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“’Her touch has turned the tumblers and unpicked the padlock of my heart’ - what do you think, Geralt?”
Geralt looks up from the sword he’s been sharpening and hums. “Do you mean for her to not be the true love?” he asks.
Jaskier frowns at him, rubbing at his nose and smearing the inkstain on it even further. “No, of course not, she’s meant to be the true love, the key to the speaker’s frozen heart.”
“Unpicking sounds like lockpicks, not a key,” Geralt points out.
“Oh damn,” Jaskier mutters. “You’re right. I liked that assonance, and I can’t use unlocked the padlock, that just sounds like doggerel -” He scratches several words out with an irritated huff.
Lambert, stretched out on the rug in front of the hearth, raises his head from the alchemy grimoire he’s been studying. “Did I just hear Geralt give useful advice about poetry?”
“Yes, of course,” Jaskier says absently, scribbling something down and then wrinkling his nose and crossing it out again. “He’s no use for rhyme and meter but he’s got a very good instinct for how a verse can be misinterpreted, which is dreadfully helpful really.”
“Huh,” Eskel says, around the waxed thread clamped between his lips. He puts down his awl to remove the thread. “How often does your poetry get misinterpreted?”
“Oh, daily,” Jaskier laughs. “You would not believe how many people think my pale lover is a woman, for instance.”
Lambert snorts and rolls over, pillowing his head on his arms and grinning wickedly at Geralt. “You mean the ‘best beloved, pale as ice, warm as summer’s gold’?”
Geralt puts a hand over his eyes in dismay. Of course Lambert’s heard that one. It is, to Geralt’s immense mortification, very popular in brothels, mostly because several of the verses are frankly filthy in a very metaphor-veiled way. Geralt takes no responsibility for that one, though; Jaskier presented it to him proudly after a winter in Oxenfurt, claiming several of his fellow poetry professors had assisted him in writing it. Geralt suspects a great deal of wine was also present.
“I like that one,” Eskel says mildly. “It’s got a good internal rhyme scheme.”
“See!” Jaskier says, pointing his quill at Eskel triumphantly. “It’s not just popular because of the subject matter, Geralt!”
“No, no, I think the filth is the main reason people like that one,” Lambert laughs. “Gotta say, though, makes it a lot harder to buy some time when there’s someone warbling about my damned brother. I keep laughing myself out of brothels, it’s fucking embarrassing.”
Geralt goes back to sharpening his sword with a snicker. At least he’s not the only person being embarrassed by that damn poem.
“In any case,” Eskel says, “if the speaker’s heart is frozen, then surely the true love ought to be warming it, not using a key at all.”
“That’s true,” Geralt agrees. “I’ve broken keys in frozen locks before.”
“Now there’s a metaphor you shouldn’t use in a brothel,” Lambert smirks. Jaskier laughs aloud.
“Not unless I want the madam to kick me out!” he agrees. “Damn it, I liked the frozen angle, but I like the lock concept too.”
“I mean, you could use lockpicking, I suppose,” Eskel muses. “Compare the current lover to one who seemed to have the key, but in the end the first lover was false and the lockpicks work just as well…”
“Oooh,” Jaskier says, tapping a finger on his lips and leaving more ink smudges behind. Geralt is looking forward to the moment Jaskier goes to wash up for dinner and notices he’s all inky; the squawking ought to be entertaining. Jaskier is usually very fussy about his appearance, but when lost in the throes of composing he forgets to be quite as fastidious, and Geralt finds it frankly adorable and also hilarious.
“Huh. Can you even use lockpicks, songbird?” Lambert asks, raising an eyebrow curiously.
“Of course,” Jaskier says, grinning.
Eskel blinks in surprise. “Of course?”
“It’s not really an official class,” Jaskier says, shrugging, “but old Professor Elzbet has an elective for bards who are planning to travel instead of taking court positions. Lockpicking, how to untie knots behind your back, which plants not to eat even if they look very tasty, how not to leave cuckoos in every nest, that sort of useful thing.”
“No shit?” Lambert says, sounding faintly impressed.
“I’ll admit I wasn’t great at the natural history parts of it,” Jaskier says, and Geralt snorts. Jaskier regularly mistakes poisonous berries for edible ones, to the point that he is now not allowed to gather berries at all. Jaskier rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue at Geralt impishly. “But I took top scores in lockpicking and I do know the eighteen most effective ways to keep from siring bastards, so really I think I did quite well.”
Eskel snorts. “I assume none of those eighteen ways include being a witcher.”
“No, weirdly enough, Professor Elzbet did not include that option,” Jaskier agrees, grinning. “A strange oversight, truly.”
“Bizarre,” Lambert drawls, and then sits up with a worrisome grin. “Oh hey - we could have a lockpicking competition!”
“I’m in,” Jaskier agrees at once, setting his quill aside. “What stakes?”
“Loser does the winner’s shifts on dish duty for a week.”
“Done,” Jaskier agrees. “Anyone else in?”
“Not me,” Eskel says ruefully. “I never did get the hang of lockpicking. Too finicky. I can play judge, though, if you like.”
Geralt shrugs. “I’m in,” he says, though he doesn’t expect to win, not when Lambert has presumably been picking up tricks from the Cat he thinks they don’t know he’s friends with, and Jaskier is, Geralt must admit, actually very good with his hands.
“I might as well join,” Vesemir says mildly from where he’s been naalbinding quietly in his comfortable chair off to the side, ignoring their antics with the ease of long practice. “See if I remember anything from my misspent youth.”
“How misspent, exactly?” Jaskier asks, eyes lighting up. “Are there stories?”
Vesemir smiles faintly. “I suppose there could be stories, if anyone was interested in hearing them.”
“Stories later, lockpicking now,” Lambert says, scrambling to his feet and trotting out of the hall in search, Geralt assumes, of locks to pick.
“I’ll get our picks,” he says, and gets up, leaving his sword and whetstone carefully to the side. Jaskier blows him a kiss as thank-you and starts tidying up his writing kit.
By the time Geralt gets back with both of their lockpicking sets - Jaskier usually keeps his in his boots or in a cunning pocket in the back of his belt, but hasn’t been bothering while they’re in Kaer Morhen - Lambert has somehow dug up four ancient locks, all rather battered, and is practically vibrating with eagerness.
“It isn’t fair to give everyone different locks,” Eskel decides, pondering the locks laid out on the table. “One might be much easier than the others, after all. So draw straws for who goes first, and then each of you open each lock in turn, and whoever gets all four the fastest wins - is that acceptable?”
“Sure, as long as we drip some oil in ‘em first, to make sure they’re not rusty as hell,” Lambert says, and Jaskier and Vesemir both nod agreement. Geralt goes to get the oil.
Eskel offers them straws when he gets back, and Geralt’s just as pleased to go second after Lambert. Lambert grins and cracks his knuckles and glances at Eskel, who has a small hourglass meant for timing boiled eggs and an expression of stern concentration.
“On your mark, get set, pick,” Eskel commands, flipping the egg-timer, and Lambert gets to work. He is, in fact, very good; Geralt watches with the pleasure he always finds in seeing a true craftsman at work. He is absolutely not going to win this contest, but that’s fine. He’s looking forward to seeing Lambert’s face if Jaskier wins, and he doesn’t really mind doing dishes.
Lambert slaps the last lock down with a triumphant whoop exactly as Eskel flips the egg-timer over for the third time. “Hah!” he says, turning to grin at Geralt. “How d’you like them apples?”
“In a tart, usually,” Geralt says dryly, and ruffles Lambert’s hair into disarray before he steps forward to take his turn. Lambert swears under his breath as he finger-combs his hair back into place, but is too pleased with himself to be truly put out.
He’s even more pleased when Geralt finishes with a respectable but clearly not winning score of five turns of the egg-timer; the third lock was a tricky little beast, and if Geralt had run into it out on the Path, he probably would have just broken it out of frustration after the first thirty seconds unless there was a compelling reason not to.
Jaskier grins and wiggles his fingers as he steps up to take his turn. “These hands are far too delicate for dishes, so I hope you like doing mine,” he tells Lambert smugly.
“Geralt’s going to be doing both of ours,” Lambert points out. Geralt sighs and shrugs. Eskel will end up helping him; he’s good like that.
Lambert does gawp very entertainingly when Jaskier finishes the line of locks in precisely the same amount of time he did. “What the fuck? He’s a bard! I was picking locks when he was in swaddling clothes!”
“And yet I daresay playing a lute gives one a certain useful dexterity,” Jaskier replies, wiggling fingers and eyebrows both. Lambert looks caught between wrath and humor, and finally breaks into a guffaw and slings an arm over Jaskier’s shoulders.
“Yeah, alright, fair. Damn, I did not think you’d be that good! Hidden depths, warbler. We’ll have to do a tiebreaker,” he declares, as they all turn to watch Vesemir.
Vesemir arches an eyebrow at them and doesn’t say anything, and Geralt has a sudden premonition. He doesn’t say a damn thing, though; it’ll do Lambert good to get taken down a peg.
Eskel gives Geralt a look that suggests he, too, has a suspicion of what’s about to happen, but all he says is, “On your mark, get set, pick!”
The thing Lambert always forgets, Geralt muses as he watches Vesemir’s fingers move with astonishing speed and dexterity, is that one does not become an old witcher without being very, very good at a great many strange skills, all of which are useful in some way or another to keep from dying. Even Lambert will admit, if with much grumbling, that Vesemir is a superlative swordsman and has probably forgotten more about monsters than all three younger Wolves put together have ever learned, but Lambert tends to assume Vesemir doesn’t have any interests other than swordsmanship, monsters, and cooking.
And then he is always very entertainingly bewildered when Vesemir demonstrates that he knows all sorts of random things, and is rather absurdly skilled at them.
As he demonstrates, slapping the last open lock on the table while the second turn of the hourglass is only half emptied.
“What the fuck,” Lambert whispers.
Vesemir grins smugly. “You are not the only one to have learned interesting skills from a Cat, my fine lad,” he says, claps Lambert on the shoulder, and ambles back over to his chair. Lambert makes a very amusing garbled noise of dismay and confusion.
“Well now I really want those stories,” Jaskier says, eyes wide and face alight with joy. “Hang on, let me get my notebook out again!”
Geralt chuckles to himself and settles back down with his sword and whetstone. Eskel goes and puts the egg-timer back in the kitchen, gathers up his mending supplies, and comes to sit on the floor by Geralt’s chair, leaning against his legs comfortably as he goes back to boring tidy little holes in leather with a sturdy awl. Lambert brings the locks over to the firelight and sits down crosslegged on the rug, scowling - Geralt would wager a fair amount of money that he’s going to spend the whole damn winter practicing his lockpicking, and probably demand a rematch near spring.
Jaskier pulls out his notebook and quill, uncaps the ink again, and sits down with a happy little wriggle, giving Vesemir an expectant look. “Stories!” he chirps.
Vesemir chuckles and taps his needle against his lips for a moment. “How about the time I ended up trapped in a tower that was supposed to be for an enchanted noblewoman?” he asks, and Jaskier actually squeaks with excitement.
Geralt leans back in his chair as Vesemir’s familiar voice washes over him, comfortable and contented down to his bones. It’s cold outside and warm in here, his brothers are safe and well (and, in Lambert’s case, swearing happily at his lockpicks), and his bard is happy. What more could a witcher want of a winter day?