I can do all things through him who strengthens me

Philippians 4:13

"Damn Caterina and her cadre of interfering ruffians!"

The Commander of the Vatican Army, Minister of the Inquisition of the Roman Curia, and Duke of Florence, Francesco di Medici, stalked down the Via della Colonna like a bright red bull. Clothed in the full cape and mantle of the scarlet ferraiuolo, the Cardinal stood well over six feet, managing a few inches on his half-sister, Cardinal Caterina Sforza, and positively dwarfing his much younger half-brother, Pope Alessandro. Francesco's hair under his zucchetto was light, the color of straw, but stricken with silver, so that it glinted like a revolver in the dim light of the snow-muffled evening. Though brushed severely back from his forehead, the occasional lock curled just below his ears. With his sharp, inquisitive brows arching over gray eyes and his broad, high cheekbones, he was attractive, authoritative, and commanded the presence of whatever room he happened to occupy.

But the sneering twist to his full lips had the effect of chilling his otherwise impressive visage. He was an intimidating man.

The pedestrians on the Via della Colonna parted for him, pressing themselves against the walls and ducking into doorways, their haste kindled by equal parts reverence and abject terror. Every time the throngs of people on the narrow Florentine streets grew particularly congested, the Cardinal raised both hands and mimicked a motion not unlike a breaststroke, and the crowd taking their cue and scuttling before him, before Francesco resumed his single-minded march towards the Ospedale degli Innocenti, crossing his arms across his chest, hands disappearing within the folds of his crimson vestments.

Cardinal di Medici's retinue included three senior enforcers of the Inquisition, as well as the Chief of the Inquisition himself, one quietly frustrated Petros Orsini.

Under different circumstances, the odd call and response number between Cardinal di Medici and the people of Florence would strike Petros as vaguely tiresome. The routine and predictability of the public theatre was of course necessary –– the people had to know what their roles in society were, what was expected of them, and how to behave in the presence of a cardinal of the Catholic Church. But the air was chilly, the hour was late, and a murderer was stalking the streets of Florence. Brother Petros had more pressing concerns, and had little interest in reacting to or rankling at his superior's self-regard.

For a young woman had been killed... butchered. According to sparse eyewitness reports, the girl's jugular had been punctured, but investigators had found not a drop of blood at the crime scene.

A vampire attack in the heart of Florence, thought Petros, during the Noël festivities, right under Cardinal di Medici's nose. It was almost unfathomable.

The post-massacre protocol under the Cardinal's direct supervision was quick and efficient –– honed to an art by the Duke's paranoia and perfected by practice. Within an hour, the dead body had been removed to the mortuary in the Ospedale degli Innocenti. The cobbled street was hosed down, washing away the blood-soaked snow. Shops reopened. Normalcy was declared. The Noël markets marshaled their traffic, and for once, Cardinal di Medici welcomed the distraction the exchange of currency and trinkets provided. The holiday blurred the memory, hiding the gruesome details behind the smoke and heat of the people's hearths and Gluwien haze of their heads. In any case, the people hadn't the courage or the desire to whisper the word vampire, any more than they had the language to describe sight to a blind man. It was as though the murder had never happened, as though the girl had never died.

Rather, thought Petros, as though the unfortunate wretch had never existed at all.

A body without mourners, and a death without witness.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," murmured Petros, too quietly for the Cardinal to hear him, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven..."

Innumerable jaunts to Florence on Inquisitorial matters had taught Petros that maneuvering a hover vehicle through the narrow, cobbled streets was a largely wasted effort - and as he had done since childhood, Cardinal Di Medici preferred to make the journey on foot. They proceeded down the Via della Colonna, skirted the students of the Università, making for the hospital through the Piazza Annunziata. The public square was full to bursting with stalls selling wooden toys and ornaments, cakes and Gluwien, as part of the annual Noël markets. The festivities and fasts were unhinged things, attached to no day, Noël's precise date rendered nonsensical after the reconfiguration of the calendars half a dozen times over following Armageddon. The holidays observed by the Holy See were heralded, instead, with the tang of snow in the air, or the spring thaw, or the advent of summer. For God permeated these things –– as the saying went, for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven –– but as the white flakes alighted on Cardinal di Medici's vestments and Petros's shock of blue hair, the latter knew all too well how transient these things tended to be.

There was, however, something to be said for Florence in the winter. Petros Orsini was a Roman man, born to a Roman family –– raised in the rione, he earned his Sacrae Theologiae Doctoratus at the Angelicum, an extraterritorial of the Holy See, and had served in the Vatican for most of his life. But Petros's duty as Chief of the Inquisition, and Cardinal di Medici's position as Minister of the same bureau, had roped Petros into a long and intimate acquaintance with Firenze. Florence appeared to Petros as a recurring dream, a place once visited and fixed forever in his memory like images on a photographer's plate; his frequent returns in Cardinal di Medici's service was akin to turning the leaves of a portfolio: a scene of the flat-bottomed boats punted beneath the Ponte Vecchio; the Arno in twilight, an endless succession of reflections and echoes, a mirroring; the Piazzale Michelangelo, silhouetted against the sky; the great dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore rising over the shimmering, rippling hide of the city, crystalline beneath the small, white winter sun. The streets were unfinished paintings under the snow - so much of the canvas was still perfectly white, as if waiting for the artist's hand to return.

Hemmed by the facades of the Piazza Annunziata, the snow began to fall heavily, clumps of wet flakes drifting lazily down, the air moist, the cobbles mushy underfoot, rendering the Noël market's beauty chaotically unintentional. Defiant in the face of its patrons, it was almost independent of human intelligences, like a stalagmites rising from a cavern floor. Forms which in of themselves were quite ugly were erected fortuitously, without design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkled with a sudden wondrous poetry. Even if Petros were to walk with his eyes closed, he could tell at a whiff when he had arrived at any specific shop, intuit it just by its scent. Anise denoted the start of the counter of mulled wine adjacent to the Palazzo della Crocetta; the smell of freshly baked plum cake landed him opposite the Museum of Archaeology, while the burnt aroma of coffee connoted the two fountains, done in the old Mannerist style that predated Armageddon. The Santissima Annunziata remained, and so had everything old that was cast in brick and stone. Fires guttered in decorative sconces, snowflakes steaming in the heat. There was something almost charming about the slapdash poverty of the piazza, and nothing to suggest a gruesome murder had taken place not two days previously.

The matter of the murdered girl had seemed ostensibly under control, proverbial dirt brushed under proverbial carpets, before Petros's extensive network of informants on the Inquisition payroll had reported the presence of three Vatican envoys in the city: two low-ranking priests and a nun, all of whom asking awkward questions about the vampire attack.

It did not take someone of Petros's intelligence to deduce the nature of their errand... or the identity of the person who had dispatched the three clergymen to Florence...

"I'll have her excommunicated for this," seethed Cardinal di Medici, slate gray eyes flashing, teeth bared. "What is Caterina thinking, sending her rabid dogs to Florence? After her disgraceful conduct in István, no less... if word of this attack reaches those monsters in the Empire, it would be just the assurance they need that the carcass of Vatican land is free for the pickings!"

Five months ago, Petros would have agreed with his superior. There was no love lost between Cardinal Caterina Sforza's AX and Petros's Inquisition. Theirs was a relationship built on soured grounds. Composed of caution and care, fury and fear... but reverence and respect, too.

During the events in István, when Archbishop D'Annunzio had reported to Cardinal di Medici for the day's failings, the Archbishop had blamed Petros's presence for the unfortunate kidnapping of a Vatican nun. It had been Caterina Sforza, not Francesco di Medici, to step in and defend the Inquisition, arguing that Petros's original mission was to guard the Pope, and had, instead, placed the blame on the police under D'Annunzio's supervision. Petros had never forgotten her conduct in the matter, conduct the Chief Inquisitor would hardly call disgraceful.

But where Cardinal Sforza was willing to collaborate with Methuselah Empire, to open official diplomatic channels, even, Cardinal di Medici would sooner see the entirety of vampire kind put to the torch. For Lady Caterina to catch wind of an attack in Francesco's own city put the latter in a very awkward position.

The suspicious mind had a way of conjuring its own demons, and Francesco di Medici's worldview was a deeply paranoid one in which everything of importance could be traced back to the infinite gradations of mortal sin. Coupled with a philosophy of strikingly frank materialism, he seemed utterly incapable of thinking symbolically or speculatively, and the unseen purgatory beneath the derma of reality, malignant and horrible, complete in its mastery of the human heart had, to the Cardinal, taken the ontological form of a fact.

"His Holiness speaks very well of Cardinal Sforza's AX," said Petros, in some attempt at conciliation.

Francesco looked as though he was gnawing rocks, and when he spoke, his tone was even more astringent than usual. "The Pope speaks very well of everybody."

Petros's frowned deepened a fraction. "Is that so wrong, Your Eminence?"

"Yes. It means you can't trust his judgement."

Petros's throat went tight, anger stinging his esophagus like pepper. He said nothing, biting his tongue, but to hear a cardinal speak so ill of Pope Alessandro made Petros's hackles stand on end.

Cardinal di Medici was always demanding proof of loyalty from his servants. Petros indulged the Duke of Florence, but dared not say what he was thinking: something had changed irrevocably in the Chief Inquisitor. He supposed the seed had been planted soon after Brother Petros had dropped Brother Abel Nightroad off a cliff in Carthage, watched the priest carve a silver path through the air towards the roiling waves of the Mediterranean, hundreds of feet below. Petros's time in the city was tapestry of tragic, unbelievable memories, which carried from one moment of nausea to another: the intestines of his soldiers splattered across the rubble and sprayed from one dying man to another; the tightly riveted tanks ripped open like the bellies of a sacrificial cow, flaming and groaning; temples and minarets broken into tiny fragments; gaping windows pouring out torrents of billowing sand and dust, dispersing into oblivion all that remained of a homes and businesses. Through Carthage, the Iblis crisis, the disgrace of István, the planted seed had grown without pause, without thought or mercy, toward Petros's throat.

The tree from which to hang himself.

Had the world changed, or had Petros? He still loved the Pope. He still venerated the Roman Curia. He still hated the vampires. But Petros found he could not soon forget the Earl of Memphis's prevenient grace, the young vampire crowned with an uncommon glory and honor. An honor Brother Petros had not thought possible of Ion's kind. Nor could Petros soon forget what it had been like to fight side-by-side with the vampire princeling on the hull of the Iron Maiden above Carthage. At the thought, the memories flashed through his mind with sudden brutality, like apparitions, among bursts and bright visions that scarcely seemed imaginable. There had been nothing but the rhythm of explosions, more or less distant, more or less violent, and the cries of the vampire earl and his companion-turned-traitor, to be classified later, according to the outcome of the battle, as the cries of wounded, of the dying, shrieking as they burned to kindling under the unobstructed Mediterranean sky.

Something had burned to kindling inside Petros, too, over recent months...

As the Chief of the Inquisition, his effectiveness was weighed in broken bodies, blood, and confession - in no particular order. To the public he was Il Ruinante, the Knight of Destruction, but it was Petros's far less public responsibilities, carried out in the vaults and torture chambers deep under the Vatican, that had taught him that nature was far more merciful than men, providing for those who suffered great pain such blessedness as unconsciousness; but men were vicious and brought their victims out of faints so that the pain might start again... and again... and again. Human beings were hungry, cruel creatures, Cardinal di Medici hungrier and crueler than most. But was Brother Petros any better? Whether torture occurred in the interest of exacting God's divine justice or accruing political ammunition hardly mattered to the man with his fingernails missing and his teeth scattered on the flagstones. The nail beds still burned, his mouth still bled. The corruptors accused the virtuous of corruption, the murderers accused the innocent of murder, the haters accused the righteous of hate, the warmongers accused the peaceful of war, the lovers of death accused those who love life with cowardice.

There seemed, always, an infinite chain of blame that wound its circuitous route back and forth across the path and under the feet of every man and every nation, so that a people who were the victims of one time became the victimizers a generation later, and newly liberated nations resorted immediately to the means of their former oppressors. The triple contagions of ambition, aggression, and absolutism effervesced within those like Cardinal di Medici into an acid that corroded the moral metal of a man, until he shamelessly and even proudly performed deeds that he would deem vile if they were done by any other.

The Chief of the Inquisition trusted Cardinal di Medici's intentions. It was the man's motivations that gave Petros pause. Francesco's arrogance and ambition threw a rather large shadow over any claims to acting purely in the service of the Lord. According to the priesthood of all believers, the homeless beggar living on the outskirts of Florence ought to be of the same standing before God as the corpulent cardinal in red robes of silk. So far as Petros was concerned, living for God was not about fleeing the work to which God had called one so that one could languish in the plush apartments of the Palazzo Apostolico attempting to incite His Holiness to war against the Empire; rather, living for God was, to Petros, about allowing oneself to be used by God to perform faithfully the work to which He has called one.

Brother Petros had developed an inner strength based on discipline, on duty, and above all on a clear vision of whom he was serving. The Inquisition of the Holy See may have had a hierarchy of command, but Petros knew he was performing for an audience of One.

And that One was not Cardinal Francesco di Medici, Duke of Florence.

The snowflakes stuck in Petros's long eyelashes. They fell and glinted on the pauldrons of his armor. The snow held its shape, became small piles of perfect mandalas and blooms tumbled together in their discrete geometries.

Ospedale degli Innocenti defined the eastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata. The facade was made of nine semicircular arches springing from composite columns. In the spandrels of the arches were glazed terracotta roundels pressed with the reliefs of small children, their faces pockmarked and weathered by the elements. Petros found the distressed likenesses rather... foreboding. What were once smiles were now snarls, teeth bared in grimaces. They reminded Petros of Ion Fortuna: beautiful, cherubic features turned twisted and furious.

Francesco barked an order to the hospital's door guard, the woman dressed in the tricolor uniform and black beret and carrying the traditional halberd of the Pontifical guard. She bowed, deep, to the Cardinal, before waving her badge at the proximity sensor and stepping into the revolving door. She beckoned the Cardinal and his retinue to follow.

The foyer of the ancient Foundling Hospital - which had been an orphanage, a palace, a museum, and an asylum at points throughout its long history - had been retrofitted with a large atrium, a beautiful glass-and-concrete interior that looked like the prow of a crystal ship, featuring soaring wooden screens with overlapping arches, reminiscent of cathedral windows. As Francesco di Medici's retinue reached the lobby on the first floor, a wimpled nurse –– wheeling a gurney with a cadaver on it, calmly and with little notice, like a shopping trolley –– took one look at the Cardinal and gestured him towards the rear of the central court. The Duke exchanged a few words in the throaty, fricative dialetto fiorentino with the on-duty administrator before storming up the staircase, continuing to mutter abuse at the Duchess of Milan.

The second floor corridor had raised wallpaper in a classic floral design, the walls unadorned, the floors bare. No small tables, no chairs, no pictures in frames, no runners. They passed by maybe a dozen rooms, only two with doors open. Petros noticed that the doors were extra wide... for wheelchairs and stretchers and the like. He peered sidelong into one of the wards. There were so many machines and wires and tubes - a reminder, albeit a grim one, that the human body was an incredible miracle, its countless autonomic functions a gift when they were operating as intended, and a cumbersome nightmare to have to approximate when they were not.

The mortuary had been arranged in the loggia above the old cloister. A pair of refrigeration units ran along the back wall; they resembled stainless steel filing cabinets, each big enough to hold a body. Petros had never been particularly keen on morgues. Nor cemeteries, anatomy museums, undertakers' parlors, funeral chapels, or any of those places where the world of the living percussed against the world of the dead. He had picked up too many bodies from too many battlefields to find death in any way sentimental...

Pausing only briefly in the doorway, Petros and Cardinal di Medici soon found their attention drawn to the center of the chilled room, where a girl lay open on one of the gurneys, pellucid in the half-light, utterly still, eyes open as if admiring the heavens. Her lips were blue, skin gray, eyes black with exploded pupils. She was as lifeless as the snow flakes that gusted around the hospital, though they, at least, got one last dance.

And then Brother Petros made the mistake of looking below the neck, and saw the burns.

Fire had eaten her lower body and swollen the rest, cooking her flesh until the skin split in slivers of lurid red and patches of peeled black. Her long hair had been thrown forward, over the top of her head. Parts of it had kindled, curling into fragile white nests. The rest was motionless, blackened, with hints of reflected blue, like rainbows on oil. The burns appeared, mercifully, to have been done post-mortem. Had the murderer attempted to burn away the evidence? wondered Petros.

Cardinal di Medici glanced down at the body as if it were a rug out of place, tutting his tongue against his teeth.

"Y-Your Eminence! Chief Inquisitor!"

Petros knew that voice.

He tore his gaze away from the girl's corpse and recognized, immediately, two of Cardinal Sforza's AX agents. The first was the upstart pup from the D'Este scandal, a broad, swarthy priest who reminded Petros of a half-finished granite statue. Or a slightly annoyed brown bear. The second, the speaker, was quite significantly smaller, a wiry, blanched creature whose face near about disappeared in a dozen orbits of her scarf. The girl had always reminded Petros of a crumpled envelope –– pale and worn, interrupted only by the red wax seal of her hair; the things inside poorly remembered and oft unnoticed, full of equal measures sadness and kindness. There was an openness to her face, an innocence - a certain kind of niceness.

Petros's scowl could have stripped the paint from the wall, if the mortuary's refrigerated interior had paint. "Sister Esther Blanchett," he muttered. "If you're here... then that means––"

"Ah ah ha! Petros! I mean, Chief Inquisitor and... oh my, is that the Cardinal?"

Oh no.

Not him.

Suppressing a wince, Brother Petros turned to face a very thin, very tall man with precise features, delicate as wing-bones, a lot of fine silver hair tied back in a tail, and thoughtful, winter-blue eyes. He wore a look of wariness, which Petros knew could change if he felt relaxed or happy into a smile of amused friendliness.

Or obfuscating stupidity.

"Nightroad," growled Petros.