Triss appreciation: Crach an Craite style
From Tower of the Swallow: Crach the ladies man works his magic.
‘Well, well.’ Crach an Craite glanced at his visitor, his head tilted to one side. ‘Triss Merigold in person. What an exceptionally pretty dress. And the lining... That’s chinchilla is it not? I would ask, what leads you to the Skellige... If I did not already know. But I do know.’
‘Very good.’ Triss smiled seductively, flipping her beautiful auburn hair. ‘Very well, you know, Earl. That saves us the introduction and the introductory statements, so we can immediately get down to business.’
...
‘Triss Merigold.’
‘Yes, Earl.’
‘I would like to invite you to dinner. Ah yes, the cook wants to know whether all the sorceresses despise seafood.’
Triss did not disdain the seafood. On the contrary, she ate twice as much as she had planned, and now began to worry about her waist – to those twenty-two inches, of which she was so proud. She decided to promote the digestion with white wine, made with the famous Toussaint Est Est. She drank from a horn with Crach.
‘So Yennefer,’ Triss continued the conversation, ‘turned up here on the nineteenth day of August by spectacularly falling from the sky fell into a fishing net. You, a loyal vassal of Cintra, granted her asylum. You helped her build a megascope... And, of course, you know with whom she spoke and what about.’
Crach an Craite took a swig from the horn and stifled a belch. ‘I do not know.’ He smiled slyly. ‘Of course I know nothing. How should I, a poor and simple sailor, know anything about the activities of a powerful sorceress?’
...
‘Your hair, Triss, is like fire in the candlelight. And your eyes are like Lapis Lazuli. Your lips are like coral...’
‘Stop it, Crach. Are you drunk or what? Pour me some wine. And talk.’
‘About what?’
‘Don't be stupid! Of how Yennefer decided to go to the Sedna-Depth.’
Crach an Craite’s eyes were like a hawk’s. They drilled deep inside her...
