“I beg your pardon?”

“For the freckles you found where you found them. For your efforts and the thorough… exploration. I want to get my own back and repay you. May I?”

“By all means.”

* * *

The sorceress’s villa, like almost all the villas in that part of the city, had a terrace with a view of the sea stretching out below. Lytta liked to sit there and spend hours observing the ships riding at anchor, using a telescope of hefty proportions on a tripod. Geralt didn’t really share her fascination with the sea and what sailed on it, but liked to accompany her on the terrace. He sat close, right behind her, with his face beside her red curls, enjoying the scent of freesias and apricots.

“That galleon, casting its anchor, look—” Coral pointed “—with the blue cross on its flag. That’s the Pride of Cintra. It’s probably sailing to Kovir. And that cog is Alke from Cidaris, probably taking on a cargo of hides. And over there, that’s Tetyda, a hulk from here, four hundred tons’ capacity, a freighter, plying between Kerack and Nastróg. And there, see, the Novigradian schooner Pandora Parvi sailing to anchor right now. It’s a beautiful, beautiful ship. Look into the eyepiece. You’ll see it…”

“I can see without a telescope. I’m a mutant.”

“Oh, true. I’d forgotten. And over there is the galley Fuchsia, thirty-two oars, it can take a cargo of eight hundred tons. And that elegant three-mast galleon is Vertigo; it sailed from Lan Exeter. And there, in the distance, with the amaranth flag, is the Redanian galleon Albatross. Three masts, a hundred and twenty feet in the beam… There, look, look, the post clipper Echo is setting sail and putting out to sea. I know the captain, he eats at Ravenga’s when he anchors here. There again, look, a galleon from Poviss under full sail…”

The Witcher brushed Lytta’s hair from her back. Slowly, one by one, he unfastened the hooks and eyes and slid the dress from the sorceress’s shoulders. After that he utterly devoted his hands and attention to a pair of galleons under full sail. Galleons one would search for in vain on all the maritime routes, harbours, ports and registers of the admiralty.

Lytta didn’t protest. And didn’t take her eyes away from the telescope’s eyepiece.

“You’re behaving like a fifteen-year-old,” she said at one point. “As if you’ve never seen breasts before.”

“It’s always the first time for me,” he reluctantly confessed. “And I never really was fifteen.”

* * *

“I come from Skellige,” she told him later, in bed. “The sea’s in my blood. And I love it.”