“Renfri,” said Geralt calmly, “did you fall from the roof onto your head on the way to my room?”

“Are you a witcher or aren’t you, dammit? They say you killed a kikimora and brought it here on a donkey to get a price for it. Stregobor is worse than the kikimora. It’s just a mindless beast which kills because that’s how the gods made it. Stregobor is a brute, a true monster. Bring him to me on a donkey and I won’t begrudge you any sum you care to mention.”

“I’m not a hired thug, Shrike.”

“You’re not,” she agreed with a smile. She leaned back on the stool and crossed her legs on the table without the slightest effort to cover her thighs with her skirt. “You’re a witcher, a defender of people from evil. And evil is the steel and fire which will cause devastation here if we fight each other. Don’t you think I’m proposing a lesser evil, a better solution? Even for that son of a bitch Stregobor. You can kill him mercifully, with one thrust. He’ll die without knowing it. And I guarantee him quite the reverse.”

Geralt remained silent.

Renfri stretched, raising her arms.

“I understand your hesitation,” she said. “But I need an answer now.”

“Do you know why Stregobor and the king’s wife wanted to kill you?”

Renfri straightened abruptly and took her legs off the table.

“It’s obvious,” she snarled. “I am heir to the throne. Aridea’s children were born out of wedlock and don’t have any right to—”

“No.”

Renfri lowered her head, but only for a moment. Her eyes flashed. “Fine. I’m supposed to be cursed. Contaminated in my mother’s womb. I’m supposed to be…”

“Yes?”

“A monster.”

“And are you?”

For a fleeting moment she looked helpless, shattered. And very sad.

“I don’t know, Geralt,” she whispered, and then her features hardened again. “Because how am I to know, dammit? When I cut my finger, I bleed. I bleed every month, too. I get bellyache when I overeat, and a hangover when I get drunk. When I’m happy I sing and I swear when I’m sad. When I hate someone I kill them and when—But enough of this! Your answer, witcher.”

“My answer is no.”

“You remember what I said?” she asked after a moment’s silence. “There are offers you can’t refuse, the consequences are so terrible, and this is one of them. Think it over.”

“I have thought carefully. And my suggestion was as serious.”

Renfri was silent for some time, fiddling with a string of pearls wound three times around her shapely neck before falling teasingly between her breasts, their curves just visible through the slit of her jacket.

“Geralt,” she said, “did Stregobor ask you to kill me?”

“Yes. He believed it was the lesser evil.”

“Can I believe you refused him, as you have me?”

“You can.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t believe in a lesser evil.”

Renfri smiled faintly, an ugly grimace in the yellow candlelight.