Chapter 53: THE RUMOR WAR
The tavern crowd swayed to my music, faces slack with the Bardic Resonance I wove through every note.
"Did you hear about the Cintran princess?" I paused between songs, voice carrying just far enough. "Terrible business. Ship went down in a storm off Skellige. No survivors."
Heads nodded. The story settled into minds softened by my magic—not a command, exactly, but a suggestion that felt like remembered truth.
Tomorrow, they'd tell others. The rumor would spread.
We'd done this in four towns now, each time planting different stories. In Oxenfurt's outskirts, Ciri had died of plague in a refugee camp. In a village near Vizima, she'd been captured by Skellige raiders. In a trading post on the Pontar, her body had been recovered from a collapsed building.
Contradictory reports. Conflicting testimony. A nightmare for any intelligence operation trying to track a single truth.
"You're getting better at this." Yennefer found me after the performance, her own work complete. "The resonance is more subtle than before. Almost undetectable."
"Practice makes perfect." I accepted the wine she offered. "Your contributions?"
"Documents suggesting the princess was seen boarding a ship to Ofir. Letters between merchants discussing funeral arrangements. A grieving servant's diary describing her mistress's final moments." She smiled sharply. "Let Nilfgaard's analysts reconcile all that."
"We make a good team."
"We make an excellent team." She sat beside me, close enough that I caught her perfume—lilac and gooseberries, always. "Another week of this, and Emhyr's spies will be chasing ghosts across half the Continent."
"That's the plan."
The tavern emptied slowly as night deepened. Yennefer's shoulder brushed mine, neither of us moving to create distance.
"We should discuss the next town," she said, but her voice lacked urgency.
"We should."
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow."
The Nilfgaardian mage found us in a town called Brennan's Crossing.
I felt him before I saw him—a wrongness at the edge of my awareness, magical attention probing the tavern where I'd just performed. Yennefer stiffened beside me, her own senses sharper than mine.
"We have a problem."
"I noticed." She rose smoothly, hand drifting toward her belt. "Through the kitchen. Now."
We moved—not running, not yet, but quickly. The kitchen's back door led to an alley, and the alley connected to the stable where our horses waited.
"THERE!"
The shout came from the alley's far end. Three figures, black armor gleaming in torchlight. More behind them, converging from multiple directions.
"Portals?" I asked.
"They'll track it. We run."
We ran.
Yennefer's magic blazed, throwing fire at the closest pursuers. I played the Terror Ballad while moving—difficult, imprecise, but enough to scatter the soldiers on our left flank. Evasion Instinct screamed warnings as a crossbow bolt whistled past my head.
Our horses were gone—taken or fled, it didn't matter. We cut through buildings, across rooftops, using every trick we'd learned in separate lifetimes.
A spell caught Yennefer's shoulder, spinning her around. I grabbed her arm, kept her moving, singing a Healing Melody even as we fled. The wound closed—not fully, but enough.
"Cave system," she gasped. "Half a mile east. Hidden entrance."
"How do you know?"
"I know everything useful about everywhere."
The cave entrance was concealed behind a waterfall—exactly the kind of thing that would appear in a story. We squeezed through the gap, the roar of falling water covering our escape.
Inside, darkness swallowed us. Yennefer's hand found mine.
"Wait here. Let them search the riverbank, then we move deeper."
We waited. Minutes stretched into hours. Eventually, the sounds of pursuit faded.
"They're gone," she said finally. "For now."
"For now." I leaned against cold stone, exhaustion settling over me. My lute was damaged—a crack in the body that would affect the sound until I could repair it. My clothes were torn. Blood seeped from a cut on my arm I hadn't noticed receiving.
Yennefer's hands found the wound. Warmth spread through the tissue as she healed it—chaos magic gentler than I'd expected.
Her hands lingered after the wound closed.
"You're hurt elsewhere," she said quietly.
"Bruises. Nothing serious."
"Let me check."
Her fingers traced my ribs, my shoulders, cataloguing damage with professional efficiency. But the efficiency faded somewhere along the way, touches becoming slower, more deliberate.
"Yennefer—"
"Don't speak."
She finished her examination. Neither of us moved.
In the dark cave, pressed together for warmth, she whispered: "What are we doing?"
I didn't have an answer. But I didn't need one.
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