about that are going to continue for a long time I think.

… So he thought that he was largely going to get away with it. He traded an agreement for his cooperation and told them everything. He had kept meticulous notes on every meeting that he had attended and every conversation that he had had. It is these notes that give us the clearest picture of what was actually happening as part of the conspiracy. But he told us what was happening and Syanna, who had led the raid on Velles' compound, ordered the arrests without even needing to consult the Duchess.

Pretty much everything else is known so I will skip through most of it. Alain did not really help very much. He was in a state of shock in the immediate aftermath of his loss to Kerrass, insisting over and over again that Kerrass had cheated. That Palmerin was biased against him and so on and so on. The other conspirators followed their orders. The example of Lord du Bas-Tyra was still fresh in their minds. And apart from anything else, they were confident and secure in their positions and their plan.

It simply never occurred to them that we would be able to turn Colonel Duberton against them.

Raoul had spotted the vulnerability. He had guessed the reason, or excuse if you prefer, as to why Kerrass was challenging Alain to a duel. He simply asked himself the question as to why Kerrass had not duelled Alain before. When he got the answer he didn't like, he retreated to secure Madame Duberton's body.

Why had the body not been destroyed, hidden, buried, burnt or otherwise? Because they knew that such things could be found eventually. Whereas if they kept it inside the manor house, the searchers, including magical ones, could be forbidden entry by rules of sovereignty. He didn't have the body burnt because he was concerned about the risk of Madame Duberton turning into a Wraith of some kind.

A fear that was not entirely unfounded.

The other problem that Raoul faced was that the conspiracy still didn't trust him. And for good reason. So he kept the body on their orders so that there was some incriminating evidence that could mark him. The fact that the conspiracy had ordered him to keep Madame Duberton a prisoner, and he had killed her instead, actually horrified more than a few conspirators.

Raoul's intention was to secure the body until the conspiracy was dealt with before disposing of the body and everything that came with it in as polite and respectful manner as possible given the circumstances.

That was still the plan but Damien was closer on his heels than he had expected. A fire would have been spotted, a group of people leaving with a body would likewise have been spotted. So he took the guards and Damien prisoner using the pretext of the fact that the lands were his own to police. He was confident that he could use his money, reputation and prestige to tie up legal things about the capture and his refusal to accept Damien's authority.

But I challenged him and he just couldn't resist.

And so the entire thing came tumbling down.

As I say, I came to this information long after the fact. After Colonel Duberton's admissions and naming of Just Some Girl, I fell apart and got really sick. There were good days and bad days. Days when I could follow along with what was being discovered about the conspiracy and other days where I could barely take anything in. I was permitted from my bed twice. The first was on the day that we carried news of the death of Just Some Girl to her family. The other was where I attended the memorial service for the victims of Jack.

It was a bleak day, the families of Appoline, Miss Donnet and Just Some Girl were given full cavalry escorts to the memorial and they were given places of honour at the following wake. The service was nice enough, moving and touching, but the Wake afterwards was strange. I found it to be an almost parody of grief.

When my time comes, a kind of simple version of the Skelligan wake is my favourite. More quiet drinking, laughing and eating amongst friends rather than the axe-throwing, wrestling, bards climbing on tables with couple's sneaking off to dark corners, but not entirely off out of sight.

For Toussaint there seemed to be a whole lot of ceremony around the entire thing. People wore ornate, dark dresses. Jewellery was, at the same time, simple and ornate. Normally silver and pearl.

I remembered a piece of correspondence that I had had with Lady Yennefer when we were working on a draft of our book and she commented that, speaking on a purely surface level of things, she quite enjoyed Toussaint memorials because it meant that her fashion choices were not too obscene in the middle of the Toussaint court.

What I'm saying is that there was a lot of Black, White and Silver in the ensembles. But it was no less fancy for all of that. There were cups of mourning. There were special dishes that were produced with the pieces being taken to those families that had lost someone first and foremost. There were songs of mourning which caused the entire court to bow their heads in solemn displays of grief.

It went on and on and on. I probably should have left much earlier than I actually did, but I felt that I had some kind of obligation to stay for much longer. A feeling that many people took every opportunity to chastise me for later.

After that, the legal process began in earnest and it was among the more frustrating things that I have ever been part of.

By this point it had sunk into the minds of the conspiracy that they were in trouble. They were scared, angry and frustrated. Many of them believed that they were innocent of all charges. Why? Because they, personally, had not been involved with any of the attacks and because their chosen victim had not been one of the ones selected to be killed. Therefore, because they had not committed any crimes directly, they should just be let go.

It had to be explained to them, over and over and over again that this was not how treason works. That conspiring to commit treason is the same thing as actually committing treason and that they would be punished for that. This did not sit well with them at all and they fought it, every step of the way.

I was interviewed by the lawyers on both sides of the case on multiple occasions. The entire process was far from pleasant and the only reason that I didn't just flee, persuading Kerrass to come with me, is because that might have meant that some, or all of the conspirators were going to get away with it.

That and because I was still really, really ill.

Life in Toussaint was going back to normal now. Syanna and the rest of the Knights of Francesca were distracted by new crimes and new crises. There was a concern that information about Velles contacts and his merchant endeavours would have gotten out into the wild and as such there was a danger of increased smuggling happening. There was a burglary at the estate of Lord and Lady Tonlaire where it seems that people were after the contents of Lady Tonlaire's Blackmail ledgers.

There was the murder of a Lord where one of the vigilance committee's that had been formed during the Jack attacks believed that we had missed some of the conspiracy. So they took the matter into their own hands. It turned out that the Lord in question had had a mistress in the figure of a member of the Vigilance committee's wives. An excuse was looked for to justify murder. It was found and the deed was done.

It was also in that period where Anne went to see her former colleagues at the Belles of Beauclair. Ariadne and I went at the invitation of the madame as we were the betrayed clients. I wanted to speak up on Anne's behalf. She had forbidden Gregoire from attending the… ceremony really is the right word I suppose.

She was exiled. The process was not pleasant. They trotted out every man, woman, boy and girl that worked at the Belles and one by one they walked up to Anne and slapped her in the face for the betrayal of a client's confidences. It was awful to watch as the tears streamed down Anne's face. I tried to intervene but Ariadne hauled me back.

When they were done, the Madame nodded and produced a, not small, bag of money which she handed back to Ariadne.

"She had no choice." I tried to say. The entire process had been deeply disturbing and upsetting to me.

"Do not interfere." Madame Isabelle snarled at me. "These matters are beyond your concern. You have no idea what we have to live with."

"He knows better than most." Ariadne said, calmly.

"Be that as it may." The Madame said. "I apologise to you both as clients. Should either of you ever come back to my doors again then you should know that there will always be food, wine, a bed and a partner of your choice to keep you warm. You have our deepest regrets for what has happened and hope that you will not hold this bitch's betrayal against the rest of us."

Anne sobbed at this last statement.

Isabelle signalled and the vast majority of the staff turned and went back inside the building, leaving only a couple of the older women out in the cold.

Isabelle approached Anne and lifted her back to her feet from where Anne had collapsed to her knees and gave her a hug. The remaining women joined the hug and there was the sound of sobbing coming from the hug. When Anne recovered her composure, Isabelle led us back into the Belles where there was a party of farewell in the offing.

The brothel knew that Anne had no choice. That could not stop her from being cast out. But now that she was cast out, they could celebrate her coming wedding with pride.

I received a number of invitations that night. So did Ariadne for that matter.

But I was still sick and I deferred with the best grace that I could manage. The women would not let me go though, getting Ariadne to promise that she would let me visit them all at a later date when I was feeling better. Anne looked on smugly, her tears long since dried up. Apparently she had been telling tales.

Ariadne was gracious about it and told everyone that I could come, but that she, Ariadne would come at the same time.

More than one woman got an odd, slightly intimidating, thoughtful look about that.

It was a little over three weeks after the arrest of Colonel Duberton, a few days after the memorial when Emma, Mark, Laurelen, Kerrass, Ariadne and I were called to the Duchess' study.