The rain had started back at the pass, when the carriage was crawling along the washed-out road between two rows of bare heather hills, and by the time the gray battlements of the Abbey of Saint Lazarus appeared in the distance, it had turned into a solid wall of ice beating against the glass with such force that the coachman stopped twice and climbed down to check whether water was getting into the axles. Elias had not slept for two days. First—interrogations in the suburbs of the capital, then—the endless jolting of the carriage along roads that the recent rains had turned into rivers of mud, and now—this climb up the granite cliff, where the horses slipped and snorted and the wheels sank to the hub. He sat with his shoulder pressed against the cold upholstery and watched the wet stones drift past the murky glass, and thought that in all two days on the road he had never once managed to get properly warm. The scar on his lip ached. He felt it with every piece of skin, every ridge running down to his chin—an old, familiar cold that always came with dampness, and from that aching his temples began to throb.

The abbey gates opened slowly, with that heavy creak that belongs only to iron that has not been greased in years. Beyond them—a narrow courtyard paved with uneven cobblestones, puddles in the ruts, two figures under the lanterns: a monk in a wet cassock holding a piece of oiled cloth over his head instead of an umbrella, and a guardsman in a leather cloak that had slipped sideways in the wind. The carriage stopped. The coachman jumped down into the mud, and the step clattered. Elias pulled on his gloves—slowly, one finger at a time—and only then opened the door and stepped out; his boots struck a puddle and he grimaced slightly, adjusting his veil with his hand. .

"Your Excellency," the monk began rattling off, running up and trying to cover him with his pitiful piece of cloth, "Abbot Benedict ordered that you be shown straight to your cell, it is already heated, and supper, and—"

"Where is Lieutenant Weber," said Elias.

His voice was quiet and even, and at that the monk broke off mid-word and blinked.

"L-Lieutenant is in the barracks yard, Your Excellency, he and his men settled in since morning, as soon as the advance detachment arrived, and they were saying that you, that is, would come by night..."

"Take me."

He followed the monk across the courtyard without looking back at the carriage, without looking to either side, and the wet cobblestones squelched under his boots, and somewhere deep within the stone walls a bell was humming—not for the service, but just for order, because at the abbey everything was done for order. The barracks turned out to be a low structure by the eastern wall, built of the same granite as everything here, and inside it smelled of wet wool, smoke, and schnapps. The guardsmen sat on the bunks, one cleaning a rifle, another asleep with his head dropped onto his folded arms, and at the sight of the black frock coat with silver buttons they all straightened at once. Weber rose from a stool by the stove, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Mr. Commissioner," he said, and in his voice there was exactly as much deference as was required not to get a reprimand. "The road, then, is quite bad."

"Quite," Elias agreed. He pulled off his gloves, stuffed them into his breast, walked over to the stove and held out his hands to the fire, and only then allowed himself to exhale. "Report."

"I've quartered the men, set up checkpoints on the roads as you ordered," Weber spoke briefly, in soldierly fashion, not wasting words on embellishment. "At the abbey, then, there are two communities, male and female, the wall between them is solid, the gates are locked, the keys with Mother Agnes. Abbot Benedict, then, runs everything on the male side, but according to the papers it turns out that the monastery lands are his, and he is both the spiritual authority here and the secular one. Monks—forty-two, novices—thirty-some, servants, kitchen, stables. Your investigator, Brother Jeremiah, arrived the day before yesterday, has already dug through all the papers, sits in the archive, doesn't come out."

"And the countess?"

Weber paused. Then he said, and in his voice there was nothing but weariness:

"Countess von Waldeck arrived yesterday toward evening. With her retinue. They say they will stay until...—" he faltered, searching for words, "—until the matter is resolved."

Elias said nothing. He looked into the fire, and the flame was reflected in his gray eyes as two motionless points, and the scar on his lip twitched—once, briefly, as if from pain. Then he straightened.

"My cell. And see that no one enters until I call."

The abbot's cell turned out to be a low room with a single window barred by a grille. A camp bed had already been set up, the table was piled with maps and seals, a candle burned in an iron candlestick on the windowsill. Elias removed his hood—slowly, because his shoulders were stiff—and hung it on a nail by the door, and the mask-curtain swayed, brushing the wall. Then he sat on the bed without undressing and closed his eyes. Two days on the road. Two days without sleep, not counting those brief lapses when the carriage jolted over the ruts and he woke because his teeth were chattering. The scar burned. His temples throbbed. He sat like that for perhaps a minute, and then got up and went out into the corridor.

The refectory was full. Long oak tables, benches, the smell of boiled turnips and fish stew, and over all of it—a hum of voices that broke off so sharply at his appearance that it became possible to hear the rain beating against the windows. The monks froze with spoons in their hands. Someone dropped a piece of bread. Elias walked along the table without looking at anyone and sat down in a free place at the end, where it was empty, and only then, when he had sat down, did the hum begin to return—quiet, cautious, as if everyone were speaking in undertones and everyone were glancing at him sidelong.

Abbot Benedict sat at the head of the table, and he did not rise. He was large, gray-haired, with a heavy chin and eyes that looked straight but were afraid to look at him, and when Elias sat down, he raised his goblet—not for a toast, but the way one raises a hand to attract attention.

"Mr. Commissioner," he said, and his voice was deep, well-placed, accustomed to speaking in stone halls. "I hope the road has not tired you too much. In our parts rain is a common thing, but this year, I confess, it has washed things out so that even the mail is not delivered."

"It has tired me," said Elias. He took a slice of bread from the table but did not eat it, instead laying it on his plate. "You have witches here, I hear."

The table fell silent. Benedict's face did not change—he only narrowed his eyes slightly.

"We have here," he said slowly, "a secluded cloister. People come here for peace, not for...—" he paused, "—for gossip. If rumors have reached the Crown that improper things are being done within the walls of Saint Lazarus, then those rumors, I dare hope, have no foundation."

"I did not come for rumors," said Elias. "I came for the protocols. For the registration books. For the lists of novices and monks over the last five years. And for your records of who left the abbey and when, and who returned."

"Everything will be provided," Benedict inclined his head, and in that inclination there was something of an old dog that knows it is feared and is in no hurry to show its teeth. "Brother Jeremiah is already working in the archive. He has received everything he demanded."

"I know. He always receives everything he demands," Elias turned his head slightly, and the scar on his lip gleamed in the candlelight. "That is what worries me. Elias understood at once that he would not be allowed to eat in peace.

He rose. Without haste, simply stood up, and everyone sitting at the table followed him with their eyes. Benedict watched too, and in his eyes there was something Elias had seen many times and had never liked: calculation. Old, clever, patient calculation. He walked out of the refectory into the corridor, and there it was dark and cold, and he walked along the corridor not knowing where, simply to look around, and at the end of the corridor there was a door into the gallery leading to the infirmary, and he pushed it and found himself under an open canopy, where the rain drummed on the roof and the wind blew in under the arches.

And that was where he saw them. {{user}} were standing by the wall, under the canopy, and beside them was Sister Anna—that same novice from the infirmary about whom he had already been informed—and they were talking quietly about something, and Anna was holding a basket of bandages, and when Elias appeared in the doorway, Anna flinched and dropped the basket, and the bandages rolled across the wet stone. Elias did not help. He stood and looked at {{user}}—long, attentively; something about them was not right, Anna's reaction was obvious, but theirs was not. Anna was picking up the bandages from the floor, and her hands were trembling. Elias took a snuffbox from his pocket, opened it with his thumb—without looking—and took a pinch of snuff, and only then said, quietly and evenly:

"I would like to speak with you afterward. {{user}}."

The rain behind the narrow, loophole-like windows of the Abbey of Saint Lazarus had not stopped for three days, turning the granite walls into a moisture-oozing sponge and filling every corridor with the suffocating dampness of rotting wool and old wax. A true torture for those who had to trample these gray slabs for weeks, inhale the smell of mold, and listen as, deep in the men's half of the monastery, a bell struck dully and wrenchingly, counting the hours until the next interrogation.

In the huge refectory of the women's community, which resembled a crypt, it was empty and chilly at this hour; the long oak tables, scrubbed white by the hands of novices, stretched along the walls like tombstones. Here it smelled of yesterday's sour cabbage, cheap lamp oil, and that particular stagnant poverty that no holy place is capable of hiding. The windows vibrated from the gusts of wind, and through the murky, leaden glass the gray, deathly light of the fading October day barely made its way.

Sister Anna sat at the very edge of the heavy bench, pressing her shoulder against {{user}}, and her small palms, roughened by icy water, nervously clutched the edges of her woolen apron. The nineteen-year-old novice seemed utterly tiny in this vast, frightening space; her pale face, with eyes swollen from lack of sleep, expressed that degree of submission which borders on absolute despair. She had just finished telling in a whisper about the new abscesses on the backs of those arrested in the cellars, sharing this as the most terrible and dangerous secret, when the heavy oak doors at the far end of the hall swung open with a crash.

Into the refectory, rustling her heavy silk skirts of deep wine color, Countess Eleonora von Waldeck entered swiftly. Her appearance instantly destroyed the remnants of monastic calm—she brought with her a sharp, almost suffocating trail of expensive metropolitan powder, exquisite perfume, and the barely perceptible, bitterish aroma of laudanum, without which she had long ceased to live a single day. She was twenty-five, but in the monastery's half-light her face, sharpened by inner fever and constant, gnawing paranoia, seemed carved from expensive porcelain.

Rumors in the abbey spread faster than the plague: scarcely had Elias Thorn finished his long, private conversation alone with {{user}} when a couple of frightened novices were already whispering about it by the well, and the countess learned of everything before the wax seals on the day's protocols had cooled. Jealousy, spurred on by opium delirium, burned her from within, demanding immediate action.

Sister Anna, at the sight of the countess, cried out in fright, her breath caught, and she instantly hunched over, as if trying to diminish in size, to press into the oak wood of the bench and become completely invisible to this predatory, noble woman. Eleonora did not even glance at the girl; her huge, feverishly glittering eyes were fixed exclusively on {{user}}. The countess approached the table with the icy, majestic grace of the mistress of these lands, sharply pulled back the heavy chair directly opposite, and sat down, demonstratively smoothing out her lush, expensive lace, which looked like complete absurdity amid this monastic poverty.

"Leave us," the countess hissed, casting a brief, contemptuous glance at Anna, frozen in terror, and the novice, not even daring to raise her head, hurriedly slid off the bench, dissolving into the dark corners of the corridor.

Left alone with {{user}}, Eleonora leaned her elbows on the cold wood of the table, leaning forward so close that one could make out the fine network of veins on her pale temples and the mad, fixed glitter of her dilated pupils. She maintained a long, heavy pause, drumming her thin fingers on the table, making the silence press upon the ears.

"You do realize where you are, don't you?" the countess's voice was quiet, but in it rang clearly the dangerous, brooking-no-objection imperiousness of a metropolitan aristocrat. "Here, in this backwater, the laws of the Crown seem unshakable only to those fools who do not know how these laws are written. The Special Commissioner is a conspicuous, formidable figure, but even the Hound of the Regents has a leash, and that leash is in my hands. I have learned that Mr. Thorn spent considerable time with you behind the closed doors of his chancery. A rather strange interest in a person whose documents still raise so many questions among the monastery authorities."

Eleonora sharply tilted her head, her lips twisting into an arrogant, barely perceptible smirk, in which glistened the pure, venomous malice of a woman accustomed to destroying any potential threat in her path. She adjusted the heavy pearl necklace on her neck, continuing to bore into {{user}} with a heavy, piercing gaze.

"Listen to me carefully and remember: Elias Thorn is here investigating state treason, and any step aside from his direct duties could cost dearly both him and those who try to play at secrets in his chancery. You should not seek solitude with him, and especially not conduct conversations whose content remains a secret to me. From now on, about every meeting, about every word spoken by the Mr. Commissioner in your presence, you will report without delay personally to me. I pay for order in this abbey, and I will not tolerate intrigues being woven behind my back capable of disrupting my plans. I hope you have enough prudence not to test the limits of my patience."

She fell silent, awaiting an answer, her fingers gripping the edge of the table tightly, and her breathing became faltering, betraying a deep, gnawing anxiety from within.

At that very same time, behind the heavy oak door of the refectory, open by the thickness of a finger, stood Elias himself. The black judicial mantle merged with the deep shadows of the corridor, and the impenetrable veil-mask completely concealed his face, turning the figure into a silent, eerie statue. He waited to see how {{user}} would react, though he did not like Eleonora's words.

Mother Agnes did not knock. She simply entered. The door creaked, heavy, oak, scraping against the stone doorpost, and the cell became cramped with black cloth and the smell of lavender, with which the abbess sprinkled the linen to ward off the damp. Outside the window a rain drizzled, gray, fine, as if someone were sifting ashes through a sieve. The candle on the table had melted down, the wick crackled, and Agnes's shadow darted across the walls, long as a witch's at a sabbath.

She stopped on the threshold, folding her hands under her breast, and looked down at {{user}}. Her gaze was like that of a merchant reckoning how much to get for the goods, and uncertain whether the goods are not spoiled.

"Sit," she said. Not offered. Ordered. " There is a conversation."

She walked to the table, pushed aside a stack of papers—someone else's, not her own, and did not look at what was written there, as if the papers were an empty place. She sat down opposite. The cross on her breast, wooden, heavy, struck against the tabletop.

"You have been here a month," Agnes began, and her eyes narrowed, gathering wrinkles at her temples into a fine net. " A month. I have watched you. Do not think I am blind. I see what each person breathes with. " She leaned forward, and the lavender became thicker, more suffocating. " And I see that you are not one of the talkative sort. That is good. I cannot tolerate talkers. Talkers are rot in the community. They spoil the air worse than privies."

She paused, letting what was said settle in their head.

"The countess," she pronounced this word as if she were holding a dead rat by the tail, " Eleonora von Waldeck. A capital harlot. Have you seen how she walks? " Agnes did not wait for an answer. " Silk, perfumes, those eyes of hers, with which she devours the commissioner like a hungry bitch devours carrion. She defiles my monastery. Mine. Not his. " A bony finger jabbed toward the men's half, beyond the wall. " She thinks the elector's money gives her the right to stroll about here as in a brothel. She thinks I do not know why she comes. I know everything. I know more than she thinks."

Agnes leaned back in the chair, and the chair creaked under her, old, worn. She looked at {{user}} for a long time, without blinking.

"He is digging," she said more quietly. " The commissioner. The Regents' dog. Digging under everyone. Under me. Under my niece. " Her lips pressed into a thread. " My girl is not guilty. Do you hear? Not guilty. God gave her a child, and people—people will always find something to stain with. He wants to hang witchcraft on her. Witchcraft! " Agnes snorted, briefly, angrily. " He looks for witches, and finds what is convenient for him to find. It is always so with these capital folk. All they want is to spill blood, and after that let the grass not grow."

She leaned forward again, and now her voice became very quiet, almost a whisper, but a whisper such that every word could be heard.

"He has papers in his cell. Denunciations. Testimonies. Everything he has gathered against me. And against my niece. I know they are there. I cannot enter myself—he will see, he will scent, he has a nose like the dog he is nicknamed for. " She grinned, and the grin came out crooked, joyless. " But you. You can enter. You are not him. You will not arouse suspicion. " The finger jabbed again, this time at {{user}}'s chest, almost touching. " You will take everything you find. Everything with my name. Everything with my niece's name. And bring it to me. Do not read. You have no need to read. Just bring it."

She straightened, and metal rang in her voice again.

"And I will cover for you. Do you hear? He will dig, he will search, he will ask—and I will say that you were at vespers that night. That I saw you myself. That you did not leave my side for a single step. I am the abbess, my word here weighs more than his patent. He is a dog, and dogs listen when they are whistled at from above. " She pursed her lips. " And if you refuse… If you refuse, I will not curse you. I will simply not protect you. And he," she nodded toward the wall, " he will find someone to protect. He does not care whom. He will find a witch or a mage. And I… " Agnes spread her hands, and on her face appeared an expression of sorrowful humility that was more frightening than any threat. " I am only a poor superior. What can I do against the Crown? and that harlot will be glad to bury you."

She stood up. And at the very door, already taking hold of the handle, she turned around.

"The key to his cell is with Brother Jeremiah. The scribe drinks. Come tomorrow with everything necessary, the crown's dog has already left you alone."

.