The witcher turned his head abruptly. In the silence his hearing, sharpened beyond measure, easily picked out a rustle of footsteps through the courtyard overgrown with stinging nettles. It could not be the striga. The steps were too light. Geralt threw his sword across his back, hid his bundle in the hearth of the ruined chimney-place and, silent as a bat, ran downstairs.

It was still light enough in the courtyard for the approaching man to see the witcher’s face. The man, Ostrit, backed away abruptly; an involuntary grimace of terror and repulsion contorted his lips. The witcher smiled wryly—he knew what he looked like. After drinking a mixture of banewart, monk’s hood and eyebright the face takes on the color of chalk, and the pupils fill the entire iris. But the mixture enables one to see in the deepest darkness, and this is what Geralt wanted.

Ostrit quickly regained control.

“You look as if you were already a corpse, witcher,” he said. “From fear, no doubt. Don’t be afraid. I bring you reprieve.”

The witcher did not reply.

“Don’t you hear what I say, you Rivian charlatan? You’re saved. And rich.” Ostrit hefted a sizeable purse in his hand and threw it at Geralt’s feet. “A thousand orens. Take it, get on your horse and get out of here!”

The Rivian still said nothing.

“Don’t gawp at me!” Ostrit raised his voice. “And don’t waste my time. I have no intention of standing here until midnight. Don’t you understand? I do not wish you to undo the spell. No, you haven’t guessed. I am not in league with Velerad and Segelin. I don’t want you to kill her. You are simply to leave. Everything is to stay as it is.”

The witcher did not move. He did not want the magnate to realize how fast his movements and reactions now were. It was quickly growing dark. A relief, as even the semi-darkness of dusk was too bright for his dilated pupils.

“And why, sir, is everything to remain as it is?” he asked, trying to enunciate each word slowly.

“Now, that”—Ostrit raised his head proudly—“should really be of damn little concern to you.”

“And what if I already know?”

“Go on.”

“It will be easier to remove Foltest from the throne if the striga frightens the people even more? If the royal madness completely disgusts both magnates and common folk, am I right? I came here by way of Redania and Novigrad. There is much talk there that there are those in Wyzim who look to King Vizimir as their savior and true monarch. But I, Lord Ostrit, do not care about politics, or the successions to thrones, or revolutions in palaces. I am here to accomplish my task. Have you never heard of a sense of responsibility and plain honesty? About professional ethics?”

“Careful to whom you speak, you vagabond!” Ostrit yelled furiously, placing his hand on the hilt of his sword. “I have had enough of this. I am not accustomed to hold such discussions! Look at you—ethics, codes of practice, morality?! Who are you to talk? A brigand who’s barely arrived before he starts murdering men? Who bends double to Foltest and behind his back bargains with Velerad like a hired thug? And you dare to turn your nose up at me, you serf? Play at being a Knowing One? A Magician? You scheming witcher! Be gone before I run the flat of my sword across your gob!”