Chapter 37: YENNEFER ASKS DIRECTLY
Nowhere to walk to.
The courtyard bench was Marta's idea — doctor-mandated outdoor rest, she'd called it, with the specific tone that meant she would check on me if I returned to my quarters too early. The ribs were nearly healed, the binding looser than it had been a week ago, but she insisted on caution.
I was reading through Brokk's latest construction estimates when Yennefer's shadow fell across the page.
She sat down on the bench across from me without asking permission. Her expression carried the particular focus I'd learned to recognize as preliminary to something important — the same look she'd worn before the gate discussion, before the joint investigation proposal.
"You knew about Aldrath before he arrived."
Not a greeting. A statement.
I set down the construction estimates. "I suspected Crown intelligence would escalate from Bertak's report. I didn't know the specific—"
"You predicted the succession correctly before any news reached us."
"The political patterns were—"
"You identified the infiltration tactic in Orin's trade approach last month before I saw it. You noticed the secondary commercial assessment buried in his questions before his cart had stopped moving."
She wasn't interrupting to cut me off. She was building a case, laying out evidence the way she'd laid out evidence about the gate's signal modulation. Methodical. Precise.
"You are not lucky," she continued. "You are not simply well-read. The pattern is too consistent across too many domains. Political, medical, tactical, ecological." She paused. "You know things before they happen. How?"
It wasn't an accusation. It was a diagnostic statement delivered in her most neutral voice.
Which was her most dangerous one.
I'd known this conversation was coming. I'd had weeks to prepare for it — the enforced rest from the rib injury had given me plenty of time to think. But preparation and readiness weren't the same thing.
"The answer I can give you," I said carefully, "is incomplete."
"I'm aware. Give it anyway."
I looked at her directly. Violet eyes met mine without flinching. She wasn't going to let me deflect, and I wasn't going to insult her by trying.
"I came into this body with an unusual form of pre-existing knowledge."
She didn't react visibly, but I felt the shift in her attention — the specific quality of focus that meant she was processing rather than simply listening.
"Historical, political, strategic," I continued. "Detailed in some areas, fragmentary in others. It fails unpredictably on individuals rather than patterns."
"The specific failure mode."
"I read institutions correctly. I misread the specific people running them." I thought of Aldrath — the trained intelligence agent I'd expected to be a guild representative. The individual variance that had caught me off-guard. "I predicted the Crown's response pattern accurately. I failed to predict who they would send."
She was quiet for a long moment. The courtyard sounds continued around us — Dolgrin and Maerik arguing about something near the forge, settlers moving through their afternoon routines, the distant clang of Brokk's hammer.
"The source of this knowledge," she said finally. "You're not ready to explain it."
"No."
"Because you don't trust me, or because the explanation is dangerous?"
"Because the explanation is incomplete even to me. And what I do understand..." I chose my words carefully. "It's not something I can frame in terms that would make sense without context I'm not prepared to provide yet."
Another silence. Longer this time.
I watched her process the information — the partial truth I'd offered, the gaps I'd explicitly acknowledged, the trust I was asking her to extend without full justification.
"I have been watching you for four months," she said. "The knowledge is real. I've verified that independently. The gaps are real — I've seen you fail on individual predictions while succeeding on institutional ones. The failure mode is consistent with what you described."
She stood, straightening her traveling coat with the automatic precision of someone who had spent decades in formal settings.
"I will not ask again before you're ready."
I wanted to ask why. Why she was accepting an incomplete answer. Why she was choosing to trust something she couldn't fully verify. Why she was still here when a smarter play would be to distance herself from whatever I was concealing.
But she was already walking back toward her workspace, and the questions would have been unfair.
She was choosing. That was enough for now.
Kasimir passed through the courtyard twenty minutes later, carrying a bundle of correspondence from his regular information circuit.
"She spent six hours in the archive this morning," he said without looking at me. "Everything you've written since your arrival. The documentation journals, the Registry notes, the survey records."
I didn't respond.
"The pattern she identified — the knowledge gaps, the institutional accuracy — she mapped it across your entire written record before she asked." He paused at the edge of the courtyard. "She came to the conversation with evidence, not suspicion."
"You're monitoring her research."
"I'm monitoring everything that might affect settlement security." He continued on toward the south wing. "You would do the same."
He was right. I would.
Yennefer was investigating me the same way she investigated the gate — methodically, with evidence gathered before conclusions drawn. She'd accepted my incomplete answer because she'd already verified the parts she could verify independently.
The question was what she would conclude from the parts she couldn't.
I returned to Brokk's construction estimates with the specific weight of being observed by someone who was choosing not to demand answers yet.
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