The lessons unfolded in layers, as they always had: magic in the morning, swordwork when the light changed, theory by lamplight when the city went to its suppers. But between the chalk and the blade, in the pauses where tea cooled and rain made its opinions known against the shutters, they talked. Not as teacher and student—that would have been simpler—but as two people who had learned that power without context is merely noise, and context without caution is a gallows built by optimists.
It began on a Tuesday, three months into his tutelage, when Yennefer returned from a council meeting with a vertical line between her brows that hadn't been there at breakfast.
"Aretuza," she said without preamble, dropping into the chair as if gravity had made a compelling argument. "Wants to position itself as arbiter of magical ethics across the North."
Geralt looked up from the circle he'd been refining—a small, mean door for objects, nothing ambitious. "And you think that's a mistake."
"I think it's theater," she said. "Tissaia believes in order. The Chapter believes in influence. The Brotherhood believes in survival wrapped in silk. None of them believe in the same future, and all of them are certain they're the only ones qualified to write it."
"How many factions?"
She counted on elegant fingers. "Three visible, two pretending they're not factions, one that meets in rooms I haven't been invited to yet—which means they're either very clever or very stupid."
"Which do you think?"
"Clever," she said. "Stupidity doesn't keep secrets that long."
He set the chalk aside and gave her the attention she'd been circling. "And where do you stand?"
"Nowhere comfortable." She poured herself tea that had gone lukewarm and didn't bother to reheat it with a glance, which told him more than the words. "I believe in competence. I believe in leverage. I believe in not being dragged into wars written by men who think magic is a servant they can dismiss when the bill comes due."
"Kings," Geralt said.
"Kings, generals, merchants who've mistaken gold for wisdom." She sipped, grimaced at the temperature, reheated it with a flick that made the cup glow sullen red for a breath. "Aedirn wants mages as weapons. Temeria wants them as decorations. Redania wants them silenced unless they're singing the Eternal Fire's hymns. Kaedwen—" She stopped, glanced at him. "You don't take Kaedwen contracts."
"No."
"Because?"
"Because they burned a house I respected for reasons that were lies dressed as law," he said evenly. "And I don't work for men who mistake pyres for policy."
She absorbed that without comment, which was its own kind of respect. "The Brotherhood is fracturing," she said after a moment. "Slowly. Politely. The way a marriage fractures when both parties are too proud to admit they've been sleeping in separate rooms for years."
"And Aretuza?"
"Aretuza believes it can teach the world to behave." Now her mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile. "Tissaia believes order is a gift you give a frightened child. Stregobor believes order is a cage you lock over chaos before it eats you. Philippa believes order is a weapon you sharpen in private and display in public so everyone remembers who holds it."
"Which one will win?"
"None of them," Yennefer said. "Because the world doesn't care what mages believe. It cares what kings fear, and right now they fear us more than they need us. That ratio is… delicate."
Geralt leaned back, folding his arms in the way that meant he was listening with more than his ears. "You're afraid."
"I'm cautious," she corrected. "Fear is what amateurs feel when they realize they've bet on the wrong hand. Caution is what professionals feel when they realize the table is rigged."
He let silence do its work. She drank her tea. Outside, a cart rattled past, the driver singing something off-key and unrepentant.
"The future," Geralt said carefully, "is going to be dangerous for mages."
She looked at him sharply. "That's not a guess."
"No."
"You've seen something."
"I've seen enough," he said, which was true in the way that witchers learn to make truth flexible without breaking it. "Enough to know that when kings get frightened, they reach for swords before sense. Enough to know that mages who stand alone will be picked off by men who've convinced themselves it's justice."
"And your advice?" The question wasn't mocking. It was genuinely curious, the way a woman asks when she already knows the answer but wants to hear how someone else arrived at it.
"Build your own faction," he said. "Not Aretuza's. Not the Brotherhood's. Yours. People you trust. People who trust you. People who will tell you when you're wrong and stand beside you when you're right. Make it small enough to be loyal and strong enough to be useful. And don't tell anyone you're doing it until it's already done."
She set the cup down with a click that said she'd heard him. "That's ambitious."
"It's survival."
"And you think I can do it."
"I think you're one of the few people who will," he said. "Because you don't need to be loved. You need to be effective. And effective people with loyal friends survive longer than brilliant people with admirers."
Yennefer studied him with the particular intensity of a woman deciding whether to be insulted or impressed. She landed on the latter. "You're more dangerous than your reputation suggests."
"Only to people who mistake silence for stupidity."
"I've never made that mistake," she said. "Which is why I'm going to pretend you didn't just outline a conspiracy in my study."
"I outlined caution," he said. "Conspiracy is what happens when caution gets sloppy."
"Fine." She rose, brushing chalk dust from her sleeve though there was none. "And in return for this unsolicited political wisdom, what do you want?"
"Dwarves," he said.
She blinked. "Pardon?"
"Mason work. Blacksmithing. The kind of craftsmanship humans do adequately and dwarves do so well you forget to be embarrassed by the comparison."
"For what?"
"A project," he said. "One that needs hands I can trust and stone that will outlast ambition."
She didn't press—not yet—but her eyes narrowed in the way that meant she was filing the question for later. "How many?"
"Three masons. Two smiths. Ones who can keep their mouths shut and their hammers honest."
"Mahakam?"
"Preferably. But I'll take any dwarf who treats their tools like family and their contracts like vows."
"This project," she said slowly. "It's not in Vengerberg."
"No."
"And you won't tell me where."
"Not yet."
She could have pushed. She was Yennefer of Vengerberg; pushing was a language she spoke with doctoral fluency. Instead, she nodded once, sharp and conclusive. "I know three masons who owe me favors and one smith who owes me an apology. I'll send word. Expect them within the month. They'll arrive asking for a man named Geralt who pays on time and doesn't argue about material costs."
"Fair."
"And you," she added, turning back to the chalk and the morning's half-finished circle, "will not tell me what this is for until you're ready. But when you are ready, I expect the full story. Not the abridged version you give to people you're being polite to."
"Agreed."
They returned to the lesson. She corrected his wrist angle. He adjusted the sigil's curve. Neither mentioned politics again that morning, but the conversation sat in the room like a third participant, patient and listening.
The subject returned two weeks later, this time over a meal neither of them had intended to share. Yennefer had been reviewing correspondence—letters from colleagues, rivals, and the occasional former student who'd mistaken nostalgia for wisdom—and Geralt had been replacing the warding glyphs on the study's threshold because one of them had started humming at a pitch that annoyed Viv when she circled overhead.
"Stregobor is building alliances with Redanian clerics," Yennefer said without looking up. "Philippa is whispering in King Vizimir's ear. Tissaia is pretending she doesn't notice either, which means she's planning something twice as complicated and half as visible."
Geralt drove the chisel carefully into the stone, flaking away old wax. "And you?"
"I am," she said, turning a page with more force than parchment required, "maintaining a reputation for being brilliant, dangerous, and uninterested in other people's games."
"Does it work?"
"It keeps me out of councils I don't want to attend and ensures the councils I do attend listen when I speak." She set the letter aside. "But it also means I'm seen as an outlier. Useful when they need someone who won't flinch. Expendable when they need a scapegoat."
"So build the faction," he said. "Quietly."
"I am." She finally looked at him. "Three names so far. One elementalist in Kovir who thinks the Brotherhood is a joke. One diviner in Redania who's too good at her work to be trusted by anyone who lies for a living. One former Aretuza instructor who retired because she got tired of teaching girls to be ornaments for men who couldn't tell the difference between power and parlor tricks."
"Good start."
"Small start," she corrected. "And fragile. Trust is a currency that inflates when spent carelessly."
"Then spend it carefully." He sat back on his heels, examining the new glyph. "And remember: the best factions are the ones no one knows exist until they've already done the work."
She laughed, brief and genuine. "You sound like someone who's built a few."
"I sound like someone who's watched them collapse when they forgot what they were for," he said. "Keep yours small. Keep it loyal. Keep it purposeful. Everything else is noise."
Yennefer leaned back in her chair, fingers laced, gaze distant. "You speak as if you've seen this future."
"I've seen enough futures to know the shape of the ones that repeat," he said, which was not an answer and also not a lie.
She let it stand. They returned to their separate work. But the silence between them was no longer neutral—it was weighted with the kind of understanding that comes when two people realize they're preparing for the same storm from different directions.
It was Geralt who raised the matter of the house.
"I need property," he said one afternoon, three months into his studies and halfway through a particularly tedious exercise in maintaining a portal aperture while distracted by loud noises. "In Vengerberg. Not in the city proper—outside it. Somewhere quiet."
Yennefer, who had been creating the loud noises with percussive enthusiasm using a hammer and a metal tray, paused. "You want to buy a house."
"Yes."
"Here."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because a bridge-villa rented by the month is fine for a man passing through," he said, letting the portal wink closed with a controlled exhale. "But I'm not passing through anymore. I'm working. And work needs a base that won't evict me when the landlord decides he likes his cousin better."
She set the tray down with a clang that suggested she was still testing his focus. "And it needs to be outside the city."
"Preferably. Far enough that neighbors don't expect conversation. Close enough that supplies don't require a expedition."
"With someone to manage it," she added, because she had already leapt three thoughts ahead.
"Yes. Someone who can handle deliveries, ward off curiosity, keep the grounds from turning into a cautionary tale about unattended property."
Yennefer tapped one finger against her chin. "I know a place. North of the city, near the old aqueduct road. Stone house, two stories, walled garden. Previous owner was a cartographer who died in his sleep and whose heirs are bickering over the estate. They'd sell to anyone who paid promptly and didn't ask sentimental questions."
"And management?"
"There's a couple—former servants from a noble house that collapsed during the last border dispute. She's a cook who understands discretion. He's a groundskeeper who knows how to make a house look inhabited without being nosy about who inhabits it."
"Names?"
"Marta and Oskar. I'll arrange an introduction. If they suit, they suit. If they don't, I'll find others."
"Price?"
"For the house or the staff?"
"Both."
She named a figure that was fair but not generous, which meant she was treating him like an equal rather than a charity case. He nodded. "Arrange it."
"Why Vengerberg?" she asked, and this time the question had weight. "You're a witcher. Witchers move. They don't nest."
"I'm a witcher who's learning to open doors across distances," he said. "Which means I need anchors. Vengerberg is one. Kaer Morhen is another. Having property in both places means I'm not improvising logistics in a cellar that smells like beer and cooperage."
She accepted that, though her eyes said she knew it wasn't the only reason. But she didn't push, because the contract between them held questions as well as answers, and some questions earned the right to wait.
The house was purchased within the month. Marta and Oskar arrived with references Yennefer had personally vetted and a willingness to accept employment from a man whose profession required him to vanish for weeks and return with bags that smelled of sulfur and dried blood.
"We've worked for worse," Marta said simply, after Geralt had walked them through the house and explained what he expected. "At least you don't pretend the strange smells are exotic perfume."
The house itself was better than Geralt had hoped: thick walls that remembered how to hold heat, a cellar deep enough for storage and warded work, a garden that had gone to seed but could be coaxed back into something useful. He set up one room as a laboratory, another as a study, and kept the third as a guest room he suspected would remain empty but which gave the house a sense of possibility.
Yennefer visited once, unannounced, and walked through with the critical eye of a woman who believed spaces were arguments made in stone and wood.
"You're nesting," she said, not quite mocking.
"I'm anchoring," he corrected.
"It's the same thing, witcher. You've just convinced yourself it sounds more professional."
He didn't argue. She was right, and they both knew it.
The dwarves arrived in late autumn, as the city shrugged off summer's memory and began preparing for cold that would make even optimists realists. Three masons—Borin, Thyra, and Magni—and two smiths—Durak and Hela. They came with tools that gleamed like promises and contracts written in a hand so precise Geralt suspected they'd been redrafted three times to remove any room for misunderstanding.
"Ye're the one who needs the stone to heed and the iron to mind its manners." Borin said, after introductions had been made and tea had been declined in favor of getting to the point.
"Yes."
"Work's not in Vengerberg, mind ye."
"No."
"An' ye'll not hear where it is 'til we've struck a deal– one that binds yer tongue, keeps yer nose out o' trouble, and finds ye willin' to work in a place what don't show up on most maps."
Geralt met his gaze. "Yes."
The five dwarves conferred in their own language—not Dwarvish, but the dialect masons use when they're deciding whether a client is worth the stone they'll waste if the job goes poorly. After a long moment, Borin nodded.
"Aye, we'll take the job. Here's how it is: half in coin up front for the stone an' iron, rest when the work's done. Don't whine if it takes longer'n ye hoped—rock answers to no man's clock. An' if some fool asks what we raised, ye tell 'em plain—we built a barn."
"Agreed."
They shook hands. The masons began gathering materials. The smiths began sketching forge designs. Geralt sent word north through the portal, brief and encoded: Expect visitors. Prepare the hall.
That winter, as Geralt split his time between Vengerberg and the keep, the pieces of a plan that had never been spoken aloud began to settle into place. The house outside Vengerberg became a second anchor. The dwarves traveled through portal and began their work in silence and stone.