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.