The Wallcreeper leaned close and looked the spy in the eyes. Although he was almost fainting from the intensity of the stomach cramps, Wendel Domarasc mustered the strength to look back at him. With calm, steely, disdainful eyes.

“Spes,” he replied calmly, “una hominem nec morte relinquit.”

The Wallcreeper said nothing for a moment, and then smiled. Very hideously.

“Cato,” he said, drawing out the words, “didn’t have all the answers. His opinions concerning hope were particularly unreasonable. Clearly owing to a lack of personal experience. I presume he’d never been in the torture chambers in the dungeons beneath Wrocław town hall.”

Wendel Domarasc, chief resident spy of the Hussite intelligence service in Silesia, said nothing for a long time, fighting intestinal spasms and dizziness.

“The philosopher calls…” he finally said, looking into the Wallcreeper’s black eyes. “The philosopher calls patience the greatest virtue. It’s enough to sit down on a riverbank and wait. Your enemy’s corpse is sure to float past, sooner or later. You’ll be able to take a good look at the corpse. Watch the current spin it around. Watch fish nibble it. Do you know what I’ll do, Grellenort, when all this is over? I’ll sit down on a riverbank. And wait.”

The Wallcreeper was silent for a long time. His birdlike eyes were quite expressionless.

“Take him away,” he finally spat.

Inquisitor Gregory Hejncze put his hands together and placed them beneath his scapular. The scapular, like the habit, was freshly laundered and smelled of lye. The smell was soothing. It helped him stay calm.

“I wish,” said the Inquisitor in a calm voice, “to congratulate Your Eminence on the capture of the Hussite spy. That is a success. A thing of great benefit pro publico bono.”

Bishop Konrad splashed water on his face, placed a finger against his nose and blew the contents of one nostril into a bowl. He took a napkin from the hands of the servant.

“They say,” he said, wiping his face and blowing his other nostril, this time into the napkin, “that you have spent time in Rome?”

“If they say so,” Grzegorz Hejncze replied and inhaled the smell of lye, “then I must have.”

“How is Holy Father Martin V’s health? Does he betray any symptoms? For I hear they prophesy that his days are numbered.”

“Who prophesies thus?”

“Soothsayers. After leaving Rome, you reportedly travelled to Switzerland? And how is it in Switzerland?”

“It’s lovely. Their cheese is excellent, too.”

“And their infantry,” said the bishop, shooing away the servant with the basin. He gestured to another who was holding a fur-trimmed mantle to come to him. “Their infantry is also good. Perhaps they’ll loan us a thousand pikes when we launch another crusade against Bohemia? Did you talk about that with them? With the Bishop of Basel?”

“I did. They won’t. A crusade—they said—will fail dismally. As usual. It’s a waste of soldiers.”