The man Tacit was introduced to had kindly features, but there was a distance and darkness within his eyes. He pressed his hand firmly into Tacit’s, so that the bones in the young man’s palm crunched.
“Inquisitor Tocco,” he introduced himself, and rose up to his full height over the young man. “So, you’re the one they’ve been talking about, are you?” he asked, his hand still tight around Tacit’s clammy fingers. “The new Inquisitor?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Tacit hesitated, finally managing to extract his hand and giving his fingers a surreptitious test behind his back. “I’ve just been told to come and see you.”
“How old are you, boy? Sixteen?”
“Fifteen. But I’m nearly sixteen.”
“Makes all the difference, that one year,” Tocco joked, feigning a smile, and Tacit realised he was being mocked. “Can you handle yourself?”
“I … I wouldn’t know.”
“You’ve seen blood before?”
Somewhere buried deep in his mind, a woman’s voice screamed.
“Again, I wouldn’t know.”
“Course you wouldn’t,” the Inquisitor hissed, and his eyes burnt hard into him. For several moments he stared into the depths of Tacit’s eyes, as if trying to retrieve memories from the young man’s mind. Then, without warning, he snapped himself straight and looked the young man up and down.
“Well, you look strong enough. Are you up for a new challenge?”
“I suppose so,” Tacit replied, watching the man leave the hall.
“About time,” the Inquisitor said. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Rome?”
“You want to be an Inquisitor?”
“They’ve told me I should be one.”
“Then let’s see if they are correct.”
They walked unmolested through the streets of the Italian capital, raising no suspicion, drawing no glances. But why should they, a dark clad Priest and his young acolyte pacing through Rome on an errand?
After a little while walking, the Inquisitor said, “They tell me you have a past. My advice to you, boy, is don’t ignore it. Use it. You’ll need it.”
“Need it? I don’t know what you mean.”
The Inquisitor stood back. He looked away up the street. Tacit saw scars on his cheek, through the bristle on his jawbone. They ran down his neck into the collar of his cassock. “Toughest job in the Church,” he said, putting his attention back onto the boy. “Guard yourself against the demons. And not just the ones around you.”
He tapped his skull and stared hard at the boy, before reaching into his pocket and drawing out a small glass bottle encased in tendrils of metal across its surface. He unscrewed the lid and put the lip of the bottle to his mouth.
He champed against the bitterness of the tincture. “Use what you can to get through,” Tocco said, raising the bottle to the boy. “You’ll find a way. Most do.”
“What about those who don’t? Those who don’t find a way?”
The Inquisitor stowed the flask into the folds of his jacket and removed a revolver from a deep pocket. “Then they’re doomed,” he replied darkly, before turning the handle of the door next to where they stood and stepping cautiously inside.