‘Why do people fear them both so much then? This one here isn’t all that big. Can it really be dangerous?’

‘This one here—’ the Witcher shook his quarry ‘—usually attacks from the rear and aims unerringly between the vertebrae or below the left kidney, at the aorta. One blow of its beak usually suffices. And as regards the basilisk it doesn’t matter where it strikes. Its venom is the most powerful known neurotoxin. It kills in a few seconds.’

‘Ugh… And which one, do tell, can be despatched with the help of a looking glass?’

‘Either of them. If you whack it over the head.’

Reynart de Bois-Fresnes chortled. Geralt didn’t laugh. The joke about the basilisk and the looking glass had stopped amusing him in Kaer Morhen, for the teachers had flogged it to death. The jokes about virgins and unicorns were just as unamusing. The record for idiocy and primitivism was achieved in Kaer Morhen by the numerous versions of the joke about the she-dragon the young witcher shook hands with for a bet.

He smiled. At the memories.

‘I prefer you when you smile,’ said Reynart, scrutinising him very closely. ‘I prefer you much more, a hundredfold more like you are now. Compared to how you were back then in October, after that scrap in the Druids’ Forest when we were riding to Beauclair. Back then, let me tell you, you were sullen, embittered and as sour as a usurer who’s been swindled, and as irritable as a man who hasn’t had any luck the whole night. Or even in the morning.’

‘Was I really like that?’

‘Really. Don’t be surprised that I prefer you the way you are now. Changed.’

‘Occupational therapy.’ Geralt shook the kurolishek he was holding by the tail. ‘The salutary influence of professional activity on the psyche. And so, to continue my cure, let’s get down to business. There’s a chance of making a little more money on the skoffin than the fee agreed for its killing. It’s almost undamaged. If you have a customer for a whole one, to be stuffed or prepared, don’t take less than two hundred. If you have to flog it in portions, remember that the most valuable feathers are from just above the rump, specifically, those ones, the central tail feathers. You can sharpen them much thinner than goose feathers, they write more prettily and cleanly, and are harder-wearing. A scribe who knows his stuff won’t hesitate to give five apiece.’

‘I have customers wanting to stuff a corpse,’ smiled the knight. ‘The coopers’ guild. They saw that vile creature stuffed in Castel Ravello. You know, that giant water flea, or whatever it’s called… You know the one. The one they clubbed to death in the dungeons under the ruins of the old castle the day after Samhain…’

‘I remember.’