Witchers were known in one of two lights all throughout the Continent. Either they were seen as magical abominations profiteering from the monster driven misfortune of common folk, or they were seen as glorious heroes whose deeds were bandied about by bards in the form of songs, epics and poetry.
Most people leaned towards the latter. At least until they met a Witcher themselves and their opinion (usually) shifted, assuming the worst of the Continent's monster slayers. That they took their ill-gotten gains back to some secret, fabulously wealthy abode where the eyes of common men wouldn't sully their treasures.
Those people, the ones that assumed the Witchers of their world were greedy abominations benefiting from the horrors of necrophages, drowners, griffins and the like? They would be shocked and bewildered to see the famous White Wolf of Rivia and his ward, the Lion Cub of Cintra, in their present circumstances.
Plain truth of the matter was, Witchers were paid handsomely to deal with other people's shit. And they still had to deal with almost all of the same normal and utterly mundane shit the common folk assumed the rich and fabulously wealthy were immune to, through the sheer power of money and affluence.
Not that they were wrong about that. Money can insulate a body or mind from many problems in just as many different ways, corrupt or otherwise. Although Witchers were indeed paid handsomely, the populace knowing just how well-compensated they were led to them being charged like the ultra rich for even their basic amenities, meaning that although Witchers were wealthy, they would blow that wealth in mere days, even living humbly.
Capitalism. It is a vicious beast, far more ruinous than any dragon or vampire. Because everything was so expensive for a Witcher, they had to charge more and more for their services, only worsening and exacerbating their problems -- and nevermind the fact that so many Witchers did jobs for free out of the kindness of the heart. Or, for that matter, that many of them accepted jobs just for the exposure it would give them to other customers.
Never accept payment in exposure.
Now, you may now be wondering what the fuck any of this has to do with Geralt and Ciri.
The two white-haired warriors were riding back to civilization after a successful griffin hunt, its severed head attached to the saddle of Ciri's horse Kelpie, while its declawed feet were hanging off Geralt's Roach. The trophies would have impressed anyone they passed on the road, but it was growing late. It was too late for them to visit the village's alderman, who had assured them he would have their payment ready. It wasn't so late that the dirt street should have been deserted.
That was the fault of the heavy downpour, soaking either of their oiled cloaks to their bodies. Their clothes were beginning to grow wet beneath them, so they decided to stop at the first inn that they saw. Its innkeeper took one look at Geralt's feline eyes, did some mental math, then told him their last remaining room would cost roughly seven hundred times its normal cost.
And it wasn't even actually their last room. They had four vacant ones, not that Geralt or Ciri would ever know that.
"Bullshit," Ciri grumbled to herself even so, climbing back into Selkie's saddle. "That's a fucking ridiculous price for an inn room." It was uncharacteristically vulgar of her, but it was a sentiment that Geralt wholeheartedly agreed with.
He agreed with a mild grunt as he mounted Roach, squinting against the rain as he considered their options. They could probably find 'accomodations' in a stable, but he was desperate for a decent bath and figured Ciri felt the same way. There were a handful of people in the village who might be willing to rent them a room for the night, if not let them crash for the evening -- but then they'd probably be expected to repay them with a favor. Also, they probably wouldn't have a good bath tub for them to take turns soaking in.
That left the only other inn in the village, the Sin Inn. It had a sleazy reputation and it was probably the last place Geralt would normally take Ciri, but... "Any port in a storm," he grumbled, spurring Roach onward to their best chance at a decent room, at a decent cost, with decent damn baths. "Come on," he grunted, wheeling his horse about without giving the inn another look, unlike Ciri. "We'll take our coin elsewhere."
Ciri, feeling irritated, made a point of meeting the innkeeper's eye as he peeked out the window, sure that the waterlogged Witchers were about to produce all the wealth in the world from their saddlebags. She flipped him the bird, something that
really
should have been beneath a woman of her blood, then put her heels to Selkie and rode after Geralt.
***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***-***
An hour later...
The Sin Inn was happy to room two Witchers for the evening at a modest, practically unnoticeable twenty percent markup. They probably could have charged the exact same premium the other inn asked and gotten away with it -- after all, what were Geralt and Ciri going to do at that point? Go back out into the torrential downpour? Definitely not.
The only reason they weren't paying an arm and a leg for their lodgings was because Geralt once cleared out the monster responsible for the sordid establishment's name. Without a succubus preying on its patronage, the Sin Inn no longer hosted the nightly orgies and gangbangs in its common room that earned it it's sleazy reputation. That was years ago, but the reputation stayed intact. It was a good place for horny ne'er-do-wells and upstanding citizens alike to find a quick lay or even more debaucherous entertainment.
That was probably because the succubus' magic had left a permanent stain on the building, so faint that not even Geralt or Ciri's silver Witcher medallions could detect its effect or the subtle way it influenced their minds. If they had, well, maybe they would have braved the rain once again.
Instead, they hit their respective rooms to wash the hunt off them before reconvening in the inn's common room below them.
Ciri was down there before Geralt was, nursing a tankard of ale at a table that was all too familiar to her mentor and father figure. As he neared her, he glanced down at the notch and mysterious stain surrounding it that he put there years ago. In fact, Ciri was sitting right where the succubus had been before Geralt had put an end to her. "Let's sit somewhere else," he grunted, picking up the ale she left ordered for him.
"What's wrong with this table?" Ciri asked, though she got to her feet anyway. He glanced back at her. She was right to question him, of course. The seats she had chosen were exactly the kind he taught her to look for years ago. Both of their backs would have been to a wall. None of the windows would have given a clear line of view to either of them, and Ciri's own chair faced the door, all important things for a woman hiding from the Emperor of Nilfgaard.
"Bad memories," Geralt simply replied, before rapping his knuckles off the mysterious stain. "And I doubt they've cleaned the place since the last time I was here. This..." He rapped his knuckles again and made a point of meeting Ciri's eyes, letting his tone grow blunt. "This isn't ale, and it certainly isn't blood."
Ciri looked at the stain for a long, long moment. It was a bit glossy. A bit white. Then she slowly stood, scraping her chair back and picking up her own tankard. "Right," she said, turning away from the table. "Lead the way, but good luck finding another table." Surprise, surprise -- the Sin Inn was completely packed, with men and women in varying states of inebriation living life to the fullest. More than a few were acting if not moving in shifty ways, furtively getting off by themselves or with someone else.
The Lion Cub rolled her eyes at the sight of one woman with someone very clearly hiding under her skirts, both because of the shifting misshapen lump in them and because of the two sets of shoes sticking out from under them.
After a couple of minutes of looking, they weren't able to find a table. But they were able to find a booth, albeit one without any form of proper seating, tucked away from the rest of the tavern but still offering a glimpse of the front door. Ciri frowned to herself as she set her tankard down on the high table, its surface just a few inches lower than her waist. "What a queer design," she mused, folding her arms over her chest and considering the polished surface. Well-polished, well-maintained. "What do you make of it?"
Geralt simply shrugged. "Probably for a tall regular. Maybe they had a troll at one point," he observed. It wasn't abnormal for taverns to have differently-sized tables for differently-sized folk, like the gnomes and dwarves of the realm. It
was
rare for them to have something so different for taller patrons.
"A troll in a tavern," Ciri laughed, a bright and easy peal of noise breaking up her intense and sometimes gloomy exterior. "You can't be serious," she accused him. Though they were often assumed to be hideous monsters, trolls were more like exceptional toddlers. Stupid and exceptionally big and exceptionally clumsy and exceptionally destructive, but toddlers nonetheless.
It certainly
wasn't
built for trolls. The booth had been there when Geralt last visited the Sin Inn, but he wasn't around for the succubus making extremely liberal use of it. There was a reason it was so well-polished and so taken care of. It was the one place where couples could tuck themselves away and hammer out a quickie without being furtive about hiding what they were doing.
"Knew one once," Geralt said with a shake of his head and not a hint of humour; his expression made the mirth on Ciri's face vanish, replaced by curiosity. The White Wolf wasn't the kind of person to set up a joke, with a sense of humour all about well-timed, deadpan or dry comments. "Shupe. One of the best Gwent players I've ever met," he admitted, taking a long swallow from his ale and allowing his mind to wander back to the card playing prodigy. "Had the largest collection of cards I ever saw, too, except he could barely hold them. Kept them in barrels. Not organized, just piled in. He would smash them on the floor and make a deck on the spot."
Ciri stared at Geralt. He
really
wasn't the kind of person to bullshit like this. "You
can't
be serious," she repeated.
"Never took a game off him," he admitted plainly. "And I don't think I could today, even now."
"Okay," Ciri said with a slow spread of her fingers in gesture. "Let's say you did know a troll who played Gwent--"
"Shupe," Geralt interjected.
