The invalids on the wagon, until then petrified and frozen in their tracks, suddenly twitched, as though animated by a magic spell. Quarter loaves of bread, rounds of cheese, pieces of fatback and sausage appeared–as if by magic–in the hands that they held out towards the elves.

And for the first time in a thousand years elves were holding their hands out towards humans.

And Lucienne and Jarre were the first people to see elves crying. To see them choking on their sobs, not even trying to wipe away the tears flowing down their dirty faces. Giving the lie to the claim that elves supposedly had no lachrymal glands at all.

‘En’ca… digne,’ repeated the elf with the lightning bolts on his sleeve, in a faltering voice.

And then he held out a hand and took the bread from Corncrake.

‘Thank you,’ he said hoarsely, struggling to adapt his lips and tongue to the foreign language. ‘Thank you, human.’

After some time, noticing that it had all gone, Lucienne clicked her tongue at the horses and flicked the reins. The wagon creaked and rattled. No one spoke.

It was well on towards evening when the highway began to teem with armoured horsemen. They were commanded by a woman with completely white, close-cropped hair, with an evil, fierce face disfigured by scars, one of which crossed her cheek from her temple to the corner of her mouth, and another of which, describing a horseshoe, encircled her eye socket. The woman also lacked a large part of her right ear, and her left arm below the elbow ended in a leather sleeve and a brass hook to which her reins were attached.

The woman, staring malevolently at them with a glare full of vindictiveness, asked about the elves. About the Scoia’tael. About terrorists. About fugitives, survivors of a commando unit destroyed two days back.

Jarre, Lucienne and the invalids, avoiding the gaze of the white-haired, one-armed woman, spoke, mumbling indistinctly that no, they hadn’t encountered anyone or seen anyone.

You’re lying, thought White Rayla, once Black Rayla. You’re lying, I know you are. You’re lying out of pity.

But it doesn’t matter anyway.

For I, White Rayla, have no pity.

‘Hurraaaah, up with the dwarves! Long live Barclay Els!’

‘Long liiiive the dwaaarves!’

The Novigrad streets thudded beneath the heavy, iron-shod boots of the old campaigners of the Volunteer Regiment. The dwarves marched in a formation typical for them, in fives, and the hammers on their standard fluttered over the column.

‘Long live Mahakam! Vivant the dwarves!’

‘Glory to them! And fame!’

Suddenly someone in the crowd laughed. Several others joined in. And a moment later everybody was roaring with laughter.

‘It’s an insult…’ Hierarch Hemmelfart gasped for air. ‘It’s a scandal… It’s unpardonable…’

‘Vile people,’ hissed priest Willemer.

‘Pretend you can’t see it,’ Foltest advised calmly.