Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Above the ragged and broken Trail the walls of Kaer Morhen rose like a dam, blocking off the whole head of the valley, all its buildings invisible behind the rise of stone that proved, if nothing else, that some bored mason had had literal hundreds of years to work on his pet project. The training court within the walls sloped to a drain, catching the runoff from the valley head and filtering it into a reservoir in preparation against some later genius finding a way to set up siege engines on the narrow switchbacks of the Trail. If the ice did not defeat them first, and several springs had been diverted to run over the Trail for just that purpose. It was not a keep that had been built with hospitality in mind, and yet, from the top of the high, curving wall built to contain the pressure of an army of siege engines without and a horde of Witchers within, a bard sang a song of welcome.

Jaskier had been reworking his repertoire in the months since his voice changed. Half his signature songs were no longer viable, and dozens more had suddenly become options. He had written to friends at Oxenfurt for suggestions for a talented tenor "student," and he'd written... Oh, scads of music, all of it welling up furiously as if it had been behind a dam like Kaer Morhen all his life, let loose only in trickles and now, suddenly, flowing freely. He had a solid start on what he was beginning to call the Wolf Rising cycle, and he would be afraid of finishing it in six months if it weren't that there was so much to say.

He didn’t so much hear Geralt approach as feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He may have decided he wasn’t afraid of Witchers any longer, but his body had not forgotten there was a predator in the room. It was just confused about what it wanted to do about that fact.

“Hello, Wolf,” said Jaskier, attempting to subtly do up his pants.

“Hm,” said Geralt.

“What are you doing up here? Practice is down below.”

“Ended.”

Jaskier half turned, surprised. Sure enough, the training grounds were emptying, the light grown mellower and orange. He should have seen it down the valley, but - well, he’d been singing.

“Oops,” he said. No bath for him, then. He may be adjusted to singing in front of Witchers - occasionally even enthusiastic Witchers - but he was not prepared for three hundred naked Witchers in the confined space of a bath. Even a bath as luxurious as Kaer Morhen’s. “And you’re up here because you… wanted to go riding?”

They went out riding about once a week, in the afternoons when Geralt had time. Geralt seemed to value Jaskier’s lack of conversation, so Jaskier spent the time composing, singing melodies to the trees or trying out different phrasing. He couldn’t bring an instrument, but the views tended toward the inspirational.

Other times Geralt sought him out because he wanted someone to go over the phrasing of a diplomatic missive and make it look less like Lambert had written it.

“Hm,” said Geralt, which didn’t sound like one option or the other, so Jaskier turned back to the view, hiding his unlaced trousers, and tried another hymn.

Geralt didn’t go away, even when Jaskier finished the third verse, so he gave up and stopped singing. “Did you need something, Wolf?”

“It’s late.”

Jaskier pondered the self-evidence of this statement. Eventually, unable to find a different conclusion, he said, “Are you worried about me, Wolf?”

“Hm.”

“You are! You think I’m singing too long, and you came to see if something was wrong. Perhaps the battlements were being swarmed, or, or -“ Jaskier finished his stealthy re-drawing of his trousers and turned around, arms spread “- I’d been carried off by griffins.”

“No griffins here.”

Jaskier sighed. Geralt really didn’t understand drama. “I know, I know, you killed them all. Perhaps you merely came to see if all was well, if I were wasting away, a starveling songbird, or…” He struck another pose. “If I needed anything more abstract. Which I do. Need something abstract.”

“Another lute?”

“Oh, you say such lovely things. ‘Another lute.’ Librettos have been made from less. No, Lord Wolf, I speak of something far grander than a lute, tribute to your magnificence and the legacy of your reign.” Foul ball, foul ball, Geralt didn’t like magnificence. It would have played well in any other court; why couldn’t Geralt be normal for once, at least when Jaskier was trying to flatter him? “I speak, of course, of organs.”

This grunt, Jaskier was quite certain, was confusion. He had isolated it several times on their rides.

“And not just any organ! No, a wind organ, played by the mountains themselves, to lend music perpetually to the breeze.”

He was fairly certain he had Geralt back to intrigue now. The concept of music blowing freely through the ridges was a very Geralt thought. Now he just had to drive the idea home.

“You should let me turn Kaer Morhen into a wind organ. No, no! Hear me out. We move the court down to the plains. Trade and diplomats can reach us more easily. We could pick a city with plenty of children Ciri’s age. And it wouldn’t be so cold all the time.”

“You’re cold.”

“No, no, I want an organ.”

“Wall’s cold.” Geralt beckoned to the stairs. Jaskier followed, still arguing, though his lungs were growing accustomed to doing so at a Witcher’s brisk pace.

“The cold isn’t the point. The point is how magnificent the instrument would be. It’s true that it’s cold - the air is cold, the wind is cold, the stones are cold, everything but the baths is cold - but can you imagine the power of an organ this big. The treadles. The valves. Shafts going up all over the mountains, you could get dwarves in, dwarves love you. Use the main hall as a resonance chamber. It would be…” Quite possibly bone-shattering, in the middle of it all. Jaskier smiled blissfully. “Amazing.”

“No,” said Geralt.

“Why not?” Jaskier whined

“History. Ask Triss, she wants to talk to you.”

It was at that point that Jaskier recognized the hall Geralt was starting on and stopped abruptly. “No. No no no. I am not joining you in the baths. Absolutely not.”

Geralt stopped walking and turned back to him. They were only a few paces from the door into the building, and the light shone in his eyes and made them gleam. “Why not?”

“I simply am not going to…” He let the unfinished tone hang, as if it were a complete sentence. Let Geralt think it was Redanian sensibilities or a lingering sense of fear, both of which were true. He didn’t need to know that Jaskier didn’t think he could disguise his lust at being surrounded by hundreds of fully naked Witchers. There was erotica with less provocation. Jaskier knew. He’d read it.

(The coin for those hours in the Special Library had been meant for more than one dress, and Jaskier’s father - well, his lovers had appreciated it.)

“You should go, though. You smell. After the training, I mean.” He didn’t smell bad, per se, just of sweat, and whether it was the regular workouts or the inhumanity - or perhaps just Jaskier’s libido talking again - Witcher sweat did not stink.

“Hm,” said Geralt.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” said Jaskier, and walked away swiftly.

“Good morning, Jaskier,” Ciri chirped as Jaskier entered the room for her lessons the next morning. She sounded suspiciously chipper, and Jaskier inspected her for signs of geese.

“Good morning, Ciri,” he sighed. Ciri’s focus narrowed on him.

“You sound unhappy. May I inquire as to why?” she asked. Using some of the elementary etiquette Jaskier had begun to teach her, he noted.

“Your papa thought I was joking about turning Kaer Morhen into an organ,” he said.

Ciri frowned. “It would take an awful lot of magic and be pretty gross,” she said, her tone in no way gainsaying the proposal. “What kind did you have in mind?”

“Not that kind of organ!” Jaskier protested. “A musical organ.”

“A throat?” Ciri asked. “That’s not an organ.”

That kind of organ, Jaskier thought, appeared only in fairy stories like his mother told her older children. He lost several minutes with Ciri describing the system of pipes and keys that resulted in music, and Jaskier did not think she was convinced he was serious. “We need to get you out in the world,” he concluded. “A princess should have worldly graces, like knowing what an organ is. It would be practical etiquette lessons.”

“I’m not a princess,” said Ciri.

“Yes, I know, you’re a cub, but the White Wolf’s daughter will inherit his -“

“No I won’t,” Ciri said, and then clapped her hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry, that was interrupting!”

“Apology accepted, but only because I’m intrigued,” said Jaskier automatically.

“I apologize for interrupting, but I won’t inherit. My papa’s a Witcher and Witchers don’t die. And he’s only in charge because it was his idea, so people voted for him. If there were another vote I wouldn’t even be allowed.”

“Vote?” Jaskier echoed. “What vote?”

“The vote to choose a leader,” Ciri said. “If you want people to do anything, you have to ask them nicely. Voting lets you ask a lot of people at once. But it’s Witcher business, so only Witchers are allowed, and I’m not a Witcher.” She sighed, as if it were an enviable thing to be.

Jaskier had his doubts about her ineligibility. She was the White Wolf’s daughter, after all, and her education was that of a future ruler - or would be if Jaskier met the Wolf’s standards. Beyond that she spent her afternoons with the adult Witchers, one-on-one lessons that made her as dangerous as the trainees, and she knew more about monsters than any human Jaskier knew. She was everything a Witcher but the trials; everything a princess but the title. If that didn’t make her heir material, he couldn’t fathom what would.

But a vote. He’d never heard of such a thing. Voting was for village councils, ignorant pig herders debating where to put the next sty. Resting the fate of an empire like the Wolf’s on something as chancy as a vote - !

Unless, he saw, it was rigged. If there were a candidate so far beyond the others in understanding and statecraft that the result was obvious, one with the present Wolf’s clear endorsement and the backing of his most powerful advisors. In that case, Ciri’s conviction that she was not a princess was mere naïveté - it all fit perfectly with Jaskier’s understanding of courts and politics.

“You have to talk so I can keep going,” Ciri prompted.

“I apologize. I was thinking about what you said,” Jaskier said. “So who is eligible to vote?”

“Witcher business. Only Witchers,” Ciri said, screwing up her nose.

Which effectively put the lower limit on voting age at thirteen - though of course younger voters would be out on patrol during important votes, or guided by their seniors. And what the upper limit on seniority might be - !

“And your father just happened to win this ‘vote,’” he said.

“Because of his idea.”

“What was his idea?”

Ciri frowned again, concentrating this time. “Witchers kill monsters. What if the monsters are shaped like humans? Which I thought was a stupid idea because dopplers…”

“Ah-ah,” Jaskier interrupted. “No stupid ideas.”

Ciri considered. “Which I thought was poorly phrased because succubi,” she offered, and at Jaskier’s nod she continued to prattle on.

‘Monsters shaped like humans.’ It was a fine statement, prevarication for a power grab. The problem was, it didn’t match what he knew of Geralt from their rides, the Geralt who procrastinated a month before writing a diplomatic letter and wouldn’t move to a palace because of some nameless history binding him to a drafty castle. He’d believe in a shadow council manipulating votes if it were Yennefer running it, but Eskel and Vesemir were too clearly busy elsewhere to be farming votes. So if Geralt wasn’t seeking power, then whose figurehead was he?

He’d have to ask an insider, he decided. Triss would tell him. And in the meantime…

“That’s enough conversational practice. Let’s play Stop and Go,” he told Ciri. Stop and Go was a game where he played various roles and Ciri could only advance across the room after bowing the correct degree their relative positions determined. It usually ended either in Ciri making it across the room and pretending to behead Jaskier for treason or, if Jaskier was fast enough, in Jaskier declaring himself to be some manner of monster and chasing a giggle-shrieking Ciri around the room.

Their etiquette lessons were louder than any Jaskier had ever had, but they seemed to be more effective.

He talked to Yennefer first. So sue him,not all of his agendas were political.

“I know you’re not just being helpful,” Yennefer told him once she had him holding her mirrors the way she wanted them. “What do you want?”

He loved how Yennefer understood him, on a ‘we’re working in a corrupt system so we may as well be open about our manipulations’ level. Not enough to give his game away by asking her for help understanding the system, but he appreciated the candor.

“I want to know what I need to do to earn some more of that body modification magic,” he said.

“You want more of that?” Yennefer asked in clear disbelief. Jaskier had to get all of this from her tone, as she was currently bent over a half-drawn chalk diagram, only glancing up occasionally to check the symmetry in Jaskier’s mirrors. “Didn’t you get the intensely painful part?”

“Sure, but it’s only for a few days,” said Jaskier. “I want done with these.” He gestured at his chest, where his breasts were ruining the line of his doublet.

“Don’t move the mirrors!” Yennefer snapped, and they adjourned for her to painstakingly adjust Jaskier’s posture.

“I’m pretty sure you could get a wire rack for this,” Jaskier said.

“You volunteered, so shut up,” said Yennefer. “What was it you wanted done with? In words this time?”

“Breasts,” Jaskier said, and stopped, surprised at the loathing in his tone. He hadn’t thought he disliked them that much.

“Why?”

“They get in the way, they bounce when I’m going up and down stairs, I haven’t had a good run since I was twelve, and they get tender every two weeks after my courses.”

“There’s some advantages to that last. And you hate exercise.”

“I am aware of the advantages. And maybe I wouldn’t hate exercise if these weren’t bouncing around so much,” Jaskier retorted. Yennefer stood up and dusted some chalk from her hands, surveying her work.

“Think about what you do want, make a plan. If you want to look like a man we can broaden your shoulders at the same time. Or just make the breasts small enough you don’t notice them. Or give you heaving bosoms, I don’t care.”

“What’s your fee?” Jaskier reminded her. Yennefer looked at him for the first time.

“I want a song request,” she said. “No arguments.”

“I play what you want all the time,” Jaskier said. “What’s the catch?”

“You’ll find out the rest as you go. Payment in advance. Do you want it or not?”

“I can back out at any time,” Jaskier stipulated.

“Either of us can. Agreed? Then get out of my workroom, you’re a shitty mirror rack.”

It would have been like Yennefer to leave Jaskier to fret about what song she wanted from him. He certainly worked himself to distraction all afternoon. She didn’t mean to give him any clues, which meant he must know it, but what did he know that she didn’t think he would otherwise sing?

He worried about things he oughtn’t sing in front of Ciri or the trainees, or something that wouldn’t suit his new voice, but in the end his time wore out before he had any good ideas. It was dinner time, and there was Yennefer, smirking at him over her wine.

How bad could it be? Ciri already knew how to swear in three languages, what could he possibly teach her that would get him thrown out of Kaer Morhen?

If he were thrown out of Kaer Morhen, where would he go?

“I think our bard is going to combust,” said Yennefer. “If you don’t mind, Geralt, I’d like to ask him for an early entertainment. Jaskier.”

Jaskier stood up, throat dry, and picked up his lute.

“Per our earlier agreement, I’d like you to perform the only known work by Julian of Lettenhove.”

Oh.

“Do recall that any argument voids our agreement.” Yennefer sat back and folded her hands.

Oh yes; and he had specified that he could back out. If he wanted to lose their agreement. Lose like a little bitch in front of everyone.

Jaskier downed the entire contents of his glass, flexed his fingers, and launched into the jaunty chords of the Vengerburg Rag.

First you’re scared of sorceries

Then maybe of policies

All of that is just a drag from

Yen the hag, Yen the hag, Yen the hag

You may well just think she’s gorgeous

If your head is stuffed with oranges

Turnin’ people into slugs

To resemble her own mug

Yen the unfuckable hag!

It went on in that manner for... longer than Jaskier was comfortable with, on this occasion. The hall was utterly silent when he finished. Not knowing what else to do, Jaskier bowed dramatically to Yennefer.

“You rhymed ‘hag’ with ‘shag’ three times,” she said.

“I was young,” said Jaskier, fluttering a hand. “It was my first time writing lyrics.”

The White Wolf had recently expanded into Aedirn. The new power on the continent was growing, and no one knew what he wanted or how to protect themselves. In the middle of all this, the sorceresses’ academies had been dissolved, and suddenly the sorcerers of both schools were at Kaer Morhen, lending their powers to the White Wolf.

Everyone was scared. People walked down the street looking over their shoulders for invading armies. And Jaskier’s first friend at Oxenfurt, who had lured him out of boarding school for a drink with students, had come into their usual tavern and burst into tears. His mother’s family had lost their home a decade ago when sorcerous fire burned the farm down and they couldn’t afford to rebuild; his favorite uncle had been killed by Witchers. And now they were in league. Jaskier watched another friend lay a hand on the boy’s shoulder, someone who wasn’t afraid of being found out by a single touch, and hadn’t known what to do.

So he wrote the Vengerburg Rag. Something jaunty and catchy and disrespectful, and for a while at least it seemed to help. It was the first time he’d pushed back the darkness with a song.

“I’d been praying you didn’t know it,” he said to Yennefer with a protective coating of flamboyant self-depredation.

“Well I do,” said Yennefer, who understood the performance they were giving, even if Jaskier didn’t know what it was for. “I’ve known it since you walked through our doors and I realized that the bard Julian of Lettenhove was not a man. I knew it the whole time you sang us such boring drivel that I began to think I had been right that he was. I don’t like keeping things from the White Wolf’s court, or seeing them kept. So I’ll ask you, Jaskier: why the pretense at being mediocre?”

Jaskier grimaced inwardly, thinking how to answer that, how to answer it with a full audience. “My father advocates maintaining a neutral position to keep options open. Since my compositions tend to be catchy…” He shrugged. “It was a bad song anyway.”

His father had locked him in the cellar for a week to teach him not to show his hand. Jaskier had sung, and smarted, and fumed that it was better to take any step at all than to sit on that power and do nothing.

But he’d come out of the basement and never sung his own songs in public again. So who had really won?

Yennefer’s eyes narrowed. But before she could say anything, the door to the hall burst open and one of the newly minted trainees staggered in. He had the look of a debilitating journey about him, which meant a human would be dead.

“Kovir is in Caingorn,” he said. Jaskier had to strain to hear his voice across the distance, even as the room stilled. “They killed Thorstein. Vanya too.”

In the silence that followed, both sorceresses at the Wolf’s table stood up. Jaskier realized his drama had been upstaged before he could regain control of it; Yennefer had already left the room. Triss hurried down the length of the hall, snapping “Potions” at a Crane Witcher in her wake. And one other motion in the hall: Geralt stood up.

“Like the drills,” he said. “Armor up. We portal when Yennefer gets back. Three from each school stay to defend. Wolves - Vesemir, Gascaden, Tjold. Go.”

Jaskier watched in awe as the hall emptied, plates of food left half-eaten in the warriors’ wake. He had never seen one of the drills Geralt had mentioned, and stood wondering what his part was to be. Some kings wanted their poets along in battle to record events, but it didn’t do them any good if the poets died, and Jaskier had never had any defense training.

It was only fifteen minutes later that the hall started filling up again, men returning to the same spots they had left before, only this time in armor and with two swords strapped across their backs. Mostly two swords, but the number had no effect on the silent, single-minded speed with which they attacked their food.

Only a few minutes after that Yennefer returned with Geralt and Eskel, Eskel holding an armful of rolled-up maps. Any warriors still eating stood and entered a long column formation, the ones at the front drawing steel swords. Geralt gave them a few words referencing places Jaskier barely remember from his own geography lessons, Yennefer raised the first portal Jaskier had ever seen, and half an hour after the news had reached the stronghold, the Warlord of the North’s army was boots on the ground at the contested area. In late fall, when the passes should have been closed to any army, which Kovir had doubtless been counting on.

It would be devastatingly attractive if it weren’t so simply devastating.

Jaskier looked around at the resoundingly quiet hall. At each table, three forlorn shapes sat at random intervals, save the high table where Jaskier, Triss, and Ciri doubled that number. No one said a word. No one but Jaskier and Ciri was close enough to speak to anyone else. Jaskier cleared his throat and projected his voice.

“Has anyone told Jan?” he asked. And then, suddenly, he was in charge: warn the servants, have the tables cleared, send everyone off to bed. Wonder what in all hells had just happened, and what would happen if this were a feint, and keep those thoughts to himself.

The next morning Jaskier had lessons with Ciri, as if nothing had changed. He took one look at her sitting patiently in her usual chair and said, “I think I need to be the student today.”

Ciri leapt to her feet. “Okay!” she said, going over to the big slate and motioning Jaskier to her chair with a gesture he had taught her. “Um, today, we’re going to learn about…”

Jaskier thrust his hand into the air. “Miss! What was that drill about yesterday?”

Ciri frowned. “You have to wait until I call on you,” she said.

“But I’m the only one in class,” Jaskier said, a complaint of Ciri’s.

“It’s practice. What if you go to Oxenfurt one day?” Ciri asked.

“I was at Oxenfurt,” said Jaskier, temporarily stymying his teacher. “I came to seek better teachers. What was that drill? I’ve never seen it before. Who’s in charge now? What’s your role?”

“You have to ask one question at a time,” Ciri chided, as Jaskier had said to her before. “That was the Being Invaded drill. Except, not a drill. Papa does it a few times a year, but usually the portal goes to the gate. I checked, but they weren’t there this time.” She squinched up her mouth against sorrow. “Last time we did it while you were out camping with Papa and Aunt Triss, and Aunt Yen let me go through the portal six times.”

“Six times,” Jaskier repeated, wondering what it felt like to go through a portal once. “I mean, who’s in charge now?”

“Vesemir, while Papa and Rennes are away, but he has to listen to the heads of the other schools if they’re here.”

“Are they?” Jaskier asked. He didn’t know the Witcher hierarchy yet. At any other court he’d have studied that right away, but with Witchers it was nearly impossible to tell who was in charge. But Ciri shook her head, which meant Vesemir was the entire chain of command.

“Do you have any more questions, or do we get back to our lesson on…” Ciri frowned at the board. “Vodyanui?”

“Just one more?” Jaskier asked. “What’s our job while people are away?”

“Oh,” said Ciri, and thought, but only for a brief moment. “We make home worth coming back to.”

And ignoring Jaskier’s stricken face, she turned to her slate and began chalking up the weak points of vodyanui, should one ever have to fight one, which was clearly her desire. When Jaskier pointed out the established diplomatic relationships, Ciri, with great delight, gave him time out for interrupting. Jaskier considered reclaiming control of the classroom, and concluded that with everyone out of the castle Ciri deserved a break. So he took her command and went to find Triss in her tower.

“I was wondering when you would show up,” Triss said. “Here. Cut this up.” She slid a cutting board over him with a ghoulishly pale worm or snake across it, a pile of coins of snake in a corner of the board demonstrating how she wanted it. Jaskier took a discreet sniff. It didn’t smell pickled, so how had it gotten that pale?

“People have been telling me to come see you for a couple of days now,” he said.

“And? What kept you?”

“Well, you see,” said Jaskier, grinning slightly, “we were invaded.”

Triss raised her eyebrows. “We?”

Jaskier wasn’t certain if he’d misspoken or not. He shrugged. He wasn’t a Witcher, he was still human, but so was Triss, technically, and Ciri for certain. And several of the fighters. But all Jaskier had promised was to be in Geralt’s court and compose his poetry.

“And how did you like the response?” Triss asked, her enunciation careful though Jaskier wasn’t sure of her motivation. He shook his head in awe.

“Merope, goddess of whores, that was fast,” he said.

“Ha!” said Triss, interrupting before he could specify. “There it is. Language, bard.”

Jaskier frowned. “Ciri swears in three languages, what have I done?” he asked.

“The cub cusses and doesn’t hurt anyone by it,” said Triss. “You’re insulting the goddess of Kaedwen. You’re living in Kaedwen and saying ‘we’ about the Wolf’s army; you might show more respect, to your neighbors if not to the goddess.”

Jaskier sputtered. “I think I’ve paid enough service - all right, lip service - at the temples to know Merope’s domain!” he protested. “Never heard a word about a goddess of Kaedwen.”

“Mm,” said Triss. “Tell me, when was the last war between Redania and Kaedwen?”

Jaskier frowned. “Ninety-si - ninety-seven years ago. Kaedwen invaded our continental farmland and we drove them out and kept the ancestral border of the mountains.”

“Is that the story they’re telling?” Triss asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “Well - whatever happened, Redanian soldiers on Kaedweni lands found civilians sheltering in temples to this foreign goddess. Soldiers being what they are, they raped the women there - and some boys - and brought home stories of temple prostitutes to justify themselves. I’m sure it was a great surprise to Merope when she started receiving prayers from Redania’s brothels.”

Jaskier’s mind made several leaps over this information. “The army in Caingorn -“ he began.

“Witchers don’t rape. They don’t have the moral leeway to commit war crimes. And Geralt would kill anyone who tried,” Tris added. “There are personal reasons to follow him.”

“Triss,” Jaskier said slowly, “who were you before you became a sorceress?”

Triss smiled. “I don’t think I want to tell you right now. Are you done with that lindwurm fetus?”

“The what?” Jaskier asked, staring with alarm at his work. Triss laughed and took the cutting board back from him.

“If you're going to run away from me and my workroom, wash your hands first. And if you aren’t, I’ve got some tubers I need sliced. You do good, even work.”

Jaskier spent the rest of the afternoon in Triss’s apothecary making potions with names like Kiss and Swallow in case of injured men returning from war, and composing a romantic ditty with as many such names in it as possible. Not wanting to work on his song cycle when an arc was being forged just the other side of the mountains, he went back the next day and changed his ditty to a filthy doggerel. Useful birds, swallows.

The third day he went back because - well, it was the day when Geralt usually took him riding and Geralt wasn’t there, and the keep was resoundingly empty with only twenty Witchers and as many boys in it.

“Are you hiding?” Triss asked.

“No,” said Jaskier immediately.

“I’m not complaining, I hate descaling silverfish,” said Triss. “You don’t have to have an excuse to come visit, the help is enough.”

“I’m not hiding, I’m collecting information for my song cycle,” said Jaskier, taking the jar of silverfish from her. “I have to win the sorceress’s favor first.” And the castle was so empty. Even the training grounds were no pleasure in the afternoons, with the few remaining Witchers merely guiding the trainees through new moves.

“How many jars of descaled silverfish does it take to win my favor?” Triss asked. “Just so I can plan for stocking my shelves.”

“One, it sounds like - but when I tell the tale it shall be a thousand. Now tell me about Ard Carraigh.”

Research was a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing with his time, not a failure to address the question of why, when he had everything he’d ever wanted - time and encouragement to perform and compose, no pressure to marry a boring lecher, a tenor voice - he was suddenly unhappy. So he listened to Triss’s version of events, in which only the lord of Ard Carraigh was snatched from his bed and executed in front of the gates to make the war shorter, and scrapped all of his existing lyrics based on his previous understanding of the situation. He cut whatever Triss told him to and made her tell him about every major event she had seen the Wolf take part in. The stories did not at all match up with what Jaskier had heard.

He was angry about this at first, and then he realized it meant he had a counterpart, a propagandist who had controlled his thoughts for the last quarter century. A rival to match wits against. A liar who had been making up atrocities whole cloth, and then he was angry on Geralt’s behalf, at someone who had taken a king who allowed his failings to be publicly broadcast and portrayed him as a butcher.

Well. This was a battlefield in which Jaskier could defend Geralt. And his enemy didn’t even know he had an opponent. This could be fun.

He wrote a few tunes to use depending on the outcome in Caingorn; he pestered Triss for news; and he waited.

Just over three weeks after they had vanished from Kaer Morhen, the shortest war Jaskier had ever heard of, the Witchers portalled home. Jaskier was at the creek with Ciri, talking about rivers and fishing and water wheels and factories and mills, the harvest and trade and attack routes into the continent. About water, and what it meant to a ruler. They were interrupted by Lambert, who had not been left behind.

“Oi, bard,” he said. “The Wolf wants to know where his goddamn cub is.”

“Lambert!” shrieked Ciri, throwing herself at him to be swung around and, mid-swing and equally piercing, “Papa’s home?”

She took off up the trail. Jaskier tried to follow but was left panting in her wake. Lambert caught up to him at an easy dog trot and escorted him the rest of the way to the keep, swearing and insulting Jaskier in a way Jaskier suspected was evidence he was glad to be home.

The returning Witchers had gathered in the main hall. Jaskier peered through elbows and past shoulders for a few minutes - Witchers were cursed tall - and then pushed his way through to Triss, around whom the Witchers were making a court of the wounded, laid out on the hall tables.

“How can I help?” Jaskier asked, since he needed to learn their names anyway. Everyone always wanted to know how many of importance had been hurt, and the wounded would want to hear their names in a ballad.

“Finally, someone asking the right questions,” said Yennefer. Jaskier hadn’t noticed her past the breadth of another Witcher’s shoulders. She looked… unlike herself, with her eyeliner running across gray hollows and her posture suggesting she was held up by spite and vanity alone. She pushed potions into his hands and directed him down a triage line.

Jaskier had just made a start when the potions were lifted out of his arms with a firmness that spoke of Witcher strength. He made a protesting noise, and found his arms pinned against his body as he was lifted into the air.

A shockwave of something passed through Jaskier’s body, fear and anger and lust and release all wound together into a wash of emotion he couldn’t process. He struggled fruitlessly against the Witcher’s grip.

“Put me down,” he demanded, and was surprised to have his captor acquiesce. He spun on his heel and found himself staring straight into the unmarred visage of the White Wolf himself, all his rage evaporating. Equally astonishing, he found himself reaching out and patting at Geralt’s arms, as if this would somehow magically turn up an injury or lack of one.

“Pick me up, pick me up, what have you done with yourself, are you wounded,” he was babbling.

“Hm,” said Geralt, taking his hands and holding them away from their work. “Completely untouched.”

Jaskier’s hands stilled abruptly. He was glad about that, he realized. He… liked Geralt.

Well that was a problem for another time.

Geralt reached out into his stupor and clapped his shoulders. “Hm,” he said again. Jaskier wondered if he were supposed to clap Geralt’s shoulders and say hm too.

“Is everyone okay?” he asked, stupid question, he had literally just been counting the wounded. “I’m glad you’re back. I have to name the wounded, to put them in ballads later.”

“Need names?” Geralt asked. Jaskier squawked.

“Absolutely not! You are the returning king. You can’t stay here and tell me names, you have to go answer people’s questions and be kingly.”

“Procrastinating,” said Geralt, much more clearly than the last time. Jaskier beat fruitlessly at his shoulder, trying to get him to turn and walk away.

“Get! I have my own work to do. Give me my potions back and make some space for the - no, don’t!”

It was too late. Geralt had squatted for thrust and then leapt into the air, clearing the height of the crowd around him to escape his followers, or jump back into them, or some other stupid Witcher interpretation of what Jaskier had been telling him. Jaskier stared dumbly after him.

“Potions are there,” said a man on a table behind him. “I’d like White Honey, for a start.”

“Hm,” said Jaskier, looking at the collection of potions that had been removed from his arms. He didn’t have White Honey. “Suck and Swallow,” he offered instead, in a voice he was beginning to suspect might not be hysteria. The Bear gave him a suspicious look as his hand engulfed Jaskier’s arm. Jaskier took a second look at the man. “Please tell me you don’t have your fist inside your belly.”

“I won’t,” said the Bear. Jaskier waited a moment for him to say something else. He didn’t.

“That’s horrifying,” Jaskier screeched. “How are you still alive?”

“Idiot overjudged his reach,” said the Bear. He looked down at the prodigious rise of his torso from the table. “Or underestimated how deep he’d have to stab. Andrzej,” he added. “You’ve been asking.”

“One day I will write the most horrifying ballad about you,” Jaskier promised. “It’ll be banned in every tavern from here to Nilfgaard.”

“Call it Ten Inches,” said Andrzej. “For how deep he stabbed, or something.”

“You’re my favorite patient,” Jaskier told him. “If you recover from a ten inch gut wound I will have it for you by the time you are better. Do you need some Maribor Forest? No? Well damn, that’s all I’ve got left. On to the next then.” He squeezed Andrzej’s shoulder as he walked away, making not an inch of impact.

Eventually the wounded were carted off to bed and the tables lain with food instead. The warriors treated their return to Kaer Morhen’s exceptional cooking, hasty though that cooking may have been, with silent devotion. Jaskier’s inquiries about what had happened were rebuffed, and even his gestures toward music, were ignored. Eventually he gave up and watched Geralt lean back in his chair and toy with the idea of another buttered roll, Ciri snuggled against his side, perfectly happy with the silence because it meant her papa was home.

Well, Jaskier was feeling pretty satisfied about it himself.

He had to wait until Ciri had been put to bed, and he’d gone himself, and his laces were undone when Eskel appeared with a knock at the door.

“So, bard?” he asked, smiling through his scar and sagging eyes, and Jaskier came.

They wound deep into the keep, until the hallways started to get humid and Jaskier balked.

“I thought you were going to tell me what happened,” he said, “not take me to the bath!”

“All the important meetings are at the hot springs,” Eskel said. Jaskier peered at him, trying to figure out if he was being had. Eskel’s face was impassive. He didn’t seem like the type to pull a prank on an unsuspecting bard…

“I’m not taking my clothes off,” Jaskier said.

“Suit yourself,” said Eskel.

He hadn’t been lying - all the White Wolf’s inner circle were gathered in the hottest pool safe for humans. Jaskier settld himself fastidiously at the edge. Eskel ripped his clothes off and left them in a puddle by the pool.

A better man would have averted his eyes as Eskel got in.

Jaskier looked around the important war council at which not a one was wearing a stitch but him. Vesemir, for once, looked the most alert; Eskel was huddling up to his chin in the water, and Yennefer and Geralt both had their necks pillowed against the rock, heads tipped back and eyes closed, such perfect mirrors that Jaskier would have called them lovers if he didn’t know better.

They were comfortable enough that Jaskier almost regretted his Redanian inhibitions - except, of course, that stripping would have meant exposing his… chest.

“Hm?” said Geralt. In any other lord it might have been So, bard, you’ve been chomping at the bit since we returned.

“What happened?” Jaskier asked. “Eskel looks exhausted, Andrzej should have died from that blow, Yennefer’s eyeliner is running…”

“It’s war, pup,” Yennefer said, holding out a hand. Jaskier dropped a handkerchief in it and she dabbed at her eyes.

“You fought your war, it’s time for mine,” said Jaskier, thinking of the propagandist in Redania. “What do you want the world to know?”

Slowly they all turned to look at Geralt, who grunted.

“Stupid king wouldn’t back down.”

Jaskier rolled his eyes. “I can guess some of it. The king of Kovir’s mother’s father was the younger brother of the old king of Caingorn, so he technically could be described as an Yn -“

“Kings,” said Geralt disgustedly. “He was stupid. We fought. I killed him.”

“You’re impossible,” Jaskier complained.

“He’s your propagandist. Give him his weapons,” said Vesemir. There was a growl in his sigh when Geralt did not respond. “Bartosz collapsed protecting Yennefer in the last battle. A sorcerer - he’s fine, just exhausted. Andrzej -“

“I don’t want to hear about Andrzej,” Geralt snapped. “Fucking kings.”

“I see.” There was a silence as the others turned to look at him and Jaskier, basking in the attention, slithered closer to Geralt. “You don’t want to hear about the heroics because every heroic means someone got hurt,” he said softly. “It’s a personal failure.”

Geralt’s eyes, raised to him, were bleak.

“War is not your personal failure. The king of Kovir chose to do that. Kovir will not do that again,” said Eskel.

“Kovir belongs to the White Wolf,” said Yennefer with satisfaction. Honestly, she and Geralt would be a disaster as a couple.

“I have to sing Andrzej’s glory,” said Jaskier, correcting for Yennefer. Geralt scowled, and nodded. “I have to sing yours, so that this doesn’t happen again.”

“It’s that or conquer the rest of the continent,” said Vesemir. “Emhyr var Emreis might have something to say about that.”

“Hm,” said Geralt.

“So tell the bard what happened,” said Eskel.

“He was stupid. We fought. I killed him,” said Geralt again. “War’s a terrible story.”

Eskel sighed and looked at Jaskier. “I can -“ he began.

“No, I can do something with that,” said Jaskier, his brain churning. “Give me a day. And - can I kill Bartosz?”

He had a draft of “Glory, Glory: the War of Caingorn” the next evening, as promised, but he had to put off finishing it because he had foolishly promised Andrzej a song for his recovery, not thinking of how preternaturally fast Witchers were at everything, including healing. He couldn’t seem to write fewer than two songs at a time, which was just as well given how many he could feel churning in him. He sang Ten Inches two weeks after the army came home, and Andrzej, unlike Gweld, smirked at his song and mouthed along to the intro, which Jaskier had sung him in the infirmary.

My woman asked how long I’d be

Sing fiddle dee diddle dee dee

When I went off to meet the war

Ten inches and not an inch more

A week later he had “Glory, Glory” ready to go, and sat on it for a full day before singing it. He had procrastinated other songs for longer, but this one was purely because he would have to sing it for the person it was meant for, and he wasn’t sure Geralt would like it.

Honestly, who was Geralt to him! Some barbarian king he lusted over, which differentiated him from every other lord how? Jaskier had written songs for actual lovers before. Admittedly, per his father’s injunction, they had stayed dutifully in the back of his desk, where they were still if his father hadn’t gotten rid of the desk. In retrospect this was for the best.

This anxiety was purest stage fright and Jaskier refused to have it in him. So he got up and sang it.

“Glory, Glory” was very nearly standard song form. The chorus was a couplet that rhymed with the lead Geralt had given him, and each verse was a simple ABAB rhyme scheme, except that it ended with a jarring court verse refrain. So:

And for Bartosz the pride of the mages

Who is splendor and light on the hill

Holds the shield as the battlefield rages -

And Kovir has him struck down and killed.

This, for a king’s hubris.

He was stupid, we fought, and I killed him

For war must be short as it’s grim

He was stupid, we fought, and I killed him

And the wolfstar will never go dim.

On the final verse Jaskier turned back to the high table and caught Geralt’s eye. As he hit the last line, he sang, “This, for kings,” and paused, and spat on the floor before launching into the rousing chorus.

“Anyway that’s how it will be sung in taverns away from courts,” he concluded, and swept into a bow so he wouldn’t have to see Geralt’s face.

“I don’t understand,” said one of the male sorcerers from far down the table. “I didn’t die.” Yennefer leaned over to explain poetic license to him.

“Your big plan is to make people spit all over my floor?” Jan asked. Jaskier sighed and wiped the mess up with his handkerchief. Most people weren’t so damned fussy about their clean floors. He’d been hoping for a less mixed response.

“I still don’t understand why Bear Andrzej gets a whole song about his dick and I get one verse about how I’m dead,” Bartosz complained.

“Maybe you need a bigger dick,” Andrzej called. There was some jeering, and a few Witchers rose from their seats, anticipating one of the brawls that sometimes broke out.

Geralt growled. The whole hall froze, looking to him. “I like it,” he said, and Jaskier relaxed. “You can still have a brawl if you want one.”

There was, for some reason, a cheer at that. Jaskier wrapped his body around his lute and leapt for the safety of the high table. Somehow he landed against Geralt’s side. Geralt wrapped one arm around him, the other elbow propped on the table holding a wedge of cheese speared on his knife.

Jaskier looked back to see how he’d wound up here. Oh yes. All the Witchers at the table had leapt down to fight for no reason, and Ciri was standing by the fire, bouncing and cheering. Jaskier’s lute sat safely in Geralt’s lap. Lucky lute.

“Did you really like it?” he asked. Geralt’s hand slid across Jaskier’s shoulders as he shrugged.

“Was afraid you’d glorify the whole thing. You didn’t,” he said, and offered Jaskier the cheese.

“But did you like it?” Jaskier demanded, struggling back to sit upright.

“Hm,” said Geralt. He took a bite of the cheese. “Liked the bit where it went deedle deedle woop.”

“That’s the bit where I’m modulating to - oh never mind,” said Jaskier.

“Tell me,” said Geralt.

“Do you know what a key signature is?” Jaskier asked. Geralt shook his head, so Jaskier began talking.

He was, unsurprisingly, still talking when he went to his room, and still talking when he fell asleep, grinning because Geralt liked his song.

It was about that time that Yennefer recovered from all of the magic output she had been doing. Jaskier hesitated to guess whether she had been helping with the healing or not. He found out she was recovered because she tapped his shoulder after he sat down after a performance.

“See me tomorrow afternoon,” she told him.

“What for?” he asked.

“We had a discussion before I left, and you paid in advance,” Yennefer said. “I hope you considered the matter thoroughly while I was away. I don’t like having unpaid debts.”

“Of course,” said Jaskier, who was struggling to remember what they had been talking about. Oh - getting rid of his breasts. No, he hadn’t given it another thought, or rather, he’d thought plenty about how he’d prefer not to have them, but not at all about just how. Well, Yennefer would believe him if he lied.

She did not believe him when he lied.

“You realize that if you don’t like the result, I am not going to reverse the matter,” she informed him. “This is one-time magic.”

“Yes,” said Jaskier vaguely, trying to sound sage and like he understood about magics so weighty they could only be done once. Was it really so hard to believe that he wanted shut of the things on his chest?

“This won’t be so easy as last time, either,” she warned him. “You’ll need to set aside a month for recovery. It will be painful and gross. You will have to be diligent about wound care if you don’t want to scar or have reduced movement.”

Jaskier shrugged. “It’s snowing,” he said. “What else am I going to do?”

“I’m having Triss brew a knockout potion for you,” Yennefer said dubiously. “Geralt will announce it so no one tries to rescue you.”

Which was just as well, because when Jaskier woke up from Triss’s potion everything hurt and he was exclaiming, “Why did I ever agree to this? There are so many more things I could be doing! Just because it’s snowing - “

“You’ve said this four times now,” Triss moaned. “That and asking for his mother’s stories. Doesn’t he ever shut up?”

“Mm,” said Geralt. Judging by the sound, he had some sort of paperwork that he’d chosen to do in Jaskier’s recovery room. Which - Jaskier cracked an eye - no, they’d put him in the council room to recover for some reason.

“Why does this hurt so much more than last time?” Jaskier complained.

“I was pussyfooting around last time because I thought you were a blushing buttercup,” said Yennefer. “You’re not, are you? So shut up and buck up.”

Jaskier closed his mouth. Triss sighed happily.

“Don’t coo at me, you’re not the one who just went through a difficult and very painful procedure,” Jaskier said. “You don’t even know how awful it is.”

“Yes she does,” said Ciri, as Triss gave up and left the room. “Aunt Yen says all sorceresses go through this, they’re just not as loud about it as you are. That’s how they get so beautiful.”

“No one’s going to do this to you, are they?” Jaskier asked in some alarm, imagining Ciri in this much pain. Ciri was taking magic lessons.

“Hm,” said Geralt. “Ciri’s already beautiful.”

Ciri preened. Jaskier pouted jealously.

“Why are there tubes sticking out of me?” he demanded.

“Drainage,” said Yen.

“You’re asking new questions, that’s good,” said Ciri helpfully.

“Drainage of what?” Jaskier asked.

“Blood. Pus. Whatever else tries to build up in there. Reeds are good at wicking, so I’ve turned you into a veritable basket,” said Yen.

“Hm,” said Geralt. “I’ve seen better.”

“I’m not going to quit sorcery to become a basket weaver, Geralt, don’t be ridiculous,” Yennefer snapped. She and Geralt seemed to get on best by snapping and snipping at each other. Jaskier had plenty of time to observe this over the next few days, since Geralt was occupied with paperwork most of the time he was there and Yennefer kept coming by to poke the reeds and twitch her eyebrows when Jaskier yelped.

Eventually she took the reeds out and Jaskier was permitted to have bandages wrapped tightly around him while he let people know how exhausting it was to sit up for the process while he was in pain. Ciri took particular interest in the bandaging and kept skipping lessons to take part, and asking whether she could get the trainees involved too as field medicine practice, which Jaskier objected to on the grounds that he was not a menagerie, and then regretted objecting to because if the trainees had come he might have had someone to help him with the unbearable itching. Ciri kept winding the bandages so tightly that he couldn’t reach inside to scratch, and no one would give him a quill to shove under them.

“Why does it itch so much,” he moaned.

“Nerves are bastards and they get confused very easily,” said Eskel. He had taken over the council room as soon as Geralt abandoned it. Jaskier hadn’t realized how much time they all spent here.

“Nerves?” he asked. He did appreciate having people around to talk to. Which was why Triss did not stick around after tending him.

“They’re in a new spot, they get confused, so they conclude you must be itching,” said Eskel. He passed a hand over his facial scar. “I’ve been through it a few times.”

“Oh,” said Jaskier. “I forgot you’ve all been injured worse than I have.”

“Not at all,” said Eskel. “I had a few claws dragged across my face. Cosmetic. You had bits actually removed.”

“Oh,” said Jaskier, brightening. “I am the boldest bully in the keep.”

“Sure,” said Eskel.

It did start to recover not long after that. Triss let him return to his room, on condition that he promise to rub lotion into his wounds every day. Jaskier agreed, and then tossed the pot of lotion into the back of a drawer and reached for his lute. Which was not the right course, picking things up hurt, and he still couldn’t even sing because the damn bandages kept compressing his lungs. Ciri had wrapped them too tightly again.

She agreed to come by for her lessons, for which he was grateful because everything wore him out so quickly now, but she only agreed if he let her keep wrapping his bandages and smearing cream on, which was highway robbery and he told her so. Then they discussed the causes of highway robbery and the best methods of treating them and segued into judicial approaches, and Ciri asked if any studies had been done on what she didn’t know to call recidivism, and Jaskier said there hadn’t.

“When I’m queen,” she said, “there will be.”

“Attagirl,” said Jaskier, closing his eyes for another nap.

If it hadn’t been for Ciri, Jaskier wouldn’t have had to deal with the damn lotion, but she kept coming by. Sometimes Geralt would stand in the doorway while she was rubbing it in and passing on some lecture or other from Triss while Jaskier howled about the pain and the damage to his honor. Geralt made no effort to preserve him from either. Best Jaskier could tell, he called others to come watch. Jaskier refused to keep a tally of the people he caught peeking over Geralt’s shoulders while Ciri tortured him.

It was Yennefer only once. She watched coldly as Ciri finished re-fastening his bandages, too tightly again, and only then said, “So you regret it now?”

“Absolutely not,” Jaskier said stubbornly, even though he couldn’t wank properly over all the fancy Witchers coming to look at him because it made his shiny new chest hurt. And when he was left alone, and had nothing else to think about since he couldn’t sing, thanks Ciri, he thought he was right about not regretting it. It wasn’t that his breasts had oppressed him constantly, but he did feel lighter without them, more cheerful. He’d never been upset about them, exactly, but - he hadn’t realized how unhappy he’d been until he wasn’t anymore. He hadn’t realized how happy he could be.

He resolved to sing about it, once he could again.

Jaskier’s health grew back as the seasons changed, and about as slowly. One week they were having blizzards two days in three; then it was perhaps once a week; and eventually all they had to deal with was the snow already on the ground. Finally, ever so slowly, water started to trickle down beneath the icy surface of the packed old snow, and it was thaw. Jaskier watched it from his window, and from short walks into the woods, and tried to sing a snowmelt melody that would weave around all those little trickles. It was tricky, and he never got anything quite like he wanted it, but there would be more springs to try. Unlike his parents, Geralt didn’t have any reason to kick him out.

Before the snow had entirely melted, when the roads were still passable by sledge, a messenger heaved his way up the Trail to say that Redania wanted to send a diplomatic envoy to the White Wolf. Geralt looked at Jaskier.

“Well we can’t exactly say no,” Jaskier said. Envoys were good. Way better than wars. He didn’t think anyone had sent one to the Wolf before, and the legitimacy - for a man who conquered three countries! - was precious. Plus, Redania’s was likely to be the best behaved envoy they could entertain. So they sent the messenger away again, and Jaskier went back to explaining the harmonic minor scale to Geralt.

He wound up going over the whole matter in depth with Jan, who wanted to know what Redanians would expect. The biggest point was making sure the whole staff was briefed on etiquette, since Redanians were big on protocol and Witchers were… not.

“Do we need to call you Lord Jaskier?” Jan asked seriously, and Jaskier doubled over laughing.

“Lord Buttercup?” he asked in return. “That’s ridiculous. Sounds like a figure in a children’s tale. A mouse with a dandelion for a shield, maybe. No, Jaskier is just fine, do not call me lord.”

“The Wolf will be pissed if you’re the only one who gets treated like normal,” Jan said. Jaskier shrugged nonchalantly.

“Treat me like a bard. There won’t be room for me at the high table anyway.”

Jan made a note. “You’re doing well with him, by the way. The White Wolf,” he clarified.

“Oh, Geralt,” said Jaskier, flapping a hand. “He’s easy to get along with.”

“Hm,” said Jan, and went back to honorifics. They should have asked for a guest list, Jaskier thought, instead of trying to cram every mode of address into each maid’s head. Oh well. Live and learn.

They should have asked for a guest list, Jaskier thought in rising panic as the Redanian envoy crossed the hall to greet Geralt on his hastily assembled throne. He knew all the Redanian diplomats and their foibles and had told Geralt airily that he could brief him in the evening on whoever was sent. He hadn’t expected the envoy to be led by his father.

Well honestly, he told himself as his carefully planned set list fell apart in his head. All of those diplomats already had jobs. This was a new - and important - position. Of course his father would try for it.

Yennefer was glaring daggers. Jaskier was supposed to be playing accompaniment for the envoy’s entrance, but for once there was no music in his head, not even something horrendously inappropriate. Not a note, and he was… trembling, as the diplomats made their introductions. Geralt looked over at him, frowning. Jaskier quietly laid his instrument down.

So they went on without him, and Jaskier, as he had done so often, sat still with perfect posture and watched the tables be brought back out for dinner. Slowly, his simmering emotions turned to rage. His father hadn’t even looked at him.

“A little entertainment before dinner, lords?” he called. He could feel the cheerful smile plastered on his face as he launched into “The Horse-Tamer’s Daughter.”

At first he just saw blank confusion across everyone’s face. “The Horse-Tamer’s Daughter” was almost never performed, so they were not familiar with it. No one knew why he was suddenly interrupting the talks. Even looking over, Jaskier’s father didn’t recognize him in doublets and tenor. For almost a full verse.

My father was a horse tamer at the edge of Hali Plain

His work was good and his horses fine, but he got little gain

For few folk come out to Hali Town, the trade is gone away

And the distant glower of the ruined tower makes few folk care to stay

So poor we were but free we were as the wild herds on the plain

And I was a child as free and wild as the wind in my tangled mane.

He got it just in time for Jaskier to really lean on the word “poor,” and Jaskier absolutely relished watching his face as he mentally reviewed the verse for insults, just in time for Jaskier to begin the second by referring to his grandmother as an animal.

My granddam told me cradle tales of the great days long ago

When the wizards ruled and the land was taxed and the lords would come and go

But the land was torn by war, she said, the tower was broken down

And the lords appear no longer here to rule over Hali Town

And neither do the wizards come, take our children one in ten

So grateful be that we’re poor but free, and you are not living then.

He got to really twist the knife in the third verse, talking about sons and poverty and children doing their parents’ work. He called in the bridge early after the third verse, to cap off the insults and spin this out longer.

My father had no sons at all, nor could he pay the fee

Of hiring men to help his work, so he turned to mother and me

We helped him run the wild ones down, to catch and tame and train

And we lived thus free and merrily at the edge of Hali Plain

So well I loved the whispering grass and the children of the land

That in time I learned as the seasons turned to call them into my hand.

Because that was the genius of his little revenge. No one ever performed “The Horse-Tamer’s Daughter” because it was too damn long. Geralt might not know what he was doing or why, but he was perfectly capable of sitting silently and not interfering. The whole hall was stuck not interfering as Jaskier plowed through fifteen verses - and they were not short verses - and as many bridges as he damn well pleased, and all their food went cold.

The cook would not thank him for that. Jaskier knew she had poured her hear out into this meal. There was collateral damage in any war. He sang his verses, making sure to draw out the word ‘white’ long past the point when his father realized he was talking about wedding dresses. It wasn’t even ‘white’ in the original.

But I’ll never wear white robes, I’ll never wear a blue stone

The ruined tower stands abandoned and alone

But when the moons are high and the wind is howling free

When I send my silent call - wild horses come to me

It was just an added bonus that his new voice didn’t suit the song as well as his old one.

When he finished - when he finally finished, after three instrumental breaks and Merope knew how many bridges - he threw his lute across his back and left the room without even bowing.

“What happened in there?” Yennefer demanded when they finally met to review the day’s events. “You were supposed to be watching the talks!”

Jaskier had been pacing the halls all evening trying to decide how to have this conversation. “I have history with a member of the envoy,” he said. “May I be excused from the rest of the talks?”

“No,” said Yennefer.

“Yes,” said Geralt. “This going to come out somewhere else?”

Jaskier watched Yennefer contemplate how much more chaos he could cause if he were so inclined. “No,” he said. “I’ve said my piece.”

“With one song?” Eskel asked, as if Jaskier could not be concise.

“Long song,” Geralt observed. It sure had been. Jaskier was a little hoarse.

“And your enemy?” Vesemir asked.

“I don’t intend to be in the same place as him,” Jaskier said, gesturing to indicate his request to be absent.

“Last question,” said Geralt. “Is it safe for Ciri to be there?”

“What?” Jaskier asked in genuine confusion, before realizing Geralt was asking if this were an enemy of young girls. “Oh! Certainly. It’s a personal thing.”

“You want to get personal, we can help out,” Eskel said. Geralt grunted.

“Not on a diplomatic ambassador you can’t,” said Jaskier, appalled. “So leave me my secrets, hm? Now, tell me what they all said so I can tell you what it means.”

Jaskier and his father played cat and mouse for more than a week. Jaskier was well practiced at avoiding people in Kaer Morhen, but his father was even more experienced at catching Jaskier when he didn’t want to be found. Perhaps inevitably, his father caught Jaskier in a hallway sneaking to the kitchens for food while they were supposed to be at dinner.

“There you are, Julian,” said his father.

“No one calls me that here, Your Lordship,” said Jaskier, putting as much conversational distance between them as he could manage.

“You can’t seriously mean they’re using that baby name I heard… and after all they’ve done to you, my precious girl!” He reached out to caress Jaskier’s arm.

“I wasn’t precious when you sent me here as a sacrifice,” Jaskier snapped, shaking the hand off.

“Darling, is that what you thought? If only I had explained it better -“

“I don’t need political machinations explained to me in small words, I learned that from you,” Jaskier said. His father’s face shifted.

“Then you understand your duty to join us after dinner, telling us everything we need to know about this Warlord.”

“Duty! To the people who threw me away!” Jaskier laughed one disdainful chuckle.

“Duty to your kin and your king!” his father snapped. “And you’ll do it, if you know what’s good for you, girl.”

He was angry now, and Jaskier had feared him once - but he realized now that next to an angry Witcher his father’s rage was laughable.

“If you lay a hand on him, I will cut it off,” said Geralt.

It shouldn’t have been possible for him to hide in a shadow, pale as he was, but he stepped out of one anyway, growling like a true wolf and certainly inhuman. Of the two of them, Jaskier was no longer afraid of Geralt.

“You gave him to me. He is mine.”

To give credit where it was due, the count recovered quickly. He had taken a frightened step backward the moment Geralt moved, but by the time the Wolf had finished speaking, Jaskier’s father had gathered his diplomatic presence about him like righteous armor.

Impenetrable, if you couldn’t be confident in the fear behind it, but Jaskier knew what Redanians thought of Witchers.

“He?” The count’s voice was confused and disbelieving, and his eyes traveled back over Jaskier, taking in the flat chest, broadened shoulders, the deep voice he’d heard when Jaskier sang. Jaskier took a deep breath and sent a prayer of thanks to Yennefer, and spread his stance to give a better look, leave his father guessing about what he might have done. “Yours? Do you think you can use her against me, to lay some claim to my inheritance?”

“Do you know,” said Jaskier, smirking with it, “it never occurred to me before. I am your oldest child. Are you going to disinherit me?”

He was gloating, and genuinely curious. He was of no further use to the family; his father might as well. But instead he looked shaken, and at a loss for words, a state Jaskier had never seen him in.

“No,” he said at last. “No.” And Jaskier didn’t know what to do with that.

“Go,” Geralt growled, looking between the two of them. His hand twitched toward the paired swords, and Jaskier’s father blanched and fled.

“Thank you,” said Jaskier, his voice nearly as high as it was before Yen changed it. “If you can excuse me. I’m going to cry now.”

Geralt shrugged, his shoulders opening and losing any hint of threat. “Hm,” he said, and Jaskier didn’t know that grunt but he knew it was okay to turn into Geralt’s shoulder and hide his face in it. As if Geralt were an impenetrable wall that would stop the whole world from seeing. As if Geralt wouldn’t notice when his shirt got wet.

“You’re supposed to be at dinner,” Jaskier said after a while.

“So is the count. You sounded upset.”

“From the dining hall?” Which was full of conversations, and Witchers having dinner, and politics, and… He was distracting himself.

“Witcher senses are better than human.”

“How much better?” Jaskier asked, and had a different thought. “How many of them?”

Geralt shrugged. It reminded Jaskier that he ought to stop touching his self-avowed lord. He didn’t want to. “Humans can’t smell lies, I think.”

“You can smell lies? How does that… how many lies have I told you?”

Geralt shrugged. “I stopped counting when you stopped saying you were fine.” There was a pause. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes,” said Jaskier. “I just - he - I’ll be okay now.”

Geralt looked back toward the hall. “I have to…” he began.

“Yennefer will kill you if you don’t. Yennefer will kill both of us. Go,” he said, pushing gently at Geralt’s arm. “I’ll see you after dinner.”

“Hm,” said Geralt.

Was that. Was that happy?

“I have a new plan,” Jaskier said when they met after dinner, Geralt and Yennefer and Eskel and Vesemir and not a Redanian in the room except himself. “Fuck diplomacy.”

“That is a new one,” said Eskel. “Anything to do with Geralt and the ambassador leaving dinner for the same fifteen minutes?”

“We write our own treaty and stuff it down their throats,” said Jaskier.

“And by we you mean…”

“Me,” Jaskier admitted. “What do you want in it?”

The atmosphere in the room certainly changed, he noted, when they were envisioning what they might get away with instead of trying to fit themselves into someone else’s plan. Redania had come to them asking for a treaty, after trying to buy the White Wolf off with a noble hostage. They didn’t need to take whatever they were offered. They should have done this a week ago.

“How does this alter our approach?” Yennefer asked when they had a list.

Jaskier paused only briefly. “Geralt knows. Follow his lead,” he said. “We should look like we follow him anyway. Barbarian brute, remember?”

“Hm,” said Geralt.

“Yes, yes we all know you’re a softie,” said Jaskier, patting his knee. Geralt made a much more satisfied grunt.

“And you? Will you be coming back to play music?” Eskel asked.

“Please,” said Jaskier. “If I am to write a treaty in a few days, I will have very little time for anything else.”

Which was probably why his father dropped the Redanian offer on them the next day.

Jaskier wasn’t aware of it for a while after it happened. Ciri’s lessons were suspended so he could write, and when his hands began to cramp he went to ask Andrzej what he thought was an innocent question about how good Witcher senses were.

“Is this about you wanking on the wall?” Andrzej asked.

“What? How did you - I mean I don’t - I was being subtle!” Jaskier objected.

“Yeah, everybody knows you wank. Bit weird, but we got used to it. Not like anyone’s wank is a secret here.”

“You don’t… mind?” Jaskier asked.

“Kid, I was twenty before I found out humans try to hide it. It’s not a bad smell, not like fuckin’ patchouli.” Andrzej shuddered. “Hate to break it to you, but you’re not the only one.”

“Like who?” Jaskier asked, and was treated to as juicy a gossip session as he could have wished, including fascinating information about Witcher refractory periods and the effect of the Grasses on teenagers.

“You’re making me horny. Wanna do somethin’ about it?” Andrzej concluded. Jaskier rubbed his ears.

“Are you asking me to -“

“Fuck, yes.”

Were men’s gossip circles generally this much more exciting? Jaskier wondered. His libido, untouched by anything but his own hand in a full year, offered an answer to a different question.

“N -“ he began. “Wait. You said Witchers are sterile?”

“Yep. Disease free too,” Andrzej offered helpfully.

“Wow,” said Jaskier, his brain short-circuiting through a year of watching Witchers train. Andrzej was not any less athletic for being fat.

He was a fun lover, too, laughing and generous and as open to trying things as he was to teaching Jaskier the benefits of fucking a Witcher. Of which there were many. Jaskier was the one to finally beg for a stop, which had never happened before, and then Andrzej picked him up - Jaskier instantly discovered a new kink - and carried him down to the hot springs to clean up.

Which was where Vesemir found them not long after. He looked from Andrzej to Jaskier and said, “Oh boy.” Andrzej raised one hand in lazy greeting. Vesemir ignored him. “You got that treaty written?” he asked Jaskier.

“About a third of it drafted, why?” Jaskier asked.

“Redanian envoy gave us theirs an hour ago. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Oh shit,” Jaskier said, scrambling out of the water and slipping right back in with a great deal of splashing. He went under briefly, and then Andrzej wrapped an arm under him and lifted.

“Something important?” he asked. Jaskier sputtered some more.

“You know the diplomatic envoy that’s been here for a week and a half?” he reminded Andrzej sarcastically.

Andrzej shrugged, hefting Jaskier casually, and said, “Eh.”

“Yes it’s important so put me down,” Jaskier said, and Andrzej very obligingly did, without even putting him back in the water. Jaskier fell over twice trying to walk while putting on his trousers, gave up and sat still for his boots and doublet, and committed the cardinal sin of not combing his hair before going to see his lord.

“Found him,” Vesemir said, preceding him into the council room. It was finally warm enough to open the windows again, but today they were shut tight against eavesdroppers.

“Hm,” said Geralt, taking in Jaskier’s damp appearance. Jaskier watched him and Eskel sniff in unison, and nervously remembered Andrzej’s lesson on Witcher senses. He had washed. “Hm.”

“Vesemir tells me we have a treaty now,” Jaskier said. Geralt pushed a neatly bound volume across the table to him. Jaskier scowled at it. “Why toy with us for weeks when they have this already written?” And bound, and practically filed in a library somewhere.

“And why give it to us now,” Yennefer said. It was not a question.

“Because they know I’m writing and haven’t finished,” Jaskier grumbled, opening the book and flipping past the first page, which was just addresses and honors. Geralt’s paragraph was a lot shorter than King Vizimir’s.

“Why not?” Geralt demanded. Jaskier looked up at him in astonishment.

“It takes more than a few hours to write a diplomatic treaty, Geralt!”

“Wolf,” Geralt corrected. Jaskier waved a hand at him, turning back to the treaty to look for traps. There was a faint sound of Eskel’s fist hitting Geralt’s sleeve.

“At least I have a template now. I can go through this, add a few of our requests, some things to argue over and reluctantly give up…” He stopped. “Scrap whole paragraphs.”

“What did you find?” Vesemir asked, looking over Jaskier’s shoulder. “The bit on Redanian succession?”

“It’s only about Redania if you’re skimming for proper nouns,” Jaskier said. “This says whatever consort Geralt takes must be from Redania, unless he has dismissed every possible Redanian lady, and any heir must be of Redanian descent.”

“Immaterial. Witchers are sterile,” said Yennefer.

“Takes out more than two thirds of our candidates,” Vesemir objected.

“Say ‘immaterial’ again when Kaer Morhen is flooded with fortune seekers,” said Jaskier.

“Nonsense. Redanians are afraid of Witchers,” said Eskel.

“Not when they could be queen of three kingdoms they’re not,” said Jaskier.

“And you?” asked Geralt.

“Hm,” said Jaskier absently, reading again. “Oh look, they thought of Yennefer’s objection.”

“I thought tighter relations between kingdoms were what we wanted,” said Vesemir, still reading over Jaskier’s shoulder.

“No, no, this says any existing heirs - that’s Ciri - would have to marry King Vizimir’s grandson,” Jaskier said. Three Witchers actually growled, and Jaskier’s stomach knotted anxiously. Shush, he told it, it's only Geralt.

“Strike it out,” Geralt ordered.

“We’ll have to strike the whole thing,” Jaskier said, and sighed. “Which means I need time to write. Delay them. Keep the envoy here.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, dance with them!” Jaskier snapped, and pushed his damp hair back. “How much time did you ask for to read the treaty?”

“They gave us two days,” said Eskel.

“And you took it?” Jaskier yelped.

“It’s thirty pages, how long could it take?”

“First rule of diplomacy, if anyone offers you anything -“ Jaskier hesitated, his father’s voice ringing in his memory, eerily similar to his own now, I don’t care if it’s a slice of cake, and he forced the rest of the words out, “you ask for double that. I need to sing something.” Something that didn’t remind him of his father, and all that came into his head were his mother’s lullabies.

“Sing tonight,” said Geralt.

“What?”

“You want dancing, you have to sing,” said Geralt. Jaskier groaned. He was right, there was no other music to be had. And that ate into what little time Jaskier had for writing.

“Three nights from now. We’ll have some sort of read-the-treaty party and announce a time for a counter offer, and pretend everyone knew that was what we meant by ‘read the treaty.’ Better tell the kitchen now.”

“Hm,” said Geralt.

Jaskier worked without stopping that week, guilty about what had happened with Andrzej. Any time he was not writing, he was in the hall playing instrumentals, not trusting himself to speak in front of his father. Eskel walked him back to his room, and Jaskier suspected there was a guard on his door, too. When his hands cramped, he opened the shutters and sang lullabies to a spring he didn’t see unfolding. The only times he saw Geralt were during performances; neither of them had time for riding.

But at the end of the week he had a treaty. In any reasonable court it would have gone through several more experienced hands to rewrite, but Geralt took it, grunted, and passed it to Yennefer. Who handed it to Jaskier’s father that evening. Who smugly took it, read the second page, and looked up at his son, smile vanished. Jaskier grinned back at him and started “Broomfield Hill.”

They argued back and forth for a few more days, but Redania had come seeking safety from Geralt; he didn’t have to agree to anything. And he was very good at grunting and not promising anything. What they wound up with was a looser truce than anyone wanted, because Redania was not willing to grant the concessions Geralt - Jaskier - demanded. But at last they were leaving. Everyone turned out to make sure they went.

They’d gotten through a month of avoiding each other. Jaskier had thought he was safe - but his father’s eyes searched the crowd and sought him out.

“Your mother would like to see you,” he said.

“What? Why?” Jaskier asked. His mother had hardly spoken to him since he left for finishing school. Most of the time he forgot she existed, and assumed she did the same to him. She wasn’t interested in children older than five or so.

“You would know better than I,” said his father, implying, to the general audience, that they did not know each other, and to the specific one, that women’s foibles were beyond him. Jaskier gritted his teeth and turned away, and did not watch them ride out.

“Well that was exhausting,” he said to Geralt when they were gone. “D’you want to go for a ride?”

“No,” said Geralt. Jaskier looked up at him. He was staring down the Trail, and Jaskier thought he could recognize longing when he saw it. “Path’s open.”

“Time to go,” Jaskier echoed. He was certain Eskel had all sorts of routes and duty schedules drawn up, none of which included Geralt.

“You should go,” said Geralt. “Spread the songs.” He didn’t look happy about it.

“Me? Travel alone?” Jaskier asked. He frowned. That was young lady thinking. “Bards do it all the time. And I do need to spread the songs. I can write on the road as well as anywhere, if there’s a notebook I can take, or even a slate… What about Ciri's lessons?”

“Yennefer managed before,” said Geralt.

“I could take Ciri with me.”

“No.”

“She ought to see more of the worl-“

“No.”

“All right,” said Jaskier. “I’ll draw up a map. Tour the edges of the Wolflands. Eskel can make me a pack.” He considered the idea of carrying it, then considered once more, realistically this time. “Maybe a pack horse, too. And I can be back here before the first snows.”

“Hm,” said Geralt. Jaskier was struck with a bout of anxiety.

“I can come back here, right? Only, my father’s probably disowning me as we speak, and I’ve never been homeless before. A proper bardly state, I imagine, but only noble in its…” He fished for a word, brain utterly flat after the last week.

“Hm,” said Geralt.

“Exactly,” said Jaskier. He wasn’t sure what Geralt’s grunt had meant - either of them - but it wasn’t whatever it was he’d just agreed to. He went to find Eskel, who used words.

Eskel blinked surprise at him through handsome amber eyes, but agreed to find him a pack and fill it with useful objects. One spare set of clothes, he told Jaskier to pack, and ‘the loot thing.’

“Philistine,” Jaskier accused.

“I’m guessing that’s a bad thing,” said Eskel. “Where is Philist?”

It was Jaskier’s turn to blink. “I don’t know,” he said, feeling ignorant himself. “It’s just a thing people say. Like uncultured swine.”

“I should hope it was uncultured,” said Eskel.

“Was that a joke? Are you joking with me?” Jaskier asked. Eskel very gently tapped his shoulder with a fist, like he was some sort of bobbing flower.

“You finally noticed,” said Eskel. Jaskier paused a moment, then hit him back like he used to do at Oxenfurt. “I have a standard speech for the boys, but… we’ll see how it applies to you. There will be enough silver in a purse to weigh you down even if you don’t take any contra - play… gigs? If you blow it in the first brothel outside of Wolvenburg, you won’t be the first to do so but you will be on your own until autumn. Remember you’re to enforce the Wolflaw, not be hunted by it. If you get into any trouble you can’t get out of - not with the law - run home, like Krzysztoff in Caingorn. Uh… the lads get the rest in lessons, what do you need?”

“Can I have a horse?”

“No. Current policy -“ they both knew that was in discussion, after Krzysztoff in Caingorn - “says fifth year on the Path and up, when you might keep a horse alive. If you can buy one it’s yours, but mind the bit about contracts and keeping it alive.”

“What about changing money?”

“Not a common question. Where are you planning to go?”

Jaskier shrugged. He was kind of just trembling giddily with the idea of going anywhere, unattended, unwatched, no place he had to be. Like a real bard.

Eskel smiled and clapped his shoulder, only a little less gently than he’d punched him earlier. “You’ve got the look all the boys do, ready to start out. You’ll be fine.”

He spent all his money in the first town on a horse he lost at cards in the second. He played sets for his suppers and wove the Witcher songs into them, seduced people when he got off stage, got chased out a window by an angry baron and out a chicken shed by an angry goodwife. He sang at a castle to an appreciative lord who gifted him a set of clothes, and had it torn to shreds fleeing an incubus the townspeople thought was too useful to call a Witcher on. He added invective and dialect to his knowledge of every language he knew, traveling with merchants and mercenaries. Who knew there were so many dialects? He resorted to pantomiming in some places and bartering in others. He never stayed with the same people more than a week.

He tried to. He was lonely. But travelers couldn’t pay for another fare just because he told good stories, and sooner or later their gigs would be in a different place than Jaskier was going. So he made friends easily and, okay, enemies more easily, because not everyone was interested in a lasting relationship after fucking, and mostly he made acquaintances.

But he didn’t meet anyone who could tease him. He didn’t meet anyone who would let him talk until he was out of words. He didn’t meet anyone who made him overflow with music.

And, to be honest with his own thoughts, he didn’t fucking meet Geralt. He didn’t know why that seemed so important. He just thought about him every day, dozens of times, even weeks later - oh, Geralt will laugh at this, or, I’d better remember that for our next ride, or, I’ll play that ornamentation again so I can tell Geralt what a turn is. It was annoying, and far outside the role of harmless sexual fantasy into which he had tried to place his thoughts of Geralt.

(Of course he lusted after Geralt, it was only natural. Witcher sex was amazing, he’d proved that, and Geralt was the Witcher. Plus those eyes and the idea he might explain, after, which calluses were from the steel sword and which from the silver. Obvious fantasy, Geralt didn’t talk that much.)

So he went west to distract himself, along the southern border of the Wolflands to areas bordering Redania, where he could spook himself with the idea of meeting someone who knew him whenever he thought about Geralt too much.

It was perhaps inevitable, traveling in this fashion, that he would run into his mother.

She had never struck him as a very strong-willed woman - she raised his father's children, tended his father’s house, and never interfered with his father’s punishments - yet here she was, alone in a foreign country, where by ‘alone’ Jaskier meant that she had only three servants and half the inn rented. Jaskier about walked right out of the town when he saw Jeremiasz having a beer in the common room of the inn, except that he’d lost the last of his money betting that an acquaintance would not ride through town at noon clad only in the lengths of her own hair.

She’d seemed like she wanted to. It suddenly didn’t seem as good a reason to spend all his money.

“It’s all right,” said Maria, who apparently still had the ability to sneak up on him. “It’s only my lady here.”

“What is she doing here?” Jaskier hissed.

“Waiting for you,” said Maria. “Like her message said she would.”

“What message?”

“The one she sent to you at Kaer Morhen after your father told her you were there, asking you to meet her here, on the border?”

“I left Kaer Morhen the day after Father did. I’ve been traveling the land ever since, earning my way as a bard, singing songs, telling tales…” His voice died out in the face of Maria’s silent skeptical look.

“Best get yourself cleaned up. I’ll just let my lady know you’re here,” she said.

“No, wait -“ said Jaskier, but Maria was as slithery as she was sneaky and ducked out of his hands as easily. Jaskier swore and looked down at his travel-stained clothes and empty purse. He could ask the innkeeper for a basin to wash his face, but he’d have to pass Jeremiasz, and, well. Jaskier hadn’t forgiven him for being his father’s retainer.

He could turn and walk right back out of this inn and down the road and anywhere he wanted to go.

His mother was at the top of the stairs, beautifully dressed, her hair perfectly in place for an informal afternoon’s deshabille. She descended the steep steps in a slow, smooth arc that Jaskier knew took more muscle than it appeared.

“Julian, my child,” she said, taking his head between her hands and kissing first one cheek, then the other. Not empty kisses either; she made contact and pressed with her lips.

“Mother,” said Jaskier. He couldn’t decide whether to argue with the woman who had named him a promise that all would be well.

“You look…” She paused. “Come, sit. We haven’t seen each other in years. Tell me everything.”

“Everything, Mother?” Jaskier asked. “You haven’t said that since I was learning embroidery. It’s an awful lot to cover.”

She was silent a moment. “Let me feed you supper anyway. Have I told you how I met your father?”

It was Jaskier’s turn to be silent, while his mother ordered the inn’s special menu to be brought and the room cleared. Jeremiasz left without objection, and perhaps some tension left Jaskier’s shoulders, though too much remained to be certain. He could, just, remember asking how his parents had met, and not being given an answer. It hadn’t been a burning question, with all the other stories his mother had told.

“Evidently not a tale I’ve told,” she said, turning away from the signal for food. “I want us to understand each other, Julian, as we -“

“Jaskier. People call me Jaskier now.”

“Again?” He nodded. “You asked them to?” Another nod. She paused for a moment, thinking. “Viscountess Buttercup?”

“Surely Father has disowned me by now,” Jaskier groaned. He still enjoyed the new bass tones in his own voice.

“Honey, no,” his mother said. “You remember the gatekeeper and his wife? How we could hear them argue from the front lawn when we were playing croquet?"

"You had to explain what sex was to me, after," Jaskier said, grinning now, if still with some confusion.

"People love in mysterious ways. I won't say your father's love was good for you. You don't have to like that it's there. But he does love you, in his fashion, and he won't disown you."

"Not even if I stand to inherit?" Jaskier asked. His mother looked him over slowly.

"I think I would like to tell you that story now," she said.

Their food came first. His mother set her bowl to the side, sniffed disdainfully at the goblet, and her eyes widened a bit in surprised approval. Jaskier fell on his bowl with his worst good manners. That, at least, made sense of this encounter. He was in no position to turn down free food.

“I was younger than you are now,” his mother said, taking a drink. “My house was falling apart. Our title meant nothing, we had no standing at court, my grandfather had gambled the money away and my father was running out of land to sell to support our household, never mind an education or a dowry. The kingdom was in much the same shape. King Vizimir had been crowned a few years before, but rumors kept circulating that he had poisoned his father and older brother.”

Jaskier made an inquiring noise around his soup. He’d never heard such a rumor.

“Your father was young, ambitious, heir to a county. Quite the catch, if I had ever met him.

“I hired an actor to dress as a Witcher and drop the right lines, and then I spread a rumor that the old king was a vampire. He’d been poisoned, sure enough, by garlic oil and a silver sword.”

“Hm,” said Jaskier.

“When the king was asked to wear silver to prove his humanity, he set his spymaster to find the truth of the rumor. He found me. I told him people like to hear that their king is a hero, that any foul deeds were done by foul people. I told him what I wanted for my service. He told his court that he would favor any man who married me.” She raised her glass. “The rest, of course, is obvious.”

His father would have jumped at the chance. His mother was saved, raised six children she never told about their relatives. Never told them how she met their father. Brought it up when Jaskier pointed out they hadn’t spoken in twenty years.

“Why -“

“I know your father raised you brighter than that,” she said, still playing with her glass and taking regular, almost nervous sips.

Because she had earned her place with a lie, and maintained that lie. It smarted, that particular lie, that Witchers were to blame, when Jaskier had been working so hard against that sort of prejudice.

Against the work of the Redanian propagandist.

His mother smiled at him.

It wasn’t that he had grown old and boring, or learned to embroider, or… It was that he’d gone away to finishing school, and started sneaking out to Oxenfurt, and some friend had told him about some essay on propaganda, and his mother had told one of her wonderful stories, about politics this time, and Jaskier had said - what would he have said? Something about how it sounded like one of her wonderful stories.

This time, when his mother raised her glass to him, it was to tip it toward him as one colleague praising another’s work.

Not something she would say aloud in a border tavern, on the White Wolf’s land.

“So now you know what I’ve been doing all these years. I really would like to hear everything from you,” she said wistfully.

“So - quit. Come with me to Kaer Morhen and -“

She held up a hand. “Can we skip the impassioned pleading? I am a wife; it’s not a job one quits. And - people love in mysterious ways. I think what I wanted to say to you was, I have loved you. It has not been good for you either. And I have drunk this rather fast.”

She looked down at the glass she had been gesturing with in some surprise, as if it had betrayed her.

“You have to drink them regularly, to build up a tolerance,” said Jaskier.

“Ah. Yes. Difficult to do, when one is always with small children. I think I should go up to bed.”

Jaskier laughed disbelievingly. “That’s it for the loving reunion with Mother? One short story, and off to bed?”

“Mother is drunk, dear.” She paused, one steadying hand on the back of her chair. “Do consider what other mysterious loves you may have attracted, and whether they are good for you. Goodnight, dear.”

Jaskier got up and found the innkeeper, incidentally avoiding Jeremiasz. “What was that stuff the lady drank?” he demanded. Tried to ask, but it came out ruder.

“She ordered the house specialty,” the innkeeper said defensively. “White Gull.”

“And you gave it to her?” Jaskier asked, having learned in the past year just how many poisons Witchers liked to lace their spirits with. “Holy shit, is she going to die?”

“No, no, it’s the novelty stuff for humans! It’s just very strong.”

Jaskier relaxed. “Wolflands tourist special?” he asked.

“They lap it up, yes. Literally, if they’re feeling cute.” They exchanged rolled eyes, and Jaskier got to the business of arranging to play a set. If he didn’t have to pay for his supper, he might even make a few of his lost coins back.

He played his Witcher songs in defiance of his mother. He’d have to focus attention on the Redanian border in future, now he knew who he was up against. The struggle took his mind off whatever it was his mother wanted him to think about, and put it squarely back on Gera -

- for the fifteenth time today -

- after he’d fucked Andrzey and promptly been asked to leave because Geralt couldn’t -

“Ah, fuck,” said Jaskier in the middle of his set.

The Trail was a lot drier at the end of summer. Jaskier made it up mostly on his feet, wondering a little how his father had made it up at all. Hidden musculature, like his mother’s stair glides? This was probably not what his mother had meant him to do with her little tip, but here he was.

At the top, the gates of Kaer Morhen were closed. Jaskier sat down with a thump. He had not expected any further obstacles. He knew better than to try the walls; they had been built against siege engines, against armies and against Witchers.

He didn’t have any might to oppose them. Just his voice. He took out his lute and sang, to the walls as he had sung from them, confident that Geralt would hear.

When first we met you said you heard
The music of a little bird

And shortly then an owl took flight:

Twas love that took to sky that night.

And when I said that I could sing

You let my voice through valleys ring

And as those avalanches fell

I whispered - and you heard it still.

You left me crying to the wind

As if your steps might thus rescind.

So this is death - the only death I fear

I speak: You do not hear.

It wasn’t any good, in tenor or soprano; it was just what was in his heart.

The gates opened. Geralt was there, alone, pushing the doubled gates wide with his stupid Witcher strength and nothing on his face. Jaskier laid a hand on the strings of his lute to still them.

“Eskel forgot to give you this. Stupid,” said Geralt, supremely unclear whether it was Eskel, Jaskier, or the mistake that was stupid. He held out a long chain with a single silver medallion at the end. Jaskier poked it to make it stop spinning.

“Geralt,” he said, “is this a Witcher medallion?”

“No,” said Geralt. “Just Wolf. Some of the others have them. Means you’re ours.” He cleared his throat. “Mine.”

“I’ve been having some very stupid thoughts,” Jaskier confessed, taking the medallion before Geralt could take it back. He held it in his palm: squeeze, and flip. Squeeze, and flip. It was the perfect size. “About coincidences, and sex, and motivations. Mostly about sex. I think about sex a lot,” he said.

“Hm,” said Geralt. It almost had two M’s on it.

“Anyway I just thought - and I know it’s dumb - but I had sex with Andrzej, and then the first opportunity afterward you asked me to leave. And I was just wondering. Why you did that.”

“We dated for ten months. And th -”

“WHAT,” Jaskier exploded. “Ten MONTHS? When did that happen? How? Why was I not aware!”

“Thought it was obvious,” Geralt said. “Weekly dates. Double date with Triss, start off safe. Fuckin’ - greeting after Kovir, if nothing else.”

“Geralt, that was not obvious,” said Jaskier. “When did all of these dates occur? Fucking - our fucking rides? I thought you were just being nice! Did no one ever tell you to tell people when you’re dating them? Merope - no, fucking Melitele blowing Merope, we never even kissed!”

“You didn’t want to. Don’t like sex.”

“Don’t like - I don’t like sex? Me? Fucking -“ Jaskier stared at him, blinking, speechless, trying to comprehend how to explain to Geralt just how very much sex he enjoyed.

“Some don’t.”

Jaskier stared at him for another moment before saying, in a slightly strangled tone, “Not me.”

“Hm,” said Geralt.

“Geralt,” said Jaskier, “I know you are not a very talkative person, but could you please, for once, just fucking saying what you are thinking? Because I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to imagine what might be going on in your head and - and wondering whether we could have been fucking for the last ten months, which, I’m not wondering less now, and I know you’re probably having a lot of emotions about how I apparently must have cheated on you, which, would have been nice to know that, but I am. Kind of wondering if I can get a rain check on all that fucking.”

“Hm,” said Geralt, and must have realized he was being unhelpful, because he added, “Gonna need some…” He gestured at the mountainside beyond Jaskier. “Time.”

Jaskier wilted, and tried to do so with dignity.

“But probably,” said Geralt. “I like fucking too.”

“Gods yes, Merope and all her - handmaidens, you must be absolutely dying for some, obviously you can’t fuck servants any more than I c - I’ll shut up now,” Jaskier said. He considered physically holding his tongue to keep it from wagging. “We should. Probably have some more discussions first. Um. Want to swap?” He gestured between them, Geralt in Kaer Morhen, himself outside in the wilderness.

“Gods yes,” Geralt echoed, and lunged for him. Jaskier tensed, forced himself to relax, and by that point Geralt was past him, and the gates stood open.

Lambert was in the courtyard, waiting for him with a grin of vicious enjoyment. “Well that was fuckin’ terrible,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, so’re you,” said Jaskier fondly, his mother’s words about mysterious loves echoing in his head. It was… more pleasant than hearing his father’s voice there. “Where is everybody?”

“Probably in the baths by now. Eskel kept ‘em back when Geralt left,” said Lambert, and grinned again. “Not me though.”

“I appreciate your vote of affection,” said Jaskier. “One day I will write you a song equal to your vocabulary.”

“Yeah, good to see you too,” Lambert said, trying to sound rancorous and not succeeding. He pushed off the wall and swaggered off in, Jaskier was fairly certain, a random direction.

Jaskier left his things on the stairs to his room with every intention of carrying them up himself later, knowing it would be done for him before he could, and went down to the baths. They were crowded and noisy with Witchers, but the Witchers were clustered in the hottest pools at the top. Eskel raised a hand in greeting, and gave the nod he used in his office, the one that meant they’d talk later, after he’d finished wrangling… three hundred Witchers and a dozen mages. Jaskier waved enthusiastically back.

He scanned the lower pools and saw a few of the human warriors sitting with the sorceresses in their favorite pool. He took a breath and left his towel with his clothes as he walked across the slick rocks to join them.

“Welcome back,” said Triss approvingly. “Your scars are healing nicely. Are you still rubbing lotion on them?”

Jaskier felt his ears burn, remembering how he’d used that as a line to lure people into his bed while he was… call it on the Path. Just his own Path. Yennefer laughed at him, a witch’s cackle, and Jaskier splashed her without thinking about it.

“You’re a pernicious hermaphrodite,” she said.

“And you’re an unfuckable hag,” said Jaskier amiably.

“I told you he’d be all right,” said Triss. She looked back at Jaskier. “I told you it would all be well, if I remember correctly.”

‘“I’ve had a lot of women telling me wise things I didn’t listen to lately,” said Jaskier. Mysterious loves and equally mysterious assurances, challenges he didn’t realize were for his own good. Geralt, and Yennefer, and Ciri, and Triss, and Eskel, and Lambert: people who loved in mysterious ways, but these, at least, just might be good for him.

He suspected that wasn’t the moral his mother had meant for him to take, but he was old enough to take things in his own way now, even when that meant starting a war with his own family. But Triss was right: all would be well, sooner or later.

All manner of things would be well.