Archive of Our Own ^beta

Grammar – The First Art, mastering the Written Word

Once in a while, when they found an inn (or a tavern, if they were separate), there would already be a bard, local or wandering, playing for the evening. Geralt always listened close, extending his sense as far as he could, listening to see if he could hear lute or lyre or voice, see if he could steer them to another inn instead. But this was the only inn the small town had, and they had been sleeping under the skies for a fortnight, and while Jaskier was more vocal about it, even Geralt wanted to sleep in a bed behind a door that locked, and wash himself with hot water, not just a stream. So, despite that he could hear two instruments, in they went.

When Jaskier faced one of those other bards, there was a dance that had to be danced. They would both see the other’s instrument, smile tightly, and begin posturing like animals about to fight for territory. They would hiss poisoned honey words at each other until one of them slunk away, and Jaskier only won those fights half the time, even now.

Geralt was resigned to it happening again as they stepped inside to hear a flute and a hurdy-gurdy being played. Which made it a surprise when Jaskier made a pleased noise of surprise at his side, and the woman turning the hurdy-gurdy lighting up in response. The man beside her didn’t seem to notice.

Well, if this was an old lover, he was not in the mood to deal with that, though he kept one ear open in case the flautist was a husband or brother who would cause trouble, if he needed to step in and save his bard. Instead, the three of them, bright songbirds all, descended on his corner table just as he was starting to eat, Jaskier leading the way and saying,

“Geralt, may I introduce one of the brightest altos Oxenfurt ever educated, and the woman I am still grateful chose a hurdy-gurdy over a lute, Jadwiga Solarz. And her husband, Piotr.”

“Hmm,” replied Geralt, looking over the other two. So these were academic friends. Less likely to result in threats of castration, at least.

“So this is the White Wolf!” said Jadwiga, her face warm even as she refused to come all that close to him. “It’s an honor to meet Jaskier’s muse.” An honor, not a pleasure, Geralt noted, before he registered what she had called him.

“Jaskier…” he warned, because they had talked about this.

“When I’m with my colleagues, I’m going to use the parlance, and in our profession the terminology is muse!” said Jaskier, already picking off of Geralt’s plate, barely chastised when his hands were smacked away.

“Jadwiga and I are on our way to perform for a wedding,” said Piotr. “We’re singing for our supper to save costs until they pay us. If you’re expecting Jaskier to pay, you had better share.”

Geralt didn’t like the tone the man was taking, it was blunt and sneering, nothing like the honeyed poison words bards used among themselves. He was used to that tone being leveled against himself, but the fact that part of it was definitely said to Jaskier…that unsettled him. “I have coin enough,” Geralt said, voice closer than he’d like to a growl.

But the man was suggesting he couldn’t provide for Jaskier which…shouldn’t set him growling. It shouldn’t. Jaskier only joked about sharing profit, the man could make his own way.

“Piotr,” sighed Jadwiga. “Don’t get territorial about singing tonight. Jaskier’s been there too, you know he wouldn’t force us out.”

“I’d never force you out, dear Jadwiga,” agreed Jaskier, smiling only at her. The implication was clear, and Geralt took a long sip of ale to get the corners of his mouth under control. Only Jaskier would see it, but that was one person too many to see him smile.

He didn’t know the history, why Jaskier seemed to adore Jadwiga and grow icy cold towards Piotr, but he could see the dynamics. And Jadwiga could too, and in true bardic fashion managed to negotiate peace by offering for them to all sing a song together.

“Perhaps we could perform an An Dro?” she offered, cradling her instrument in her arms.

“Well shall we, Reynard?” asked Piotr.

Reynard?

“Don’t tempt me, Baldwin,” returned Jaskier with a sharp smile, before he took the lute out of its case and settled the strap across his body. Jadwiga let out a startled laugh but joined him at the table they had been performing on while Piotr spluttered a bit, following them. Why was he offended?

But then Jaskier began to sing, his voice calling out across the tavern, Jadwiga echoing behind him and Piotr joining in a heartbeat later. And Geralt didn’t have room to think about jabs between the two men, too busy listening to Jaskier sing.

It was clearly a popular song, as the tavern came alive under Jaskier’s leading voice and the other two echoing behind him, lute, flute, and hurdy-gurdy mixing in bright tune and a droning note underneath. Tables were shoved back very suddenly, as people started dancing, the steps sloppy and made looser by drink, but Jaskier was alive the way he always was in performance, and that was always more enjoyable to watch than a dozen tipsy villagers trying to coordinate a dance.

The addition of the dancing made the bards glance between each other, and Piotr twirled his finger a few times as they clearly kept it going longer than normal to allow for dancing the song just a few simple lines to sing over and over as long as people felt like dancing, but they certainly looked happy to keep singing, and if people danced, they got thirsty and would buy more to drink, so the innkeeper looked more than happy to let them keep going.

When the song was done, there was a general clamoring for more, and Jadwiga set about playing a similar tune while Jaskier bowed out, returning to Geralt’s side under the glaring watch of Piotr, even as he played alongside his wife.

“I don’t understand why she married him, he’s the worst,” said Jaskier the moment he got to the table. Geralt didn’t say anything just gestured to one of the bar maids, who nodded and brought a plate and two drinks. “I mean, supposedly she’s in love with him, and I’ll grant that maybe she is, but I truly do doubt that Piotr can love anyone but himself.”

“You know her,” he said.

“We attended Oxenfurt together, yes. We weren’t in the same college, of course, she was in the ladies’ college, but we took all our music classes together. Gods but she’s talented. I wasn’t joking, I am so glad she took up the hurdy-gurdy, I know I’m no slouch at the lute, obviously, but if she competed with me no one would look twice at me. Piotr on the other hand…” Geralt offered a grunt, and while he started into his dinner, Jaskier continued, obliging the curious grunt. “Piotr didn’t attend Oxenfurt. Well, he did, but then he was…let’s say he was asked to pursue education elsewhere. What’s worse is he was only there for music. He hated me because I was better at him at music while I was well on my way to becoming a magister.” He went on to mutter out the years old gossip under the music, while Geralt watched the two bards. Jadwiga beamed at her husband while they played, while Piotr only glanced back at her, too absorbed in the music and consequently the applause from the dancers.

Jaskier talked a lot, but he never told falsehoods, as such. Not about these sorts of things.

“Why did he call you Reynard?” he finally asked, interrupting Jaskier partway through the tale of when he and Jadwiga had run into Piotr after he officially left Oxenfurt but stayed in town, how Piotr had looked like he had just been served a cowpie for his dinner when he saw them in their robes.

“Because you’re the White Wolf,” said Jaskier, as if it was obvious. “Reynard the Fox and Isengrim the Wolf, he thinks he’s being clever.”

“So you call him Baldwin?”

“Yes, for Baldwin the Ass. Really, Geralt, I know you aren’t the most scholarly man but you must have read something of Reynard.”

“Hmm.” He hadn’t. He wasn’t illiterate, but reading for pleasure wasn’t exactly what Witchers did, let alone what seemed to be animal tales.

Jaskier looked like he wanted to belabor the point except that the most recent song finished, and he had to applaud, beaming at Jadwiga who smiled back at him. All tale of foxes and wolves fell to the side as Jaskier ate and applauded his friend and her husband, before Geralt finished his ale and stood. “Room’s third on the right,” he told Jaskier, before taking his things and heading upstairs. A kettle was set near the small stove, and he dropped it atop, waiting for the water to heat and listening to the music coming up from below.

The rambunctious dances were done now, and he could hear Jadwiga’s alto voice singing, muffled for distance but a Witcher’s ears were enough. She was crooning a song of flowers and birds, turning her instrument while her husband played a piping song beside her or occasionally added his voice.

The kettle began to whistle, and he poured out the water into the washbasin, steaming too much for a human’s skin, and set about washing off the road from his skin. Halfway through, the door opened and Jaskier slipped inside.

“Jadwiga went to bed, the crowd convinced Piotr to stay, not that that took much, and I wasn’t going to put myself through listening to that,” said Jaskier in unprompted explanation, setting down his lute case and his own bag. “Water cooled down enough for me?”

“Not yet,” warned Geralt, and went back to scrubbing the cloth across his body, listening as Jaskier kept talking. It was, much as he didn’t want to admit it, somewhat comforting to always know exactly where the other man was while his back was bare and turned.

“In any case, I promised Jadwiga I’d see them off in the morning. They’re to a marriage about a day’s travel south of here, they’re leaving at about dawn to get there before it’s too late, wedding’s in two days. We’re not heading south, are we? Gods Above, if I have to travel with Piotr we’ll come to blows within the hour, I’ll kill him and Jadwiga will never forgive me.”

“Hmm.”

“I wanted to ask, you didn’t seem to know Reynard the Fox. Have you really not read any stories?”

“Water’s cooled,” he said, instead of answering.

“Oh, already?”

All talk of animal tales that Geralt hadn’t read but were apparently so popular he should have was forgotten, but Geralt did still think on it. He knew, of course, that Jaskier had attended university, but he had generally thought of it as a formal education of music. Instead he was a…magister, whatever that meant, and was entitled to robes, apparently. Jaskier was better read than Geralt, which wasn’t surprising, able to toss off literary references as insults. Though, maybe that wasn’t so impressive, apparently it was a shock that he didn’t know Reynard by name alone. Still, Geralt thought it was worth noting, at least.

Much to Jaskier’s delight they didn’t have to share the road, as Geralt was told of a pair of wyverns battling for territory in some Duke’s land to the east while Jadwiga and Piotr were going south, so after a drawn out farewell between Jaskier and Jadwiga, they parted and were happier for it.

“Say, Geralt,” said Jaskier as they made their way out of town. “This Duke, it doesn’t happen to be Duke Maurice Casimir of Cornu, is it?”

“It’s the Duke east of here,” said Geralt only.

“Cornu is east of here. Oh, Geralt, you are to be on your own this time, the Duke of Cornu is the one who has the original Romance of Silence, by Master Heldris’ own hand! I only ever read copies, oh if he would allow me to even see it, I will die a happy man.”

“That good?”

“The story alone, young Silence who is raised as a boy because girls cannot inherit, it’s very good. But his personifications of Nature and Nurture, their arguments over who truly made Silence in the end, that’s the real strength of it.” And on Jaskier went, talking about the story, about Eupheme and Euphemie and the plays on the word “euphemism” and the role of the queen as peace bride who sneers at her inherited kingdom she had been raised to hate, Silence who wasn’t told that the world would say that they were a girl until they were just about eight years old and deciding that they’d hate to be a girl because they would be denied all freedoms if they were, and King Evan who loved “Silensus” but didn’t love “Silence.”

And Geralt listened and very silently within himself promised himself that he’d get Jaskier into this library that would make him so happy. It would keep him away from what promised to be a deeply, deeply dangerous job, but it would also make him smile. And somehow, that had become reason enough.

Uncomfortable with the thought, Geralt nudged Roach a little faster, just to put her a few paces ahead of Jaskier, just so he wouldn’t see him out of the corner of his eye.

Rhetoric – The Second Art, mastering the Spoken Word

The Duke of Cornu did indeed have both a wyvern problem and the original copy of that Romance Jaskier had been in raptures over on their way there. And he was happy to send a Witcher out to dispatch the monsters and to usher a well-read bard into his library.

The wyverns themselves were dead tricky – one was a mature male, the other juvenile and likely just out of its parents’ nest. If he killed the juvenile, the mature would just settle back into its nest, if he killed that mature, the juvenile would snag the nest. He had to get between them during a territorial spat, and that was dangerous at the best of times.

So when it was done, he staggered back to the Duke’s keep with a still bleeding wound on his side a week after he left. Jaskier, on the other hand, seemed eager to get away.

“The Witcher is hurt, and I have rooms enough for him to convalesce,” the Duke was insisting, speaking directly and pretty obviously only to Jaskier.

“Ah, but I have been impeding upon your generosity for a week now, it would be rude for us to demand an unspecified amount of time more,” argued Jaskier. “In any case, a Witcher heals faster than us mortal men, I expect he’ll be in fighting shape by this evening, hmm Geralt?”

Geralt looked at Jaskier and gave a curious grunt, not sure why Jaskier was wheedling his way out of a keep he had been in raptures over visiting, but willing to play along. No one else would know the colors of his noises, only Jaskier had been around long enough to figure them out.

Still, soon enough they were making their way to an inn in the town down the hill from the keep, and Jaskier finally burst and explained, “His library was magnificent, I might have gotten a little teary-eyed when I saw the Romance of Silence, I won’t lie, but the man himself was insufferable.”

Apparently his list of crimes included being “charming without substance” and “thinking himself to be talented in dialectic when he obviously wasn’t” and Geralt quickly sorted that away into Jaskier Being Jaskier and tuned it out until they were in the room the innkeeper pointed them to. The litany of complaints dried up as soon as Jaskier saw the wound on Geralt’s side, and his attention went instead to helping tend it.

Jaskier’s hands were gentle but confident as he washed, packed, and bandaged the wound, and it was the gentleness that unsettled him the most. So when they lingered on his side after the bandages were done, Geralt prompted him away from his side by asking, “Was the duke that bad of a host?”

“Oh he was awful,” said Jaskier, off on a rant and his hands away from Geralt’s skin again as he crossed the room to reach into Geralt’s bag and toss him a clean shirt. “The moment I mentioned studying Silence at Oxenfurt he wanted to talk, which was fine, it was actually quite nice to talk about some of the more ambiguous positions of Heldris as author or Heldris as fictional narrator…but then he went on and on about how he had studied rhetoric. Only rhetoric.”

“And that…offends you,” tried Geralt, surprised at the venom in the bard’s tone.

“You weren’t trapped with someone who thinks because he studied rhetoric he was the height of witticism. I ate dinner with him and he tried to start a formal dialectic. Do you know how odious those are? And he barely knew how to have one anyway.”

Jaskier said things like that sometimes, things Geralt absolutely did not understand and wasn’t sure he ever would understand, and usually he’d let it slide, just another Jaskierism. But this time he knew that word, or at least, it sounded like “dialogue” so he could probably put it together, and so he couldn’t help but say, pulling a shirt on over his wound, “A formal conversation is that bad? Thought you’d like that.”

“A dialectic is not conversation,” corrected Jaskier, but he didn’t sound like he was correcting, more like he was sharing a sort of secret. It was indirect mocking of the duke, Geralt thought. “A formal dialectic is incredibly structured, the idea is to reconcile two arguments. You take two authorities and reconcile the differences. You have to start with the question to determine, then you present a provisory answer. Then you have to present the arguments in favor of it before you have the argument against the provisory answer and then a determination of the question and then the replies to the objections. And I had to take the argument against and listen to him trying his damnedest to handle the replies.”

“What?” asked Geralt, unintentionally. But absolutely nothing Jaskier just said made any sense at all.

There was a moment where they looked at each other, before Jaskier said, his tone of voice suddenly very different, “It is asked whether a kikimora is sentient. And it seems that it is not. Geralt, why is a kikimora not sentient?”

“Jaskier, what are you doing.”

“Give me the reasons why, Geralt.”

Another long moment passed before Geralt sat back, only barely wincing from his wound and said, “Kikimoras don’t think, they act on instinct. If something has kikimora pheromones on it, it perceives it as one of them, even if it’s nothing like them. I could walk up to one smelling like one and it would leave me alone.”

“On the contrary, Master Gorgias wrote in his work ‘The Mind Alone’ that the only thing anyone can be assured of is their own mind. Gorgias’ work explains what has been named ‘The Problem of Other Minds’ – the idea that you cannot know what another being is perceiving. Traditionally used to argue that I may perceive the cold as more extreme than you do, or what I call red you might see what I would call blue. So to animals, and then to a kikimora, the problem persists. Can we know what a kikimora is perceiving? It is just as likely that a kikimora operates by scent before sight, that it prioritizes that sense where we prioritize sight. Is it not possible, then, that a kikimora is indeed sentient by its Other Mind?”

Geralt opened his mouth to argue, before he stopped, suddenly unsure. Jaskier was leading him through a formal dialectic, he had put that much together, this wasn’t an actual argument he was making. “Hmm,” was all he ended up saying, willing to let Jaskier play it out.

“Now, traditionally, since you took up the provisionary answer you would have to take the replies, but I’ll do that for you,” said Jaskier. “To the first I answer, Master Gorgias’ work survives in incomplete forms alone, it would be irresponsible to draw conclusions from what is incomplete. But if we are to humor it, then to The Problem of Other Minds I answer that Master Gorgias is not taking the position traditional associated with the Problem, and indeed his position in the larger work is to imagine we are the dream of the Gods, not that all exists within our human minds. The Problem of Other Minds has been expanded by following thinkers, the arguments associated therein are not applicable to Gorgias.

“To the second, the application of Gorgias’ works to animals, I answer that Gorgias has, in all surviving work, both in The Mind Alone as well as in his complete works on the morality and power of rhetoric, never made mention of animals. To Gorgias, animals have no position in his own writing and thinking. Be it horse or kikimora, they are not applicable to him.

“To the third, the prioritization of senses, putting one before another does not mean the others do not exist. If a kikimora smells the pheromones of its own kind and does not react with violence, then surely it must recognize that what it thinks is a kikimora is half its size. Even if we prioritize sight, it does not mean we don’t hear, smell, taste, or feel. A horse might startle at touch, but upon seeing its master, will calm again. Therefore, a kikimora should make full use of its senses.”

Jaskier walked back over and sat down on the bed, his knee settling on the bed so he could face Geralt as he said, “So, the conclusion we make is that the beginning of the contrary position was flawed, and thus the argument is weak. This we have to ascribe to the imperfect nature of the premise within the dialectic’s format. A contrary position must be made by an authority, of which none have written on kikimoras, for that is the domain of Witchers alone. And there ends the dialectic.”

There was a moment of silence as Geralt absorbed all that Jaskier had just said before he turned back to the bard and asked, “And you had to put up with that for a week?”

“You understand why I was so ready to leave,” said Jaskier, that odd, academic tone of voice missing now. “I would have left ages before if I could have done it without offending the man, but I didn’t want him to cheat you out of coin just because I couldn’t put up with him.”

“You mentioned something. Morality of rhetoric?”

“Oh, that. No one really thinks it anymore, but traditionally, rhetoric was considered just as powerful as medicine. The idea was if you’re good at it, you can convince people to do anything. So if you knew rhetoric but weren’t virtuous with it, then you were a bane on society, or something like that. Of course, having met someone who knew rhetoric but barely anything else, I’m willing to agree that he’s a bane on society.”

He wanted to ask more, about who Master Gorgias was, why he wrote about rhetoric and human relations and also about how one couldn’t be sure of anything but your own mind, but…he was a Witcher. He knew monsters and potions and Signs, yes, he knew wildlife and their habits and rhythms and what behavior was safe and what was dangerous, and that was all very important and he did enjoy knowing when a wolf trotted downwind if it was getting his scent or stalking him, but it wasn’t cerebral, to borrow a word from Jaskier. He already hadn’t heard of stories even Jaskier was surprised he hadn’t heard, trying to keep up with education Oxenfurt offered its students wasn’t meant for a Witcher. They were to kill monsters and that was all. Monsters and Money, no dialectics or casual referencing of great thinkers.

“Hmm,” he eventually offered, and settled to sleep. Wyverns were exhausting.

“He did mention his sister wrote, something about the flocks in her lands being picked off – she was furious because some of the herding dogs are wool dogs and she’s famous in courts for the winter wear she gets from them, but sounded to me like it might be a job. Or maybe it’s just some hungry wolves, but it might be worth checking. Better than wandering without direction, at least. I got directions from the duke, if you’re interested.”

Geralt, half asleep, said nothing, and Jaskier must have thought him fully asleep, because his voice dropped to much quieter levels, and Geralt fell asleep to the wordless humming and singing Jaskier always went to bed with.

Logic – The Third Art, mastering Thought

It was just a pack of hungry wolves, and it seemed they had moved on in any case, so without a contract and a suspicious village, they simply moved on, heading north-northwest. Sometimes, it was just better to take the first road out and not ask around, especially in a place like that. Not actively hostile, but could easily become hostile.

They had the whole day ahead of them, and still plenty of coin from the Duke of Cornu, seeing as they hadn’t had a chance to spend any of it yet. Jaskier, already yearning for a night in a real bed before they had to leave the small town, kept up a running commentary about what he planned on buying, mostly food that wasn’t foraged or game meat, a full hot bath no matter how much it cost, and a night on a feather mattress.

“If you find an inn with feather mattresses, we wouldn’t be able to afford them,” pointed out Geralt.

“Geralt, I’m fantasizing, don’t bring reality into this,” admonished Jaskier. “But I suppose I’d settle for a feather pillow.”

It seemed to be how he amused himself that day, until they set up camp. Geralt laid the snares for dinner, and when he came back with arms full of wood for the fire, Jaskier was deep into hyperbole of all the lovely things he’d demand, but now they were things for Roach as he stroked her neck.

“Where are you going to find a bridle of silk and gold anyway?” asked Geralt, amused as Jaskier jumped.

“It’s what she deserves,” sniffed Jaskier, rather than admit that he had been making up ridiculous and impractical things. “Because Roach is the single best girl on the Continent.” Geralt didn’t say anything, because Jaskier knew how much he loved his horses, saying anything at all would end poorly for his dignity.

But Jaskier never needed him to contribute for a conversation to be held, not if he didn’t want to talk, and there were whole days at a time where talking was just beyond him. And as Geralt built the fire, and got it steady enough that he could go do a quick check of the snares, Jaskier kept going on, partly to Roach, partly to Geralt, and partly to whatever Gods might drift their attention to a wandering bard in the forest. Geralt would never admit it, but it was slowly becoming almost necessary to hear Jaskier chattering away without dedicated audience as they settled into camps or in rented rooms. He wouldn’t be settled into his skin to sleep or meditate otherwise.

When he returned with a dead rabbit to split between them and the rest of his snares in hand, Geralt was almost surprised that Jaskier was still on the topic of Roach, rather than playing his lute. Granted, he was singing a little song that didn’t rhyme in the slightest, but it was still obviously about Roach.

“Still on about my horse?” he asked, idly amused as he set about preparing the rabbit.

“Of course I am. I told you, she deserves it. In fact, deserving of all praise is…is predicated of her! That’s how much she deserves it!”

Geralt’s hands never stopped, but his mind did. He hadn’t ever heard that word before, far as he could remember. Monsters and Money, he told himself. That was his life, no wonder he hadn’t heard it. But, it hadn’t been more than a handful of days since Jaskier had walked him through a formal dialectic, and not more than two weeks since the bard had tossed off popular animal tales and complex Romances with equal familiarity. What was it, Heldris as narrator versus Heldris as author?

Geralt was smarter than Jaskier in a lot of things, namely wilderness survival, but Jaskier had been proving more and more recently that he was smarter than Geralt in a lot of other ways. More traditional ways. And he knew that, but it was different to know something and have it shown to you.

Why hearing Jaskier toss off a word he hadn’t heard before set off this chain of thought, Geralt had no idea.

“You’re quiet,” offered Jaskier eventually, sitting down and helping get the rabbit over the fire.

“I’m always quiet,” said Geralt.

“Yes, but this is different. What’s spinning around in that lovely head of yours?”

Geralt weighed the options. He could say something innocuous that would set Jaskier off on another one-man conversation about anything at all, he could stay silent, or he could ask. If he did the first, Jaskier would take the hint but probably keep watching him closely in the coming days as if trying to figure him out. If the second, Jaskier would probably worry about him and try and ply him into telling him what was “wrong” by earnest questions, offerings of full baths while he made do with a kettle and rag, and sweetbreads spread with jam to try and get him to open his mouth by way of eating. If the third…

“You said something,” said Geralt, choosing the third road. “Earlier.”

“I said a lot of things earlier, even sang some things.”

“Hmm. You said…that deserving praise was predicated? Of Roach.”

“Oh,” said Jaskier, blinking at him.

So this was something he should have heard of. He should know what it meant in context. Geralt turned back to the fire and was about to grunt something along the lines of forget it, when Jaskier continued.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize. Half the things I say I don’t realize I’m saying. That must have been confusing.” Jaskier adjusted himself so he was half turned to Geralt, even as Geralt himself didn’t move. But Jaskier knew him by now, somehow, so he’d know he was listening. “Predication is…Gods, I never realized how hard it is to explain. Uh…when I said that deserving praise and attention and treats was predicated of Roach, that means…it means that it would not be possible for her to be Roach without being deserving of praise and attention and treats. Does that make sense?”

Geralt thought for a moment and said, “No.”

“Figures. Okay. Let me try again.” Jaskier was actually silent for a moment before he said, “Everything has features, yes? Things you can see about them. Predication is an essential feature. Like…like a horse. A horse can’t be a horse unless it’s an animal. So, being an animal is an essential feature, so it’s predicated. If…if a horse is walking in town and a painter knocks pigment out of his window and the horse is turned orange, it’s still a horse. The fact that it’s orange is an accidental feature, so it’s not predicated. If you can change something about a horse without destroying it, that’s an accidental feature. If you can’t change it, then it’s essential, so it’s a predicate.”

Geralt turned to him and said only, “Speak normally.”

“I’m trying really hard, believe it or not, trying to define a predicate is really hard. Look, it’s something that’s intrinsic to something, there’s ten categories and they’re really confusing, and you use them for syllogisms. That’s really all you need to know.”

“What is a–” started Geralt before he cut himself off. Jaskier was frustrated trying to define one word and here he was demanding another. No, he’d better check his store of potions, tend to his swords, something. Let Jaskier go back to his lute and songs.

“What is a syllogism, is that what you were going to ask?” said Jaskier anyway. “They’re a lot easier to explain than predication, I can tell you that.” Geralt glanced over at him, the bard looking like he was waiting for Geralt’s permission to explain, somehow. Geralt offered a small nod, unsure, and Jaskier just smiled and took one the stick Geralt had been using to stir the fire and began to scratch in the dirt as he spoke.

“A syllogism is something you do to create an axiom in logic, something that proves itself, I mean. We write them out like this, it’s a sort of shorthand.” In the dirt he was scratching out AaB BaC AaC. “The little a is what’s called a syllogistic proposition, it’s a visual cue for what it means. A is the universal affirmative, I is the particular affirmative, E is the universal negative, and O is the particular negative. So A is predicated of B, you get that now. So if A-a-B, and if B-a-C, then therefore A-a-C. You can deduce from there.” The stick scribbled out more curious lines of letters cobbled together as Jaskier rattled off how they related, and then tapped each in turn as Jaskier announced them as, “Barbara, Celarent, Darii, and Ferio.”

Geralt didn’t have words, just stared at the lines of odd letters strung together, and wondered how in the name of anything worth swearing on those translated to Barbara. “Jaskier, that doesn’t mean anything at all. That’s just nonsense,” he said instead.

“It is a little complicated in theoretical terms, that’s true,” admitted Jaskier, before folding his face in thought, tongue just peeking out from between his lips. “Okay. Okay. Hmm. Alright, let’s think about it this way. Let’s start with Barbara.”

“What the fuck is Barbara.”

“It’s a mnemonic device – it’s just a prompt. You get too far along it gets hard. You remember the A-a-C Syllogism by calling it Barbara. Okay, here.” And he hopped to his feet and went over to where Roach was eating contentedly, her ear flicking when he got too close, clearly having had her fill and more of his loud attentions earlier. “A horse is an animal, yes?”

“Yes.”

“We can go from there. So, A-a-B will be Animal is true of every horse. B-a-C will be Roach is a horse. Well, we’d phrase it as Horse is true of Roach. So, what’s the A-a-C? The conclusion, if Animal is true of every horse and Roach is a horse is…”

“Roach is an animal,” said Geralt slowly. This couldn’t be what Jaskier was explaining that had been so confusing and made no sense. This was obvious. Part of him couldn’t help but wait for the trick, for Jaskier to start laughing, for something to happen. But all that did was Jaskier smiled and said,

“Exactly! That’s Barbara. Think of Barbara as a lovely, welcoming bar maid who smiles and nods and fills your ale a second time without your asking and without charging. She’s wonderful, and is always saying yes. Now Celarent. Celarent is the Lord who’s convinced you stole the virtue of his betrothed and won’t listen to a word you say – he’s the universal negative.”

“Are these from your own experiences?” asked Geralt.

“No, all these mnemonics came from my professors, I just remember them by means of characters. Anyway, the point stands. Let’s keep lovely Roach as our example, we’ll build around her. This is A-e-B. Say…Horse is not true of any sorceress.” Geralt snorted under Jaskier’s continuing explanation, amused. “But then we have to create a B-a-C, we’ll use the same one as before. Horse is true of Roach. So, therefore our A-e-C…”

“Roach is not a sorceress.”

“Exactly so! Now comes Darii, and Darii is a tease. We love her, but she has conditions that have to be met before she’ll say yes. As for an example…hmm…” His eyes landed on Geralt’s swords and he came striding back, touching the hilt of one as he said, “Weapon is true of every sword. A-a-B. Silver is true of some swords. B-i-C. So, how do we make our A-i-C?”

“Some weapons are silver,” said Geralt. This made sense. These examples fell into place. But looking at the exhaustive scratching in the dirt, and tracing the examples through them, he had a feeling this came from Jaskier, not the inherent understandability of the ideas themselves. Especially given how complex they were when Jaskier had explained without examples.

“Yes! Now Ferio is very difficult. He’s a right contrary bastard most of the time, but I’ve got a handle on him. Think of it this way. We start with A-e-B. That will be ‘Talented is true of no Valdo Marx.’” Geralt’s lips twisted up against his will at Jaskier’s eternal hate of the man. “And now we need a B-i-C again. So, unfortunately, Valdo Marx is true of some troubadours. That will take us to A-o-C, which in this case is ‘Talented is not true of every troubadour.’ Make sense?”

“Why do you phrase it in that way? Why not just say ‘Valdo Marx is not talented, he is a troubadour, so not all troubadours are talented?’”

“Because if you phrase it like that, it’s a lot easier to keep from making an invalid argument,” said Jaskier, shrugging and sitting down, pointing at the written out examples in the dirt. “These are solid arguments. Fit anything in there and you’ll have something that’s axiomatic, something that proves itself. But if you start talking normally with it, then it can fall apart.” Jaskier looked at him and seemed to see that didn’t help, so he went on, saying, “If I say…some cats are black, and some black things are your pauldrons, then it’s invalid. That’s A-i-B and C-i-A. But if I say ‘black is true of some cats’, and ‘Geralt’s pauldrons are true of some black things’ then I can see that it doesn’t make sense and I don’t accidentally create a fallacy and find myself trying to defend that your pauldrons are cats.”

Geralt was silent for a long moment, thinking while Jaskier muttered to himself about if the rabbit was done cooking, deciding it was, and taking it off the flame to start divvying it up between them. “Why bother?” he finally asked.

“Bother with what?” asked Jaskier, looking confused. “I mean we could leave the rabbit as is, but I don’t know how we’d get equal shares if I don’t –”

“Not that. Why bother proving those things? Why not just say that Roach is an animal, why bother going through all that?”

Jaskier looked at him a moment before he said, “Well, I don’t do them for fun. Syllogisms like that are the basic tools of philosophy. How are you supposed to debate Hylomorphism if you can’t prove that the foundations you’re building off are sound?”

Rather than ask after whatever Hylomorphism was, which, if it was something philosophical, would most certainly be beyond him, Geralt only said, “Thought you were a bard. Not a philosopher.”

Jaskier’s nose wrinkled as if the idea was deeply offensive and he said, “I am not a philosopher. But Logic is a liberal art, Geralt, that’s what I was at Oxenfurt to study. What, did you think I just lazed about all day with my lute?”

“Hmm.”

Letting Jaskier splutter and rant in playful offense and taking over divvying the rabbit, Geralt thought. Logic. People threw that word around a lot, even him. Logical sense; then it’s only logical. Phrases like that came out of his mouth from time to time, they were in his mind a lot too. Did any of the things he said were logical match up with those four?

He looked back down at the four syllogisms, and traced them to each example.

Only a striga would be picky enough to only eat hearts and livers. So if a population’s mysterious dead were missing only hearts and livers, then what was killing them was a striga. Did that match?

Eating hearts and livers is true of striga? Is that what it would be? Eating hearts and livers is true of striga, and striga is true of what was plaguing the town, therefore…or, plaguing the town is true of striga? Therefore…

Or would it be another one? Eating hearts and livers is true of striga, monster is true of what is plaguing the town, so striga is true of plaguing the town? No, Jaskier said that was a fallacy, so…

“They’re really hard,” said Jaskier, apparently noticing Geralt thinking. “And these are just the first four. The rest are Camestres, Cesare, Festino, Baroco…Darapti, Felapton, Disamis, uh…Disamis…this is where I always lose it. Boc…no, no, Datisi, then Bocardo, and Ferison. There’s a reason this gets taught at university.”

“You have a handle on them.”

“Well, yes, but I don’t do anything with them. Look, if we walked into a town that was plagued by some monster, I wouldn’t be putting together syllogisms to prove to them I know what it is that’s been killing their livestock. I’d just tell them ‘oh that sounds like a werewolf’ or what have you. You don’t have to know how to fit knowledge into a syllogism. It’s a regimented, academic thing like the dialectic. Doesn’t fit outside the world of intellectualism and are really tedious to do.”

Geralt just let out a grunt of acknowledgment and dismissal. He got up then, and went to his store of potions, determined to distract himself. No Witcher had ever sought education beyond what was offered to them in their keep. Their lives were prescribed to the Path they had to walk, it didn’t allow for stints at universities. He was a Witcher. Maybe he didn’t choose that life for himself, but it was the one he had. Witchers didn’t learn this stuff, so he shouldn’t mourn that he couldn’t keep up with it. He wasn’t meant to and that was all.

Behind him, Jaskier slowly began to pluck at his lute, and when he did return to the fire to spread his bedroll out and sleep, he noticed that Jaskier’s footprints were carefully around the edge of his written out syllogisms. He deliberately stepped on them, smearing them. It was petty, but it made him feel better, in a quietly nasty way.

He lay to sleep, chiding Jaskier to go to bed soon or he’d have only himself to blame when he complained of being tired the next day as they travelled on. Jaskier waved him off, and as he slipped to sleep, Geralt could hear him singing to himself. And if the maiden in his song was named Barbara, he was already too close to sleep to think too hard on that.

Arithmetic – The Fourth Art, mastering Numbers

Monsters had been thin on the ground ever since the wyverns on the duke’s land, which was good for the people of the Continent, but not that good for their purses. Villages and towns and hamlets didn’t like a Witcher when there were no monsters, and while Jaskier could charm a night at the local inn in exchange for his playing, he couldn’t always guarantee money.

They still had the payment from Cornu, but even the most generous amount of money would soon run dry if they could only spend it with nothing replenishing it. There was only so much they could do to save costs, especially when Roach threw a shoe.

The local farrier was unabashedly in love with Roach, most farriers and stable hands were, and happily promised to get the shoe back on, but even with their decent combined purse and the farrier willing to cut down the price for the privilege of getting to care for her, it wasn’t cheap to shoe a horse.

When Geralt paid the farrier, stroking Roach and quietly murmuring promises that it would be fine soon, he silently started to think of what he could do to save costs, because it certainly was a lot.

He could take jobs he didn’t like, unsheathe steel for a while and involve himself in the squabbles of men, but that always left a bad taste in his mouth and despite that everyone was more than happy to remind him that Witchers might have been born human they weren’t anymore, when he turned blade to men rather than monsters, people tended to shriek and throw stones and accuse him of “turning on his own kind.” He could avoid towns entirely, hunt his own food, sleep in the woods. Jaskier would hate it, but they might have to, until a contract appeared.

It felt wrong, sometimes, to hope for a monster to cause trouble for people or outright kill them, but times like this, it was monster or nothing.

Jaskier himself was in the small public house, and when Geralt returned scribbling away in a notebook that wasn’t his song notebook, which was odd. When he approached, Jaskier looked up, and smiled tightly at him.

“So, things are going to be a little rough for a few weeks,” he said.

“Hmm,” agreed Geralt.

“I’ve been running numbers, look.”

The notebook was filled not with songs, but with equations. Numbers crammed together in all available space. Jaskier pointed at one particular group and began to explain. Based on their usual spending habits, and the conversion rates between ducats and orens, they should have been able to live on the duke’s payment for at least a month and a half, barring any great expenses and not considering the growing of their purses through performance and contracts.

“But we’ve had no income. And then Roach threw a shoe,” said Geralt.

“Then Roach threw a shoe,” agreed Jaskier, turning the page to another close group of numbers. “It’s not the end of the world, but we’re going to be feeling it. See, our usual weekly spending, averaged out between the two of us, comes to about seventy a week. With Roach’s shoe, we’ll be flat out of money in just a few days.”

“Unless we cut down,” pointed out Geralt.

“Exactly. I’ve done some counting. It’s possible for us to go as low as about twenty two a week, even if we don’t change our habits about how many nights a week we spend in town.”

“How do you figure that?”

Jaskier walked him through it, breaking down all their expenses with roughly average costs. A meal cost that much, ale versus wine cost this much, and so on. If Jaskier stopped indulging in wine alone, that brought costs down this much, if he managed to negotiate to sing for supper and shelter and Geralt happened to share that room with him, it halved the costs entirely which save them that much money.

“That leaves us spending what, five and a half ducats a day?”

“Just about,” agreed Jaskier. “Which is doable, but rough.”

“We could always camp most nights.”

“We could, much as I’d hate it. But you won’t get contracts unless we’re around people, which means you’ll have to spend at least half a ducat for an ale to be in gathering places. And I can’t do anything to supplement our purse if I can’t play for people. I could busk, sure, but that’s never as profitable.”

“So we could be half a ducat a day.”

“Let’s save that for when we have two ducats to our common names, shall we?”

“We can hunt.”

“You can hunt and I’m not half bad at foraging by now, but I would not go wandering around a dark forest to look for dark berries if I can help it. Five and a half is you paying for a meal and mooching off my room. If I can negotiate that.”

“You’ve sung for your supper.”

“Yes, but not for food and a room. It’s usually one or the other.”

Their purses were light and Jaskier’s sums didn’t look very promising. Unless they found a monster in the next town. Or if they were exceedingly lucky, they’d find a monster, kill it, and find someone in town offering pay. That weighed the danger of carting in dead monster parts to human settlements, though.

“Makes you wish we could charge interest, doesn’t it?” said Jaskier with a small laugh. “Even just two percent.”

“Hmm,” said Geralt, who only had a basic understanding of interest. It didn’t work on Witcher contracts, nor bardic ones, apparently. Money that made money, somehow. There were certain areas where charging interest was considered a sin, others where it was a necessary evil, and others where it was celebrated as creating prosperity.

Wait. Why did Jaskier know how to charge interest? It didn’t work in a profession where your pay was sometimes food.

“Why do you know how to charge interest?” asked Geralt.

“Oh, I don’t. Well, I know the equations, probably. It’s been a while since I had to run them, but I do have a very good memory. So they’re probably up there, somewhere. Anyway, this all seems dire, but we very well could get a monster in the next town, so we’ll live lean and hope for the best.”

“Why were you running equations for interest?” asked Geralt again. Jaskier knew books and formal debate styles and the foundations of philosophy, he knew poetry and ballads, why did he know the moneylender’s profession too? Did he know his friend at all?

“Aren’t you curious,” commented Jaskier.

“You aren’t a moneylender,” countered Geralt.

“That’s fair. No, it was just arithmetic exercises, that’s all. Theoretical problems. If this much is lent with this percent interest how long to pay it off if you pay back in installments of that amount and how much is the profit in interest. Hated them, but it did always make a point of why some people consider it a sin.”

“You just said you wished we could charge interest.”

“Geralt, in what world do you think I’m not a sinner? How many times have I been the instrument of adultery? Granted, I only really know about it after the fact, not my fault they don’t tell me they’re married, but the point stands.”

Geralt bit down on the smile that wanted to bloom, but he clearly didn’t manage it enough, because Jaskier was grinning at him conspiratorially before turning back to his book of sums. “How long is getting the shoe back on Roach going to take?” asked Jaskier, contemplating the numbers.

Considering the farrier had been in love with Roach…

“Tomorrow,” said Geralt.

“Well, then I’d better see if I can’t sing for supper or shelter. The quicker we cut down on costs the longer we can survive,” said Jaskier, closing his book of sums and tucking it away.

“We won’t die.” Geralt had been without a coin to his name hundreds of times, they’d just have to hunt and sleep under the stars for a while. It was summer, it wouldn’t be the least bit unpleasant.

“I am prone to hyperbole and we both know it. I know we won’t starve. Just…I’d prefer if we didn’t have to resort to living in the woods to stay alive.”

“We won’t.” He’d take jobs that required steel, not silver, even if they left a bad taste in his mouth, it’d be worth it to keep the option for Jaskier to sleep inside. Geralt was more than fine sleeping in the woods and eating nothing but game meat and foraged things for unknown amounts of time if he had to, but Jaskier deserved better. Mildly uncomfortable with the thought, Geralt instead went and got an ale, ready to sip it slowly and let Jaskier take mouthfuls through the evening as he sang, and now very aware of the cost of it. Half a ducat, they could allow themselves five more that night.

He needed to find a job and quickly.

Geometry – The Fifth Art, mastering Magnitude at Rest

The farrier had reshod Roach, and even checked her other shoes too, replacing her back left shoe without extra cost. He stroked Roach’s neck longingly in farewell, which made Jaskier roll his eyes, as if he hadn’t bidden dramatic farewells to Roach himself.

And when Jaskier asked if the farrier hadn’t heard tale of any monsters nearby, the farrier furrowed his brow and shrugged before he said, “There’s a town north of us, Vondam, they’re building a new tower.” He glanced at Geralt and said, “Might appreciate extra hands.”

“Hmm,” said Geralt. That was honest work, it wouldn’t cause him to draw steel, and he had muscle enough to help carry stone or brick, whichever they built with.

“We’ll head north, then,” said Jaskier. “Before they finish.”

The farrier snorted a laugh and said, “They’ve been building the thing for years, you’ve got time.”

“Why?”

“Keeps falling over. This is their fourth attempt, there’s talk that they might inter a sacrifice to keep it up if it falls again.”

“That’s just going to breed a monster,” said Jaskier. “Right, Geralt?”

“Not if it’s a willing sacrifice,” said Geralt, distracted with settling Roach with her tack. “Most wraiths are only there for unfinished business or poor burials. If they go willingly under the tower, they won’t come back.” To the farrier he said, “Thank you.”

“Your horse is a lady among mares,” the farrier said. “Bit nippy, but an honor to shoe.”

“Hmm.”

Nodding their farewells, Geralt led Roach out and towards the road heading north.

“I know we’re not exactly spoiled for choice or anything, but I’m…not sure I want to go somewhere like that,” said Jaskier slowly as they walked.

“They won’t kill you,” said Geralt plainly.

“I wasn’t worried about that.” Geralt just stared at him, and Jaskier sighed and said, “Alright, yes I was. Builder’s rites are stories, Geralt, I didn’t think people actually did them!”

“They do, but it’s usually coins or whittled things, not people.”

“Yeah, which is why that people from out of town have heard about possibly putting someone in there is so worrying. They’re going to put someone down there if it doesn’t stay up this time.”

“Won’t be you.”

“Why, because they’re still building it? One accident in building it, they’ll shove someone in there even if it isn’t the bottom!”

“You aren’t from there.”

“Come again?”

“Sacrifices like that, building rites, they have to be from the community. Otherwise, why would the gods care? It’s ritual murder, then, not sacrifice.”

Jaskier was quiet a moment before he said, “You know, the fact that you know that is not as reassuring as you seem to think it is.”

It was his profession to know those things. His life depended on knowing when the word sacrifice was taken literally or if only the motions were adhered to, sometimes. Blood spilled whether it was willingly given up or not. Jaskier knew that, but letting him give voice to nervousness would help dispel it.

That was Jaskier. He actively trailed behind Geralt to most monsters, even when Geralt told him time and again that it was too dangerous, and didn’t fear those encounters. But rumors spread about builder’s rites terrified him.

Within two hours, Jaskier’s fear had disappeared, even the tang in the scent had faded away. Probably talked himself around into wondering why this tower was so important. Probably had some fantastic story bubbling in his brain. More likely than not it was some local lordling’s vanity project and he was too proud, or stupid, to give up.

But if they offered coin for offered hands, he’d take it. Living on less than six ducats a day was possible, but miserable.

When they reached the town, it was market day, crowded and busy, and around half-organized brick rubble that lay in a straight line. Tower fell over again.

“You’d think they’d clean it up,” muttered Jaskier as they made their way through town. And, while Geralt stabled Roach, Jaskier asked around and got information of where they could offer their services to helping clean up the brick.

“They don’t even have a dedicated architect,” said Jaskier that night over a shared meal in the inn, picking off the same plate. There was always the chance they’d see Geralt was a Witcher and turn him away, they couldn’t go spending money. “No wonder the thing’s fallen down so many times, this town is a mess.”

“Are you going to start claiming you’re an architect now?” asked Geralt, and then started to worry very seriously that perhaps he was going to start claiming that. After all, Jaskier had revealed plenty of other skills recently.

“No,” said Jaskier, wrinkling his nose the same way he had when Geralt implied he was a philosopher, like it offended him. “But even I know that when a tower’s fallen down three times already means something isn’t going right in the plans. In any case, the room is paid for by my performing, so if you’ll excuse me…”

“We’re doing manual labor tomorrow, Jaskier, don’t stay too long,” warned Geralt. Jaskier’s fingers had the callouses a lute left, but his palms were still soft. He hadn’t done work like cleaning up a fallen tower in his life, he deserved at least one warning.

“Of course, of course,” waved off Jaskier. “Room’s the fourth on the left, by the way.”

Geralt lingered anyway, taking slow and occasional mouthfuls of ale, but partway through his performance, someone bought Jaskier a drink, and Geralt drained the rest of the one they were to share and went to bed. He was a Witcher, he’d have to do twice the work a mortal man would do the next day and he knew it.

When Jaskier came upstairs, Geralt woke. He always did. Sleeping behind a door that locked was nice, but only when it was locked. Otherwise, he’d wake. Laying in bed, listening to Jaskier hum to himself, the sound a near-silent one that only slid in and out of existence at all, Geralt relaxed the instinctive tensing of his muscles.

Eventually the other man slid into bed with him, back pressed against back, and that pressure, vibrating ever so slightly from the humming, was enough to let Geralt slide into sleep once more.

The next day dawned early, and when they got to the clearing site, they weren’t turned away, which was encouraging. It was simple work, gather wheelbarrows full of spilled brick and carry them to where they were being stacked in pallets for another go at the tower. He and Jaskier were to work together. And as expected, Jaskier chatted with everyone as they did.

Through that, they found out that this town was growing from the little nothing village that had been there, and this tower was to be a symbol of growth. Which was aptly pointless to have a lot of fledgling civic pride and no sense tied up in it.

And eventually, Jaskier wandered off from his side, until Geralt only spotted him bent over a table near the stacked pallets, peering at the plans that had been left there. And when he came back with another load of bricks, Jaskier was arguing with a whole group of puffed up men.

It looked too much like when he was cornered by cuckolds or people who thought he was going to cuckold them, and Geralt found himself walking over without conscious thought, as if to protect him. Instead, Jaskier turned to him, exasperated and said, “Geralt, will you vouch for the fact that I’m not an idiot?”

If they were alone, he’d joke that he couldn’t do that. But there were people. “You’re not an idiot,” he said instead.

“Where did I study?”

“Oxenfurt.”

“And do I or do I not qualify for robes there?”

“You’ve said something about that, yes.” Geralt was suspicious now. What was this about?

“As my companion can verify, I am a magister of the arts which means I do know what I’m talking about when it comes to geometry.”

“You? A magister?” scoffed one of the men. “You’re a bard, I saw you performing last night.”

Jaskier had that particular look on his face that made Geralt linger, ready to step in, not exactly wanting to be chased out of town because his friend couldn’t control his temper. “Have you ever learned the method of exhaustion, sir? Do you know what the parallel postulate is, sir? Do you know how to use the Lunes of Alhazen, sir? Have you read Alhazen’s treatises on his attempts to square the circle and his postulations that it’s impossible, sir? Are you familiar with how the relation between geometry, optics, and equations of the fourth degree allow for the calculation of volumes of paraboloids, sir? I will sit you down and walk you through each if you require, sir, but do not assume that because I sing, I am uneducated.”

There was a breath of time that Geralt was, for a moment, absolutely convinced would be broken by violence, that he’d have to step in and they’d have to leave town immediately and unpaid. But the one of the others, an older man with a neat beard, asked, “Why does our tower fall, then?”

The scoffer stayed back as the others bent over the plans, as Jaskier explained that one of the base equations of the whole plan was wrong. Geometric compasses and straightedges were called for, and they all crouched in the dirt together as they drew out angles and equations and quickly struck up an argument about the “Ludolphian Number.” This was safe, Geralt could go back to his own work.

This was the division of skills, he thought to himself. Geralt was good at hard physical work, be it carting brick or slaying monsters, while Jaskier was snapping off complex ideas and was familiar with treatises and complex relationships between fields of study. Geralt didn’t even know what a paraboloid was, let alone that anyone needed to figure out the volume of it.

He was getting maudlin, and he shoved down those thoughts. There was no use getting caught up in thoughts like that. None at all.

By the end of the day, Jaskier was still with the small committee of planners, lanterns set up and now with leaves of parchment and strips of bark covered in sums and drawings, and chalk and tablets the same. Even the scoffer was engaged in the conversation now, it seemed. And when Geralt went to collect the day’s pay, the paymaster told him he was entitled to one man’s work for one day, not two.

“Your friend wandered off too early for any pay,” he was informed. Which was fair.

When he went to collect Jaskier, the man was stumbling over trying to get out of being on the planning committee for the project. It sounded, amusingly, almost like when he was trying to get out of being accused of being the instrument of adultery. “Well, well, you see, uh, I might very well be educated, yes, but my – my heart is not in these pursuits. Academic! Intellectual stimulation only! I, uh, uh, ah Geralt! Got the day’s pay? Shall we off?”

“Hmm,” he grunted. Apparently being an architect was just as distasteful to Jaskier now as it had been the night before.

“Right, well, you know how it is. Best of luck on your tower! I’m sure my equations are more than enough, do check as you build, I’m sure you’ve got plumb bobs and a smith must be able to beat out a surveyor’s chain for you, shall we Geralt?”

“We have to pay you, Magister Pankratz,” protested one of the committee members.

“Ah, yes, well, I couldn’t be paid as if I was part of your committee, of course.” He seemed torn between getting paid and being obliged to stay, and the result was enough amusement to make up for a day of manual labor.

Of course, he was paid much more than a laborer’s day wage, and that night at the inn, they counted their money and Jaskier did a lot of quick sums in his notebook, and it seemed two meals and two ales were suddenly possible. A lot was suddenly possible, it seemed.

“Maybe I should do work like this more often,” said Jaskier, but his tone was dejected.

Jaskier was brilliant, Geralt was realizing that more and more. He knew so many things and tossed them out just as casually as conversation. He was one of the smartest men Geralt knew, he could be a philosopher or an architect just as easily as a bard, and it might even offer steadier work than a bard. But he didn’t want to do that sort of thing. He wanted to be a bard, to sing in taverns and travel around writing songs of adventures.

For the sake of their purses and not having to live on less than six ducats a day, quite possibly he should take those jobs.

But he looked miserable at the idea. That sort of look didn’t belong on his merry face, and Geralt wanted it gone.

Words weren’t his strength, he couldn’t reassure Jaskier like that, he didn’t know how to say that no matter what, he’d do what it took so Jaskier didn’t have to do a thing he didn’t want to do. So instead he just looked at him and said, “I’m never calling you ‘Magister Pankratz.’”

“Oh, thank the Gods,” said Jaskier, who understood him even when Geralt wished he didn’t. “We might have to leave town tomorrow, though, otherwise they might try and get me to stay again.” Considering they were only there because of the chance to make money from a few day’s work clearing rubble, the money made from Jaskier’s consulting work cleared up any reason to stay.

“Hmm,” agreed Geralt.

Music – the Sixth Art, mastering Numeric Relations

The next town they went to had been dealing with a Bruxa and had lost more young men for trying to kill it than the Bruxa’s own attacks. It meant they were desperate, and finally Geralt could offer his own strengths. It wasn’t a skill that would make people beg him to stay, but it was what he was best at.

Jaskier had been told to stay back, and he had cheerfully ignored it, until the first shriek’s power threw him back multiple feet and splayed on his back. That seemed to prove there was no “safe vantage point” and he thankfully fled back to where Roach was ground tied.

Without his attention divided between attacking and protecting, the fight was a lot faster, even though it wasn’t easy or short.

But when it was done, the Bruxa’s head cut clean off for proof for payment, Jaskier was apparently unbothered by how he had been attacked, instead chattering away about how experiencing the power of a Bruxa’s scream was only going to make the ballad even better.

He at least had the tact to be silent about his creative process while in the town that had lost so many to this monster, but a town that lost so many wanted its monsters gone – and that included Witchers. The fact that the community was in mourning was probably the only reason Jaskier didn’t go on his usual tirade about how they should treat Geralt better.

Instead, he plucked through possible tunes and muttered lyrics as they passed on, and by the time they had to set up camp, he had a basic tune for his Bruxa ballad.

Every so often, Jaskier would ask Geralt what he thought of a tune, knowing by now that he’d just get picky about the words. Tunes on the other hand, Geralt could say were good or bad and not have to say “that’s not how the battle went” for the thousandth time.

The compromise was he’d sing the tune with meaningless noises, just sounds so Geralt could listen and give feedback. Inasmuch as he could, usually just humming if it wasn’t bad and grunting if it needed work. It wouldn’t work unless Jaskier knew him as well as he did.

That night, though, as Jaskier sang out a tune with meaningless noises to fill the space of words, Geralt’s eye caught onto the bard’s hands. One was held palm up, the other’s fingers dancing across his palm and fingers, touching very specific places that corresponded with each note.

“What are you doing?” Geralt asked, surprising both of them that he did. Enough that Jaskier stopped singing and blinked at him in confusion.

“Singing…?” he tried.

Geralt huffed in agitation and said, “With your hands.”

“Oh. Just…measuring the song?” There was a difference in tone there. It wasn’t uncertain, it was a realization that, even as he was saying it, Jaskier realized it didn’t make sense. Geralt just raised a brow at him until he sighed and said, “Music is mathematics, unfortunately. So sometimes you need to map it.”

“With your hands.”

“Yes. Guido of Arezzo developed it, ages and ages ago, so we call it the Guidonian Hand. The idea is that you can use your hand to map intervals, and its main use was for singers reading musical notation, but us composers use it too. I’ll show you.” And just like that, the bard came and sat next to Geralt by the fire, taking his worn hand in his own, and holding it out in front of them, palm facing them. It felt unbearably intimate, but it was equally unbearable to think of pulling away. “Each note in a scale has a corresponding sound, we call them solfège. You’ve heard me singing them, ‘ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la.’ And each portion of the hand matches it too.”

Jaskier’s fingers were gentle as he touched the pad of Geralt’s thumb and said, “The durum line starts here. There are three, and they interlock. Durum, Naturale, and Molle. We start with Ut.” And he began to sing scales with those meaningless noises, his fingers touching gently along Geralt’s, sliding down his thumb, across the base of his fingers before spiraling up them. And he repeated it again for the other two lines, showing how they swirled together. He was very, very aware of where each note was and where Jaskier was touching him, singing quiet scales in his ear as they swirled across his hand. “In classes, your professor would just touch and say, ‘sing in Molle’ and you’d have to hit the pitch. Believe it or not, it’s where the phrase ‘running the gamut’ comes from.”

“Really?” he couldn’t help but ask. He had heard that in training at Kaer Morhen, but it was musical? Had the elder Witchers known? Did anyone else wish, from time to time, that they could learn more than life prescribed them?

“This note, here, on the thumb, if you want the fancy name, it’s the gamma ut,” Jaskier was saying. “Gamma ut, Gamut, you see where it came from. Scales used to be called gamuts, too, but now it’s just the whole run of the hand.”

“Why is it called ut? Where did the sounds come from?”

“A hymn, if you believe my professors. Hundreds of years old, I’ve never even heard it. But that’s where solfège comes from.”

Geralt nodded and then asked, “Why do they repeat? The ut starts here, but then it repeats later.”

Jaskier’s face lit up, and Geralt had a feeling he’d made a mistake. Jaskier was going to tell him about the technicalities of music, and he wasn’t sure there was a way out of it.

“Each scale, from ut to la, is called a hexachord. Because there’s six notes. They have to exist in groups of six, but there’s that step in between, which is where gaps get filled by the other lines. Hexachords exist all the way through the gamut, that is, the entire scale through the hand. And they interrelate. All music is read by internal relations, it has no link to absolutes.”

“What?” It sounded like Jaskier, who didn’t believe in absolutes himself, but it didn’t make sense with what little Geralt understood of music, that seemed to have specific notation.

“I know, trust me, I know. What it just means is…here, wait.” And he got up long enough to fetch his songbook and return, opening to one of his ballads, the one about the vampire. “Don’t say a word about the words, I’m making a point about the music.” Geralt snorted, amused. “Alright, so when I sing this, I sing it like this.” And he drew his finger along the sketched out line of notes, written along hastily drawn staves of music, as he sang. Geralt couldn’t comprehend what the notes meant, but Jaskier sang the noises – the solfège – with confidence anyway. “Now if I were to give this to Jadwiga – you remember her, right? Dead talented on the hurdy-gurdy, married to Useless Piotr? If I were to give this to her, she’d read the relation between the notes. See how this one is marked flat? That means this is a mix of naturale and molle lines. We don’t need to get into that, though. So she’d read that relation, and sing it in a mix of those hexachords that is comfortable in her voice. Understand?”

“No,” admitted Geralt. But the fact that he didn’t wasn’t surprising. Not really. Apparently, music was just as hard as everything else Jaskier had long since mastered. It just seemed easy.

“That’s fair,” said Jaskier, instead of looking surprised that he didn’t understand. “Give me your hand again, I’ll show you.” Wordlessly, Geralt did so, watching as Jaskier’s finger flew from his hand to the songbook, showing the notes on music staff and on hand. “The mix of naturale and molle exists here; when I sing it, I sing it here. But the hexachords repeat. So if this is too low for Jadwiga, she might instead use these hexachords up here instead. And all the notes will match up perfectly, just better suited for her voice. I can try and sing it that high, but I don’t think either of us would like to hear that.”

Geralt’s free hand drifted to the one Jaskier held and traced the sections Jaskier had mapped out. It made some sense, but so too had the syllogisms until he had tried to fit his knowledge into them. It just meant Jaskier was good at explaining, if he made the impossible make sense, not that it was something he could ever try and understand on his own.

“Why were you mapping your new tune?” he eventually asked.

Jaskier shrugged and said, “Well, frankly, because I’m still writing it. I told you, music is mathematics, unfortunately. If I keep to standard measurements within music, it should be fine, but I’m still doing the calculations, as it were.”

“Hmm,” said Geralt. And then he ventured, “Show me.”

Jaskier smiled, and he kept hold of Geralt’s hand, singing the solfège of his newest ballad as his fingers danced across Geralt’s fingers and hand, showing the relations of the notes and the hexachords, his touch always gentle.

Behind him, Geralt could swear he heard Roach snort at them, but he didn’t pull his hand away. He didn’t understand, not totally, but it was enough to watch.

Astronomy – The Seventh Art, mastering Magnitude Inherently Moving

The Bruxa ballad, “The Vampire’s Cry,” was immediately popular, and it was a good thing that Jaskier had shown him the tune alone, because it absolutely was not what happened. Yes, the Bruxa’s scream was enough to toss someone back, but it hadn’t incapacitated him for more than a second, not the dramatic question of if he could rise in time to avoid her claws. No, that had been Jaskier, winded and struggling to his feet to retreat to safety.

The song did help swell their purse until that lingering uncertainty of how little could they spare a day settled in the back of their minds. Not gone, because their lives didn’t allow them to forget it, but not needed just yet. Especially the further away from the hunt they got, since there was less of a chance of someone having lost a friend or relative to the Bruxa, letting it just be an exciting song.

There were drowners near the mill of the village they were in, a thing that teetered into being a town at the base of some earl’s home, and that was easy enough, after a Bruxa. The miller was grateful, he had been too frightened to go out and fix his waterwheel, and since his livelihood had been saved he paid as generously as he could. When he returned to the tavern, Jaskier just about tackled him in greeting, something having riled him up.

“His lordship the Earl of Mariben is hosting a party in three days’ time at the advice of his astrologer, who is predicting the height of the Tears of Melitele,” said Jaskier all in a rush. Geralt, long since used to this, ventured only,

“And you want to play at that party.”

“What? No. Well, usually yes but ah, you see, his daughter was…”

“You slept with his daughter and now he’d run you through soon as he sees you,” surmised Geralt.

“Alright, first of all it was entirely consensual and her husband is a prig who only married her for the dowry so he could shower his mistress in jewels. Why the hell he didn’t marry the mistress I’ll never know. As for her father, he’s one of those types that assumes that woman’s worth comes from perceived purity or whatever rot he’s got in his head, so. Granted, I would like to avoid a blade to the stomach. No, no, the point is, the Tears of Melitele are to be at their height soon.”

“They happen every year, Jaskier, you must have seen them before.”

“Well, yes, but they only happen once a year. Why pass up any chance to see them?” Geralt just huffed and stepped past him, getting himself an ale. Drowners weren’t hard, but a drink after a fight was always welcome. Jaskier, predictably, just trailed after him, still chattering away as they sat down in a corner of the tavern. “In any case, I’m not sure I trust an astronomer who can predict the height of astrological events well enough for an earl to invite his peers for a party.”

“So they aren’t going to be at their height?”

“No, well, yes, but we won’t know what day. This is the time of year for them, they always happen around now, their radiant is, of course, the Dancer, and that’s up.”

“And you can calculate it better?”

“Well I’d be more honest than someone who has to interpret the stars to his patron’s liking, I’ll say that. But it is always a good guess that these days will be some of the best.”

“You’re trying to ask for something.”

“Of course I am. Look, we aren’t unable to afford it, but humor me and sleep out under the stars?”

It would save costs, something they should always save as much as possible, because one never knew how long between contracts you could go. It was practical for that purpose, and it would result in them avoiding the parade of nobility that would come waltzing through town to visit the earl for his party, which was a boon to Geralt. Nobility was best in small doses and never in a parade.

It would also make Jaskier happy.

“Hmm,” he agreed, and predictably Jaskier’s face lit up.

The bard had charmed the butcher and his wife, apparently, because he unveiled a small chain of sausages for the evening while they set up camp. There was a hill just outside of town, and the trees thinned out near the top, which meant clear view of the skies. The earl’s home was obscured and if they turned away, so too was the village. It was like when they were in the depths of the wilderness, far away from all settlements, just the two of them.

They ate their meal at sunset, watching the sky be pained in purple and gold, frying sausages over the fire and handfuls of foraged goods they had gathered on their walk up. Roach had found a patch of clover and seemed delighted with it, ignoring both of them entirely. Not long after, they let the flames die down, not wanting the light from it to ruin their night vision. Well, Jaskier didn’t, Geralt’s would still be just fine.

“You know, it’s said that in Nilfgaard, it isn’t the Dancer at all,” said Jaskier as he settled in to watch the skies for the night. “It’s true! I read it in Oxenfurt, they call it the Sky Boat.”

Geralt, who knew the stars to navigate by and not the stories, had a hard time seeing the figures people claimed to see. He saw the Two Chariots, of course, but beyond that it always was a failed endeavor. Looking up at the constellation so many called the Dancer, he didn’t see a dancing figure, nor a boat. Instead he just hummed.

“I don’t see it either,” agreed Jaskier. “I remember my mother used to tell me all the stories, but I couldn’t ever see the figures. Of course, when I was at university, I got the chance to read Azophi’s Book of the Fixed Stars, and that certainly helped. The copy at Oxenfurt’s library is breathtaking, you know they used actual gold leaf for the stars? Anyway, it maps out the constellations and then draws what they are above them.”

“Sounds impressive,” said Geralt. He wanted to see it. Of course he wouldn’t, but he’d like to. He had gone to various libraries in temple complexes or schools over the years, looking for a specific treatise that had the recipe for rarely used tinctures and potions for his hunts, when faulty memory meant death, but he had been placed in a corner table and had the treatise brought to him. No one trusted a Witcher to wander their libraries and find things himself. Something like a book of constellations would never be brought to him and he had no way to go to it.

“Oh it is. It truly is. It’s also very rare and expensive, they keep it chained to the wall, you have to ask the librarian to unlock it for you. The Almagest is a lot easier to get a hold of, so I only ever saw Azophi’s book once or twice, but I remember it.”

Relative silence fell, Jaskier taking his lute and plucking away at it, tunes Geralt recognized and those he didn’t. And as Jaskier amused himself while watching the emerging stars for signs of Melitele’s Tears, Geralt turned instead to caring for his things. His swords needed tending after using them today, and he ought to go over his armor too.

He just set down his sword from coating it in oil when Jaskier spoke again. If he had been waiting for Geralt to put down his sword, it meant he wanted him to pay attention and didn’t want him to risk a nasty cut from split attention. So instead of picking up his armor, he turned his head towards his friend.

“You studied astronomy, right?” he asked.

“Not as such,” allowed Geralt. “Stars for navigation and telling time, but not much beyond that.”

“Oh.” It was a little dejected, and Geralt didn’t know why. When Jaskier said nothing more, he offered tentatively,

“Education for a Witcher isn’t exactly university, Jaskier. If it’s not necessary for the Path, we didn’t learn it.”

“No, yes, I know that. Or, put it together, rather, you don’t tell me much about that sort of thing. It’s just…” There was a pause, and Geralt had to prompt Jaskier into speaking with a hum, which was nearly unheard of. “It’s just that everywhere we go, that’s all people know of the stars. And I’m not complaining! They’re wonderful people, and travelling with you is wonderful, only…only I miss it, sometimes. Talking with people about shared knowledge. I forgot about it, only really remembered when we were in that little town with that ridiculous tower of theirs.

“Honestly, that one man, he kept insisting that the Ludolphian Number is twenty two sevenths, but it’s so much easier to use the value in the Almagest, that’s broken to a decimal, it…well, I didn’t want to have to stay there, of course, but it…it was – it was good to argue it, you know?”

And Geralt couldn’t offer that to him. He wasn’t entirely sure what the Almagest even was, let alone anything more complex than what constellations meant what time of year it was, and where the North Star hung. Well, at least Geralt had always been honest that all he could offer Jaskier were stories for his songs.

“Witchers aren’t meant to be scholars, Jaskier,” he eventually said.

“Well you’re just as good as a bestiary,” he tried, but the levity fell flat.

His lute playing was much more somber as he watched the skies, which grew darker and darker and stayed still. No Tears fell that night.

The next night, after another meal at sunset, as the stars began to appear, the crescent moon beginning to climb the sky. Jaskier’s lute, which had been so very cheerful that day, was once again melancholy. And Geralt, who was not good at words, cleared his throat to get Jaskier’s attention and ventured, “The moon’s crescent.”

“Yes…?” said Jaskier.

“It…hmm.” He felt like a fool, but Jaskier had said he missed this, and this was as much as he could offer, so he might as well. “If you connect the edges and trace it down, it points south.”

Jaskier’s smile wasn’t beaming, but it was warm as he said, “Finding direction from the moon only works when it’s crescent. It’s simpler to find the North Star.”

Good. So he did notice what Geralt was trying to do, even if he couldn’t do it to the extent he wanted.

“I bet you can find the North Star in your sleep.”

“Hmm.” And then he tried again, saying, “Nearly.”

“Where is it?” challenged Jaskier, and Geralt barely glanced up before he pointed to it, Jaskier laughing in delight. “You don’t have to force yourself to talk if you don’t want to.”

“You said you missed it,” he said. “I don’t…I don’t know things like geometry, I’ve never read the Almagest, but I know a few things.”

“My dear Witcher. And they say you don’t feel emotions.” Uncomfortable, Geralt looked down and swiftly grabbed at one of his pauldrons and his leather grease, even though it didn’t exactly need greasing right that instant. He stayed focused on the task even as Jaskier came and sat next to him. “Would you mind terribly if I complained about how one of my professors was so enamored with the new Torquetum he refused to teach us how to use astrolabes so we had to form our own study groups to teach each other?”

That actually sounded like an amusing story. He hummed his assent, and immediately Jaskier launched into the story. Professor Franco Geber had been behind acquiring the new astrological instrument for the university and was so amazed by its capabilities that he had turned himself nearly nocturnal so he could experiment with it night after night, half awake in classes and such raptures over the thing that one of Jaskier’s classmates had just organized everyone to teach themselves. They had read texts in the library in their free time and at night, under lanterns everyone brought, they compared notes and the Almagest to their borrowed astrolabes, they puzzled things out themselves.

“Oh but you said you’ve never read it. The Almagest is the best authority and most complete work on astronomy that’s out there. It covers everything from the table of chords and spherical trigonometry to epicycles and retrograde motion of the planets.”

“In one work?” asked Geralt.

“It’s the work all astronomical texts are based on. When you were taught, did you have any texts at all?”

Geralt shrugged and said, “Mostly practical. But there was some, so we had some idea where to look.”

“I’d bet anything those were excerpts from the Almagest.”

“Hmm.”

“But anyway, Professor Geber hated us as soon as he found out that we had that little study group. He took it to the Dean to discipline us. Luckily, the Dean chastised him for not teaching us. We still spent most of the time on the Torquetum, but he at least gave us some basics.”

“What is the Torquetum?”

“Oh. Right. It’s this complex device, it takes measurements in horizon, equatorial, and ecliptic coordinates. Sort of a mix of a usual astrolabe and an armillary sphere? Looking back, it was an impressive device, but you really should start with the basic instruments.”

“Hmm.”

“You know,” said Jaskier eventually, his eyes still trained on the Dancer constellation above, watching for a sign of the Tears. “I would bet that if you sat in on an astronomy class at Oxenfurt, you’d be more than able to keep up with it.”

Geralt felt himself stiffen at that, and just hummed in dismissal. He couldn’t keep up with any of the academic things Jaskier had taught him. Jaskier’s examples and explanations made sense, but he couldn’t go beyond them. He wasn’t as well read, he couldn’t handle a dialectic, syllogisms eluded his attempts to create any himself, he didn’t even know what trigonometry was let alone if it was spherical, geometry was just shapes, the equations and conclusions drawn from them eluded him, and even if he looked at the palm of his hand the measurements of music just weren’t there. So why did Jaskier think he could ever understand astronomy?

“Hmm,” he said instead, hoping Jaskier would drop it. He had his skills, he didn’t like being made to feel stupid.

“I mean it. All those classes are is learning the measurements of what you know. If the moon is crescent, you can find south from its horns. You know it from experience, we just learn it from authorities like the Almagest.”

“Jaskier…”

“I saw you step on the syllogisms I wrote out,” he blurted, sounding like he hadn’t meant to say it. “Back when I wrote them, I saw you go out of your way to step on them and smear them out. And you had been staring at them so hard, you looked like everyone I knew at university when we were trying to build our own axioms when we first started out and…I can’t do this like this, would you please look at me?”

Geralt refused, and tensed his neck so even Jaskier’s hand on his chin couldn’t move him. The bard sighed and he thought for a second he had won, until Jaskier just climbed into his lap, hands on his cheeks to keep his head facing forward and meet his blue eyes. He was surprised enough he didn’t move.

“You are a brilliant man, Geralt. Maybe not academically, but not everyone is. But even if you aren’t, you’ve listened to every rant I’ve gone on about all those things, and you’ve understood them. If I was asked to do syllogisms on my own after one lecture on them, I would have been making fallacies and things that didn’t make sense. If I was asked after just one lesson to understand hexachords and write my own music, it doesn’t bear thinking about. If you had the chance to actually learn these things instead of just listening to me, you’d understand them and you’d be brilliant.”

Geralt didn’t say anything, just blinked at the man in his lap, holding his hands covered in leather grease away from Jaskier’s fine doublet. He wasn’t sure how to respond, or even if he was supposed to. He just sat there, staring at his friend.

Jaskier sighed, his thumbs stroking idly at Geralt’s cheeks like he didn’t realize he was doing it, and said, “My dear Witcher. You deserve more than what life has offered you so far.”

A moment later, Jaskier climbed out of his lap and moved a distance away, giving Geralt his space as he turned his attention back to the Dancer, watching for Tears.

The rest of the night passed in silence, until Jaskier fell asleep. Geralt cleaned his hands with a rag to get the grease off before he went to Roach, stroking her nose and sighing. Jaskier was brilliant, but sometimes that meant he looked too closely and knew too much.

“Think we can ride off tonight? Leave him behind?” asked Geralt. Roach snorted at him and tossed her head to hit him in the chest. “Yeah, you’re right. Me too.” He gave her a fond pat and stepped away, back to the fire to sleep.

Jaskier at least gave no indication of that moment the night before, happy to just complain that the earl’s astrologer had apparently gotten it right that the Tears would begin to fall that night. It was amusing, watching Jaskier rail against someone he had never once met, and Geralt was more than happy to ignore anything that happened the night before.

Still, with the parade of nobles heading to the estate, Geralt was grateful for Jaskier’s insistence of getting back to the hill by sunset to have as much chance as possible to see the stars, because seeing one more Lord and his Lady go by in all their state with their coterie would be enough to drive him mad.

But again, on the hill with their backs turned to the village and the trees and hills obscuring the earl’s estate, it was the two of them and Roach alone in the world again, and even as Geralt stirred the fire to cook their meal, a stew made with actual beef, he couldn’t help but think about the night before.

“I’m taking comfort that the astrologer said they would be at their height tonight, instead of this being when they start,” Jaskier was saying as he stirred in some of the herbs they had gathered on their way up. “Proves me right, you cannot measure these things so far in advance.”

“And if they don’t start tonight?” Geralt couldn’t help but ask.

“Then I will be even gladder knowing the Earl of Mariben is not only backwards and small-minded about his daughters but also a laughingstock among his peers,” said Jaskier with a smile. Geralt couldn’t help it, he smiled back, small as it was.

When they were done eating, and the sky was fading into a rich purple, the Evening Star showing her face before any other, Jaskier came and sat next to Geralt again, so close their knees touched. Geralt had the sudden urge to move away, but he would not make himself a fool for being frightened of Jaskier.

“You know,” said the bard, “the Evening Star isn’t a star.”

“It isn’t?” asked Geralt hesitantly.

“Nope. Planet. But it circles the sun, not the earth. Evening Star is just a poetic convention now.”

“Oh.”

“If you trace out the pentagram, it’s path is like a flower. It’s all about its conjunctions and orbital resonance, I remember being told once there’s some sort of magic attached to it, but I always just liked the pattern. Can I show you?” Geralt nodded, and Jaskier smiled, that same warm smile as before, and took out his song notebook, and in a corner of a page dedicated to The Vampire’s Cry, he began to draw a looping, swirling shape. It did look like a flower, sort of. “I was obsessed with this, as soon as I learned about it. I drew it in the corner of all my notes, someone once asked if I was drawing a dandelion.”

Geralt knew he should be asking if that was why he took the name for himself, why he styled himself that way instead of performing under his birth name. But instead he just traced the pattern with his eyes, the swirling pattern of the Evening Star’s heavenly motions. Jaskier seemed content enough to let him, his own eyes trained upwards, straining to see if the Tears were beginning to fall.

He went to check on Roach, who absolutely did not need him but was willing to accept a few pats and a hidden treat from one of the saddlebags. It was only when she tossed her head in agitation of not wanting that much attention again that he pulled away, and returned to the fire and to Jaskier, wishing he had something to do with his hands, something to distract himself with. He didn’t have components for potions, and he wasn’t low on them anyway, so that was out. His swords were oiled and left out of their scabbards to keep rust spots from forming from being sheathed too long (three days wasn’t going to destroy them, he knew, but he needed to keep himself occupied with something), and his armor had all been greased.

When he sat down, reestablishing space between himself and Jaskier, the bard spoke again and said, “You know, I once had to name all the named stars in the Dancer for an examination. I was just trying to do it, I can’t remember a single name. I know which ones they are, but not a name.”

“Hmm,” offered Geralt.

“It’s that one, at the elbow, and then the one at the stomach, and that one in the hand, and there, in the hem of the dress. No idea about the names.”

“I suppose you can’t remember everything.”

“As long as I can still navigate, that’s all the astronomy I technically still need to know. North Star and using the moon to find south will be just enough. And the constellations, but those are easy enough, yes?”

“Hmm.”

“Geralt,” Jaskier started after a moment, “I hope I didn’t…last night, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t,” said Geralt shortly.

“Only, I do mean what I said, I just–”

“Just watch the sky, bard.”

The silence that followed was uncomfortable, and Geralt thought about maybe oiling his swords again anyway, or even getting out his handfile and setting to work at his swords with that, or even scraping out the last of his wax for the scabbards. Anything to stop sitting in silence next to Jaskier after making him so uncomfortable.

If he were anyone else, he’d say something, just comment on the nobility that had ridden through, make some comment on which way they’d travel after Jaskier saw the Tears of Melitele, anything. But he didn’t, and so the silence stretched.

Until, that is, Jaskier gasped and cried, grabbing at Geralt’s arm, “Look! There they are!”

The Tears of Melitele, shooting stars in abundance, all nearby the Dancer, flaring for the briefest moments before disappearing. They lasted no longer than lightning bolts, and they were certainly not as bright or attention grabbing as lightning. They just flared to life for brief seconds, and it took quick, keen eyes to spot them at all.

Geralt had teased Jaskier about it, said they happened every year, it wasn’t like they’d never see them again, but they were lovely. There were shooting stars the same that happened in the deep winter, just around the solstice, though not so plentiful and very faint, and he did usually indulge in sitting outside, arms folded to keep his warmth contained as he watched them. Here in summer, it was no different, except that instead of being alone, Jaskier’s hand had not left his arm.

As soon as he realized that, Geralt couldn’t watch the stars anymore. His attention was entirely on the hand on his arm and how warm it was. He turned towards Jaskier, who was still watching the falling Tears, his face smiling and content.

“There’s as many as a hundred an hour,” Jaskier was saying, his eyes flicking across the skies to catch as many shooting stars as he could. “I’ve never had the patience to count, but it certainly seems like it.”

Geralt took a long, silent breath before he said, “When I was in training, in the autumn, just before the elder Witchers returned for the winter, there was a heavenly storm. Hundreds of shooting stars, the sky looked like it was falling. And then it happened again, later. Do…do you know what it was?”

Jaskier turned to him, and said, “You…you saw the Leonid Storm. It happens just about every thirty-three years or so. Its radiant is the Lion, it has a thousand stars an hour…I’ve always wanted to see it.”

Well, that explained why he had seen it again.

“Hmm.” Had it been thirty years since he last saw it? When was the next time the storm was due? Could he take Jaskier to see it, bundle him in furs to keep warm to sit outside in the tipping point between autumn and winter? Wrap his arms around the bard to keep him warm and watch the skies fall?

“Why bring it up?” asked Jaskier, his voice careful.

Geralt didn’t say anything, but his hand reached to cover Jaskier’s, still on his arm. And pressed down to hold it in place and it seemed it was going to pull away, as if startled by the reminder of where it was. “You wanted to see the Tears of Melitele. The…the Leonid Storm is the only thing I could think of that is more impressive. I’m not…I’m not academic. You miss talking about shared knowledge, and I can’t offer that to you. But I know that watching the storm from the tower of Kaer Morhen is like watching the sky fall. And I could give that to you.”

Jaskier stared at him before letting loose a little laugh, something that verged into hysterical. “You know,” he said, voice a little strangled, “when you say things like that under shooting stars, they almost sound romantic. Careful, maybe I’ll start thinking you meant it that way.”

“Hmm.” He adjusted his hand on Jaskier’s, slightly, a finger sliding to his wrist and feeling the pulse begin to speed, and smelled breathless anticipation on Jaskier’s slightly shaky exhales. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he said, “What if I want you to?”

One moment they were sitting side by side, their hands the only real point of contact, the next he was on his back, Jaskier atop him and kissing him with all the feeling that had been bound up in his heartbeat a moment before. “My dear Witcher,” Jaskier whispered into the spaces between kisses. “They say you don’t feel anything, but look at you, you romantic. Under falling stars and everything! What a ballad this would make.”

“If you write a ballad about this…” started Geralt, unable to think of a good end to the threat, but Jaskier was laughing, muffling it against his collar, and he didn’t feel the need to. His eyes were filled with falling stars, and his arms with a laughing bard. He didn’t feel threatening just then, he didn’t feel stupid next to Jaskier’s demonstratable intellect, he didn’t feel anything but very, very happy.