“There is no evidence of that, unfortunately.” The instigator shrugged. “The three prisoners are typical rapscallions and on top of that, slow-witted. They carried out the assault, it’s true, emboldened by your not having a weapon. Rumours about the theft spread incredibly swiftly, thanks, it would seem, to the ladies from the guardhouse. And at once there were willing people … Which is actually not too surprising. You aren’t especially liked … Nor do you seek to be liked or popular. When in custody, you committed an assault on your fellow prisoners …”
“That’s right.” The Witcher nodded. “It’s all my fault. Yesterday’s assailants also sustained injuries. Didn’t they complain? Didn’t ask for compensation?”
Dandelion laughed, but fell silent at once.
“The witnesses to yesterday’s incident,” said Ferrant de Lettenhove tartly, “testified that the three men were thrashed with a cooper’s stave. And beaten extremely severely. So severely that one of them … soiled himself.”
“Probably from excitement.”
“They were beaten even after being incapacitated and no longer posing a threat.” The instigator’s expression didn’t change. “Meaning that the limits of necessary defence were exceeded.”
“I’m not worried. I have a good lawyer.”
“A sardine, perhaps?” Dandelion interrupted the heavy silence.
“I inform you that the investigation is under way,” the instigator finally said. “The men arrested yesterday are not mixed up in the theft of the swords. Several people who may have participated in the crime have been questioned, but no evidence has been found. Informers were unable to indicate any leads. It is known though—and this is the main reason I am here—that the rumour about the swords has stirred up a commotion in the local underworld. Even strangers have appeared, keen to square up to a witcher, particularly an unarmed one. I thus recommend vigilance. I cannot exclude further incidents. I’m also certain, Julian, that in this situation to accompany the Lord Rivia—”
“I have accompanied Geralt in much more hazardous places; in predicaments that the local hoodlums could not imagine,” the troubadour interrupted combatively. “Provide us with an armed escort, cousin, if you regard it as appropriate. Let it act as a deterrent. Otherwise, when Geralt and I give the next bunch of dregs a good hiding, they’ll be bellyaching about the limits of the necessary defence being overstepped.”
“If they are indeed dregs and not paid hitmen, hired by someone,” said Geralt. “Is the investigation also paying attention to that?”
“All eventualities are being taken into consideration.” Ferrant de Lettenhove cut him off. “The investigation will continue. I shall assign an escort.”
“We’re grateful.”
“Farewell. I wish you good luck.”
Seagulls screeched above the city’s rooftops.
They might just as well not have bothered with the visit to the armourer. All Geralt needed was a glance over the swords on offer. When, though, he found out the prices he shrugged and exited the shop without a word.
“I thought we understood each other.” Dandelion joined him in the street. “You were supposed to buy any old thing, so as not to look unarmed!”
“I won’t throw away money on any old thing. Even if it’s your money. That was junk, Dandelion. Primitive, mass-produced swords. And little decorative rapiers for courtiers, fit for a masked ball, if you mean to dress up as a swordsman. And priced to make you burst out in insane laughter.”
“We’ll find another shop! Or workshop!”
“It’ll be the same everywhere. There’s a market for cheap, poor-quality weapons that are meant to serve in one decent brawl. And not to serve the victors, either, for when they’re collected from the battlefield they’re already useless. And there’s a market for shiny ornaments that dandies can parade with. And which you can’t even slice a sausage with. Unless it’s liver sausage.”
“You’re exaggerating, as usual.”
“Coming from you that’s a compliment.”
“It wasn’t intended! So where, pray tell me, do we get a good sword? No worse than the ones that were stolen? Or better?”
“There exist, to be sure, masters of the swordsmith’s art. Perhaps one of them might even have a decent blade in stock. But I have to have a sword that’s fitted to my hand. Forged and finished to order. And that takes a few months or even a year. I don’t have that much time.”
“But you have to get yourself some sort of sword,” the bard observed soberly. “And pretty urgently, I’d say. What’s left? Perhaps …”
He lowered his voice and looked around.
“Perhaps … Perhaps Kaer Morhen? There are sure to be—”
“Certainly,” Geralt interrupted, clenching his jaw. “To be sure. There are still enough blades, a wide choice, including silver ones. But it’s too far away, and barely a day goes by without a storm and a downpour. The rivers are swollen and the roads softened. The ride would take me a month. Apart from that—”
He angrily kicked a tattered punnet someone had thrown away.
“I was robbed, Dandelion, outwitted and robbed like a complete sucker. Vesemir would mock me mercilessly. My comrades—if I happened upon them in the Keep—would also have fun, they’d rib me for years. No. It’s out of the bloody question. I have to sort this out some other way. And by myself.”
They heard a pipe and a drum. They entered a small square, where the vegetable market was taking place and a group of goliards were performing. It was the morning repertoire, meaning primitively stupid and not at all amusing. Dandelion walked among the stalls, where with admirable—and astonishing—expertise he immediately took up the assessment and tasting of the cucumbers, beetroots and apples displayed on the counters, all the while bantering and flirting with the market traders.
“Sauerkraut!” he declared, scooping some from a barrel using wooden tongs. “Try it, Geralt. Excellent, isn’t it? It’s a tasty and salutary thing, cabbage like this. In winter, when vitamins are lacking, it protects one from scurvy. It is, furthermore, a splendid antidepressant.”
“How so?”
“You eat a big pot of sauerkraut, drink a jug of sour milk … and soon afterwards depression becomes the least of your worries. You forget about depression. Sometimes for a long time. Who are you staring at? Who’s that girl?”
“An acquaintance. Wait here. I’ll have a brief word with her and I’ll be back.”
The girl he’d spotted was Mozaïk, whom he’d met at Lytta Neyd’s. The sorceress’s shy pupil with the slicked-down hair in a modest, though elegant dress the colour of rosewood. And cork wedge-heeled shoes in which she moved quite gracefully, bearing in mind the slippery vegetable scraps covering the uneven cobbled street.
He approached, surprising her by a stall of tomatoes as she filled a basket hanging from the crook of her arm.
“Greetings.”
She blanched slightly on seeing him, despite her already pale complexion. And had it not been for the stall she would have taken a step or two back. She made a movement as though trying to hide the basket behind her back. No, not the basket. Her hand. She was hiding her forearm and hand, which were tightly wrapped up in a silk scarf. He noticed her behaviour and an inexplicable impulse made him take action. He grabbed the girl’s hand.
“Let go,” she whispered, trying to break free.
“Show me. I insist.”
“Not here …”
She let him lead her away from the market to somewhere they could be alone. He unwound the scarf. And couldn’t contain himself. He swore. Crudely, and at great length.
The girl’s left hand was turned over. Twisted at the wrist. The thumb stuck out to the left, the back of her hand was facing downwards. And the palm upwards. A long, regular life-line, he noticed involuntarily. The heart-line was distinct, but dotted and broken.
“Who did that to you? Did she?”
“You did.”
“What?”
“You did!�
� She jerked her hand away. “You used me to make a fool of her. She doesn’t let something like that slide.”
“I couldn’t—”
“—have predicted it?” She looked him in the eyes. He had misjudged her—she was neither timid, nor anxious. “You could and should have. But you preferred to play with fire. Was it worth it, though? Did it give you satisfaction, make you feel better? Give you something to boast about to your friends in the tavern?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t find the words. But Mozaïk, to his astonishment, suddenly smiled.
“I don’t bear a grudge,” she said easily. “Your game amused me and I’d have laughed if I hadn’t been afraid. Give me back the basket, I’m in a hurry. I still have shopping to do. And I’ve got an appointment at the alchemist’s—”
“Wait. You can’t leave it like that.”
“Please.” Mozaïk’s voice changed slightly. “Don’t get involved. You’ll only make it worse … I got away with it, anyway,” she added a moment later. “She treated me leniently.”
“Leniently?”
“She might have turned both my hands over. She might have twisted my foot around, heel facing forward. She might have swapped my feet over, left to right and vice versa. I’ve seen her do that to somebody.”
“Did it—?”
“—hurt? Briefly. Because I passed out almost at once. Why are you staring like that? That’s how it was. I hope it’ll be the same when she twists my hand back again. In a few days, after she’s enjoyed her revenge.”
“I’m going to see her. Right away.”
“Bad idea. You can’t—”
He interrupted her with a rapid gesture. He heard the crowd buzzing and saw it disperse. The goliards had stopped playing. He saw Dandelion at a distance, giving him sudden and desperate signals.
“You! Witcher filth! I challenge you to a duel! We shall fight!”
“Dammit. Move aside, Mozaïk.”
A short and stocky character in a leather mask and a cuirass of boiled oxhide stepped out of the crowd. The character shook the trident he was holding and with a sudden movement of his left hand unfurled a fishing net in the air, flourished and shook it.
“I am Tonton Zroga, known as the Retiarius! I challenge you to a fight, wi—”
Geralt raised his hand and struck him with the Aard Sign, putting as much power into it as he could. The crowd yelled. Tonton Zroga, known as the Retiarius, flew into the air and—entangled in his own net and kicking his legs—wiped out a bagel stall, crashed heavily onto the ground and, with a loud clank, slammed his head against a small cast-iron statue of a squatting gnome, which for no apparent reason stood in front of a shop offering haberdashery. The goliards rewarded the flight with thunderous applause. The Retiarius lay on the ground, alive, but displaying fairly feeble signs of consciousness. Geralt, not hurrying, walked over and kicked him hard in the region of the liver. Someone seized him by the sleeve. It was Mozaïk.
“No. Please. Please, don’t. You can’t do that.”
Geralt would have continued kicking the net-fighter, because he knew quite well what you can’t do, what you can, and what you must do. And he wasn’t in the habit of heeding anyone in such matters. Especially people who had never been beaten up.
“Please,” Mozaïk repeated. “Don’t take it out on him. For me. Because of her. And because you’ve mixed everything up.”
He did as she asked. Then took her by the arms. And looked her in the eyes.
“I’m going to see your mistress,” he declared firmly.
“That’s not good.” She shook her head. “There’ll be conse- quences.”
“For you?”
“No. Not for me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sorceress’s hip was graced by an intricate tattoo with fabulously colourful details, depicting a fish with coloured stripes.
Nil admirari, thought the Witcher. Nil admirari.
“I don’t believe my eyes,” said Lytta Neyd.
He—and he alone—was to blame for what happened and for it happening as it happened. On the way to the sorceress’s villa he passed a garden and couldn’t resist the temptation of picking a freesia from a flower bed. He remembered it being the predominant scent of her perfume.
“I don’t believe my eyes,” said Lytta Neyd. She greeted him in person; the burly porter wasn’t there. Perhaps it was his day off.
“You’ve come, I guess, to give me a dressing down for Mozaïk’s hand. And you’ve brought me a flower. A white freesia. Come in before there’s a sensation and the city explodes with rumours. A man on my threshold with a flower! This never happens.”
She was wearing a loose-fitting black dress, a combination of silk and chiffon, very sheer, and rippling with every movement of the air. The Witcher stood, staring, the freesia still in his outstretched hand, wanting to smile and not for all the world able to. Nil admirari. He repeated in his head the maxim he remembered from a cartouche over the entrance to the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Oxenfurt. He had been repeating it all the way to Lytta’s villa.
“Don’t shout at me.” She snatched the freesia from his fingers. “I’ll fix the girl’s hand as soon as she appears. Painlessly. I’ll possibly even apologise to her. I apologise to you. Just don’t shout at me.”
He shook his head, trying not to smile again. Unsuccessfully.
“I wonder—” she brought the freesia up to her face and fixed her jade-coloured eyes on it “—if you know the symbolism of flowers? And their secret language? Do you know what this freesia is saying, and therefore you’re communicating it to me quite consciously? Or perhaps the flower is purely accidental, and the message … subconscious?”
Nil admirari.
“But it’s meaningless anyway.” She came up to him, very close. “For either you’re openly, consciously and calculatingly signalling to me what you desire … Or you’re concealing the desire your subconscious is betraying. In both cases I owe you thanks. For the flower. And for what it says. Thank you. And I’ll return the favour. I’ll also present you with something. There, that drawstring. Pull it. Don’t be shy.”
That’s what I do best, he thought as he pulled. The woven drawstring slid smoothly from embroidered holes. All the way. And then the silk and chiffon dress flowed from Lytta like water, gathering itself around her ankles ever so softly. He closed his eyes for a moment, her nakedness dazzling him like a sudden flash of light. What am I doing? he thought, putting his arm around her neck. What am I doing? he thought, tasting the coral-red lipstick on his mouth. What I’m doing is completely senseless, he thought, gently leading her towards a bureau by the patio and placing her on the malachite top.
She smelled of freesias and apricots. And something else. Tangerines, perhaps. Lemon grass, perhaps.
It lasted some time and towards the end, the bureau was rocking quite violently. Coral, although she was gripping him tight, didn’t once release the freesia from her fingers. The flower’s fragrance didn’t suppress hers.
“Your enthusiasm is flattering.” She pulled her mouth away from his and opened her eyes. “And very complimentary. But I do have a bed, you know.”
Indeed, she did have a bed. An enormous one. As large as the deck of a frigate. She led him there, and he followed her, unable to take his eyes off her. She didn’t look back. She had no doubt that he was following her. That he would go without hesitation where she led him. Without ever taking his eyes off her.
The bed was huge and had a canopy. The bed linen was of silk and the sheets of satin.
It’s no exaggeration to say they made use of the entire bed, of every single inch. Every inch of the bed linen. And every fold of the sheets.
“Lytta …”
“You may call me Coral. But for the time being don’t say anything.”
Nil admirari. The scent of freesias and apricots. Her red hair strewn across the pillow.
“Lytta …”
“You may call me Coral. And you may do that
to me again.”
The sorceress’s hip was graced by an intricate tattoo with fabulously colourful details, depicting a fish with coloured stripes, its large fins giving it a triangular shape. Fish like that—called angelfish—were usually kept in aquariums and basins by wealthy people and the snobbish nouveaux riches. So Geralt—and he wasn’t the only one—had always associated them with snobbism and pretentious ostentation. Thus, it astonished him that Coral had chosen that particular tattoo. The astonishment lasted a moment and the explanation came quickly. Lytta Neyd both looked and seemed quite young. But the tattoo dated back to the years of her real youth. From the times when angelfish brought from abroad were indeed a rare attraction, when there were few wealthy people, when the nouveaux riches were still making their fortunes and few could afford an aquarium. So her tattoo is like a birth certificate, thought Geralt, caressing the angelfish with his fingertips. It’s a wonder Lytta still has it, rather than magically removing it. Why, he thought, shifting his caresses to regions some distance from the fish, a memory from one’s youth is a lovely thing. It’s not easy to get rid of such a memento. Even if now it’s passé and pompously banal.
He raised himself on an elbow and took a closer look, searching her body for other—equally nostalgic—mementos. He didn’t find any. He didn’t expect to; he simply wanted to look. Coral sighed. Clearly bored by the abstract—and not very purposeful—peregrinations of his hand, she seized it and decisively directed it to a specific place; in her opinion the only suitable one. Good for you, thought Geralt, pulling the sorceress towards him and burying his face in her hair. Fiddlesticks to stripy fish. As though there weren’t more vital things worth devoting one’s attention to. Or worth thinking about.
Perhaps model sailing ships too, thought Coral chaotically, trying hard to control her rapid breathing. Perhaps military figures too, perhaps fly-fishing. But what counts … What really counts … Is the way he holds me.
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