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Chapter Text

The Royal Palace is nearly quiet, even to a witcher’s ears. Most nobles have been too cowardly – or understandably afraid – to show themselves, and the serving staff is meek and unobtrusive, trying their best to stay unnoticed. It’s the kind of place where servants wear soft shoes to avoid being heard.

Geralt can’t blame them for their fear, as much as he would like to inspire more positive sentiments. They’re on conquered lands, after all. He doubts any of them truly believe his assurances that no one will come to harm who doesn’t demonstrably deserve it. Most of them watched him behead their king just days ago.

He tried to cut the inevitable war as short as possible by going directly for the head of the state, as he has with every other kingdom he’s conquered, but stealing into the night to kill the king was impossible, not if he wanted his claim to be legitimate. There were other casualties. Soldiers, mostly young Redanians who never asked to serve a tyrant. And, because Geralt wasn’t fast enough, two witchers.

He enters the throne room wearily. The throne sits empty at the top of the dais. The blood has been cleaned off. Geralt doesn’t even glance at it, and instead stops in front of the bowing figure awaiting him between Lambert and Merek’s forms.

“Walk with me,” he says, adding a dismissing nod of his head to the witchers.

The man straightens his huge form, his bald head overtaking Geralt’s height by several inches. He’s wearing garish, cheap clothes that wouldn’t look out of place in Novigrad’s lower market. For all the world, he looks like a common thug.

Geralt isn’t fooled in the least. Sigismund Dijkstra may look like a brute, but he’s one of the most astute, intelligent men Geralt has met. They’ve had dealings before in Novigrad, and once in Oxenfurt, long ago. This time, though, the power balance is very different.

“We have much to talk about,” Geralt says as he leads Dijkstra out to the gardens.

The outside is only slightly less stifling than the palace. Perfectly trimmed hedges put Geralt on edge. He’s travelled the wild for too long.

“I’m sure,” Dijkstra says prudently.

He’s been the head of the Redanian Secret Service for decades. Geralt is reasonably sure that he had no part in the now late king’s most recent transgressions, nor in the years-long campaign of oppression Vizimir engaged in against non-humans, and that’s the only reason his head is still on his shoulder.

He was almost good company, last time Geralt met him, aside from the fact that his mission interfered with Geralt’s contract. They talked about many things. It would be hard to say that he cares about non-humans, because he doesn’t truly seem to care about anything aside from his network of spies, but he almost certainly didn’t support measures that irreparably hurt Redania’s trade and alienated it from its neighbours.

“Who do you answer to?”

“My king,” Dijkstra answers without hesitating.

Geralt stops walking to face him. “And who is that?”

“Now, I suppose that’s you, Sire.”

Geralt twists his mouth. The honorifics still grate at him, but this one in particular. But more importantly…

“Do you know that witchers can smell lies?”

“I do,” Dijkstra answers, and Geralt is even more grated that his dropping the honorific now is a blatant sign of disrespect.

“Then why bother lying?”

“Because, Sire, I am a spy. Lying is what I do. There is no word that comes out of my mouth that isn’t a lie.”

Geralt contemplates him for a moment. “And here, Dijkstra,” he says slowly, “we reach an impasse. Whether my senses can detect a lie in what you just said or not, that sentence is a paradox in itself. Which you very well know.”

“Sire.”

“You’re testing me. I’m testing you. The entire thing is pointless, so I’ll be more direct. You cannot lie to me. You could probably deceive me, with some effort, but all that would result in is your eventual death, and, if it also leads to mine, Emhyr’s victory.” He pauses, because being a warlord involves way too much talking and he hates it. “On the other hand, you could agree to work for me, in which case you would be free to lie to anyone you want, except for me and my brothers. My… administration needs a good intelligence office.”

Dijkstra inclines his head and thinks it over. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement,” he says, and this time Geralt smells no lie.

He can’t be entirely sure, of course. It’s possible that Dijkstra is a good enough actor that he can control even his scent, though that is nearly unheard of in humans. But Geralt will trust his nose before almost any of his advisors, so it will have to do.

“Good. Eskel and Yennefer will work out the details. Now, tell me about the Friends of Humanity.”

Dijkstra coughs, covering something that might be a laugh. “It’s a joke.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” Geralt says. “They seem to have done quite a lot.”

The nebulous resistance group emerged some time after Vizimir took a sharp turn toward genocide. Geralt can’t remember exactly when he started hearing about them – around the time Yennefer got to Kaer Morhen, he thinks. They started out smuggling elves out of Redania. The movement is much larger than that now, organizing protests and disruptions, writing weekly pamphlets that are illegally printed in at least three kingdoms. It’s hard to guess at their numbers and impossible to know their identities.

“No, I mean, that name is a joke,” Dijkstra explains. “They’re mostly non-humans, and they’re not particularly concerned with humanity.”

“Do you know who leads them?”

“Everyone knows,” he shrugs. “Calls himself the Sandpiper.”

“But no one seems to know who he is.”

Dijkstra’s face doesn’t change, but there’s something new in his scent, something like surprise, or disbelief. Geralt isn’t sure – he doesn’t know this human well enough to distinguish his emotions properly. Still, it throws him off a little. “You know his name,” he states.

A pause – suspicious. Dijkstra’s mind works fast.

“He used to be one of my men,” he says almost smoothly.

A crow that’s been pecking at some berries on a hedge flees at their approach, attracting both of their gazes.

“Not any more?” Geralt asks.

“We had a difference of opinions.”

Geralt squints at Dijkstra. “But you let him run his group under your nose.”

“Who says I let him do anything?”

The crow caws, landing on another hedge.

“Come on, don’t tell me your Secret Service couldn’t have nipped the whole thing in the bud if you’d ordered it. You weren’t in favour of Vizimir’s policies. If nothing else, they were bad business.”

“I wouldn’t go against my King.”

Geralt can hardly miss the layers of implications. He drops the subject, he’s not going to get a more direct admission. “This Sandpiper,” he says instead. “Can you contact him?”

“If you were to order me to, I could… find a way to get him a message.”

“I want to meet him.”

Dijkstra meets his eyes, for the first time looking less than perfectly composed. “I don’t know if he’ll be ready to expose himself.”

“Things will change now. He must know that.”

“I’m sure he does. I’ll pass on the message. That’s the best I can give you.”

Geralt nods curtly and dismisses him. The crow is looking at them from across the rose garden. Dijkstra chases it away with a wave of his arm when he passes its hedge.

Fucking Redanians.

*

Oxenfurt doesn’t have a palace, only a town hall housing little else than administrative and ceremonial business, so the witchers have been housed in the guest quarters of the Academy. Geralt was given the luxurious suite reserved for the royals – where the former king stayed during his visits, according to the staff.

People here aren’t quite as horribly formal and stilted as in Tretogor. Oxenfurt is a city of scholars and students, not nobility. Yennefer, on Geralt’s behalf, elected against taking over the town hall and instead requisitioned several offices and meeting room from the Academy, which means that their accommodations and working conditions are overall much nicer than in the cold halls of the Royal Palace.

Still, Geralt doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the scared deference of most of the humans he encounters. Everyone who crosses his path stinks of fear – sometimes mingled with awe, sometimes with hatred. Before, on the Path, people used to be scared of witchers, but not like this. They despised him more often than not. Now they look at him like they think he’ll tear out their throat at the slightest wrong move.

“Remind me why we’re doing all this?” he asks Eskel after another exhausting morning of stilted meetings and lonely distance. Lunch with the mayor was an uncomfortable affair for everyone involved, and all Geralt wants is a nap.

There’s no time for that, but he and his brother still unceremoniously pile up in front of the fireplace in his room.

“Because Vizimir tried to exterminate all non-humans?” Eskel offers, settling Geralt’s head on his lap and massaging his temples.

“Fuck him,” Lambert says from where he’s sprawled over the arm rests of a large armchair.

Yennefer snorts, sitting more properly in her own seat, her back perfectly straight. “I couldn’t have put it more eloquently.”

Geralt’s gaze lingers on her. She’s tense, agitated. Her heartbeat is faster than it should be, even if she looks perfectly composed on the outside. He knows her too well to be fooled, but she shakes her head minutely at him, so he doesn’t ask.

“But why us? Why me?” he asks instead – it’s a recurrent conversation, and they all know the motions. It’s soothing, in a way. Familiar, unlike everything else here.

“Because you’re an idiot,” Eskel indulges him. “You couldn’t keep your paws to yourself, you killed a king and we had to clean up the mess you left behind.”

“He was a monster,” Geralt mutters.

“Vizimir may have been worse,” Yennefer intervenes.

Geralt considers that. Henselt of Kaedwen, the first king he beheaded – and isn’t that a thought – was definitely a monster. Geralt can still see it in his mind’s eye, the young girl he tracked to the capital on her family’s behalf trapped under the heavy body of the King, crying out for help as he pleasured himself. The list of children, girls and boys, that Henselt’s chamberlain showed him, names on a sheet of paper and small bodies buried in an unmarked grave. Geralt didn’t even think about what he was doing when he raised his silver sword.

He fled Ard Carraigh with the royal blood still coating his blade. It almost doomed them all – when the Wolf witchers came down from Kaer Morhen in the spring, they found themselves face to face with an army dead-set on eliminating them. Henselt’s son, as it turned out, had his mind turned to revenge, and the same vices as his late father. Only a good dose of luck and the Dyn Marv caravan passing through Kaedwen saved them from a massacre.

Two days later, Geralt killed his second king, and became a warlord.

Vizimir, though… Vizimir was of a different sort. Proper and kingly in his personal life, easy-going – some might even say nice . His kingdom prospered well enough for the first decade of his reign. He wasn’t as hostile toward elves as Calanthe of Cintra, though the restrictions on their employment and rights grew stricter under his hand, much like they did in all the northern kingdoms. But when put to the test, when his eastern neighbour and distant kinsman fell under the sword of the new Warlord, soon followed by the northern kings of Ghelibol and Caingorn, Vizimir grew fearful and paranoid.

He turned on his own people. Anyone caught praising the witchers was arrested. Non-humans, for the sole fault of their heritage, were seen as allies to the mutant warlord by default. Restrictions became segregation, and soon, arrest warrants. Those who didn’t hang from the noose were lynched in the streets by terrified, vengeful mobs. And Vizimir sat in his palace and signed order after order to further restrict freedoms and cut down dissidents.

Vizimir wasn’t monstrous in the same way as Henselt, but Yennefer isn’t wrong. He may just have been worse. Of the people killed on his word, there will never be a full headcount.

“Maybe we should have done this years ago,” Geralt growls.

Eskel shifts under his head. “Maybe. But we didn’t have the manpower to hold Redania. We’re going to be stretched thin as it is.”

Unlike with Kaedwen, there was no single event that triggered the witchers’ decision to move on Redania – aside from the arrival of the Manticore School last summer, which finally gave them the dearly needed strength in numbers. Vizimir was far too scared and well-counselled to dare open war. Reports of his dark deeds came to Kaer Morhen only through refugees who fled the kingdom, and the flow thinned after the first year.

Yennefer has been advocating for them to take Redania from the start, almost from the moment she made it to Kaedwen. But the Nilfgaardians had recently taken Cintra and were advancing on Rivia and Lyria. Vesemir and Geralt deemed it unsafe then, with their numbers as low as they were, even after the Bears and the Vipers joined them.

The first rumours of a resistance network at the very heart of Redania, operating from under Vizimir’s nose out of Oxenfurt, came from the refugees. The armed branch, leading dangerous raids and protests across the kingdom under the moniker of Friends of Humanity , now has a reputation far past the borders, and their inflammatory pamphlets are reprinted in most of the northern cities, escaping censure and intimidation. But refugees referred again and again to a more secretive side to the resistance, one dedicated to rescuing and smuggling non-humans out and passing intelligence.

And behind it all is the elusive Sandpiper, the hand who writes the pamphlets. They know nothing of the man, save that he is human and an incredible wordsmith.

Footsteps ring out down the corridor, and Geralt springs to his feet, immediately regretting Eskel’s warmth. He growls an “Enter,” at the knock on the door, straightening his gambeson.

The superintendent is preceded inside by the reek of fear. Geralt glares at him in annoyance, and he cowers back imperceptibly, before bowing deeply.

“The Sandpiper has arrived, my Lord.”

“Alone?” Eskel asks.

“No, he’s accompanied by two people. A man and a woman.”

“Show them to the council room,” Geralt says, referring to the room they’ve appropriated for their meetings. “Yen, I want you there. Eskel, Lambert, Coën, with me. Merek to stand guard.”

Everyone obeys smoothly. It didn’t always go so easily, but – well, they made Geralt their leader, not the other way around. He never wanted this. After five years, the motions are learned and the gears are well-oiled.

The stench assaults Geralt first as he approaches the room, even before he comes through the door. Sewers, or some other human waste. The other witchers half-gag behind him as they smell it. It overpowers everything else Geralt’s nose might be able to detect and forces him to breathe through his mouth instead.

The trio of strangers has been shown into the room, but they’ve remained standing, quietly talking among themselves – about the decorations, as far as Geralt can hear. The stench comes from them, that much is immediately obvious. When the witchers and Yennefer file in, they go quiet and look over.

None of them try to kneel before Geralt, as many of the Redanians have been doing, cowering in fear. That they refuse to even bow is probably politically significant, but Geralt will leave that analysis to Yennefer and Eskel. He’s rather thankful for the lack of ceremony.

The taller man is the first Geralt takes notice of, through long habit of assessing the threats in order of dangerosity. He stands to the right, one step forward from the others, exuding calm and quiet confidence as he meets Geralt’s gaze with his own bright orange eyes. A witcher. Geralt’s steps briefly halt in surprise, and he can feel the same shock in Eskel behind him.

The witcher nods to them without showing any kind of expression on his dark brown face. He’s tall and wiry, wearing layered leather armour that almost resembles scales, and a bow and a quiver across his back, with the barest glimpse of the hilt of a sword. His hands are spread away from his body, but his back is tense and his gaze flickers rapidly between them.

The other man, slightly shorter and broader in the shoulders, is wearing a brown coat patched up in several places. His face is hidden behind long brown hair and a hat with a wide brim pushed low on his brow, rather incongruous indoors. He’s holding a long wooden staff in one pale hand, but it doesn’t look sturdy enough to be a weapon.

His other hand is curled around the elbow of the young woman. She is petite and thin, her short red hair giving her something of a boyish look. Her clothes are only slightly less ratty than her companion’s – her dress was once a dark blue, but it’s faded to more of a dull grey. The two of them give off the look of people who used to be well-off but have fallen on hard times. She looks at Geralt warily, her posture defensive but not cowered.

Geralt’s eyes linger on the man in the middle who won’t look up. There’s something familiar about him, but he can’t place it. The feather in his hat is unusually long, white with an orange tip. A crane feather. There are no cranes on Redanian shores.

The witcher’s arrows are fletched with the same. He looks back at Geralt with an eerie calm.

“You’re the Sandpiper?” Geralt asks him, letting his companions file in and surround him.

The witcher snorts and takes a step back. “No, I’m definitely not.”

The other man finally raises his head to meet Geralt’s gaze – with eyes that Geralt would know anywhere. “That would be me,” he says softly.

“Jaskier,” Geralt breathes out.

Chapter Text

Jaskier has changed.

Geralt can’t help but catalogue the differences while he stays frozen in place, shock coursing through his veins, half a room between them. He’s thinner and yet broader, muscled, a hunger-pang look replacing the former softness of his face. There’s a new scar running through his right eyebrow. His hair has grown to shoulder-length, and his stubble doesn’t hide the new lines around his mouth.

It’s been six years. Six years since Geralt left him at the top of a mountain. Six years since he last heard anything of his best friend.

It was never supposed to end that way.

He reasoned with himself, at first, once he understood just what he’d thrown away that day. Surely Jaskier was furious, Geralt should give him some time. Surely involving him in this mess was too dangerous. But it’s been quite safe for a while – Kaer Morhen may well be the safest place on the Continent, at the moment. Yet Geralt never made a move. Never looked.

The truth is… Geralt doesn’t know what the truth is any more. There was shame involved, and guilt, and fear. He let time pass – he was so busy – and then he didn’t know how to go at it. How to say it. Where Jaskier even is.

Jaskier is standing in front of him. Claiming to be the fucking Sandpiper .

How Dijkstra must have laughed at him.

Forcing himself to break eye contact, if only to regain his countenance, Geralt glances around the room. The unnamed witcher and the woman are looking at him warily. Eskel and Lambert look almost as shocked as he is, but the frown on Yennefer’s face denotes something different. She knew, Geralt realizes. This whole time, she knew who the Sandpiper was.

He resists the urge to shake her, to demand answers. He has little right to them, and he knows it.

“Sit,” Eskel says, breaking the awkward stand-off. He gestures toward the chairs around the large table in the middle, nudges Geralt to his own. Jaskier takes a hesitant step forward, and the woman at his side pulls his hand up to the back of the closest chair.

There’s something odd about their interactions, but Geralt tears his gaze away to go sit on the other side of the table. By the time they’re all seated, Jaskier has pulled off his hat to put in on his lap, and draped himself onto his chair with an air of fake confidence Geralt knows all too well.

The stench prevents him from smelling Jaskier’s emotions, but his heartbeat is fast, and the hand holding his staff – why a staff? – between his legs is a little too tense.

Out of the shadow of his hat, Jaskier looks pale and drawn. There are bags under his eyes, and the scar on his brow is larger and gnarlier than Geralt first thought. He’s squinting against the light coming from the windows, like he used to during his headaches.

He’s aged. In the two decades they travelled together, Geralt saw him grow into himself, from a gangly barely-past-teenager to a confident man, but he never thought of it as ageing. He never seemed older, just… broader. Larger than life, in many ways. Now, though, there are fine grey hairs among the brown, and his thinness accentuates his features, making him look more middle-aged than like a young man.

The silence stretches again, awkward and uncomfortable. Geralt should probably be the one to say something, but his words have fled him. Eskel handles most of the talking in meetings, but now he’s waiting for Geralt’s cues, hesitant. Jaskier seems in no hurry to speak, and his companions are similarly stony.

In the end, Yennefer is the one who takes the first step.

“Bard,” she says to Jaskier, a smile dancing on her lips.

That’s new. The last time Geralt saw them together, on that accursed mountain, they could barely stand to be five feet from each other.

Jaskier’s eyes widen just a little as he turns his head in her direction. “Witch,” he smirks, surprise colouring his tone.

“You smell like something crawled up your arse and died,” Yennefer says. Her face is straight, but Geralt knows her enough to see the amusement in her eyes.

He half-expects Jaskier to be offended, but he just smirks wider. “What a lack of originality!” he exclaims dramatically. “So many insults at your disposal, and this is the only one you can think of?”

Geralt makes a discreet sign at Yennefer, and she snaps her fingers. The stench recedes – and so does every smell in the room. Geralt sniffs carefully, hearing Eskel at his right do the same thing. Instead of vanishing whatever was exuding the horrible stink, she masked all odours, depriving the witchers of their sense of smell entirely – which means they won’t be able to tell if Jaskier lies to them.

He’s fairly sure that she didn’t have to do that.

“I only take from the best,” Yennefer says, and Geralt can’t even begin to parse whether that’s supposed to be an insult or something else entirely.

What the fuck is he missing?

Jaskier just smiles, inclining his head. “Good of you to acknowledge it.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Yennefer asks.

“Yes, of course. These are my friends, Shani Mézeck and Stefan of the Crane School.”

“A Crane?” Eskel repeats.

Stefan pulls his medallion from under his armour, revealing the engraving of a bird in flight. “Well met, Wolves,” he says. He inclines his head toward Coën, frowns at his medallion. “And… Griffin? I thought none of you remained.”

“It’s just me,” Coën says sadly.

Stefan murmurs something in a language Geralt doesn’t understand. “I’m sorry. May they fly long under the starless sky.”

“We’ve been trying to get in touch with your school for a long time,” Eskel says.

“As we answered, our home is the sea. We wouldn’t be any use to you in the mountains.”

“Then why are you here?”

The corner of Stefan’s mouth quirks up. “By taking Redania, you’ve reached the sea. You’ll be in need of a navy before long. Besides, birds sometimes help each other. We have been allies of the Sandpiper for a few years. And I was curious about the White Wolf.”

“Well, you have him in front of you,” Eskel smiles. “This is Geralt of Rivia. I’m Eskel, and this is my brother Lambert, the Griffin is Coën, and over there is Merek.” He gestures at each of them in turn. “And this is Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

“Sorceress of her state,” Jaskier explains quickly, in an aside meant for his companions. “The first from Aretuza who defected to the Wolfland.”

“I hardly defected,” Yennefer snorts. “Given the circumstances.”

Jaskier inclines his head. “Cahir will be glad to see you, I think. I know I am.”

Envy – no, jealousy – strikes Geralt irrationally. Jaskier’s tone is as soft as ever when his words reflect his heart, words of friendship that Geralt has heard many times and never been able to reciprocate. He wishes this smile was directed at him even though he doesn’t deserve it – wishes it hard enough to resent Yennefer for it. Why does Jaskier even care about her? They used to hate each other. Jaskier has yet to acknowledge Geralt in any meaningful way, and it’s eating him inside, that new neglect.

“Who’s Cahir?” Geralt growls.

Jaskier doesn’t even look at him, but his posture tenses further. “A mutual friend,” he says – and it would sound casual to anyone who doesn’t know him. To Geralt, the message is clear. Don’t tread where you’re not welcome.

Geralt decides that it’s not worth pushing. Not worth losing his calm over, and risking saying words he doesn’t mean again.

“How did you become the Sandpiper?” he asks instead. How did I not know?

Jaskier considers his answer. Shani, whose role in all this is still unclear, makes a subtle move toward him under the table – laying a hand on his thigh, probably. Idly, Geralt wonders if they’re lovers. She has to at least a decade younger than Jaskier, but it has never stopped him before.

“A lot can happen in six years, Geralt,” Jaskier says eventually. “Some people become warlords. Some do… other things.”

A non-answer if Geralt has ever heard one. A stalemate. Jaskier isn’t willing to give him more, and Geralt doesn’t know what to do. Where the personal ends and the political begins.

It hasn’t been a problem until now. Yen, Triss and his brothers have no qualms about calling him out on his shit, and no one else comes close enough to matter. His allies treat him as an equal and his vassals as their lord, as uncomfortable as that position may be. His enemies mostly fear him.

Jaskier is none of those. The Sandpiper is the leader of an illegal ring under the old administration – an unknown entity. Julian Pankratz is an unsworn vassal – a liability. Jaskier…

A friend, Geralt decides firmly. Before anything else, a friend. But this is the wrong place and time for personal amends.

“Tell me about your network,” he says.

Jaskier’s face closes even further. “What do you wish to know?”

Geralt tries not to let the flat tone affect him, and he nods to Eskel.

“As we understand it,” Eskel starts, “you were driven underground by the non-human policies set up by the late King. It started with smuggling people out, didn’t it? Then the protests, the pamphlets, the acts of sabotage. You seem to have made Vizimir’s self-appointed task of ridding Redania of non-humans rather harder.”

Jaskier’s shuttered expression turns almost smug, and it slaps Geralt in the face with familiarity. For the first time since he walked into the room, he truly recognizes his friend.

“I can hardly take credit for all of it,” he says, “but then, the names of most of the people responsible will never be known, and this is how we wish it to be.” He shifts in his seat, and again Geralt meets a stranger – a leader of people, quietly confident and proud. “Secrecy is our protection. I hope you can understand that we may not tell you everything you wish to know.”

“But you don’t need secrecy any more,” Lambert speaks up for the first time. “Redania is now under the Wolflaw. Your people are safe.”

“Can you guarantee that?” Jaskier asks without even pausing. “Can you guarantee that if we went out in the streets tomorrow, none of us would be mobbed or arrested? Because if you think you can, then you’re far more naïve than I thought you were.”

“We cannot influence the public opinion in a day, but there will be no new arrests,” Eskel says. “New policies are being rolled as we speak. There will be pardons and new, fair trials for everyone who has been convicted.”

“Everyone who’s still alive,” Jaskier mutters under his breath.

Eskel acknowledges that with a nod. “All the laws against non-humans are to be stricken down. Your people will be free to live normally once again.”

“And you think that will change people’s minds? They’ve been told that non-humans are the enemy for five years, and many of them have believed it for far longer. And now their country has been conquered by a foreign power headed by a mutant everyone says is a beast.” He sends Geralt an apologetic look as he says that. Coën makes a move to protest, but Geralt stops him with a shake of the head. “More than ever, they’re going to look for someone to blame.”

Geralt and Eskel share a look. “I take your point,” Eskel says formally. “Let us amend that. We wish to work with you to figure out the best ways to make non-humans safe and welcome in Redania, while acknowledging that it will take time.”

Shani nods, but Jaskier doesn’t react immediately. When he does, it’s only to lean back in his chair and sigh. He rubs at his eyes. Shani lays a hand on his arm.

“What will you ask us in return?” Jaskier asks eventually.

Eskel opens his mouth to answer, but Yennefer stops him with a sign. “Jaskier,” she starts. “This is something we have endeavoured to do in Kaedwen, in Ghelibol and Caingorn and Aedirn, even in Temeria since the alliance. We will do what we can without your concourse if you don’t wish to work with us. But if you want to make it a trade, then we can offer individual compensation and resettling as needed for your people in exchange for information.”

Geralt stares at her in surprise, because that’s not at all what they agreed to. But Jaskier and Shani are both nodding, exchanging what looks like signs in their joined hands, and Stefan’s gaze has turned approving.

“And blanket pardons for any crime committed for the Friends of Humanity or the smuggling network?” Jaskier asks, daring them with his gaze.

Yennefer hesitates and turns to Eskel. Eskel turns to Geralt, who finds himself at a loss. This looks like a matter of policy more than of morals: if they provide blanket pardons for one group, other people might try to claim similar excuses, and the legal system could lose its integrity.

“No blanket pardons,” he decides. “But any declared member of your organization may be prosecuted as a combatant under martial law. It should take care of any deed done against soldiers or guards short of war crimes.”

“But that will mean that deeds done against them will be treated the same,” Jaskier points out.

“Only if it happened in a clear combat situation, but yes.”

Jaskier and Shani have a whispered conversation, half sentences interspersed with signs that Shani forms into Jaskier’s hand. “You’d have to renounce justice for those who have been tortured in jail,” Shani says hurriedly.

“I know,” Jaskier signs with his other hand. Then, spoken, “I’m the one who stands to lose the most there. It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

Stefan coughs, likely to remind them of their audience. Geralt can’t help but wonder what he’s missing there – torture? – but asking would be undoubtedly unwelcome, so he waits, his gaze fixed on Jaskier.

“That’s acceptable,” Jaskier says out loud. “We’ll take those terms.”

From there, the meeting devolves into the technical details of their deal, and Geralt leaves it to Eskel and Yennefer to broker it. There is little actual information exchanged, nothing that tells him what Jaskier has been doing exactly for all this time, who exactly is Shani, how he managed to become friends with a Crane. How, in the first place, he ended up at the head of a non-human resistance network.

The lack of any scent to tell what Jaskier is feeling doesn’t help the sense of unreality creeping under Geralt’s skin. He idly wonders if he should throw a silver coin at Jaskier to check he’s not a Doppler, before he glimpses two silver chains around his neck, holding the ring and the brass tuning fork that Geralt recognizes. Not a monster, then. Definitely Jaskier.

But not just Jaskier, not any more. The man before him has grown into someone Geralt doesn’t know, and he would weep for the loss if the guilt wasn’t going to choke him first.

They conclude on the promise of a second meeting the next day, to start the actual work. Geralt shakes himself out of his thoughts when Jaskier rises and holds out his hand to him over the table. “I’ll expect a written contract,” he says mildly, “but we can shake on it for now.”

Geralt is almost hesitant to touch him for how greedily he wants it. Jaskier’s skin is cool, and his grip neither strong nor weak. The handshake is terribly impersonal, and it leaves Geralt a little mournful.

“What about the Cranes?” Eskel asks Stefan. “What’s your purpose here?”

“For now, we’re allied with the Sandpiper’s network. I’m mostly here to act as a bodyguard to Jaskier and Shani. But now that introductions have been made, I will bring what I’ve seen back to my School. Expect us to be in touch.”

Eskel nods. “Then all that’s left is to thank you for coming forward. We understand the risk you took in revealing yourself.”

“I had the… privilege of some level of prior knowledge,” Jaskier nods at Geralt without meeting his eyes. Is that all their friendship is to him? Prior knowledge? “I have not known Witchers to be cruel to those who mean them no harm, with very few exceptions.”

Geralt can’t help staring. Is that a dig at him, at his terribly and unfairly cruel words at their parting? Or is he referring to something else? Jaskier doesn’t give anything away, doesn’t look at him again, and Geralt is left reeling as Shani and Stefan rise as well. The other witchers follow suit.

“Wait, Jaskier,” Yennefer calls before they can move. “Is there still a warrant out for your arrest?”

“As far as I know, yes,” Jaskier says. “Shani’s, too.”

“Then let me…” she trails off, grabbing a piece of paper to scribble a sentence on it. “Geralt. Sign.”

Lambert snickers at the very informal order, and both Jaskier and Shani look a little amused. Geralt looks down to read what Yennefer wrote – a writ of free passage – and scrawls his signature at the bottom, before using a small Igni to melt the end of a baton of wax and affix his seal.

“There you go,” he hands it to Jaskier across the table.

Jaskier fumbles strangely in taking it, and immediately hands it over to Shani to read. She reads the sentence aloud.

“Thanks,” Jaskier says to Yennefer, putting his hat back on. He fumbles again pushing his chair away, one hand holding his staff like a… guide?

“Wait,” Geralt calls, finally putting things together. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

Jaskier flinches. Shani’s glare could burn through a wall. Stefan’s posture shifts ever so slightly to defence.

Geralt ignores them, entirely focused on Jaskier. It’s obvious now. The squint, as if fleeing the glare of the sun, the strange staff, the way he didn’t even try to read the writ, Shani signing straight into his hand. “You’re blind,” he says. “Or mostly blind. What happened?”

Maybe it’s because his voice almost cracks on the last word, but instead of bristling, Jaskier sighs softly and his shoulders slump. “You’re right,” he says. “I lost vision in my right eye in… an accident a few years ago. The other eye wasn’t very good to begin with, as you know.”

Right. Geralt had forgotten, actually, that his terrible eyesight in one eye was the reason Jaskier would tire out in the evenings and get those painful headaches.

“An accident?” he asks.

“That is, I believe, what the City Guard’s records might reflect, if they even bothered to keep track of the medical file of a prisoner sentenced to death, later escaped.”

His tone is neutral, friendly even, and there’s a hint of a smile dancing on his face. Geralt processes that before he can process the words, and the disconnect jars him so strongly that he nearly snaps. He can’t take it any more, that distance between them, Jaskier’s coldness. Not… Not while hearing that.

“You were tortured?” His voice sounds strangled, even to his own ears.

Jaskier’s mouth twists. “Stoned, actually. On the pillory. I was tortured as well, but they mostly left my face alone.” He reaches up to touch the scar on his brow, just above the newly blind eye. “I was lucky to escape alive.”

“The Sandpiper was never arrested,” Eskel says before Geralt can find a suitable reaction to that.

“No, but the bard Jaskier was sentenced to death by hanging for smuggling elves out of the city. After that, we went fully underground.”

Shani squeezes Jaskier’s arm. Her glare at Geralt has turned haunted, full of sorrow. “Maybe that’s a conversation best had in another setting,” she says.

“They do need to know my… limitations, if we are to work together,” Jaskier disagrees. “I can read a little with a magnifying glass, provided that there is enough light. Shani or someone else will come with me to every meeting to act as guide and secretary where necessary.”

“What about—” Geralt stammers. Beside him, Lambert sketches a wave as if to test Jaskier’s sight, which makes Shani glare at him instead. Jaskier doesn’t react to it.

“I can see you,” he says, encompassing them all with a gesture, “but you’re little more than blurry blobs to me unless you come to stand five inches from my face. Which I would rather you didn’t, if you don’t mind.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt breathes, his emotions too tangled to understand. The very thought of Jaskier between the hands of the City Guard makes his gut churn, and a part of him wants to run out to the Guard house and snap every one of their necks.

But what overwhelms everything is the guilt. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there for Jaskier when Jaskier needed him, when he was almost executed. All because of his fucking pride.

“Geralt,” Jaskier calls softly. Geralt grits his teeth and forces his attention back to the room. “Please, don’t make this into something it doesn’t need to be.”

Geralt breathes out carefully, audibly – not quite a sigh, but something in Jaskier’s posture relaxes at the sound. “I’m sorry,” he says.

It’s not enough, it doesn’t even begin to cover the scope of his wrongs. But it’s a start.

“Me too,” Jaskier murmurs.

It’s not absolution, it’s not even accepting his apology.

But it’s a start.

Chapter Text

“Jaskier!” Yennefer calls out, catching up with the group at the northern side door of the Academy’s building.

She’s artfully dodged Geralt’s thunderous look and the interrogation she knew was coming by slipping out of the room before he could stop her. She’ll have to deal with him later, no doubt, but it will go better if he’s had time to digest what he’s just learned.

It will go better if she has, too. While she knew all along who the Sandpiper was, the changes in Jaskier are a shock of their own. She always thought of him as Geralt’s dramatic bard first. The man who rescued her when she fled Aretuza was more determined, graver, but he still had that same eagerness to please. She delighted in reading his pamphlets, but she never stopped to consider what he might have gone through in the meantime.

The Jaskier who looks back at her now, hat screwed low on his head, one hand on his friend’s elbow for guidance and the other sweeping the ground with his staff, has grown and aged more than four years can account for.

“Yennefer,” he says, his face tight but his tone gentle.

And, unexpectedly, he lets go of Shani and opens his arms to her. Yennefer folds herself into his embrace almost greedily. His grip is strong, wiry – what he’s lost in fat, he’s gained back in muscle. His stubble tickles her ear as she buries her face in his shoulder. He always looked so small beside Geralt that she’d forgotten how tall he really is.

“I’ve missed you,” she says.

Jaskier gently pushes her back. “You shouldn’t say things like that. I might start to believe you.”

Yennefer swats his shoulder.

“You didn’t tell Geralt,” he says.

“You asked me not to.”

And Geralt never asked, Yennefer doesn’t add. He didn’t once wonder where Jaskier was in her range of hearing, or say a word about him. If he had, if he had shown true concern… She doesn’t know what she would have done then. It was jarring for a long time, Geralt-without-Jaskier, more perhaps even than the whole warlord business, the changes in their circumstances.

They’ve mostly repaired their relationship by now, but there is still a Jaskier-shaped hole between them.

“Thank you,” Jaskier breathes.

“I still owe you for that day. Without you, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“You don’t owe me anything. But… I wasn’t lying, when I said Cahir would be glad to see you. Want to come with us?”

Before Yennefer can answer, Shani taps Jaskier’s arm. “Are you sure we can trust her?” she whispers in his ear – more than loud enough for Yennefer to hear.

“She’s a friend,” Jaskier says.

“She’s the White Wolf’s sorceress.”

Jaskier shakes his head. “She already knows many things. If she was going to betray me, she could have done that years ago. To Geralt or to the authorities.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Yennefer says. “I can only… I admire everything you’ve done. I wish I could have helped.”

“You’ve been sitting in your castle in the mountains lording over everyone while we starved and froze to death in fucking caves,” Shani spits at her.

Yennefer pauses in shock for a fraction of a second, but she’s not Aretuza-trained for nothing. She straightens her spine, looking down at the young woman, who is half a foot shorter than her. “I’ve tried to get Geralt to move on Redania before now, we just didn’t have the numbers,” she says.

“So that’s your solution to everything? Getting your witcher boyfriend to conquer every place that doesn’t already do your bidding?”

Yennefer tries to catch Jaskier’s gaze, but he’s not looking at her. He’s tilting his head to the side slightly, listening, as if he’s interested in her answers. Behind him, the Crane smirks at her and shakes his head.

“If that’s what it takes,” she says, her head held high. “Although Geralt is hardly my boyfriend.”

“Shani.” Jaskier puts a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Yennefer’s not responsible for any of this. When she last came through here, she was hunted much as we have been. I trust her with my life.”

Yennefer isn’t sure what she did to inspire such loyalty. She remembers a time when he could barely look at her without sniping.

“And all of ours? The girls’?”

Jaskier doesn’t even hesitate. “Yes. I think the time for secrecy might be past, anyway.”

Shani holds out for a second more, then she deflates. “Fine,” she says. “You’re the boss.”

Jaskier sighs. He squeezes her shoulder, then he lets go, holding out his free hand to Yennefer instead. She hesitantly lays her palm onto his. He reaches to take her wrist, and then, stepping to her side, her elbow. “There. Makes it easier to keep track of you.”

“What do I do?” Yennefer asks, hating how her heart beats in her ears. She’s not sure if it’s from the contact or her fear of doing something wrong.

“Follow Shani, don’t lead me into a wall. I’ll handle the rest. Don’t fret.”

“Okay,” Yennefer says weakly.

“We’ll have to go through the sewers again, I hope you don’t mind.”

Yennefer screws up her face, and Shani smirks at her. She sends back a mild glare.

“I’m a sorceress, darling,” she says. “Stench doesn’t cling to me.”

“I seem to remember otherwise,” Jaskier snorts. “I’m glad your magic came back.”

“Me too.”

It’s not as easy, as natural as it used to be. She’s re-mastered portals, with Triss’s help, but even now she struggles with some simple spells, with no rhyme nor reason. It takes more out of her, as if her chaotic energy is leaking from somewhere. It’s an ache she never quite loses.

Looking at Jaskier, she rather thinks he might understand that feeling, but she doesn’t share that musing, not with company. She focuses instead on guiding him, what little of it she actually has to do. Out of habit or desire to prove something, Shani warns him of steps and turns before Yennefer can, and smaller obstacles he easily finds with his staff.

The Crane witcher follows behind them, more like a bodyguard than a friend. He’s donned a great cloak, hiding his quiver and bow, and Yennefer, with her purple dress, is now the most conspicuous of the group. Shani leads them to the back door of an abandoned house, down through the cellar, into a tunnel. The stench of the sewers only gets stronger.

They get to slippery, repulsive stone floors, and then they’re forced to cross the actual sewers. The others don’t even wrinkle their nose. Yennefer cuts off hers with a discreet gesture.

Jaskier switches back to holding Shani’s elbow there, because he can’t use his staff properly and these tunnels are treacherous. They work together almost seamlessly, Shani giving whispered warnings and directions, Jaskier slipping behind her or further to the side at the slightest shift of her arm. “Outside, I can see buildings and walls, at least,” he explains. “It’s too dark down here.”

Yennefer holds the torch and tries not to slip on some disgusting slimy thing. It’s not the same path she took the last time she was here, but she still half-expects each corner to hold that tentacled monstrosity that terrified her so much, magic-less and defenceless.

After what feels like an eternity, they leave the sewer for dryer tunnels, not built out of quarry stone but carved directly into the rock. By the sea, probably, helped along in some places by dwarven and elven hands. Pitch black gives way to a faint light coming from the distance. They go up some stairs, then some more, until they’re probably above the street level they started from.

A series of small caves, then. Some of them are empty, some have crates stored against the walls, or other, unidentified objects covered by fabric. Shani raises her fingers to her mouth and lets out a stream of shrill, loud whistles in some sort of coded rhythm. The next cave has a curtain over the entrance and bedrolls set close to the wall. Yennefer catches the shadow of someone moving at the exit.

Then, finally, they find the light. It’s a huge cavern, easily ten times larger than the ones they’ve just walked through. Opposite the tunnel they come from, it opens out onto a water body – Yennefer can just barely see green land on the horizon. The Pontar, probably, somewhere past the Oxenfurt harbour… She knows her geography, but the tunnels were a maze. They have to be inside the cliff face, west of Oxenfurt.

The inside of the cavern is milling with people. There are tents set up on the stone floor, easily a dozen of them, and more than she can just glimpse through openings along the wall, leading to connected caves. Two large fire pits are set up at the edge, where the smoke can easily flow out. Tables and stools made of various materials are scattered between the tents, various work stations where people, elves, dwarves and humans mingled, work at their various crafts. There even seems to be a small forge close to one of the pits.

It’s incredible. Yennefer heard Jaskier say they’d gone underground , but she didn’t stop to think of the practicalities. These people have set up a small village of their own, here inside the cliff. There are families, young children running around, an old woman sitting in a rocking chair knitting.

Jaskier and Shani are greeted with smiles but also trepidation, and several people give Yennefer suspicious looks. Stefan seems to have faded into the shadow. After answering a few shouted questions with the same gesture to wait, Jaskier climbs onto a small stage set against the back wall. “Yen, come on up,” he calls softly.

As Yennefer obeys, hesitant, he strikes a brass gong set up to the side. The low sound echoes around the cavern, vibrating in Yennefer’s bones. People look up from their work, come out of the tents and the connected caves, gather in the open space before the stage. There are five or six scores of them, at least. Elves, dwarves, humans, even a few halflings. There’s a dozen children, and as many older teenagers.

Most of them look half-starved, and even at a glance, Yennefer can see that a large number of them are disabled. Not just injuries consistent with fighting or harsh living conditions either: people are missing arms and legs, leaning on crutches or someone else’s shoulder, sporting eye patches or facial deformities… She eyes a young human girl with an obvious crooked spine, biting her lip, before Jaskier starts to speak.

“I know you’re all eager to know how the meeting went. But first, this is Yennefer.” He signs at the same time as he talks, in smooth gestures that hint at more than a passing knowledge of the language, despite his blindness. “She’s a sorceress. She’s my friend, and I trust her.”

A murmur of assent rises across the cave. It’s not the loud and ferocious “White Wolf” that the witchers of Kaer Morhen give Geralt, not the same complete fealty, but there’s respect and trust there that even Geralt doesn’t quite manage to inspire. Shani’s outburst earlier proved that Jaskier’s people don’t hesitate to speak out if they think he’s in the wrong, but a word from him carries a lot of weight. Yennefer is safe here.

As she jumps down from the stage, she half-tunes out Jaskier’s account of the meeting, but she keeps watching the reactions. Relief floods the room when he asserts his certitude that the witchers won’t try to arrest them, but there are furrowed brows. A few people call out questions, and eventually Jaskier comes down to answer them individually. They wait for their turn patiently, showing a level of organization surprising for such a group. Their worries range from food supply to details of the Wolflaw. Jaskier calmly and steadily replies, his tenor ringing out in the echoing cavern.

Then finally, it’s like an invisible cue signals dispersion. People move out, going back to their work or their tents. Yennefer and Jaskier find themselves alone at the foot of the stage.

Jaskier sweeps at the floor until he finds the stage with his staff. “Yennefer?”

“I’m here,” Yennefer says, lightly touching his hand like she’s seen Shani do.

Jaskier immediately takes her elbow. “Come on. There are some people I’d like you to meet.”

Though she’s nominally guiding him, he’s the one who leads her over to the mouth of the cavern, avoiding obstacles with practiced side-steps. Yennefer looks around in curiosity. The stone ledge ends abruptly after the fire pits, but one side, a gentle slope goes down to a small pebble beach ten feet below. Beyond that, the water is deep and dark, pulled by a strong current. They’re inside a small creek, and the cliff face protrudes on each side, hiding them from view of the Oxenfurt harbour and the mouth of the Pontar both.

Jaskier takes her down to the beach. “Essi?” he calls out as they carefully walk down the slope.

“Papa!”

Yennefer startles. The loud call comes from a little girl who jumps straight into Jaskier’s arms, no more than a blur until Jaskier catches her with ease and sets her back down. She looks maybe ten years old, with pale skin and reddish-blond curls held back in a messy ponytail. Another, slightly younger girl trails behind her, her darker hair hiding most of her face. Upon seeing Yennefer, she makes a distressed noise and clings to Jaskier’s hip.

“Yes, I’m back,” Jaskier says, perhaps responding to a sign she makes into his hand. “Where’s Essi? And Fiona and Cahir?”

“Over here,” a blond woman says, stepping out from behind a large rock. “We were playing the blue peddle game.”

The two little girls pull at Jaskier’s arms until he follows them. Bewildered, Yennefer follows him into the space behind the rocks, right underneath the cavern’s ledge.

There, on a flat, smooth surface afforded by the odd rock formation, a group of people is sitting in a circle, around what looks like a small pile of pebbles. Spaces between them are obviously meant for the two girls and the woman, though as they approach everyone shifts around to make space.

“Thanks for keeping an eye on the girls,” Jaskier says. “Is Gwen here?”

A young man steps forward and claps his hands twice, attracting Jaskier attention. He’s a witcher, Yennefer realizes, seeing his yellow eyes. He’s wearing light armour similar to Stefan’s and a quiver of brown-fletched arrows, the same colour as his hair.

“Stefan should be ready to sail soon,” Jaskier says. “You’re going back to report to the Fleet.”

The young witcher signs something close to his chest, looking at the ground. “I must ready the boat,” Essi says – translating.

“See you later, then,” Jaskier smiles. “Girls, say goodbye to Gwenvael.”

“Bye Gwen!” the older girl shouts far too loudly, making the witcher wince. The other signs something at him, and he responds with a flap of his hand.

Several of the adults wave at him, and he nimbly climbs one of the rocks to reach the slope.

The girl plants herself before Yennefer. “Who are you?”

“Ah, that’s Yennefer,” Jaskier says. “Yen, here’s Saskia, and Maja,” he points at the other child, still plastered to his side. “And you already know Fiona. Blossom?”

“Here,” an older teenager calls out. It takes Yennefer a moment to recognize Cirilla. Her hair is still died brown, but it’s cropped very short, and she’s grown quite a bit. She’s lost the last of her baby fat and her features have sharpened, making her a striking beauty. She’s wearing pants and a long knife at her belt. “Hi.”

“Yennefer,” a deeper voice says. Yennefer looks around and her eyes meet another familiar gaze.

“Cahir,” she breathes. “You stayed.”

“As you see.”

If anything, Cahir looks younger than when she last saw him, clean-shaven and dressed in leathers, rid of the overgrown beard and hair from his stay at Aretuza. He looks calmer, too, almost happy. He’s clearly at ease here.

It lifts a weight Yennefer hadn’t known that she carried. It’s not that she care about him, not exactly. They certainly didn’t become friends in the week they spent together fleeing the Brotherhood. Their nerves were far too frayed for that. But like soldiers in battle, they built a connection.

Yennefer barely remembers that week now. The months after losing her chaos blur together like a dream, until she woke up one day in Kaer Morhen, Geralt’s naked body tangled with hers, and realized how much time she’d lost. But some moments are seared into her memory, and that minute she held an axe over Cahir’s neck, trying to decide between saving his life or her own, is an image she will never be rid of.

Cahir smoothly sits down beside Cirilla, angling his sword so it doesn’t get in the way, just inches from her. The girl must have gotten over her murderous rage somehow – last time, Jaskier could barely keep her from trying to cut Cahir’s throat.

So much has changed. A part of Yennefer regrets not staying here with Jaskier and his friends. She loves her position in the White Wolf’s council, the power it affords her, but…

But Jaskier, with all his pain and his grief, has founded something just as valuable, if not more. A family. As he sits down in the circle, one girl on each side, it’s glaringly obvious how close they all are.

“Yen!” he calls, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Who else do you not know? Essi, of course, the best bard of Redania and probably half the Continent—”

“No, that’s you , Jas.”

“Given that I haven’t been able to show my face in over three years, I don’t count any more,” Jaskier smiles. “Who else?”

“Aiden,” Cirilla says, nodding at the dark-haired man on her other side.

“Ah, yes, of course. Our resident witcher.”

Yennefer opens her mouth in surprise. The man has bright green – mutated – eyes, and he’s wearing a sword at his back, but she can’t see a medallion. “Witcher?”

“Formerly of the Cat School,” Aiden says, watching her warily.

“All the Cats are in Kaer Morhen.”

“I haven’t been back in a long time. Not sure I’m still a Cat.”

“You’re ours,” Jaskier says firmly. “The rest doesn’t matter.”

He sends Yennefer a warning glance, but it’s not needed. Aiden looks about two seconds away from bolting. She doesn’t push, but she files a note in her mind to investigate later. She knows all the Cats, and she’s never heard of an Aiden.

“Can we play again?” the youngest of the girls asks – Maja. It’s the first time Yennefer hears her speak, and it’s only audible because there’s a lull in the conversation. She doesn’t look up from Jaskier’s side.

“Sure,” Cirilla says. “Want to be the blue pebble this time?”

Maja nods and detaches herself from Jaskier, pulling back her long hair. From up close, she bears a striking resemblance to Jaskier. Her eyes are the exact same shade of blue, but she keeps them trained on her hands as she rearranges the pebbles until she finds one that’s naturally a pale shade of blue.

“You play?” the other girl pokes her finger into Yennefer’s knee. Yennefer tries to remember her name. Saskia?

Where Maja is very obviously Jaskier’s daughter by blood, Saskia doesn’t share any of his features. That doesn’t mean anything, of course. Who is their mother? Essi? Shani, maybe? They’re both old enough to have been born while Jaskier still travelled with Geralt, but Yennefer never heard anything about a child.

“I’ll just watch,” she says when she sees that Saskia is waiting for an answer.

She feels a small sting where Saskia touched her, almost like a shock of electricity, except… Yennefer focuses on the spot. It’s Chaos of some kind. Not like hers, but the shape of it rings a bell. Is the child a Source?

Quietly, she moves out of the circle to go sit by Jaskier’s side, as the others get involved in the game. Jaskier is sitting it out as well, probably because it seems to involve matching pebbles by colours, amid a complicated hand-to-hand exchange in a circle. Maja is apparently very good at it, and Saskia keeps dropping her pebbles instead.

“You’ve gathered quite a flock here.”

Jaskier smiles wistfully. “I seem to have, haven’t I?”

“Blue!” Maja suddenly yells, all her shyness forgotten. She smacks her pebble down on the ground and whoops. As she pulls her hair out of her face, Yennefer notices the slight point to her ears. She must be at least half-elf.

“Three daughters, huh?”

“Geralt would laugh at my face,” Jaskier says self-deprecatingly. “I used to boast about being free of attachments.”

“Were you?”

A small laugh. “No, I guess not.”

“Do you have regrets?” Yennefer asks curiously.

“Plenty, but my family’s not part of them. Do you?”

Yennefer thinks about it, watching Cirilla win several pebbles in a row. “I’m not sure.”

She gave up on her dreams of children around the time she lost her magic. Training herself back to a level of control she deemed acceptable took all of her energy for so long, and once she got there, she found that her priorities had changed. If she has a legacy, it will be in the enduring of Geralt’s administration.

But the desire stayed with her. Or rather, perhaps, the wish for a closeness that she’s never really found, for people to calls hers. Her relationship with Geralt was physical before anything else, they were never partners in the way of emotional intimacy. All the people that she loves, that she calls friends – even with Triss, with Geralt now, she doesn’t have this sense of family .

Ironically, perhaps, the closest she ever came to it was with Tissaia. She didn’t realize it until it was far too late, and their relationship was too fraught to build anew.

Jaskier reaches out and seeks her hand, fumbling a little. She intertwines their fingers.

“You’ve changed, since that dragon hunt,” she says.

He leans his shoulder against hers. “I learned to stand by myself. It was about fucking time.”

She laughs. “Yeah, it was.”

Chapter Text

Watching Jaskier with his daughters kindles a part of Yennefer’s heart that she had thought she’d buried on a beach with the newborn princess of Aedirn.

As much as she despaired for a child of her own for years, she stayed as far away from existing children and their parents as she could. It’s possible that she unconsciously feared that interacting with real, live children would prove that she would make a terrible mother. That day on the mountain, Geralt really dug into all of her deepest insecurities.

She ponders that as Maja, the youngest and shyest of the girls, continues to give her a wide berth. She stays plastered to Jaskier’s side as often as she can, but whenever Yennefer approaches, she runs away to another part of the cavern.

Is she really that scary? Cirilla is polite with her but she also remains aloof and careful, herding her sisters out of the way of the adult conversations. Saskia, alone, doesn’t seem to think anything of poking Yennefer and even running into her on accident, but she seems to be that way with everyone. Coordination isn’t her strongest suit, but she has no trouble charming everyone with her wide smile and her clumsiness.

It reminds Yennefer of Jaskier when he’s out of his element, but he was far less endearing. She finds him more careful now, more guarded. Instead of thriving at the centre of attention, he hangs back on the fringes, and it’s only the constant vigilance of his friends that keeps pulling back into the fray.

Yennefer stays for an early supper. They eat stew made on one of the fires, seated around a large slab of stone set up between the tents. Their company is reduced to just the girls and Cahir. Saskia and Maja are almost entirely silent through the meal, though they appear to be carrying out some kind of private conversation in looks and half-sketched signs.

Cirilla seems determined to be part of the adults’ circle, even if Jaskier’s involved explanation of the financial complexities of running such a refuge must be boring to her. Cahir is probably just as bored, but he has more training and he hides it well. Yennefer listens to the gaps in Jaskier’s account more than the facts and carefully files them away. She’s starting to get a better picture of what life has been like to them the last few years, and it’s not precisely rosy.

The cavern is largely open to the elements, and Oxenfurt grows cold in the winter. Not as cold as Kaer Morhen, but the frost two years ago was the worst recorded in a century. Jaskier skips over the details, and Yennefer doesn’t ask, but it puts Shani’s earlier words into context. We starved and froze to death in fucking caves.

Food supply comes largely through donations, and what underground commerce they manage to make of their crafts. Fishing is too dangerous so close to the harbour, and food doesn’t grow in caves. Supply runs are one of the most dangerous jobs – “on the refugee side,” Jaskier clarifies. “We keep our activism separate as much as we can, it’s all run from the printing press. Not everyone here is involved in that.”

Yennefer eyes Cirilla, who looks like she’s restraining herself from elaborating on that.

“What do you do here?” she asks her.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re what, eighteen? This isn’t the kind of community where a young adult can afford to sit around and play all day, let alone go to school. So what do you do with your time?”

“Er…” Cirilla hesitates, taken aback. “I help with organizing things, keeping track of our food supply…”

“We’ve tried to prepare her as much as we could for running an administration,” Jaskier says. “On a tiny scale, of course, but I’ve also tried to keep up with her court education where I could.”

Yennefer considers them both. Of course, Cirilla is still a princess, even in exile. But still, she’s been here for over four years now, and they clearly don’t have the luxury to waste a pair of hands. “There’s something you’re not saying. You should have been apprenticed by now, learning a trade and ready to go out on your own.”

Cirilla hesitates. Jaskier sighs. “Show her,” he says.

Sheepishly, Cirilla holds out something to Yennefer, who opens her hand. When she recognizes the object, she hisses in surprise.

It’s her star pendant.

She reaches up to her neck. She hadn’t even realized it was gone, let alone that it had been stolen.

“You’re a thief,” she breathes.

“It was a more useful skill than embroidering,” Cirilla shrugs.

Jaskier makes a face at that. “Certainly more useful than your embroidering,” he mutters.

“And you condone that?” Yennefer asks Jaskier.

It’s not that she’s a stickler for the law or anything, especially not in the situation they’ve been in. But thieving is an incredibly risky job even when you’re not a princess on the run. Being a teenage thief in training sounds a lot like being a teenage mage in training: dangerous and demanding beyond their abilities. Yennefer remembers all too well the harsh mentoring style of Aretuza, and she can’t imagine Jaskier wanting that for Cirilla.

“At some point, I realized it was better for her to do it with some level of supervision than to wait until she snuck out,” Jaskier says lightly. “She’s light-footed and daring, and she can be cunning. She’s good at it.”

“I lifted food from the market for everyone during the bad winter,” Cirilla says proudly. “And I once freed three people from a City Guard cell.”

“They were in the barracks, not the prison,” Jaskier corrects. “But you did very well.”

Yennefer clasps her pendant back around her neck. “Who teaches you?” she asks.

“Mostly Aiden. Dermain is really good with locks too.”

She points to an elf by the closest fire pit, who turns at hearing his name. The name rings a bell, and upon seeing his face, Yennefer realizes that he’s the mute elf who guided her and Cahir through the tunnels when they were fleeing from the Brotherhood. He waves at them with a wide smile.

“Wasn’t he supposed to get on that ship to Arcsea?” Yennefer frowns. “Why is he still here?”

“Oh, he used to tell the refugees that to make things easier,” Jaskier shrugs. “He’s been part of the network since the start, more or less. He ran the Temeria route from Gors Velen when Temeria was just as bad to the elves. Since King Foltest’s alliance with Geralt, it’s been a lot better, we can even smuggle some refugees into Temeria.”

“He’s a great guy,” Cahir interjects. “Used to be a banker. He taught the girls their numbers, since Jaskier is hopeless at them.”

“One cannot be amazing at everything, my friend,” Jaskier smiles.

“What about you?” Yennefer asks Cahir. “What’s your job here?”

“Guard duty, mostly. Aiden and I take turns running the perimeter and escorting runs.”

“And they teach us to fight,” Cirilla adds.

“Fiona’s become a good swordswoman. The Cranes taught the older kids to shoot, too, Dara’s pretty good with a bow now.”

“I see you’ve all been busy,” Yennefer says.

“Quite,” Jaskier snorts. “On that note, petal, bud, I think it’s story time. Essi’s doing it tonight.”

“Story time!” Saskia exclaims, clapping her hands. Maja joins her in the clapping, briefly, though she remains more subdued.

“Go put your plates on the dish rack then.”

Saskia immediately knocks her plate off the table. Maja clasps her hands over her ears at the rattle of the tin on the stone floor, prompting her sister to sign an apology and promptly get her plate back. Maja carefully takes it from her and piles it up on her own.

“Everything alright?” Jaskier asks when the silence stretches.

“Yes, papa,” Maja says in her quiet manner, before describing everything that just happened in quick, whispered words.

“Thank you, bud.” Jaskier holds out an arm to her, and she leans in for a quick hug.

“Come on, story time!” Saskia urges her.

“Coming, coming,” Maja murmurs, smiling.

“I’m going to see Dara,” Cirilla announces as soon as the girls are gone.

“Give Yennefer back whatever else you took first, please,” Jaskier says with a long-suffering air.

Cahir snorts. Cirilla smirks and pulls the keys to Yennefer’s apartments in Kaer Morhen from some hidden pocket. Yennefer gapes at her. “That was inside my dress.”

“Oh, this too,” Cirilla says with bored shrug. She sets a short dagger down beside the keys.

“You little—” Yennefer starts cursing, but she doesn’t finish her thought. Jaskier still looks unconcerned, but Cahir has unmistakeably stiffened as soon as she moved toward Cirilla. Touchy, then.

How did they get here from Cirilla’s knife on his throat? From Cahir leading the Sacking of Cintra to this level of protectiveness?

She backs off smoothly, gathering her belongings. “You should be careful who you steal from,” she says. “I know mages who would have reduced you to ashes for this.”

“Jas wouldn’t have let them in here,” Cirilla says confidently.

“No, but I would not advise angering Yennefer too much, either,” Jaskier says.

She put a knife to his throat, too, the first time they met. Yennefer blinks and reevaluates Cirilla and Cahir from that perspective. They’re young – so very young, and yet they’ve both been through far too much. Shared experience, even from opposite sides of a battleground, can bring people together in the most surprising ways.

Cirilla slips away with a cheeky wave, and Cahir follows, muttering something about shifts. Jaskier gives them a moment, then he leans closer to Yennefer.

“I didn’t just ask you here because I wanted you to meet them,” he says.

“I suspected.”

A smile spreads on his face. “I knew I liked you.”

Yennefer snorts. Laughter bubbles out of her without warning. After a second, Jaskier joins her, and for a while they sit side by side, shaking with laughter.

There are tears in Yennefer’s eyes by the time she regains control of herself – mirth mingled with grief that she sees mirrored in Jaskier. She truly has missed him, far more than she realized.

She leans back. “So, what would you ask of me?”

“I could use your help. We don’t see many sorcerers around here, and fewer even that I would trust.”

“You mean you trust other mages than me?” Yennefer quips.

Jaskier tilts his head, as if actually considering it. “That implies that I trust you,” he says. “Which I do, actually.”

“So what is it?”

“Ciri has some kind of voice-based magic. It was in her screams at first, purely defensive, uncontrolled. Essi and I did our best to train her voice, but her power grew with her. It’s bursting out randomly, it’s stronger than she can handle. A few weeks ago, she made a spontaneous portal. It split a table in two.”

“You think she needs training.”

“I would at least like your opinion.”

Yennefer considers that. “I can test her, if you want. I assume you’re not keen on shipping her to Aretuza.”

“Even if I was, and I’m certainly not, she’s a princess in hiding.”

“Uncontrolled portals are no laughing matter,” Yennefer frowns. “It could be dangerous, especially with so many people in close quarters. And it also means that she’s powerful.”

“Her mother had some chaos too,” Jaskier says. “Did Geralt ever tell you the story of Pavetta’s betrothal?”

Yennefer shakes her head, before remembering that Jaskier can’t see her. The cavern has grown mostly dark with the twilight, and most of the light now comes from the fires and the torches set up along the walls. A gaggle of children, among them Maja and Saskia, are sitting on the stage in a circle around Essi and her lute.

“Geralt doesn’t speak of the past,” Yennefer says.

Jaskier lets a moment pass. “I see. Well, Pavetta destroyed the entire throne room of Cintra in an outburst of power that day. There were other forces at play, some that… Fuck, I’m going to have to talk about that with Geralt, he needs to know about Duny. But anyway, Ciri is definitely her mother’s daughter.”

“Duny?”

“Ciri’s birth father. He’s… Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d rather tell you about that with Geralt present. Officially, I mean. The political implications are rather staggering.”

Yennefer almost protests, but Jaskier’s face is grave and determined. Arguing will get her nowhere. “Alright,” she says. “I can come back in a few days to test Cirilla.”

Over on the stage, Essi is engaged in mixed storytelling and song, plucking her lute along with the pacing of her tale. She’s a good singer, and the children reprise her choruses with varied degrees of accuracy. The loudest voice is Saskia’s, and it’s surprisingly beautiful.

“You taught all of your kids to sing?” Yennefer asks, amused.

“Of course,” Jaskier smirks. “Maja prefers to play the viol, though. She comes by it honestly, her mother was a luthier.”

“But she’s yours?”

Jaskier shrugs. “They’re all mine. But if you mean by birth, yes, she is.”

“She’s what, eight years old? You were already a father when you were still trailing after Geralt?”

Jaskier’s mouth twists, and Yennefer regrets her phrasing. “I didn’t plan to claim her,” he says. “Cyssiel wished to raise her with her own people, and I didn’t mind. But she was one of the first elves we lost.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jaskier sighs. “She was a good friend.”

Yennefer awkwardly pats his shoulder. Almost a century old and she’s still helpless in the face of loss. In moments like these, she longs for Triss’s ease with compassion.

“What about Saskia?” she asks.

“She calls me Papa, but I’m really fostering her. It’s complicated.”

“She’s got some kind of magic too, doesn’t she?”

Jaskier leans back. “Ah. You’ve picked up on that, uh?”

“She feels… different,” Yennefer says, unable to put it into words. Whatever chaos Saskia has, it’s something that she’s encountered before, but she can’t quite define it, it’s strange in a way no Aretuza-trained mage can be.

“Technically, you’ve met her before,” Jaskier says with a smirk.

“What?”

“Remember the dragon hunt?”

Yennefer huffs. “Do you even have to ask?”

Jaskier chuckles. “Fair. But what I meant was, do you remember what Borch was protecting?”

“His… egg?” Yennefer hesitates. It takes a moment to dawn on her. “Wait, she’s—”

“She hatched out right after you and Geralt left.”

“She’s a dragon?”

“Yep. A beautiful teenage dragon.”

Yennefer stares at Saskia’s back on the stage, her messy ponytail, the way her voice rises out above the others in a way that’s not quite natural…

“How the fuck did you end up with her?” she asks. “Did Borch…”

Jaskier shakes his head. “He’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking. He raised her as long as dragons normally do, which is about a year. But there’s a war in his land, too, and it wasn’t safe for Sae. And she’d… imprinted on me, apparently. Because I was there when she was born.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“It’s been an interesting few years.” An understatement if Yennefer has ever heard one, it seems. She’s had a strange time of it herself, what with Geralt and the whole warlord business, but everything she’s learned this afternoon almost seems to top it.

“That means she’s… six?” she asks. Saskia doesn’t look six years old – she’s taller than Maja and she looks older, even if Maja’s seriousness makes her sister look childish in comparison.

“Not really. She came out of the egg much more developed than a human baby, and she grows up a bit faster. Developmentally we figure that she’s closer to ten.”

“In body but not in mind? She acts a bit…”

Jaskier frowns at her disapprovingly. “In mind too,” he says. “Moving in this body, and speaking aloud, it doesn’t come naturally to her. She prefers to speak mind to mind.”

“How do you hide that from everybody?”

“We don’t.”

“They all know? Is that safe?”

“We’re all living in close quarters,” Jaskier shrugs. “It’s kind of hard to hide a half-grown dragon.”

“And they don’t mind?”

Jaskier’s silence feels almost judgemental.

“Look around you,” he says. “What do you see?”

Yennefer is stumped for a moment. “Um, elves, dwarves, humans…”

“People. People who have for the most part lived in the margins their whole lives. People who have been, who are persecuted for the grand crime of being born. Sae isn’t an outsider here. If anyone is, it’s me.”

“What do you mean?” Yennefer frowns.

“I’m fully human, and until recently, mostly able-bodied. I may not have been happy growing up, but I was never in danger. It took me a long time to even realize what a privilege that is.”

Yennefer reflexively clutches at a lock of her hair, hands tightening into fists. This is the life she refused, she thinks, looking around her with new eyes. When she chose her transformation, she left all this behind – the life of the marginal. She’s no less an outsider now, but nobody would dare to bully or pity her.

Jaskier wasn’t born into it, but she was. She would have fit right in here. In another time, another life, maybe she would have managed to escape and find such a community before her step-father finally killed her.

“Do you know why there are so many disabled people here?” Jaskier continues, as if reading her thoughts – but he isn’t, he can’t, he knows little of her past. “Because once the lynchers ran out of elves and dwarves and obviously mixed people, they remembered the old tales, about people with elven blood further in their family tree being born deformed.”

Yennefer hisses under her breath. Jaskier’s slight pause is the only sign that he heard her.

“They came after the beggars in the street, after long time neighbours and even friends. They didn’t make a distinction between those born with a disability and those who acquired it later – to them, we’re all the same. The City Guard didn’t participate, not like with the non-humans, but they didn’t stop it, either. Everyone here has lost someone. Everyone here has had to run for their lives. So no, nobody will try to turn Saskia in for who she is.”

He turns to look at Yennefer, though his eyes don’t quite settle on her face in the semi-darkness. And maybe it’s because of the dancing light of the torches, but there’s something haunted in his gaze – hunted. She finds no words for him.

He’s one of them, fully. Not as a smuggler, as a human trying to help out, but as an integral part of the community. He’s bled at their side and faced loss and grief and growth. He’s their leader because they chose him to be.

“You should bring Geralt here,” she says eventually, after a long pause. “He needs to see the scope of what you’ve built. I don’t think he realizes.”

Jaskier sighs and runs a hand down his face. “Seeing him today, I… I don’t know.”

“He’s changed, too. He’s more… settled. If you’re worried about him exploding in your face again, I don’t think he will.”

“It’s not that. I mean, he hurt me, there’s no doubt about that, but I worked through those feelings a long time ago. So much has happened, it feels like a lifetime has passed.”

“Still, don’t you want him to know your daughters, at least?”

Jaskier winces. “There’s Ciri. I don’t know how he’ll react to her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s still his Child Surprise. He always rejected Destiny, but I’m sure that if she’d found him after the Slaughter of Cintra instead of me, he would have cared for her, in his fashion.”

The reminder is chilling. Not that Yennefer had forgotten who Cirilla is – she spent many a lonely night after getting to Kaer Morhen wondering about her. A Destiny bond is no laughing matter. Geralt never looked for Cirilla, that she knows of, or expressed any interest in her, but then she was left for dead after Cintra.

Back then, Yennefer was still so angry with Geralt about the bond he created between them. The thought of another, a child, shackled to him as she was…

“He was certainly eloquent about his views of fatherhood,” she says, mouth twisting as she thinks about their fight on the mountain. “But I think deep down he was just scared that she’d be hurt the way he was.”

“I know. But now… She’s not a child any more. She’s been hurt regardless. I don’t want him to reject her to her face.”

Yennefer contemplates him for a moment. What is he truly afraid of?

“I can’t tell you how he’ll react, but I think Ciri is more secure in your love than you think. She won’t be looking for a father in him, Jaskier. She already has one.”

Jaskier deflates. “What if he resents me for taking her in? For not seeking him out?”

Ah, so there’s the crux of the problem.

“That would hardly be fair of him,” Yennefer says, knowing even as she says it that the fairness of it doesn’t matter.

Jaskier rests his chin on his hand, staring into space. What memory is he lost in?

“He’ll find out eventually,” Yennefer sighs. “Waiting will just make it more complicated.”

Jaskier shakes himself. “You’re right.” He pauses. “I can’t bring Geralt here without putting it to a vote, it’s not my decision alone.”

“You brought me.”

“As a friend. But Geralt is the Warlord.”

“Right.” Yennefer swallows around the implications of that – that he trusts her to keep their location hidden even from Geralt, if need be. “I… thank you. For showing me all this.”

Jaskier reaches out until he finds her arm. “It’s really good to see you again.”