“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.