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get up? They didn’t break any bones, did they?’
    Dandilion stood with difficulty, groaned and stretched his aching shoulders.
    ‘What’s with them?’ He indicated the bodies lying on the ground.
    ‘We’ll check.’ The enchantress snicked the stiletto shut. ‘One of them should still be alive. I’ve a few questions for him.’
    ‘This one,’ the troubadour stood over the reeking man, ‘probably still lives.’
    ‘I doubt it,’ said Yennefer indifferently. ‘I severed his windpipe and carotid artery. There might still be a little murmur in him but not for long.’
    Dandilion shuddered.
    ‘You slashed his throat?’
    ‘If, out of inborn caution, I hadn’t sent an illusion in first, I would be the one lying there now. Let’s look at the other one . . . Bloody hell. Such a sturdy fellow and he still couldn’t take it. Pity, pity   ‘
    ‘He’s dead, too?’
    ‘He couldn’t take the shock. Hmm … I fried him a little too haul . . . See, even his teeth are charred— What’s the matter with you, Dandilion? Are you going to be sick?’
    ‘I am,’ the poet replied indistinctly, bending over and leaning his forehead against the pigsty wall.
    ‘That’s everything?’ The enchantress put her tumbler down and reached for the skewer of roast chickens. ‘You haven’t lied about anything? Haven’t forgotten anything?’
    ‘Nothing. Apart from “thank you”. Thank you, Yennefer.’ She looked him in the eyes and nodded her head lightly, making her glistening, black curls writhe and cascade down to her shoulders. She slipped the roast chicken onto a trencher and began dividing it skilfully, She used a knife and fork. Dandilion had only known one person, up until then, who could eat a chicken with a knife and fork as skilfully. Now he knew how, and from whom, Geralt had learnt the knack. Well, he thought, no wonder. After all, he did live with her for a year in Vengerberg and before he left her, she had instilled a number of strange things into him. He pulled the other chicken from the skewer and, without a second thought, ripped off a thigh and began eating it, pointedly holding it with both hands.
    ‘How did you know?’ he asked. ‘How did you arrive with help on time?’
    ‘I was beneath Bleobheris during your performance.’
    ‘I didn’t see you.’
    ‘I didn’t want to be seen. Then I followed you into town. I waited here, in the tavern – it wasn’t fitting, after all, for me to follow you in to that haven of dubious delight and certain gonorrhoea. But I eventually became impatient and was wandering around the yard when I thought I heard voices coming from the pigsty. I sharpened my hearing and it turned out it wasn’t, as I’d first thought, some sodomite but you. Hey, innkeeper! More wine, if you please!’
    ‘At your command, honoured lady! Quick as a flash!’
    ‘The same as before, please, but this time without the water. I can only tolerate water in a bath, in wine I find it quite loathsome.’
    ‘At your service, at your service!’
    Yennefer pushed her plate aside. There was still enough meat on the chicken, Dandilion noticed, to feed the innkeeper and his family for breakfast. A knife and fork were certainly elegant and refined, but they weren’t very effective.
    ‘Thank you,’ he repeated, ‘for rescuing me. That cursed Rience wouldn’t have spared my life. He’d have squeezed everything from me and then butchered me like a sheep.’
    ‘Yes, I think he would.’ She poured herself and the bard some wine then raised her tumbler. ‘So let’s drink to your rescue and health, Dandilion.’
    And to yours, Yennefer,’ he toasted her in return. ‘To health for which – as of today – I shall pray whenever the occasion arises. I’m indebted to you, beautiful lady, and I shall repay the debt in my songs. I shall explode the myth which claims wizards are insensitive to the pain of others, that they are rarely eager to help poor, unfortunate, unfamiliar