‘Don’t play dumb, Biberveldt,’ Muskrat frowned. ‘The whole city already knows the profit you made on the cochineal. Everybody’s talking about it already and it has clearly reached the hierarch and Chappelle. How cunning you are, how craftily you benefited from what happened in Poviss.’

‘What are you blathering about, Muskrat?’

‘Ye Gods, would you stop trying to play the innocent, Dainty? Did you buy that cochineal? For a song, at ten-forty a bushel? Yes, you did. Taking advantage of the meagre demand you paid with a backed bill, without paying out a penny of cash. And what happened? In the course of a day you palmed off the entire cargo at four times the price, for cash on the table. Perhaps you’ll have the cheek to say it was an accident, a stroke of luck? That when buying the cochineal you knew nothing about the coup in Poviss?’

‘The what? What are you talking about?’

‘There was a coup in Poviss!’ Muskrat yelled. ‘And one of those, you know… levorutions! King Rhyd was overthrown and now the Thyssenid clan is in power! Rhyd’s court, the nobility and the army wore blue, and the weaving mills there only bought indigo. But the colour of the Thyssenids is scarlet, so the price of indigo went down, and cochineal’s gone up, and then it came out that you, Biberveldt, had the only available cargo in your grasp! Ha!’

Dainty fell silent and looked distressed.

‘Crafty, Biberveldt, must be said,’ Muskrat continued. ‘And you didn’t tell anybody anything, not even your friends. If you’d let on, we might both have made a profit, might even have set up a joint factory. But you preferred to act alone, softly-softly. Your choice; but don’t count on me any longer either. On the Eternal Fire, it’s true that every halfling is a selfish bastard and a whoreson. Vimme Vivaldi never gives me a backed bill; and you? On the spot. Because you’re one tribe, you damned inhumans, you poxy halflings and dwarves. Damn the lot of you!’

Muskrat spat, turned on his heel and walked off. Dainty, lost in thought, scratched his head until his mop of hair crunched.

‘Something’s dawning on me, boys,’ he said at last. ‘Now I know what needs to be done. Let’s go to the bank. If anyone can make head or tail of all this, that someone is the banker friend of mine, Vimme Vivaldi.’

III

‘I imagined the bank differently,’ Dandelion whispered, looking around the room. ‘Where do they keep the money, Geralt?’

‘The Devil only knows,’ the Witcher answered quietly, hiding his torn jacket sleeve. ‘In the cellars, perhaps?’

‘Not a chance. I’ve had a look around. There aren’t any cellars here.’

‘They must keep it in the loft then.’

‘Would you come to my office, gentlemen?’ Vimme Vivaldi asked.

Young men and dwarves of indiscernible age sitting at long tables were busy covering sheets of parchment with columns of figures and letters. All of them–without exception–were hunched over, with the tips of their tongues sticking out. The work, the Witcher judged, was fiendishly monotonous, but seemed to preoccupy the staff utterly. In the corner, on a low stool, sat an elderly, beggarly-looking man busy sharpening quills. He was making hard work of it.