The town hall thugs and Hunt’s men dragged the woman off Reynevan, tugging, jerking and shaking her like a rag doll. The woman suddenly sagged in their arms and rolled her eyes. She coughed spasmodically, choked and wheezed. Then suddenly rasped, spat and sneezed out snot, spraying it in great quantities in all directions. Blood and mucous thickly speckled the faces and clothing of the surrounding people.

“Blessed Virgin Mary!” howled somebody from the throng. “It’s the plague! The pox! The pox!”

There was no need to repeat it. Everybody knew what mors nigra—the Black Death—was, everybody knew what to do in the face of the Black Death. There was a simple principle and one rule: fuge, run away. Everybody—market traders, passers-by, servants, the bishop’s soldiers, the Nose, Hunt—fled in panic, knocking over and trampling one another. Salt Square emptied in a second.

Only Reynevan remained. A physician. Kneeling over the plague-stricken woman. Trying to open her mouth, alleviate her plight, remove the mucous and clots blocking up her throat. There’s no spell for it, he thought feverishly and chaotically. No spell, no charm, no amulet. No magic can cure it, or protect one from being infected by the pulmonary form of the plague. For it was the pulmonary form, there was no doubt, the symptoms were classic, although… She isn’t febrile… Her forehead is cool… As is her body… Her chest… How is it possible? Something’s not right.

The woman with the unremarkable face pushed his hands away.

“Rather than groping me,” she said calmly and clearly, “run away, you hapless idiot. Quickly. Before they realise it was an illusion.”

He didn’t need telling twice.

Had he decided on fleeing from Wrocław with no further thought, wearing just that thin jerkin, he would have pulled it off. The city was in such confusion and panic, his escape would quite likely have succeeded. But Reynevan was reluctant to give up his belongings and the bay pacing horse Dzierżka of Wirsing had gifted him. He turned out to be incapable of abandoning those material goods without a second thought or any regret. In short, materialism was his undoing. As it had been to many before him.

They seized him in the stable. They fell on him as he was saddling his horse. Resistance was out of the question. There were too many of them; he would not have fared any better had he tried to fight the hundred-armed Briareus. The highly predictable outcome was that Reynevan ended up with a sack over his head and his arms and legs bound. Then they picked him up, tossed him onto a wagon like a parcel and covered him with some soft, heavy things, probably rags.

A whip cracked, axles creaked, the wagon lurched forwards and rolled along a street lined with logs. Reynevan, pressed down by the pile of rags, swore and kicked himself.