The seminarist, as usual, first reached for the pouch, then abruptly withdrew his hand as though the canon had offered him a scorpion.

“Reverend Father…” he mumbled. “I don’t do it for… for a few paltry pennies… but because—”

“Take it, my son, take it,” interrupted the canon with a condescending smile. “I’ve already told you on other occasions that an informer must receive payment. One most despises those who inform for nothing. For idealistic reasons. Out of fear. Out of anger and envy. I’ve told you before: Judas deserves contempt less for his betrayal and more for doing it so cheaply.”

The afternoon was bright and warm, a pleasant change after several days of rainy weather. The spire of Mary Magdalene’s Church and the roofs of houses gleamed in the sun. Gwibert Bancz stretched. It had been freezing at the canon’s. The chamber was in shade, the walls were cold.

Aside from his premises in the chapter house on Cathedral Island, Provost Otto Beess had a house in Wrocław in Shoemakers Street, not far from the town square, where he usually received people whose visits ought to go unnoticed, and Gwibert Bancz’s was one of those. So Gwibert Bancz decided to make use of the opportunity. He didn’t feel like going back to the island, for it was unlikely the bishop would need him before Vespers, and from Shoemakers Street it was a short distance to a certain beer cellar he knew just past the Poultry Market. He could spend some of the money he had received from the canon there. Gwibert Bancz firmly believed he was ridding himself of sin by ridding himself of the money.

Nibbling a pretzel purchased at a stall he had just passed, he took a shortcut by ducking into a narrow alley. It was quiet and deserted there; so deserted that rats, alarmed by his appearance, scurried away from his feet.

Hearing the rustle of feathers and the flapping of wings behind him, he looked back and saw a large wallcreeper perching ungainly on a frieze above a bricked-up window. Bancz dropped the pretzel, stepped back and recoiled.

Before his very eyes, the bird slid down the wall, scraping it with its claws. It became blurred. Grew in size. And changed shape. Bancz wanted to scream but not a sound emerged from his constricted throat.

Where the wallcreeper had been a moment before, now stood the knight the seminarist knew. Tall, slim, black-haired, dressed in black, with the piercing eyes of a bird.