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.”

All froze upon seeing the Addressee. His head was bandaged, not from Sniper’s bullet but from Science, whose tests had cut His flesh deep, seeking the miracle’s residue. His suit of antique black had always been a mourning suit, His protest against His Peer’s creation Death, but it felt different now that concrete tragedies made so many wear black with Him. He Who Visits from Another Universe can never be said to change expression, nor is there much alteration to the bearing of the flesh that He inhabits so distantly, as a puppeteer inhabits his marionette. Yet somehow the flush of spring and sun awakened an energy in the limbs of His youthful earthly body—Jehovah’s Peer, Who governs Nature, bade her grant His Guest the full flower of the human form, however little He might use it.

“I hesitate to enter Another’s sanctum,” He said as He crossed the Conclave’s threshold, “but I am relevant.”

For three breaths, no one could do more than stare.