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The room was too small for Yennefer’s liking, and she paced it from end to end, keeping her ears pricked up. There could be someone standing right outside the door, waiting for her, and she’d never know. There could be someone lurking outside the window. She lifted a corner of the curtain, peering out at the empty blackness.
She dropped into a crouch, making certain that the knife she kept strapped to her ankle was still secure. Standing up, she resumed her pacing. Her corset was beginning to chafe at her, pressing uncomfortably snug around her ribs.
She was itching for this to be over.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs. Geralt’s bard put his head into the room. “Evening,” he said, though it was well after midnight. “Still up?”
“Evidently,” she said. “Any sign of Geralt?”
He pulled a face. “Not a whisper. I take it you haven’t had any luck with the curse, then?”
“For the last time,” she said, “it is not a curse. A curse I could handle. The lingering effects of a magical void are the farthest thing from a curse.”
“If you say so.”
“In fact one might say it’s the precise opposite of a curse.”
Smacking his lips, he said, “it’s all the same to me.”
He, of course, had felt nothing at all, even when he was standing in the void itself. He hadn’t felt its deadening silence, its stomach-churning emptiness. He hadn’t felt anything vital inside himself go dark.
No, he’d just stood there with his hands on his hips and said, “what’s got into you pair, then?”
She was tired. She hadn’t realised how much she’d come to rely on her magic to give herself little boosts, after a long and difficult day. She said, “I can’t imagine where he’s got to.”
“Well, he’s away in a huff, so probably nowhere in particular,” said Jaskier.
“He isn’t in a huff,” said Yennefer.
“Hmm, I really think he is,” the bard said. “You know, because you so unfairly snapped at him that this entire situation was his fault?”
“It wasn’t unfair.”
“Even though this whole mess is quite patently no-one’s fault,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “and there was really no need for any shouting or throwing things or storming off in huffs.”
“Debatable,” she said. “Did you come down here just to irritate me?”
“Ah, no, I came down because I forgot my pack,” he said. “And, I suppose, to say that I’m going to bed.”
“Alright,” she said. “You do that.”
“Are you staying up?” he said. “Because if so I’d appreciate if you could stop rattling about. This house is very creaky.”
“I shall rattle as much as I like,” she said. “I’m waiting for Geralt.”
He tilted his head to the side, and stepped fully into the room. “Much as it doesn’t behove me to express concern for your wellbeing,” he said. “Given how much of a huff he was in there’s every chance he won’t be back before morning, so I wouldn’t bother.”
There were times – not infrequently – when he’d go out of his way to remind her that he’d known Geralt longer and therefore knew him better. Oh, he’d said airily, Geralt can’t stand sheep’s cheese. Oh, Geralt always gets like this after a hunt. Geralt doesn’t like it when people touch his weapons. Geralt won’t like this. Geralt doesn’t do that. It was difficult to gage if that was what he was trying to do now, without being able to look into his mind, but she didn’t think it was. He seemed to be making a sincere attempt to offer her some advice.
She had to admit, privately, that she felt a little better for having him in the house. Unlikely as it was that they’d be attacked by marauders or wild beasts or monsters in the twelve or so hours before the effects of the void wore off, she was painfully aware that she was limited in her ability to defend herself and that if the worst did happen, the bard’s help might be better than no help at all.
But his being aware of that most uncomfortable facet of the situation – the thought of his having the gall to feel protective of her – made her skin crawl.
“It’s fine,” she said curtly. “I’ll wait up for him.”
“Hm,” he said.
“What?”
“Are you alright? Aside from the obvious, I mean. You seem a little – frazzled.”
She was tired. She was sweaty, and itchy. She wanted badly to complain to someone and since Jaskier was the only person around for miles he’d have to do.
“It’s this dress,” she admitted. “It fastens up the back with about a hundred miniature buttons. It’s, not strictly possible for one to remove it on one’s own.”
He snorted. “Oh? Well, how would usually get it off?”
“Usually I just,” she said, and motioned, trying to convey the general idea of I unfasten them all at once, with magic. “Whoosh.”
His eyes widened as he grasped the problem. “Ahh, I see,” he said. “That does sound very awkward.”
He looked her up and down, pursing his lips. She avoided his gaze.
“Well,” he said at length. “Night, then.” Turning, he left her alone.
Yennefer stood in the middle of the room, listening to his footsteps recede up the stairs. After a moment, they faltered and then began to descend.
Leaning back into the room, he said, “would you like some help?”
“From you?”
“I do have,” he waggled his fingers, “some experience removing ladies’ clothing. And very dextrous hands.”
“I’ll wait,” she said.
“All night?”
“If necessary.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “I promise not to tell anyone. Not even Geralt. I, I really do understand how, hm. Uncomfortable this must be.”
Yennefer heaved a sigh. Her corset creaked faintly beneath her dress. Oh, but she ached to have it off. “Fine,” she said.
“Goodness,” he said, upstairs in the bedroom, peering at her back in the flickery lamplight. “They are small, aren’t they? You can barely see them.”
“Just unfasten it,” she said. She felt a gentle tug at her neckline as he began to ease the first button out of its hole. “It’s a very fashionable and elegant design,” she said stiffly. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It is very nice,” he agreed. “I suppose this is the sort of thing one usually has a ladies’ maid for.”
Or a husband, Yennefer thought.
“So this void business,” he said, working his way down her back, carefully teasing out each button. He was being more delicate about it than she’d expected, trying not to damage the embroidery. More delicate than Geralt would probably have managed to be. Well, she supposed, he’d always had a healthy respect for nice clothes. “Did it – hurt?”
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t pleasant. But no.”
“I see,” he said. “Good to know.”
“Worried about Geralt?” she said.
“Naturally.”
“It’s uncomfortable,” she said. “That’s all. It’ll pass.”
“Let’s hope it passes soon.” He was almost all the way down her back. “I imagine it’s worse for you. Isn’t it?”
Geralt was hampered, by the loss of his signs, but by no means was he rendered powerless. He wasn’t stripped bare, the way she was. She wasn’t entirely sure he understood – that he realised that, although they’d both had something taken from them, his loss wasn’t the same as hers.
She said, “I can handle it.”
“Good grief,” he said. “How far down do these go?”
“Most of the way.”
He reached the small of her back and dropped to his knees to keep going. “Ah,” he said, his face perfectly level with her behind. “Quite a view.”
“Bard,” she said, “if you say one word about my backside my first act when this wears off will be to flay your skin from your body.”
“Understood,” he said, reaching, cautiously, for the buttons. “I shall keep my comments to myself. Although, if I might say, they are all complimentary.”
“I am currently mentally cataloguing all the spells I know to flay a man alive.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
He finished unbuttoning her, in silence and – to his credit – clearly taking care to touch her bottom as little as humanly possible. With a sigh of relief, she pulled the dress down her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
She stood in her corset and petticoat, her arms and shoulders bare, gooseflesh rising on her skin in the chilly room. It wasn’t a position she’d usually like to be in when alone with a man she didn’t fully trust.
But then, she supposed she must trust Jaskier; there was no way she’d have agreed to this otherwise. Somehow she hadn’t noticed that she had come to trust him.
“Goodness,” he said, rising to his feet. “Laces too?”
“Corsets usually have them,” she said, putting her hands upon her hips. She was very glad she didn’t have to look him in the eye for this.
“Shall I –”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“It would be worse,” he said as he began, cheerfully, to unlace her. “I once had a tryst with a lady who was wearing – five layers of petticoats. We had to put them all back on in rather a hurry, and then I managed to tie myself to her stays and her husband was coming up the stairs so we were both panicking –"
There was the faintest creak on the landing outside. The bedroom door opened.
They froze, Jaskier’s fingers stilling on her laces. Geralt was standing in the doorway, staring at them. Yennefer stared back.
He walked like a cat, in spite of his considerable bulk. Bereft of her magic, Yennefer hadn’t sensed him approaching at all. The look on his face was utterly inscrutable. She hadn’t the slightest idea what to say and evidently Jaskier didn’t either.
At some length, Geralt said, “what are you… doing?”
“I’m undressing your lover,” said Jaskier. “Why, what does it look like I’m doing?”
Geralt said nothing at all. There was no change to his facial expression. Turning upon his heel, he walked back down the stairs.
Jaskier resumed unlacing her corset. “Do you suppose he understand that was a joke?”
Yennefer said, “I wouldn’t count on it.”