“You’re as stubborn as a mule, laddie. Didn’t you hear what I said? I won’t tell you anything. Nothing you might reveal under torture. The game is too important and the stakes are too high.”

“What game?” Reynevan shouted. “What stakes? I care nothing about your games! Your secrets haven’t been secrets for a long time. The cause you serve is no longer a secret, either. What, do you think I can’t put two and two together? Let me tell you, I don’t give a damn about it. I don’t give a fuck about conspiracies or religious disputes. Do you hear, Horn? I’m not asking you to turn in your accomplices, to betray any more hiding places where Joannes Wicleph Anglicus is buried. But I must, by the Devil, know why, how and by whose hand my brother died. And you will tell me. Even if I have to beat it out of you!”

“Oh! What a little rooster!”

“Get up. I’ll give you a hiding.”

Horn stood. Swift, nimble, like a lynx.

“Take it easy,” he hissed. “Take is easy, m’Lord Bielawa the younger. Let’s keep calm. Anger mars beauty. You’ll lose your looks. And your popularity with married women now famous throughout Silesia.”

Leaning back, Reynevan kicked Urban hard below the knee as he had seen Scharley do. Horn, astonished, dropped to his knees. But from that moment, Scharley’s tactics began to fail Reynevan. Horn avoided the punch meant to break his nose with a slight but quick movement and Reynevan’s fist only brushed his ear. Horn parried a wide and inaccurate left hook with his forearm, sprang nimbly up from his knees and jumped aside.

“Well, well.” He grinned. “Who would have thought it? But since you want it so much, laddie… At your service.”

“Horn.” Scharley, without turning around, took Tomasz Alpha’s bread knight with his bread queen. “We’re in prison, I know the custom, I won’t get involved. But I swear that whatever you do to him I’ll do to you twice over. Especially dislocations and fractures.”

Things moved quickly. Horn jumped at Reynevan like a cat, smoothly, gracefully, sinuously. Reynevan dodged the first blow and punched, even finding the target, but only once; all his other blows were parried or blocked. Horn struck just twice, very quickly. Both blows were accurate. Reynevan flew back and sat down hard on the dirt floor.

“Children,” said Tomasz Alpha, moving his king. “Just like children.”

“Rook takes pawn,” said Scharley. “Checkmate.”

Urban Horn stood over Reynevan, rubbing his cheek and ear.