The Via Caravelli in Venice lies to the east of the Piazza San Marco, down several lesser canals and past several Renaissance-era villas, which were once quite lovely, but later inevitably succumbed to the ravages of time and centuries of water damage. Off what is considered the beaten path, yet still within sight of the campanile, the Caravelli provides the occasional visitor a touch of the exotic, a chance to feel they've one-upped their fellow tourists. Occult and rare booksellers lie tucked within the slightly run-down but still elegant buildings, along with several betting parlors, a few small cafes, a small shop selling hand-crafted puppets, and a tiny bed and breakfast rumored to have once hosted James McNeill Whistler, who purportedly was to later use the little hostelry's now-dilapidated front entrance as the inspiration for his sketch, "The Doorway". The proprietor is a Calabrian named Giorgio who insists that his ancestor was an illegitimate offspring of Stendhal.

The one who called herself Morrigan Aensland was no stranger to the city of Venice, and a little judicious research into this highly questionable background, from a few of her more trusted sources, revealed that the bed and breakfast was in fact a former safehouse for the KGB during the Cold War, and that Giorgio's true identity was that of one Georg Semyonovich Neretzky, once a full-bird Colonel in the Soviet state security apparatus. When she brought it up with him over a few shots of vodka one evening, he merely shrugged and nodded his head. "That is the truth," he replied, in his entirely unbelievable attempt at a Calabrian drawl. "After the Soviet Union fell to pieces I did not particularly care to return. I applied for asylum and changed my name to my cover alias, and I've lived a good life ever since. All the idiot tourists want to stay in palazzos on the Grand Canal, they are all money and no character, I get the ones who want to see a little bit of Venezia minore, the real Venice, the Venice of the day-to-day life, they have less money but more character."

Morrigan's brow furrowed, her head tilting back against the rough wood of the wall adjacent to their little table in Giorgio's backroom. Their respective shot-glasses were in the process of forming pyramids on the tabletop. "So why don't you tell people the truth?" she suggested, her voice slurring just a touch from the Stoli. "That'd be some great word of mouth advertising. Stay the night in an old KGB safehouse, swap stories with a retired Cold Warrior, listen to dirty jokes once told by Leonid Brezhnev."

Giorgio let out a grunt of dismissal, to show what he thought of THAT idea. "No one would believe such a ridiculous tale," he informed her. "So what if it is true? You cannot tell people the truth. No one wishes to hear the truth. They never believe it, even if it is staring them in their faces. I was a terrible field agent, if you must know. But I was effective at maintaining my cover, because no one could imagine that anyone speaking in a thick Slavic accent, with lots of men and women in trenchcoats coming in and out of his little hotel at all hours of the night, could be anything but an innkeeper catering to the highly profitable market there is in facilitating adultery." He downed another shot of vodka, placing the glass upside down upon his growing scale model of Djoser's step-pyramid at Saqqara. "It is not enough for people to believe something even if it happens all the time, regularly, right in front of their noses and forever half-shut eyes. In order for people to accept the truth, it must also be mundane. Boring. Without sparkle or luster or any kind of thrill. The best place to hide is always in plain sight, and I should know, because it is how I made my living. Do you know what I mean?"

Morrigan leaned back and curled her arms behind her head, wiggling her glass between her teeth, up and down. "Unh-hunh," she grunted. "Lil' bit."

It was a bit more difficult for Morrigan to find what it was she'd actually come to see in Venice, and on the Via Caravelli in particular. Despite not being in plain sight, it proved more difficult to locate than it had been to uncover Giorgio's past. No one had ever heard of the place, hinting at either poor location and advertising, or a highly exclusive clientele. She eventually found what she was looking for in a house once owned by the infamous Bartoli gang, since dispersed after Marco Bartoli vanished under mysterious circumstances in China. Many of the locals gave it a wide berth, believing it to be haunted. However, when Morrigan arrived by speedboat (the preferred mode of travel on the Caravelli, since only tourists travel by gondola) on her third day in the city, she found a very pleasant, well-maintained facade, with a popular wedding planner's on the ground floor and a few small law offices up the stairs. On the top floor, at the end of a hallway paneled in ancient brown oak, was a single door: 'Fortunetelling!' Highly stylized but faded letters and an exclamation point formed an arc above smaller, less flamboyant words below. 'Madame Rose, Teller of Fortunes. Cards Drawn, Palms Read, Birth Signs Divined. Put the Ancient Knowledge of the Gypsies to Work in Your Life! Inquire Within.'

A few knocks on the door and quiet, discreet hallos to whoever might have been inside yielded no results. Morrigan was pondering her next move when a diffident tap on the shoulder and a soft sound of a throat clearing caused her to turn in surprise, not the least of which because she'd heard no one on the stairs or coming down the hall.

Standing there was a tall woman with classic Mediterranean features, with long, wavy hair so black it almost seemed purple. She was clad in a bright red dress, decorative yellow buttons in front along with a wide leather belt about the waist, tilted at a rakish angle. The dress fell off the shoulders and sported a scandalously plunging neckline, but rather than revealing any cleavage she wore a sleeveless purple turtleneck beneath. A yellow scarf twined about her elbows and behind her back. Dark hose and sensible red pumps completed the picture, along with oversized sunglasses across her face; to Morrigan she had the gaudy, Euro-fashionable look of an Italian TV star, rather than a fortuneteller, if in fact that was who she was. All she needed was a Prada bag with the tremulously quivering head of a Pekinese peeking out. "Madame Rose?" Even to her own ears, Morrigan's voice was a little squeaky.

The woman's eyebrows lifted slightly behind her the frames of her sunglasses. "I am Rosetta Gioconda della Vega, yes? This is my shop."

At that moment Morrigan was seized by an inexplicable perversity, her head tilting to the side with an inquisitive look. "Can you read my mind and guess why I'm here?" A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

Rose, however, sniffed through her nose in irritation. "No, I cannot," she replied, putting a hand on her hip, the other carrying a paper bag full of groceries, a baguette sticking up at an awkward angle. "I am not a psychic, miss, I am a fortuneteller." A long piano-finger rose to indicate the sign on her door. "While I do not deny that such talents may be possible, I am quite incapable of performing them." She switched her grocery bag to her opposite arm, fumbling in her purse.

"So you just predict the future?" Morrigan asked, holding out her arms helpfully. The bag was roughly deposited there a moment later, the baguette diagonally blocking her view of Rose producing a key to unlock the front door.

"No, I don't do that either," Rose replied, twisting the key and swinging the door wide with an obliging series of creaks. She took one step in the doorway, turned to face Morrigan, and retrieved her grocery bag in both arms. "You can't predict the future, it simply isn't possible. The future is always in a state of flux. If someone were to, for example, actually SEE their future, at that very moment it would change forever. Nothing they saw would ever come true, because knowledge of the outcome would change their actions. You can only make educated guesses about the things to come, and even then, those who are actually good at doing so invariably work in the stock market."

Morrigan's feet shuffled, brow furrowing. "But you tell fortunes," she said in a small voice, diffidently raising a finger.

Rose brusquely nodded her head. "I do," she replied. "I quip vague and flowery gnomic aphorisms based upon the general shapes and outlines I see within the patterns of a person's life, and charge ridiculous amounts of money to the wealthy and gullible for doing so." She leaned forward slightly to peer at Morrigan behind her shaded lenses, appraising the other woman up and down. Morrigan found herself shrinking from the subtle force of the woman's scrutiny. "You do not strike me as especially gullible, so I can only assume you're here for something else."

A moment of silence passed between them before Morrigan's inner resolve returned to her. She straightened her back, looked Rose in the eyes - or at least, the lenses of her sunglasses - and set her feet. "I don't want my fortune told," she said. "I don't want to know about my future. I want you to tell me about my past."

In response, Rose slowly pulled off her sunglasses and let out a small sound of satisfaction. "Ahhh," she murmured, the sound rising and falling in pitch. Now, apparently, Morrigan had captured her interest. "No one ever wants to know about their past," she said, a note of conspiratoriality entering her tone. "Despite the fact that it contains even more mysteries than the future, everyone believes that they have their past all figured out. Except, it would seem, for you," she added.

"No one remembers their own birth," Morrigan replied, her face betraying no expression. "More importantly, no one can point to a single, random day on a calendar and say, I remember exactly all the things I did that day." She shrugged. "How can anyone truly imagine that they have all of that empty space figured out? If anyone really sat down and thought to themselves how much of their lives are a complete mystery, they wouldn't sleep so soundly."

After a moment, Rose turned into her lair, beckoning Morrigan forward with a waving hand. "Come in, come in. Welcome to my humble little storefront. Would you like an apƩritif? I may have some cognac or a cheap vino."

Morrigan followed her inside to the dark little abode behind the door. Whatever she had expected of a fortuneteller's establishment, this wasn't it. Several ornate mahogany bookshelves lined each wall, containing titles printed in various languages, almost all dealing either with occult subjects or with the powers of the mind, save for one spirally-bound folder printed in English, appearing to be a CIA document related to poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia: "Khun Sa, the Taliban, and General Vega - Warlords of Opium Cultivation, 1985-Present". The carpet was thick, dark, and fluffy, Morrigan's sandaled toes sinking in comfortably. Several exquisitely crafted high-backed chairs surrounded a long teakwood table, one candle burning upon a candelabra in the center. "No thank you," she called out to Rose, who was disappearing through another door adjoining the room. "No crystal ball?" she called to the doorway.

Rose reappeared a moment later with two crystal goblets instead. Her pumps had vanished, stocking feet making trails in the carpeting. "Water," she said, depositing the glasses on the tabletop. "For later." Settling to a chair, she crossed one leg daintily over the other, and bid Morrigan to sit on the chair next to hers. "Crystal balls," she remarked, as Morrigan settled in, "have no practical use whatsoever that I can determine. I have a theory that they keep the attention of the customers upon the ball, while the fortuneteller has her eyes upon their face, watching for visual cues. But I have no first-hand knowledge." She waved a hand in dismissal, then leaned forward. "Now listen to me carefully." Her eyes shone in the candlelight. "You may see things that you might not have been witness to. You may see things that have nothing to do with the answers you seek. The only thing I can tell you after long experience is that every life touches every other life in ways so complex that no one can perceive the whole picture. It might make sense to you right away, or it might remain a mystery your whole life. I'm not offering you any sort of explanation." She took a breath. "Only a glimpse. Do you understand?"

Morrigan nodded her head, then reached sideways and took a few sips of the water. "I understand," she said. "What do I have to do?"

Rose held out her arms, palms upraised. "Give me your hands," she said.

One of Morrigan's eyebrows quirked upwards, a mock-plaintive tone in her voice. "Will I get them back?"

"Possibly," Rose replied. "Feeling lucky?"

With not a little hesitation, Morrigan reached out her hands, and clasped Rose's tightly.

-------
Edinburgh, Scotland, 12:09 am - 31 October 1678

Rain drummed against the parapets and spires of Holyrood Abbey, night-shrouded clouds emptying their stores upon the roofs and streets of the city of Edinburgh. Gas-lamps and fires sputtered in the onslaught. Heedless of the weather, speeding up to the Abbey gate was an ornate horse-drawn carriage, its pilot whipping the horses into a frenzy, their mouths flecking with foam as they raced the whip's sting down the street. The occupant of the carriage, a tall, distinguished man with the red robes and broad hat of a Cardinal, employed exercises to calm his beating heart and slow his anxious breathing. He was a man very good at his job. Badges and the insignia of a Grand Inquisitor upon his cassock attested to this fact, as well as attesting to his high standing within the Society of Jesus. Additional devices, inscrutable to the outsider, also proclaimed his position within the Holy Inquisition's elite division for covert action, the Congregation for the Protection of the Faith, charged with the sacred task of gathering information for the Holy See; they were additionally bestowed with the rare but sacred honor of dealing with any unpleasant but necessary duties considered too coarse and weighted with sin for the delicacy of the papal fingers. He'd slipped unnoticed into the country while entry into Scotland for Catholics at the time was all but impossible; and while the Kirk, the Scottish Parliament house, had offered a bounty for the head of any Jesuit. For the head of Cardinal Albert Simon, personal confidante and advisor to the Sun King of the hated French, Louis XIV, one could only imagine how such a bounty would grow. With a smirk of satisfaction, the Cardinal imagined that it would fetch a high price indeed.

As the carriage pulled up to the gate, the passenger door was flung open from within. The Cardinal, quite spry for his advanced age, practically flung himself from the coach as well in his eagerness to gain entrance. "Where's Sergius?" he demanded of the assembled nuns and monks who'd stepped forward to greet him, their plain brown robes and bald pates a marked contrast to Simon's scarlet robes, his cassock and golden decorative badges of holy office. Several had bowed, reaching their hands forward to kiss the cardinal's papal signet ring, but his brusqueness and urgency startled them with its intensity. "The abbot!" Simon shouted, his pearl-handled cane slamming against the ground in white-hot annoyance. "Where's the Abbot! Conduct me to him at once!" Bowing and scraping, fearful of the cardinal's rage, they moved aside, for it was said that many heretics had found their way to Hell early beneath the flames of his anger. Two attendants opened the wrought-iron gate, Simon gliding his way through like a crimson avenging angel, cowering monks following in his wake.

Attendants and door guards bowed as Simon's footsteps thudded against the weathered stone - he simply brushed by them, raising his fingers quickly in impatient blessings as he made his way to the chapel. The distant notes of monks chanting compline resounded from somewhere in the abbey complex, providing an eerie accompaniment for the anxious procession. Near the chapel entrance waited the Abbot of Holyrood, Brother Sergius, flanked by the abbess of the adjacent nunnery, Mother Superior Angeline. It was only then that Simon, slowing his purposeful stride, deigned to reach his hand forward that the two might kneel and kiss the ring. "You found him?" he demanded.

"Indeed, your grace," intoned Sergius, straightening up, his face and manner grave, extending a hand toward the chapel as he stepped to one side, though the cardinal paused a moment to hear the abbot's report. "A team discovered them involved in some kind of ritual near Loch Maree to the North. He was quite mad, your grace. Raving and shouting, his body twisting unnaturally." The cardinal nodded curtly and proceeded into the chapel. "We brought him back," Sergius continued, following behind the train of the cardinal's cassock. "Him, and one other."

"One... other?" Simon's brow had only time to furrow before he crossed the narthex to enter the chapel proper, slowly moving to a stop as the scene assailed him. The stench of death pervaded the room like reeking camphor, a sickly-sweet odor of decaying meat and rotting eggs. Illuminated by the flickering light of torches, blood was everywhere; on the altar-cloths, on the wooden pews nearby, on the vestments of the nuns who stood a grim vigil, bowing their heads at the Cardinal's presence, at each side of a table set before the altar, beneath the crucifix mounted on the wall, Christ staring in what seemed to be stunned incomprehension at the scene below Him. Blood dripped from the table to the stone floor, still liquid and warm, each drop ticking off another second that Cardinal Simon stared, dumbfounded, by the carnage before him, until he focused on the table... The table that had been set before the altar held a single human form, face and upper body covered by a white burial shroud stained with red; only the edge of slender calves and delicate feet were visible, red blotches discoloring the otherwise ivory perfection of their skin, a wide, thick, slick trail of blood coursing from between her legs, coating the sides of the tablecloth. Slowly, Simon's gaze turned to the table's side, where a sobbing man clutched a pale hand from this ghostly form, slack and unresponsive, between the two of his. The man's hair was grey, disheveled; an aristocratic black periwig had been tossed carelessly onto a pew nearby. He was dressed only in his underclothes, and to Simon seemed a small, shriveled shell of a man, tears streaming down his face. "Mother of God!" Simon whispered, the normally unflappable Inquisitor quite speechless. "It's an abbatoir in here..." His shocked gaze settled upon the covered corpse. "Who in the name of the Blessed Virgin was this unfortunate creature?"

"A Highlander woman, from a noble clan," intoned Sergius as he moved forward, speaking quickly close to the Cardinal's ear, the only sound in the room save for the sobbing man and the dull wheezing groan of the weather outside. "She was with him when they were found." Sergius took a breath, turned and nodded to a priest that stood at the corner of the room, pale and drawn, mopping his brow, who then stepped forward at Sergius' indication. "She was pregnant, and claimed the child was his. She insisted the only way to cure his madness was to marry the two of them before the child was born. Father MacGregor," he murmured, indicating the priest, "performed the ceremony upon our return, upon which the girl's water broke. It was a proper Catholic ceremony. Under the Church, they are married, although I doubt the Anglicans or the Presbytery would see things in the same light. The child was delivered right there before the altar not ten minutes prior to your arrival... at the stroke of Midnight."

Cardinal Simon's eyes didn't move from the terrible scene in front of him, until he executed a double-take, his eyebrows rising in open astonishment. His head whipped around to stare at Sergius, then at the priest, mouth dropping open. Father MacGregor bowed his head reverently at the legendary Inquisitor's notice. "Your Eminence."

"They're married?" Simon blurted out, a whisper in shock. "There's a child?"

MacGregor bowed a second time, as Sergius nodded his head, eyes narrowing at the depth of Simon's reaction. "Indeed, your grace. A girl. It was a difficult birth," he murmured, eyeing the corpse in repose. "The mother did not survive it. The baby is being tended to. May I ask-" He was cut off abruptly by Simon's raised hand, gloved in red, as the cardinal stepped forward purposefully, brushing past the bowed heads of the nuns, walking up to the kneeling, sobbing, woeful man holding the corpse's hand.

"Your majesty," Simon murmured, placing his cane against the birthing table and dropping to one knee, placing a hand on the man's shoulder. "It is I, my lord. Albert Simon. Do you recognize me?"

Cheeks stained by copious tears, dirt, and what appeared to be soot, small cuts dotting both his cheeks as well as his hands, the man Albert Simon called lord raised his head to stare upon the cardinal's face, his own face rheumily quivering with fear, disorientation, and uncertainty; it was a face Simon knew well from his days at the French court, when the withered husk before him was a cynical, brooding young man, a prince in exile, his father beheaded by Cromwell and that blackguard's screaming Roundhead mob. Charles Stuart. The young man who had returned in triumph to become Charles II, King of England and Scotland. "Wh-where am I?" he whispered, eyes clouded by premature age. "Albert? Why am I in this dark place? Is Louis angry with me?"

Simon shook his head. "No my lord," he murmured, opening his arms, receiving the royal presence in a comforting embrace, the King erupting in choking sobs against his breast. "You've been ill." His hands brushed through Charles' long, wispy grey hair, growing from the parts of his head that could still grow hair; his eyes turned toward Sergius, motioning the monk forward. The Brother did so, followed by Mother Angeline and Father MacGregor, the nuns following uncertainly behind. "There, there, my lord," whispered Simon, his voice a soothing, melodious tone of comfort, as he methodically pulled the royal mane to one side, exposing the King's neck. "Soon you'll be all better..." At the nape of King Charles' neck lay a discolored, oval-shaped wound, still fresh, blood slowly leaking from within to trickle down Charles' back beneath his shirt.

Sergius gasped, taking a fearful step backwards. Angeline clutched her rosary, face tightening. The nuns, brave enough to weather what must have been a frightening birth, quickly crossed themselves and fled the room. Father MacGregor found a way to turn a few shades paler and quietly followed after the nuns, pulling out a metal flask and taking a long draught of whatever spirits he kept within. "It's unmistakable," whispered Sergius, first to break the silence. "Only one thing can make a neck wound like that. That point at which a demon finds easiest access into the bodies of human beings." He turned to Angeline. "The child. It's father was possessed. It must be killed immediately!"

Simon's gaze was flat, and unblinking, turning from Sergius to Angeline and back. "Absolutely not," he declared, before Angeline could open her mouth, silencing further discussion. He did so calmly but with a flatness that implied an unquestionable authority. Slowly the Cardinal turned back to the sobbing form against him, pressed his hands to its cheeks, and gently pulled away so that he might look the King in the eye. "My lord," he murmured, his voice once again in the soft, gentle tone he used to soothe even the hot temper of monarchs such as Louis XIV. "You have sinned." Charles' face clenched, a moan escaping his throat, before Simon with both hands shook the royal head insistently, willing the man to listen. "Grievously you have sinned. Being at heart a good man, your mind has blocked out the terrible thing you have done. It may return, in time. But a woman lies dead. A horrible act has been committed, for which you must atone." His eyes bored into the king's, imposing his will upon the weaker-willed monarch, much as the demon that had inhabited his body might well have done.

"Wh-what must I do?" whispered the morose monarch, voice quavering, when it seemed to him that Simon was waiting for a response. "I'll do anything..."

Simon nodded his head. "To confess your sins is the first step upon the path of righteousness, my lord. To be absolved, however, will take an even firmer dedication. First, you must abandon your earthly ways. Cease the undignified womanizing that has characterized your reign. Second..." Simon's head tilted, as if tightening the screw inside Charles' head. "You must return to the Holy Mother Church," the cardinal whispered. From the corner of his eye, Simon could glimpse with not a little satisfaction the image of Sergius' mouth going slack and dropping open. "Renounce your oath to the Presbytery and to the Church of England. Return your people to the welcoming arms of the Holy Father, who yearns only for the welfare of their souls. Do you understand?" His hands finally moved from Charles' cheeks, the monarch dropping his head, whimpering softly. It could have been a nod, or perhaps a fugue of complete unreason as the man retreated withing himself. Simon put a steady hand upon the top of the king's head, murmured a swift prayer, and then stood. "In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." He made the sign of the cross with two fingers above the King's head. "Go in peace, my son."

King Charles was led away by two novices, who were to take him to a waiting carriage, conveying him to the Kirk and a return trip to England. It would, in fact, greatly benefit Holyrood Abbey to return the King so helpfully, proving that while they practiced their Papist enormities, they were still loyal Scots first and foremost. At the time of King Charles' departure from the monastery, Cardinal Simon was lifting the edge of the shroud that covered the corpse's face, his head tilted back and nose wrinkled distastefully, when Sergius walked up to him. The monk's expression was muted, but full of intense emotion, though one the Cardinal found largely inscrutable. Simon thought he looked rather like a growling poodle. "He's been missing for nine months," Brother Sergius grated, tossing a hand toward the direction the departing King took to exit the chapel. His tone became more caustic as he folded his arms over his chest. "What are they going to say? Lost on a hunt?"

Simon turned his regal gaze toward Sergius, his reply offhand and dismissive, a mere detail. "The English Parliament has invented a plot," he replied, nodding matter-of-factly as he let the cloth of the shroud drop back over the face of the nameless dead Highlander girl. "A man named Titus Oates is spreading rumors that there's a Jesuit plan to assassinate the king." He snorted, a pleased smirk on his face, gratified that his order had such a fearsome reputation among the heretic rabble. "Therefore the King can't go out in public out of fear for his safety. That sort of nonsense." The Cardinal allowed himself a smile. "How ironic that they'd guessed our plan so closely. Though perhaps because of tonight we won't have to stick his idiot brother James on the throne just yet." Charles' brother James was unrepentantly Catholic, and had been so most of his life, making him a much better choice for the twin thrones of England and Scotland. The moment the Jesuits had learned of older brother Charles' disappearance, plans had been set in motion to track him down and eliminate him, but now, it seemed, fate had dealt them an even better hand than the one they held before. "The child was a girl, you say? Imagine another Virgin Queen, Sergius. Another Glorianna, just like that scrap of Welsh offal Elizabeth. Only this one neither bastard nor heretic."

Sergius' next statement was controlled, but his voice trembled ever so slightly. "You've damned us all," he growled, upper lip quivering in righteous anxiety. "The child was conceived by a man possessed. It's unclean!"

Cardinal Simon's gaze turned to meet the abbot's, his gaze unwavering and cold, voice level. "The child - a girl, you said? - is a legitimate, Catholic heir, borne of noble blood, to the thrones of England and Scotland, married in the bosom of the Church at this very abbey." He really is a simple man, the Cardinal thought to himself. Naive, and so comfortably ruled by dogma that he might assuage his fear of the terrible world around him.

"It's a demon!" Sergius replied angrily, his fists clenching, face contorting in fury. "Could our duty to the Lord be any the clearer?"

"My dear abbot." Simon's voice had turned hard, no longer seeking to accommodate the slow, weak perambulations of an inferior mind. He turned to face the monk, imperious authority radiating from him like rays of light. "You talk to me of duty? His Holiness the Pope Innocent XI, His Most Catholic Majesty King Louis de Bourbon, and I as well, would gladly see the DEVIL HIMSELF," Simon's voice emphasized these last two words so loudly and clearly that Sergius would be unable to escape them, "happily seated upon the thrones of St. George and St. Andrew both if it could somehow return this island to the embrace of the Holy Mother Church. Do you understand?" Sergius could only stare at him, wide-eyed. "The fires of hell itself," Simon went on, "are a small price to pay to save the souls of so many. THERE is where our duty lies. To the congregation of all good Catholic believers, who have placed the trust of God upon us. Would you dare speak such filth to them, as you have so freely to me, of abandoning them because your faith is clouded by doubt?" Their gazes were locked for what seemed an eternity, until Sergius dropped his, head bowed in a respectfully defeated posture. It had not taken that much effort. The Cardinal had broken much stronger men in his years with the Inquisition.

With finality, Cardinal Simon brusquely straightened his gloves, lifted his cane - eyeing the blood coating its iron tip distastefully - and turned to take his leave. "I must go," he informed the abbot. "I must report on this matter to the Holy See in Rome. I place the child in your responsibility until my return. Keep it safe." One last, intense gaze. "Remember. The very future of the Holy Mother Church in all the British Isles is resting upon your unworthy shoulders. Trust in our Lord, and do not waver." And with that, Cardinal Albert Simon strode out of the chapel, leaving Sergius before the altar with his head bowed.

Other monks in residence at the monastery, as well as the odd custodial worker in residence, soon moved in to dispose of the body and clean the blood. Sergius mutely stepped aside to allow them their duties, when a young nun entered the chapel, skittered up to Sergius and softly but insistently cleared her throat. "Brother Abbot."

Sergius jerked a bit, looking up at her; her hands were clasped together in front of her stomach, eyes lowered. "Yes?" His voice seemed distant, withdrawn, even to himself. The girl opened and closed her mouth, her head listing sideways as she tried to compose what she was trying to say. "Yes, out with it?" barked Sergius with impatience.

"You must come see," she finally blurted, eyes finally darting upwards to meet Sergius' irritated stare. "We... That is... The elder sisters would not let us disturb you while you received His Eminence. But it's the baby... Babies. They're twins!" She flapped her arms in consternation, took a few steps backward to indicate that Sergius should follow, then turned and fled down the hall.

Sergius, following after, his wooden sandals clacking on the floor as he hurried to keep up, felt that surely there was something he was supposed to feel in this situation. Surprise. Shock. But really, his mind had been numbed from his encounter with the Cardinal. It continued numb as he followed the girl down several stone passageways until they reached the novice nuns' communal bath chamber, a room normally off limits to the men, a special exception of course being made in the Abbot's case. Torches lit the interior. A small knot of women were clustered around an unseen something in the center of the room, their faces slack-jawed and mute. One old sister hovered in a corner, back turned from her fellow sisters, crossing herself and kissing her rosary as she mumbled her Hail Marys in whispery, urgent rasps. At the Abbot's arrival, the gathered sisters looked up, then mutely opened a path for him to the center of their throng, the young novice who'd fetched him leading him forward by the wrist. Lying there, wrapped in blankets atop two overturned wooden crates, were the objects of their attention. "Th-they don't cry, or squall, or fuss in any measure," the girl told him as she pulled him forward with such insistence. "Even while their poor mother screamed her life away giving birth to them, the wee ones kept their peace."

On the left lay a small, thin, perfect little infant, hairless and without blemish, making soft baby sounds and muted baby-gurgles; a girl-child, with what looked like a slight smile on her face, waving arms and legs fruitlessly as her eyes darted with insatiable curiosity about the room. On the right, another girl child lay in swaddling clothes, doing much the same, save that it was a bit chubbier, more pale, made soft cooing sounds, and its movements were more robust. Strange, however, was that the girl-child lain to the right had soft, thin, wispy, purple-colored baby-hairs crowning her head; and most terrible yet to Sergius, who at first glance dismissed the sight because he simply could not believe the sight he was cursed to behold: extending from her forehead were small, stumpy, half-formed winglets like the wings of a bat. The horror was not complete, however, until the sisters withdrew the blankets, tilting the babe slightly to the side to show him what lay beneath: black, vestigial wings extending from her shoulder blades, similar to those at her forehead, as dark as night, glistening with the ambient moisture of the room. The joints where her wings met the rest of her body mottled between human flesh and the leathery substance of which these limbs were fashioned. At the very tip of each winglet were tiny yet razor-sharp claws. A collective gasp erupted from the assembled throng, the women all moving backwards, a few making the sign of the cross over themselves, as each miniature bat-wing began jerking from side to side, in time with sudden motions of the baby's arms as it burbled incomprehensible noises to itself. The sister that had held her released her with a start, letting her fall back into a prone position next to her fraternal twin, whom she was utterly unlike in every way. Sergius could only stand there and stare, face bathed in shadow from the sputtering torchlight. Until, in a single motion, he stepped forward, picked up the wingless baby on the left, and handed her in her swaddling blankets to the novice nun who'd led him the way to the bathchamber. "What's your name?" he grunted.

"Sister Alexandra, brother," the girl said, her eyes wide as she accepted the precious cargo, cradling the girl-child in the voluminous sleeves of her white nun's habit. The child didn't cry out at being moved, made no protest at being separted from her sister. She merely made a sound vaguely resembling 'buh-buh-buh' while opening and closing her mouth repeatedly.

"The girl is yours," Sergius barked, his tone curt, imagining his tone sounded a little like Cardinal Simon's. "Your new assignment from this moment onward is her care and protection. Mother Angeline will concur with me on this. No other duties take precedence." The girl said nothing, merely bowed her head and scurried from the room, clutching the complacent, angelic little girl-child to her bosom.

As one, the remaining nuns looked down at her purple-haired, winged twin, then looked up at Sergius, who was rolling up the sleeves of his monk's habit. "The rest of you, out," he barked, not meeting their eyes. There was a moment of hesitation as no one moved, at which point the abbot finally raised his head, strain evident on his face. "You heard me. GET OUT!" Slowly they dropped their gazes, without accusation or recrimination, merely bewilderment and uncertainty, filing out the doorway like mourners in a funeral procession. Sergius shut the door and bolted it behind the last nun to leave, before turning around again, a haunted expression upon his face. "There is nothing else to be done," he murmured to himself, rubbing his hands together, despite the heat of the bath chamber. "The child is unclean. Her unholiness and abomination is writ upon her body for all to see." His breath came in ragged gasps as he did a quick search of his surroundings, finally grabbing onto one of the large heating stones the nuns used to warm their bathwater. "The Cardinal only needs a single princess. Just one. Only one." Hefting it in both hands, testing the weight, his monologue trailing off into half-formed words and muttered phrases, he returned to the stone crates upon which rested the remaining girl-child, now his only companion in the empty room. The baby looked up at him curiously, blinking wide maroon-colored eyes, wriggling her arms and legs, the wings of her back stretching and making little half-hearted flaps against her blanket. Brother Sergius lifted the stone high above his head with both hands, staring down into the girl's wide, luminous eyes.

"In nomine patri," he intoned, voice cracking, then brought the stone down with all his strength, the impact making a sound like a crushed melon.

He raised the stone once again above his head - once again, he brought it down with all his might, making another sickening thud as it landed. "Et filii..."

The stone rose above his head once more, before making yet another thrust downward. "Et spiritu sancti..."

Again and again he raised the stone high, only to bring it down once more each time. He did it over and over, until the stone was slick with dripping green blood, until his hands were coated with it, until blood the color of thistle leaves covered his robes in slowly crusting green stains. His voice was weak from exertion. "I cast thee out in the name of the Lord."

Finally he stood before his handiwork, panting and gasping for breath, letting the stone drop to one side with a loud crunch against the masonry of the bath chamber's floor. His arms fell to his sides listlessly, his muscles like rubber. All of a sudden, his head lifted, jerkily darting from side to side as his ears strained to listen to a sound half-heard amid the blood rushing through his ears.

It is only then, from far off elsewhere in the monastery, that he can hear the ear-splitting cries of a newborn child.

-------
It was late at night, and Giorgio was sitting behind the front desk of his little inn, watching Hungarian television on his little television set, periodically letting out belly-laughs and pounding the worn wooden counter, when Morrigan plodded in the door. A light rain had washed in from the Adriatic a short while before, and Morrigan's fashionable clothes were damp from the night's wet. "Signora," he called over, leaning out from behind a sketch comedy show in Magyar starring a former porn star and current MP of the National Assembly. "You're in late. Fun evening?"

Morrigan made no reply, and merely stood there in the lobby with her back to him, staring out the door toward the canal.

"But you're soaked," Giorgio exclaimed, moving out from behind the desk. "I shall get you a blanket, and we shall have Giorgio's special coffee in my kitchen, yes?" He put his hands upon her shoulders to guide her inside, and meekly she allowed herself to be led.

Soon she was safely ensconced at a table in Giorgio's cramped but warm and cozy kitchen, blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a mug of hot coffee in her hands, liberally sweetened with some of the hotelier's extensive vodka supply. Giorgio busied himself at the counter, fixing two small plates of cake for them to share. The fluorescent lighting above made a small, quietly insistent humming noise. "Venice is the birthplace of pastry, you know," he said, his back to her. "The first recipes were introduced by Swiss immigrants from Graübunden in the 17th century. They also began the custom of eating pastries with coffee, and opened the first coffee shop in 1680. So it is that this great piece of Venetian culture came from outsiders, who settled here, far from home, seeking shelter." One plate in each hand, he set one next to Morrigan's place at the table, and one for his own as he sat down across from her. "I can relate."

Morrigan woodenly nibbled on her cakes, occasionally sipping from her coffee mug. "I found what I was looking for," she said after a long while, her voice small and frail. "I suppose I shall be leaving tomorrow."

Giorgio nodded, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. "I am sorry to hear this, but of course I knew it would happen eventually." His head turned curiously toward hers, but her expression was blank, eyes content simply to stare at the cupboards beneath the kitchen sink. "Was it expensive?" The tone of his question is offhand, even a little flippant. She takes no notice.

"No," she replies. "I think she felt sorry for me, so she didn't charge me anything." Morrigan's mouth began to open, full of unasked questions, confessions, worries, and terrors. Wondering about the things Giorgio had been made to do to serve his former country, how he had felt about them, how far he had to go. If any of the things he'd done had still haunted him, and how he dealt with them. Even if some of those things weren't even his fault. Even if he felt like a monster simply because he survived while another hadn't, even though he himself was just as much a victim of the same system that had murdered so many others. But in the end, her mouth closed, and none of these words left her lips. Instead, she just had another nibble. "Thanks for the cake. It's delicious."

Giorgio nodded in easy-going silence, simply content with the company.