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In a cold hall, high in the Amell Mountains, a portal opens. A woman steps through it, flanked by two guards - two Witchers, in fact, one a lean elegant man with a griffin’s head medallion about his throat, the second much taller and broader, his medallion showing a snarling bear. All three glance around, the woman and the Griffin curiously, the Bear with ill-hidden distaste, as the portal snaps closed again.
“And I thought Kaer Morhen was cold,” Yennefer says, flicking her fingers. The huge fireplace at one end of the hall roars to life, the flames edged with purple. “For that matter, I thought Kaer Morhen was bleak.”
There’s no decoration to be seen on the walls or the tables or the big rough-hewn chairs. Kaer Morhen’s walls may not be hung with tapestries, but the legs of all the tables are carved with intricate patterns, and the chairs and benches are surprisingly handsome things, showing the work of many different hands. Some of the carvers are Bears, actually, which is part of why Yennefer is surprised that Haern Caduch’s furniture does not have the same adornment.
“The Old Bear didn’t approve of frivolity,” Artek says. “We kept any nicer things in our rooms.”
“Huh,” Yennefer says, wrinkling her nose. “Well. Cold and bleak it may be, but it will do. Thank you again for offering.”
Artek shrugs. “It’s not doing any good just moldering. Might as well get some use out of it.”
“Eminently practical,” Yennefer agrees. “If you two could move a pair of chairs over by the fire?”
Ealdred and Artek lift two of the big chairs easily, positioning them far apart enough that anyone seated in them won’t be able to reach each other, but near enough that they’ll be able to speak comfortably. Yennefer eyes the chairs for a moment and flicks her hand again, summoning cushions from her own rooms in Kaer Morhen. They might as well be reasonably comfortable for this conversation; it’s meant as an offer of alliance, after all.
“Right then,” she says, and pulls a mirror out of her pocket, a pretty silver-backed thing Ciri commissioned for her down in Wolvenburg, with lilacs painted on the back and a very comfortable handle. It usually lives on Yennefer’s dressing table, but it also makes a very good scrying tool.
She breathes on the glass, and when the fog clears, the mirror shows not her own reflection but a dark, lovely face she used to know very well indeed. The other woman raises an eyebrow; Yennefer nods. The mirror fogs and clears again to show only Yennefer’s own face, and she tucks it away carefully and sits down on one of the chairs, lounging back in an elegant mimicry of relaxation. Artek leans against the wall near the hearth, arms crossed over his broad chest; Ealdred takes up a position behind and to the right of her chair, like a king’s honor guard.
A second portal opens in the center of the hall, and three figures step out. The first is a woman of about Yennefer’s own height, dark-skinned and dark-haired and beautiful as only sorceresses are, in a green gown embroidered with golden Nilfgaardian suns. A statement, loud as a shout; but then, Yennefer’s black gown has Milena’s beautiful embroidery on all its hems, of golden-eyed white wolves peering between lilac flowers. She and Fringilla sat through many of the same lessons on courtly maneuvering, after all.
Fringilla is flanked by two Nilfgaardian soldiers in the gold-edged uniforms that indicate the Imperial Guard; they have professionally blank expressions, but their knuckles are very tight on the hafts of their ceremonial halberds. They know perfectly well that two human guards would never be a match for two Witchers, if this were to become a battle. But Yennefer has no intention of allowing it to do so.
“Fringilla,” she says warmly, and gestures to the other chair. “Welcome to Haern Caduch.”
“Thank you,” Fringilla says, taking her seat with a graceful sweep of her skirts. They each conjure their own drinks as the Nilfgaardian guards take up positions behind Fringilla’s chair; they obviously aren’t going to trust any food or drink the other might provide. They sip from their conjured goblets, and Fringilla leans back, ostentatiously at ease.
“So then,” she says. “I assume this is not about the nonaggression treaty my lord’s envoy has signed with your lord.”
“So it is not,” Yennefer agrees, “save in a rather oblique manner.” She takes another sip - what’s in her goblet looks like wine, but is actually honey-sweetened pomegranate juice. She cannot afford even the slightest weakness in this conversation; the merest blurring brought on by wine could be disastrous. Equally, of course, she cannot let Fringilla know that she is wary enough to avoid wine. Thus, pomegranate juice.
If she had to guess, she’d wager Fringilla has something similar in her goblet.
Fringilla raises an eyebrow and makes a little gesture with her free hand: Go on.
“You are known to be loyal to your lord, even as I am to mine,” Yennefer says. Fringilla inclines her head a little, accepting the compliment. “Which means I expect you are very nearly as…displeased about the late and unlamented Rience’s alliance with the equally unlamented Evertsen as I am.”
Fringilla’s fingers tighten on the stem of her goblet, just a little. “I suspect we are equally displeased, yes,” she allows. “I considered him a valuable ally. Discovering otherwise was…vexing.”
Yennefer smiles, a tiny quirk of her lips, carefully controlled. “In the spirit of our shared displeasure, then, and of the treaty which our respective lords have approved, it seemed to me a friendly gesture to let you know a little of what Rience admitted under questioning, before he died.”
Fringilla’s eyebrows rise slightly. “We have not exactly kept up our correspondence, old friend,” she observes, with a bit of an edge to the words. “Nor do I recall an invitation to join your…merry little band of renegades.”
Yennefer lets herself chuckle. “Alas, I thought you had found such happiness in your position that you would be uninterested in such a risky venture as it seemed at the time. I had not heard from you in quite a while, after all.”
It was Fringilla who stopped writing, after she was sent to Nilfgaard. Yennefer had not reached out more than once, of course - she is far too proud to keep sending letters which returned unanswered - but it was not her choice to end their correspondence. Fringilla grimaces slightly, conceding the point.
“I had,” she says grimly, “been twenty years beneath the Usurper’s thumb. I would have refused you in any case.”
Yennefer tilts her head. “Nevertheless, I should have asked. And, perhaps, apologized.” A weakness for a weakness, keeping the balance between them.
Fringilla snorts. “For stealing Aedirn out from under my nose?”
“Indeed.” Yennefer grimaces delicately. “Virfuril was not nearly as pleasant a lord as I had hoped.”
“And Fergus was rather better than I expected,” Fringilla allows. “If unfortunately rather too trusting of his army’s commanders. Perhaps we may call it even on that score.”
“I should like that,” Yennefer agrees, and takes another sip of her juice. “It…grieved me, to lose your friendship.” She would not have been able to admit that, a decade ago when she first came to Kaer Morhen, back when she knew as surely as breathing that any evidence of softer feelings was a weakness which would be exploited ruthlessly by those around her. But she has spent a decade in Kaer Morhen, among the Witchers who hide their soft hearts beneath gruff words and gentle touches, and she has learned the power of a truth freely given.
“Did it?” Fringilla says, eyes widening a little. “Well. I never thought I would hear the great Yennefer of Vengerberg admit to missing little old me.” There’s very old bitterness in the words. Yennefer can’t really blame her for it; Yennefer was a bitch back when they were young, and while she is still an unrepentantly vicious person, she tends to aim her poison a little more carefully now.
“Perhaps I have matured a little since Aretuza,” Yennefer says dryly.
“Miracles do happen,” Fringilla says lightly, and leans back, deliberately relaxing again. Her next words are so soft Yennefer barely catches them: “It grieved me, too.”
Yennefer inclines her head and takes another drink. “Perhaps we could resume our correspondence.”
“Perhaps we could,” Fringilla agrees. “But I do not think you invited me to this…charmingly desolate location to discuss old grievances.”
“Indeed, I did not,” Yennefer says. “Though I may be providing you with some new grievances…not, however, against me.”
Fringilla smirks and takes a sip of her own drink. “Go on.”
“Rience was under the distinct impression,” Yennefer says, “that I would not dare to do him harm. Not for any fear of him - he was at least intelligent enough to know that much, if only because he was bound in dimeritium at the time - but because, as he claimed, he was only doing as he was bidden by his true master: the Brotherhood, whose wrath, of course, I would not wish to draw down upon myself.”
“The Brotherhood,” Fringilla murmurs, frowning. “What did they want Rience to do?”
“As best I can discover, they wanted him to destabilize both Nilfgaard and the Wolflands,” Yennefer tells her bluntly. “Nilfgaard, because you have your own college of magic, your own mages who do not answer to Aretuza or Ban Ard - and the Wolflands because the Wolf has dared to impose his laws even on mages, and they fear he will soon cease to allow Aretuza and Ban Ard to do as they will.” She smirks. “They’re quite right to fear that, as it happens.”
“Oh?” Fringilla asks, raising one eyebrow in elegant query.
“Rience is not the only mage of the Brotherhood who has angered the Wolf this year,” Yennefer says, baring her teeth in a very wolf-like grin. “The Wolf’s council has decided it is time and more than time to take a closer look at what, precisely, is going on within the hallowed halls of sorcery.”
Fringilla chuckles. “That old bastard Stregobor won’t be happy about that.”
Yennefer’s grin gets toothier. “I did say another Brotherhood mage had angered the Wolf this year.”
Fringilla’s eyes widen. “Stregobor?”
“He tried to lay claim to one who had put herself under the Wolf’s protection, in order to experiment upon her.” Yennefer shrugs elegantly. “My lord granted him a far swifter death than he deserved.”
Fringilla sits bolt upright, and nearly drops her goblet. “He’s dead?”
“Extremely, unless he has learned the art of living without a head,” Yennefer replies, knowing her voice is dripping with satisfaction and not bothering to suppress it.
“Well,” Fringilla says, and takes a deep drink from her goblet, leaning back again slowly. “Well. What did the rest of the Brotherhood have to say about that?”
“To tell the truth, I’m not sure they’ve noticed yet,” Yennefer says, shrugging. “Kaer Morhen’s wards are, as I am sure you know, very good, and he was wearing dimeritium when he died. I assume they think he’s still hunting Black Sun girls through the wilderness.”
“Wearing dimeritium - no, nevermind,” Fringilla shakes her head briskly. “Stregobor, dead. Well. That does put an interesting complexion on things.” She hums, tapping the fingernails of her free hand on the arm of her chair. “And Rience was to destabilize Nilfgaard, was he?”
“Evertsen apparently wanted to be the puppetmaster behind an Emperor easier to control than Emhyr is,” Yennefer explains. “Rience was helping him in the theory that a puppet emperor with a roundly hated master would be…less competent than the current leadership, and leave more opportunities for Brotherhood manipulation.”
“He wasn’t wrong,” Fringilla says, brow furrowed as she thinks it through. “Evertsen couldn’t take the throne himself without a full-out coup - he’s got no var Emreis blood, and after the Usurper, the nobility is not particularly inclined to support another nameless contender for the throne - but if he put, for instance, young Voorhis on the throne…”
“I do not think young Voorhis is as malleable as Evertsen assumed,” Yennefer says dryly. “He’s coping surprisingly well with Kaer Morhen.”
“Is he?” Fringilla says. “Interesting.” She shakes her head a little. “Nevertheless, he is young, and had he taken the throne while Evertsen yet lived, it would have been…unfortunate. Or if Evertsen had his claws into one of the Voorhis cadet lines - that would have been worse yet.”
“I would assume Evertsen’s execution is having interesting repercussions,” Yennefer says. To be honest, she assumes the entire government of Nilfgaard is currently having convulsions. From what she understands, Evertsen was very nearly as powerful as the Emperor himself, and his sudden and summary execution has probably left a hole that a great many people are scrambling to fill - not to mention all the secrets Evertsen doubtless held, and which will cause chaos whether they are forgotten or revealed. Yennefer has to admit she would probably not enjoy dealing with the mess; she has gotten too used to Witcher honesty.
Fringilla smiles thinly. “Very interesting, yes,” she agrees. “It is quite astonishing how many pies one man can stick his fingers into.” She gives no further details, of course; Yennefer hardly expected any. Fringilla isn’t going to air Nilfgaard’s dirty laundry so cavalierly. “So. As you say, I have discovered new grievances, if what you say is true.”
“A decade among Witchers does tend to cure one of the habit of lying. ”
“Does it? Perhaps we should send you a few of our less honest nobles.”
“You might not get them back. Or at least not with their heads attached.”
Fringilla snickers. “It would be no great loss.” She eyes Yennefer thoughtfully for a long moment. “Supply me with the names of any within Nilfgaard who were Rience’s allies, and I will question them myself. If your words are true…then if the Wolf moves against the Brotherhood, send word to me. I will speak to my lord, and if any flee the Wolf’s justice, Nilfgaard will not shelter them. I do not think my lord will disagree, when I tell him of Rience’s true purpose.”
Yennefer suppresses any sign of surprise, offering a warm smile instead, and summons the scroll of Rience’s conspirators from her desk. Fringilla catches it neatly as it pops into existence in front of her, unrolls it to glance at the names, and presses her lips together in a thin unhappy line.
“I see I have some work to do,” Fringilla murmurs, and rolls the scroll up again, tucking it away before fixing Yennefer with a long, curious look. “You could have never told me,” she says. “If I act upon this, my lord’s hold upon the throne only grows stronger. Nilfgaard under a new emperor, especially just now, would be…severely weakened. Why aid us? You know as well as I do that Nilfgaard has acted against the Wolflands ere now.”
“I know, too, that Emhyr has decreed an end to those attempts,” Yennefer says. “Rience was quite bitter about it. And I know that Emhyr has been…extremely firm…about bringing no harm to my lord’s daughter.”
“And another emperor might repeat Evertsen’s folly,” Fringilla says, nodding. “I see.” She taps her fingers on the chair’s arm again, hesitating, and then says, slowly, “Yennefer, do you know why my lord is so very protective of a girl he’s never seen?”
“I do,” Yennefer says. “Or at the least I have a very good guess. But it is not my secret to tell.”
“I see,” Fringilla says. “Or rather, I don’t see, but I shan’t press.”
“Emhyr might tell you, if you asked,” Yennefer says thoughtfully. “Then again, he might not. I don’t pretend to know how his mind works.”
“Do you understand how your lord’s mind works?” Fringilla asks, smirking.
“For the most part.” Yennefer smiles. “One needs only assume that he will do the right thing, and then attempt to deduce what that is. Oh, and he despises anyone who misuses the power they hold over others.” She waves her free hand languidly. “So you might tell Emhyr that if he wants anything more than a nonaggression pact between Nilfgaard and the Wolflands, he can start by taking a good long look at whatever his nobles and priests - and mages - are doing that might look like the strong preying on the weak. I expect young Voorhis has already told him the same, but hearing it twice cannot hurt matters.”
“Don’t wolves eat the weakest of their prey?” Fringilla inquires.
“To be sure,” Yennefer agrees. “But they guard the weakest of their packs.”
“Ah.” Fringilla regards her quietly for a little while, dark eyes unreadable. “That may perhaps explain why my lord has discovered a sudden interest in judicial reform. I thought it only a response to Evertsen’s treason.”
Yennefer inclines her head. “It may be both, knowing what I do of your lord.” And is very interesting indeed, as a response to whatever young Voorhis has been telling Emhyr.
Fringilla chuckles, nodding acknowledgement of the point. “You’ve changed, you know.”
“I know,” Yennefer agrees, and gives Fringilla a genuine, rueful little smile. “The Wolf’s morals are contagious.”
“Huh,” Fringilla says. “Fascinating.” She banishes her goblet back to wherever it came from and rises, smoothing down her skirts. “Well. This has been extremely enlightening, but if I stay here much longer I think my feet may actually turn into icicles.”
“It is rather absurdly cold,” Yennefer says, handing her own goblet to Ealdred and standing. “I appreciate your willingness to brave the chill.”
“The information you have given me is worth far worse than an hour in the cold,” Fringilla says, and for a moment they stand there, eye to eye. Yennefer can remember the last time she saw Fringilla face to face, decades ago, at the ball where Yennefer went north and Fringilla went south and the friendship between them shattered like a dropped vase.
Or perhaps it did not.
Perhaps it only went dormant, like a flower bulb buried in the soil.
“I shall write to you, to inform you of what I find from Rience’s associates,” Fringilla says softly.
“I shall answer,” Yennefer replies. An olive branch, offered and received.
“The Great Sun smile on you,” Fringilla says, smiling a little; Yennefer inclines her head.
“And the gods bless you, as well,” she says, and Fringilla turns and opens a portal - skillfully but not nearly as swiftly as Yennefer has learned to do - and leads her guards through it.
When it closes, Yennefer sighs and sinks back into her chair, letting her head fall back against the wood and closing her eyes. Ealdred puts the goblet into her hand again, and she drains it, tart juice and sweet honey blessedly refreshing.
“That seemed to go well?” Ealdred ventures. “I did not hear any lies, though her words were very cautiously avoiding some matters.”
“It went better than I was expecting, yes,” Yennefer admits. “She has matured as much as I have.”
“You were marvelous,” Ealdred says, and Yennefer opens her eyes to smile up at him.
“Was I so?” she teases.
“You always are, but today most especially,” Ealdred says solemnly. Yennefer chuckles and pushes herself to her feet, banishing all the cushions back to her rooms with a gesture. She’ll check the ones Fringilla sat on before she uses them again, of course, in case Fringilla poisoned them, but that’s only sensible caution; she doesn’t actually think the other sorceress did so.
“It is too cold here,” she says. “Let’s go home.”
Artek pushes away from the wall with a grunt of agreement. Yennefer opens a portal to Kaer Morhen with a sharp gesture, and takes Ealdred’s offered arm as they walk through.
Kaer Morhen feels very warm after the chill of Haern Caduch, but Yennefer thinks maybe the warmth in her chest is that of having started to reforge a friendship - or at least an alliance - she has long considered shattered for good.
And one which ought to give the Brotherhood of Sorcerers a great many nightmares. Nilfgaard and the Wolflands are each dangerous enough independently. If they ally themselves against the Brotherhood…
Well. Yennefer is looking forward to that.