Chapter 92: I loved her. I really did

It was the Empress that found me first.

I had elected to take the back way out of Toussaint in an effort to avoid as many people as possible. There is a path that leads through the gardens and up the side of a hill and I was sat with my back to a tree, legs stretched out in front of me looking out over the entirety of the Duchy. I had my travelling clothes on and my spear was propped up next to me and I had taken great care not to look like Lord Frederick the courtier of the last few weeks and months.

The path was not as quiet as I had thought that it would be. It turns out that it is a favourite path of painters and young lovers who want to “escape” from it all. I had had to force down bitter tears when a young couple had chosen a nearby bush to enjoy each other's company for a while. I easily made my way out of sight so that I no longer had to watch them but I could still hear them.

Fortunately for everyone there had been a short shower of spring rain a little earlier that I had enjoyed. It had left the air feeling fresh and clean in a way that precious little else did.

I wanted to leave then but this is where Kerrass had agreed to meet me, bringing horses and provisions for the road and I couldn't afford to miss him if we were going to escape quietly.

But the Empress found me first. I heard the hoof-beats as her horse trotted up the path just before she walked round the tree to look down at me.

“Looking to slip out quietly were we,” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

I tried to climb to my feet, long years of training in Etiquette wouldn't allow me to sit on the floor when the most powerful person on the continent stood over me. But she waved me back down to the ground and sat next to me. She was wearing a pair of soft leather trousers that looked well cared for as well as some riding boots in similar leather. They showed signs of much use but were obviously well loved. She also wear a stiff leather corset which I suspected had metal plates sewn into it, around her middle and there was more stiff leather wrist and shoulder guards. She carried a red scabbarded sword in her left hand which she propped up against the tree although I noticed that it wasn't far from her hands.

It occurred to me that I had never seen her looking quite this comfortable.

There was another new addition as well. The crossbow that I had had made for her was in the holster on her hip. It gave her a rakish, cavalier air that I think suited her.

“I apologise your majesty.”

She chuckled. “No you don't. You absolutely intended to slip away quietly without anyone knowing weren't you?”

I admitted the accusation with a nod.

“Don't feel bad Lord Frederick. The Imperial Intelligence service and the men of the third legion work for me.” She said it with a certain air of smugness.

I looked at her crooked smile for a moment.

“Kerrass told you didn't he?” I accused.

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“He did.”

I grimaced. “I'll skin that cat.”

“Oh yeah? you and whose army.” She sniffed disparagingly. “You can't borrow mine.”

I found myself laughing with her.

“Sweet Melitele,” She said after a moment or two of silence. “Sweet Melitele but.... Sorry I should ask. Do you mind if I call you Freddie?”

I shook my head. She nodded in gratitude.

“I am so, so sorry Freddie. So very sorry.”

“Look Majesty, with all due respect to your grief but you have nothing to....”

She held her hand up to stop my flood of very correct and heartfelt words.

“It's just the two of us here Freddie. Call me Ciri would you. When there are others about then I'll let you Majesty me this way and that, but for the two of us here and now? Call me Ciri would you?” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“Very well. Ciri.” it tasted awkward in my mouth.

“And don't give me that other bullshit either.” She glared at me. “No, it wasn't my fault. Yes I did everything I could but I still lost her. I couldn't find her and I couldn't prevent her from being taken. Let me have that at least would you?”

“The people who took her are the ones to blame.”

“I know that.” She sighed and looked out over Toussaint. “I do know that. Lord Voorhis, Papa and father all tell me and have told me that there is very little we can do to prevent a lone nutjob from doing their thing. But that doesn't stop me feeling as though I failed her. And if I failed her then I definitely failed you.”

She sniffed. I was astonished. It's one of those things that you just don't imagine the Empress weeping. “But even if I admit that I had nothing to do with it,” she continued. “Even if I try to convince myself that there was nothing that I could have done, nothing more that I could be doing right now then I would still be sorry for your loss and the pain that you must be feeling right now.” She sniffed again. “I am so, so very sorry Freddie.”

There was a catch in her voice that brought a lump into my throat too.

“Flame but I miss her.” I heard myself say. “I hadn't seen her for years before your coronation but I never missed her like this.”

“I know Freddie. Goddess but I miss her too.”

We rested against each other. She put her arm round me and I put my arm round her and we wept for a while.

It took a long time but then she pulled away before sniggering and wiping her eyes.

“What?” I asked her.

“Triss keeps telling me that there's nothing more pathetic than a Sorceress in tears. I must look a right state.”

“This from the Empress of the continent.” It was a weak joke but I tried to inject some humour into it. She pushed me away in indignation.

We sat in silence for a moment or two, staring out over Toussaint.

“You haven't exactly seen Toussaint at it's best.” She said suddenly. “Promise me something Freddie?”

“Majesty?”

She pulled a face at my failure to use her name.

“When all this is over,” she said. “When things have settled down a bit I will need to come back here. I come back here fairly often actually to see Mum and Dad but I will need to come back here for state occasions. On one of those state occasions I'm going to invite you and your family to come down and visit. I'm going to have Anna....” It took me a moment to connect this casual name with Duchess Anna-Henrietta, “... treat you all as honoured guests and put on a bit of a show for you. I want you to see Toussaint in all it's glory with it's festivals and Tournaments and balls and parties. It's theatre and show-troupes and ancient traditions that are painfully silly and everyone knows that they're painfully silly including the people that are performing the rites. I want you to come hunting and eat and partake in the best wine in the world because if you think that Toussaint doesn't keep the best wine here for itself then you are insane.

“You have only seen the seedy underbelly of it all,” she went on. “I would like you to see the splendour of it as well. One of the reasons that I am so angry about what has happened here, what has been allowed to happen here, is that I love this place and I would like you and your family to see the parts of it that I love.”

I found my mind shying away from the idea and she must have seen my concerns. “Don't worry, I'm talking about a few years time.”

“It would need to be.” I said, trying desperately to keep the bitterness and rage out of my voice.

“We have time, you and I.”

There was another pause.

“How are you doing Majesty?” I asked her. I don't know why I asked but suddenly it seemed like a very relevant question. “With all of this I mean. Not just Frannie but with everything else.”

She smiled and picked up a small twig that she played with between her fingers.

“I heartily wish I was coming with you.” She said after a long while. “I'm surrounded by guards but they're not that much of an obstacle, not really although they would be horribly upset if they heard me say that. One of the attractions of the simpler life is that I would feel proactive. I would be doing things, solving problems and saving lives. But the small handful of lives, the small problems that I can save on the road are nothing compared to the problems that I can solve from the throne. It just feels....less satisfying somehow. Signing orders and laws rather than swinging a sword. There's an immediacy that I miss.”

She was stripping the bark from the twig and hurling the ragged ends away from her.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said suddenly, “and I hope it doesn't offend you or upset you or anything but I genuinely don't understand something.”

“Sounds ominous.” She gave a lop-sided smile. “But please....”

“You are the lady of Time and Space correct?”

“Yes.”

“So why can't you just go back in time and prevent my sister from being taken?” I heard the pleading whine in my voice and felt a small amount of rage at myself more than anything. “I know it's childish and I know that's not what it's for and I know there's something to be asked for why should I have the benefit of your power when so many other people have lost family and loved ones. I even know the answer is probably “because it doesn't work like that,” but...” I felt my rage and pain threatening to overwhelm me again. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last.

“Flame but I'm sorry.” I said after the lump in my throat had subsided a little. “I shouldn't be talking to you like that, your rank not withstanding.”

“It's ok,” she said in a tired voice. “You are right though. It doesn't work like that. That's the quick answer anyway. The long answer is complex and I don't understand it all myself, as well as this world lacking the language to to describe it.”

She scraped some debris away on a small patch of ground as she talked.

“Most people think of time as a river. Flowing constantly and steadily in one direction. And to the vast majority of people that is entirely correct.” She drew a line in the dirt with her stick.

“But it's not quite true. To get to grips with this you need to understand that when we talk about time there are three perspectives that you need to get to grips with. Those concepts are the concepts of Past, present and future.”

From the end of the line she started drawing out many off shoots, in different directions. “In many ways, the concept of time as a river still works here but it's still not quite right. We have the main trunk of the river and then, the further up the river we go, we have the more little streams and tributaries that feed that river. But the model breaks down here as, with rivers, the water runs from the tributaries into the greater stream whereas with time, it goes the other way.

“Here,” she pointed at the single thicker unbroken line, “This is the past, while here,” She pointed at the part where the single unbroken line broke off into all of the different branches. “That point is the present. Everything beyond that is the future. Are you with me so far?”

“Not even remotely,” I admitted. “But I haven't shut down yet.”

She grinned and I guessed that this was a common conversation for her to have.

“As we, let's call us “The observer of events,” move through the linear time at the point of the present. We are constantly going through the process of changing future events into past events. As the Observer, We are the thing that makes the “Present”, the “present”.”

“So it's like tenses in language. A future tense, a past tense....”

“Yes, but also a separate “present tense,” for things that are happening right now in the instant of observation.”

I found my mind bending around the concepts and she chuckled at my face.

“So why can't I go back and change the past? That's the root of your question right?”

“Yes.”

“The simplified version of the matter is that the events of the past are set. I cannot change them. That's not just me, if we could send anyone through time into the past then it would still result in the same thing happening.”

I wanted to ask why, she saw it and held a hand up to prevent me.

“The reason for this is described as “a paradox.” In one of the worlds that I visited, the most common and simplest way of describing this is called “The Grandfather Paradox.” This suggests a theory that the time traveller goes back in time and kills his own Grandfather as a child. But that would prevent the time traveller from being born, which would, in turn, prevent the traveller from going back in time and killing his own Grandfather. Which would mean that the Grandfather would never be killed leading to the traveller being born, becoming a time traveller and going back in time to kill his Grandfather.

“The nature of the paradox is cyclical and unbreakable. It can't be broken free from. So Nature, the universe or whatever you want to call it, dictates that this cannot happen. Therefore, the time traveller goes back to kill his own grandfather but circumstances conspire to prevent this from happening. He kills the wrong child, or it turns out that his great grand parents actually had a second son, named them for the child that they had lost and that “this “ child was the Grandfather after all.”

“So, if I went back in time to try and prevent your sister from going out to meet with her fate that night. Then my actions in the past, are already in the past. They already happened and they still resulted in her going out that night and getting caught. Maybe my interference is the reason that she took the secret passage out of the room rather than by walking out of her room doors into the waiting guardsmen.

“We can't know.

“All that we know is that she was taken from us. It happened and there's nothing we can do now except attempt to change the future.”

My mind was working furiously.

“But hang on.” I said. “If you went back and talked to Francesca about what happens in the future. From her perspective, she is still the observer in the present right?”

The Empress nodded.

“So to her, the future isn't set. She could them make the choices that change what happens.”

“She could. But we know that she didn't.”

“Why?”

“Because from our observations. If that happened we would simply cease to exist. We wouldn't have had the conversation that led us to go back in time to change her perspective.”

I scratched my head in confusion.

“But also,” I tried. “To her, we are in the future. One of several possible futures right?”

“From her perspective yes.”

“We can change the future, so why can't she?”

“No-one knows. Because the perspective is fixed to our own perspective. Yours and mine.”

“My brain hurts.”

She smiled sadly. “As does mine. There is another theory that is impossible to prove. We know that there are other worlds because that's what happens during the conjunction of spheres, when the worlds come together and the barrier between them becomes thinner. We have not, yet come up with a concept to deal with this other theory in our world but others are working on it. The theory goes that as well as being other worlds there are also “Parallel dimensions.”

“We live in one dimension. But every choice we make causes a branch in the road. We make a decision and head down one path while another version of us, in a different world, chooses the other path creating a separate dimension. An infinite possible number of dimensions created by all the different decisions that we all make on a daily basis.”

“Ok, now you lose me.”

“Think about it. Let's say that you are right. I go back in time and warn Francesca not to go out that night. Tell her as much as I know about the conspiracy against her and against us. She takes that knowledge and uses it. We know that to our perspective, that didn't happen but to her...She goes on to make some different choices and as a result she creates an alternative dimension where she, you and I are more properly prepared for what happens next.”

“That doesn't help us though does it.”

“No. We are still stuck in the timeline and dimension where we lost her.”

We stared at each other for a moment.

“Fuck,” I said after a while.

“Indeed. I think through exactly the same process nearly every day when I think of my dead mother, Uncle Vesemir, Grandmother and all the other people that we have lost.”

She suddenly looked very old then. Very very old.

“But anyway.” She shook herself “I came to tell you something else.” She said throwing the twig over her shoulder and reaching into one of the pouches at her side. “Turns out you can do some surprising things when you're the most powerful woman on the continent.”

“Oh,”

She had produced an envelope which she kept on her lap and she stared at me with a raised eyebrow and a look of amusement.

“Did you know,” she began after a while. “That I was advised to destroy your family?”

“What?”

“Yes. I had just come to court and I was already being groomed to take my fathers place. We didn't have a time-scale yet for that to happen but already your family, the Coulthard family were terrifying the southern lords. Not many of the Northern Continent had sent delegates to my court yet and as such the only people around were Nilfgaardians and they were terrified of your father and what he was capable of.”

I said nothing.

“They told me a whole bunch of things and gave me intelligence reports about all of you. There were assessments of your families wealth, in both Liquid capital as well as the assets. I read reports on each of you, your fathers ambitions and your families actions during the last war. All of those reports painted the picture of an ambitious northern family whose patriarch was wise enough to know that Infrastructure and trade is far more important than how well you can tilt at the dummy in the yard.

“That kind of man sends courtiers into apoplexy. They were terrified. They predicted that your father would be buying up land, buying up trade resources and gathering economic power. They saw your brothers growing influence in the most powerful religion of the Northern continents as well as your families involvement with the Northern Magic users and your involvement in academia meant that you would have the power over the young minds of the north. They were predicting a few strategic marriages made by your family followed by a slow and steady rise to power over a generation or so.”

She giggled. “It seems ridiculous now with the benefit of hindsight but they were absolutely terrified of you. Over and over again we were advised to send assassins or manufacture excuses to lead to your disgrace and executions.”

“Why didn't you then?”

“Nervous?” She teased.

“Too fucking right.”

“I don't know in all honesty.” She admitted. “It just seemed a little...extreme. I still didn't have that much power. Father was handing me more and more responsibility and I was actually making decisions but I could easily see the fact that people were still checking with him. Every time I made a decision they would turn to him to see if he agreed.

“He didn't take it well as I recall and had one of them broken on the wheel for not immediately following my orders.”

She sighed at the memory. “I asked him what I should do about the matter. He didn't answer me properly. Instead, all he did was lay out the options for me again. What they all might achieve, what they wouldn't achieve, how they could be used. I asked him about the whole thing of “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer,” but he never seemed to agree to that. He would tell me that if you are going to make an enemy then you should destroy them utterly with such extremity that they will never even try to come back at you and will act as a warning to anyone else that might become a threat.

“As an aside he once said that mercy was cruel. He said that living enemies raise armies against you but dead enemies only raise grave-markers. At first I thought him cruel but then he explained that his method would prevent wars.

“Complicated man, my Father.

“Anyhoo, I've got off topic.

“I still couldn't decide what to do but then your sister came to court. I didn't realise it at the time but your family had given me the greatest gift that you could possibly have given me. You gave me a little sister. You gave me a friend.

“No-one else could do what she did for me. No-one. She taught me so much.” The Empress scuffed another tear from the corner of her eye.

“She was like that.” I said. “She did that a lot.”

“No, sorry Freddie but I don't think you've quite got it yet. I have plenty of friends. Loads of them. Tons of them. But they're all older than me. They're all friends of Mum or Dad first, before me. I can think of Dandelion, or Yarpen or Zoltan. Anna is a friend too after a fashion but they all came to me through my history or, now, they all come to me because they want something. I find that I get lonely now and the only person. The only person who seemed to like me for being me was Francesca.

“Some people accused her of doing it on purpose. They used to think that she was pulling the wool over my eyes or that it was all some kind of long term play on the part of your family. I heard that one so often that I was even hyper cautious in my treatment of her and my reluctance to let her into my life. Now I resent the time that I lost because of that.

“She would laugh at me when she caught me being too formal with her. But then she would tell me how much it hurt her. But then she offered to leave if it was causing me trouble and I found that I genuinely believed that she meant it if I thought it would help, she was that selfless.

“She had this knack of knowing when to make a joke to lighten the mood or suggest some kind of mischief when she thought I was getting to serious. She would skewer me with some form of sarcasm or a cutting barb if, as she put it, I was getting to far up my own ass. She used to hug me when I wept with the pressure of it all and she knew. She knew when I needed to do all of those things.

“No knight, or guard or foreign dignitary could get past her when she had decided that I had had enough for the day.

“And every day she would wake me up with breakfast and a smile to warn me that my secretary was coming with the days appointments. There are times when I think that she must have been exhausted but she always had a smile for me and a smile for everyone else. Eventually it dawned on the people that surrounded me that Francesca really was, just that nice.

“I loved her. I really did.”

She looked at me side-long. I don't know what she saw in my face as I was too busy listening to pass judgement but she saw something.

“Oh not like that.” She said with a smile and a little gentle scorn at the idea. It took me a while to notice what she was talking about though. “Not that my tastes don't occasionally run in that direction and not that I wasn't tempted, but in every way that your elder sister is into women, your younger sister is into men. I was only a little disappointed but only because it meant that at some point in the future it would mean that she would fall in love with some dashing young courtier and I would have to let her go. Instead... Instead I loved her like a sister.

“A little sister and the closest friend that I've ever made that didn't come to me because of what and who I am and what I've been through. She was my friend and I could teach her about the world and she could teach me about living a life without fear.”

The Empress sniffed again and wiped her face.

“Goddess but I miss her.”

She shook herself.

“But I got side-tracked. I've been thinking a lot about your sister in the weeks since she disappeared. Before she vanished, I could have put none of that into words. But that's how I think of her now. The little sister that I never had. As a result of her influence I have made it my business to get to know your family Not as well as I would like but I have also spent some time talking to Emma before you arrived and your brothers and I have decided not to destroy your family after all.”

She grinned at my reaction.

“Uh....thank you?” I attempted.

“Don't worry. But it is pointless to think that the Coulthards are without power and I must bind you to me in some way. Someone suggested a marriage of some kind.”

I shifted uncomfortably a little.

“Don't worry Freddie you're off the hook. If it does your ego any good though I would choose you over your other eligible brother though. I like him but there's something about him that makes me uncomfortable. I suspect that he would really struggle with the idea of being subservient to me.”

She pulled a face.

“But that was never really a serious thought. Instead I have decided to follow through on my initial thought and I have adopted the five of you into my family.”

“What?”

“Yes. On an unofficial basis. You won't have any of the rank, or the land and you certainly won't fall into the line of succession. But I have two Fathers, a Mother, a dead mother who I no longer remember and a Stepmother who it's debatable whether or not my stepmother is older than me or not. I was already thinking of Francesca as a sister and I find that I like the idea of having Emma and you as further extended family. I like Mark and I'm sorry that we won't have time for me to get to know him better and Sam makes me laugh when he's not talking about silly things.”

“That sounds like Sam.”

“Yes.” She laughed. “Of all of you though it is you that I know the least. I know that you're leaving but I hope that we can become friends in the future. I need friends Freddie. I need people that will tell me when they think I'm taking myself too seriously. People that will tease me and cheer me up. Get drunk with me and laugh and cry and remind me that underneath the crown I am still a human being after all. Too many people see Cirilla the Empress rather than Ciri the woman. Francesca did that for me and I've missed that these last few days. Will you do that for me?”

“I will do my best to serve Your Majesty.”

She searched my face to see if I was joking. Fortunately for both of us, I was indeed joking and she laughed.

“Good, I'm glad. So...”

She handed the envelope over. “That is your warrant. If you produce that at any Imperial Waystation it will mean that you can get food, a bed and reinforcement if you need it. It doesn't put you in the chain of command though so the soldiers won't just drop everything and run off, when and where you tell them.”

I nodded and took the envelope.

“I will continue our investigation here and tear the continent apart until we find some sign of Francesca. I will be in touch with you and the rest of your...The rest of our family if and when we find something.”

I nodded again.