Of Bards and Witchers

Fourth

    Julian is eighteen and his knuckles are bleeding as bad his as split lip. Madame Sabia Hughes is nothing like her first name might entail and he can’t stop himself from saying as much despite the answering crack of a cane across his back. He chokes back a sob and releases a throaty laugh instead.
 
   The cane comes down a second time for his audacity, and then a third for giving the children ideas— “We are not children,” he grits, through clenched teeth— and a fourth— a young woman sobs into her hand; and he must admit, the madame is particularly insistent on getting her points across tonight. He must look a mess. She must look wild— because, “Maybe then you will learn to keep your mouth shut, Honorable Pankratz.”
 
    Belatedly he notices that tears have begun to roll down his cheeks of their own accord. Frankly it is embarrassing to be crying at this age- he is a man, but he will never be a free one. He has known that his whole life. There is no point in crying.
 
    Soon he will overtake his father as his sole heir. He will become Viscount de Lettenhove and he will marry diplomatically. He will procure wealth and produce a son to endure the same tribulations as himself, and then he will become Viscount de Lettenhove. The cycle will never die.
 
   The quiet of the classroom is stifling, so he gathers his breath to speak.
 
    “It’s quite alright, Madame Hughes,” he rasps, ever cordial. The tip of his tongue runs across his bloodied lip and he tilts his face to the ceiling. One day his mouth will get him into trouble and it will be the death of him. “One day you will be able to admit you were wrong without lashing out like a child.”
 
    The cane comes down a fifth time because he never learns.
 
    Later, when he is bandaged and laying on his stomach in the infirmary so as not to aggravate the wounds on his back, a young woman sits at his bedside and asks, “Why?” He grins— it opens the split in his lip again.
 
    “Why not?” He goads, in turn. “She is no better than the rest of us. She makes mistakes, too.”
 
    Again. Again. Again.
 
    She shakes her head, but he has ignited something in her eyes. “You must be mad.”
 
    —

    Six days after his twenty-second birthday Virginia, Countess de Stael, leaves him ( Again. ).
 
    “I am in love,” she says, as she gathers his hands into hers. “What we had was beautiful, Julian, but it was deluded— Oh, Julian, my darling, no— I think back on our times together with nothing but utmost fondness... But I have pledged unto him my undying faithfulness. I am happy.” Her eyes are warm and alight with something close to sincerity, but her visage remains passive as always. He knows she is anything but.
 
    In all the years he has known her, he has yet to see a smile turn her lips. Today is no different, even as she speaks of her love.
 
    He leaves Kerack without bidding her farewell, lest he make a fool of himself.
 
    —
 
    He suffers a run-in with thugs some months later. It is his second night in the town of Posada, they are three gaudy young men with supposedly nothing better to do than heckle a passing bard. The inkeep yells them off, thrashing about with his oh-so-formidable broom, but not before they get a few good kicks in and scamper off with his coin.
 
    He lets his head thump back into the dirt and sighs.
 
    “Get up, Bard,” the inkeep presses. When Jaskier doesn’t move, he swats him in the head with his broom. Formidable indeed.
 
    Said thugs return the following morning to watch him play and pelt him with food. It sours his mood enough that he becomes crass in his playing— the rest of the patrons don’t take kindly to this, and it lands him little more than incessant jeers and bread in his pants. He’s stated enough with the free food.
 
    And then he spots the man in the back, drinking alone, and thinks fuck it all. The man looks up— molten gold, wisened by and yet full of life— and Jaskier is overcome with a feeling he hasn’t felt since his last day in Oxenfurt. A Witcher looks back at him, and he is something to behold.
 
    Enchanted indeed.
 
    It should have been obvious from the get-go, thinking back on it. If he’d been paying attention he’d have noticed the two swords much sooner. He might have noticed from the stark contrast of the man’s relatively youthful face curtained by pure white locks, or the medallion draped from his throat.
 
    Oxenfurt did not have much by way of Witchers. Roderick had called them a dying breed— they were mutated and old and monstrous. He thinks Roderick might have been wrong— well, maybe not about the old part.
 
   The Witcher blinks.
 
    “Well?” The bard says. “Wouldn’t want to keep a man with... bread in his pants waiting— Three words or less.”

    “They don’t exist.”
 
    Melitele’s tits.