Reynevan looked back, hearing a slight noise behind him. The other character blocking the exit to the alley also had a truncheon. He was only a little taller and only a little more colourful than his companion, but his face was much more repugnant.

“Let us go, m’lord,” said Grey, without raising his eyes.

“Where to? And what for?”

“Don’t offer any resistance, m’lord.”

“Who ordered this?”

“Lord Neplach. Let us go.”

They didn’t have far to go, as it happened, just to one of the buildings on the southern frontage of the Old Town Square. Reynevan couldn’t work out exactly which one; the spies led him in from the back, through gloomy arcades stinking of mouldy barley, through courtyards, hallways and staircases. The interior was quite sumptuous—like most houses in that quarter, it had been taken over when the wealthy Germans who had owned it fled from Prague after 1420.

Bohuchval Neplach, called Flutek, was waiting for him in the drawing room beneath a light-coloured, beamed ceiling. A rope was tied to one of the beams. A dead man was hanging from the rope. With the toes of his elegant slippers touching the floor. Well, almost. They were about two inches shy.

Without wasting time on greetings or other outdated bourgeois customs, barely glancing at Reynevan, Flutek pointed at the hanged man. Reynevan understood.

“No…” He swallowed. “That’s not him. I don’t think… No, no it isn’t.”

“Take a closer look.”

Reynevan took a closer look, good enough to be sure that the rope digging into the swollen neck, contorted face, bulging eyes and black lolling tongue would come back to haunt him during his next few meals.

“No. That’s not him… In any case, I can’t be sure… I saw him from the back…”

Flutek snapped his fingers. The servants present in the drawing room turned the hanged man so that his back was towards Reynevan.

“That man was sitting. Wearing a cloak.”

Flutek snapped his fingers. A moment later, the corpse, now cut down, was draped in a cloak and sitting in a curule chair—striking quite a macabre pose, bearing in mind the rigor mortis.

“No.” Reynevan shook his head. “Don’t think so. That man… Hmm… I’d definitely recognise him by his voice—”

“Regrettably, that’s not possible.” Flutek’s voice was as cold as the wind in February. “If he could speak, I wouldn’t be needing you at all. Go on, get that carcass out of here.”

The order was carried out at great speed. Flutek’s orders always were. Bohuchval Neplach was the head of the Tábor’s intelligence and counter-intelligence operations, reporting directly to Prokop the Shaven. And while Žižka was alive, directly to Žižka.

“Be seated, Reynevan.”

“I’m afraid I can’t—”

“Be seated, Reynevan.”

“Who was that—”

“The hanged man? It doesn’t matter in the slightest now.”