[ When Geralt calls him well-educated - really meaning it, too, not teasing or sarcastic - Maia has to bite back another laugh. It is meant sincerely, he can tell, but it is so very far from the truth. He shakes his head, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. ]

Yes, well... proper posture and etiquette were very important to our guardian. And punctuality. But he could be bothered to teach us very little else. Law, history, politics, philosophy, literature, art, science, foreign languages, magic - of these we know almost nothing, and what we do know, we have learned in the year since our coronation. When we arrived at court, we were as helpless as a baby.

[ Probably he wouldn't have survived those first weeks and months, if it hadn't been for Csevet, so organized and clever and sharp, answering his questions, avoiding crises, basically running the country himself until the emperor caught up.

Maia raises his glass too, feeling warm and nervous and happy, to be speaking so candidly with someone, who is just as contemptuous about the priorities and pettiness at court as he is. Cheerfully, and with a distinct enough enunciation that it is clear he has never said it before in his life, he repeats. ]

Yes, fuck those assholes.

[ He can almost feel Beshelar being scandalized, from across the multiverse. He sets down the glass of wine, closer to Geralt than to him, indicating that he can have it. Maia would love to keep trash talking the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of court, but his curiosity is bubbling over, so he asks, excitedly: ]

Did you say... you are a monster hunter?

[ Is that a thing people do? It sounds like something out of a wonder tale, to Maia. ]