‘…Zireael veloe que’ss aen en’ssan irch

Mab og, Hen Cerbin, vean ni, quirk, quirk!’

‘The embittered and mistrustful old man,’ Vysogota said a moment later, without changing his position, ‘apologises to the young polymath. The venerable old raven, sensing everywhere deceit and trickery, asks for forgiveness of the swallow, whose only crime is to be young and full of life. And very pretty.’

‘Now you’re talking drivel,’ she said crossly, involuntarily covering the scar on her cheek. ‘You can forget compliments like that. They won’t correct those wonky stitches you tacked my skin with. Don’t think, either, that you’ll gain my trust by apologising. I still don’t know who you really are. Why you lied to me about those dates and days. Or why you looked between my legs, when I’d been wounded in the face. And if looking was where it finished.’

This time she made him lose his temper.

‘What are you saying, you brat?’ he roared. ‘I could be your father!’

‘Grandfather,’ she corrected him coldly. ‘Or even great-grandfather. But you aren’t. I don’t know who you are. But you are certainly not who you pretend to be.’

‘I am he who found you on the bog, almost frozen to the moss, with a black crust instead of a face, unconscious, and filthy. I am he who took you home, although I didn’t know who you were, and was within my rights to expect the worst. Who bandaged you and put you to bed. Tended to you, when you were expiring with fever. Nursed you. Washed you. Thoroughly. In the tattoo region as well.’

She blushed again, but had no intention of changing her insolent, defiant expression.

‘In this world,’ she growled, ‘deceptive appearances occasionally feign the truth; you said it yourself. I also know the world a little, if you can imagine it. You rescued me, tended my wounds, nursed me. Thank you for that. I’m grateful for your… your kindness. Although I know that there is no such thing as kindness without—’

‘Without calculation or the hope of some profit,’ he finished with a smile. ‘Yes, yes, I know, I’m a worldly man. Perhaps I know the world as well as you do, Ciri? Wounded girls, of course, are robbed of everything that has any value. If they’re unconscious or too weak to defend themselves, free rein is normally given to one’s urges and lust, often in immoral and unnatural ways. Isn’t that so?’

‘Nothing is as it seems,’ answered Ciri, her cheeks reddening once more.

‘How true a statement,’ he said, throwing another pelt on one of the piles. ‘And how mercilessly does it lead us to the conclusion that we, Ciri, know nothing about each other. We know only appearances, and appearances are deceptive.’

He waited a while, but Ciri wasn’t hurrying to say anything.