“A hasty conclusion,” said Kundrie, blinking all four of her eyelids. “Hejncze is not the Inquisition. Hejncze is but a cog in the machine. But the bishop himself is doing his utmost to discredit that cog and eliminate it. Perhaps intrigue has finally yielded success? Perhaps Hejncze has no significance in the machine now, or is of so little importance he isn’t being kept informed? Perhaps things go on there behind his back?”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” said the Wallcreeper, biting his lip. “I’ve had enough of theories. I want hard facts. Arcane Knowledge, Kundrie, Arcane Knowledge. Necromancy and goetia. I purposely sent my men to Schönau in order to steal some of Miss Apolda’s personal effects, objects she had touched. You received them. And what of it?”

“I’ll show you,” said the neufra and rose ponderously from the curule seat. “Allow me.”

The Wallcreeper thought he knew what to expect. Kundrie usually employed the Longaevi’s magic. Probably discouraged by the lack of results, she was now trying the magic used by the Nefandi. The Wallcreeper looked and quickly swallowed the saliva gathering in his throat.

On the table, a long strip of skin, apparently torn from a living person, had been formed into a circle. At regular intervals along it, indicating the corners of a triangle, were a goat’s horns, a mummified bat and a cat’s skull. The bat had been drowned in blood and the cat had been fed on human flesh before being killed. The Wallcreeper preferred not to know what had been done to the goat. In the middle of the circle, hammered to the table with an iron stub nail, lay a severed human head, already dripping and stinking dreadfully. Kundrie had previously gouged out the eyes—the parts that rot the quickest—and smeared wax into the sockets. The skin around the head’s mouth was charred, the lips hanging in twisted shreds, curled up like rotten bark. Before the head lay a pair of severed hands, also nailed to the table. Between the hands lay some kind of skinned and mutilated animal: a large rat or small dog.

“They gave me the scarf,” said Kundrie, producing a scrap of grey wool, “which I prudently cut up into pieces. This is all that’s left. Look.”

She placed the rag between the corpse’s hands. The hands twitched and fluttered and the fingers began to suddenly twist and writhe like worms, as though trying to grab the rag. Kundrie raised her hands and held them out in front of her and her fingers were overcome by an uncontrolled shaking, imitating exactly the movements of the hands nailed to the table.

“Iä! Iä! Nya-hah, y-nyah! Ngg-ngaah-Shoggog!”