A King Sleeps Beneath Radom - When Street Names Vanish from Radom, an Archivist Discovers That a Buried Army Is Awakening Beneath the City - Dorian Vale

INTRO - A King Sleeps Beneath Radom - When Street Names Vanish from Radom, an Archivist Discovers That a Buried Army Is Awakening Beneath the City.INTROThe first name disappeared on Tuesday, a few minutes after three in the morning. Marta Wolska knew because, at that exact moment, she had her finger resting on it. She was alone in the reading room of the municipal archives, bent over a volume bound in cracked dark-brown leather. Normally, she did not work at this hour. Normally, people did not sit at three in the morning comparing a 1934 street register with a map drawn before the war. But then again, renovations in a storage room did not normally uncover a bricked-up cabinet containing documents that appeared in no inventory. The book lying in front of Marta bore an ordinary title: Register of Changes to Street Names in the City of Radom. The title was the only ordinary thing she had found in it. The paper varied in thickness. Some pages had been written in ink, others in pencil, and several in something brown that Marta preferred not to identify before laboratory testing. The oldest entries did not match the binding. Someone had stitched together documents from different periods and added new pages over the course of decades. The same sentence kept appearing in the margins. Do not take the roads' names away. At first Marta assumed it was a note left by one of the old clerks. Then she noticed that the handwriting changed. The sentence had been copied again every few dozen pages, sometimes in careful calligraphy, sometimes in a nervous hand, sometimes in capital letters. Do not take the roads' names away. She moved her finger lower. Wałowa. Reja. Grodzka. Żeromskiego. Beside each name were dates, former designations, references to municipal resolutions, and short comments. Some were factual. Others became increasingly peculiar. Beside one entry, someone had written: preserve three copies. Beside another: say the name aloud before changing the signs. And beside a third, written in faded ink: if it disappears on its own, do not restore it without a witness. Marta sighed and reached for her phone. She took a photograph of the page. The screen flashed. In the photograph, where the last street name should have been, there was only a blank line. She frowned. She looked back at the book. The name was still there. Ulica Bernardyńska. She took another photograph. A blank line. - Great - she muttered. - The archives are haunted by autofocus problems. She enlarged the image. The dates on either side of the entry were sharp. So was the item number. Only the name was missing. Then the letters beneath her finger began to fade. Marta froze. They did not vanish all at once. First the black outline of the B grew thin. Then the ink yellowed, as though it had aged a century in a matter of seconds. One letter after another dissolved into the paper. Marta jerked her hand back so sharply that she knocked over her mug of cold coffee. A moment later, nothing remained but a clean line. The entry number beside it was still there. Marta stared at the empty space for several long seconds. Her heart was beating too fast, but one part of her mind - the most stubborn, professional part - was already searching for an explanation. A chemical reaction. Moisture. Disappearing ink. The lamp. Some kind of damage to the paper that she had failed to notice before. Her phone vibrated on the table. A notification from the map app informed her that her route home had been updated. Marta opened the map automatically. Ulica Bernardyńska had no name. The road itself still existed. The buildings were where they belonged. The church, intersections, side streets - everything looked normal. Only a gray strip of roadway ran across the screen without a label. She typed the name into the search box. No results. She tried again. Bernardyńska Radom. No results. Marta stood up. The chair scraped across the floor. The sound seemed unnaturally loud, and immediately afterward she heard something else. Clack. She froze. Clack. It was not coming from the corridor or the storage rooms. It came from beneath the floor. The archives occupied the ground floor and basement of an old building, but the reading room stood above the technical rooms. Marta knew the noises the building made. Pipes cracked. Radiators hissed. The old freight elevator groaned as though every day it regretted still being operational. This sound was different. Clack. A pause. Clack. A pause. Like a hard sole striking stone. Marta walked to the door and looked into the corridor. Emergency lights cast a greenish glow over the walls. Everything was empty. Behind her, a page turned. She spun around. The book was open to a different page. She had not seen the pages move. The window was closed. The ventilation system had not worked in years. In the center of the right-hand page was a map. Not the Radom she knew. She recognized the arrangement of several streets and the outline of the Market Square, but beneath them, drawn in much finer lines, stretched a second network of roads. They ran beneath buildings, crossed modern city blocks, and descended toward a place marked by a black circle. Around it, someone had drawn hundreds of tiny rectangles arranged in even rows. Marta leaned closer. Beside each rectangle was a name. Not a surname. Not a number. A first name. Dobrogost. Mścibor. Pakosław. Witosz. Hundreds of names written so small that they almost merged into a gray blur. At the top of the map, a single line ran directly toward the place where Bernardyńska should have been. The first surname - or perhaps first name - written along that line had been crossed out. Clack. This time the sound was louder. Then came a second. A third. A fourth. Not one pair of feet. Many. Marta backed away from the table. Coffee dripped from the overturned mug onto the floor. One drop landed on the edge of the map. The ink spread. Beneath the black circle, words appeared that had not been there a moment before. THE KING SLEEPS AS LONG AS THE CITY REMEMBERS. A chill crept across the back of Marta's neck. Below it, more words began to appear. Slowly, letter by letter, as though an invisible pen were writing across the page. THE FIRST ROAD HAS LOST ITS NAME. The clacking beneath the floor stopped all at once. Silence fell. Marta stared at the book. After several seconds, one final sentence appeared. THE FIRST SOLDIER HAS RISEN. Somewhere deep beneath Radom, metal ground against stone. And then someone knocked upward against the stone floor. Three times.

Chapter 1 - The Nameless Street - A King Sleeps Beneath Radom - When Street Names Vanish from Radom, an Archivist Discovers That a Buried Army Is Awakening Beneath the City.Chapter 1 - The Nameless StreetAt seven fourteen, Marta sat on the steps outside the archives with a plastic cup of coffee she had no intention of drinking and watched people heading to work as though the night that had just ended belonged to a different city. Radom was waking normally. A bus stopped at the intersection. A man in a navy jacket walked a dog that stubbornly sniffed the base of a lamppost. A bread delivery driver parked with his hazard lights on. Two schoolgirls walked with phones in their hands, never looking up even when one of them nearly stepped in front of a bicycle. Nothing was marching underground. No paving slabs were lifting under the pressure of hundreds of feet. No hands were reaching out of drains. No tombs had opened, tombs which, according to every reasonable source of knowledge, had never existed here in the first place. Marta almost managed to believe she had fallen asleep over the book. Almost. The photograph of the page was still on her phone, showing a blank line where Ulica Bernardyńska had been. She opened the map app for the twelfth time. The road existed. The name did not. She tried searching for the address of one of the buildings she knew. She typed the street name manually. For a moment the phone suggested places in other towns, then displayed a message saying no result had been found. Marta closed her eyes tightly. Bernardyńska. She said the word silently. Bernardyńska. She still remembered it. That felt important, although she could not have said why. The archives door opened behind her. - Have you been here all night? Anna Kordas stood in the doorway with a bag over one shoulder and keys in her hand. She had run the archives for eleven years and possessed the rare ability to look at an employee in such a way that the person immediately remembered every form they had failed to complete in the previous six months. Marta stood. - We have a problem. - I know. You look as if you slept in a wastepaper container. - That is not what I mean. Anna's eyes moved from the cup to Marta's face. - What happened? Marta hesitated. She could tell her about the book. About the map beneath the city. About names arranged in rows. About the sentence that had appeared on paper without anyone writing it. The first soldier has risen. Or she could begin with something that could be checked. - Do you know where Ulica Bernardyńska is? Anna frowned. - Where is what? All Marta's exhaustion vanished in a single instant. - Bernardyńska. - Is that a street? - Anna. - Do not look at me like that. There are hundreds of streets in Radom. I am not required to know all of them. - You walk along it at least twice a week. Anna was already about to answer, then stopped. Her expression shifted almost imperceptibly. - The one by the monastery? - Yes. - Right. What is it... She broke off. Marta watched her supervisor try to remember a word she must have seen the previous day on road signs, invoices, maps and plaques. - Bernardyńska - Marta repeated. Anna winced as though a tooth had suddenly started aching. - Strange name. - Why strange? - I don't know. - Do you remember it now? Anna was silent for a moment. - Bernardyńska. She said the name slowly. - Yes. I think so. - "I think so" is not a normal answer when someone asks you about a street in the city center. - Neither is interrogating me on the steps outside work at seven in the morning. Marta took out her phone. - Look. She showed her the map. Anna enlarged the screen. - Error. - In two apps. - Two errors. - In the municipal address system too. Anna looked up. - How do you know? - I don't yet. In five minutes, I will. She called Paweł Krajewski. He answered on the fourth ring. - If you're calling because your scanner has broken again, I want to make it clear from the start that it is not my child and I am under no obligation to raise it. - I need you to check one street. - It is seven in the morning. - I know. - That information was for you. - Bernardyńska. Silence followed. Marta looked at Anna. - Paweł? - Say that again. - Ulica Bernardyńska. - In Radom? - Yes. She heard keyboard taps. Paweł worked with the city's spatial information systems, although whenever anyone asked what exactly he did, he usually said that he made sure officials did not place buildings in the middle of rivers or move property boundaries using Excel. Marta had known him since university. She had gone into archives; he had gone into surveying and IT. Ever since, their professional friendship had consisted largely of proving to one another that the other side stored data incorrectly. - Interesting - he said. - What? - Give me a moment. More keyboard taps. - The road layer is there. Geometry is correct. Identifier too. - The name? - Field is blank. Anna sighed. - So it is a system failure. Paweł had clearly heard her. - Who's there? - My director. - Tell your director that if it is a failure, it is a very ambitious one. Marta switched him to speaker. - Explain. - The name wasn't deleted from one field. It isn't in the current database, the historical names register, the nightly backup or the search index. I'm checking last week's backup now. Silence. - And? - Marta asked. - Blank. - A month ago. - Wait. More typing. - Blank. A chill moved through Marta. - Impossible. - Obviously impossible. Which is why I'm saying "interesting," not "normal." - Do you have an offline archive? - I do. - How far back? - Annual snapshots. But I have to go down to the server room. - Check. - Marta, did you sleep at all? - Check. Paweł sighed. - Fine. I'll call you back. He hung up. Anna opened the door wider. - Now you're coming inside and showing me why you're behaving as though somebody stole a street. Marta turned toward the building. - Because I think somebody just did. The book lay where she had left it. She had closed it before leaving the reading room, but now it was open again. Not to the page with the map. To the street-name register. Anna approached the table. - Is this from the cabinet? Marta nodded. - No accession number. No reference code. I couldn't find it in any catalog. Anna put on gloves. - You should not have worked with it before entering it into the temporary register. - I know. - Or taken photographs with your phone. - I know. - Or left it on the table. - I know. Anna gave her a sharp look. - Then why did you? - Because something underneath the floor started walking. For one second there was complete silence. - Excuse me? Marta pushed the book toward her. - Bernardyńska was here. Anna examined the page. Entry number, date, references. A blank line. - We cannot be certain. Marta took out her notebook. - I copied the first few names before I started taking photographs. She opened it to the page she had written at around two forty. Wałowa. Reja. Grodzka. Żeromskiego. Bernardyńska. Anna looked at the final word. - I remember it now. - Ten minutes ago you didn't. - I was half asleep. - Was the municipal system half asleep a year ago too? Anna did not answer. Marta's phone rang. Paweł. - Found something? - Come over. - Tell me. - Marta. His tone was different now. - Come over. - What did you find? - Paper. - What? - The only copy of the register that whatever this is hasn't wiped clean is a printout from 2019. And it isn't just Bernardyńska. Marta tightened her grip on the phone. - What else? - I have three streets the system considers unnamed, but they have perfectly ordinary names on the printout. One probably disappeared several weeks ago and nobody noticed. - Which one? Paweł hesitated. - I'm not telling you over the phone. - Why? - Because I'm looking at the name, Marta. I can see it. I can read it. But when I look away from the page, after a few seconds I can't remember what I just read. Anna stopped pretending to examine the book. - We're going - she said. Marta closed the register. She did not manage to lift it from the table. A dull crash came from the basement. Both women froze. Not a single knock. Something heavy had fallen or struck a metal door. A moment later, the fire alarm sounded. Marta ran out first. Lights were coming on along the corridor. Employees who had already arrived emerged from their offices. Someone asked whether there was a fire. Someone else searched for a phone. Anna took command. - Everybody outside. No lifts. Kasia, check upstairs. Piotr, call security. Marta went in the opposite direction. - Where are you going? - Basement. - Marta! She did not stop. The door to the stairwell stood open. Dust lay on the first step. Not construction dust. Not gray cement. Brown, damp earth. Marta descended. The smell changed after several meters. Paper and dust gave way to basement cold, rust and moisture. And something else. Wet soil. She met the security guard at the bottom. Marek Lewicki held a flashlight in one hand and his phone in the other. - Don't come down. - What happened? - The technical-room door. - What about it? He shone the light down the corridor. The steel door leading to the heating installation room had been bent outward. Not inward. As if something on the other side had hit it with enormous force. - There's no exit in there - Marek said. - Just pipes and a foundation wall. Marta moved closer. She noticed a print on the floor. Long and narrow. Not the sole of a modern shoe. A foot shape ending in a clearly defined heel. Small metal studs had left impressions in the wet earth. Marek crouched. - What is that? Marta remembered the rectangles on the map. Names. Hundreds of names. Dobrogost. Mścibor. Pakosław. Witosz. She placed her palm against the wall beside the door. A faint vibration passed through it. Not pipes. Rhythmic. Distant. Thud. Thud. Thud. Like footsteps coming from somewhere that should have been solid foundation and earth. - Call the fire brigade - she said. - Fire brigade? Marta looked at the warped door. - For now. When she returned to the reading room to collect the book, she noticed a new mark on its spine. A thin scratch. It ran from top to bottom, forming a shape that resembled the numeral one.

Chapter 2 - What Was Never Written Down - A King Sleeps Beneath Radom - When Street Names Vanish from Radom, an Archivist Discovers That a Buried Army Is Awakening Beneath the City.Chapter 2 - What Was Never Written DownThe printout lay on Paweł's desk between two monitors and a packet of crackers. Marta had been staring at the name for almost a minute. Ulica Pusta. - This has to be a joke - she said. - I wish. - "Pusta" is a perfectly normal name. - That's exactly why it took us so long to notice anything. Paweł turned one of the monitors toward her. On the city map, a short road north of the center ran between older buildings and an area redeveloped several years earlier. - What is it called in the current database? - Nothing. - Since when? - I don't know. There is no deletion event in the logs. No user changed the record. No modification date. The field looks as though nothing has ever been entered there since the object was created. - But something was entered. Paweł tapped the sheet of paper. - Which is why printouts have suddenly become my favorite data-storage devices. Anna stood by the window with her arms folded. After the alarm, the fire brigade had arrived, followed by technicians. The basement room had been empty. The wall behind the installation showed no damage. There were no signs of forced entry and no person who could have bent the door. They had found soil. The analysis would take time, but one firefighter had said it looked as though somebody had carried several kilograms of wet clay into the room. Anna did not believe in a buried army. She had, however, stopped talking about a system error. - What are the other two? - she asked. Paweł took out another sheet. - One is Bernardyńska. The other... He read it. Frowned. Read it again. - Damn it. - What? He turned the printout toward Marta. The page showed a name she recognized immediately. Ulica Podwalna. - I know it - she said. - So do I. - It's close to the center. - I know. - Then why do we remember it? - Because we're looking at the page? Paweł covered the name with his hand. - Say it. - Podwalna. They waited. - Podwalna - Marta repeated. - So it isn't disappearing from memory the way Pusta is. - Not yet. Anna moved closer. - What does "not yet" mean? Marta took the notebook from her bag. - The book had different comments in it. "Preserve three copies." "Say the name aloud before changing the signs." "If it disappears on its own, do not restore it without a witness." Paweł stared at her for a moment. - And only now you decided that was worth telling us? - Last night I assumed somebody had an unusual sense of humor. - And the sentence about the soldier? Marta pressed her lips together. Anna looked at her. - What soldier? Paweł raised his eyebrows. - So you didn't tell her that either. - I didn't want to begin with the worst part. - Usually that's exactly where you begin. Marta sat down. She told them about the map. She did not dramatize. She gave the sequence of events the way she would have described damage to a document: a page turned without any visible cause, a plan of underground roads appeared, the plan contained rectangles marked with first names, text appeared. Anna did not interrupt once. Paweł interrupted four times. - Hundreds of rectangles? - Yes. - Like graves? - That's what they looked like. - And the text said exactly... - "The king sleeps as long as the city remembers." - Excellent. - Then, "The first road has lost its name." - Even better. - And, "The first soldier has risen." Paweł pushed his chair back. - Fine. So we have a folkloric hacker. Anna gave him a look. - Excuse me? - If someone broke into the municipal databases, planted a prepared book in your archives and got into the basement to stage a performance, then at least we're still operating in a world where the laws of physics apply. - He bent a steel door outward from inside a sealed room with no entrance? - I don't know. A magnet. A hydraulic ram. A very determined colleague. Marta watched him. - Paweł. - What? - You don't believe in the hacker either. He leaned back. - I believe in everything that has logs. - This doesn't. - Exactly. That's why it annoys me. Anna took the printout. - The book must contain earlier entries concerning those streets. - It does - Marta said. - Or it did. - We're going back. - We can't. - Why? Marta glanced at the clock. - The fire brigade sealed the basement, not the reading room. - So we can. - That's not what I mean. The book is changing. If another name disappears and it is the only place where something about the mechanism was recorded... Paweł pointed at her phone. - You have photographs. Marta opened the gallery. Stopped. The photograph of the map beneath Radom was still there. But the names had vanished. Where she had previously read Dobrogost, Mścibor, Pakosław and Witosz, there were now only rectangles. Empty. - There were names here last night. Paweł took the phone. - Cloud backup? - Automatic. He opened the browser and checked. The same. - Another photo? Marta scrolled through the images. Text remained legible on several pages. Her finger stopped over one marginal note. A surname. Leszczyński. - What did you find? - Anna asked. Marta enlarged the image. The note had been written in ballpoint pen, so it came from a much later period than most of the book. "Checked after the 1976 incident. Three anchors preserved. J. Leszczyński." - Jerzy Leszczyński - Anna said. Marta looked up. - You know him? - He worked at the archives before my time. Not as director. Document conservator. He left sometime in the late nineties, I think. - Is he alive? - I think so. - You think? - Marta, I do not maintain files on retired employees. Paweł was already typing. - Got him. - What? - Address. Anna frowned. - You can't just... - Official contact register for former collaborators of municipal institutions. Entirely legal and extremely boring. He lives on the outskirts. Marta stood. - We're going. Jerzy Leszczyński opened the door after the third ring. He was over eighty, tall and thin, and moved more slowly than his impatience seemed to think he should. When Marta introduced herself and Anna, his expression remained neutral. Only when she mentioned Paweł and the city office did irritation appear. - If this is about some survey, I don't use the internet. - It isn't a survey. - My taxes are paid. - We work at the archives. - I can see that. Marta had no idea how. - We found a book. Leszczyński stared at her for several seconds. - What book? - A register of street-name changes. - You have dozens of those. - This one has no reference number. His hand froze on the door handle. - Where? - In a bricked-up cabinet. - Exactly where? Marta described the storage room. The old man stepped aside. - Come in. The house was full of books, but not randomly. Every bookcase had a number. Shelves were marked with small labels. Three boxes of index cards sat on a desk. Paweł looked at Marta. - I like him. Leszczyński heard. - Not yet. They sat at the table. Marta placed her phone on the surface and showed him the photograph of the note. - Is this your handwriting? Leszczyński did not touch the screen. - Yes. - What happened in 1976? - Many things. - You wrote about three anchors in the book. The old man's face hardened. - The book should have been closed. - It was bricked up. - That is not the same thing. Anna leaned forward. - Mr. Leszczyński, this morning a door in our archive basement was bent outward from the inside. Footsteps were heard beneath the building. One of the streets ceased to exist in the registers. The old man looked at Marta. - Which one? - Bernardyńska. He went pale. Not dramatically. The color simply drained from his face. - You remember that name? - Yes. - Without looking at it written down? - Yes. - Who else? Marta pointed at Anna. - She does after hearing it. - That's not enough. - What isn't enough? Leszczyński stood. He went to one of the bookcases and removed a small wooden box. Inside were three slips of paper. Each bore the same street name. Marta read them. Bernardyńska. The first was typed. The second handwritten. The third looked as though it had been torn from a notebook. - Why do you have these? - Because I knew it would start one day. Paweł gave a quiet snort. - Very helpful sentence after fifty years. Leszczyński looked at him without offense. - Young man, for fifty years nothing started. That is a much better result than you think. Marta touched the typed slip. - What are anchors? - A place-name exists in several ways. On a sign. In a register. On a map. In someone's memory. Paint alone means nothing. Neither does a file. What matters is agreement. - Agreement between what? - Three independent testimonies. Paweł shook his head. - No. - What do you mean, "no"? - We are not calling data copies magic. - Call it redundancy if that helps you sleep. Marta almost smiled, but Leszczyński had already continued. - Not every name is an anchor. Most streets can be renamed and nothing will happen. The ones that matter to the seal were chosen by people long before modern city plans existed. - What seal? - Anna asked. The old man hesitated. - There is something beneath Radom that should not be dug up. - An army - Marta said. Leszczyński closed his eyes. - The book said that? - There was a map. Hundreds of names. - Are the names still there? - They disappeared from the photograph. The old man lowered himself more heavily into his chair. - That's bad. - Who are they? - They were people. - When? - A long time ago. - The Middle Ages? - Older history than most of the documents I worked with, and younger than the legends built around it. I cannot give you a year. - And the king? Leszczyński's head came up at once. - Do not say the name. - We don't know it. - Good. Paweł folded his arms. - So underneath Radom there is a nameless king and an army tied to street names. - You're simplifying it. - I'm trying to keep up. Marta pointed at the three slips. - If Bernardyńska lost all its anchors, why do you still have these? - Because they are not in the system. They are not cataloged. They were not created from one source. Each was copied by a different person at a different time. - So the name can be restored? Leszczyński went silent. For the first time, Marta noticed that he did not look frightened. He looked guilty. - What happened in 1976? - One name disappeared. - Which one? - I won't tell you. - Why? - Because it was restored and closed again. You do not open a grave simply to prove to someone that there is a body inside. - Who restored it? - Me and two other people. - How? Leszczyński ran his fingers along the edge of the box. - Three testimonies. One written. One placed at the location. One preserved by a living witness. The name must once again refer to exactly the same place. Paweł leaned forward. - So we can just print a sign? - No. - Why not? - Because a sign you print now will be a copy of information you already possess. It will not be independent testimony. - What if we find an old sign? Leszczyński looked at him with greater interest. - That may help. Marta thought of the book. - What about an entry in the register? - If it remembers the older state. - "Remembers"? - Don't catch me on words. When you work with this long enough, you start talking about documents as though they were people. - You really believe a document can remember? Leszczyński looked at her. - You work in an archive. You should know better than I do that sometimes paper remembers more than a person. Paweł's phone rang. He looked at the screen. - The office. He answered. - Yes? He listened for a moment. His expression changed. - When? Marta straightened. Paweł moved toward the window. - Don't update anything. Don't synchronize anything. Disconnect the backup from the network. Another pause. - I know I sound insane. Do it. He ended the call. - What? - Podwalna. Marta felt her stomach tighten. - Gone? - From the main database. Five minutes ago. Leszczyński closed the box. - How many names were marked in the book? - I don't know. - You need to know. - We'll go back to the archives. - No. Marta looked at him. - The only source we have is there. - Which is exactly why you cannot leave it there. - What are you suggesting? The old man crossed to a bookcase. From the lowest shelf he pulled a long roll wrapped in cloth. He unfolded it across the table. It was a map of Radom. Old, folded many times, covered in handwritten notes. Red dots marked its surface. Marta counted the first few. One at Bernardyńska. A second at Podwalna. A third at the place corresponding to Ulica Pusta. Then more. Dozens. - How many? - she asked. Leszczyński did not need to check. - Forty-nine. Paweł whistled. - Forty-nine anchors? - That's how many there were when I left. - And if they all disappear? Leszczyński looked at the center of the map. The red dots had not been placed randomly. They formed a ring. Marta saw it only now. A ring around the center. - Then - the old man said - it will no longer matter how many streets we remember. - Why? - Because the streets do not imprison the army. Marta felt she knew the answer before she heard it. - Only the king. Leszczyński nodded. Marta's phone vibrated. A message from Marek, the archive security guard. "Come back. Someone is in the reading room." Marta called him immediately. Marek answered in a whisper. - Where are you? - In the corridor. - Who went in? - Nobody. - What do you mean, nobody? - Cameras are clear. Doors are locked. But I can hear him. - Hear who? A metallic sound came through the phone. As though something were being dragged across stone. Marek was breathing faster. - A man. - Have you seen him? - Through the glass. - What does he look like? A long silence. - Marta... - What does he look like? - He's wearing chain mail. Leszczyński straightened. Marta was already reaching for her bag. - Don't go inside. - I wasn't planning to. The sound of breaking glass came through the phone. Marek swore. Then someone on the other side said something quietly. The voice was male, deep and rough. Marta did not understand the first word. She understood the second. - Bernardyńska. Marek stopped breathing. The man repeated the name. More clearly this time. - Bernardyńska. And then he asked: - Who else remembers it?