And to blame for all of this, Apeczko suddenly decided, picking his teeth, is Reynevan, Reinmar of Bielawa. And he shall pay for it. But not in a way that would incite the whole of Silesia. He shall pay in an ordinary way, quietly, in the dark, with a knife in the ribs. When—as Balbulus guessed right—he appears in secret at the Cistercian sisters’ convent in Ligota, beneath his lover’s window. One thrust of a knife and he’ll land plop in the Cistercians’ carp pond. And hush! The carp won’t let on.

On the other hand, one cannot utterly ignore Balbulus’s instructions, if only because the Mumbler usually checks whether his orders are executed by giving the same orders to not one, but several persons.

What to do, by the Devil?

Apeczko thrust a knife into the table with a thud and drained his beaker in one draught. He looked up and met the gaze of the fat housekeeper.

“What are you staring at?” he growled.

“The senior master has recently stocked up with some excellent Italian wine,” said the housekeeper calmly. “Shall I have it drawn, Your Grace?”

“Indeed.” Apeczko smiled in spite of himself and felt the woman’s calm soothing him, too. “Indeed, please do, I shall taste what has been maturing in Italy. And please send a boy to the watchtower, have him bring me a half-decent horseman with his wits about him. Someone who’s capable of delivering a message.”

“As you wish, Your Grace.”

Hooves thudded on the bridge. The messenger hastening away from Sterzendorf looked back and waved at his woman, who was bidding him farewell from the embankment with a snow-white kerchief. And suddenly caught sight of movement on the moonlit wall of the watchtower, a vague moving shape. What the Devil? he thought. What’s creeping about there? An owl? A swift? A bat? Or perhaps…

The messenger muttered a spell to protect him from magic, spat into the moat and spurred on his horse. The message he was carrying was urgent, and the lord who had sent it cruel.

So he didn’t see a huge wallcreeper spread its wings, fly down from the parapet and noiselessly, like a nightly spectre, glide over the forests eastwards, towards the Widawa Valley.