“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.