Chapter Text
‘Behave yourself and stop caterwalling. It’s unbecoming.’
‘I’m not caterwalling, and do not tell me to behave, Phil - '
‘If you must insist on your dramatics, then do not address me so. Really, Triss. I had thought you were past all this.’
‘Philippa. I don’t like this. It’s not too late.’
‘Not too late? Oh dear. You’ve hardly changed, have you? The world is truly dark these days if this is all that’s required for a seat at Tankred's table.’
Triss had changed, an awful lot. Changed enough to know that Philippa was calm when pleased, and hurtful when scared. Changed enough to know who it was that Triss was no match for. Whose memory clung to the walls like old smoke.
Sticky, tarry, and rotten.
She’d changed enough, too, to know that her cautions meant nothing.
She had not changed enough to stop herself trying regardless.
‘You invite me here, as a friend and an ally, to assist your research. You set the terms, and I agree to them. I had hoped that this meant you were no longer inclined to behave flippantly, dear. I am here, and I have agreed the terms, signed and sealed and presented to your King. And you tell me now its not too late to go back on them?’
‘Phil – Philippa. Leave pride out of this.’ She knew it wasn’t about pride. Phil needed whatever leg up she could get, and backing out of the agreement with Tankred would set her back months in her efforts to win back some semblance of power. But she had to try. ‘If this goes wrong - ‘
‘If it goes wrong, then you, an esteemed sorceress with decades of effort and money spent on your betterment, have put your word to it. I hope you are not so foolish. I know you are not. So behave yourself.’ Philippa’s gaze softened, and she fixed her dark eyes on Triss with a look that would have ruined her once. ‘If I did not have absolute faith in your judgement, I would not have answered your invite. Now, trust me, little one. I have done this before.’
Triss watched as Philippa raised her palm to her mouth, tipped, and swallowed.
The research wasn’t that interesting. A half-decipherable jumble of notes and expired spells. Things in jars. Circles on the floor hidden by years of dust.
What it was was an olive branch. Philippa, free only by the grace of the Emperor’s gratitude, haunted Montecalvo with the ghost of what she had been. The castle had become an island, unwelcome in the land it stood upon. Redania would not forget Philippa’s wrongs until long after the current generation had aged and past, and it would be longer than that before her name fell away from its place in the footnotes of Nilfgaard’s conquest of the North.
She’d backed the winning horse, of course. What else would Philippa do. What else could she have, to survive.
But a generation was a long time to wait, and the cost of her freedom was taking it's toll.
Well, Triss thought. Philipp could have done a great many things, really. Her and Keira and found their way. Fringilla had. But their ways were not Philippa’s. There were few left now who’s were.
Philippa haunted her castle, and bid higher and higher for relevance as time went on the the Emperor’s wary eye never left her.
Triss had wondered if she’d stay in that place, but of course, what was a generation to Phil. She had outlived Redania itself, and would outlast the world’s mistrust for her if she could only curry enough favour to keep herself safe long enough. This was not the end of the Great Philippa Eilhart’s story, Triss supposed. Only a long and painful lull.
Still, it was a wan time for the sorceress, and Triss saw how she stagnated behind those walls. How she loathed to be nothing, and to have nothing to strive for. How carefully she trod not to be seen as scrabbling for what she’d once had.
Yen, of all of them, seemed to have had the right idea. Not that Triss envied her, not anymore. She certainly didn’t envy Philippa. Bit by gentle bit, she was washing her hands of her old childishness, and the future, without love or lodge, shone sunny through Lan Exeter’s autumn clouds.
All the same, she felt for Philippa. Not to mention that the seeds of alliance would be well sown for the days when, as she surely would, the Lady of Montecalvo found her way back into the great game of the world again.
So she’d invited her old friend and mentor to examine the abandoned research, and take what she liked. Triss herself, along with others, had already searched it all for anything that might be against Kovir’s interests to share. It was a sentimental gift, more than anything else.
Despite that, strong objections had been made to the owl sorceress’s presence in court, and strict caveats had been made visiting the old townhouse where the half-finished work had sat gathering dust for years now.
It was those caveats that Philippa had just swallowed down.
They were Triss’s own invention, and for all that her stomach went cold to see her old idol tipping them down her throat, a part of her smiled deep to see how much she trusted Triss’s work.
The tablets had been designed, on the surface of things, as means of easing the tensions between mages and political men following the third war.
Trace amounts of dimeritium would bind to the taker’s blood, blocking a mage’s powers just as chains of the same metal would. Unlike chains, the metal in the system would persist only a matter of hours, so there was no chance of being left powerless by error or trickery.
After the atrocities committed against mages across the North following Loc Muinne, not a single one would agree to be placed in dimeritium again, for fear that the shackles would be locked and never lifted.
After the atrocities committed by mages in the lead up to Loc Muinne, few people with power would agree to entertain the presence of any but the most trusted mages unless they were suitably hobbled for as long as they were in a position to cause any damage.
Triss’s creation suited neither group particularly well, but was certainly better than the alternatives. Mage’s who wished to prove their trustworthiness could do so without putting their life in another’s hands.
Personally, she suspected a deeper reason behind the research. The contract for it had come from the Empire, trusted to her personally, which was more than enough evidence to tell her that the Crown Princess was spending far less time in the Palace than she would have her father and his own mages think, and was looking for a way to hide her own magical signature without any outward signs.
The tablets themselves were safe beyond doubt. She had tested them upon herself countless time and, whilst singularly unpleasant, they were not dangerous.
All the same, nothing ever went as you expected it to with Philippa, and despite it being by her own invitation, Triss found herself begging the other sorceress to make her excuses and forsake the research she had come to see. She had a cold feeling in her gut, all of a sudden, and far too much had gone wrong in her relatively short life to not listen to that feeling when it came.
It did no good, and Triss bit her lip as the colour went from Philippa’s face and the owl sorceress leant against the doorframe to support herself. Safer option or not, dimeritium was a ghastly thing to be touching, and the dose that Tankred’s other mages had declared Philippa was to take in order to be granted access would have been enough to send weaker mages into a coma.
‘There.’ Her voice came thin and breathy ‘Nothing at all, after months in that blasted thing.’ One of her knees buckled and she snarled at Triss when she stepped forward to help her, drawing herself back up again and leaning on the door as she panted. ‘I’ll kill you, you know. If these turn out to be less than perfect.’
The withdrawal of trust stung more than the threat, but Triss stood straight and waited for Philippa to collect herself.
She mused to herself, deep down, as she watched the older woman prop herself up against the oak, that this was the only time she’d ever likely be in a position to hurt Phil. She could even strike her, she’d still have the upper hand. One of the greatest sorceresses of their age, and the most terrible, now nothing more than a slim body, struggling to hold itself up.
‘Don’t even think about it, little one. You would pay dearly later.’
Triss nodded, ashamed to have been caught, and oddly warmed to be seen so well, and led Philippa up the stairs and into the workshop.
Philippa would confess it to no one, not even in the darkest and coldest of the small hours, but sometimes she dreamt of being trapped. Sightless, magicless, unable to speak, or with hands to grasp. Trapped in the darkness, listening and waiting. Knowing all the time that she could have flown free, weak though she was, and at the same time that it was hopeless. Without magic, her world was black indeed, and she would have never been able to navigate her way to a safe roost, let alone to anyone who could have helped her.
To anyone who asked, she'd have recalled how calmly she'd bided her time, how certain she'd been in her own wiles that she could wait, and listen, and know that the time would come for her to make her move.
She would never tell anyone that she knelt that morning before her washbasin, waiting to see if her stomach would empty itself for fear of what the day would bring. She would never tell anyone how one ankle would wake her in the night burning with the sting of a metal band that was no longer there. No one would ever need to know that there had been days as an owl that she had found herself waiting only to die, there in the dark.
Her new eyes worked well enough, though they would never look the same as the one's she'd lost. There would always be something false, something glassy about them when she looked in the mirror. A reminder that what was gone would never truly return.
Most days she chose to cover them and navigate with her magic, rather than suffer the half-lit world she had remade for herself, and the nausea of the half-sent messages she'd managed to weave a path for to her brain. The nerves were complicated, ever so much so, and sometimes her efforts went so wrong that she could only lie on the cool floor and wait for the pain to ebb.
Without magic, she had nothing to rely upon but the half-results of her own handiwork, that she had not learnt yet to rely upon. Her vision dimmed as the dimeritium made its way into her system, and a piercing pain stabbed through her head. The fear was there, she watched it inside her self as though from a great distance, kept at bay by the company she would never loose face in front of.
She saw the younger sorceress ahead of her, hips swaying pale across her dim world in their pale skirts, and up the stairs she followed, taking each step carefully.
The smell of the rooms above hit her all the stronger for the lack of a clear image, and she hardened her jaw against the memories.
She smelled the familiar materials of alchemy, of course, long stale, and amongst that the hints of a long-lost perfume, just as stale. What she'd known she would smell amongst it all and was still not ready for was the metallic signature of magic, left behind. A ghost in the air, still lingering, long after its wielder was dead.
Triss could smell it too, of course. Young thing, she'd still known enough dead sorceresses in her short little life, and would know how the fallen lingered on in their work, to those with the nose to look for it.
'Phil...I'm going to leave you to it...I have a meeting to attend...take as long as you need. The guards will see you to your chamber once you're done.'
'Do you think your tact is charming? Go, then, attend if you are truly needed elsewhere, but don't suppose to pity me.'
Triss, who seemed to be less scared of her by the year, took her leave. The door shut, softly, behind her, leaving Philippa alone, with the guards, and the ghost, buried into the very grain of the wood.