‘I backed Ciri,’ said Francesca, ‘but I must take you to task, Yennefer. You left the Lodge, fleeing from it and refusing to cooperate. You don’t have any rights. You do, though, have obligations, debts to pay, a sentence to hear. Were it not for that, you wouldn’t have been allowed to cross Montecalvo’s threshold.’

Yennefer restrained Ciri, who was itching to stand up and shout. Without resisting and in silence, Ciri sank into the chair with the armrests carved into sphinxes, watching Madam Owl–Philippa Eilhart–getting up from her chair and suddenly towering over the table.

‘Yennefer doesn’t have the right to vote, that is clear,’ she announced in a ringing voice. ‘But I do. I’ve listened to the votes of all the women present here, so I can finally vote myself, I believe.’

‘What do you mean by that, Philippa?’ Sabrina frowned.

Philippa Eilhart looked across the table. She met Ciri’s eyes and looked into them.

The bottom of the pool is made of a many-coloured mosaic, the tiles shimmering and seeming to move. The entire surface trembles, glimmering with light and shade. Carp and orfe flash by under lily leaves as large as plates, amidst green pond weed. The young girl’s large dark eyes reflect in the water, her long hair reaches down to the surface, floating on it.

The girl, forgetting about the whole world, runs her little hands among the stems of water lilies, and hangs over the edge of the pool surrounding the fountain. She would love to touch one of the small gold and red fishes. The fish swim up to the girl’s hands, they circle around her curiously, but they won’t let themselves be seized; they’re as elusive as apparitions, like the water itself. The dark-eyed girl’s fingers close on nothingness.

‘Philippa!’

It’s her most favourite voice. In spite of that the little girl doesn’t react right away. She continues to look at the water, at the little fish, at the water lilies and at her own reflection.

‘Philippa!’

‘Philippa.’ Sheala de Tancarville’s harsh voice shook her out of her reverie. ‘We’re waiting.’

A cold, spring wind blew in through the open window. Philippa Eilhart shuddered. Death, she thought. Death passed beside me.

‘This Lodge,’ she finally said confidently, loudly and emphatically, ‘will decide the fates of the world. Because this Lodge is like the world, is its mirror. Good sense, which doesn’t always mean cold wickedness and calculation, is balancing out sentimentality, which is not always naive. Responsibility, iron discipline–even if imposed by force–and aversion to violence; gentleness and trust. The matter-of-fact coolness of omnipotence… and heart.

‘I, casting my vote last, take one more thing into consideration,’ she continued in the silence that had descended on the colonnaded hall in Montecalvo. ‘One that, though it doesn’t balance out anything, counterbalances everything.’