Tellico moved backwards, pressing his back against the tent’s canvas.

‘Which is why,’ Geralt continued, ‘you will now turn back into Biberveldt and hold your hands out nicely to be tied up. You aren’t capable of defying me, because I am what you are unable of copying. You are absolutely aware of this, Dudu. Because you took over my thoughts for a moment.’

Tellico straightened up abruptly. His face’s features, still those of the Witcher, blurred and spread out, and his white hair curled and began to darken.

‘You’re right, Geralt,’ he said indistinctly, because his lips had begun to change shape. ‘I took over your thoughts. Only briefly, but it was sufficient. Do you know what I’m going to do now?’

The leather witcher jacket took on a glossy, cornflower blue colour. The doppler smiled, straightened his plum bonnet with its egret’s feather, and tightened the strap of the lute slung over his shoulder. The lute which had been a sword a moment ago.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Witcher,’ he said, with the rippling laughter characteristic of Dandelion. ‘I’ll go on my way, squeeze my way into the crowd and change quietly into any-old-body, even a beggar. Because I prefer being a beggar in Novigrad to being a doppler in the wilds. Novigrad owes me something, Geralt. The building of a city here tainted a land we could have lived in; lived in in our natural form. We have been exterminated, hunted down like rabid dogs. I’m one of the few to survive. I want to survive and I will survive. Long ago, when wolves pursued me in the winter, I turned into a wolf and ran with the pack for several weeks. And survived. Now I’ll do that again, because I don’t want to roam about through wildernesses and be forced to winter beneath fallen trees. I don’t want to be forever hungry, I don’t want to serve as target practice all the time. Here, in Novigrad, it’s warm, there’s grub, I can make money and very seldom do people shoot arrows at each other. Novigrad is a pack of wolves. I’ll join that pack and survive. Understand?’

Geralt nodded reluctantly.

‘You gave dwarves, halflings, gnomes and even elves,’ the doppler continued, twisting his mouth in an insolent, Dandelion smile, ‘the modest possibility of assimilation. Why should I be any worse off? Why am I denied that right? What do I have to do to be able to live in this city? Turn into a she-elf with doe eyes, silky hair and long legs? Well? In what way is a she-elf better than me? Only that at the sight of the she-elf you pick up speed, and at the sight of me you want to puke? You know where you can stuff an argument like that. I’ll survive anyway. I know how to. As a wolf I ran, I howled and I fought without others over a she-wolf. As a resident of Novigrad I’ll trade, weave wicker baskets, beg or steal; as one of you I’ll do what one of you usually does. Who knows, perhaps I’ll even take a wife.’