“Starting without me?”

“J-Julia!”

It was she, Julia Doria-Pamphili, not yet a statue but the living imperatrix, who strode into the citadel whence her pseudopriestly legions govern the omnipresent, silent kingdom of theology. Today she wore not only her slim black-and-purple sensayer’s scarf of velvet and satin, which twined about her shoulders like a serpent, but her full robes, the puffed and rustling archaism of academia, which strikes our eye as mad, but made sense in the arcane days when universities were born, and the surest proof of membership in Earth’s elite was still that one could afford to waste two yards of cloth on sleeves. Julia did not close the robe, of course, but let it flutter open, baring at the front her suit of sheer black silk, its custom tailoring proclaiming her membership in Earth’s elite today.

“Julia, but… you were arrested!”

“You’ve never heard of bail?”

Julia’s dark eyes smiled, but she ran her fingers along the coil of her black hair too. I knew that gesture from times she has lost games, or learned of plans falling through. A bitter sign. He is neither fool nor green, our Papadelias, the unwilling but devoted Commissioner General of Romanova’s law. Papa knew Julia’s resources: her family fortune, her ties with Madame and Dominic, the web of craven parishioners Dominic taught her to snare. With zealots ready to throw their fortunes at her feet, her resources were infinitely grander than her wealth on paper, so any bail amount a judge would consider reasonable, Julia could raise and discard without a second thought: a million, ten. No financial tether, then, could keep deadly Julia from slipping away and making her next appearance in a broadcast at her beloved Sniper’s side. But Papa is Greek, and Greece knows Rome, and the Doria-Pamphili line could not be more Roman had they laid Julius Caesar on the pyre themselves. Papa had asked Sciarra Colonna, Duke-Prince of Paliano and Prince Assistant to the Papal Throne, to post Julia’s bail, a mere twenty grand—pocket change to a Colonna prince, but as iron a leash for Julia as one could wish for. They do not die easily, these ancient families. With centuries of intermarriages, rival cardinals, old feuds, and coats of arms with papal keys above them hanging side by side in palaces older than bail itself, Julia would not dishonor the Colonna bash’ for all the gold in Troy.

“Julia,” one of the braver Conclave members ventured, “with all that’s happened we haven’t started the process to remove you from office, but given the charges aga—”

“I took the liberty of inviting some guests,” she interrupted. “Jehovah, please, come in—no need to linger in the doorway.”