“May God keep you.” The magister scholarum linked his fingers. “May we meet in better times.”

“Let’s hope. I have a final request.”

“Consider it done.”

“I knew and saw for myself,” the grey-eyed man began a moment later, “that you are a master among masters in the art of underground activities, who can hide what should remain hidden. I believe you can also cause the opposite to happen.”

“Make something secret stop being secret?” Domarasc smiled. “Give out information and disinformation?”

“You read my thoughts.”

“What or whom does this concern?”

The grey-eyed man explained. Wendel Domarasc said nothing for a long time, then confirmed that he would execute it. But not using words. With a nod of his head.

Through the small open window came a chorus of voices of the pupils from the Opole Collegiate Church school, reciting the beginning of The Metamorphoses.

Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo,

sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.

Poena metusque aberant, nec verba minantia fixo

aere legebantur, nec supplex turba timebat

iudicis ora sui, sed erant sine vindice tuti…

“The words of Naso were wise.” The grey-eyed man interrupted the long silence after listening. “The first age was golden, a timeless spring of the world. But that age won’t return. And the silver age passed after it, and the bronze, too. Now has come the fourth age, the final age of hard iron, de duro est ultima ferro. The final age is one of blood and destruction. A plague of crime has erupted into the world. Faith and truth have fled before war, killing and conflagration. Treachery and violence triumph. Horrified by what is happening, Astrea, the last of the deities, is abandoning the Earth. And when the deities are gone… What then? A deluge?”

“No,” countered Wendel Domarasc. “There will be no deluge. And it won’t be the last age. A guarantee of that is, for example, those whippersnappers reciting Ovidius Naso. We, the people of the darkness, people of violence and treachery, we, indeed, will pass along with the age of bloody steel. But they will survive. They are the future and hope of the world. What we are doing, we are doing for them.”

“I thought the same once.”

“And now?”

The grey-eyed man didn’t reply. He fingered the knife kept in a sheath attached to his forearm hidden in the sleeve of his jacket.

“You were betrayed,” Tybald Raabe repeated, impatiently, bored by having to repeat it. “You were sold. You were made into bait. You’re in mortal danger. You must run away at once. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Now—only now—did Elencza of Stietencron confirm with a nod; something indeed shone in the watery blue of her eyes. Tybald was cross.