I knocked on the door.
"WHAT?!"
Ian's menacing shout was my answer.
"We're busy!!!"
Triss kept up with her and I decided to use the intercom.
"What are you ladies doing in there?"
That's not what I said out loud.
"Jennyfair, it's David..."
"David? I thought it was that pesky Nilf again. come in!"
And the intercom told me something different.
"I'm sick of him, knocking every twenty minutes... It's like throwing him out of the fortress..."
Entering the office I closed the door behind me and shook my head.
"Ian, Triss, aren't you two playing around?"
Both girls shrugged, and I walked over to Triss and put my arm around her shoulders.
"Maybe a little... Actually we were only planning to keep him outside the door for about forty minutes, but then he knocked for the first time..."
Yen grinned.
"Then I suggested we start the countdown from scratch, saying he'd run us off and we had to redo some of the work."
Triss grinned the same way Ian had done recently.
"So, in short, you're punishing a guy for being intemperate?"
Now it was my turn to chuckle and shake my head.
"Yeah..."
"But you have to accept it..."
Both girls sighed at my words, but still nodded their heads.
"Okay, I'm letting him in, and I don't think he'll mind if Triss is in the office as well as Ian. Plus we can hurry him up and say he's been distracted."
"Hmmm..."
Both girls hummed and looked at each other, then nodded in agreement with my decision, and I immediately went to the door and opened it and looked out.
"Can you do it in five minutes?"
"А?"
Nilf looked at me very surprised.
"The enchantresses aren't really unhappy that you were constantly interfering with their work. If you'd shown a little patience instead of knocking them down at the most crucial moment, they'd probably have accepted you by now. As it is..."
I shook my head.
"...they're willing to give you five minutes, if you don't, they'll throw you out of the office."
"Uh, uh. yes! Enough!"
He nodded hastily, trying to look as convincing as possible.
"Come on. Come on in."
I stepped aside slightly and Nilf immediately entered the office.
"Dear Enchantresses, I am Captain of the Third Division of the Nilfgaard Army, Sir Curht, I was sent here by the Emperor of Nilfgaard himself, Emgyr var Emreis, Deitwen Addan yn Karn aep Morwoodd, to deliver a message to Yennifair of Wengerberg."
Nilf gibbered very, very quickly, trying to say it all in one breath and not waste a second on an extra action or word.
"I'm listening to you..."
The voice of a queen, addressed by a bug that was in front of his eyes and just too lazy to swat. So much so that Nilf shuddered and tried to pull himself together.
"The Emperor asks you to visit Nilfgaard so he can speak with you personally. He has information regarding his daughter!"
"Did you come here just to tell me that I should drop everything and go to Nilfgaard right now? For what?"
"Mistress Enchantress, Ciri was your ward, the Emperor said you had a mother-daughter relationship and...
"Bullshit..."
Ian shook her head with a disdainful look at Nilf.
"Ciri came to me as a pupil when she was old enough, and I could not replace her mother in any way. Nor could she be the daughter I never had... I would call us sisters."
Yen nodded thoughtfully at these words of hers.
"So your Emperor knows absolutely nothing about our relationship..."
I couldn't help snorting, because Ian was being a little deceitful here. They could be called mother and daughter. But Nilf didn't need to know that, not at all.
"But you were still close... Ciri needs your help! You and Geralt!"
Yen grinned contemptuously.
"Apparently Imperial has outdated data, as my help is now needed HERE."
"But..."
"Five minutes are up. out."
"But..."
Just then, the door opened and Ciri peeked inside the office completely without knocking.
"Uh, uh. sisters, are you busy? Uh, David. you're here? Okay, well, I'll check back later."
The door closed, and Nilf stood still... He had obviously caught the blue screen and no longer understood what was going on.
"Uh, that's--
"Yes, that was Cirilla, now get out of my office, you're interfering with our work. We heard you, we realized you were talking nonsense. so shoo."
I went to Nilf and literally pushed him out the door, but the guy didn't come to his senses, so I towed him to his men, who were given some space, but that was it.
After that, I turned around and was about to leave.
"Wait! Wasn't that Cirilla Fiona Ellen Rhiannon?! It was her, wasn't it?!"
I stopped upon hearing this panicked cry from Nilf and half-turned around to look at him like he was sick.
"I thought you were already told it was really her..."
"But, uh. how?"
"It's none of your business."
I shrugged and still left him and his men.
"How's that?"
I returned to Ian's office and saw Ciri and Triss there, and grinned as I leaned against the wall since there were no more seats available.
"It's okay..."
Ciri grinned.
"You haven't driven them outside the castle wall, so we'll forget about them tomorrow. Let them see the Wild Hunt attack. After that, we can use the portal to send Ian to Nilfgaard, have her bring her father here..."
Ian spoke with a grin that didn't match her usual easygoing sneer. Her smile was contemptuous now.
"I thought the plan was different..."
I looked questioningly at Ciri and then shifted my gaze to Ian and Triss.
"Yeah, but I rearranged it a little bit, or do you mind?"
Ciri raised an eyebrow regally.
"You know, right now I'd like to put a throne under your cute ass, not this chair you're sitting on, and dress more... dressy. You'd really look like the Empress."
"That's the way I'll soon be..."
"Yeah..."
I nodded at these words of hers.
"So what's your new plan?"
"Negotiate on our turf, from a position of strength."
Ciri grinned a very unkind smile.
"So we invite Emgyr here..."
I looked up to the ceiling thoughtfully.
"You're against it?"
Ciri looked at me with concern.
"You're my future empress, so I have no right to object to you..."
Ciri's eyes widened in shock, but I wasn't going to end it there.
"in public. But we're in private now, so let me get this straight, are you sure? It's just that we'll probably have to let his guards in here, at least a dozen or two of them, let them sniff out what's what... And that, as you must realize, will affect secrecy and defense."
I looked carefully at Ciri, who bit down on the nail of her thumb thinking about my words.
"Yeah, uh. I'm sure, uh."
Ciri looked at me with a share of guilt.
Negotiating in the Nilfgaard capital will be on Emgyr's terms, and I can't allow that. I can't go there tomorrow and be trapped inside four walls. It would have a profound effect on my perception of the world...
"I agree with Ciri..."
Triss nodded her head.
"...If she ends up in Nilfgaard now, she will not be released, and her political views and skills are not yet formed. They'll just turn her in the right direction and tell her what to do, without explaining anything..."
I nodded at those words.
"Okay, so tomorrow we marinate the Nilfs, and the day after tomorrow we send them by portal to Nilfgaard. I think it would be good if Ciri wrote a short letter to her father..."
"He's not my father."
She wrinkled her nose.
"...but yeah, he'll need to send a letter. And then Ian or Triss will open a new portal for the bastard and his guards to come through."
Ciri nodded.
"Okay, uh. that's settled, now I'd like to understand what happens next."
"What's next?"
Ciri looked at me in surprise.
"Yeah, well... what happens next? You meet Emgyr, and then what happens?"
"Well..."
Ciri shrugged.
"...I'll stay here, Ian and Triss will take over my training in terms of politics and finance, and in a year and a half or two I'll take the throne."
Her voice was very confident and I decided to clarify why that was so.
"You sound very confident about it..."
"Well, I'll take it either way. whether Emgyr is for it or against it, I'll still take the throne. So we should have the Wild Hunt taken care of by now."
"We'll figure it out..."
I grinned and nodded my head.
"Do you have a plan?"
"Well, uh. yeah. there is. When SUZI comes to his senses, we'll start implementing it."
"Hmm?"
Glances crossed at me.
"What do you mean when you say SUZI has to come to her senses. She's IL, what's there to come to her senses?"
"No longer IL..."
I shake my head.
"While Ian and Triss were making a concentrate here I did a little work with Panam and SUZI, they wanted to hook up PROXY, but..."
I stopped talking for a short pause.
"Why do you keep pausing? What happened in there?!"
"It's just that SUZI is now inscribed on the brain of the very PROXY she was going to use simply as a body to explore the world."
"How?"
The girls' synchronized question made me chuckle.
"How should I know?"
I shrugged, trying to show with my look and tone how clueless I was about how this could even happen.
"All I know is that we plugged it in and the next second, all the comps and servers just shut down and the SUZI was in the PROXY body."
"AND?"
"What and?"
"What happened next?"
"Next... and next we started to panic, as we didn't immediately realize that SUZI was in the prepared body that was supposed to be PROXY. And when I noticed that the body was showing signs of life, I headed over to it, while Panam sent me to check the comps and servers."
"AND?!"
The three girls' synchronized question made me chuckle.
"Next, I gave her CPR, as the SUZI could not start breathing on its own. Then I had a little trouble with the letters and the hand movements. but it took her at least a week, if not a month, to get used to her new body. However, we were able to reconnect her to the computers, so she'll be able to perform her functions as before."
The girls nodded.
"Okay, uh. so you have another girl in your harem?"
Ciri asked the question with a smirk on her lips, but I only shook my head.
"I don't know her well enough to have that kind of relationship... Okay."
I pushed myself off the wall and looked at the girls.
"I went on to work..."
"Come on..."