‘I’m glad it’s sitting, cheeky bastard,’ Dainty snarled. ‘Just to think it even stopped here, at the Blade, where I customarily lodge! It already thinks it’s me!’

Dandelion nodded.

‘Dainty,’ he said, ‘It was you. I’ve been meeting it here for three days now. It looked like you and spoke like you. And when it came to standing a round, it was as tight as you. Possibly even tighter.’

‘That last point doesn’t worry me,’ the halfling said, ‘because perhaps I’ll recover some of my money. It disgusts me to touch it. Take the purse off it, Dandelion, and check what’s inside. There ought to be plenty, if that horse thief really did sell my nags.’

‘How many horses did you have, Dainty?’

‘A dozen.’

‘Calculating according to world prices,’ the troubadour said, looking into the purse, ‘what’s here would just about buy a single horse, if you chanced upon an old, foundered one. Calculating according to Novigradian prices, there’s enough for two goats, three at most.’

The merchant said nothing, but looked as though he were about to cry. Tellico Lunngrevink Letorte hung his nose down low, and his lower lip even lower, after which he began to softly gurgle.

‘In a word,’ the halfling finally sighed, ‘I’ve been robbed and ruined by a creature whose existence I previously didn’t believe in. That’s what you call bad luck.’

‘That about sums it up,’ the Witcher said, casting a glance at the doppler huddled on the stool. ‘I was also convinced that mimics had been wiped out long ago. In the past, so I’ve heard, plenty of them used to live in the nearby forests and on the plateau. But their ability to mimic seriously worried the first settlers and they began to hunt them. Quite effectively. Almost all of them were quickly exterminated.’

‘And lucky for us,’ the innkeeper said, spitting onto the floor. ‘I swear on the Eternal Fire, I prefer a dragon or a demon, which is always a dragon or a demon. You know where you are with them. But werewolfery, all those transmutations and metamorphoses, that hideous, demonic practice, trickery and the treacherous deceit conjured up by those hideous creatures, will be the detriment and undoing of people! I tell you, let’s call the guard and into the fire with this repugnance!’

‘Geralt?’ Dandelion asked curiously. ‘I’d be glad to hear an expert’s opinion. Are these mimics really so dangerous and aggressive?’

‘Their ability to mimic,’ the Witcher said, ‘is an attribute which serves as defence rather than aggression. I haven’t heard of—’

‘A pox on it,’ Dainty interrupted angrily, slamming his fist down on the table. ‘If thumping a fellow in the head and plundering him isn’t aggression, I don’t know what it is. Stop being clever. The matter is simple; I was waylaid and robbed, not just of my hard-earned property, but also of my own form. I demand compensation, and I shall not rest—’

‘The guard, we must call the guard,’ the innkeeper said. ‘And we should summon the priests! And burn that monster, that non-human!’