Stephen Hulin

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘that bar, previously filed and sharpened, fell into arena on my order.’

  ‘Thank you that it was given so quickly.’

  ‘The guest were in seventh heaven. Even the mayor Coppenrath was satisfied, he was even glowing, and that motherfucker is hard to please. He doesn't like anything, he is grim like a brothel on a Monday morning. A seat on the council, it seems is heh heh mine. And maybe even a higher one, if... Would you put on a show next week, Geralt? With a similar routine?’

  ‘Only if,’ the witcher moved, hurting his shoulder, ‘instead of a vigilosaur it's you, Pratt in the arena.’

  ‘A joker, heh heh. Did you hear Dandelion, what a joker he is?’

  ‘I heard,’ confirmed the poet, looking at Geralt's back and clenching his teeth. ‘But it was no joke. It was completely serious. I too, quite seriously announce, that the wedding of your grand-daughter will not be honored by my performance. After what you did to Geralt you could forget about it. Just like any other occasion, including christening and funerals. Including your own.’

  Pyral Pratt looked at him and in his saurian eyes something flashed.

  ‘You don't show respect, singer.’ He said through clenched teeth. ‘You once again show me no respect. You are asking for a lesson in this topic...’

  Geralt approached, stood in front of him. Mikita panted, lifted his fist, reeking of musk. Pyral Pratt gestured him to be calm.

  ‘You’ll lose face, Pratt.’ said the witcher slowly. ‘We struck a deal, classically, according to laws, rules, and not a bit less important customs. Your guests are satisfied, you got your prestige and perspectives for a seat on the city council. I got needed information. Both sides are satisfied, so we should part company without anger and grudge. Instead you threaten me. You lose face. Let's go, Dandelion.’

  Pyral Pratt paled a bit. And turned his back on them.

  ‘I wanted,’ he said, ‘to invite you for dinner. But it seems that you are in a hurry. Farewell then. And be glad that I let you leave Ravelin with impunity. I used to punish lack of respect. But I will not stop you.’

  ‘And with good reason.’

  Pratt turned.

  ‘What?’

  Geralt looked him in the eyes.

  ‘You are not, although you think differently, very wise. But to try stopping us would be stupid.’

  ***

  They barely went past karst spring and got to the first of the roadside poplars when Geralt stopped his horsed and listened.

  ‘There is someone coming after us.’

  ‘Damn it!’ Dandelion chattered with his teeth. ‘Who? Pratt's bandits?’

  ‘It's not important. Go, go with full speed to Kerack. Get to your cousin. In the morning go to the bank with the cheque. We will meet later at the "Under Crab and Garfish".’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Don't worry about me.’

  ‘Geralt...’

  ‘Stop talking, hurry your horse. Go!’

  Dandelion listened, leaned in his saddle and forced the horse into a gallop. Geralt turned back and waited calmly.

  From darkness emerged riders. Six riders.

  The witcher, Geralt?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘You will come with us,’ spoke the one nearest in a hoarse voice. ‘No tricks, OK?’

  ‘Leave my reins, or I will hurt you.’

  ‘No foolishness.’ The rider took back his hand. ‘And no violence. We stand for the law and for order. We are not bandits. We are on prince's orders.’

  ‘What prince?’

  ‘You will know soon enough. Come with us.’

  They went. There was a prince, remembered Geralt, in Ravelin, incognito, as Pratt said. Things did not look good. Contacts with princes were rarely pleasant. And they almost never ended well.

  They didn't go far. Just to an inn at the crossroads smelling of smoke and with lights flashing in the windows. They went into the common room, which was almost empty, not counting a few merchants at a late dinner. The entrance to an alcove was guarded by two armed guards wearing blue capes, similar to Geralt's escort. They went in.

  ‘Your Grace...’

  ‘Get out. And you, witcher, sit down.’

  A man sitting behind the table wore a cape similar to his soldiers but richer in finish. He covered his face with a hood. He didn't have to. The oil lamp on the table lit up only Geralt, hiding the mysterious prince in shadow.

  ‘I saw you in the arena at Pratt's,’ he said. ‘It was indeed an impressive show. That jump and blow from overhead, strengthened by the full weight of your body.... The iron, although a blunt bar went through that dragon’s skull like through butter. I think that it would be, let’s say like a spear passing through chain mail, maybe even plate... What do you think?’

  ‘The night is late. It's difficult to think when sleep overcomes you.’

  Man in the shadow snorted.

  ‘Let's not waste time then. And get to the point. I need you. You, a witcher. For a witcher's job. And things are so strange, that you also need me. Maybe even more. I'm prince Xander of Kerack. I wish strongly to be Xander the First, king of Kerack. At the moment to my regret and the state's harm, Kerack's king is my father, Belohun. An old man, still in his full health, and he could rule, touch wood, another twenty years. I don't have neither the time nor the patience to wait so long. Well, even if I waited so long, my succession is not so sure. The old man could indicate another heir at any time, he has a lot of offspring. And he plans to spawn another, for at Lammas he plans a royal wedding, with pomp and splendor, which this country can't afford. He’s like a miser that goes to relieve himself in a park to preserve the enamel on his chamber pot, then spends a whole mountain of gold on a wedding. Bringing ruin to the treasury. I would be a better king. Problem is - I want to be king now. As soon as possible. And for this I need you.’

  ‘Among the services I render there is no regicide. Or staging palace coups. If this is what you had in mind.’

  ‘I want to be a king. To make it happen my father must cease to be the king. And my brothers must be eliminated from succession.’

  ‘Regicide and fratricide. No, your grace. I must refuse. With regret.’

  ‘Not true,’ snarled the prince from the darkness. ‘You don't regret. Not yet. But you will, I promise.’

  ‘Your grace will deign to keep in mind that threatening me with death is pointless.’

  ‘Who says anything about death? I'm a prince, not a murderer. I tell you about your choice. Either my grace, or disfavor. You will do what I demand and you will enjoy my grace. And you will need it, believe me. Now that you are awaiting trial for embezzlement of funds. You will spend the next few years by the oar on a galley. You seem to think that this is all over? That the case is discontinued, that the witch Neyd who because of her caprice lets you fuck her will drop the accusation and that will be all? You are mistaken. Albert Smulka, the administrator from Ansegis, has made a confession. And it incriminates you’.

  ‘That confession is false.’

  ‘You will have hard time proving it.’

  ‘You have to prove guilt. Not innocence.’

  ‘Good Joke. Very funny. But I wouldn't laugh if I was in your shoes. Look here. These,’ he dropped a file of papers, ‘are documents. Certified testimonies, relations of witnesses. The locality of Cizmar, hired a witcher, and he killed a leucrota. On the invoice is seventy crowns, in reality he was paid fifty five, the excess shared fifty-fifty with the local clerk. In Sotonin village, a giant arachnomorph. Killed according to the invoice for ninety crowns, actually according to testimony of the prefect - for sixty five. In Tiberghien a harpy was killed, the invoice for a hundred crowns, paid seventy. And your earlier stunts and scams: A vampire from a castle in Petrelsteyn that did not even exist, and it cost the duke a round thousand orens. A werewolf in Guaamez, for hundred crowns, supposedly disenchanted, and magically un-werewolfed, a very suspicio
us case, because it's quite a cheap disenchantment. An echinops, or rather something you called an echinops and brought to the prefect in Martindelcampo. Ghouls from the cemetery of Zgraggen, that cost commune eighty crowns, although no-one ever saw their dead bodies, because there were eaten by other ghouls, heh heh.’

  ‘The prince deigns to err,’ said Geralt calmly. ‘These are not evidence. They are fabricated slander, fabricated incompetently at that. I was never hired at Tiberghien. I’ve never even heard about Sotonin. All invoices from these places are obviously fake. This will not be hard to prove. And ghouls killed by me at Zgraggen were heh-heh, eaten by other ghouls heh-heh, because such are the customs heh-heh. And the dead buried at the cemetery since then have been undisturbed and turn slowly into dust, as the remnants of ghouls moved from there. And I don't even want to comment on the rest of this nonsense in these papers.’

  ‘Based on these papers,’ the prince put his hand on top of the documents, ‘you will be accused. The process will take a long time. Will they prove to be true? Who knows? What will be court's sentence? And who cares? It's meaningless. What’s important is the stink that will spread. And it will last to end of your days.’

  ‘Some people,’ he continued, ‘despise you, but tolerated you because they must, as a lesser evil, as a killer of the monsters threatening them. Some of them hate you because of you being mutant. They fell revulsion for this abomination as for an inhuman creature. Other fear you, and hated you for this fear. All this will be forgotten. The fame of an efficient killer and a reputation of an evil warlock will fly off like a feather on the wind, the revulsion and fear will be forgotten. They will remember you only as being a greedy thief and a cheat. The one that yesterday feared you and your spells, who turned away his eyes, the one that spat when he saw you or took out amulets, will laugh tomorrow, will elbow his companion. Look, the witcher Geralt, the puny cheater and swindler is coming! If you will not take up the task that I will commission to you then I will destroy you. I will destroy your reputation. Unless you serve me. So decide. Yes or no?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don't have any delusions, about your connections helping you in any way. Ferrant de Lettenhove or your red witch lover. The Instigator will not risk his career, and the witch will be forbidden by her Chapter to meddle in a criminal affair. No one will help you when the machine of justice will start to grind you. I ordered you to decide. Yes or no?’

  ‘No. A final no, your grace. The one hidden in the side chamber can come out now.’

  The prince, to Geralt's astonishment, laughed. And hit the table with his hand. The door screeched, and from the adjoining room emerged a person. Geralt recognized him even in the dark.

  ‘You win the bet, Ferrant,’ said the prince. ‘Pick up the price from my secretary tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you, your grace,’ Ferrant de Lettenhove the royal instigator said with a slight bow, ‘but I've treated this bet as purely symbolic. To show how sure I was that I was right. It was never about the money...’

  ‘The money, that you won,’ interrupted the prince, ‘is for me only a symbol too, the same as a symbol of the Novigrad mint on the coins, and the profile of recent hierarch. Know, you both, that I won too. I recovered something that I considered lost irretrievably. Faith in humankind. Geralt of Rivia, Ferrant was absolutely sure of your reaction. I on the other hand, I confess, thought that he was being naive. I was convince that you would falter.’

  ‘Everyone wins something,’ said Geralt sourly. ‘What about me?’

  ‘You too,’ the prince became serious. ‘Tell him Ferrant. Explain what has happened here.’

  ‘His grace, present here is Prince Egmund,’ explained the instigator, ‘he deigned to impersonate for a while his brother Xander. And also, symbolically, his younger brothers, who have designs on the throne. The prince suspected that Xander, or some other brother would use a witcher to get to the throne. We decided to... stage something like that. And now we know, that if it actually happened... If someone would actually voice such a mean proposition, that you will not follow it. You would not fall for fear of a prince's graces. You would not fear threats nor blackmail.’

  ‘I understand,’ the witcher nodded. ‘And I pay homage to your talent. The prince deigned to fall into the role exquisitely. In what he told about me, in the opinion held about me I couldn't find any acting. I felt pure sincerity.’

  ‘The masquerade had its purpose.’ Egmund interrupted the awkward silence. ‘It achieved it, and I will not explain myself. And you will have your advantage too. Financial. I namely really plan to hire you. And to pay for your service generously. Tell him Ferrant.’

  ‘Prince Egmund,’ the instigator said, ‘fears an assassination attempt against his father, king Belohun, that may occur during the royal wedding planned on Lammas. The prince would be calmer if the security of king was cared for by... someone like you, witcher. Yes, yes, don't interrupt, we know that witchers are not bodyguards, that they exist to protect people from monsters, magical, supernatural and unnatural...’

  ‘That's according to the book,’ interrupted the prince. ‘In real life it is different. Witchers are getting hired to protect caravans, wandering through wastelands abundant in monsters. It happened that bandits attacked such caravan, and the witchers had nothing against cutting them to bits and pieces. I think that the royal wedding could attract... basilisks. Would you be up to protecting against basilisks?’

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On that, if this is further staging. And I'm not an object of provocation. From any other brothers for example. A talent for acting I presume runs in the family?’

  Ferrant snorted. Egmund hit the table with his fist.

  ‘Don't overstep yourself,’ he snarled. ‘And don't forget yourself. I asked if you will protect the wedding. Answer!’

  ‘I could,’ nodded Geralt, ‘take up protecting the king from hypothetical basilisks. Unfortunately, in Kerack my swords were stolen. The royal services were not able to track them, and frankly they seem not able to do too much in this direction. I will not be able to protect anyone without swords. So I must refuse due to objective reasons.’

  ‘If this is only a question of swords, then there will be no problem. We will get them back. Isn't it so, Master Instigator?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘You see. The royal instigator absolutely affirms. So how will it be?’

  ‘Let me get back my swords first. Then absolutely.’

  ‘You are a stubborn man. But alright. I’ll point out that you will be paid for your services and I assure that you will not find me a miser. As to other advantages you will get some of them now, in advance, as proof of my good will. You can think of your trial before the court as discontinued. The formalities must be met, and bureaucracy knows no hurry, but you can think of yourself as a person free from any charges, and with full freedom of movement.’

  ‘I'm grateful beyond measure. What about testimonies and invoices? Leucrota in Cizmar, werewolf in Guaamez? What with these documents? Those that your grace deigned to use as... a theatrical prop?’

  ‘The documents,’ Egmund looked him in the eyes, ‘will temporarily stay with me. In a safe place. Absolutely.’

  ***

  When he arrived back Belohun's bell sounded midnight.

  Coral, to tell the truth kept calm when she saw his back. She could keep her self-control. Even her voice did not change. Almost did not change.

  ‘Who did this to you?’

  ‘A vigilosaur. A kind of lizard...’

  ‘A Lizard stitched you? You let the lizard stitch you?’

  ‘The stitches were put by a medic, and the lizard...’

  ‘To hell with the lizard! Mozaïk! Scalpel, scissors, pincers! Needle and catgut! Pulchellum elixir! Aloe decoction! Unguentum ortolani! Gauze and sterile dressing! And prepare a synapism from honey and white mustard! Move, girl!’

  Mozaïk
finished in admirable hurry. Lytta began the operation. The witcher sat and suffered in silence.

  ‘Medics not knowing magic,’ said the sorceress through clenched teeth, ‘should be forbidden to practice. Lecture at university - yes. Sew the body after an autopsy - yes. But they should not have access to live patients. But I will not live to see it I fear, everything goes in opposite directions.’

  ‘Not only magic heals,’ Geralt risked an opinion. ‘And someone has too. Specialized wizards-healers are few, and regular wizards show no will to heal. They don't have the time, or they think that it's not worth it.’

  ‘And they rightly think so. The results of overcrowding could be fatal. What is it? With what are you playing?’

  ‘The vigilosaur was marked by this. It had it permanently attached to its skin.’

  ‘You took it of it as a trophy, due the winner?’

  ‘I took it to show it to you.’

  ‘A curious coincidence,’ she said, putting winter cress on his back. ‘Taking into account that you were heading in this direction.’

  ‘Heading? Oh, yes, true I forgot. Your confraters and their plans regarding me. Does it mean that the plans have become more defined?’

  ‘Exactly. I received a message. You are asked to come to castle Rissberg.’

  ‘I'm asked, touching. To the castle Rissberg. Seat of the famous Ortolan. A request I can't refuse I guess.’

  ‘I would not advise it. They request that you come quickly. Taking your wounds into account when will you be ready to go?’

  ‘Having my wounds in mind, you tell me. Medic.’

  ‘I'll tell you. Later... Now... You will be absent for quite a long time, I'll miss you... How do you feel now? Will you be able... That's all Mozaïk. Go to your room, and don't disturb us. What was this smile of yours to mean? Am I to freeze it on your lips forever?'

  Interlude

  Dandelion, Half a century of Poetry

  (fragment of draft that never made it to official issue)