‘So you killed the Witcher,’ he said again, smiling repulsively. ‘Forestalling Homer Straggen, also called Nightingale? Fascinating, fascinating. Put simply, I ought to pay you fifty florins. The second instalment. Which means Straggen received his two score and ten florins for nothing. For you surely can’t suppose he’ll give it up.’

‘How I settle accounts with Nightingale is my business,’ said Angoulême, sitting on a crate and swinging her legs. ‘The contract on the Witcher was a one-off commission. And we carried out that commission. We did, not Nightingale. The Witcher’s in the ground. His company, all three of them, are in the ground. In other words: job done.’

‘At least that’s what you claim. How did it happen?’

Angoulême kept swinging her legs.

‘I’ll write my life story when I’m old,’ she declared in her usual impudent tone. ‘I’ll describe how this, that and the other took place. You’ll have to hold on until then, Mr Schirrú.’

‘It shames you that much, then,’ the half-breed remarked coldly. ‘So, you did the deed foully and treacherously.’

‘Does that bother you?’ Geralt asked.

Schirrú looked at him intently.

‘No,’ he answered after a moment. ‘Geralt the Witcher of Rivia didn’t deserve a better fate. He was a simpleton and a fool. If he’d had a finer, more honest and honourable death, legends would have sprung up around him. But he didn’t merit a legend.’

‘Death is always the same.’

‘Not always.’ The half-elf turned his head, trying to catch a glimpse of Geralt’s eyes, shaded by his hood. ‘Not always, I assure you. I presume you dealt the mortal blow.’

Geralt didn’t reply. He felt the overwhelming urge to grab the cross-breed by the ponytail, knock him to the floor and wring every detail out of him, knocking his teeth out one by one with his sword pommel. He held himself back. Good sense suggested Angoulême’s hoax might bear better results.

‘As you wish,’ said Schirrú, not getting an answer. ‘I won’t insist on a report about the course of events. It’s clearly difficult for you to talk about it, and there’s clearly not very much to boast about. Supposing, of course, that your silence doesn’t stem from something quite different… For example, that nothing at all occurred. Do you perhaps have any proof of the veracity of your words?’

‘We cut off the Witcher’s right hand,’ Angoulême replied impassively. ‘But later a raccoon took it and devoured it.’

‘So we have only this.’ Geralt slowly unbuttoned his shirt and drew out his medallion with the wolf’s head. ‘The Witcher wore it around his neck.’

‘May I?’

Geralt didn’t hesitate for long. The half-elf hefted the medallion in his palm.

‘Now I believe,’ he said slowly. ‘The gewgaw emanates powerful magic. Only a witcher could have had something like this.’