Chapter Text
“Your father cares for you, in his own way,” said Geralt, doubting the statement himself, but feeling morally obligated to stick by it nonetheless.
“Fuck that, and him,” said Ciri.
Hard to argue with her on that one, so he took a drink instead. A long one.
Around them, a bitter-cold forest lay in silence, leaves crunching and cracking under the weight of winter. With a little fire at their feet, and furs around their necks, the crisp air was bearable at stride, or by the flames.
How the Nilfgaardian courier had found them way out in the Aedernian wilderness—or what was left of it, considering the enterprising peasants and equally-enterprising soldiers’ dedication to destroying the local flora—he had no idea. But found them he had, teeth rattling in his black beekeeper’s armor, and ridden off again into the dusk with a single regretful glance at their little fire.
Where he thought he was going to go, night like tonight, he wondered, but he didn’t intend to think too hard on that one. Another man risking his neck for the Empire, not anyone’s business but his own. Men have done more foolish things for coin. Like kill monsters.
Point was, the courier had gone, leaving him alone with a confounding little note and his equally-confounding daughter.
Ciri tipped back her bottle, the brown glass in her gloved hand starting to frost over, and he wondered for a moment if he should be letting her drink all that. Something, something, bad parenting. What would Yen say? But, then again, Yen wasn’t here—and when had he ever let Ciri do anything?
He looked at the scrap of neatly-folded brown paper in his gloved palm again, as though it might change shape or color or the writing on it might disappear entirely. The scribbled ink looped over itself so anally intricately you might mistake it for a child’s scribble, if the ink didn’t stink of money.
Sir Geralt, ran the note—
Please come to the palace at once. An urgent matter regarding our mutual acquaintance requires your attention, as well as your discretion. Ask for Mererid, engage no one else.
Regards,
A well-wisher
The text of the message had not, in fact, changed in the two minutes since the last time he’d read it. It wasn’t Emhyr. Couldn’t be, not after the last time, not when Geralt had, for all intents and purposes, failed him. Or lied, which, if known, would be infinitely worse.
If it was just him? Fuck it, he’d go, even if just for curiosity’s sake. But Ciri, gods if he found out she still lived…
“But it isn’t Emhyr,” he said, with more conviction than he felt. This would be the kind of sly, underhanded bullshit the emperor would pull. “I can’t imagine him wanting to see my disappointing face again. But mutual acquaintance? Not sure I know enough Nilfgaardians to have any of those. And who the fuck in Nilfgaard wishes me well?”
He spat the last few words out like they pained him, caught like a bone in the gut. Southerners always said one thing, and meant another. Fuck if he was going to try and figure out what was meant. Nothing pleasant, he’d bet.
“Who’d you fuck last time you were there?” came Ciri’s elegant answer.
He fidgeted against the log behind him. What was wrong with her?
“No one. Also, that is… not appropriate.”
“Not appropriate?” she snorted. “What are you, my governess? We’ve been over this.” She shook her head at him with mock sincerity. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s your reputation, not mine.”
He frowned at her, then back down at the note. The possibilities swarmed over themselves, though the list was far too short for his liking—but he made it anyway.
“Emhyr is probably the only person in Nilfgaard who might have ever wanted to see me again,” he said, pointing one finger with fervor at the snow, “And that was before I lied to his face. So, not him.”
He held up a second finger.
“Morvran Voorhis? He saw what I could do, professionally, and as the appointed heir could have a contract. But, I doubt he would risk the emperor’s wrath by soliciting the white wolf, when said wolf has been forbidden the capitol. Plenty of other witchers in the world.”
A third finger extended.
“Which leaves me with what? An anonymous solicitor? Don’t like that. The chamberlain—no, the barber? He’d invite me back just to watch the execution.”
He waved the little paper at her, trying to impress on her the seriousness of the situation. Ciri did not even blink.
“I. Don’t know. Who sent this.”
She shrugged with a cultivated disregard. “Does it matter? Just ignore it.”
The Lady of Time and Space has spoken, said the shrug. Let anyone who cares to contest her will speak, and woe betide them!
Geralt sighed, and shoved the paper into the bag at his feet. His shoulder ached, his knee ached, and it was too goddamn cold to deal with any of this. Most importantly, he was out of beer, and not even a little bit drunk.
“I’m going to bed,” he announced, as though that activity involved anything other than walking five feet to the right and crawling into a low tent.
There was absolutely no justification for the knot of dread in his stomach at the message, and yet. It reminded him all too clearly of how close Nilfgaard could be at their heels anytime they wanted—almost as if he’d gotten permission from the emperor himself to roam the wilderness, rather than pulled the wool over his eyes and gotten away with it.
And that said permission could be revoked at any time.
“Suit yourself,” called Ciri after him. “Don’t forget we have a slyzard tomorrow.”
“You and that bottle don’t forget,” he said, flipping the door of his lean-to shut.
In worse weather than this, they’d want to share, but Ciri had all her own things and no matter how much he liked her, he did like to stretch all the way out in his own bed.
He lay down—would have knelt, if the ceiling had been low enough—and pulled enough furs over himself to suffocate a lesser man. Witcher hunting skills had plenty of uses—alternative applications, Lambert called them—and after enough years on the path, he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to at least try to be comfortable.
After some minutes, when he breath no long stung the skin on his face and the stinging clench of his shoulder relaxed infinitesimally, he reached for sleep or mediation. Whichever came first.
---
Regrettably, the note was still there, on the top of his pack, in the morning.
“Do you think Voorhis sent it?” he asked, casually, as they skinned the slyzard.
Ciri looked up at him with her hands full of purple guts and fixed him with a glare. One of the creature’s venom sacs had burst and her hair was slicked with it, all pink-yellow and pus streaked.
“I have no idea, but if you want to find out, you best go.”
“I don’t want to go, I want to know who wants me to go. There’s a difference, and it could get one or both of us killed.”
She looked down at her work again as he worked a knife into the spine.
“Sure. But I think you want to go,” she said, finally, in a voice curiously devoid of emotion.
He hummed non-committedly to that. Dangerous to commit to wanting things in a world like this one, and she should know that better than most.
“Mystery that needs solving. Wouldn’t you?”
“No,” said Ciri, still in that cold, curious voice, even as her hands flew over the carcass, pulling scale from skin with a practiced ease.
He waited for her to elaborate. They’d never really talked about it, Nilfgaard. The Emperor’s involvement in the end of the world—on the right side of things, curiously enough—their mad dash to hide Ciri before he could catch wind of her again, and deafening silence that had followed, all seemed like good things to bury in the mud under your boots and keep on walking from.
Maybe she didn’t want to bury it, though. Maybe she regretted it. The thought stung, that she might want to go back to that gilded cage—but stranger things had happened and who wouldn’t want a warm bed more nights than not, here in the wilderness?
She still hadn’t said anything, just struck the poor dead slyzard with a force it didn’t deserve.
“It’s already dead, you know,” he said finally, watching her more than anything.
Hacking the rest of the slick organ out, she put down both the liver and the knife and fixed him with a look, her arms red to the elbows.
“Geralt,” she said, with a stern iron in her tone, and yeah, that was the Yen in her, “Are you seriously asking me to give you permission?”
“What? No,” he said, realizing it was a lie as soon as it left his mouth.
She sighed.
“I don’t want to see that thrice-damned city again for the rest of my days. I won’t sleep under that banner, break bread in his house, or watch the sun set over any land where the black flag flies. That is the measure I have poured out for myself, and I will drink it dry. You, however—” she pointed a bloody finger at his chest, leaving a smear, “—are not in the least bound by that. I am not offended if you want to go, though I don’t see why. But you clearly want to.”
“That seems,” he stumbled, “A little extreme.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is it?”
That look spelled danger, he knew. Hard to hear her setting up grudges to life a lifetime by, but some things you learn by living. Best to leave that one where it lay.
“I don’t want to leave you out here alone,” he said, lamely.
“Hah,” she huffed a laugh, and her quick anger passed, gone again on white wings, “Who’s protecting who? High time we took a break, if that’s how you feel. Besides,” she nodded to the sword on her back, “I have Swallow here to protect me.”
That settled that, he guessed. Nodding slowly, he went back to the work—slice, skin, cut away tendon from bone. Nothing needed goes to waste, not a drop of blood, not a scale unusable. The only limit the size of your pack, the strength of your legs—and the hounds at your heels.
They finished in silence, leaving the rest of the carcass to rot in the cave, or freeze, to rot come spring. More’n likely the latter.
After they’d washed in the frozen river, Geralt handed over the trophies wordlessly. They mounted up, and turned to go their separate ways without a goodbye, as they always did. No goodbyes for witchers, only greetings at the end of a long road—or nothing at all. Best not to hurry the Path’s end.
Ciri turned her mount to face him at the tree line, a few yards apart.
“Sure you won’t come, just to the border?” he tried. “Warmer that way.”
“No, Geralt.” Her lips twitched up in a smile that told him she understood why he was asking.
“Hate him that much?” he said.
The eerie green of her eyes flickered with a light brighter than white flame for the briefest of moments.
“Yes.”