Chapter Text
“It was handled poorly,” Eskel says, voice thick with something like shame. “The younger boys could be apprenticed with the keep’s staff, or fostered out to relatives. Some we managed to send back to their families. But the older trainees - there were nearly a hundred between the schools set to take the grasses that summer.”
“Most of them would have died,” Jaskier reminded him. “They lived instead.”
“They lived.” Eskel’s laughter was wretched. “For a little while, at least. Some of them couldn’t - they didn’t know how to be human men, instead of witchers. And we didn’t realize they needed help. Not soon enough.”
Carefully, carefully, Jaskier reminded himself. This wound was tender still. “Who took in the older boys?”
“Five towns in Kaedwen agreed to take them. No one had intended to cause harm.” Jaskier heard the unspoken statement: harm had happened, nonetheless.
“Vesemir thought -” Eskel stopped again. “Lambert hated Vesemir, and Varin, all the other trainers. They get on better now, but before we overthrew the King of Kaedwen - We thought he’d died, his first year on the path, when he didn’t return for winter. Expected it, even. Mostly, we didn’t think about him at all - one more witcher, dead on the path, decades ago.”
“What changed?” And howhad Lambert made it onto the warlord’s council if he’d been gone so long? A question for another time.
“Aiden - his friend, the cat witcher - came to Kaer Morhen when Vesemir called the schools together. Lambert came with him.” Eskel shook his head. “None of us recognized him. Not until he saw Varin.”
Jaskier felt his lips twitch, despite himself. “You recognized him by the cursing?”
Eskel nodded, a flash of rueful amusement crossing his face. “Lambert’s contribution to the discussion was that any man worse than Varin was by definition a monster, and if the schools didn’t act, he would, and to hell with us all.”
“And if Lambert still felt like that, after decades -” Jaskier didn’t finish the thought. Vesemir wouldn’t have seen any reason the boys would want to stay, after everything that was done to them.
“Exactly.” Eskel took a long, shuddering breath, and pulled Jaskier closer. “By the time we acted, most of the older boys were already gone. Some of them disappeared. A few of them ended up executed for theft, or murder. Others - died. By their own hand, or someone else’s, or wild animals, or injuries gone septic. We failed them.”