‘You’re talking rubbish.’

‘You tried,’ the bard continued, unmoved, ‘to learn if it was possible to bed her in the hay, if she was curious to find out what it’s like to make love with a misfit, with a witcher. Fortunately, Essi turned out to be smarter than you and generously took pity on your stupidity, having understood its cause. I conclude this from the fact you did not return from the jetty with a fat lip.’

‘Have you finished?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Goodnight, then.’

‘I know why you’re furious and gnashing your teeth.’

‘No doubt. You know everything.’

‘I know who warped you like that, who left you unable to understand a normal woman. Oh, but that Yennefer of yours was a troublemaker; I’m damned if I know what you see in her.’

‘Drop it, Dandelion.’

‘Do you really not prefer normal girls like Essi? What do sorceresses have that Essi doesn’t? Age, perhaps? Little Eye may not be the youngest, but she’s as old as she looks. And do you know what Yennefer once confessed to me after a few stiff drinks? Ha, ha… she told me that the first time she did it with a man it was exactly a year after the invention of the two-furrow plough.’

‘You’re lying. Yennefer loathes you like the plague and would never confide in you.’

‘All right, I was lying, I confess.’

‘You don’t have to. I know you.’

‘You only think you know me. Don’t forget: I’m complicated by nature.’

‘Dandelion,’ the Witcher sighed, now genuinely tired. ‘You’re a cynic, a lecher, a womaniser and a liar. And there’s nothing, believe me, nothing complicated about that. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, Geralt.’

V

‘You rise early, Essi.’

The poet smiled, holding down her hair, which was being blown around by the wind. She stepped gingerly onto the jetty, avoiding the holes and rotten planks.

‘I couldn’t miss the chance of watching the Witcher at work. Will you think me nosey again, Geralt? Why, I don’t deny it, I really am nosey. How goes it?’

‘How goes what?’

‘Oh, Geralt,’ she said. ‘You underestimate my curiosity, and my talent for gathering and interpreting information. I know everything about the case of the pearl divers, I know the details of your agreement with Agloval. I know you’re looking for a sailor willing to sail there, towards the Dragons Fangs. Did you find one?’

He looked at her searchingly for a moment, and then suddenly decided.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘I didn’t. Not one.’

‘Are they afraid?’

‘Yes, they are.’

‘How, then, do you intend to carry out an exploration if you can’t go to sea? How, without sailing, do you plan to get at the monster that killed the pearl divers?’

He took her by the hand and led her from the jetty. They walked slowly along the edge of the sea, across the pebbly beach, beside the launches pulled up on the shore, among the rows of nets hung up on stilts, among the curtains of split, drying fish being blown by the wind. Geralt unexpectedly found that the poet’s company did not bother him at all, that it was not wearisome or intrusive. Apart from that, he hoped that a calm and matter-of-fact conversation would erase the results of that stupid kiss on the terrace. The fact that Essi had come to the jetty filled him with the hope that she did not bear him a grudge. He was content.