ABOUT TWO FEET IN FRONT OF MY EYES LIES ADAM, COMPLETELY naked.
The Biblical Adam, I mean. The serpent coiled around the nearby tree tells me that much. This picture has been painted skillfully—incredibly so, with color both vivid and expertly shaded, vital composition that draws my eye to Adam’s outstretched hand reaching up toward God, and enough subtlety that the expression in Adam’s eyes carries as much emotion as any human’s could. He’s thinking: I’m scared, but I want this.
If I were looking at this in a gallery, I’d assume it had been painted in one of the workshops of the Old Masters at the height of the Renaissance. Just two problems with that scenario—first, this work is so new I can still smell the fresh paint.
Second, not only am I not in a gallery, but I seem to be lying on wooden scaffolding. While I’m flat on my back, the painting looms above me, so broad I can’t see the edges.
What’s the mortal danger here? I can’t see anything. Is the scaffolding rickety, about to collapse? Feels steady enough to me. The air doesn’t smell of smoke. My body feels absolutely fine, not injured or punctured in any way.
Carefully I roll over, taking note of the clothing I wear—rough-woven cloth dyed the color of rust, bad shoes, some kind of scarf tied over my hair—
—and look down to see that I’m roughly forty feet above the marble floor.
Once I was nervous about heights, but after dangling from a helicopter and being in Earth orbit, a mere forty feet feels like a relief. Was Wicked hoping I’d roll over too quickly and plunge to my death? She can do better than that . . .
“Do you not see the heresy?” calls a proud, authoritative voice. Her words echo in this space, which must be large, even if I can only get glimpses of it around the scaffolding. “How can you excuse your mistress now?”
I shift farther along the platform until I can see who is speaking to me from below. A small group gathers down there beside enormous columns holding up a vast arch. Most of the people wear long dresses or robes obviously more luxurious than my own. Their garments are bright with the shine of silk or the sheen of velvet. A few wear the deep red cassock and cap I know belong to cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. There’s no doubt who the speaker is, though—that has to be the woman wearing a tall, peaked hat and white robes richly embroidered with golden thread that glints in the light.
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.”
I manage a smile as the locket settles into my palm. “Yes, milady.”
Maybe “milady” is laying it on a bit thick, but I don’t care. I’m swimming in the relief of knowing this Romola is the one who belongs in this dimension, and having the Firebird once again around my neck. It’s one small victory to set against the devastation of losing Paul.
Pope Martha dismisses me, saying, “Back to Trastevere with you, girl. And tell those lunatic parents of yours that I expect to review their planetary charts shortly.”
“Thank you, Your Holiness.” This time I bow deeply, and with sincerity, because I really don’t want to spend any more time around a touchy pope. Yet I take my time walking out, traversing the nave at a leisurely pace. I’d be a fool to waste a single moment I can spend looking at the wonder of the Sistine Chapel, midcreation.
When I step outside, into the late-afternoon light and the bustle of Rome’s streets, I’m able to clear my head and think.
That wasn’t an attempt to kill me. Yeah, the pope was unhappy, but it was Mistress Annunziata she was really angry with. Besides, I don’t think she’d have had either of us executed. Michelangelo acted like a total brat with Pope Julius II for years, and I think the worst punishment he ever faced was a delay in payment.
So why did Wicked bring me here?
Maybe her trip to the Romeverse was accidental. Theo once told me some universes are “mathematically similar” to others, meaning that if your calculations were the smallest bit off, you might wind up in a completely different dimension. Wicked could’ve come here, realized she was in the wrong place, and hung around just to keep me trapped on the space station she’d scheduled for destruction. When she couldn’t think of an effective way to kill off this Marguerite, she decided to use this universe as a holding cell rather than a potential murder weapon.
That makes perfect sense, I say to the Paul in my mind, as if he were here to work through this with me. In fact, that’s got to be the most likely explanation. The next universe is the one I should probably be worried about.
Still, as long as I’m in the Romeverse, I have to stay on guard.
My breakup with Paul should hurt more than it does. Right now it’s as if I’m in shock—numb to the pain. They say people who have an arm or leg amputated often feel it for months or even years afterward, the nerve endings still sending signals about itches and sensations that are no longer real. A phantom limb, that’s what they call it. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling now, this sense that Paul can’t really have broken up with me, that he’s still by my side.
He is, in the most important ways, I remind myself, squaring my shoulders. He’s working with you to save the other Marguerites and protect the multiverse. So concentrate on what matters.
Although I’ve never visited the Vatican back home, I know from movies and TV that it’s this gloriously old-fashioned palace and cathedral, usually surrounded by flocks of tourists. St. Peter’s is, if anything, even more imposing here, where no other buildings seem to be even three stories high. Its enormous dome soars above the various earthen-colored brick buildings clustered nearby. The city keeps no respectful distance. Instead the dirt roads around the Vatican are crowded with groups of rosary-clutching pilgrims, vendors selling fruit or bread from mule carts, or intently chatting monks in their cassocks. My last journey to the Romeverse was brief and frantic, taking place entirely at night. Looking at the scene in the late-afternoon light gives me the chance to truly experience something very like our own Middle Ages.
It doesn’t take away the fear and urgency I feel. Doesn’t mend my broken heart. But I can’t let Conley and Triad turn the Firebird into nothing more than a weapon. The chance to see other worlds is a gift—priceless and irreplaceable. Even now, I have to hold on to my sense of wonder at the knowledge that I’m standing in a whole new world.
I walk into the crowd for a bit, mostly just to take in the sights and smells. The smells dominate. This is ye olden days, in which they had no deodorant. Also, nobody has the job of cleaning up after the mules. Even the stink is kind of interesting, though. It makes me appreciate home.
I need to find my home here in the Romeverse. That’s not someplace I reached on my first trip, and it’s not like I know my way around the city. Nor were medieval people big on road signs. When a nun walks near me on the road, her wimple almost comically broad-winged, I stop her. “Excuse me, Sister, but I’m lost.”
Like every other word I’ve uttered in the Romeverse, I say this in either early Italian or late-stage Latin. The language skills we learn as babies are more deeply ingrained in the memory than almost anything else, meaning dimensional travelers automatically speak whatever languages their hosts do.
The nun smiles beatifically at me. “Can I help you, my child? Where do you need to go?”
I want to say, To the Castel Sant’Angelo. That’s where Paul is—Father Paul, in this dimension, a priest who should not love me but so desperately does. I want to feel Paul’s love for me again.
But if it doesn’t come from my Paul—the one I love most of all—it’s not enough for me. Not anymore.
“To Trastevere,” I say instead, hoping I remember how Pope Martha pronounced that. “Do you know where the inventors live?”
Finding Trastevere turns out to be easy enough. The neighborhood isn’t very far from the Vatican, nestled below the hills and right by the bank of the Tiber. Most of the city lies on the other side, including the majority of the crumbling monuments of the Roman Empire. The houses here are humble, made of whitewashed brick or stucco in various shades of earthy orange, pink, and gold.
As for finding the inventors—the nun had no idea, but it turns out I didn’t need any extra help. Atop one of the taller buildings, I see a copper dome approximately the size of a MINI Cooper, with a wide slit in the middle. From that opening projects what has to be this dimension’s very first telescope.
Yeah, I’m home.
“Hello?” I call as I come through the door. “Is anyone here?”
“We’re up here, darling!” My mother’s voice comes from above, no doubt from the observatory/attic. In one corner of the room is the wooden ladder that leads up and down. The room itself looks like one Vermeer might have painted, with its simple wooden furniture, its wide fireplace, and only a couple of images on the wall for decoration—sketches of mine, showing my family in robes and caps.
“Just polishing the lenses.” That’s Dad, who must be beside Mom upstairs. “Tonight promises to be clear, which means we’ll finally get a good look at Jupiter!”
My parents: always different, always the same. I want to see them wearing their medieval clothes—this could provide prime fodder for teasing later on, once we’ve gotten through all of this. I need to feel like eventually I will laugh again.
But first we have to get through it, which means continuing the chase the very first moment I can.
Probably Wicked won’t have moved on yet. That last scenario of hers was crafty, so I think she’s taking her time. Planning things out more carefully. Setting traps within traps. That’s not the kind of thing you accomplish in only an hour or so. (This world’s technological level allows for more sundials than clocks, so I can only estimate how long I’ve been here.) Still, I have to try. So I sit down on one of the benches by the table, take the Firebird from my robes, and hit the controls to jump.
I don’t shift universes. Not surprising.
But at that moment—the exact same instant—the ground lurches, sending crockery tumbling to the floor and making my parents cry out. I hear yells from outside, too. We’re experiencing an earthquake.
As a native of the Bay Area, and therefore someone who has spent most of her life perched directly atop the San Andreas Fault, I’m familiar with tremors. The one that just shook Rome wasn’t even that strong.
Still, it happened the very moment I activated the Firebird.
In my head I can hear both my parents saying, as they have a hundred times before, Correlation is not causation. Just because two things happen in proximity to each other doesn’t necessarily mean one of them caused the other.
When one of those things is a device capable of destroying entire dimensions, though . . .
That’s incredibly unlikely. They all said so, and I know them well enough to understand that they’d never even have considered building a Firebird if it weren’t absolutely true.
Unlikely. But not impossible.
The ground shudders again, longer this time. Longer earthquakes are more powerful.
What if—what if this was Wicked’s plan? What if she came up with a way to destroy this dimension without my help, set it in motion, and fled?
This time she might not be murdering me. She might be murdering this entire world.