Chapter 82: I know who sent the message (2)

I know, I know that the academic thoughts on the benefits of a hunch but I can't explain the extreme, almost visceral reaction at the possibility of Sam's guilt in the matter of Francesca's disappearance. I refused to believe that it could be him I just couldn't even begin to understand how it could be him.

Things started to move very quickly after that.

I've never understood the bodies desire to go into a state of shock. I can only speak from personal experience but it seems to happen whenever we have entered a moment or period of crisis. At the receipt of some really bad news or after you've been injured. It always strikes me that this is a very foolish time to go into a mental state where your brain goes all woolly, you can't think straight and you run into the very real possibility of passing out. Surely that's the worst possible thing that you can do in these circumstances. I can understand the need to suppress pain response and things like that, but surely that would be the point that you would need more of an ability to think and control and plan.

But no. There I was, sat in the Empress' office as she signed a whole bunch of Imperial orders and I could do absolutely nothing. I began to shake and sweat until someone noticed what was happening and I was brought some strong, restorative drink to get my brain to work again.

There's another thing. Why is it always a strong alcoholic drink that they choose in these circumstances? But I digress.

I sat in the Empress' office as circumstances moved further and further away from my control.

On some level I was aware that my brain was still working. Worrying away at the problem, turning it this way and that way in an effort to find the solution as though a new perspective might shed some more light on the matter. I was also aware that I was exhausted. I had gotten engaged the day before yesterday. Yesterday I had been involved in a discussion at the highest level and today, I had been all set to watch history in the making and was looking forward to the parties that were bound to be happening, even now as the sun was beginning to set.

I wanted to dance and drink and talk and walk. I wanted to see Ariadne but most of all I wanted to sleep and let the world worry about itself for a while.

The evidence against my brother was damning. But how could I go against it? That was the shape of the problem. The larger problem of where my sister had vanished to seemed a little...big...for me to comprehend at that point. We had followed the trail as far as we could and now it needed to be homed in on a bit more.

The “legwork” part of the investigation that Kerrass had been ignoring while we had followed Francesca's trail more closely. I was dimly aware that he was involved in doing all of this now, specifically I was aware that he was part of the interrogation of the Postmaster where they were asking him things like “What did the man look like who dropped off the message? How were they dressed? What did they sound like? How did they move?

I was also dimly aware that people were asking my sister's guards some searching questions. Did they hear anything? Had they seen anything? Was Francesca acting suspicious in any way? The questions about why they hadn't reported the fact that there had been a message delivered to her on the night of her disappearance or questions regarding their competence were waiting until after the other questions had been answered to the satisfaction of the questioners.

I knew that my brother had been arrested and was sitting in a cell somewhere. I knew that his servants were being questioned and that his squires and so on were being examined in the most minute detail. I was even dimly aware, somewhere in the back of my mind, that Sorcerers were getting involved. I felt badly about that. It's easy to say to yourself that someone would eventually identify Sam's handwriting so that I wasn't entirely responsible.... but I felt responsible. I felt as though I was to blame somehow.

But there was something wrong with the note and I couldn't say what it was.

Flame but I didn't want to be here.

I wanted to be at home. Or failing that I wanted to be camping by the side of the road with Kerrass. Hunk of meat roasting over a camp-fire passing a bottle of hooch backwards and forwards while we talked about the latest monster that we had faced.

I wanted to be planning my first series of lectures at the university. I wanted to be with Ariadne somewhere, spending some time planning our future or, alternatively, just spending some time looking at her. I could live with that.

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If I couldn't get any of that, then some time training. The Empress had asked for a recommendation regarding the founding of a new Witcher school. I could be spending some time working on putting together a report. But now. Now. I had to figure out why I was so certain that Sam was innocent of the things that it was beginning to look like he might be guilty of.

I say again. The possibility that he might be guilty had not even begun to cross my mind. It simply could not be true. But I didn't know why that might be the case. It was like.... It was like that moment where you have an intuition about something. I'm an academic so I can only really talk about this on that kind of level. You have been asked a question by someone in a position of authority and so they need to be answered. You then realise that you know what the answer is. You can see it in front of your eyes and you declare that answer in a proud and happy voice, then the lecturer or tutor looks you square in the eye with a wicked smile and says.

“You are correct Mr Coulthard. But why is that the case?”

It is a common and unfair point that you often don't get credit for work unless you can state with definition as to why a thing had happened.

But I couldn't see it. I knew that my brother was innocent and it was more than just the instinctual thought that “My brother couldn't possibly have done something so evil.” I was well aware that there was the potential for evil in my family. Edmund had proven that. I had had that thought back then when Kerrass had found that Edmund had killed our Father that he couldn't possibly have been responsible. And again when it was found that Mother had, in turn, killed Edmund. On both of those occasions my brain had leapt to their defences saying that they couldn't possibly be responsible for the calamity that had befallen us and time and again I had been proven wrong. My family had the capacity for evil and I knew that, even though I privately thought that Francesca might be above that kind of thing.

Samuel was a soldier. He had fought in the war and was more than physically capable of killing someone. That I knew that was indication enough that there might even be the capacity of something worse. Since the time of my father's death I have, again, changed my outlook on life. I now believe that everyone is capable of extreme violence given the right circumstances. It's a similar sentiment to the old one of everyone having their price. Everyone has a price, which means that if you offer something to someone, it might not be money or property or women then, sooner or later you will find that thing that they want Sooner or later if you torture someone enough then you get the information, (it might not be the information that you want but you will get the information). But the other thing is that, at the end of the day, with enough of a push, a person can be driven to extreme violence.

I knew that he was capable of violence. If I thought about it, which I did, I might have said that Sam's thinking was a little bit more direct. If he wanted to kidnap or kill Francesca, going through some convoluted plan to summon her out of a place where she was almost as heavily guarded as the Empress herself was just not his style. He had every opportunity to do these things with considerably less risk as well. It didn't feel right that it might have been Sammy. It just wasn't his style.

But that wasn't why I was so convinced that it wasn't him. There was something else there as well and I couldn't see what it was. I reached out for it and it just fell away from me as though it was on the end of a piece of string and the kidnapper was tugging that string away from me.

I had seen something. I was sure of it. Some....thing that meant that it was impossible for my brother to do the things that he was being accused of. Something that potentially only I had seen or only I could be sure of.

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“I always find it better to look away from the problem for a while.” The Empress told me after a while.

While I had sat there in a daze she had gone through another change into a brighter and more colourful dress than the severe cut of the coronation dress. She was still sat at her table and was looking down at the paper that she was working on. She looked like a tutor who was marking a student's work. I was dimly aware that somewhere in the back of my brain, my inner schoolchild was glad that she wasn't my teacher.

“Excuse me?” I spluttered out on my second attempt as my throat had gone dry.

“Take a step back from the problem that you are working on and try something else,” she said. Passing the piece of paper off to her secretary who took it off her. The entire thing was covered in writing and she gestured for the secretary to take it away before turning back to me.

“It's tough sometimes.” She said. “Sometimes you want to just barrel through a problem. To charge it, sword spinning and make it go away. But it doesn't work like that. It never works like that.”

Another one of the doors into the room opened and a table was set out. Plates, dishes and cutlery were set out before a steaming chunk of meat and some vegetables along with some gravy and a bottle of wine.

“Join me for something to eat?” She said getting up. “You have the look that mother sometimes gets when she's working on something. The look of someone who has forgotten that they need to eat occasionally on the grounds that they had other things on their mind. You don't even have the excuse that you can sort yourself out with some liberal application of magic to keep your energy up. “The brain needs fuel”, as mother Nenneke would say,”

I staggered over to the table and sat down opposite the most powerful person on the continent. We ate in silence and she was correct in her assessment of me. I was absolutely famished.

“I have a policy,” she said. “It was something that was decided within a week of my introduction to public life. If I'm eating with someone, then no-one is to interrupt me during the course of that meal.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because it gives me a moment to myself. The Witchers taught me early on that Breakfast is the most important meal of the day but if I haven't been woken up before dawn due to some kind of catastrophe then believe me when I say that that is a good day.”

She put some more vegetables on her plate with relish and drowned them in gravy.

“Lunch is often spent working with people or talking with people and I get a couple of mouthfuls of whatever high energy pastry that passes in front of my mouth between speeches but then, another of Mother Nenneke's sayings occur to me which is that sitting down and eating something is actually still hard work.

“She once told me that you should always take the time to sit and eat with people, even if you have nothing to say. That it is a time for strangers to get to know each other while it's also the time for old friends to get together and reminisce about old times.

“As well as that,” She went on, “You can tell a lot about a person by the way they eat food.”

I felt my interest being caught. “Really?”

“Oh yes. For instance. You have just eaten your green vegetable first before moving onto your meat and stuffing before mopping up the juices with your bread. Did you do that because you dislike the meat and was putting it off? Or did you get your least favourite parts of the meal out of the way before everything else?”

“The second one,” I said feeling a bit bemused.

“Ah, so you're the kind of person that gets the unpleasant chores out of the way before you move onto the more pleasurable ones.”

I nodded. “What does that say about me?”

She laughed. “I haven't got the faintest idea. It probably says something but I'm not wise enough to try and figure it out.”

“Awww.” I complained. “I was looking forward to finding out the answer to that.”

“Yes well, I wish I had time to look into it. If I had the wish of my heart I would be out on the road dealing with the monsters that trouble my subjects. One of the things I have enjoyed about your writing is that you have commented about the simplicity of a Witcher's work. I recognised that and I miss that aspect of my life. Of course, back then, when I was fleeing and fighting for my life, I would have given anything to be somewhere warm, comfortable and secure.”

“We always want the thing that we can't have.”

“Isn't that the truth.”

“So why did you give that up and come to be Empress?”

“It's an interesting question.” She said, “and you are not the first person to ask it.”

I waited a while to see if there was going to be any more but the Empress remained steadily silent.

“And?” I prompted.

She grinned at me. When looking at her during her carefully managed public appearances it is sometimes easy to forget that there's a young woman under all of that. A clever, charming and beautiful one at that. “I've thought about it quite a bit. I'll let you know when I have an answer.”

I laughed with her.

Conversation stalled for a while in the manner of two people who don't know each other very well.

“Were you ever told the story about how your sister first came to my attention?”

“I was not, Majesty.”

She laughed at the memory.

“She was sixteen.” She said. “Time is a malleable state for someone in my position. In years for this world I stood at somewhere around nineteen to twenty one when I came to my Father's court.”

She saw my confusion.

“Sorry, you will have been told of my elven title of “Lady of time and space?”

“I am aware of the title but beyond that...”

“What it means is that time passes differently for me. It goes on a linear course only because I allow it and because I want to interact with the people here. If I wanted to I could keep time still, move outside of time altogether which is actually a fun trick if you ever want to hear what people are really saying about you, or even make time run backwards. I've tried it a couple of times but as a result it would be safe to say that I am both younger while at the same time being older than I look.”

“At the same time?”

“Yes.”

I felt my mind sliding off the concept. The Empress laughed at my face.

“At least you register the possibility that it might be true rather than just denying the truth that time is, in fact, not absolute in it's passage and is, actually, rather maleable. But anyway, enough of the advanced concepts of space time and more reminiscences about your sister. I had arrived at my father's court,” She looked sidelong at my confused face. “Sorry, sorry. Dandelion would be furious with me as I'm absolutely useless at telling stories. Do you know about my two fathers?”

“I was aware, in as much as I have read the saga's of the poet.”

She winced.

“So you know that my biological parents didn't really have much to do with raising me. That largely fell to Geralt and Yennefer who I call Mother and Father. But when I came to court there was so much nonsense going on, I had to teach myself to refer to the Emperor as “Father,”. To be fair to him, I think he struggled with it as much as I did.”

She poured some wine for herself and offered me some. I made the universal gesture of “only a small one” with my thumb and index finger.

“I like my Step-mother though, even though she looks unsettlingly like me but she's entertainingly terrified but at the same time exceedingly brave. Whoever it was that taught her how to speak with an educated Cintran accent deserves all the money that they were paid. But anyway, I'm getting away from the story.

“I had been at court for a couple of months. When I first got to court I was, rather naively, determined not to change in any way. I told myself that the courtiers would have to learn to accept me the way that I am, warts and all. That didn't work out. Not entirely their fault.

“Part of the problem was that they simply didn't know how to treat me. My Father intended me to replace him as The EMPEROR with all the capital letters that that implies. He didn't want me to be some kind of figurehead while all the decisions were going to be made behind closed doors, by other men who had their own best interests at heart rather than the interests of the Empire. He wanted me to be Empress of Nilfgaard. He wanted me to rule.

“That just didn't cross the minds of the people here. Nilfgaardian nobility expect their women to be seen rather than heard. The women at court have an awful tendency to only speak when they're spoken to and to always, and I do mean always, defer to their husband's opinion. Some people said that I might be a pleasant breath of fresh air but the truth was that the old factions of the court just had a mental shut down whenever I went near then or tried to talk to them. They had this.... kind of shutter behind their eyes that cut off their thoughts whenever they saw me. This....girl can't possibly be the Empress therefore she does not exist and her opinion is precisely that.”

“An opinion.” I offered.

“Yes,” She grimaced. “The first time it happened after I had been formally presented to the court as my Father's intended heir my father had the offending dignitary pulled apart by horses. After that, instead of them ignoring me you could almost see them sweating with the effort of trying to take me seriously.

“But I refused to allow them to pigeon hole me. I refused to be categorised and labelled but we soon realised that I would have to work within the system to force people round to my way of thinking.

“It started with my wardrobe. A woman's wardrobe in Nilfgaard....Ugh,” She shuddered theatrically. “All dark, subdued colours, plain cuts designed to show off someone's profession as well as to minimise any sexuality that the lady in question might have. If you do spend any time in court, it's somewhat relaxed here in Toussaint because it has to be but when we get back to Nilfgaard, you can spend an entertaining afternoon watching all the old men's faces whenever Phillipa, Triss or even your Ariadne walk through the court. Confident women, comfortable with their sexuality are almost abhorrent to the courtiers, but at the same time being so....attractive.

“But I digress.

“At first what we did was to try and emphasise the fact that I am my father's daughter. If you look at the portraits of each of us we don't look alike and people comment that I must look like my mother. But when you see us together, really see us together then people can see the similarities. So at first, they tried to work off that. If I dressed like my Father did, then people would accept that that's who I come from and what I expect to do with my time.

“It didn't work out.

“Then they tried to dress me in these ornate, heavily jewelled and embellished confections that they called Dresses,”

The Empress shuddered again before chuckling at the memory.

“As I recall I politely enquired if the dressmaker in question had ever faced a stampeding herd of wild horses. That was the day I also learned about how people in Nilfgaard take whatever I say literally.”

“Funny that,” I commented.

“Yes, well. My father used to come up with increasingly inventive ways to have people executed in an effort to get people to think about things before they start to talk. He used to take a perverse pleasure in coming up with methods of execution to fit the crime and then not to bother turning up to watch them. He says that he thought it was the final nail in someone's self-esteem and confidence if the Emperor himself didn't think you were important enough to watch your execution.

“In the end though I chased them all out of the room and chose the one woman who asked me what I wanted to wear. Together she and I came up with what my current wardrobe mostly consists of. I kept my Father's simplicity in that I don't really like jewellery. I told the woman that I want clothes for day to day use that I could, at a moments notice and without having to disappear of to my chambers for several hours, go riding, hold court, receive dignitaries, accept gifts and pass sentence. I wanted to be able to move, walk around at my own pace rather than at the pace governed by overly narrow skirts and I wanted to be comfortable. I told her than everyone should already know who I am so I didn't feel as though I needed to announce it with frills, ornaments or jewellery. It still took work, many weeks and months worth of work before I was approaching satisfaction with what I had but we got there in the end. But there was a significant problem. A problem that no-one, including me, had even begun to think of.

“That problem was what to do with my hair.

“It's a truth of the South, as well as a truth of the North that a woman's hair tells you a lot about the woman in question. Women cover their hair when they're married. Either under a hat, a wimple or some kind of scarf. But even before that, many young women tie their hair back to keep it out of their eyes while they're working, in the fields or looking after the children but then we come to the problem.

“I used to tie my hair back as well. To keep it out of my way while fighting, running or riding. But it's unthinkable for the Empress to have her hair tied back like some kind of Peasant woman.” She smirked at a memory. “But likewise, a woman with long hair is also a statement about status. It tells anybody watching that the woman in question had time and the money to keep their hair long, clean and in a state to be managed. That way, I could even make my hair a statement in and of itself.”

Her eyes went distant for a moment or two.

“My sister told me that.”

“I didn't know you have a sister Majesty.”

“I don't. Not really but Triss and I have a certain understanding.”

There's nothing like speaking to someone who has a close relationship with important people to remind you that important people are still just people too. I had difficulty thinking about who the Empress was referring to when she said “Triss,” although it seems obvious now that she must be talking about Triss Merigold, advisor to King Tancred of Kovir.

“So we wasted even more time trying to figure out what to do with my hair.

“I remember distinctly. It was maybe six months after I had come to court. Only a couple of months after your sister had arrived. She had been living in the capital since I had arrived waiting for an introduction. She had been presented to me but there were so many names and faces in the early days of my arrival, that I had lost track of her. But it was just before I had decided that if I wanted to wear trousers under a long coat then I could wear trousers. So I was still in skirts, a bit more severe than the dressmaker wanted them to be while at the same time being a bit too ornate for my tastes.

“Don't get me wrong, I like frilly things and pretty jewels as much as the next eligible lady but there is a time and a place and that was not it.

“But I was walking through the court. Meeting several people and catching up with a couple of friends when my hair fell out of the careful arrangement that had been piled on top of my head.”

The Empress laughed.

“The looks of horror on the surrounding courtiers would have been almost comical if it wasn't for my own frustration and impatience. In the end though a small, girlish snigger came to my ears.

““Who was that?” I demanded in what was probably a rather peevish tone of voice.

“Your sixteen year old sister was firmly pushed into view. I always suspected that there were rather a few people who wanted me to eviscerate this northern wench for her impertinence. Literally as well as figuratively. But the two of us locked eyes as she rose from a very deep curtsy.

“Silence reigned. Then your sister opened her mouth. Something else that simply isn't done in this part of the world where young women are expected to be seen, not heard. “If I may, your majesty?””

“I must have given some indication as to the positive, she disappeared into the crowd and came back shortly with a chair. She positioned the chair just behind me, oblivious to the bodyguards that were watching her every movement with suspicion and distrust, climbed up onto the seat so that she towered over me. She had a long stick in her hand which I later found out was from one of the jugs of lemonade. They were used to stir the lemony mixture and she had wiped it clean on her dress. She did some kind of...well... movement with my hair as she wrapped it round this stick. It took her, maybe ten heartbeats, if that before she climbed down, curtsied again and retreated to the press of court.

“Her arrangement held for the rest of the day and into the night.

“My hair-dresser expressed mystification at the invention and your sister had to be sent for to demonstrate how to take it down. Which she did by simple method of pulling out the stick to let my hair tumble down around my shoulders.

“After that I made it my business to know everything there was to know about your sister and your remarkable family from the north.”

The secretary knocked on the door and came in. “Majesty?” he prompted.

The Empress sighed. “Go on then, have they corrected the mistakes this time?”

“I think so Majesty, yes.”

Nothing had been said between them but they both seemed to know what the other was talking about. A large piece of paper was set down in front of the Empress which she cast her eyes over quickly before nodding her satisfaction and holding her hand out. A pen was pressed into her grip and she signed.

She did so too quickly and on one of the curves of lettering around the “o” in the Riannon of her name, the quill spattered a small amount of ink onto the paper as I watched.

I stared at the tiny blob of ink as it slowly dried on the paper.

Then I knew what I had seen.

I was up and out of my chair with the same speed as an arrow leaving the bowstring.

I was halfway down the corridor before I realised that I had just been unforgivably rude to the most powerful woman on the continent. I ran back, skidding to a halt in front of a bemused Empress who had moved back to sitting at her desk.

“My apologies majesty.” I stammered out. “Forgive me.”

She rewarded me with an amused smile and waved her hand in the universal sign of dismissal and I was back to sprinting down the corridor. I saw the Empress' personal secretary with another arm-load of documents for the Empress to sign and I grabbed him, probably causing some small consternation to the guards.

“Where's Lord Voorhis?” I demanded.

“What?”

“Lord Voorhis. Where is he?” I yelled.

“Err. In the cells?”

“Good.” I paused. “Errr, how do I get there?”

He gestured and a page detached from the wall. “This way sir.”

I nodded and ran on so that the poor fellow had to run to keep up.

He led me down a series of stairs where I nearly twisted my ankle jumping too far and too fast. But nothing could keep me from going where I needed to go.

We came to a guard room. Kerrass was there along with a couple of guards. Through another open door I could see a small series of rooms that looked to have been temporarily changed into a small prison. It was odd. The doors weren't heavy, nor were there any of the iron bars that you expect in a jail. Nor was the dungeon of the form of the deep pits that normally categorise dungeons and the keeping of prisoners. I'm told that Toussaint normally keeps it's undesirables in a separate prison enclosure across the river and this area had been pressed into service given the current crisis. It had probably been used to house wine.

I came to a halt next to Kerrass who raised an eyebrow at me.

“Freddie, You alright?”