Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Luke 23:34

Three Days Later

Crying.

The sound rose out of the darkness like a jagged, rotten tooth. It was horrible, out of balance. It carried too much weight, converging on a singularity whose gravity seemed impossible to escape.

The voice was heavy with pain and fear.

Alarmed, he realized it belonged to a child. A boy… crying.

He knew that voice… recognized...

"P-p-please... it hurts…"

Some vague comprehension crept along the inside of his chest, accompanied by a deeper thrill of blind terror. He stumbled through the shadows towards the voice.

But the wails broke suddenly, clinging to the silence, before the muffled sobs turned to screams…

Screams of pain… no.

Worse than pain.

Loneliness, betrayal, confusion…

The sound escalated, shrieking upwards into higher pitches, higher volumes.

He listened, paralyzed by his own horror and revulsion.

A dream.

Someone, he thought, must hear this.

Someone… they must…

Just a dream.

He should do…

He finds the body of a boy. He crouches over the corpse, crying quietly, making no secret of it.

He should do something.

He touches the child's face, something so kind and delicate and gentle… lost forever..

He should.

Cold, dead, blue-white.

The screaming stopped, prematurely and permanently.

Wasn't real.

Serene but lifeless.

He buried his face in his hands.

Just a…

The boy's skull crumbles and breaks apart as he brushes a thatch of straw-colored hair back from his brow.

He screamed.

He screamed until he thought his throat might wither.

Until...

"I think you had better wake up now, Bureau Director."

Instead, he kept his eyes firmly and intractably shut.

The image of the dead child –– a boy in papal vestments, pearly chasuble stained crimson –– spun slowly and agonizingly in his brain, in monochrome, liked a jammed projector playing an endless loop of old film. It was a horrifying image, ultimately unreal, but there was still a kernel of disquiet buried deep in his subconscious.

It had been so vivid, like a fragment of an old memory, an echo of experience… or perhaps a premonition.

He shivered.

He was so terribly frightened, then, to open his eyes; the pain in his head was so great, he was afraid there might be too little of his eyes left to open. Bloody bundles of twitching muscle fibers and severed optical nerves. He shuddered at the thought.

But he couldn't live without his eyes; he couldn't do his duty… couldn't protect His Holiness…

Petros let the lids roll open slowly.

There was nothing wrong with his eyes.

Regardless, the low, dull ache remained. He grit his teeth against the pain spreading up his back and shoulders and thundering like a freight train in his head.

His gums were bleeding. They always bled when he was in a vicious mood, or doing something exceptionally physical.

Or both.

The blood tasted watery in his mouth.

The lower part of his face was covered by a transparent blue mask, a thick, ridged tube connecting it to a ventilator at the side of the bed. The appliance wheezed at regular intervals, a steady beat in which Petros found some small smidgeon of order and reassurance. The cannula on the back of each hand fed to a saline drip, wires patched to his chest led to the heart monitor, and thin red electrodes ringed his forehead –– a bloodless crown of thorns.

"There you are, Director. Back in the land of the living in more ways than one, no? My word, but you have had a rough time of it, haven't you?"

Who in the blazes…

Grunting bodily, Petros eased himself into a sitting position, fairly certain that every muscle in his body protested the movement. He blinked sleep from his eyes, attempting to distinguish the figure idling quietly by his bedside; the newcomer's hair was dark, the color of obsidian, and it reflected blue in the harsh fluorescence. Feathery locks fell just below his ears –– the line of his bangs looked sharp enough to open an envelope. His face was pinched and interrogative, and his brows arched sardonically over thin, half-lidded eyes so black and shiny that a hundred points of light reflected at their centers.

Petros's stomach rose and fell disconcertingly. He must have pulled a face, going green with nausea, for the visitor tutted infuriatingly.

"I wouldn't move too much, if I were you, Director," said a voice as smooth as eggshell, as malignant as cancer. "We can't have you being sick all over yourself, now can we? You'll aspirate into your ventilator."

Petros, stubborn to the point of bullishly difficult, tried to turn his head. An incandescent burst of pain danced along the bone his skull with deceptive grace, striking delicate blows against the backs of his eyes and doing precious little to alleviate the immediate impulse to vomit.

Perched above him, arms looped behind his back, Brother Matthaios smiled serenely, vacuously.

"What frightfully poor taste that would be," he marveled, "for you to expire, here in the hospital, after you've survived such hardship. Bathetic, almost. If it were a work of theater, I'd demand compensation for the wasted time and money."

Petros's gaze didn't stray from Matthaios... not that there was anything else in the ward capable of holding his attention. It was a soulless place, its sterility sharpened by the pervasive smell of disinfectant and refracted by the painfully bright white walls...

"The last time I was forced to suffer through a script of such saccharine sensibilities, I took the playwright's life in recompense. Do you remember, Petros?"

The words held him in a tighter grasp than if Matthaios had physically grabbed him. The Director pushed his own voice out of his mouth as though it had been reluctantly clinging to the back of his throat: "The official report," he croaked, "details how Archbishop D'Annunzio took his own life––"

"By means of a cyanide capsule, hmm? I had to force the old sod's jaw closed, but he bit down on it, eventually. Although that chore was positively enjoyable compared to the later task of having to pick slivers of his broken teeth out of my cassock…"

His nostrils flared, fogging the surface of the ventilator mask. "You lying piece of––"

"Oh, don't be so naive, Reverence. It's unbecoming. You ought to know by now that there is no transparency. It cannot exist. Surveillance doesn't go both ways. There are those who watch, and those who are watched; the powerful, and the powerless. Those who rule have a vested interest in shaping the perceptions of those they wish to rule, Director. And if blood must be shed on the altar to ensure the continuity of that perception, then so be it."

"By what warrant?" demanded Petros. "How does the Lord benefit from such wanton, indiscriminate carnage? That is not faith; it is imposture!"

"God once asked Abraham to sacrifice his own son, Isaac, on Moria," he countered. "And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son…

"Take it from a former military man, Excellency... a temple is worth a dozen tanks, and the Bread of Christ a thousand bullets. A member of a militia, carrying a gun, might control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he stands at their head and waves the barrel in their general direction. However, a single priest can put a policeman inside the head of every member of their flock, for ever.

"Power not presence, Petros. Power is not being seen… power is the indomitable belief that someone is always watching. Power... is faith."

Petros was quite literally steaming, the chill of the hospital's ventilation striking off his flushed skin.

"Have you ever heard of an air embolism, Director?"

Under vastly different circumstances, Petros might have frowned at the abrupt change in subject. But an acute awareness of the cannulas fixed to the back of each hand had most every rational thought frozen in impotent horror.

"It occurs when oxygen or nitrogen enters an artery. These air bubbles can travel to your brain, heart, or lungs and cause respiratory failure. An air embolism can sometimes occur if your lung is compromised after an accident –– from broken ribs, perhaps, or a plunge into an icy river. You might be put on a breathing ventilator. And if one forced air into a damaged vein or artery…"

Before Matthaios managed another word, Petros flung the blue mask from his face, the plastic clattering as it hit the floor somewhere behind their heads. He tore out both intravenous lines; blood seeped from the backs of his hands, leaving stigmatic holes like the wounds of Christ, staining the starchy bedsheets.

Matthaios snickered, a glitter of genuine amusement in the face of Petros's desperate bid at self-preservation.

He probably took some perverse pleasure in watching his superior jerk and twitch to every thinly-veiled threat.

Matthaios was worse than von Lohengrin.

"As the late Archbishop would no doubt testify… accidents have been known to happen."

He laughed at that, while Petros managed only a stunted shuffle back on the mattress; the Chief Inquisitor stared, almost dumbfounded, at a man who was, despite appearances to the contrary, totally sincere. A sadistic, twisted mind... but not an insane one. There was something deeply rational about Matthaios's behavior that set Petros's teeth screaming.

"I confess you are a difficult man for me to understand." He crossed his arms and propped a foot on the wall, as at ease as a seminary student debating apocrypha. "You are widely regarded as the most violent man in the Vatican... the Knight of Destruction, no less. You are the paragon to which most of our holy order aspires, and yet… you pass pity around indiscriminately, making no distinction between the worthy and the unworthy. Mercy as you would have it practiced is, in the eyes of the Bureau, a military weakness, and in the eyes of God, a moral infirmity."

"And what would you know about God and mercy, Matthaios?" snarled Petros scathingly.

"We are the sword-arms of the same beast, you and I. You enjoy the official power of the Holy See –– tacit in the functions of your office –– while I enjoy its implicit sanction. But fear and violence remain the choice weapons of us both. QED," he concluded, "we pledge our loyalty to entities whose laws are written by bloodshed and enforced by the same. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.

"Therein lies your particular species of paradox… the hypocriticalness, one might say. You may preach a fine philosophy, Petros, but over and over again, you fail to supplement it with any kind of tactical carry-through." Matthaios's eyes narrowed slightly, and he added, waving a hand airily: "Naturally, it is always easiest to judge where one is ignorant –– a mistake we made about you, and one that you'll find we have striven to correct –– but it seems that your idealism has turned you foolhardy. His Eminence ought to have dismissed you months ago, particularly after that mess in Carthage, and yet, with a stupefying inertia, you persist. Ah…" Matthaios's voice trailed off as an odd expression crossed his face. "Speaking of persistence… that reminds me..."

Petros's heart pounded as the shorter inquisitor reached into the pocket of his robe. Matthaios extracted something, but kept it curled in his fist, shielding it from view until the moment he tossed it towards Petros's outstretched hand. The Bureau Director was forced to catch it or drop it.

Physically, the silver was warm from the batting of Matthaios's pockets, but it had a cold lining that was almost icy, and Petros flinched from the sudden sting against his palm. Something about it unsettled; it was not an object he cared to hold.

When he rationalized what, exactly, it was, he tasted something alkaline at the back of his mouth, and his face fought a grimace against the flavor.

It was a delicate silver chain, the length looped through a crucifix filigreed with a crest of crossed swords, a crown sitting between their hilts.

It was a rosary.

Petros went white.

Esther Blanchett's rosary.

"I trust," murmured Matthaios, his small smile registering more as a smirk, "that you will find a good home for that, Bureau Director."

No secrets, then.

Matthaios knew...

Understanding dawned, and with it came an unbidden mental image of the Moroccan Demon stripping the rosary from the girl in the dungeons of Castello di Signa... depriving her of that last physical connection to God, like snipping a phone line.

Anger scorched Petros's cheeks, appalled at his underling's audacity.

"Is human dignity," he growled, the danger Matthaios presented to his own safety momentarily forgotten, "and human life so cheap that the rights protecting it can be bargained away to appease your every appetite?"

A shrug. "We are both men of God, Petros. The difference between us… is merely our willingness to sacrifice Isaac.

"Ask yourself, Director: is it better to make a votive offering of a pure soul, or to show mercy, and in so doing pardon, an evil one?"

"I believe it is better, Brother Matthaios, to cease this line of questioning."

Matthaios's mouth snapped shut. Petros swallowed very deliberately, his throat skipping.

Both men stared –– Matthaios with submission, Petros with shock –– at the figure standing in the doorway.

The newcomer was august and dignified... beautiful in the same way a blade or bayonet might be beautiful. She was at least as tall as Matthaios, narrow waisted with long arms and legs. A smooth, symmetrical face looked as if it had been carved from ivory, pale and serene. She kept a thatch of glossy silver hair bound about the brows with a crimson cornet –– emblazoned with the hammer and lightning of the Vineam Domini. The veil of her habit framed her face, rendering her features all the more austere; her eyes, curiously round and slightly too large, were so somber they were almost stormy, the color of ocean swells as they attempted the long, slow erosion of a breakwater.

"Brother Matthaios," said Sister Paula Souwauski, her tone vaguely chiding, "might I remind you that are under mandate to cease communication with the Bureau Director until after Cardinal di Medici has delivered his debrief."

A thin thread of distaste seamed her voice, too fine for anyone who wasn't terribly familiar with her temperament to catch.

Matthaios missed it. Petros did not.

"My humblest apologies, Vice Chief," capitulated Matthaios, bowing deferentially to the Lady of Death. "Is His Eminence ready for his audience?"

"Yes. Please wait for us in the conference room. The Director and I will be along presently."

"Very good, Sister."

If Paula intuited the threat posed by Matthaios's presence, she didn't seem particularly concerned by it. A complex expression flashed across Petros's face, then –– compounded of confidence and pride at the Vice Chief's handling of Matthaios, along with a little half-suppressed and worried edge that wondered if Sister Paula's apparent disinterest might not, in fact, be genuine.

That she really didn't care for or about Petros's fate as much as he might hope.

After Matthaios departed, the door to the ward banging shut behind him, the Chief Inquisitor's thin seam of a mouth tugged into a slight smile... ominous, humorless. He managed to maneuver himself to his feet, pausing only to allow the static behind his eyes to subside. He swayed slightly, taking in desperate pulls of air to dispel the wave of dizziness, tasting blood and saliva guttering down his throat. When he spoke, his voice forced itself in thin bursts between hard breaths: "Sister Paula… what are you doing here…"

She barely glanced up. "A delicate political matter has arisen concerning the Kingdom of Albion. His Holiness requested the guidance of his advisors, and the Concistoro was forced to recall His Eminence and Her Grace the Duchess of Milan immediately to Rome. In lieu of his presence, Cardinal di Medici had entrusted me with escorting you to your mandatory interview, during which time you will be expected to account for your actions over the past week." Her eyes combed him from head to foot in a precise, efficient sweep. "Are you able to walk?"

Pale, dehydrated cheeks flushed pink. Determined to salvage some of his battered pride, Petros reached small loop of elastic from the bedside before combing through the wind-blown, greasy blue tangles falling around his face, trying not to sorrow over the profuse number of split ends. Small strands lost themselves inside larger ones, dipping in and under and out of an increasingly intricate design.

A single silver eyebrow rose. "You will re-injure your arm doing that."

"I will not stand before my superior looking like Abel Nightroad," he grouched. "Would you rather do it yourself?"

"I do not know how to braid hair."

"Then kindly keep your peace, Sister Paula."

"Very well, sir."

Petros guided his hair back from his forehead, and by some miracle, the haphazard braid stayed in place. He righted himself, feeling his broken ribs grind together. Aside from a quick gasp of air, he was able to marshal his expression against the pain.

"Let's go," he growled.

"Sir."

The Vice Chief fell into step beside him. His pace was uncertain, slipping from tiny, mincing tiptoe to sweeping strides, whereas Paula maintained a frustratingly constant, parade-perfect pace.

Still, he couldn't help but notice a certain air about her, like the coiled tension of a metal spring: compressed, watching, waiting, her face buried in the shadows of her cornet. There was a look in her eyes that he thought he recognized, that of someone who wanted to keep conversation to a minimum, so as not to voice aloud that which she would rather leave unspoken.

Whether by intuition or paranoia, Petros could not tell, but Paula's presence in Florence troubled him in much the same way Matthaios's fixation on his intravenous line had troubled him; her gaze remained fixed on the middle distance and would not stir, as though beholding a spectacle from afar.

The further they proceeded down the corridor, the more Petros was struck by the slightly bewildering conviction that Paula was deliberately avoiding eye contact.

He felt frustrated and angry. Sad too, as he seized upon a credible explanation.

A danger fundamental to Cardinal di Medici's schemes and stratagems lay in an absolute dependency on a secrecy which, once blown, became a fatal liability. Such a breach of trust had spelled Brother Bartholomaios's death several months ago; of course, it had been Sforza and Iqus who had executed the inquisitor, but Petros harbored little doubt that it had been within Cardinal di Medici's power to intervene, and Cardinal di Medici had, instead, done nothing. Petros's wholesale scuppering of His Eminence's objectives regarding Blanchett and the Orden struck Petros as untenable. He knew no duplicitous apparatus could function if some employee decided which secrets to preserve and which to let fly... who determined on his own recognizance when to look in the other direction...

And when to intervene.

And Petros had done so thrice.

He had once saved a vam–– a Methuselan noblemen, hardly more than a child, from being burnt and blistered by the rising sun over Carthage. The unwonted show of mercy had left in its wake a long, unsettled ambivalence.

In István, he had risked his life to rescue another Methuselah who had, not several days previously, tried to kill him... because Petros had known her persecution was unjust, because Archbishop D'Annunzio had broken the oath he swore before God in his desire to stoke the fires of blasphemous conflict... and because Petros could not abide the deliberate immolation of innocents, regardless of their species.

And, finally, when Petros had happened upon young Blanchett in the sensory deprivation tank, for the first time in his life, his imagination grasped the height and depth of the horrors his own holy order was capable of inflicting on the least deserving.

Petros believed the Lord to be just, forgiving, and merciful. His God was one who had bled and whose heart had been broken, who understood the sanctifying power of love and sacrifice. He told His disciples not to resist evil, but to embrace their enemies, and when smitten on one cheek to turn the other.

If such convictions marked him a heretic in the eyes of a single prelate, regardless of his political influence... then so be it.

If Cardinal di Medici's endeavors ran counter to the gospels, then Petros could not, in good conscience, count himself an accessory to those endeavors.

Matthaios had been wrong; his faith stemmed neither from an obligation of obedience nor from a fear of damnation; nor a desire to appear more righteous than others; nor because God demanded it.

And certainly not from something so base as a wish for power.

It was Petros's duty to care for all of creation, both visible and invisible. To honor God by urging His ministry with disinterested fidelity.

If he spoke in the tongues of men or of angels, but had not love, then he was nothing.

In an instant, the haze cleared from Petros's mind. For the first time, he knew for certain what Paula's presence portended... why Matthaios had seemed so insufferably peacock proud of himself. Why he had been smiling with that vicious and exhilarating arrogance.

Numb disbelief gave way to a pragmatic acceptance. There had been too much death and suffering and pain packed into the past few days.

Tragedy, especially his own, had lost its potency, becoming only sad and still.

"May I ask you one thing, Paula?"

If she was surprised at the jettisoning of her honorific, she gave no indication of the fact.

"... If you must."

"Are you here to kill me?"

Her pace faltered the smallest fraction; she touched her thumb to her forefinger, above her hips, where her set of crescent moon knives rested in their scabbards. For a person as supernaturally composed as the Vice Chief, the physical reaction was akin to a shout or scream.

To Petros, it was as if he had just asked her to do the impossible, to stop breathing or to still her own heart.

How practical...

His Eminence has summoned to Florence the only person who can kill me.

Petros was shocked to find within himself, imagining this, not much emotion, just a cold thrill at being a witness, a kind of bleak wonder at facing a silence that was, in itself, all the answer he needed.

"Very well," murmured Petros.

Paula's forehead furrowed and her lips pursed. "Director..."

"I am content. It is a good death, to be vanquished by your hand."

She looked up, holding his gaze for the first time. There were dark patches under her eyes, vivid against the bone-china paleness of her face. "You fool, Petros."

"Indeed."

"You knew, Chief." She blinked with practiced calm, speaking with insistence: "You knew what your actions would augur."

"Yes, I did."

"Then why..."

"Because I am weak," said Petros, and he smiled to prove it. His words were no longer pitched to his usual rousing volume; he was acutely aware of how weary, how exhausted, he sounded.

There was another long silence bereft of the tension which characterized the first. It was broken only by the sound of Paula's heels, resounding in short, rapid bursts.

Something like a sigh passed her lips.

"If this is weakness," she murmured, "then I pray grace will never grant me strength."

Petros shot her an astonished glance and was surprised to find her shifting with uneasy embarrassment.

"The Cardinal is expecting us, sir," she muttered, looking at the floor.

The hospital's communication room was narrow and tall with walls and floor of polished hardwood and a ceiling that was three-quarters glass skylight. The surfaces of each of the three inward-curving walls were covered in instrumentation, with scarcely an inch between one flickering display and the next. When the door closed behind Paula, the unhealthy sounds of the hospital were almost soundproofed out. In the sudden hush, Petros heard his heart ratcheting to a fever pitch against his sternum. He thought he might feel better if he tried to take a deep breath, but found he couldn't, his broken ribs inhibiting the movement. The best he could manage was a shallow hiss of air.

Brother Matthaios prodded at a row of stippled controls below a cluster of small triangular displays. As the Uriel's pilot, and as a former military man, he was the best suited of the three inquisitors to work the hospital's equipment.

A deep purr rose from the depths of the machinery; the screens and indicator displays flashed and then steadied. The voice of the computer proclaimed: "Palazzo Apostolico, Rome. Cardinal Francesco di Medici."

"Well met, Eminence." Matthaios gave each word the euphony of sacred chapter.

A moment later the scowling face of Cardinal di Medici appeared on the screen. He looked as ill-humored as ever, his eyebrows lowered, lending him the appearance of perpetual frustrated impatience. The Cardinal turned his head towards Petros, and it seemed to the Chief Inquisitor like the slowest action he had seen in his lifetime. His Eminence's expression grew suddenly strained, his eyes lighting unnervingly.

Petros flattened the feeling in his stomach and said nothing.

"A few matters have arisen which I believe are best addressed immediately, Reverences," intoned Cardinal di Medici; his voice seemed distant, almost fuzzy, in contrast to the screen's clarity. "How fare your injuries, Brother Petros?"

"I... will recover, Eminence. Dr. Lauricella has given me six months." His face was set and solemn, caught stark in the glare from the projector. "However, I expect I will be able to return to my holy mission in six weeks."

"Your diligence, as ever, does you credit." The Cardinal spoke casually but, to Petros's surprise, quite sincerely. The Bureau Director prided himself on his ability to read expressions –– a useful faculty for someone of his profession –– but the look on Francesco's face, in that moment, was utterly inexplicable. "You will forgive Sister Paula's taciturnity, however I have every intention of treating this forum as an official inquiry into the incidents which have transpired over the past week, and the security of this information must remain guarded."

"I understand, Your Grace." The Chief Inquisitor's teeth were clenched so hard, his skull ached. He imagined himself to be caught the heart of a complex labyrinth of argument and counter-argument, a vocal maze where every syllable was laden with deep inflections and meanings.

And he was completely inept at navigating any of it. Politicking and double-talk had never been Petros's area of expertise.

Moreover, he was in no hurry to prolong the inevitable. He fought the urge to ask why Cardinal di Medici had not yet dispensed with the niceties and ordered Sister Paula to cut him down, but he knew such a query would be the coward's way out.

Petros Orsini had consigned himself to his fate from the moment he swore an oath to Father Nightroad, before God, that he would save the Lady Saint; his soul was prepared, but that did not mean he ought to die in ignorance, still questioning Cardinal di Medici's intentions.

"From my understanding, despite your injuries, there was much to admire in your actions," the Duke of Florence said with a faint countenance Petros couldn't parse, try as he might. "Your forthright initiative and the scrupulous care with which you executed your duty bespoke an earnestness of, shall we say, intent. However, because the AX, as the furtive, contemptible delinquents are so often wont to do, have elected to keep their own council, I have yet to hear any lucid account of what, exactly, precipitated the second kidnapping of the Lady Saint... and why you alone were the one to shoulder the burden of her recovery, Petros."

"It was purely an impulse of disinterested obligation on my part, Eminence," said Petros, very carefully. "I did my duty for God and the Church."

"And yet you knew enough of the particulars surrounding the girl's vanishment to deduce her location and make the necessary martial preparations. Hardly disinterestedness at all. Of everyone in the Inquisition, you appear to me to be the most conversant in the details."

Damnation... a misstep. A muscle fired in Petros's jaw, his stomach churning with nausea and his chest going tight.

"Or is it that your mind has since been addled?" His Eminence inclined his head, shadow scoring his features. "Had I lived through your recent experiences, I expect I might suffer a similar crisis of recollection."

Petros mulled this over, looking for hidden barbs –– and for hidden meanings.

A frown creased Paula's marble forehead. "With your permission, Your Grace."

Cardinal di Medici arched an eyebrow, knitting his hands together. "Go on, Vice Chief."

"When I spoke with the chief surgeon, she listed as preeminent among the Bureau Director's injuries a form of hypoxia called ischemic encephalopathy, a complication of cardiac arrest catalyzed by cold water shock. It is not unheard of for patients suffering from hypoxia to experience significant memory loss. The Director has suffered a trauma, sir."

Bless you, Paula...

Petros held his breath for a moment, recognizing a reprieve. He chose his next words deliberately lest the Cardinal decide he was through with his indulgences:

"While it is true that have no recollection of what happened after I fell into the river," he began, cautiously, "I am able to call to mind the events leading up to the moment I lost consciousness." Petros seized on a useful diversion. "Including the role AX had to play."

"Which is?"

"I determined the likelihood extremely high that Cardinal Sforza and her adherents were well in hand to mount a rescue attempt of their own; however, due to the circumstances surrounding the Saint's disappearance as well the fact that both departments were operating within the borders of the Tuscan duchy, I deemed it in the Bureau's best interests to minimize the involvement of Her Grace the Duchess of Milan and her agents. For the sake of protecting our security, and ensuring Your Eminence's political autonomy, I acted alone."

Petros went on after a moment, "Since it is the duty of the Church to frustrate the machinations of all heretics and traitors, and as it seemed expedient to secure the Saint under my own power, I decided to act. It appears to have worked, at least for a time."

"For a time... you are referring to the conflict in the Palazzo Santissima Annunziata three nights ago." Petros had expected Cardinal di Medici's reply to come slowly, sunk in consideration. Instead, his voice was almost inordinately strong and forceful. Strident, as though he was trying to hide something.

You needn't bother, Your Eminence, thought Petros grimly, bristling with suppressed anger and resentment.

I already know.

"Yes, Your Grace. One Dietrich von Lohengrin, a noted Orden extremist –– and the man whom I believe is partially responsible for the Saint's kidnapping –– attempted lay siege to the hospital where she was convalescing."

"The name of Lohengrin is familiar to me. A thorn in the Vatican's side ever since Caterina's people scraped that blasted Blanchett girl out of the Hungarian Marquisate. I trust he was swiftly dealt with."

Il Ruinante took a breath, composing himself, wanting desperately to continue, but somehow knowing the moment called for silence.

Swiftly dealt with...

Petros thought back to the night he had regained consciousness, three days ago. He remembered the small, red-headed figure racing from his bedside... tilting and swaying under the weight of his Screamer as she carried it into battle. Her face had been blanched, tired and drawn but fiercely determined; full of fear, of revulsion, of apprehension, of admiration...

Of love.

Something inside Petros had jarred, that night... an obstreperous urge had seized him –– he had, if for however brief an instant, seriously considered barring the girl from leaving the hospital, though he doubted either force or persuasion would have kept her from rushing to her protector's aid.

Esther Blanchett's courage was sometimes frightening for its ability to blind the girl to all risk... her bravery had a tendency to become foolhardiness under unfavorable conditions.

It was a merciless instinct... her regard, her love, for her comrades... something that went far beyond military talent, or duty, or even courage. Those things, Petros knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But he lacked that deeply personal compulsion, as indomitable as the faith of any inquisitorial knight, colder than winter itself... a fierce, selfless protectiveness that no sane person, least of all those who cared about her, would ever willingly rouse.

Simple for the reason that it was so self destructive...

That night, Petros had known, with an icy shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him respect Blanchett still more deeply, that hers was a determination which would not –– could not –– relent or rest. The dangers be damned.

He had recognized her as only another holy warrior could –– he saw in her a similar vein of loyalty... of temperance and courage. Yet he also knew in that moment that for all his own victories in battle, he was not and never had been her equal. As a force of brute strength, yes. As the sword which would execute vengeance for the covenant, yes.

But Esther Blanchett, by virtue of the compassion and gentleness Petros did not himself possess, was the embodiment of God's absolution.

And so will I go forth unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish...

"Yes," said Petros finally. "Yes, Eminence, I believe von Lohengrin was dispatched. However, due to my injuries, I am unable to confirm the outcome of the battle."

"AX will likely have that information," supplied Paula dutifully.

"Far be it from me to give the impression of impertinence, Director," said Matthaios mildly, putting his oar in; "but did you not state, earlier, that Ibn Lohengrin was, in your own words, only partially responsible for the Saint's kidnapping...?" Under the severe horizon of his hair, his narrow eyes looked shrewd and capable. "Partially...?"

"I did not misspeak, Brother Matthaios," said Petros, tone glacial. "Your Grace," he ignored his subordinate completely, "I trust you are aware that I recovered Blanchett at the Castello di Signa... an installation which falls under the direct jurisdiction of the Ministry of Papal Doctrine. Moreover, the Orden operatives under von Lohengrin's command knew of her whereabouts and were well-equipped for the extreme weather conditions."

"You're suggesting they had help?"

"I am suggesting nothing, Your Grace. A suggestion implies uncertainty, and I have no doubt that Esther Blanchett's kidnapping would have been impossible unless Rosenkreutz had the inside assistance of a high-ranking Carabinere or inquisitorial officer."

"Brother Petros, if you mean to suggest the Department of Inquisition is somehow responsible for what happened, then I would caution you to choose your next words with great care."

"I am a mere soldier," said Petros demurely, his head bowed. "It is not my intention to levy baseless accusations against the Bureau, and I have neither the wit nor the wisdom for deceit."

"And yet here you stand engaging in conjectures which directly contradict the testimonies you delivered when you assumed this holy office, Petros... testimonies wherein you vouched for the character and capability of your subordinates in order that they might serve as inquisitors."

While Petros felt no qualms about being ill-mannered to Matthaios, years of service as well as his natural ecclesiastical deference meant he was reluctant to treat the Cardinal in the same way. "With respect, Your Grace, that is not entirely accurate." Petros managed to muster something of his usual stentorian tone. "There are three officers in the Department of Inquisition, two still living, whose ordination I did not personally vouchsafe.

"The first was Brother Bartholomaios, formally Duo Iqus HC-IIX, whose body and combat memory were appropriated by the Bureau following the Garibaldi Rebellion. The second was Brother Philippos, whose elevation from the laity class to the clergy I opposed on the grounds of fundamental incompatibilities in his personality. The third," He released an injured sigh and raised his head so that all in the room could see his haggard expression, face set in grim determination, "is Brother Matthaios."

Petros, vaguely disquieted by his superior's uncharacteristic stoicism up until that point, was relieved to see the image of Cardinal di Medici quiver in the frame of the screen. Beneath it, there was a dark sort of silence, as if the room had been holding in air for so long that it had forgotten how to breathe.

In Petros's peripheries, Paula's hand fell to the hilt of her knife.

The space felt like a shrine, a sanctum of desperate, almost holy quiet broken only by the frantic beating of Petros's heart beneath his ribs. For a paranoid moment, he felt certain that everyone could hear it...

It was Matthaios who spoke first. Smoothly, he disturbed the hallowed silence, making the sacrilege seem easy. "Do you mean to accuse me of orchestrating the entire affair, Director? Forgive my rudeness, but I don't recall your personal sponsorship ever constituting the measure and standard of our loyalty to the Church."

"You're quite correct, Matthaios. I am but a humble knight. I do not presume to suggest my testimony amounts to an act of pure credence, logically immune to any verification." Petros considered his next words carefully, ignoring the anxiety gripping claws into his belly and concentrating instead on his righteous anger... the last bastion of his courage. "However," he ventured, "I believe a deposition from His Eminence is the only thing that will prove, or disprove, your innocence."

Faintly nonplussed, Matthaios let his eyebrows dance questioningly. Paula's lips were twisted and her countenance had gone gray. Vague indignation, perhaps surprise, turned the Cardinal's complexion ruddy.

The Chief Inquisitor's vision had grown tight, tunneled. He barely registered the three other clergy at its edges.

He had taken a huge risk by shifting the terms of the conversation... a gamble. But Petros was no minister or statesman, no accomplished rhetorician; he couldn't debate his way out of a confessional, much less navigate the complicated politicking of the Duke of Florence's caliber.

He was a soldier, and in any military engagement, a calculated risk constituted a wager, a shot in the dark, commanders made when they were unable to determine what else to do. When the gamble worked in his favor, his decision-making was blazoned as strategic genius.

When it didn't work in his favor, the commander rarely survived long enough to cogitate on his stupidity.

Only time would tell whether the odds were working in Petros's favor.

Each of Francesco's breaths rattled in agitation behind the ropey ladder of his throat. His gaze fastened on Petros, gray eyes like two short metal bolts –– pupils pale and reptilian, almost slitted.

"My deposition..." he parroted sepulchrally.

O Heavenly Father, Grant to your Knight the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other... Amen...

Petros tried to picture in his mind patterns of total order, a private world of angles and straight lines, sanity and uniformity. A prism through which to split confusion into clarity...

"My Lord Cardinal," said Petros quietly, "approximately three days ago, two Orden terrorists ambushed myself and Dr. Wordsworth of the AX in the Piazza Santo Spirito, in broad daylight, in the middle of the Oltrarno district. One of those terrorists was von Lohengrin himself... the other was the man the Carabinieri know by the alias Magician, the Inquisitorial Bureau's Public Enemy Number Two."

Petros recognized the Duke of Florence's barely suppressed wrath –– he registered Sister Paula stirring in his peripheries, making no effort to hide the fact her gloved hands were resting on her weapons.

If his hunch proved wrong now... Paula wouldn't leave him alive long enough to regret it.

Petros pressed on regardless: "Our counterattack was interrupted, however, by the arrival of Brother Matthaios and the Carabinieri under his command. His intervention allowed for the retreat of the terrorists. He refused to engage them in battle, and in so doing, granted both individuals clemency in their escape... one of whom would go on to threaten the life of the Lady Saint as well as the patients and staff of the Ospedale degli Innocenti."

Sister Paula instantly froze, hand hovering in midair, waiting patiently for further elaboration that never came. Her eyes darted between the looming presence of the Cardinal on the projector screen and the small, black-haired inquisitor; the latter's perennially cordial expression looked suddenly strained.

"When I demanded an explanation, Brother Matthaios justified his actions by invoking the office of Your Eminence. According to him," announced Petros, "you, Your Grace, gave him the order to spare the terrorists."

He turned his head and stared hopelessly into the face of death.

"For the sake of the Ministry of Papal Doctrine and the Department of Inquisition... and as the Director of that same institution, I must know... did you issue the command, Eminence? Did you order Brother Matthaios to protect members of the Rosenkreutz Orden?"

Everything depended on that single question, one sweeping blow of accusation. Petros had played his hand; there would be no second chances. He had been dreading this moment –– he felt exactly as he had once done as a child, sitting on a bench, tossing pebbles into the golden ribbon of the Tiber, watching them descend, with grave finality, to the riverbed.

He felt no pain, no fear... just a slow, sinking sense of despair, swathing his head like cotton and muffling his mind like deep sleep. He had little strength left. He had no weapons; he had no allies.

Il Ruinante stood still, silent and consigned, and waited for it to end.

One way or another.

But then something stirred on the Cardinal's face –– a mere muscle twitch, moving slowly from mouth to eye, at the slowest crawl imaginable. Not hurrying. Not harried.

Almost... obliging.

"No."

Time ground to a halt inside Petros's skull. There was the taste, the stench, the warmth of blood in his mouth –– his gums hemorrhaging again –– but it had coagulated, as though frozen in a single instant.

"No, Brother Petros... I gave Brother Matthaios no such order."

Matthaios's features lost their sour sense of humor and became glacial. His rattish face seemed to bloat, no longer with arrogance but fear. "Eminence...?"

"Sister Paula..." began the Duke of Florence; there was an uncharacteristic coolness in his manner which Petros found both admirable and alarmingly callous, "place Brother Matthaios under arrest on the charges of kidnapping, conspiracy, and treason against His Holiness, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and the Vatican Papal State."

"That is––!"

"You used your inquisitorial influence to commandeer the Castello di Signa installation and kidnap Sister Esther. You deliberately spared the lives of two Orden operatives in order that they might assume custody of the Lady Saint. It is only thanks to Brother Petros's intervention that the truth –– and your treachery –– has come to light." The Duke of Florence's face was flat but his eyes were alive and fiery. His pupils were sky-dark, sparkling with cruelty. "You will be held in our custody before your formal inquisition at the Castel Sant'Angelo. May God have mercy on your soul."

Grave pity was, decided Petros, far worse than Francesco's renowned fury.

In the next instant, the projector screen went dark.

"Amen," intoned Sister Paula, if possible, even chillier than their superior. She drew both enormous knives, describing twin crescents across her midriff and holding the blades at arm's length, edges leveled in Matthaios's direction.

The Vice Chief, noted Petros, had positioned herself between her target and the only exit, and without Uriel, Matthaios could not hope to match Paula in one-on-one combat.

A growl cut them both momentarily short –– Matthaios's voice, laced with bestial aggression.

Neither the Chief nor the Vice Chief had ever heard that streak of blatant violence before.

"Damn," he swore; there was a certain hurt in his words –– but not enough to hide the malice. Petros's hackles stood on end as the small man's movements grew less open, more cautious. He took short, cramped paces, pressing hands to the wall as though probing for a weakness in the plaster. "How utterly careless of me."

"It would be in your best interest to submit to arrest calmly and quietly, Brother," said Sister Paula with irreproachable calm. "If you resist––"

"Sister Paula!" cried Petros, eyes bulging; his arm shot out, halting the Vice Chief in her forward momentum. She collided with his forearm and the grafted skin on his burns chaffed painfully. "The ground...!"

Paula's eyes widened as a column of light erupted from under Matthaios's feet, bubbling towards the ceiling like the cloud of an active volcano. The hospital's usual disinfectant scent was tinged with something sick –– a noxious, chemical odor, like sulphur, which made Petros's flesh shudder. A complex geometric pattern rose from the floor –– an invisible energy burning an apotropaic, five-pointed star with collinear edges into the stone, as though pressed there by an electric branding iron.

"What in Heaven..." snarled Petros, hearing his voice brimming not so much with confusion as with an awful suspicion. "A pentacle...?"

The interstitial light strobed violently, settling down as a swirling mist, tinged red by leaping and writhing will-o'-the-wisps on the fringes of the circle.

Suddenly, the pernicious vapors vanished. At the center of the circle, Matthaios creased and pleated in midair like paper origami, his slight figure folding to a point until he vanished.

What was left of him –– smoke, shadow, the faint odor of rotten eggs –– was carried away by the wind.

The floor was empty.

Brother Matthaios had vanished.

"Chief, remain here and contact His Eminence immediately," said Sister Paula severely, striding towards the door. "I will establish a perimeter and canvas––"

"No, Vice Chief."

She froze in the entryway. "I beg your pardon?"

Petros shook his head.

A deep, dark frown slanted across Paula's features, hardening like whetted carbide. "His escape corroborates your accusations, Director: Brother Matthaios has been conspiring with heretics and apostates. If you are suggesting––"

"I recognized the symbol on the floor," barked Petros impatiently, shooting his second in command a glance packed with pain and suppressed irritation. "The same sigil appeared under the Magician and von Lohengrin before they made their escape from the Piazza Santo Spirito."

"Sorcery. Witchcraft." Her shoulders sank forward and her fringe fell over her face, obscuring her eyes. "Matthaios will burn for this."

"No, Vice Chief, he will not."

"Why."

Paula...

Because Matthaios never conspired with the Orden.

Because the Cardinal lied, and abandoned one of his top officers, in order to save his own hide.

Petros felt something, though he knew not what, twist beneath his ribs. Fear...

Because he had vague, indistinct memories –– confused hallucinations, mixing past reality with present fantasy –– of a blazing bright figure, hovering on six outstretched wings, suspended above the freezing cold water and the horror and the gore... a true manifestation of divine wrath in the moment when Petros knew he was going die.

Because every time he thought of the Orden, he remembered, at the edges of his mind, the vision of the seraphim in white and gold, and trembled with a horror that was nameless, non-communicable.

Absolute.

"Because," said Petros quietly, in a tone that brooked no discussion,

"Brother Matthaios, Paula, is already dead."

Elsewhere

The man who called himself Matthaios lurched from the shadows, dropping unceremoniously into the middle of an abandoned alleyway. He groaned bodily, clutching his midsection. He immediately turned his head to the side and vomited all over the cobbles, bile steaming against the snow. He bowed over his knees and took slow, deep breaths.

"Well done, Eminence," he seethed through the sick, swiping at the back of his mouth. He spat into the gutter. "Clever, cunning old bastard."

He had been sacrificed… a mere pawn on the chessboard of Francesco's statecraft. How damnably humiliating… tossed aside in favor of a lumbering oaf like Orsini, who was as stupid as he was loud…

"Still smart enough to ask the right questions, however," sneered Matthaios. "Damnation."

If he ever saw the Bureau Director again, Matthaios would take his time with him.

He mastered his temper with some effort, setting aside more murderous impulses as he took stock of his situation. Something, some force, had yanked him from the hospital; a form of Old World technology, no doubt, which meant his supposed rescuers were either criminals or vampires.

That was all well and good, he supposed. He imagined some bloodshed might improve his mood considerably...

But once he lurched to his feet, Matthaios felt unaccountably shackled –– still nauseous, but dizzy and languid, too. Florence –– if he was even still in Florence –– felt tight around him. He no longer had any way of gauging where he was: the alleyway was endless and meandering, the buildings close and distracting. His probing eyes alighted on fragments of architecture, on signs and symbols, shapes in the distance, but no movement, no sound.

The only defining landmark to catch Matthaios's jaded eye was a statue at the center of the square... encrusted in ice, almost defeated by the weather. A pair of effigies… and not particularly good ones, at that. Competent but uninspired –– a bronzed, bare-chested angel, holding a lowered spear, staring into the sky. His face had been obliterated, eroded by persistent snow and rock salt. A second angel knelt at the first's feet, his wings torn and ragged. His head was held low, shielded, and unlike his fellow, most of his expression was still, ostensibly, intact, the carved mien plainly visible. Matthaios saw in it fear, hatred, the humiliation of shattered ego, pain, guilt.

But mostly fear… staring down at an infinite abyss, terrified.

The angels Michael and Lucifer, he surmised. The triumph of righteousness and purity over ambition, false pride and evil intent.

From Matthaios's perspective, it appeared as though Michael was stabbing Lucifer in the back.

"You got him, Isaak! Oh, good show!"

Matthaios stiffened. Every hair on his neck stood on end.

"I apologize for the nausea, Inquisitor. Spatial displacement can be rather jarring for those unaccustomed to it. Although... I don't suppose you will have to suffer the discomfort for much longer..."

He stopped, listening, half-suspicious, half-fascinated, searching for their source of the pair of voices. He turned towards the sound of footsteps, the weight of two bodies cracking the lacquer of the ice.

They appeared almost as suddenly as Matthaios had.

The mouth of the alleyway framed a tall, willowy man, stooping slightly, his flesh too pale, features too precise, too pristine to be genuinely attractive. Matthaios estimated that he was in his mid-twenties, though something worn in his face suggested he was much, much older. At odds with both these observations, however, was the fact that the youthful sparkle in his eyes and the innocent smile wouldn't have looked out of place on a toddler. His appearance careened towards the unkempt, enhanced by the uncombed mess of champagne gold hair and gnawed fingernails. He was dressed plainly in faded cotton trousers and a baggy, off-white shirt which, Matthaios noted neutrally, was wrongly buttoned.

The man stared at the inquisitor until the latter felt ever-so-slightly discomposed. Matthaios couldn't pin down what it was, exactly, about the figure that disturbed him. Perhaps something in the way he moved… his body language was loose and smooth, lacking the stiff, jerky movements most people affected when dealing with strangers, much less members of the Inquisition; Matthaios's uniform ought not to have communicated any false impressions, but the young man's eyes and mouth were so alive with insanity Matthaios doubted he comprehended what the Vineam Domini portended.

Madness was the principal panacea for cowardice, he supposed.

Suddenly, the young man seemed to lose interest and began gazing distractedly around the confines of the street.

"We've been expecting you, haven't we?" he said eventually. He smiled vaguely, dangerously toothy. He was leaning in Matthaios's direction, swaying pendulously –– but not paying him much attention.

"Indeed," responded the second figure; he was dressed entirely in black, so well-camouflaged with the shadowy corners of the street that Matthaios hadn't noticed him at first. He was incredibly tall, pale and sallow, thin to the point of emaciated. His black hair hung past his waist, individual strands hovering about his shoulders as though snatched by an invisible wind.

Pentacles, like the one that had appeared beneath Matthaios's feet, emblazoned the backs of his white gloves.

The inquisitor recognized him instantly.

The Magician… the man from Oltrarno…

The Rosenkreutz Orden.

"We couldn't afford to leave your fate in the hands of the Inquisition, Mateo Vallejo," said the Magician idly, taking a drag from a pencil-thin cigarette.

Matthaios had grown so used to intrigue and intelligence-gathering during his tenure as an inquisitor that he failed to feel anything more than a flicker of disbelief at hearing his Christian name.

"After all, they might have let you live. Francesco di Medici can be slippery."

Vague disbelief turned to shock.

"You're the Moroccan Demon," added the blonde man, like a child trying to impress its parents with a newly learned scrap of knowledge.

Matthaios growled through clenched teeth: "You'll find I don't much care for that name, infidel."

"That's okay... because I don't much care for you, either."

Suddenly, a boiling wind, like a wall of searing air, buffeted the flesh of Matthaios face. His skin began to bubble and blacken, an instantaneous, cancerous necrosis, like a radiation burn; he smelled the rich pungency of hissing fat and roasting tissue and he threw his head up, breaking into a scream that endured for minutes, changing in neither pitch nor intensity.

The scream became a storm of noise, the walls of the alleyway blistering into static.

"You hurt them, Demon."

Pain lanced through his neck, jerking his head violently to one side. Matthaios howled, eyes streaming.

Then the blonde man was standing right in front of him, staring at the inquisitor with his smooth, vacant face and… and...

He... It wasn't human.

It might have looked human once. It even had a vaguely human shape and was wearing what remained of human clothes. It was a human body that had begun to decay. Flesh, bones, nerves, muscles, and organs all lost their rigid structure and were flowing, black and viscous, towards Matthaios. A thousand tiny mouths sucked impotently at the air, gnawing at chunks of ice, dragging a trail of wet, sticky flesh in its wake.

"You hurt his friends… you made him sad. You made him suffer."

Thin, absurdly strong limbs grew out of the bulk of black flesh, clinging to Matthaios's back and shoulders, raising him slowly and painfully upright. The horrific creature held him in a scorching parody of an embrace.

"I can't bear to see Abel suffer."

Agony rushed through Matthaios, inundating every nerve, spreading to the furthest capillary reaches of his body. His flesh sang, hissing like an insect under a magnifying glass.

Nearby, the statue at the center of the street began to glow. It was melting. The heat welded Michael's arms to Lucifer's back, the latter's wings turning molten and sloughing onto the ground. Lucifer's face stretched, welling tear-like towards the cobbles. The snow sizzled against the bronze, turning instantly to steam.

Then the creature stood before him, its body clean and pearlescent where it crested the black, toothy viscera, a condescending smile quivering on its lips.

Three pairs of massive wings emerged from its back. Its face blurred, like a heat haze, resolving into a corona of living flame, constellated in hundreds... thousands of eyes no larger than the head of a pin.

Ofanim... Wheels of Galgallin...

It was a thing beyond love or hatred, beyond the beautiful or the monstrous. Beyond, finally, Matthaios's own power to comprehend or catalogue.

The creature leant forward, his fingers locking round Matthaios's neck. A rod of agony drove through bone and muscle and tissue and sinew and nerves, piercing his spine. He felt himself go rigid, his body stiffening soundlessly. The creature's thumb traced the flesh under his chin. Matthaios looked into his eyes and saw... nothing.

No pupils, no retina, no whites, no color.

Just... living blackness. Living filth... a million writhing, starving shadows.

In that eternal moment, immediately before his sanity was blasted to pieces, Matthaios knew he was going to die.

The slender hand around Matthaios's throat constricted with a single, fierce pressure.

His sight misted red, and the last thing the Moroccan Demon saw was the stone-carved smile on the blond man's face…

So beautiful...

In the second before his neck snapped.

Matthaios's black eyes were dim with distant joy, even as his head rolled across the ground at his feet...

Elsewhere

When he emerged from his conference, she was waiting for him.

Her brother approached the staircase at pace, the agitation as palpable as a mantle of static electricity before a thunderstorm. He grasped the handrail in a white-knuckled grip, stroking and squeezing the iron as if trying to push his fingers through to the stonework beneath. He pulled away abruptly, turning with equal sharpness as his gaze alighted on his younger half-sister. His fingers formed an accusative point, stabbing at her.

"I haven't time for––"

"You'll make the time, Francesco," countered Caterina Sforza, cool and composed. "If speaking with me is such drudgery, My Lord Brother, then I will walk with you."

A beat. "If you insist."

Their footsteps reverberated along the marble steps of the Scala Regia, a barrel-vaulted colonnade that ran from the Portone di Bronzo to the Apostolic Palace; the design of the staircase was such that the proportions necessarily grew narrower at the end of the vista, a telescoping effect that exaggerated the walking distance. It had always given Caterina a tremendous headache.

She didn't waste her time justifying her eavesdropping; Francesco would have done the exact same thing, given half a chance. "I trust the traitor has been apprehended?"

"I have every confidence in Sister Paula's abilities when it comes to expunging heretics and other such treasonous filth." He twisted his head about and his features formed an expression that after a few seconds she guessed, by his tone, must be a sneer –– it was difficult to tell in the crepuscular narrowness of the Scala. "I confess I'm surprised you, of all people, Caterina, would think to question the Vice Chief's capacity in these matters."

The Duchess of Milan felt gaunt and worn with a sudden frustration; she put the back of one hand over her mouth, whether to smother a scratchy cough or because her stomach threatened to turn she was unsure. Her brother's attempt at provocation was plainly obvious and patently juvenile, to boot.

Still, Caterina knew –– and Francesco knew that she knew –– that she had never fully recovered, either politically or spiritually, from the business with the Neue Vatican. The wound of Vaclav's absence had yet to scar over, and the official recognition of his disloyalty, his designation as a traitor, ensured the hurt would continue to plague her for some while yet.

Juvenile, yes. Ineffective... no.

"Yes, Paula conducted herself with admirable competence and rectitude on that occasion. If I came across as condescending, I beg your forgiveness, Francesco."

"You are forgiven. Now, if you'll excuse––"

"Though it is rather ignominious, is it not?" mused Caterina, leisurely skeptical, causing her brother to stop in his tracks. He was not by nature a sedate person, but he seemed, in that moment, in an uncommon hurry to be shut of her company. "Both the Ministry of Holy Affairs and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith playing host to two traitors within the span of as many years. When a community truly disintegrates, knitting it back together becomes a herculean, perhaps impossible, task. We have been consecrated to the service of God's flock; in an epoch of change, the Church remains the symbol of continuity; in a phase of disintegration, the element of cohesion; in times of mutability, the emblem of permanence. If we fail in that duty, the restoration of virtue, trust, and cohesion between the Holy See and its congregation becomes exceedingly difficult to restore."

"You needn't sermonize to me, Caterina." Francesco's effort at feigned nonchalance was gone, swept away by a different set of dangerous, tense mannerisms. "If you have a point to make, I suggest you make it. This situation in Albion requires my immediate attention."

"And here I labored under the belief that matters of state and foreign affairs fell within my jurisdiction."

Francesco was positively bristling with impatience. Despite the bluster, however, Caterina intuited that he was still carefully observant, mindful of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and wise to the fact that Caterina was stalling, deliberately trying to make him stumble.

"No matter..." She tucked a corkscrew of hair behind her ear, peering imperiously through the smoked gold of her monocle lens. "Although it does cause one to wonder how Brother Matthaios managed to take the entire Bureau by surprise. That he had the capital and resources necessary to commandeer the Castello di Signa signals to me that he has enjoyed the financial and martial support of the Orden for a not significant period of time. How, I wonder, has he succeeded in evading the scrutiny of both your knights and yourself for so long..."

"The man is a spoil of war. As you well know, my knights are chosen from childhood for the explicit purpose of assuming the role of inquisitors. In addition to their training, they each must swear a vow of absolute loyalty and obedience to God and the Catholic Church. But––"

"But Matthaios did not undergo the indoctrination," finished Caterina. "He was a gun for hire, was he not? A mercenary." She sniffed. "Just the sort, you believe, the Orden might be predisposed to attract. I would like to say that I expected more forethought from a man of your military intuitions, Francesco, but the truth of the matter is... you're more intelligent than this."

The silence that followed was tense and menacing and, thankfully, short.

"Speak plainly, Your Grace," snarled the Minister of the Doctrine, but his voice had lost some of its force. Caterina studied his face, wondering how someone so infinitely clever could be so infinitely stupid...

"I have every suspicion that you're not being entirely honest with me... Your Grace."

Her rival's complexion mottled to an alarming shade of crimson. Utter loathing was carved onto his face –– pure, near-bestial rage from which a lesser soul than Caterina Sforza would have fled in terror. But the Duchess of Milan, who had been exposed to nearly thirty years of Francesco di Medici's volcanic temper, remained unruffled.

"How dare you... how dare you come into this sacred hall, flinging accusations?"

"I have not yet made any accusations," said Caterina. "Perhaps it is your own guilt clamoring in your ears, Francesco. Indeed, it does well to be careful of the actions we take, for there are always unintended consequences. Sometimes they are serendipitous, other times they are appalling. We must tread lightly in this world... until we are sure of foot." A triumphant, expectant crease twitched like a dying thing in the corner of her eye. "You, my Lord Brother," she intoned, her voice as serene as a high mountain lake, with nary a ripple to betray the terrible rage roiling in the depths, "appear to have lost your balance."

There was something sleek and deadly and uniquely violent about Francesco di Medici in a fury, a man working off his anger at a world he believed was doing its best to spite him. Her brother, Caterina reflected, not for the first time, had been born to the wrong age. The arrogant shuffle of his gait, his eyes fierce and open wide, his readiness to meet any obstacle with massive retaliation... all of those things belonged to the Dark Times.

To the battlefield, not to the basilica.

"Do you expect me to believe," Caterina whispered, her voice a reedy exercise that managed, despite its fragility, to drip acid, "that an inquisitor under your direct supervision, who, despite his reputation, was utterly devoted to God and the Church, and who demonstrated no disloyalty to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith since he took holy orders, has in fact been allied with those apostates the entire time?"

His face, she thought, appeared terribly gaunt, gray with exhaustion and hatred. He had grown thinner, his high, articulated cheekbones sharper than before. Were it not for Francesco's height, he would have blown over in a stiff wind. If Caterina were in an entirely different scene of mind, she might have pitied him. As it was, she could barely muster the strength to master her own physical deterioration, much less her brother's.

"Just because you were too blind and dull-witted to rout out the traitor in your ranks," sneered Francesco, "does not mean I suffer from the same handicap, Sister Mine."

His mouth contorted uneasily, confirming for at least the dozenth time Caterina's suspicion that this was a man who indulged in the odd grin every couple of years but otherwise stuck rigidly to rigor mortis lip-twitches to convey the apotheosis of good humor.

But Caterina wasn't laughing.

She stared without blinking into Francesco's face, not missing the flicker of vindictive smugness that lurked in her brother's stormy eyes.

The Duchess of Milan used her teeth to pull her glove from her fingers, folding the pristine white fabric before tucking it into the folds of her crimson vestments.

Then she drew back her hand and slapped Francesco, hard, across the face.

The violent smack of flesh striking flesh echoed through the staircase.

His mouth opened slightly to reveal the whitest teeth she had ever seen, bared in a grimace as a drop of blood ran slowly down his chin from his mouth.

"Damn you," breathed the Duke of Florence, more a gesture of the lips than a sound. "How much––"

"Everything. I know everything, Francesco." Caterina seized great bundles of crimson silk, drawing her skirts tighter. She imagined her knuckles tensed and white. "Father Tres contacted me from the Ospedale degli Innocenti the moment Sister Esther and Brother Petros were recovered," she stated vehemently. She felt a dry cough skittering up her diaphragm, her chest heaving under the bones of her corset, a splitting headache sitting over her right eye as if it had been nailed there. "You traitorous bastard... how dare you..."

The Cardinal hissed: "I ought to have repurposed your little toy for parts after he murdered one of my inquisitors...!"

"You would harm a daughter of this Church, a friend to His Holiness..." She tasted acutely the pain and fury and betrayal, swirled the acrid flavor around her mouth like wine gone sour. "You would lay a hand on one of my agents, Francesco, and with her, you would seek to supplant me? How dare you."

"You despise her, Caterina," snarled Francesco with hateful relish. "You would see her dead as soon as I."

"The key differences being, My Lord Brother," countered the Duchess of Milan, rounding on him in genuine anger, "that I would succeed where you have so spectacularly failed, and I would not contract the task out to mankind's greatest enemy."

"Rosenkreutz, Francesco..." The loathing with which she invested the name –– both names –– was difficult to ignore. "Do you despise me so much?" she asked quietly. She fought to keep her tone as bland as possible, ever the vision of composure, but Caterina had little doubt her brother caught a hundred subtle inflections: bitterness, confusion, curiosity. Foremost, however, was fury.

Perhaps it was just as well, Caterina tried to console herself. Despite her tendency to touch others with a projected sense of patient, rational calm, there was an outside possibility that any affected pacific stance may have antagonized her brother still further.

Regardless, he continued to stare down at her with a horrible expression on his face. There was no indication of shame or remorse... just sharp cunning, arrogant hatred and vicious hedonism. She met his gaze with equal hostility, but where Francesco radiated resentment, Caterina could manage only profound disappointment.

"Under your guidance," he seethed, "His Holiness presides over a Vatican State ruled by the weak and the small-minded, who are too stupid to know they are weak and small-minded! Through your power politics and opportunism and your ridiculous vanities... by bluff, by coercion, you have championed a policy of complaisant indulgence for our enemies."

"Not all victories are won by the sword, Brother."

"You would have me give up the fight entirely! On behalf of what? Moral principles? And what of the higher order of things, which demands the punishment of sin? I know what evil is afraid of. Not your ethics, Caterina... not your preaching or moral treaties on life or dignity. Evil is afraid of pain, of mutilation, of suffering and at the end of the day, of death! The dog howls when it is badly wounded! Writhing on the ground and growling, watching the blood flow from its veins and arteries, seeing the bone that sticks out from a stump, feeling the cold as its guts escape its open belly! That is the way to fight evil, Cardinal Sforza!"

"Regardless of your reasons, I cannot abide this show of disloyalty to the Mother Church, Duke of Florence. There will be consequences."

"Oh, you will abide it, Your Grace." Caterina's instincts began to chatter dangerously as Francesco grew, suddenly, very still. A fine sheen of sweat glistened off his finely set muscles, a grim light catching his quicksilver eyes. She imagined the temperature in the room plummeting so fast and so far, Caterina was almost surprised her breath didn't come out in clouds.

"You will abide it... unless you would like it disseminated to the College of Cardinals that the Duchess of Milan is keeping a one-thousand-year-old genetic abomination in her charge."

She felt the freezing burn of ice against her throat. "What did you say?"

He took a few steps back down the Scala Regia, until he stood at eye-height. Even when his nose was only a few inches from her face, she refused to surrender ground. "Abel Nightroad has loitered in your shadow since you were a little girl, Caterina," said Francesco with a softness that forecasted devastation. "Twenty years... and yet the man hasn't aged a day. Or did you think I wouldn't notice? Indeed, I might have dismissed the inconsistency as anomalous, perhaps serendipitous, in light of the services he has rendered the Church, but then I received a most disturbing report from Brother Petros three months ago... in Carthage."

Caterina clenched her teeth and turned her head aside, but knew she was too late to disguise the anger she felt.

"You are not the only one who has trained their dog to bark at every act of insubordination, Caterina."

So... the Director of the Inquisition let slip the secret, after all...

She ought to have had the bullish idiot executed years ago...

"A creature with a midnight-dark plumage, who can redirect electrostatic energy at will... a blood-drinker who feeds on the viscera of other blood-drinkers. The Director was exceedingly thorough with the details." He tut-tutted severely. "The AX professes to rid the world of monsters, Caterina, and yet it fosters in its care the biggest monster of them all."

The air was freezing, too much like death against her skin. "And yet you've said nothing in all this time." The disconcerting realization followed immediately after the statement, like thunder chasing a bolt of lightning. "Leverage, Francesco?"

"Insurance. I will keep your confidences, as you will keep mine."

"And if I don't?"

"Then the entire Holy See will know your greatest secret. It will spell the death of that beloved monstrosity of yours... and it will ruin you."

Greatest secret...

A sudden cognizance stopped her dead, as though by some impalpable intervention.

Abel's identity was not her greatest secret; it had never been.

If Brother Petros had told his superior about the Krusnik in Carthage, then why hadn't he disclosed knowledge of the Duchess of Milan's council with the Count of Memphis on the same occasion? Francesco knew nothing of Caterina's liaising with the Tsala Methsaluth; even Alec was oblivious to her intentions. It did not make sense for the Director to cherrypick the details of his report, especially when one such detail included the brokering of peace between the Vatican and its greatest enemy. Compared to the possibility of entente between Terran and Methuslah, Abel's Krusnik abilities seemed a largely inconsequential fact.

Unless...

It didn't take Caterina's genius or her being uncommonly familiar with the way her older brother's mind operated to put two and two together: Francesco had lied. Petros had disclosed nothing. The Director had played his knowledge close to his chest, for Abel and Ion's sakes as well as his own.

There were any number of ways for Cardinal di Medici to learn of the Krusnik... Matthaios in Estonia, or Paula in Brno. Abel valued tact and judiciousness above most other virtues when it came to the use of his powers, but in times of great desperation, discretion tended to play second fiddle to a desire to protect his friends and comrades.

It was obvious to Caterina that Francesco no longer trusted his most powerful subordinate: the Bureau Director was too close to the AX. His recent record of service steered far too steeply in the direction of mercy rather than ruthlessness. He valued principals above loyalty, faith above blind obedience. Matthaios had been sacrificed simply because, between the two men, and in spite of his inconstancy, Petros was the more effective weapon. He was bigger, and stronger, and what he lacked in cleverness he more than made up for in passion and fervor.

But that fervor had proven a hindrance on more than one occasion –– Caterina suspected Petros owed his loyalty to the Throne of Saint Peter far more than one Cardinal Francesco di Medici. And so long as the latter was barred from sitting on the former, Orsini would pose a problem.

By driving a wedge of distrust between the Chief Inquisitor and Caterina's AX, Francesco hoped to isolate Petros, to cast him adrift, so that when the Minister of the Doctrine finally flung the man aside, he would have no safe harbor towards which to swim.

What a waste, thought Caterina bitterly.

Regardless... the Concistoro could not learn of Abel. Caterina would surrender Esther Blanchett to the worst tortures of Matthaios's diseased little imagination a thousand times over before she relinquished her most powerful ally.

Caterina valued him more than her own life. She had for years, even if it was a hopeless, unreturned adoration that left her unfulfilled. Even if he had never touched her, not even in the most innocent way. Even if Abel had only looked, and smiled.

But she would protect that smile... and crush any who sought to wrest it from her.

Be it terrorist or Vampire... layperson or Lady Saint.

Francesco knew that. Caterina knew that he knew that.

She had to make it into something so secret she didn't even acknowledge it, and certainly didn't allow the likes of Abel Nightroad or Esther Blanchett to acknowledge it. Nor, Heaven forbid, act upon it. Francesco's betrayal belonged only to Caterina, and all the rage, all the shame, too, were hers alone.

Her burden to bear.

Francesco stood at the landing, his broad shoulders filling the doorway. He wore an expression they knew both well –– the implacable one that meant Caterina could sooner carve through a mountain with a teaspoon than change his mind. They were both motionless.

Neither of them had won.

Yet both of them had lost.

And worse still... they were both left with that unshakable feeling nothing had been finished, either.

But even in their stubborn opposition, Caterina saw a singular connection, locked as they were in an eternal stalemate from which both wanted to break free but could not. Their cooperation would not be able to keep things perfect and unchanging, just as an open antagonism would not be able to destroy the other indefinitely.

Like particles in a cloud chamber, they would compete for supremacy, collide and clash and spin apart until one of them was forced to yield, if for however brief a time, or else fall together, immolated in mutual destruction.

"Did we always hate each other so, My Lord Brother..." she murmured. Her calm, her resignation, lent her, as it often did, an odd dignity.

Looking towards the Portone di Bronzo, Francesco raised a hand to his forehead, a shadow blocking out his eyes. Silence ruled for a long instant. The Duke of Florence stared at nothing with a bitter gaze, waiting for the moment to break.

"You would wrest from me my peerage, my political power, my voting bloc, even my own Knight," he said coldly, quietly, at a volume he rarely reached, even at mass. "The hatred is all I have left."

She inclined her head. "Not so. You have merely forgotten how to love. And that is a different sorrow."

And had she owned the words, the Duchess of Milan would have told the Duke of Florence what her heart intuited –– that love and hatred often traveled the same road and sometimes, whether by grace or misfortune, they crossed paths and became each other's companions.

Caterina let the edge of her gown fall from her fingers. A sudden spasm of pain fired across the knuckles of her right hand, nearly making her gasp. She smothered it, until her head began to ache with the effort.

She turned from him, walking back the way she had come.

"I did not always hate you, Caterina."

She paused. The voice did not threaten or invite danger. If anything... it was wistful.

But it belonged to a ghost.

And Caterina did not believe in ghosts.

Her answer was delivered with her back to him.

"Perhaps not," she said. "But we will, I suspect, hate each other hereafter."

Cardinal Sforza strode away from her brother. She descended the Scala Regia and stopped at the door at the foot of the colonnade. Her fingers tightened around the handle reluctantly.

Step through, and live with the shame of having to absolve Francesco of his sins, by virtue of political necessity more than any prevenient grace.

Turn around, and face the possibility of losing the man she loved to the very same wheels of fortune she had set in motion…

The answer, to her, was patently obvious.

Caterina twisted the handle.

Elsewhere

Several stories beneath the slate cobbles of Rome, in a room so deep it might have once been a storm cellar, or a bomb shelter, and accessible only by means of a secret entrance built into the grotesques and vignettes and impresi of the mezzanine of the Palazzo Spada, there was a ward where a young woman slumbered.

What remained of her body was as red and raw as a shell wound, hers a battlefield birth of splintered bone, hot shrapnel, and glutinous blood, held together by a complex gestalt of machines and medicines and artificial intelligence programs, working around the clock to keep the young woman's slumber from slipping into something more permanent.

The secret ward had the metal bed-frames and onion paper sheets and plaster walls of a hospital room, but it lacked the traffic of one. There were no white coats carrying clipboards. No family members tipping back in forth in plastic chairs. No nurses bustling from bedside to bedside. No murmurings of the variety traditionally employed for hushed conversations and whispered diagnoses.

There were no projector screens or computer terminals in the room, no loudspeakers or communication stations...

So, in a way, the woman couldn't even visit herself.

Perhaps that, in itself, was a small mercy...

The young woman –– thin, atrophied, almost corpse-like –– lay propped upright on the room's single bed, positioned in the way people often fell asleep on trains or airships –– her body stiff, one arm slightly higher than the other. Her hands folded demurely on her lap, her head falling towards one shoulder.

An entire hemisphere of her face was swathed in bandages, the linen sunken, as though portions of her skull had collapsed in on themselves.

William Walter Wordsworth remembered, with a vividness that was vicious and cruel in every detail, what lay beneath: skin blistered and shriveled. Exposed molars bared in a rictus grin. The eye a blackened ball and socket, staring blankly, oblivious to the room or the Professor's presence in it.

What little remained unobscured by the bandages was gray and purple –– bruised –– the bone structure was austerely angled, the cheekbones paring-knife sharp, the jaw broken in places. There were no smile lines around the mouth, no touch of softness anywhere.

Just a small mole, a raised beauty mark, on her hollowed cheek...

William plopped a fistful of flowers in a vase. The roots were only as wide as toothpicks. The blooms were marble-colored, as white as lather, a peaked face with a droopy mustache of petals.

"These are for you, darling," announced the Professor to the silence. "Their name is aerides odorata... 'children of the air'..."

She offered him no answer.

"Tres picked them out," he fibbed, finding some mainstay of comfort in his rambling. "An apology for being unable to pop down to see you himself... he's still operating in low-level diagnostic mode, you see. Von Lohengrin really did a number on him..."

She hadn't offered him an answer in nearly ten years.

The words failed, then. His breath caught, lodging like a cherry pit in his throat. He reached out his hands slowly, enfolding one of hers within them.

It was as dry as cork... as light as paper.

William had designed her computer-generated avatar to appear as she once had been, whole and alive; he had even programmed the simulation to age –– her hair to silver, the crow's feet in the corners of her eyes to spread and deepen. To pale in fear, or blush in anger or embarrassment.

The rest of the Vatican saw the hologram every single day... their professional and personal relationships brokered entirely through the artificial intelligence network. A necessary interface to allow for human contact and communication, and to give the comatose patient the illusion of movement, of freedom.

But what William retained at the forefront of his mind –– the image he had forced himself to tattoo forever on the inside of his skull –– was that of the thin, gray figure in the bed, locked away beneath the bones of Rome…

There was a long stretch of awkward, but in some ways significant silence. It occurred to William then that he couldn't remember the last time he had felt uncomfortable in this woman's presence. But at that moment, the air between them seemed bloated with inevitability, like something about to snap and recoil with the painful kick of gunfire.

After a while, the Professor released his breath in one long, resigned sigh. He bowed his head, resting his chin on his chest.

He felt suddenly tired... beyond any tiredness he had ever felt before.

"You asked me, not so long ago," he began, coming to the end of his feeble digressiveness and wrinkling his face in embarrassment, "what it was I had been hiding from you. Why I was acting so strangely around Alucard, and I said I couldn't tell you…

"I'm not who you think I am. Not… not entirely. Not anymore. I might have been, once. Something got lost along the way –– lost to the deepest, blackest pits of my insides, and I'm not entirely sure I like what I've acquired in the interim… that vague intelligence clinging to ghosts of past times.

"I've heard it said that when a person experiences death, he glimpses in an instant his entire life right in front of his eyes, like a reverie." William sounded to himself as if he were trying out a new word, testing it for rightness. "Like... time travel, in a way. Operating in only one direction."

A metastasization across centuries, and in a way, Walter was very much like a cancer… a loathsome cluster of abnormal cells. Articulate in his pain, howling and shrieking, jerking and twisting in the gray matter of the Professor's brain.

A pentecost of bitter chuckles fell from his mouth –– each one weak and breathless.

"But I'm not Alucard. I can't go back and forth. I can't change what happened in the past. I can only hear the screams…"

Saying the words aloud did little to stave off the emptiness growing in the space between his ribs. His skin felt as brittle as porcelain. So, for that matter, did his mind.

"By now you've already formed your own impressions," he murmured, a voice of pure abstraction. "You either believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person's past has nothing to do with his future. Perhaps knowing more will make you think differently of me, but it won't change what happened all those years ago, because some things you carry around as though they are a part of your blood and bones, and when that happens, there's nothing you can do to forget. It's almost a scientific precept, isn't it? It demands names and classifications, records and predictions. It engenders a determination to discover the truth, whatever that truth may turn out to be. Regardless of the fact that, in knowing grief, every facet of the truth has already been filtered through a veil of redactions and rejections and disbeliefs. The rational world has spun so completely out of its orbit, that there is no way to chart what might happen next.

"But however much I may confuse reality with the arbitrary divisions I have erected in an effort to make sense of that reality, in this openness and sincerity of investigation it bears some semblance to religion... understood in its deeper sense. I was convinced that if there was something divine in the universe, the only way I would be able to find it was through measurement, experimentation...

"Knowledge, especially in faith, is akin to science. And science binds… it does not divide. We seek knowledge not out of fear of the darkness but at a promise to gain clarity. This is our most intimate journey, like blind men, like moths at night... like children yearning…

"Steadily... we approach the point where what is unknown is not a blank in a book of definitions and classifications but a window in reality, a window whose name is not ignorance but wonder…

"I have yet to find that window, Kate... but I will." William's grip tightened around her frail hand. "I made you a promise."

Her voluminous sleeves were pinned up, showing a pair of wasted arms, chapped with cold and mottled with bruises. At his touch, he waited for her eyes to flutter open, to see him and smile, to chide him or bat his hand away.

It didn't happen.

Her hair was the color of straw, dry and dead. It crunched as he stroked it back from her face.

She had no more use for pain, for memory or regret. The latter was reserved for him alone; shamefully, selfishly, his mourning was less for his dear friend than it was for himself. He knew he would always grieve for the missed opportunities, the words unspoken or spoken in haste, the hole in his life and the unsettling of his soul. Every Nöel, he gazed upon the stillness of her repose and felt his own self-importance crack and the myth of his immortality fall to pieces.

"When you lose someone you––" Don't say it, you foolish old sod, Wordsworth... "care about, perhaps you lose a part of yourself, as well," he said. "Caterina and Abel dealt with it in their own ways, me in mine, and you in yours." He lifted his hand off her forehead. "Caterina remains suspicious of the world, Abel goes along with it, I avoid it, and you… you try to save it. In small ways. In… kind ways, Kate. Always so kind…"

"Your tea, Kate. Pots of tea… you find more comfort in the making than the drinking. Do you know… Beethoven wrote the Moonlight Sonata, his only opera and six symphonies when he was stone deaf. He heard the melodies take shape in his memory alone… beautiful music of which he himself could not partake."

The Professor shook his head once, his gaze not on the bed, but somewhere beyond.

"Memory…" William leant forward, speaking with a low, wistful reminiscence. "Do you remember," he began. "Summers spent in Kew Gardens. Raleigh, me, you…"

Butler.

The Professor closed his eyes.

"Sunny afternoons. Walking through the prefabricated glass factory buildings and huge exhibition halls. Bougainvillea… vines of bright pink flowers dancing over wrought-iron arbors. Variegated ferns, bleeding hearts, lemon and lilac trees. And the orchids…" He flashed her a small, sad smile, even though she could not see it. "A madhouse of colors and shapes: ruffles, pleats, corkscrews, blooms as big as fists, small as fingernails, smelling of honey, grass, citrus, cinnamon… every bloom was an inspiration. I often wonder if your flair for tea-making originated in those greenhouses, Kate… among the orchids…"

He expelled his remaining breath in a faint sigh. William felt that he ought to say something more, but there was nothing there. A cold lump in his throat and a blank mind in his skull. The scent of the flowers in the vase reminded him of his age, of his past. Things he wished not to remember.

Concentrating his mind and energies, William adjusted the stems in the water as though the motions would dislodge the fluvial knot jammed in his throat; it made him wonder if all things taken from their home too soon lost some of their bloom.

The past clung to him like the smell of white orchids…

William felt, then, a crystalline warmth moistening his eyes, barely wetting the pristine ivory of the flowers at her bedside.

He put his hand on her shoulder, bending down to kiss her gently on the forehead.

She smelled like vanilla, antiseptic, saline... and beneath it all, the faint odor of char.

"Happy Christmas, Kate," he said quietly. "I'm so sorry...

"I did the best I could."

Elsewhere

Abel Nightroad watched the sun set beyond the Arno.

Under the veil of long, wooly shadows, the buildings on either side of the river spread towards the north and south like great crimson serpents with rectangular scales, coppery under the sky with its taches of gold and red. From his vantage on the Ponte Vecchio, Abel could see what a maze Florence was –– every house three stories high and each abutted to the next, the streets curved as if laid down on a whim, twisting without pattern or design.

He took a deep breath; the air the warmest it had been in weeks. The snow had stopped. The storms had passed. The priest's expression was calm and thoughtful, the light in his pale blue eyes neither triumphant nor defeated. Without the Krusnik ratcheting his bloodlust a fever pitch, the battle adrenaline had dimmed, as it often did, to a feeling empty and cold, like a hearth devoid even of ashes –– geared to quiet, to contemplation.

He decided that sunrise and sunset both gave him a pleasantly sad feeling. The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness, full of daunting possibility; the sunset, a lonely yet comforting sense of closure. He indulged his agreeable melancholy as the earth turned under him, growing steadily darker, the white streets turning to flame as the twilight extinguished itself in its long westward slide.

In the thin, fading light, he thought the tendrils of cloud were the same color as Lilith's hair –– as Esther's.

He turned to his companion, who was standing close enough that her hipbone had begun to dig into his thigh. He smiled wistfully, studying her expression from his high vantage. As always, he saw much on Miss Esther's face –– an alchemy of nuances. But it was difficult, in that moment, to tell what, exactly, she was thinking. Her eyes seemed wide and tired... and Abel supposed she was, at that. He attempted for the past several hours to project calm and gentle camaraderie, allowing her the dignity of her own process.

She had barely managed three words in as many days... going silent in the wake of Alucard's sacrifice...

Too many times had Miss Esther been forced to mourn for the people she knew and loved. Too often.

It broke his heart.

He peered over the edge of his spectacles –– Miss Esther's face was golden in the setting sun. She watched the river with the misty eyes of a daydreamer, glazed over with a sort of trance-like lacquer, as if in the middle of a revelation.

Or a vision.

As the stories went, Dante had been standing near the Ponte Vecchio one evening when he saw Beatrice coming along the Lungarno. He was a young man, she even younger. It was not their first meeting, nor their last, but that vision contained for the poet the whole of eternity, the connection between his soul and Heaven itself.

Abel suppressed a sigh.

He registered the slow turning of some inward tide, not unlike the shadows chasing after the sunset. He looked at the last of the crimson-colored water as, together, he and his dear friend retreated beneath the Ponte Vecchio's angled shadows.

"We ought to get back soon, Miss Esther," said Abel quietly. "We don't want to be late for Sister Kate's departure."

"Yes… yes." She paused and stared skyward. He could see the blush high on her cheeks, little black, quarter-moon smudges under her eyes, the flesh tissue-thin over her skull. She seemed so tragically diminished –– aged. The realization chafed at him, making his chest ache. "A little longer, Father. Please?"

"Well… all right. I don't want you to catch cold."

"I'm fine. I just want to watch the sunset."

So they stood together, dusk like firelight churning in their eyes, as the the world turned from gray to lavender and then to black. After an hour's silent vigil, chipped-glass stars began to glitter above their heads, crystalline in the hallowed dark. Below a girdle of purple dust, the silhouetted hillsides had been reduced to regiments of clean, flat shapes. It was, Abel thought, a bit like looking at a snowy postcard: the world seemed cleaner, somehow. Still and uncomplicated. The distant fragrance of pine resin was like burning incense –– a balm of open sky and snow and moonlit nights.

He did not miss much about his old life... his other life.

But he did miss the stars.

There was, he decided, no finer place of worship than beneath the canopy of constellations, with the moon lifting a forehead over the horizon like an act of providence, earthbound congregations mining ephemeral love from the cold and distant lights.

His spectacles nearly sliding off his nose, Abel gazed up at the stars, as though he might find his answers emblazoned in the arbitrary patterns of light arching over his head. He lingered long enough to allow each mote of fire the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of his retina.

He gazed at the second moon, the ARK, for, perhaps, a little longer.

He said a prayer for Élissa.

And for Lilith.

Without a word, he reached down and folded his hand around Miss Esther's –– her skin was warm and soft, and he could feel her pulse throbbing steadily beneath his palm.

"I'm fine, Father," she chastised gently.

"Yes, I know."

The evening wind was faint, just enough to chill his skin and raise a fine layer of goosebumps. His companion's gaze, like his, had drifted to the stars. He imagined the gentle breeze buoying her upwards, lifting her hair in a coronal nimbus of red and raising her into the sky; even as he imagined it, she appeared to recede from him, her expression unaccountably distant, her pale face a glimpse of white surrounded by the boundless dark.

"I'm... fine..."

With a cringing shudder, she pulled her eyes away from whatever she alone could see.

"Esther..."

She cried out on the crest of a sob.

"Home..." she gasped, clutching at her chest. "He's home... he's home..."

"Oh, my dear Esther…"

The small endearment was entirely too effective: Miss Esther began to weep quietly, her body seized as though by a stutter, or a shiver, that would not let go. For a few long minutes he allowed her to cry, allowed her to agonize at the unfairness of the haphazard and tumultuous world, for the sheer emotional strain of a bedrock pain.

Her sense of loss was boundless, staggered across souls and centuries.

Just like...

"He made it, Father. He found his way..."

Just like Abel's own.

And yet...

There was joy there, too.

Grief and joy.

The peace of closure, the wonder of tracing two paths which crossed with the perfection of fulfilling a purpose that spanned lifetimes. Two people who had loved each other however imperfectly, who had tried to make a life together, however imperfectly...

Little lights twinkling into the high firmament, until they were lost among the stars.

How sad...

How exquisite.

Through her tears, Esther began to laugh gently.

It was a beautiful sound, as cool as the first drops of rain in autumn, as fresh as spring flowers, as young and as light as life.

"Home, Abel. He came home."

As Esther turned her head, laughing and crying, her face seemed to be glowing, as though reflecting the cosmos suspended above the world. The starlight on the river, the swaying of the bare tree branches in the wind, the slight rattle of the panes of glass in the old window frames... everything was too beautiful for words.

In an instant, Abel was enthralled at how miraculous it all was. Overwhelmed.

Everything... absolutely beautiful...

He pulled Esther into his arms, pressed his cheek against the sticky mess on her face. She wept into his cassock as he ran his fingers through her hair, held her tight, hugged her to him desperately.

He felt her smile against his chest, and he smiled too.

L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle...

A long time ago...

A man in red kneels before a woman in white, so close that his knees touch her toes. He sweeps his hands to his sides, lowering his head until the crown of his head brushes bare flesh, his hair falling like reams of heavy silk around his face, obscuring whatever expression lies hidden underneath.

He sinks into the bow, grateful beyond words for its familiarity and its soft comfort.

The woman hovers over him, perhaps waiting for a lead. They are close enough for him to feel her breath, and for her to notice the absence of his.

Neither one flinches at the intimacy.

"To think..." his voice is as smooth and defined and ageless as his face, "after all these years... I still have a proclivity for leaving you speechless."

Twin creases appear between her brows. Her nose is slightly chipped, bent at the center. Her arms are long, coffee-colored ropes that fray into hands.

"Mind your manners, servant."

Then his soft hair is under her fingers, and he hears her exhale, as if she has been holding her breath for years, and he knows nothing else.

He needs nothing else.

Integra smiles.

"Welcome home, Count."