‘I won’t forget,’ she sniffed.

‘Don’t wriggle, future Princess of Verden, ma’am.’

‘I’m not going to be a princess,’ she muttered.

‘Very well, very well. You won’t be a princess. You’ll become a hamster and live in a burrow.’

‘No I won’t! You don’t know anything!’

‘Don’t squeak in my ear. And don’t forget about the strap!’

‘I’m not going to be a princess. I’m going to be…’

‘Yes? What?’

‘It’s a secret.’

‘Oh, yes, a secret. Splendid.’ He raised his head. ‘What is it, Braenn?’

The dryad had stopped. She shrugged and looked at the sky.

‘I cannot go on,’ she said softly. ‘Neither can you, I warrant, with her on your back, Gwynbleidd. We shall stop here. It will darken soon.’

III

‘Ciri?’

‘Mhm?’ the little girl sniffed and rustled the branches she was lying on.

‘Aren’t you cold?’

‘No,’ she sighed. ‘It’s warm today. Yesterday… Yesterday I froze awffy, oh my, how I did.’

‘It is a marvel,’ Braenn said, loosening the straps of her long, soft boots. ‘A tiny little moppet, but she has covered a long stride of forest. And she got past the lookouts, through the bog and the thicket. She is robust, healthy and stout. Truly, she would come in useful. To us.’

Geralt glanced quickly at the dryad, at her eyes shining in the semi-darkness. Braenn leaned back against a tree, removed her hair-band and let her hair down with a shake of her head.

‘She entered Brokilon,’ she muttered, forestalling his comment. ‘She is ours, Gwynbleidd. We are marching to Duén Canell.’

‘Lady Eithné will decide,’ he responded tartly. But he knew Braenn was right.

Pity, he thought, looking at the little girl wriggling on the green bed. She’s such a determined rascal! Where have I seen her before? Never mind. But it’s a pity. The world is so big and so beautiful. And Brokilon will now be her world, until the end of her days. And there may not be many. Perhaps only until the day she falls in the bracken, amidst cries and the whistles of arrows, fighting in this senseless battle for the forest. On the side of those who will lose. Who have to lose. Sooner or later.

‘Ciri?’

‘Yes?’

‘Where do your parents live?’

‘I don’t have any parents,’ she sniffed. ‘They drowned at sea when I was tiny.’

Yes, he thought, that explains a lot. A princess, the child of a deceased royal couple. Who knows if she isn’t the third daughter following four sons? A title which in practice means less than that of chamberlain or equerry. A mousy-haired, green-eyed thing hanging around the court, who ought to be shoved out as quickly as possible and married off. As quickly as possible, before she matures and becomes a young woman and brings the threat of scandal, misalliance or incest, which would not be difficult in a shared castle bedchamber.

Her escape did not surprise the Witcher. He had frequently met princesses–and even queens–roaming around with troupes of wandering players, happy to have escaped some decrepit king still desirous of an heir. He had seen princes, preferring the uncertain fate of a soldier of fortune to marriage to a lame or pockmarked princess–chosen by their father–whose withered or doubtful virginity was to be the price of an alliance or dynastic coalition.