The monster was dead, now part of the midden where it had dwelled.

Another star fell. ‘A garbage heap,’ the Witcher said with effort. ‘Muck, filth and shit.’

II

‘You reek, Geralt,’ Yennefer grimaced, not turning from the mirror, where she was cleaning off the colouring from her eyelids and eyelashes. ‘Take a bath.’

‘There’s no water,’ he said, looking into the tub.

‘We shall remedy that,’ the sorceress stood up and threw the window open. ‘Do you prefer sea water or fresh water?’

‘Sea water, for a change.’

Yennefer spread her arms vigorously and shouted a spell, making a brief, intricate movement with her hands. Suddenly a sharp, wet coldness blew in through the open window, the shutters juddered, and a green cloud gushed into the room with a hiss, billowing in an irregular sphere. The tub foamed with water, rippling turbulently, banging against the edges and splashing onto the floor. The sorceress sat down and resumed her previously interrupted activity.

‘How did it go?’ she asked. ‘What was it, on the midden?’

‘A zeugl, as I suspected,’ Geralt said, pulling off his boots, discarding his clothes and lowering a foot into the tub. ‘Bloody hell, Yen, that’s cold. Can’t you heat the water?’

‘No,’ the sorceress, moving her face towards the looking glass and instilling something into her eye using a thin glass rod. ‘That spell is bloody wearying and makes me feel sick. And the cold will do you good after the elixirs.’

Geralt did not argue. There was absolutely no point arguing with Yennefer.

‘Did the zeugl cause you any problems?’ The sorceress dipped the rod into a vial and dropped something into her other eye, twisting her lips comically.

‘Not particularly.’

From outside the open window there was a thud, the sharp crack of wood breaking and an inarticulate voice, tunelessly and incoherently repeating the chorus of a popular, obscene song.

‘A zeugl,’ said the sorceress as she reached for another vial from the impressive collection on the table, and removed the cork from it. The fragrance of lilac and gooseberries filled the room. ‘Well, well. Even in a town it’s easy for a witcher to find work, you don’t have to roam through the wilds at all. You know, Istredd maintains it’s becoming a general rule. The place of every creature from the forests and swamps that becomes extinct is occupied by something else, some new mutation, adapted to the artificial environment created by people.’

As usual, Geralt winced at the mention of Istredd. He was beginning to be sick of Yennefer’s admiration for Istredd’s brilliance. Even if Istredd was right.

‘Istredd is right,’ Yennefer continued, applying the lilac-and-gooseberry perfumed something to her cheeks and eyelids. ‘Look for yourself; pseudorats in sewers and cellars, zeugls in rubbish dumps, neocorises in polluted moats and sewers, taggirs in millponds. It’s virtually symbiosis, don’t you think?’

And ghouls in cemeteries, devouring corpses the day after the funeral, he thought, rinsing off the soap. Total symbiosis.

‘Yes,’ the sorceress put aside the vials and jars, ‘witchers can be kept busy in towns, too. I think one day you’ll settle in a city for good, Geralt.’