Chapter Text
On the sixteenth consecutive morning that Emhyr woke with Geralt in his bed, he found himself for once barely tempted to linger. Geralt let him go with the usual sleepy grumbling, and Emhyr only paused for a moment to marvel at the witcher tucking his face into Emhyr's pillow and sprawling out again in unguarded slumber.
Even that sight didn't transfix him for long, however. Not today.
His valet, well accustomed to the routine by now, waited until Emhyr had walked past the foot of the bed to enter the room, and Emhyr enjoyed the little rituals of being dressed and shaved, sipping tea between sweeps of the razor. Geralt slept on, unconcerned, by now as accustomed to the valet's presence as the valet was to Geralt's.
When he'd dismissed the servants and was alone again with the sleeping Geralt, Emhyr withdrew the key he'd had tucked away in an inner pocket of his surcoat for a week now, and lay it carefully in the center of the breakfast table. The servants would know to arrange Geralt's breakfast without disturbing it--if Geralt did not somehow sense its presence and wake to find it before they arrived with his meal.
Emhyr turned away, wasting no more time; he doubted Geralt would take long to find what the key gave him access to, and Emhyr wanted to get a proper look at it himself first.
Emhyr hadn't set foot in the conservatory since a fortnight earlier, when he'd walked through with Martin, the specialist gardener assigned to the project, to show him exactly what he'd had in mind. He had had daily updates and sketches showing progress, but the reality of the space, when he stepped inside, was still enough to stop him in his tracks. After a moment he stepped inside far enough to close and lock the door behind him.
When Emhyr had first led Geralt through it, on the day of that momentous negotiation in the rose garden, this had been a quite ordinary conservatory--a space where one might take leisure in a garden-like environment, without enduring the discomforts of weather or insects in the outdoor gardens. Even the citrus trees had been intended more as ornament and curiosity than food production, though Emhyr had directed that the oranges be regularly harvested and delivered to Geralt's rooms. The plants, arranged in pots and trays on the tiled floor, had been purely decorative, with plenty of space left for elegant furniture, with wide paths for the convenience of servants and to avoid dirtied hems.
Now it was something altogether different. The chairs and couches and incidental tables had disappeared, leaving only a long unadorned workbench along one wall and two sturdy stools as the only furnishings. Every other inch of space was devoted to plants, in a dizzying variety, packed as densely as their various growing requirements permitted. The sheer unrelenting efficiency of the space made it feel like another world from the rest of the palace. Although the specimens had been arranged with pleasing symmetry where possible, the only element that was at all frivolous was the corner where roses of multiple colors had been trained over a frame; even the roses were present primarily to create cover for plants that required shade to grow.
Emhyr walked carefully down the narrow pathways left to navigate the space, looking carefully at the results of all the work. Martin had had an entire staff, including mages, laboring day and night to source the plants and make sure they could all be accommodated in the same space--several requiring colder weather were still in another building under preserving enchantments, awaiting Geralt's opinion on where and how it would be best to establish them. Cirilla had assisted with acquiring some of the items from particularly remote locations, and of course had advised them on the catalogue of plants Geralt would wish to have ready access to for brewing his potions.
And now virtually every plant she had been able to name or hunt up in a week's research was here, growing in neat clusters and rows. Each type of plant had a marker with a stamped number, corresponding to an entry in the ledger waiting on the workbench, which would have a record of what the plant was, where and how it had been harvested, and what methods had been used to cultivate it here.
There were two separate pools with plants growing in them, one of fresh water and one salt, plus an artificial stream for those that required moving water.
Emhyr crouched beside it, resisting the temptation to dip his fingers into the flowing water. Cirilla and the gardeners had all been extremely clear on how rampantly toxic the plants could be. That was the reason for the newly-locked doors; prior to this the conservatory had been open to anyone who had the freedom of this part of the palace.
He heard a soft scuffing of footsteps outside, and then the little click of the key into the lock. Emhyr stood, eager to see the look on Geralt's face when he first beheld his surprise.
It was only when Emhyr saw the blankness of shock wipe Geralt's expression clean that he was sure it was a surprise. He'd given orders that Geralt was to be accommodated if he made any effort to discover what was happening in the conservatory, and that no report was to be made to himself in that event. If Geralt had only humored him in pretending that the gift was a surprise, that would have been well enough--a gift in return, in a way. Emhyr had thought that the likeliest scenario.
From the evidence now, Emhyr would appear to have overestimated Geralt's inquisitiveness, at least in this direction. Emhyr took a few cautious steps toward him as Geralt stood frozen in the doorway, face utterly still except for his eyes darting here and there. At his movement, Geralt's attention focused on Emhyr, and then he looked down, seeming to notice the key still in his hand. He pushed the door shut behind him, turning away from Emhyr to make sure it locked.
When he turned back he was grinning as he stared around. "Wow," Geralt said, "Uh... is all of this..."
"I did have them leave the trees, since you liked them so," Emhyr said, gesturing toward the citrus trees that still lined two walls, bearing lemons and limes as well as the oranges Geralt so enjoyed. "Though if you'd rather free up space for something else, of course..."
Geralt shook his head and stepped further into the room, his grin shrinking a little as he examined the plants. Emhyr stayed where he was, feeling not quite certain he ought to approach. Geralt didn't seem displeased, exactly, but this was not the way Emhyr had envisioned him reacting--though in truth he couldn't tell how Geralt was reacting. He seemed still too stunned to quite take it in.
It was possible that Emhyr had taken a good idea to the point of overkill.
Geralt methodically worked his way along the narrow central path between the plants. He didn't touch any of them--though he seemed to examine them carefully--except that he ran one finger over the just-opened petals of a rose before crouching to see what grew in its shade. He did not miss even the fungi growing in the near-darkness on the undersides of plant stands.
Emhyr retreated bit by bit; he did not want Geralt to brush by him without touching, as he did all these dangerous plants. He wound up perched on one of the stools at the workbench, as-if-idly opening the ledger so he wouldn't keep watching Geralt and searching for a sign of what he was thinking or feeling.
A curl of impatient anger rose in Emhyr--Geralt had said it was all right for Emhyr to give him things, he hadn't objected to any other gift--but a glance at Geralt snuffed it out. Geralt wasn't angry; he wasn't protesting. He was keeping himself very contained, his movements small, his expression controlled.
The smile had vanished altogether now. Emhyr found he could not bear the prospect of waiting for Geralt to wend his way through all the remaining plants before breaking the silence, which had grown oppressive as noonday sun in the desert.
"If you don't like it..." Emhyr tried, but he had no idea what to offer.
Geralt's head jerked up, and the smile returned. His eyes were pools of darkness and he was breathing a little fast, both signs Emhyr had seen often enough in his bed--but Geralt was deathly pale and his movements were stiff as he came to Emhyr, none of the usual easy predator's grace in his gait. Emhyr fought the urge to pull away, and Geralt came all the way to him, cradling Emhyr's face between his palms and kissing him roughly, frantically. It should have been like a dozen other kisses they'd shared, but it was all wrong.
"Thank you," Geralt said, when Emhyr pulled back enough to break the kiss. "This is amazing, it's great, I just--" Emhyr recognized the wide eyes and stumbling words as panic just as Geralt said, "I have to go. I have a contract, so I have to go. Now. Sorry, this is great, I just have to--"
Emhyr couldn't find even a wisp of anger for the absurdly transparent lie, not when it was so obviously driven by a desperate need to escape. Emhyr had no idea what he'd done to inspire it, but he had to do exactly what he'd done the last time he'd so terribly frightened Geralt. He had to step back and let him go.
"It's all right," Emhyr said softly. "I understand. You are a witcher; you must do as you must. I know you can't say when you'll return, but I hope you'll keep in touch with Cirilla, so she won't worry too much."
Geralt actually met his eyes directly at that, for nearly the first time since he'd stepped into the conservatory. He went still, staring, his hands resting motionless on Emhyr's skin. They felt cold, or at least colder than Geralt's usual furnace-warmth. Emhyr made himself look back steadily, radiating perfect calm and acceptance. He kept his own hands in his lap, making no move to touch or hold.
"I'll--I just have to--" Geralt kissed him again, and Emhyr thought there was a hint of genuine gratitude in it this time--not for the spectacular gift of the alchemical garden, but for letting him go. "I'm sorry," Geralt repeated, pulling back. "I'll--I'll tell Ciri."
With that he turned on his heel and walked so fast to the door that Emhyr's eye could hardly track him. Geralt's shoulders shook as he struggled for a few seconds to unlock it and let himself out, and then he was gone.
Geralt managed not to break into a run until he'd made the last turning on the way to Ciri's rooms. He knocked for entrance, trying to think as he did of where to look next if Ciri wasn't here--would she have gone out riding, maybe? He thought she did that sometimes, early in the morning, or--
The door opened on Ciri's chief lady-in-waiting, Julena; her expression went from baffled to concerned as she got a look at him. "Sir Geralt? What's wrong?"
"Geralt?" That was Ciri, sounding worried as well. "Jul, let him in, he's seen it all anyway."
Julena stepped back from the door and Geralt stepped in to see Ciri, wearing nothing but a loose pair of drawers and binding around her breasts, hunting through a wardrobe. She looked over her shoulder as Geralt came into sight. "What is it? What's wrong, should I--"
Geralt shook his head, clearing his throat with an effort. "Nothing, it's not--everything's fine, I just have to, uh--I have to go."
He knew he was doing this all wrong, being way too obvious, but he couldn't muster up another fake smile, or smoother words, with his brain jangling like a sack of copper pots on the back of a runaway horse.
Ciri studied him with an intent look for a few seconds, then nodded. "Come with me, we'll see where to send you."
Ciri tugged a long shirt over her head and strode through the little sitting room to one Geralt hadn't seen much before--an office, with bookshelves covering two walls and the rest papered over with overlapping maps and charts. More maps and papers covered the desk and a long worktable, but Geralt's eye caught on the standing mirror in the corner--no doubt spelled, to allow her to speak to other sorceresses. Had she patched things up with Yen by now? Or was she using it to speak to other sorceresses who were speaking to Yen, engaging in that oblique network of communication they all seemed to use to keep tabs on each other while feuding?
"You want to be out of the Empire?" Ciri asked, moving to the table to rifle through papers. "Up in the North? Or Skellige? If you just want to go to Corvo Bianco, of course--"
"I have a--" Geralt swallowed hard and shook his head at himself. Emhyr had politely accepted that lie; Ciri wouldn't. "I need a contract. I need to work."
Again Ciri stilled for a moment, looking at him, reading him. Geralt tried not to squirm under her scrutiny, though he didn't even know what he wanted her to see or not see.
Emhyr hadn't even done anything--not anything bad. This wasn't like that misunderstanding, when Geralt had gotten it all wrong and thought Emhyr would force him. It was a gift, just another gift, just like the clothes and weapons and new tack for Roach and that pretty damn collar...
But all of those things just sort of... happened. Geralt could maybe kind of guess how much the clothes or gear or weapons would cost if he'd wanted to buy the equivalent himself, though if he really thought about it they all had to be the work of master craftsmen who'd never even deign to let a witcher buy their wares. The collar, the Order of the Moon--that was a big unwieldy piece of jewelry, and what it meant, the honor it represented, was something intangible, something only an emperor could give. There was no use attempting to calculate a price.
The conservatory, though...
Geralt recognized the plants Emhyr had gathered together to grow there. He knew how many hundreds of miles apart some of them normally grew; he knew what kind of cold rivers and lakes and seas he'd have to dive into to get those water plants, what bogs he'd have to wade in to get the ones potted in more slurry than soil. He knew what kind of caves he'd have to descend into--the creatures he'd have to fight and the potions he'd have to take--to gather some of those fungi. He knew how precious each and every one of those things was, how many hours, how many days and weeks of toil and travel they'd cost him.
And Emhyr had just... told somebody to make that happen. To bring all of them to lay at Geralt's feet, while Geralt himself spent a couple of weeks sleeping in a comfortable bed, eating gods-be-damned oranges--oh but not to worry, Emhyr had made sure he could still have oranges and fucking roses and a whole big worktable just for himself.
There had been a rack of little vials for potions behind Emhyr when Geralt went to him, dozens of them. Geralt would bet they were tempered glass if not some kind of carved crystal or maybe fucking diamond, as nearly unbreakable as they could be; not one of them would have a flaw or a hint of discoloration in its perfect clarity.
Geralt hoarded vials for potions, pocketed the empty ones if he possibly could, even when he had to take a draught in the middle of a fight. Good vials, ones that wouldn't break easily, that were perfectly clear so he'd never mistake the contents, were precious. And Emhyr had just lined up a few dozen of them, so Geralt could use everything in the conservatory to brew up an entire school's worth of stockpiled potions if he wanted to.
Just for him, just because Emhyr--
"Geralt?"
Geralt shook his head sharply. Ciri's expression had turned gentle, and Geralt stepped up to the table and started looking over it himself. The map was covered in little markers, and the papers he could immediately see were... contract offers, all of them copied onto Ciri's expensive paper in some clerk's neat hand. Besides actual jobs offered, there were reports of monsters, murders, disappearances.
"I've been having the couriers report anything that might be witcher business," Ciri said, gesturing at all of it. "There aren't many left to cover it all--I felt bad enough taking myself out of circulation, and now you're here too. I thought, this way we'll know if there's something we need to attend to, or maybe some things we can--well, Morvran mostly, at this point, but he listens well enough--can direct soldiers to look into or deal with, or..."
Geralt looked over the map again, picking out familiar locations, staggered all over again by this bird's eye view of where witchers were needed, everywhere in the North. He spotted the gap around Vizima--someone must have been there recently, scooping up all the contracts.
"I think Eskel was there," Ciri said, following his gaze. "Do you want me to send you near there? Maybe you could meet up with him, work together for a while."
Geralt was shaking his head even before the image formed in his mind of running to Eskel when he was running away from this. Inevitably Eskel would be amused, or disgusted, or both in turns, to see Geralt bolting away from Emhyr var Emreis being too nice to him. Geralt couldn't face the thought of even finding words to explain it, let alone dealing with Eskel's reaction.
"Right," Ciri said briskly. "Skellige's not in bad shape--I've been advising Cerys when anything strange crops up, and they've got it pretty well in hand. Redania's a mess, though." She picked up a stack of papers. "We've assigned scouts or squads to look into these, and there are a few new ones in this morning's dispatch that I haven't looked through yet--if I send you to Tretogor you'll get those reports first and you can decide how to go from there. Or would you rather be in Novigrad?"
Geralt blinked at the map for a few seconds, almost literally blinded by the one thought worse than Eskel's reaction to all of this: Dandelion's reaction.
He was going to write ballads.
"Tretogor's fine," Geralt managed.
Ciri nodded. "Tretogor it is. Do you want to take Roach, or pick up a courier horse when you get there?"
Geralt stared at Ciri as the options raced through his mind--what it would mean to take Roach, what it would mean to leave her, the gauntlet of Emhyr's people he'd run getting to the stable...
That decided him. "I'll get a horse there. Take care of her for me?"
"Of course," Ciri said, briskly, like this was some perfectly normal minor emergency and not... whatever it actually was. "Come on, you need to pack, I'm not sending you anywhere like this."
Geralt glanced down at himself. He'd barely bothered to dress before he went to see what little mystery Emhyr had left for him to unravel. He'd been amused, eager, expecting a particularly lavish breakfast, sex, baths, something reasonable, at least by the standards of the last few weeks. And instead...
"Yeah," Geralt said, and turned on his heel to head to his own rooms. Ciri lagged behind, but caught up with him by the time he reached his own door--Geralt glanced back and realized she had trousers on now, and was lacing up a bodice over her shirt. Probably for the best.
He let himself into his rooms, which he'd visited only irregularly since his very first trip to Emhyr's bed. Everything seemed to be as he'd left it, though as he shoved clothes into his pack he thought that his socks and drawers had multiplied, and his clean shirts had undergone some transformations. He didn't look too closely at them. He didn't want to know, not right now.
He ran practiced fingers over the pockets of his pack--his small tools and backup weapons were still in place just as they'd been that day Ciri found him on the road and brought him here. He tried not to think anything at all as his fingers encountered the shapes of vials, all the potions he'd had on him that day. He'd been running low, but if he was going to Tretogor he could buy the ingredients he needed easily enough. He hadn't been hurting for ready cash, at least, having done a dozen or more contracts back to back.
It wasn't like he'd had to spend a copper since he'd come to Nilfgaard. His pack still held all of its hidden coin stashes, right where he'd left them.
That took care of packing. Now he just had to get dressed.
He grabbed the light armor he'd been wearing when Ciri found him, which had stayed here, unused, ever since he'd arrived, while he wandered around practically naked in Emhyr's palace, not even bothering to carry his swords half the time even when he could. Everything he pulled on was clean, mended, and--he didn't look closer than that. If they'd done more than clean and mend he really didn't want to know about it right at this moment, not when his options were to wear it or get dropped into Tretogor in nothing but his shirtsleeves.
Then all he needed was his weapons, and those, at least, no one had touched but him, cleaning and sharpening them after every desultory training session. He grabbed his swords and slung them on, his hands moving automatically out of sheer ingrained habit while his eyes were stuck on what had been hanging on the same rack: the silver knife Emhyr had given him, the same night he gave Geralt the collar.
It was a really fucking good knife, and silver. And Emhyr had given it to him, and Geralt had accepted it; it was his. He could do what he liked with it now. He'd certainly learned better in his long life than to leave a weapon behind when it might be useful.
Geralt's hands scarcely paused between getting his swords settled and reaching for the knife. It was the work of a minute to strap its scabbard to his right thigh, where he could draw it without having to reach up or even across his body as he would for his swords.
It felt good there, and Geralt refused to think about why or what any of it meant. It was new, that was all; it always felt good to have an extra blade handy, like a new pair of sturdy boots or a fully stocked larder.
He turned to Ciri, who was standing in a clear space, hands slightly raised like she was prepared to open the portal the instant he spoke. "I'm ready."
She nodded, but her hands lowered slightly. "Should I... is there anything you want me to tell him? Or not tell him?"
Geralt gritted his teeth as his gaze dropped to the floor.
Emhyr had sat so still, letting him go. He'd been so resigned to it.
He'd said, with the faintest note of helplessness in his voice, If you don't like it...
"Tell him," Geralt said, struggling for just the right words. "Tell him not to change anything. Not until I get back."
Ciri nodded, obviously accepting that Emhyr would understand what the message meant even if she didn't, and then her hands were moving, and the portal formed in the air of Geralt's sitting room.
He grabbed Ciri's shoulder and gave it a squeeze, beyond thinking of words to thank her or anything else to say, and then he stepped through into a stone-walled room he didn't recognize. He only had time to step over to a window and determine that he was not far off ground level in the eastern wing of Radovid's--former--palace before the door opened.
Geralt opened his mouth to offer some explanation, his fingers twitching toward Axii at his side, but realized from the person's placid expression that there was no need. The young man--clerk? courier?--just said, with an educated Nilfgaardian accent though in the common tongue, "Ah, Sir Geralt. Her Imperial Highness mentioned you might be turning up. Do you want to look at the dispatches?"
Geralt blinked at the guy for a moment while he fought down the absurd impulse to jump out the window and run instead, then nodded. "Yeah, she said there was some new stuff. Thought I'd better take a look."
From the way the clerk calmly nodded, stepped back, and gestured for Geralt to follow him through the door, that passed muster as a coherent explanation for his sudden presence. He wouldn't have to explain anything. No one would ask him why he was here.
Within an hour Geralt had selected the most urgent-looking jobs, as well as giving advice--which was written down with a studiousness that probably meant his suggestions would transform more or less instantly into orders--on how ordinary troops in sufficient numbers could probably handle a few of the others, as well as how they could tell if he'd guessed wrong, and they needed to get the hell away and call for him.
Geralt himself was making for the poorer quarter of Tretogor, the rising sun casting long shadows at it rose above the buildings nearby, when his stomach grumbled.
He hadn't stopped to eat breakfast before he went to see where Emhyr had gone this morning. He stopped in his tracks, rubbing at his belly and staring at the dirt road, the people moving around him, breathing the smells of shit and smoke and people and animals and food.
It seemed impossible that he'd woken up this morning in Nilfgaard, let alone in Emhyr's--in the Emperor's--bed. Even more impossible that he'd lingered around the palace for weeks, living like he was a brainless ornamental construct in a mage's illusion, lounging around eating oranges and fucking all the time.
He glanced down at himself, at his too-clean, too-well-mended armor. At the silver knife strapped to his thigh.
That much was real; that much had definitely happened.
Geralt shook his head and changed direction, aiming himself toward the strongest smell of hot bread and meat, where he could faintly hear a murmur of voices and clink of coins promising a food stall. The contracts in his pocket were real; Tretogor was real. The hunt ahead of him was real. This was his life, his path, where he belonged.
Whatever dream he'd woken from didn't matter now compared to that. He had work to do.