Now here is a name Brother Vesperus clearly has some familiarity with. The flicker of recognition is self evident even despite the dour and very set lines of his face.

"Only by reputation." Laurentius's own academic interests mercifully have little overlap with the Magister in question's. But he'd colleagues more compelled by similar subjects and it's the nature of academics to complain about the various barbarous heels in their fields.

"And that he was captured some time ago."

(And that no peer from that aforementioned field of study had seemed either very upset or particularly compelled to negotiate the man's rescue or release.)