Kenna, still trying to read his thoughts, grimaced, picking up a wave of desperate, impotent fury. Something snapped in Rience’s brain, yet another partition. He’ll say something out of fear, thought Kenna, something he meant to keep until the end, as a trump card, an ace, which would have beaten all the other aces in a last, deciding hand for the highest stakes. Now he’ll discard that ace, out of a banal, revolting fear of pain.

Suddenly something popped in her head, she felt heat in her temples and then sudden cold.

And she knew. She knew Rience’s hidden thought.

By the Gods, she thought. What a pickle I’m in…

‘I’ll talk!’ howled the sorcerer, reddening and staring goggled-eyed in the coroner’s face. ‘I’ll tell you something genuinely important, Skellen! Vattier de Rideaux…’

Kenna suddenly heard another thought, belonging to someone else. She saw Neratin Ceka with a hand on his dagger moving towards the door.

Boots pounded and Boreas Mun rushed into the headman’s hall.

‘My lord coroner! Quickly, sir! You’ll never believe who’s here!’

Skellen gestured to Brigden, who was bending over towards the spy’s heels with the iron, to stop.

‘You ought to play the lottery, Rience,’ he said, looking out of the window. ‘I’ve never met anyone in my life with such luck.’

Through the window they could see a crowd and two people on horseback in the midst of it. Kenna knew at once who it was. She knew who the bony giant was, with the pale fishlike eyes, riding a powerful bay.

And who the ashen-haired girl on the splendid black mare was. With hands bound and a collar around her neck. And a bruise on her swollen cheek.

Vysogota returned to his cottage in a foul mood, dejected, taciturn–even angry. The reason was a conversation with a peasant, who had rowed over in a dugout canoe to collect some pelts. Perhaps for the last time before the spring, said the peasant. The weather’s getting worse by the day. The rain and wind are so bad I’m afraid to venture onto the water. Ice on the puddles in the morning, blizzards are nigh, and after that frosts. The river will rise and flood at any time, then it’s away with the dugout and out with the sleigh. But even a sleigh’s no use on Pereplut, naught but bogs far as the eye can see…

The peasant was right. Towards the evening it became overcast and white flakes fell from the dark blue sky. A stiff, easterly wind flattened the dry reeds, whipping up white crests over the surface of the wetland. It had become piercingly, bitterly cold.

The day after tomorrow, thought Vysogota, is the feast of Samhain. According to the elven calendar it’ll be the New Year in three days. According to the human calendar we’ll have to wait another two months.

Kelpie, Ciri’s black mare, stamped and snorted in the barn.