neither a dress nor her favourite black agate
jewellery nor any sharp makeup. She was wearing a man's short jacket, leggings and high boots – a 'field' outfit as the poet called it. The enchantress's dark hair, usually loose and worn in a picturesque mess, was brushed smooth and tied back at the nape of her neck.
'Let's not waste time,' she said, raising her even eyebrows. 'Dandilion's right. We can spare ourselves the rhetoric and slick eloquence which leads nowhere when the matter at hand is so simple and trivial.'
'Ah, even so.' Dijkstra smiled. 'Trivial. A dangerous Nilfgaardian agent, who could now be trivially locked away in my deepest dungeon in Tretogor, has trivially escaped, trivially warned and frightened away by the trivial stupidity of two gentlemen known as Dandilion and Geralt. I've seen people wander to the scaffolds over lesser trivialities. Why didn't you inform me about your ambush, Dandilion? Did I not instruct you to keep me informed about all the witcher's intentions?'
'I didn't know anything about Geralt's plans,' Dandilion lied with conviction. 'I told you that he went to Temeria and Sodden to hunt down this Rience. I also told you that he had returned. I was convinced he had given up. Rience had literally dissolved into thin air, the witcher didn't find the slightest trail, and this – if you remember – I also told you-'
'You lied,' stated the spy coldly. 'The witcher did find Rience's trail. In the form of corpses. That's when he decided to change his tactics. Instead of chasing Rience, he decided to wait for Rience to find him. He signed up to the Malatius and Grock Company barges as an escort. He did so intentionally. He knew that the Company would advertise it far and wide, that Rience would hear of it and then venture to try something. And so Rience did. The strange, elusive Master Rience. The insolent, self-assured Master Rience who does not even bother to use aliases or false names. Master Rience who, from a mile off, smells of Nilfgaardian chimney smoke. And of being a renegade sorcerer. Isn't that right, Philippa?'
The magician neither affirmed nor denied it. She remained silent, watching Dandilion closely and intently. The poet lowered his eyes and hawked hesitantly. He did not like such gazes.
Dandilion divided women – including magicians – into very likeable, likeable, unlikeable and very unlikeable. The very likeable reacted to the proposition of being bedded with joyful acquiescence, the likeable with a happy smile. The unlikeable reacted unpredictably. The very unlikeable were counted by the troubadour to be those to whom the very thought of presenting such a proposition made his back go strangely cold and his knees shake.
Philippa Eilhart, although very attractive, was decidedly very unlikeable.
Apart from that, Philippa Eilhart was an important figure in the Council of Wizards, and King Vizimir's trusted court magician. She was a very talented enchantress. Word had it that she was one of the few to have mastered the art of polymorphy. She looked thirty. In truth she was probably no less than three hundred years old.
Dijkstra, locking his chubby fingers together over his belly, twiddled his thumbs. Philippa remained silent. Ori Reuven coughed, sniffed and wriggled, constantly adjusting his generous toga. His toga resembled a professor's but did not look as if it had been presented by a senate. It looked more as if it had been found on a rubbish heap.
'Your witcher, however,' suddenly snarled the spy, 'underestimated Master Rience. He set a trap but – demonstrating a complete lack of common sense – banked on Rience troubling himself to come in person. Rience, according to the witcher's plan, was to feel safe. Rience wasn't to smell a trap anywhere, wasn't to spy Master Dijkstra's subordinates lying in wait for him. Because, on the witcher's instructions, Master Dandilion had not squealed to Master Dijkstra about the planned ambush. But according to the instructions received, Master Dandilion was duty bound to do so. Master Dandilion had clear, explicit instructions in this matter which he deigned to ignore.'
'I am not one of your subordinates.' The poet puffed up with pride. 'And I don't have to comply with your instructions and orders. I help you sometimes but I do so out of my own free will, from patriotic duty, so as not to stand by idly in face of the approaching changes
'You spy for anyone who pays you,' Dijkstra interrupted coldly. 'You inform on anyone who has something on you. And I've got a few pretty good things on you, Dandilion. So don't be saucy.'
'I won't give in to blackmail!'
'Shall we bet on it?'
'Gentlemen.' Philippa Eilhart raised her hand. 'Let's be serious, if you please. Let's not be diverted from the matter in hand.'
'Quite right.' The spy sprawled out in the armchair. 'Listen, poet. What's done is done. Rience has been warned and won't be duped a second time. But I can't let anything like this happen in the future. That's why I want to see the witcher. Bring him to me. Stop wandering around town trying to lose my agents. Go straight to Geralt and bring him here, to the faculty. I have to talk to him. Personally, and without witnesses. Without the noise and publicity which would arise if I were to arrest the witcher. Bring him to me, Dandilion. That's all I require of you at present.'
'Geralt has left,' the bard lied calmly. Dijkstra glanced at the magician. Dandilion, expecting an impulse to sound out his mind, tensed but he did not feel anything. Philippa was watching him, her eyes narrowed, but nothing indicated that she was using spells to verify his truthfulness.
'Then I'll wait until he's back,' sighed Dijkstra, pretending to believe him. 'The matter I want to see him about is important so I'll make some changes to my schedule and wait for the witcher. When he's back, bring him here. The sooner the better. Better for many people.'
'There might be a few difficulties,' Dandilion grimaced, 'in convincing Geralt to come here. He – just imagine it – harbours an inexplicable aversion to spies. Although to all intents and purposes he seems to understand it is a job like any other, he feels repulsion for those who execute it. Patriotic reasons, he's wont to say, are one thing, but the spying profession attracts only out-and-out scoundrels and the lowest-'
'Enough, enough.' Dijkstra waved his hand carelessly. 'No platitudes, please, platitudes bore me. They're so crude.'
'I think so, too,' snorted the troubadour. 'But the witcher's a
simple soul, a straightforward honest simpleton in his judgement, nothing like us men-of-the-world. He simply despises spies and won't want to talk to you for anything in the world, and as for helping the secret services, there's no question about it. And you haven't got anything on him.'
'You're mistaken,' said the spy. 'I do. More than one thing. But for the time being that brawl on the barge near Acorn Bay is enough. You know who those men who came on board were? They weren't Rience's men.'
'That's not news to me,' said the poet casually. 'I'm sure they were a few scoundrels of the likes of which there is no shortage in the Temerian Guards. Rience has been asking about the witcher and no doubt offering a nice sum for any news about him. It's obvious that the witcher is very important to him. So a few crafty dogs tried to grab Geralt, bury him in some cave and then sell him to Rience, dictating their conditions and trying to bargain as much out of him as possible. Because they would have got very little, if anything at all, for mere information.'
'My congratulations on such perspicacity. The witcher's, of course, not yours – it would never have occurred to you. But the matter is more complex than you think. My colleagues, men belonging to King Foltest's secret service, are also, as it turns out, interested in Master Rience. They saw through the plan of those – as you called them – crafty dogs. It is they who boarded the barge, they who wanted to grab the witcher. Perhaps as bait for Rience, perhaps for a different end. At Acorn Bay, Dandilion, the witcher killed Temerian agents. Their chief is very, very angry. You say Geralt has left? I hope he hasn't gone to Temeria. He might never return.'
And that's what you have on him?'
'Indeed. That's what I have. I can pacify the Temerians. But not for nothing. Where has the witcher gone, Dandilion?'
'Novigrad,' the troubadour lied without thinking. 'He went to look for Rience there.'
A mistake, a mistake,' smiled the spy, pretending not to have caught the lie. 'You see what a shame it is he didn't overcome his repulsion and get in touch with me. I'd have saved him the effort.
Rience isn't in Novigrad. Whereas there's no end of Temerian agents there. Probably all waiting for the witcher. They've caught on to something I've known for a long time. Namely, that Geralt, the witcher from Rivia, can answer all kinds of questions if he's asked in the right manner. Questions which the secret services of each of the Four Kingdoms are beginning to ask themselves. The arrangement is simple: the witcher comes here, to the
