“Good joke. Amusing indeed. But I wouldn’t be laughing, in your shoes. Take a look at these. They’re documents.” The prince tossed a sheaf of papers on the table. “Certified testimonies, witness statements. The town of Cizmar, a hired witcher, a leucrote dispatched. Seventy crowns on the invoice, in actuality fifty-five paid, the difference split with a local pen-pusher. The settlement of Sotonin, a giant spider. Killed, according to the bill, for ninety, actually, according to the alderman’s testimony, for sixty-five. A harpy killed in Tiberghien, invoiced for a hundred crowns, seventy paid in actuality. And your earlier exploits and rackets; a vampire in Petrelsteyn Castle which didn’t exist at all and cost the burgrave a cool thousand orens. A werewolf from Guaamez had the spell taken from it and was magically de-werewolfed for an alleged hundred crowns. A very dubious affair, because it’s a bit too cheap for that kind of spell removal. An echinops, or rather something you brought to the alderman in Martindelcampo and called an echinops. Some ghouls from a cemetery near the town of Zgraggen, which cost the community eighty crowns, although no one saw any bodies, because they were devoured by, ha-ha, other ghouls. What do you say to that, Witcher? This is proof.”

“Your Highness continues to err,” Geralt countered. “It isn’t proof. They are fabricated slanders, ineptly fabricated, to boot. I’ve never been employed in Tiberghien. I haven’t even heard of the settlement of Sotonin. Any bills from there are thus blatant counterfeits; it won’t be hard to prove it. And the ghouls I killed in Zgraggen were, indeed, devoured by, ha-ha, other ghouls, because such are the habits of ghouls. And the corpses buried in that cemetery from then on are decomposing peacefully, because the surviving ghouls have moved out. I don’t even want to comment on the rest of the nonsense contained in those documents.”

“A suit will be brought against you on the basis of those documents.” The prince placed a hand on them. “It will last a long time. Will the evidence turn out to be genuine? Who can say? What verdict will finally be reached? Who cares? It’s meaningless. The important thing is the stink that will spread around. And which will trail after you to the end of your days.