‘Very well, as you wish. Where was I…? Aha. The war broke out, you know, with Nilfgaard. My relatives lost everything, had to abandon their house. They had three children of their own, and I’d become a burden to them, so they gave me away to an orphanage. It was run by the priests of some temple or other. It was a jolly place, as it happens. A bordello, a whorehouse, simple as that, for people who like their fruit tart and with white pips, get it? Young girls. And young boys too. So when I joined them I was too grown up, adult, there were no takers for me…’

Quite unexpectedly she blushed with shame, visible even in the firelight.

‘Well, almost none,’ she added through clenched teeth.

‘How old were you then?’

‘Fifteen. I met one girl and five boys there, my age and a bit older. And we teamed up in no time. We knew, didn’t we, the legends and tales. About Mad Dea, about Blackbeard, about the Cassini brothers… We wanted to get out on the road, to taste freedom, to maraud! So what, we told ourselves, if they feed us twice a day? Does that give some lechers the right to screw us—’

‘Language, Angoulême! Keep it in moderation.’

The girl hawked noisily and spat into the campfire.

‘Prig! Very well, I’ll get to the point, because I don’t feel like talking. We found knives in the orphanage kitchen. We just had to whet them well on a stone and strop them on a belt. We made some excellent clubs from the turned legs of an oaken chair. All we needed was horses and coin, so we waited for two perverts, regular customers, old buggers of, ugh, at least forty. They came, sat down, sipped wine and waited for the priests to tie the chosen kid to a special contraption, as was customary… But they didn’t get their oats that day!’

‘Angoulême.’

‘All right, all right. In short: we knifed and clubbed to death those two lecherous creeps, three priests and a page; the only one not to bolt, he was guarding the horses. We roasted the temple warden’s soles until he changed his mind about giving us the key to the coffer, but we spared his life, because he was a nice old gaffer, always kind to us. And we took to the road to plunder. We had our ups and downs, won some, lost some, we gave and took some beatings. Full bellies, empty bellies. Ha, more often empty. I’ve eaten everything that crawls, anything you can fucking catch. And things that fly? I even ate a child’s kite once, because it was made of flour and water paste.’

She fell silent, then distractedly messed up her flaxen hair.