‘Fabio,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s split up. We’ll meet up in a bit in that alleyway we came along. Go. And if anyone stops you to ask, you don’t know me or anything about me.’

‘But… Ciri—’

‘Go!’

She squeezed Yennefer’s amulet in her fist and murmured the activation spell. It started working in an instant, and there was no time to lose. The constables, who had been forcing their way through the crowd towards her, stopped, confused.

‘What the bloody hell?’ said one of them in astonishment, looking, it would have seemed, straight at Ciri. ‘Where is she? I just saw her…’

‘There, over there!’ yelled another, pointing the wrong way.

Ciri turned around and walked away, still a little dazed and weakened by the rush of adrenaline and the activation of the amulet. The amulet was working perfectly; no one could see her and no one was paying any attention to her. Absolutely no one. As a consequence she was jostled, stamped on and kicked innumerable times before she finally extricated herself from the crowd. By some miracle she escaped being crushed by a chest thrown from a cart. She almost had an eye poked out by a pitchfork. Spells, it turned out, had their good and bad sides, and as many advantages as disadvantages.

The amulet’s effects did not last long. Ciri was not powerful enough to control it or extend the time the spell was active. Fortunately, the spell wore off at the right moment, just as she left the crowd and saw Fabio waiting for her in the alley.

‘Oh my,’ said the boy. ‘Oh my goodness, Ciri. You’re here. I was worried…’

‘You needn’t have been. Come on, quickly. Noon has passed. I’ve got to get back.’

‘You were pretty handy with that monster.’ The boy looked at her in admiration. ‘You moved like lightning! Where did you learn to do that?’

‘What? The squire killed the wyvern.’

‘That’s not true. I saw—’

‘You didn’t see anything! Please, Fabio, not a word to anyone. Anyone. And particularly not to Madam Yennefer. Oh, I’d be in for it if she found out…’

She fell silent.

‘Those people were right.’ She pointed behind her, towards the market square. ‘I provoked the wyvern… It was all my fault…’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ retorted Fabio firmly. ‘That cage was rotten and bodged together. It could have broken any second: in an hour, tomorrow, the next day… It’s better that it happened now, because you saved—’

‘The squire did!’ yelled Ciri. ‘The squire! Will you finally get that into your head? I’m telling you, if you grass me up, I’ll turn you into a… a… well something horrible! I know spells! I’ll turn you into—’

‘Stop,’ someone called out behind them. ‘That’s quite enough of that!’

One of the women walking behind them had dark, smoothly combed hair, shining eyes and thin lips. She had a short mauve camaka cape trimmed with dormouse fur thrown over her shoulders.