The scribe, clutching his handiwork to his belly, gave a low bow and shuffled backwards towards the door. Bishop Konrad sighed heavily, took a gulp of wine and signalled the servant boy to recharge his goblet. The servant’s hands shook and the neck of the carafe jingled against the lip of the goblet. The bishop dismissed him with a wave.

“You haven’t shown your face here for a long time,” he said to the Wallcreeper when they were alone. “You haven’t flown in through the window, haven’t alarmed the servants, haven’t given rise to rumours for quite a while. I was beginning to worry. Where have you been, son, and what have you been up to? Let me guess: studying devilish books and grimoires at Sensenberg? Stupefying yourself with hash’eesh and the poison of fly agaric? Summoning Satan? Venerating demons, offering them human sacrifices? Killing prisoners in their cells? Losing your subordinates, your famous Black Riders, on battlefields? Allowing traitors to get away and letting spies lead you by the nose? Go on, son, tell me. Give me your account. Brag about which of my instructions and orders you have ignored recently. And how you’ve been staining my reputation.”

“Finished, Papa dear?”

“No, son. I haven’t finished with you. But know this—I am sorely tempted to be done with you, once and for all.”

“Since you’re talking about it, it can’t be so bad,” said the Wallcreeper, grinning and lounging in an oak curule seat. “If I were really vexing you or were no longer useful, you’d finish me off quietly and without warning. And without mercy. Heedless of any blood ties.”

“I’ve told you,” Konrad said, squinting, “so don’t make me repeat it. There are no blood ties between us. I may call you ‘son’ and treat you like a son. But you are not my son. You are the son of a sorceress, a poisoner, on top of that a converso whom I saved from the stake by making her a nun. The fact that I gave your mother the honour of fucking her numerous times does not in the least mean that you are the fruit of my loins, Birkart, that you sprang from my seed. I’m inclined to believe, son, that the very Devil begat you. And it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that some mortal man in Lubáň could have got his paws on your mother; I’m too familiar with both convents and the temperament of your lascivious mama, which makes me certain that many a priest confessor had his way with her there. It is your character, however, that shows definitively who brought you into the world.”

“Go on, Papa dear, go on. May it bring you relief.”