Time of Contempt(10)

‘Your sarcasm pains my heart, Witcher. I’ve got you out of a pickle, and you, rather than thank me, wound my heart.’

‘I thank you and I beg your pardon. Why did King Foltest order his agents to search for Ciri, Codringher? What were they ordered to do, should they have found her?’

‘Oh, but you are slow-witted. Kill her, of course. She is considered a pretender to the throne of Cintra, for which there are other plans.’

‘It doesn’t add up, Codringher. The Cintran throne was burnt to the ground along with the royal palace, the city and the rest of the country. Nilfgaard rules there now. Foltest is well aware of that; and other kings too. How, exactly, can Ciri pretend to a throne that doesn’t exist?’

‘Come,’ said Codringher, getting up, ‘let us try to find an answer to that question together. In the meanwhile, I shall give you proof of my trust . . . What is it about that portrait that interests you so much?’

‘That it’s riddled with holes, as though a woodpecker had been pecking at it for a few seasons,’ said Geralt, looking at a painting in a gilt frame hanging on the wall opposite the lawyer’s desk, ‘and that it portrays a rare idiot.’

‘It’s my late father,’ said Codringher, grimacing a little. ‘A rare idiot indeed. I hung his portrait there so as to always have him before my eyes. As a warning. Come, Witcher.’

They went out into the corridor. The tomcat, which had been lying in the middle of the carpet, enthusiastically licking a rear paw extended at a strange angle, vanished into the darkness of the corridor at the sight of the witcher.

‘Why don’t cats like you, Geralt? Does it have something to do with the—’

‘Yes,’ he interrupted, ‘it does.’

One of the mahogany panels slid open noiselessly, revealing a secret passage. Codringher went first. The panel, no doubt set in motion by magic, closed behind them but did not plunge them into darkness. Light reached them from the far end of the secret passage.

It was cold and dry in the room at the end of the corridor, and the oppressive, stifling smell of dust and candles hung in the air.

‘You can meet my partner, Geralt.’

‘Fenn?’ smiled the Witcher. ‘You jest.’

‘Oh, but I don’t. Admit it, you suspected Fenn didn’t exist!’

‘Not at all.’

A creaking could be heard from between the rows of bookcases and bookshelves that reached up to the low vaulted ceiling, and a moment later a curious vehicle emerged. It was a high-backed chair on wheels. On the chair sat a midget with a huge head, set directly on disproportionately narrow shoulders. The midget had no legs.

‘I’d like to introduce Jacob Fenn,’ said Codringher, ‘a learned legist, my partner and valued co-worker. And this is our guest and client –’

‘– the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia,’ finished the cripple with a smile. ‘I guessed without too much difficulty. I’ve been working on the case for several months. Follow me, gentlemen.’

They set off behind the creaking chair into the labyrinth of bookcases, which groaned beneath a weight of printed works that even the university library of Oxenfurt would have been proud to have in its collection. The incunabula, judged Geralt, must have been collected by several generations of Codringhers and Fenns. He was pleased by the obvious show of trust, and happy to finally have the chance to meet Fenn. He did not doubt, however, that the figure of Fenn, though utterly genuine, was also partially fictitious. The fictitious Fenn, Codringher’s infallible alter ego, was supposedly often seen abroad, while the chair-bound, learned legist probably never left the building.

The centre of the room was particularly well lit, and there stood a low pulpit, accessible from the chair on wheels and piled high with books, rolls of parchment and vellum, great sheets of paper, bottles of ink, bunches of quills and innumerable mysterious utensils. Not all of them were mystifying. Geralt recognised moulds for forging seals and a diamond grater for removing the text from official documents. In the centre of the pulpit lay a small ball-firing repeating arbalest, and next to it huge magnifying glasses made of polished rock crystal peeped out from under a velvet cloth. Magnifying glasses of that kind were rare and cost a fortune.

‘Found anything new, Fenn?’

‘Not really,’ said the cripple, smiling. His smile was pleasant and very endearing. ‘I’ve reduced the list of Rience’s potential paymasters to twenty-eight sorcerers . . .’

‘Let’s leave that for the moment,’ Codringher interrupted quickly. ‘Right now something else is of interest to us. Enlighten Geralt as to the reasons why the missing princess of Cintra is the object of extensive search operations by the agents of the Four Kingdoms.’