Chapter Text
THE HARBINGER
by yolkipalki
Chapter Seven: The Bones of Winter
。。。oOo 。。。
Silence is all we dread.
There’s Ransom in a Voice –
But Silence is Infinity.
Himself have not a face.
– Emily Dickinson
。。。oOo 。。。
“But did you feel it?” Aiden whispered to Lambert as they chopped firewood in the blustering winds.
“Of course I fucking felt that, you prick.” Lambert hissed, holding up his scarred hand to his chest. They had a room, a room with a lumpy straw bed and a roaring fireplace all their own waiting for them inside the keep.
Now they were out deep in the gaping frozen cunt of the north mountains doing their chores and Geralt’s because he'd lost his fucking mind. Lambert just didn't think it was fair. Life had never been fair to Lambert— to any of the witchers— but this was a whole new level of fucked over.
All he wanted was a little bit of respite this winter. And even that was too much to ask.
“No, not your hand,” Aiden said dismissively, his eyes distant as he chopped wood. “Something happened. I could feel it in my medallion. The faintest vibration.”
Lambert scoffed and looked at the Cat with utter disbelief. “You’re fucking nuts. I can’t deal with two whack jobs at once. You’re going to have to wait until after I kill Geralt, then I’ll deal with your mad arse.”
“Maybe there’s something to this, Lamb.”
“If you say one more godsdamn word, I will run you through.”
“No, you won't,” Aiden smirked, bringing the axe down hard. “You'd have nowhere to sheath that beautiful, aggressively average cock of yours.”
。。。oOo 。。。
The day began before dawn with a cold plunge. No words. No warmth. Just the icy shock of the water stealing Jaskier's breath and forcing clarity.
After that came the knives — thrown, drawn, reversed — until his fingers blistered. Then running drills in the orchard, barefoot in the snow. To stay hidden, cover his tracks, stay silent with only the orchard's winter bones as cover. Each missed step earned him a switch across the calves.
By midmorning, he was balancing blindfolded on the narrow beam over the cellar pit, reciting hand signs with split-second precision while Valdo lobbed small stones at his chest. He fell only once today, caught himself and managed to prevent snapping his ankles this time. He blistered the hell out of his hands in the process though.
Lunch was dried meats, bread, and water, if he’d earned it. Today Valdo deemed he hadn't.
Then came the part he hated most. What Valdo called Becoming. They'd send in a stranger, or sometimes a noble’s brat in fine silks. He was to win them, disarm them, deceive them—all while pretending to be nothing at all. Sometimes a cook, a farrier, a coachman.
No words, no charm, just whatever was left of Jaskier and his deafening silence.
By dusk, his head ached, his hands were swollen and they oozed plasma and blood, the backs of his calves were welted and bruised, the skin split in some places. He was falling apart. He had been looking forward to sinking into himself beneath the droning tide of Lilka and Valdo’s dinner diatribes. But, unexpectedly, Ciri was there. Jaskier hated that his first thought had been, ‘this must be some form of punishment. They want me to try and put up a façade in front of her when they know I’m near collapse.’
Unfortunately, knowing their intentions didn't make him any more capable of countering them.
Ciri immediately panicked when she saw the bandages. But Lilka had played it off as some valiant attempt by him to stop a falling stock pot from crashing to the floors of the kitchens and burning a scullery maid and that he had burned himself in the process. Ciri seemed to believe it.
Jaskier longed to speak to her, to ask her how she was doing. But his hands were too swollen and raw to sign. So he listened intently when she spoke and the rest of the time, he tried to stay present. Like hanging onto the rope over the cellar pit after losing his footing. He tried not to retreat into himself and sink.
“Fiona,” the countess hummed, stirring her glass with a crystal sugar spoon, “do you know how witchers are made?”
Ciri glanced between Jaskier and the countess, confusion and curiosity bright on her freckled face.
“No, Lady Lilka,” she quietly replied.
“Mages snatched up little children and vivisected them, running experiments and filling them with poisons like drowning rats in a barrel.” The earl sang the words as though it were a song, searching for a melody. He was half-drunk already.
“A gruesome truth, but a truth nevertheless. Mages stole children, snatched little boys from their cradles and beds, ripped them from their wet nurses, and carried them off to a keep in the mountains where they tortured them, mutated them, and killed them.”
The princess, having just shoved a cut of roasted beet into her mouth, stopped chewing, clutched her silver fork tight, and turned to Jaskier for confirmation. He nodded, a bitter taste in his mouth. He didn’t like where this conversation was headed.
“Those that survived were more beast than human, set loose on the world to hunt down monsters.”
“Is it true?” Ciri whispered, and Jaskier nodded solemnly once more.
“Do you know why they did this?” The countess asked.
The princess shook her head.
“Because, they wished to create a man without fear, without pain.” The countess smiled fondly at the young girl. “Why do you think they did that?”
Ciri thought for a moment, swallowing the mouthful of food and washing it down with a sip from her glass of pomegranate juice. “To make them better fighters?”
“I believe that was their intention, but they failed. Do you know why?”
Before Ciri could speak, Valdo interjected. “If a man cares for nothing, then he has no fear. If he has no fear, then he has no hesitation and is, therefore, unstoppable. Is this not true?" He mused, leaning forward from where he sprawled lazily in his chair to pull a pear from an ornate wooden bowl.
Jaskier watched the countess carefully, trying to gauge her reaction, but her face remained all but unreadable.
"Yes, on this point we can agree. But once more, you lack forethought. If a man cares not for the world and feels no love, then he fears no loss. If he fears no loss, he has nothing to fight for. With no hope, no drive, no fire in his belly or beneath his feet, then what has he?"
Valdo took a bite of the under-ripe pear and pulled a face at the crunch, eliciting a giggle from the young princess.
"So...what, he becomes disillusioned and bitter, is that it?" Valdo asked.
“Earl Bielski, you are a drunk and a fool.” The countess cautioned, resting her hand upon the ornate basket beside her.
Valdo gestured to the serving girl holding the bottle of wine, she stepped forward and he slapped her arse hard enough for her to yelp.
Ciri fumbled, her glass of pomegranate juice spilling over her plate. The earl scowled. The countess and her ward both giggled, meeting each other’s eyes with a tentative fondness. Cirilla avoided the earl’s look of indignation as she searched for a way to switch the subject.
Jaskier was only half paying attention, watching with disgust as Valdo groped the poor serving wench yet again.
He barely heard the conversation around him. The clink of silver on porcelain, the low thrum of the hearth. Everything was muffled, as though someone had packed his ears with wool. His thoughts drifted, unmoored, spiralling back to the smell of pine and horse leather, the rough texture of a scarred thumb brushing his jaw. Fingers laced with his own.
For one aching moment, he could see him—Geralt. Geralt was there standing in the doorway. Snow in his hair. A gash above one brow. His shoulders drawn tight with exhaustion and something else, something soft in his eyes. Relief. Recognition, perhaps? It was so real, Jaskier's heart stopped for just a beat.
Geralt called his name. The voice wasn’t in the room. It wasn’t real. It was inside him.
The sound of it shattered something.
His chair scraped violently against the floor as he lurched forward, knocking his goblet aside. The wine spilled dark and blooming across the table linens as Jaskier pitched toward the ground.
He hit the stone floor hard. His knees buckled, the blisters along his palms burst from the pressure of slamming his weight against the stone. Blood welled beneath the split skin. He doubled over and retched. Not daintily. Violently. A whole-body purge, like the vision had turned him inside out.
Ciri gasped. “Is he— Is he alright?”
“Little mouse?” Lilka called softly to him. She didn’t raise her voice. Her tone was calm. Too calm.
Jaskier blinked rapidly, struggling to return. Sweat clung to his brow. He was still shaking, knuckles white where his bleeding hands gripped the edge of the tablecloth.
Ciri had risen from her seat, half-reaching toward him.
“Sit, dear,” Lilka murmured, brushing Ciri’s shoulder with two polished fingers. “It’s just a faint spell. The poor thing gets those sometimes. Nothing serious.”
“But—” Ciri looked unconvinced. “He’s bleeding through his bandages.”
“I said sit.”
The command wasn’t shouted, but it cracked across the room like a whip. Ciri sat.
Jaskier remained on the floor, head bowed, bile on his tongue, the echo of Geralt’s voice still ringing in his skull like a struck bell.
And across the table, Lilka smiled.
Lilka’s lips curled faintly, there was something deep and dark in her eyes.
“Woolgathering again?” she asked, tone light, but there was an edge beneath it. She reached for the wine, graceful and measured, like she hadn’t just clocked the way his hand was trembling.
Jaskier gave a paltry nod, unsure of what else she expected him to do given his inability to speak. He wiped his mouth, gave a mournful look to the serving girls who bustled to clean up the mess he'd made, and sat on the other side of the table for now.
“I… uh, I like your basket, Lady Lilka,” Ciri said quietly.
“Thank you, Fiona.” The countess replied. Her voice was bright and beautiful like a ringing chime.
Jaskier was certain she would continue, her voice joining the din of Valdo’s advances on poor maids and the sounds the wind made against the stones of the keep. But she didn’t. The countess sat there with her hand on the lid of the cylindrical basket.
“It’s called a tuesok. Come, come. Have a look.” She prompted. The countess lifted the basket and turned it around so that Ciri could see the fine drawings etched into the bark — depictions of falcons, maidens, horses, berries, and flowers. It was truly stunning.
Jaskier remembered distinctly the last time she had held the basket, there had been a serpent in it. One that Jaskier had killed. He had no way of knowing what was in the basket now, if anything.
Jaskier’s body moved before his mind could catch up. His hand shot out and caught Ciri’s wrist firmly.
She froze. So did Lilka. The moment stretched on. Only Valdo continued unbothered by the tension that had settled over the dining table.
Jaskier mouthed the word don’t.
Lilka’s eyes flicked to his. Amused and assessing, and as cold as the North Seas. But she said nothing.
Ciri looked between them, confused. Then she sat back slowly, rubbing her wrist where he’d grabbed her. He hadn’t grabbed her hard, but it had surprised her.
Jaskier didn’t let himself look at Ciri. He kept his gaze on the basket—on the place where he knew the danger lay, coiled and waiting.
He had let his guard down. Let grief and memory dull his senses. And Lilka, with a smile as fine as a blade, had reminded him what was at stake.
If he wasn’t careful, Ciri would die, or worse, suffer his fate. And Lilka would be the one to see it through, with elegance, with calculation, and with the very hand Jaskier had once trusted to guide him.
He swallowed hard and let go of the princess's wrist.
He couldn’t afford to see ghosts. Not now. Not when the monster was still at the table.
Lilka flashed him a dazzling smile, dimpled cheeks rosy, she pulled her lower lip between her teeth and let out a contented sigh.
“Next time, perhaps,” the countess said, turning her dazzling smile toward Ciri—but her eyes never left Jaskier. “The hour is late, and I fear you must depart, Fiona.”
“Oh.”
The disappointment in the princess’s voice was small but sharp, like a tiny blade pressed to the heart. Her shoulders sank, fingers tightening around the napkin in her lap. Then, as Jaskier rose silently to his feet, she sprang from her chair and ran to him, arms wrapping around his waist.
He startled at the sudden warmth of her, blinking down at her tangled hair and the pale curve of her cheek pressed to his tunic. One of her braids had come loose, ribbon hanging limp against her collarbone.
Behind them, the fire snapped in the hearth. The servants stilled. Even Valdo’s drunken mumbling softened to a murmur.
“What are you afraid of, child?” Lilka asked, her tone honeyed and delicate. “You may speak freely; no one will hurt you here.”
Ciri hesitated. Her grip on Jaskier didn’t ease. She slid one of her hands down into his and began tracing absent, anxious shapes across his rough palm—circles and slashes, spirals and crosses.
“I…” she glanced over her shoulder, eyes searching Lilka’s expression for something — reassurance, maybe. Safety. She didn’t find it. “When will I see Jaskier again?”
“Soon, dove.” The countess smiled, her teeth glinting. “He must away on matters of court, but he’ll be home soon.”
Ciri looked up at Jaskier, her mouth trembling. Miss you, she signed, the motions small and private.
He cupped her face gently, thumbs brushing her temple as he mouthed the word “soon”.
It wasn’t a promise. It couldn’t be. But he let her believe it was.
She leaned up on her toes, and he bent instinctively to meet her. He kissed the crown of her head, soft and reverent. He held her for a moment longer, memorising the weight of her, the steady beat of her worry against his chest. Then he stepped back, watching as the guard captain cleared his throat and motioned for her to follow.
Ciri lingered one more second, then turned, slipping silently from the hall with her retinue behind her like shadows.
The doors closed. Jaskier stood still.
“Well then,” Lilka purred, reclining in her chair, turning her glass in her fingers. “What a precious little bond the two of you share.”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
She tilted her head and smiled, dimples pressing deep.
“You may go.”
He didn’t move at first. His pulse was still fluttering from the vision, from the basket, from the grip of Ciri’s fingers and the fear in her voice. The mask of calm slid back into place like old armour as he inclined his head.
“Rest well tonight, little creature,” Lilka hummed as he turned to go. “For tomorrow I have news for you.”
Jaskier blinked at her, trying to keep the confusion from muddling his features. The appearance of indifference was the closest thing to secrets he had these days.
Great.
。。。oOo 。。。
They were in the main hall, half-drunk on White Gull, snow crusted thick against the keep’s windows. A fire crackled merrily, and Gwent cards were strewn across the long oak table like fallen leaves. Aiden was arguing over the rules, Eskel was laughing into his cup, and Lambert had just cursed loud enough to scare some crows roosting in the rafters.
Geralt was silent. Not brooding, not exactly. Just... still. Staring at his hand like he wasn’t sure it belonged to him. Maybe they didn't anymore. They certainly didn't feel like it. The noise of the room dulled. Muted. Like cotton had been stuffed into his ears.
Then the room tilted.
Jaskier had struggled to sleep after Lilka’s ominous dismissal. But he knew he’d need it, he stumbled into bed, exhausted and crusted with sweat and blood. He’d barely fallen asleep when a jolt of panic shot through his chest.
Jaskier stirred beneath the blankets, fingers twitching under his chin like he was plucking at a memory. His breath fogged in the cold. The fire in the hearth had long since guttered out. Something was wrong. He couldn’t tell what, yet. But it was.
Then, he heard the whisper of a hinge.
He didn’t move. Not at first.
The door creaked open, no louder than the wind outside, and he felt the shift in pressure before he heard the sound. Soft-soled boots. Controlled breath. Someone entered with the patience of a snake.
His heartbeat slowed.
Not from calm. From calculation.
He kept his eyes shut. Let his limbs go slack until he heard the blade slide free.
A sharp crack of wood, and Geralt was no longer sitting in Kaer Morhen. He was… somewhere else. Somewhere, he was certain he’d never been before.
A breath of candlelight. The stink of sweat and smoke and pain. Jaskier was there. Half-asleep, eyelids fluttering as a shape loomed over him in the dark. He looked exhausted, broken. Thinner and sharper, somehow than Geralt had ever seen him. His hands were bandaged, as was the leg poking out from the tangle of blankets. A horrid scar tore sideways across his mouth, healed and pink now.
Geralt could see a hand clad in a finely stitched leather glove holding a blade. A blade that was slowly and silently lowered to Jaskier’s throat. He could feel the chilled iron through someone else’s skin.
The world snapped sideways. Geralt's body moved before thought. He surged to his feet — cards scattering, bench scraping back hard enough to splinter. The mug in his hand shattered against the floor.
“Geralt?” Eskel asked, halfway between concern and alarm.
But Geralt didn’t hear him.
He was already moving, shoulder-checking Aiden as he lunged forward, grabbing Lambert by the collar and throwing him.
“Oh, fuck this.” Lambert wailed as he scrambled to his feet. He launched himself at Geralt but Eskel caught him.
"Don't—" Geralt snarled. His voice was wild, wrong. "Get away from him!"
He bared his teeth. Picked up an iron poker from beside the fire.
“Whoa—whoa, fuck, hold on!” Aiden ducked. Lambert threw a punch at Eskel. Who let go of Lambert, leaving Aiden to restrain him, and threw himself at Geralt.
Eskel caught his hand and the poker before Geralt could drive it down into the back of Aiden's skull. “Geralt! Geralt!”
And just like that, it broke.
Geralt staggered. Blinked. The iron poker clattered from his hand. His knees hit the stone. He stayed there, panting, wide-eyed, like something had just passed through him.
Silence rang like the echo of a bell.
“Fuck me sideways,” Lambert muttered, getting up. “What the hell was that, you mad bastard?”
Geralt didn’t answer.
His hands were shaking. An earthenware bowl that had broken in the commotion had sliced his palm. He barely noticed.
Vesemir’s voice came from the far end of the hall, calm but cold. “Get him out of here.”
The knife wasn’t showy. It wasn’t meant to threaten. It was clean—a quiet blade, meant for one purpose. It slid free of its sheath with a whisper.
The weight in the room shifted. A presence. Quiet footsteps, deliberate, pacing slowly from the doorway to the edge of the bed. Closer. Closer.
“Tell me, bard,” Valdo’s voice was a low murmur, almost fond, “what happens if you don’t hear them coming?”
Jaskier didn’t answer. He didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. But his entire body tensed beneath the blankets, muscles locking as pain flared in his legs and hands, the deep lash welts still raw, his fingers tight and split from training.
He hadn’t been asleep. Not really. He hadn’t slept deeply in weeks.
The blade touched his throat. Cold metal on fevered skin, as intimate as a lover’s kiss.
And Jaskier moved.
His hands—bandaged, blistered, trembling—shot out with violent precision. One gripped Valdo’s knife wrist, squeezing hard enough to grind bone. The other slammed up into his midsection, a palm strike trained into him over weeks of abuse. It knocked the wind out of Valdo’s smug little lungs with a grunt.
Jaskier twisted, rolling off the bed with a thud that sent lightning through his legs. His knees nearly buckled from the impact, screaming where the switches had broken skin earlier. But he caught himself, panting, half-crouched on the stone floor.
Valdo recovered fast, but not fast enough.
Jaskier surged forward, pain blurred by adrenaline, and tackled him back against the bedframe with a snarl. They grappled, no elegance or no grace, just desperate force. Valdo tried to twist the blade inward again, but Jaskier got under him, drove his shoulder into the bastard’s chest, and pried the knife from his fingers with a voiceless grunt of effort.
The handle bit into his palm, tearing already-raw skin. He didn’t care.
He staggered backward, knife raised now, chest heaving, knees shaking. Blood slicked his hands. His entire body was aflame with pain. But he didn’t drop the blade. He didn’t look away.
Valdo laughed. Wheezing, he bent over with a wicked, toothy grin. “There he is.”
Jaskier stood seething.
“You’re still too slow,” Valdo panted, straightening. “You should’ve had my throat open the moment before I touched you.”
Jaskier’s grip on the knife tightened. Pain thrummed through him.
“But better,” Valdo said, brushing off his tunic like nothing had happened. “Much better.”
Jaskier noticed his hands, though injured, didn't shake. He wondered when the last time they'd trembled with fear or adrenaline.
“You left your door unlocked,” Valdo added.
Because you told me to.
Jaskier just stared.
Valdo stepped forward again and opened his palm for his dagger. Begrudgingly, Jaskier offered him the hilt.
Valdo patted him on the cheek, set his hand on Jaskier's shoulder, and offered a gentle kiss to the crest of his cheekbone.
“Next time I’ll use poison,” he said, tone almost fond. “Sleep well, Julian.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
Jaskier’s chest heaved. He touched his throat when Valdo had cut him. It wasn't deep. Barely bleeding. His hands and calves hurt far worse than his throat. He stayed there long after Valdo was gone, alone in the dark. Blood slowly dripped from his bandaged fists.
It had been two days since the incident in the main hall, and despite Eskel’s attempts to coax him out of his quarters, Geralt was content to wither away there alone. But now, in the middle of the night, with everyone asleep and retired to their rooms, and the halls of stone cold from the bitter winter outside and the banked fires, he wandered.
The fire crackled low, casting a wavering amber glow across the stone walls of Kaer Morhen’s study. Geralt stood by the hearth, unmoving, his hand braced against the mantel as though it were the only thing keeping him upright. The air smelled of ash and pine resin and something sharper, like pickled regret.
Vesemir stepped inside without a word. He moved like he always had: slow, steady, letting the silence do half the work. He poured himself a drink and took a seat without invitation.
“You’re chasing ghosts, boy,” he said quietly.
Geralt didn’t move.
“I’ve seen the signs,” Vesemir continued. “You train like your body’s not your own. You eat only when someone puts food in your hand. And you haven’t slept right in weeks, I can hear you pacing the halls like a spirit with no grave.”
“I’m fine,” Geralt said flatly.
“Horse shit.” Vesemir sipped his drink, gaze sharp. “Geralt, you’re grieving.”
Geralt turned his head, just slightly. Enough to show he was listening. Not enough to confirm anything.
“You don’t have to say his name,” Vesemir went on. “But I know. I’ve known since you came back from the south half a man.”
Geralt’s jaw tensed.
“You didn’t get a body,” Vesemir said softly. “Didn’t bury him. Didn’t burn him. Didn’t get to lay your sword on his grave or light a candle or speak his name at dawn.”
“I don’t need a fucking ritual,” Geralt muttered. “He’s not—”
He stopped himself.
Vesemir waited, as patient and as sharp as ever.
Geralt exhaled, the sound ragged. “He’s not dead.”
“Isn’t he?”
That quiet question hit like a blade slipped between ribs.
“You think this is what the living feel like?” Vesemir’s voice was gentler now, but no less firm. “You think this… silence inside you, this ache in your chest like something was ripped out and stitched back wrong, is nothing?”
Geralt’s throat worked, but he didn’t answer.
“I’ve buried brothers,” Vesemir said. “I’ve buried sons. And you’re grieving, Geralt. Whether he’s dead or not. You lost him.”
Geralt’s hand trembled on the mantel.
“I hear him,” he whispered. “Not his voice. Just… him. I can't explain it. It's not a sound. It's… it's like a wire in my teeth. Like a song I can’t remember but can’t forget either.”
Vesemir was quiet for a long moment. Then he stood, walked over, and placed a hand on Geralt’s shoulder.
“When you carry someone that close for that long, they don’t always leave clean,” he said. “Sometimes love lingers. Sometimes guilt. Sometimes magic. Doesn’t matter which it is, it hollows you out the same.”
Geralt blinked hard.
“I wasn’t ready,” he said hoarsely.
“No one ever is, son.”
They stood like that a while, the fire crackling, wind moaning through the keep stones. Silence settled soft as snowfall between them.
Then Vesemir said, “You can’t keep bleeding in the shadows, boy. If he’s truly gone, grieve him. And if he’s not… find him. Before what’s left of you forgets how.”
Far to the south of Kaer Morhen, beneath a sagging stone balcony slick with moss, the boy they called Blue—on account of his striking eyes—moved like a shadow through the veins of Lord Reymard’s estate.
His hands were chapped. His eyes were dull. His limp was barely noticeable now. It was part of the story they’d built around him.
He moved through kitchens and gardens and libraries no one remembered to lock. He was nothing. No one.
But in the dark, he paused.
His breath caught. His chest ached—not sharp, not sudden, but deep, like an old bruise pressed too hard. It pulsed, low and sickening, somewhere behind the ribs.
He’d felt it before. It had become a companion to him since that night in the woods. It was like his own shadow, following him in the sunlight and overtaking him in his darkest moments, swallowing him whole. He pressed a hand to the stone wall to steady himself, blinking against the sting behind his eyes.
Grief could do that. Witches, too. They twisted you up and make you feel things that weren’t there.
Jaskier closed his eyes.
He’s not real, he told himself. Geralt is dead.
The ache pulsed again, faint as a plucked string. A memory. For a second, he could almost swear he saw a mockery of Geralt, as real as his own two hands, leaning against the wall, gaunt and pale and broken.
But he wasn’t there. Geralt never was. It was just a cruel trick of the grieving mind.
Geralt was gone.
Jaskier had failed him—utterly, finally, and without excuse. The weight of it sat in his chest like riverstone, cold and heavy, dragging him down no matter how many faces he wore or lies he memorised.
But he would not fail her. He couldn’t.
Ciri was all he had left of Geralt. She was his last oath. His final song. And if he had to become a shadow to protect her—a dumb, tongueless servant slipping through enemy halls—then so be it.
He’d already buried his voice. What was the rest of him, if not disposable?
He pushed it down. Buried it beneath frost and ash and the rhythm of footsteps down a hall he wasn’t meant to be in. There were names to memorise. Maps to sketch in charcoal on the underside of a dresser drawer.
So he moved on.
And the bond, thin and fragile as spider-silk, trembled. But it held all the same.
They called him "Blue" or sometimes "that dumb bastard from Low River” here.
Nobody asked his name.
The first noblewoman had waved him off after an hour, deciding he was too dull for the house and too pretty for the stables. But she owed a favour to her cousin, who owed a favour to a minor baron, who owed a rather large debt to Lady Bielski.
So she gifted him, with dramatic sighs and a false sense of generosity, to the next rung down the ladder. Who, in turn, passed him along with a bottle of mead and an apologetic shrug to Lord Reymard’s household in Duskwater Hollow.
That was where Lilka wanted him.
The estate was a rambling grey thing, full of peeling tapestries and sharp-eyed servants. Reymard was an anxious man with too many debts and too many doors. All with locks, irons, and pins. His household thrummed with paranoia, a perfect place to drop a mute ghost of a boy no one would notice until it was too late.
Jaskier kept his eyes low. He limped slightly, favouring the old injury on his foot, which wasn’t entirely feigned, though he made it worse for show. He chewed absently on his lower lip and wrung his hands. When anyone spoke to him, he stared.
Once, he moved his fingers strangely. Twitching in sets of three, like he was working out a tune he couldn’t quite remember. That seemed to be the thing that convinced them he’d been kicked in the head by a horse, a rumour someone helpfully started after he wandered into the tack room and knocked over a pail.
By day, he mucked stalls and scrubbed dishes. By night, he wandered. Always quiet. Always forgotten.
He lingered in archways. Listened by doorframes. He learned the head steward was sleeping with the baron’s youngest son. He learned two of the guards were being paid off by someone from Gors Velen, and that a courier would arrive within the week.
He traced the cracks in the floor of the library with a fingertip and memorised the length of the hallway between the war room and the servants’ stairs.
On the fifth night, he slipped into the upper study. His fingers were shaking, but precise. Behind the false panel in the desk was the missive Lilka wanted.
He copied the names, burned the original, and replaced it with a forgery. Then he knelt by the fire and dirtied his face with soot. By the time the head cook found him in the scullery, he was clutching a half-eaten heel of bread and humming tunelessly to himself.
The courier never came. But a covered wagon did. Carrying inside, supplies from Bielski lands and a single mute stablehand curled up between barrels and crates.
Valdo had been tasked with giving Julian an assignment. He’d chosen an impossible one. The longer he could keep him in training, the longer he could keep him from proving himself to Lilka.
Julian was already a problem—clever in ways he shouldn’t be, too observant for someone meant to play dumb. The last thing Valdo needed was for the mute to be placed somewhere out of reach, beyond his interceptive grasp. So long as he could see him, monitor him, redirect him when needed, he could manage the threat. But each successful mission chipped away at that illusion of control.
He prayed, quietly and bitterly, to the gods and devils Old and New that some unfortunate tragedy would befall the little mewling bardling while he was away. A wrong turn. A blade in the dark. A slip on a frozen road. Something clean, impersonal, final.
It would cost them, yes. His loss would create waves through Lilka’s networks, like plucking a thread on a spider’s web. The utterly useless man had become unexpectedly effective, unexpectedly trusted. But Valdo would pay that price a thousand times over. He would drain every coin from Cidaris’s coffers if it meant keeping Julian out of Lilka’s true grasp.
Because he knew what came next.
Once she gave him a name, a real one, once he was welcomed into her menagerie proper—with all the pomp and unspoken promises that entailed, Valdo’s position would begin to rot from within. It wouldn’t matter how long he’d served, how deep his roots ran, how many bodies he’d buried in her name.
Julian would become the new jewel in her crown. And Valdo? He would become just another old blade—useful until dulled, then discarded. Or worse, he would find himself in the garden with Lilka’s late husband. He’d come too far, bled too deeply, and sacrificed too much to let that happen now.
He hated the mute for that. But more than that, he feared him.
This was merely a stalling tactic until he could figure out how to get Julian out of the way for good without his head being on the line.
He was stewing and mulling in his thoughts when there was a knock at the study door. A guard entered and announced that Julian had returned from his assignment. Valdo’s heart dropped so fast he thought he’d be sick.
“Send him in,” he drawled lazily.
When Julian entered, he placed the letter on Valdo’s desk without ceremony. He didn't flinch when Valdo picked it up with a frown. He just stood there, expressionless and waiting with those big, foolish doe eyes. Jaskier had never been known to sit still in any circumstance. But the broken man, standing on the other side of his desk, was no longer quite Jaskier.
“You found it,” Valdo said flatly, scanning the forged version of the missive. The tightening of his fingers on the parchment was the only indication that he seemed surprised by this news. In fact, he was utterly stunned. Valdo had sent the Ryś into the estate undercover as a scullery maid, and she'd never managed to wander any deeper than the dining halls. She'd been there for two months before it was clear the mission was fruitless. She was more than capable of success in both retrieving information and planting it. As capable as she was at killing. But she hadn't succeeded.
And where the Ryś had failed, the Countess's horrid little plaything had succeeded. He had waltzed into the estate and returned with a hand-drawn map of the entire estate, and the ledgers that Lilka required. He had only been there for eight days. He was a natural. He was a sharpened needle driven through moth-eaten linen.
Fuck.
Valdo looked up to see the mute's placid face, waiting to be either reprimanded or dismissed; there would be nothing in between. It was, not only the ledger that Lilka had been searching for, but a recreation of the estate and all its servants quarters, passageways, and hidden rooms.
“Did anyone see you?”
A sure shake of the head.
Valdo set the paper down, pressing his thumb into the corner.
“She’ll be pleased.” He paused, opening his mouth as if to speak, but he simply closed it once more and reached for his wine.
Fuck.
Still, Jaskier waited.
Valdo exhaled. “I didn't think you'd ever catch on. But it seems you're finally making yourself useful. What wonderful news.”
His pulse throbbed behind his twitching eye. Valdo wasn't the least bit pleased, and he knew he certainly didn't sound it either. He had accomplished what he’d been sent to do and he’d done it seamlessly, quickly, and provided more information than they’d asked for.
Shit.
Jaskier crooked an eyebrow. His nose twitched, but he kept his hands folded behind his back.
“Though if you are to slip through the shadows so quickly and readily, we'll need to do something about that face of yours. That scar makes you recognisable.”
Jaskier touched the side of his face absently, his fingers brushing the edge of the scar Valdo had given him when he threw him into the sea, helpless and bound. Valdo watched him for a long moment.
“No longer a mere butterfly, you seem to be,” Valdo muttered. Repeating the words that Lilka had said to him earlier as she waxed poetic about Jaskier leaving on his first reconnaissance mission.
Jaskier said nothing. Just tilted his head like a crow listening to a far-off sound.
Valdo shivered, disgusted at the sights and mannerisms of his former petty rival.
“Get out and clean yourself up, you smell like horseshit.”
The mute scurried away, and Valdo was left with the deeply troubling news that Julian had succeeded, against all odds.
Power was shifting like the sands. And change, it would seem, was inevitable. But Valdo would be damned if he let Julian take his kingdom from him.