‘Wait, Braenn! Come here, scamp, I’ll carry you pick-a-back.’

She was warm and smelt like a wet sparrow.

‘What’s your name, princess? I’ve forgotten.’

‘Ciri.’

‘And your estates, where do they lie, if I may ask?’

‘I won’t tell,’ she grunted. ‘I won’t tell, and that’s that.’

‘I’ll get by. Don’t wriggle or sniff right by my ear. What were you doing in Brokilon? Did you get lost? Did you lose your way?’

‘Not a chance! I never get lost.’

‘Don’t wriggle. Did you run away from Kistrin? From Nastrog Castle? Before or after the wedding?’

‘How did you know?’ She sniffed, intent.

‘I’m staggeringly intelligent. Why did you run away to Brokilon, of all places? Weren’t there any safer directions?’

‘I couldn’t control my stupid horse.’

‘You’re lying, princess. Looking at your size, the most you could ride is a cat. And a gentle one at that.’

‘I was riding with Marck. Sir Voymir’s esquire. But the horse fell in the forest and broke its leg. And we lost our way.’

‘You said that never happens to you.’

‘He got lost, not me. It was foggy. And we lost our way.’

You got lost, thought Geralt. Sir Voymir’s poor esquire, who had the misfortune to happen upon Braenn and her companions. A young stripling, who had probably never known a woman, helped the green-eyed scamp escape, because he’d heard a lot of knightly stories about virgins being forced to marry. He helped her escape, to fall to a dryad’s dyed arrow–one who probably hasn’t known a man herself. But already knows how to kill.

‘I asked you if you bolted from Nastrog Castle before or after the wedding?’

‘I just scarpered and it’s none of your business,’ she grunted. ‘Grandmamma told me I had to go there and meet him. That Kistrin. Just meet him. But that father of his, that big-bellied king…’

‘Ervyll.’

‘… kept on: “the wedding, the wedding”. But I don’t want him. That Kistrin. Grandmamma said—’

‘Is Prince Kistrin so revolting?’

‘I don’t want him,’ Ciri proudly declared, sniffing loudly. ‘He’s fat, stupid and his breath smells. Before I went there they showed me a painting, but he wasn’t fat in the painting. I don’t want a husband like that. I don’t want a husband at all.’

‘Ciri,’ the Witcher said hesitantly. ‘Kistrin is still a child, like you. In a few years he might turn into a handsome young man.’

‘Then they can send me another painting, in a few years,’ she snorted. ‘And him too. Because he told me that I was much prettier in the painting they showed him. And he confessed that he loves Alvina, a lady-in-waiting and he wants to be a knight. See? He doesn’t want me and I don’t want him. So what use is a wedding?’

‘Ciri,’ the Witcher muttered, ‘he’s a prince and you’re a princess. Princes and princesses marry like that, that’s how it is. That’s the custom.’

‘You sound like all the rest. You think that just because I’m small you can lie to me.’