Chapter Five

In which we leave our heroes for a short time and move from Bohemia to Silesia, to see what some of our old—and new—friends were up to at more or less the same time, give or take a month or so.

Haven’t I seen him somewhere before? thought Wendel Domarasc, magister scholarum of the Collegiate School at the Church of the Holy Cross in Opole, looking at his guest. Haven’t I seen him somewhere? And if so, where? In Krakow? In Dresden? In Opava?

The voices of pupils came drifting in from outside the window, chorally reciting stanzas from Statius’s The Thebaid. Every now and then, the recitation was interrupted by a yell—the usher supervising the class was correcting a pupil’s Latin using a rod and encouraging him to try harder.

The guest was tall and slim to the point of thinness, but strength could be sensed in him. He wore his greying hair in the fashion of a clergyman and his felt cap—Wendel Domarasc would have bet any money—concealed a tonsure or the remains of one. The magister was also willing to bet that the visitor might also have lowered his eyes, humbly bowed his head, put his hands together and mumbled a prayer like a monk. He could have. If he’d wanted to. Now he clearly didn’t want to. He looked the magister straight in the eye.

The visitor’s eyes were most strange. Their unmoving keenness was unnerving and sent tingles down Domarasc’s neck and back. But their strangest feature was their colour—that of iron, the colour of an old knife blade, darkened by use. The realism was enhanced by reddish spots on the irises, just like flecks of rust.

“Ecce sub occiduas versae iam Noctis habenas astrorumque obitus, ubi primum maxima Tethys imu… impulit… Ouch! Oh, Good Lord Jesus!” The young pupil blew on his stinging hands.

Wendel Domarasc, magister scholarum of the Collegiate School at the Church of the Holy Cross in Opole and main sleeper agent of the Taborite intelligence service, head and coordinator of the spy network in Silesia, sighed softly. He knew who the visitor was—he’d been warned he would come. He knew on whose orders the visitor was there and whose authority he represented. He knew what authorisation the visitor had to give orders, and also the penalty for failing to carry them out. That was all Domarasc knew. Nothing more. In particular, not the visitor’s name.

“Well, yes, m’lord.” He finally decided on a form of address as courteous as it was neutral. “Hard times have come to us lately in Silesia. Hard times, indeed… I don’t say that, please understand, to shirk my duties or to justify idleness, no, not at all. I make efforts, Brother Prokop need not worry—”