He did not. Because he couldn’t. Caught by surprise, his head was muddled, it was like a dream, he was confused by what had happened. Jutta, he thought, feverishly and incoherently. Jutta. The altarist Felicjan will find the place of Jutta’s incarceration. But how will I contact the altarist? When I myself am in captivity? Or dead?

A crowd gathered and grew around him.

“Go on,” signalled the man with the disfigured nose. “Tie up the rogue. Bind him.”

“Bind him, bind him!” A grey-haired beanpole in a leather jerkin with a drawn sword, accompanied by several armed men, forced his way through the throng. “And when you’ve bound him stand aside, for he is ours. We’ve been tracking him for several days. You were quicker, good for you, but now hand him over. Our rights take precedence.”

“How so?” The Nose stood with arms akimbo. “How are they superior? This isn’t Ostrów Tumski, this is Wrocław! And in Wrocław nothing ranks higher than the city council, the council governs Wrocław. I arrested the prisoner by order of the gentlemen of the council and am to deliver him to the town hall. You are right that I was quicker. And you were tardy! Your loss, you should have risen earlier. The early bird catches the worm! Thus begone, Lord Hunt. Hinder me not in my service!”

“The bishop rules Wrocław,” retorted Kuczera of Hunt. “He is the proxy of King Sigismund, your master, you plebeian, and the master of your damned council. And I represent the bishop here, so beware of whom you address, you town hall lackey. And whom you send packing. I have orders to deliver the prisoner to the bishop’s palace—”

“And I to the town hall!”

“This,” Kuczera said angrily, “is a church matter and the town hall can keep its fucking hands off. Go on, stand aside.”

“You stand aside!”

Kuczera of Hunt growled, panted and put his hand on his sword. At that moment, a small figure in a dull greyish smock sprang—or rather shot—from the growing and increasingly restless crowd. Before anybody could react, the figure sped on and attacked Reynevan, snatching him from the grip of the servants and knocking him over, pressing him to the ground. The astonished Reynevan looked straight into the newcomer’s face. A grey, bland and quite unremarkable face. Blood was dripping from the unremarkable nose and mouth. And some kind of repulsive, sticky secretion.

“I’ll sneeze snot over them,” the figure murmured straight into his ear in a soft, high female voice. “And you flee…”