Head lowered, watching from the corner of his eye, Victor took in the bleak walls. This looked like a requisitioned house—something seized for temporary use. A low stool still let them loom over him, and with four brutes boxing him in, they were leaning on basic intimidation tactics.
Too bad none of it worked on him.
He raised his head, looked at the monocle, and smiled.
"Honored King's Eye, Director Thaler. I can explain—this is all a misunderstanding.
"Mr. Vivaldi has suffered from impotence for a long time. And besides being a witcher apprentice, I also make a living selling alchemical products. My distributor is the owner of The Hairy Bear—Griffarin, a veteran of the Battle of Brenna, a man with brothers-in-arms.
"So today I came to deliver Golan's custom-made virility draught. If you don't believe me, you can check my herb pouch."
Thaler's expression became… complicated. That answer was so far outside his expectations that he flicked a hand, signaling one of the brutes to step forward and take Victor's herb pouch.
They emptied everything out right in front of him. Victor pointed to a few unlabeled vials and had the brute pass them to Thaler.
"I brought eight doses of this draught. Two of those vials are complimentary samples—you can test them right now."
There was barely any need to test. Victor looked too certain. A man like Thaler could tell at a glance: this was the real thing. Victor's suspicion level dropped sharply.
Frowning, Thaler folded his arms.
"Next, we'll search your body. Don't worry—it'll be handled by a woman. We'll also use instruments to monitor any magical response on you. Any objections, Mr. Victor?"
"No objections. As long as it proves my innocence."
…
An hour later, Victor strolled out of the house with an easy, unbothered air. He crossed back over and knocked on Golan Vivaldi's door.
Up on the second floor, in the shadow by the window, Thaler watched Victor's back. Another man stood beside him—Vernon Roche, the King's Hand.
"So you called me over just to let him go?" Roche asked.
"To hell with it," Thaler said, turning with a crooked, helpless smile. "I haven't misjudged someone in a long time. I was almost certain Yaevinn used him to deliver a letter—but every magical detector we have came up clean. He wasn't carrying anything strange."
"What about his herb pouch?" Roche bit down on his cigar and struck a match.
"That was the main focus. Magic detection, needle probes—the full set. Nothing. The only step we didn't take was to cut the old thing to ribbons and hand him a new one.
"And the strip search? Ves did it personally. You can hear the report straight from your own people."
The Blue Stripes lieutenant stood a half-step behind them. Ves—shirt buttons left undone as usual—crossed her arms, pushing two mounds of pale flesh upward, and shrugged at Roche.
"Other than 'strong' and 'huge,' I didn't find anything special. But he's very strong. Very huge. For someone registered as sixteen on his tax papers, that's extremely suspicious."
The Blue Stripes commander barked at his own lieutenant on the spot.
"Suspicious my arse! So what, I'm suspicious too? And button your damned shirt—your belly button's showing."
After chewing her out, Roche turned back to Thaler, exasperated.
"Even so, you could've detained him. Watched him a few days. Maybe he'd slip."
Thaler shook his head and removed his monocle to wipe it clean.
"No. Apart from this, he's clean as a sheet of paper… no, not that clean. More like beige paper.
"But if we detain him on suspicion this thin, we might as well arrest everyone in the slums—every one of them looks more suspicious than he does.
"Besides, he's been invited to perform at Princess Adda's banquet tomorrow. Hard to imagine, isn't it? Our Mr. Victor is also a bard. A very good bard—at least that's what Master Dandelion says."
Roche didn't reply. He smoked in silence, watching Victor's back as the boy disappeared inside the house across the street, the cigar's smoke curling into rings in the dim.
…
Knocking at Golan Vivaldi's door, Victor knew Thaler was watching him now—probably Roche too.
So what?
The herb pouch his grandmother had made for him was an inconceivable construct of laws—something that stood above magic itself.
As long as Victor didn't personally take action, there was no one in this world—no one under the sky or beneath it—who could pull out the letter Yaevinn had entrusted to him, much less a pair of royal spies and their dogs.
Unless they witnessed Victor demonstrate taking something out with their own eyes, no one could ever find any difference between the bottomless herb pouch and an ordinary one.
The iron gate opened. Victor saw the banker under house arrest and almost felt pity—then he took it back. There was nothing worth pitying here. If Victor had been caught earlier, the banker wouldn't have spared a shred of sympathy for him either.
He entered with calm composure. Once he confirmed the interior was safe, he produced Yaevinn's letter from the herb pouch and placed it in the banker's hands. He also delivered six bottles of the virility draught.
"This works very well. Try it. If you need more, you can buy it in the Temple Quarter—The Hairy Bear. Ask Griffarin."
A few minutes later, on the second floor of the building opposite, they watched Victor step out and walk back toward them openly, ready to submit to the "leave" inspection.
Ves chuckled.
"I'm going down to search him. Any of you want to come with me?"
Thaler waved it off.
"No point. He was clean earlier—he'll be clean now."
Roche refused as well.
"He sells cock-raising tonics. No need to meet him. And before you go downstairs, button your shirt."
Ves grinned and fastened the shirt casually.
"You know what? While I was checking him, I thought of someone. That free man."
"Batman?" Roche flicked a hand, thoroughly done with her. "I've got enough problems. Don't make me think about that cross-dressing freak."
Thaler didn't take it seriously either. A weirdo in a costume brawling at night—so long as no one died, it wasn't even worth ranking on his priority list. The Scoia'tael's strange movements were far more urgent.
…
When Victor finally made it home, he went straight down to the basement. Carefully, he opened the banker's reply and found an entire page of coded jargon—Common Tongue mixed with Nilfgaardian.
After a moment's thought, he tossed a blank sheet into the cauldron. Then, following the original line by line, he stirred and worked, quickly reproducing a copy.
Up on the second floor, Angoulême was laughing and chatting with Catherine. Victor had something on his mind and didn't pay attention to what they were saying—otherwise, he might've drawn steel and ended the conversation the hard way.
He handed the copied letter to the girl.
"Didn't you say you wanted to figure out what Yaevinn and his people are really doing? See if you can make sense of what this code is saying."
Then he went out, heading for the slums.
Golan Vivaldi's reply didn't need to leave the city. It only had to reach a specific person in the slums—but it was urgent enough that it had to be delivered today. That alone gave Victor a bad feeling, and it was why he'd chosen to open it and keep a copy.
Before long, in the corner of a narrow alley, he bumped into a dwarf with a beard that was half red and half gray. Victor slipped the letter to him quietly, then vanished just as quickly.
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