Chapter 19: WHAT KASIMIR KNOWS
The workshop door closed behind Kasimir with the soft click of well-fitted wood — one of his own improvements, made in his first month here.
"There is something I use," I said, before he could settle into the careful silence I'd come to recognize as his thinking posture. "It is not standard ability. It is not magic in the Brotherhood sense. I would like you to know it exists without needing to know what it is."
He went still. Not the defensive stillness of someone caught, but the attentive stillness of someone being offered something unexpected.
"I am telling you because I trust your discretion," I continued, "and because you are already accumulating data. A partial honest disclosure is better than a complete observed mystery."
The shoulder twinged when I shifted position — four days of healing, mobile but not fully recovered. Marta's treatment was on schedule, but the tissue needed time.
"What does it do?" Kasimir asked.
"It helps me read things. Creatures, structures, patterns. Sometimes the reading shows — the way I look at targets twice, the way I knew the priority points on the Arachas before I'd ever fought one."
He was quiet for a long moment. The workshop light caught the angles of his face — a face he'd chosen and maintained for two years, so carefully human that sometimes I forgot what he actually was.
"I have been a Doppler for my entire life," he said finally. "Which means I have been performing human so completely that I have forgotten some of what I actually am." He met my eyes. "Someone offering me a partial honest disclosure without expectation of reciprocity is the most genuinely unusual thing that has happened to me in forty years of careful concealment."
"I don't need reciprocity. I need you to understand why I sometimes know things I shouldn't."
"You already explained that in the eastern margin. After the elder."
"I explained that something existed. I'm explaining now that it's systematic. That it's not going away. And that if you need to cover for what you see, you should know you're covering for something consistent, not random strangeness."
Kasimir nodded slowly. "I will not ask questions I was not invited to ask. I will continue to do what I do." He paused. "Is it safe? The system?"
The question carried more weight than its surface meaning. A Doppler asking if something was safe meant asking if it would attract the kind of attention that got non-humans killed.
"I believe so. It doesn't broadcast. It doesn't leave traces others can detect. It's—" I searched for the right word. "Internal."
"Then we continue."
The simplicity of his acceptance settled something in my chest that I hadn't realized was tight.
"There's something else," he said, shifting into the operational mode I'd come to rely on. "The Temerian scout camp has moved. It's now one mile north."
I'd expected escalation eventually. This was faster than projected.
"And a second team has been spotted on the southern road," he continued. "Two teams watching means this is not one person's initiative anymore. It's coordinated."
Two surveillance teams. Institutional attention. The neutral observation phase was ending.
"How long have they been in position?"
"The southern team appeared three days ago. The northern team moved the day before that."
"Anyone made contact?"
"No. They're watching, not approaching. But the coordination suggests someone higher up the chain approved the increased coverage."
I filed the information under "problems requiring preparation." The settlement's appearance would need to shift from "eccentric noble project" to "legitimate agricultural venture" before formal contact occurred.
"One more thing," Kasimir said. "Brokk's trade contact sent word through. The letter reached the Brotherhood routing. It will reach Yennefer."
The tension in my chest shifted to something different — not relief, not anxiety, something in between.
"Estimated response window?"
"Three weeks."
Three weeks to prepare for a meeting that would determine whether the next three years of my existence involved the most dangerous mage on the Continent or didn't.
"Thank you, Kasimir."
He nodded and moved toward the door, then paused. "The disclosure. It was a risk."
"Yes."
"It landed correctly."
He left without further comment, and I sat alone in the workshop with the weight of what I'd just done settling into my awareness.
The conversation had been the most honest one I'd had with anyone since dying in a Moscow alleyway and waking up in someone else's body. The Doppler who had spent forty years performing humanity had received a partial truth, and the partial truth had been enough.
My shoulder ached. My CP balance sat at 130. Two Temerian surveillance teams were watching. And somewhere between here and the Brotherhood's routing network, a letter was traveling toward a woman who had spent a century being lied to by professionals.
The disclosure felt like a risk and landed like the right decision.
Which was the same thing my best clinical calls had always felt like.
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