“Indeed,” Ewa purred, the sound carrying low through the podium microphone, “a truly memorable lesson, Danuta. One I assure you we will discuss at length. Privately.” She turned back to the rows of banquet tables without waiting for an answer. “Now, where was I? The foundation’s dedication to municipal culture…”
Danuta stepped away from the riser. Wine glasses clinked against silverware as people leaned inward across round linen tables, heads tilting together behind raised napkins. Jadwiga sat at table three, wine glass gripped so hard her knuckles were white, tracking Danuta’s retreat toward the exit.
Tymon stood beside the double doors, fingers hooked loosely in his tuxedo pockets, shoulders hunched forward. “Danka. Are you hurt?”
“I’m intact,” she said. “Can we go?”
He nodded. “The car is already outside.”
The sedan crossed the Vistula in silence, tires humming against wet asphalt. Danuta leaned her forehead against the glass, tracking the amber streaks of bridge lamps until the trees along the estate drive swallowed them.
Inside their second-floor suite, Tymon shut the heavy walnut door and threw the latch. “I have never heard anyone speak to Mother like that. Not even my father.” He loosened his bow tie, letting the ends drape over his collar. “She will retaliate before the weekend.”
“She was already planning to,” Danuta said. She walked to the wall safe behind the landscape canvas and slid the brass catch. The music box sat inside on the velvet lining; she ran her thumb across the carved bird on its lid.
A muffled tone sounded from the nightstand drawer. Danuta slid it open and lifted the modified tablet. On the screen, a solitary notification blinked over an encrypted partition.
The message held sixty-four hexadecimal characters followed by one sentence: *The lark is ready to sing.* Beneath it sat a single sign-off: *Xaw*.
“Xaw,” Danuta murmured, staring at the handle. “He sent a passkey.”
“Who is Xaw?” Tymon asked, leaning in over her shoulder.
“I have no idea.” She pasted the string into the tablet’s partition prompt. The padlock icon shifted green, and three grayed directory trees blossomed into rows of subfolders: audit logs, land registries, scanned wire slips, and recorded call logs.
Danuta expanded the first directory. “Look at the dates, Tymon.”
The ledgers detailed five shell entities registered in Riga and Limassol, routing procurement payments away from the Nowak Group’s rail subsidiaries. Beside them lay settlement agreements marked confidential, referencing collapsed subcontractors whose warehouses had burned during municipal re-zoning disputes.
“It is broad,” Danuta said, dragging down the spreadsheet column. “Wire transfers signed by proxy officers, shell holdings under third-party nominees. Her personal signature isn't on any of these wire authorizations.”
She opened a subfolder titled ‘Perch Research.’ Inside rested an uncompressed photograph of an embossed cloth spine: *The Avian Heart: A Guide to European Songbirds*. A caption below read: *‘The Lark’s True Song lives where the heart flew highest.’*
Danuta met Tymon’s eyes. “The glasshouse behind the orchard.”
Tymon blinked. “Father’s flight house? It has been padlocked since his funeral.”
“He kept birds there?” Danuta asked.
“Waxbills and crested larks,” Tymon murmured, his gaze dropping to the floorboards. “He spent every afternoon there sketching and feeding them. After the fall, Mother ordered the locks changed and forbade the groundskeepers from clearing the path.”
“We need to check it tonight,” Danuta said, setting the tablet face-down on the sheets. “Before the estate staff starts morning maintenance.”
The dome rose behind the hornbeam hedge, a cage of oxidized iron ribs and cracked greenhouse panes. Wild ivy wrapped the lower struts, choking the rusted padlock until Tymon worked the latch free with a pocketknife blade. Inside, the soil smelled of damp rot and dried lime, and suspended wire cages swung motionless in the draft.
Tymon shone his phone’s flashlight toward a zinc potting bench beside the inner wall. On a shelf above it sat two dozen warped volumes, their covers curled by years of humidity. “His field guides are still here.”
Danuta ran her fingers along the swollen paper edges until the faded gilt lettering caught the beam: *The Avian Heart: A Guide to European Songbirds*. She slid the volume out. It lacked the heft of thick rag paper.
She lifted the cover. A square cutout pierced the center of the block, lined with moldering purple baize. Inside lay a small silver key with an uncut barrel, resting atop a glossy print. Danuta lifted the photograph toward the light: Tymon’s father sat pressed against the floor of an unfamiliar tiled room, hands raised defensively, a dark hematoma spreading across his cheekbone.