Although we’ve never met before, I know who this is: Her Holiness Pope Martha III.
I tell myself, Welcome back to the Romeverse.
“Do you refuse to answer?” she shouts. Even at this height, I can see her frown lines deepening. “Do you endorse your mistress’s heretical work?”
I know enough world history to be sure I do not want a pope to be angry with me. Is that Wicked’s plan? To feed me to the Inquisition? “No, ma’am—Your Holiness!”
“Then why did you not stop her from painting this abomination? To depict Adam alone at the Creation, without Eve, mother of humanity?” Pope Martha waves some kind of golden staff around the enormous space enclosing us.
Finally it hits me that this is the Sistine Chapel—only now coming into existence, only now turning into a masterpiece. Instead of Michelangelo, another painter has the honor of creating this work, and apparently I am one of that painter’s apprentices. Awestruck, I roll onto my back again and stare at this painting, which I now recognize as a wholly original interpretation of the creation of man, the moment Adam receives the spark of consciousness from God. I get to help paint the Sistine Chapel! That makes this absolutely, utterly, the most magnificent universe I’ve ever been to. My misery about my split with Paul evaporates for one beautiful moment, leaving me to feel nothing but pure wonder.
“Still you refuse to answer!” bellows the pope, which reminds me to move.
“Forgive me, Your Holiness,” I call. “May I come down and address you directly? With, uh, the respect you deserve?” That sounds like the kind of thing you might say to a pope.
After a moment’s silence, Pope Martha III replies, “It shall be permitted.”
Turns out this scaffolding was built by people with hugely exaggerated ideas of how acrobatic most artists are. It takes me a while to work my way down, and I’m panting by the time I do. But I use that time to think about how I can possibly answer her question, since I have no idea who my “mistress” is, why the pope isn’t bitching at her directly, or the reason behind any of the artistic choices she made.
Pope Martha can’t be taller than five foot two. She’s older, nearly elderly, and her shoulders have begun to stoop. But a sense of power radiates from her as surely as any light. This woman knows her anger can make emperors tremble—and right now, she’s angry with me.
“Your Holiness,” I begin. Should I curtsy? Can’t hurt. So I do it, then start talking fast. “As I understand it, my, um, mistress plans to paint the creation of Eve as an entirely separate panel. She wants to individually portray the Father and Mother of humanity before she brings them together to tell the rest of the story of the Creation.”
Pope Martha says nothing, and I find her silence ominous. If Wicked somehow figured out how to frame me for heresy in medieval times—well, I’d have to give her points for creativity. But I don’t think that’s it. Honestly, I don’t seem to be in any danger at all.
Instead of fear, I feel only the quiet anguish of knowing that Paul and I have been divided from each other . . . maybe forever.The pope finally proclaims, “If true, that explanation is satisfactory. But I shall expect a full accounting of her plans for the ceiling when Mistress Annunziata returns from the Dolomites.”
I nod. “Absolutely. Your Holiness.” Gotta remember to add that every time.
“She keeps her plans secret, and still has the audacity to complain about what she is paid!” Pope Martha begins to pace, and her elegant flock of courtiers moves back, with rustles of silk, to give her room. “Does she dare to dicker with her pontiff? I have seen her wearing golden chains, fine dresses, even jewels.” The pope’s hand goes to her throat, like she’s pantomiming some necklace she saw on Mistress Annunziata. Then her eyes focus sharply on me, and she cries, “Look at this! She is so generously compensated that even her apprentices can wear chains!”
With that, she grabs the chain of the Firebird and yanks it off my neck.
Damn! Most people from this dimension would never see the Firebird unless their attention had been drawn to it, but Pope Martha was thinking about the exact right thing at the precise moment her eyes focused on me. Since she was thinking about what someone wears around her neck, she saw what was around mine.
My first instinct is to tackle her and get it back, immediately, but my guess is that physically attacking the pope would not end well. I try to think of an explanation that might work. “That isn’t something I bought,” I manage to say. “It’s a—a family heirloom, Your Holiness. My mother handed it down to me.” Which is more or less the truth, actually. “Please, I—”
“Her Holiness would never wish to deprive a lowly apprentice of her one valuable possession,” murmurs one of the courtiers as she steps forward. “Her mercy and generosity are praised throughout Christendom.”
I’ve seen this courtier before, in this world and several others: It’s Romola Harrington. My entire body tenses, because in the Home Office, she’s one of Wyatt Conley’s many underlings. She’s slipped into various dimensions to interfere with me before. And yet I’ve also run across her in worlds where she was only herself, and even where we were friends. She’s someone on the very farthest reaches of the orbit that contains my family, Paul, Theo and Conley—someone who might be tied to us, or might not.
Has the Home Office’s Romola come here to entrap me? Or is this merely the Romeverse version behaving the way she normally would?
“You should ask forgiveness for doubting your pontiff’s charity,” Romola says. She’s supposedly scolding me, but I can tell she’s actually playing to Pope Martha’s vanity to make sure I get the Firebird back.
“I do. Please forgive me, Your Holiness.” I drop another curtsy, just in case.
Pope Martha airily holds out the Firebird and gives it to Romola. “Return this trinket to the girl, Lady Romola.”
Oh, no. Romola’s got the Firebird. If this one is working for Conley, there’s no way she’ll ever give it back. But I could tackle her, at least once we’re no longer in the pope’s presence . . .
No need. Romola only runs her hands over the Firebird in a show of admiration—over and over, almost creepily—but then smiles and hands it back to me. “What an interesting necklace. How good of your mother to give it to you.”