My jaw hitched to one side as I held Michelangelo’s glare. That’s when the pope clapped. “A competition as I like it,” he said, with a tone fit for a Carnevale celebration. And for the first time since Alidosi’s death, his eyes gleamed. “One winner takes all, in art as it is in life.”

Chapter XL

Chapter XL

Sitting on the marble floor, leaning against my Religion wall and drinking directly from a large-mouthed flagon of unwatered wine red as dragon’s blood, I stared up at my Philosophy fresco. The library was complete, the ceiling and all four walls: Religion, Poetry, Law & Virtue, and Philosophy. I should’ve been proud, surrounded by those frescoes, but instead, I felt limp as watery pigment dripping down a dry wall.

“He asked me to return this to you,” came a voice.

I lulled my head to the left. The figure in the doorway was barely illuminated in the crumbs of pewter moonlight, but that was no doubt Felice della Rovere holding my portrait of Cardinal Alidosi. “I don’t want it, either,” I said. “Burn it.”

She crossed the room—for once her widow’s weeds seemed wildly appropriate—and propped the portrait against the wall next to me. “You’ve done a great service to your duke.”

I knocked my elbow against the portrait so that it fell face down on the marble floor with a clack. “Is that what I’ve done?”

“You’ll be rewarded.”

I lumbered to my knees and crawled over to my stack of supplies. “Yes, it’ll certainly be a memorable reward when Michelangelo chisels my paintings off these walls.” Paintbrushes, mortar, knives, more paintbrushes . . . where is it? “I can only hope that your father has ordered me hung by then, so I don’t have to witness it.”

“Your duke won’t let him hang you.”

I picked up a leather pouch and crawled back to the portrait. “So, you admit His Holiness has already measured the rope. Che grande.”

“My father is angry, but he knows what you can do with a brush. If he didn’t, you’d already be . . .” She exhaled long and hard as if expelling a final breath. “He wants you here, alive, competing with Michelangelo, making him miracles.”

I dumped the contents of that pouch onto the back of the portrait: char cloth, striker, flint. “There’s no such thing as miracles.” I didn’t even bother to pull up my sleeves or roll wrists before picking up the flint and striker to work a spark—what was the point of counting anymore? What was the point in anything anymore?

She pressed her hands over mine. “Don’t. You’ll start a fire.”

“That’s the goal.”

“Not inside the palace.”

“This place is made out of stone. It won’t spread beyond this room. And this room is slated for execution, so . . .”