Episode 3 - Venice - Part 2: The Morning and the Metus

Episode Three: Venice

Part 2: The Morning and the Metus

My sleep that first night in Venice is dreamless.

I awake with the dawn, a man named Pepin on my mind. I'd heard Peitho say the name, I was sure. But I'd heard the title, The Great, in a dream which insisted it was not a dream. Could it be coincidence? But it didn't make sense. Pepin had arrived recently enough that he'd only had time to act out two of the killings I'd seen in my dreams. This made me think.

The Wadjet I'd seen told me that sometimes when we dream, we touch the Void. I'd gone there with the Potion. I think this, then immediately argue it. That's not possible. There was no “Void” to go to. There was no Wadjet to tell me about it. There is only this: what I can feel and smell and touch... and see. And I saw that a man named Pepin the Great was going to do something terrible; and that he was, right now – or had been recently – in Venice. It's impossible that this could be true – that I could have learned this in a dream. Could I have figured it out on my own?

I have a long day ahead of me, and a lot to think about. As I sit in the bed with my feet on the floor, my elbows on my knees, chin propped on my palms, my misuse of quality thinking time, be it because of Ol Jimmy or my own procrastination, hits me squarely in the Guilt Box. I ignore this. What good would it have done? I'd still have to do it today.

I need to organize my thoughts.

The way I see it, I had three issues at hand. In the first, there is Peitho and whatever is going on there; in the other, there is Pepin. And then there is the killer. If any of what I had Seen was real, then these three things might be one thing. But I wasn't going to approach them like that. When you untangle a mess of rope, you get nowhere working on the whole mess at once. If you want any hope of success, you have to work one cord at a time.

I thought of the stack of books and the list regarding Peitho. Whatever is going on with her doesn't matter right now. Peitho is a problem I can't solve, but which I can make go away. Or so I believe. If – that is – I find bloody Pepin. Which – Venice is a thriving city of some half a million people. Where the Hell could he be hiding? And the girls.

There is nothing I can do about them.

Not if Pepin isn't the killer.

So that was that.

The next thing I needed to address was how I was going to use the things I'd seen – the dreams and visions. If they weren't useful in getting rid of Peitho, then there was nothing doing in considering them any further. If they were meaningless, they were meaningless.To determine this one way or another, I needed to decide whethey they came to me a priori – or whether I had all the necessary information in my brain without them. If I had all the information, then I could tell myself that they were just dreams – that they were just my mind simulating combinations of ideas in ways I hadn't thought of yet.

When I get up to pursue the day, I don't know whether I could have heard rumors about Pepin and not remembered them. I do know that I don't have any idea where I came up with the Rod of Asclepius. The metaphors for its use which I could imagine were unsettling enough that I didn't like thinking about them. By the time I saw Jacopo again, I'd decided to put the question of the dreams and visions out of my head entirely. An answer would come eventually – or it wouldn't; in that eventuality I'd either be dead or the whole storm would pass me by. Either way, this would solve itself without me if I could just hold out long enough. What did an accurate hypothesis matter? What mattered, I knew, was how I reacted to finding the Truth.

Pottage – it was for breakfast, too.

Maybe Jacopo could read the brooding on my face, maybe he wanted to give me space for his own reasons; whatever the case, he didn't talk to me much before I approached him at his counter some time after I'd eaten.

I ask him whether another girl had been found that morning. I didn't have the heart to ask for the girl's description when he said yes – with the dawn, same as the others. Or whether he knew her. Maybe that was why he'd been so quiet.

“You think this Pepin is the one hurting these poor girls?” He asks after a moment of silence.

I've been trying to figure out how to get out of this conversation I'd started. I nod. “I don't know that.”

“But you're lookin for him?”

“I am.”

“You don't seem as surprised or... shocked by these girls bein dead as a man might expect. He done this before? You a Taker? A manhunter? He kill one o your sisters or something? Or... are you some kinda sorcerer? A dreamer, like Daniel from the Bible?”

The way he says sister makes me think of Peitho.

I laugh. “I'm not a Dreamer. I'm not a thief taker either – nor a manhunter— Though I've done both before. I don't know if he has or not. But I'm looking for him. If he's the one hurting these girls.... I'm going to stop him. You have my word on that.”

“The word of a Northerner don't mean a squirt o piss to me. But I think I trust you, Rob. If that even is your real name. I was thinkin about your Great Pepin this mornin. I was thinkin o that girl what visited you last night, if you know what I mean.” He makes the appropriat lascivious face. I almost can't blame him.

I did, and didn't want to know more. “Did she ask you where to find me? When she first showed up?”

He frowns. “No, sir. She just walked straight on back. I figured by the look on her face— Well, I know better'n to interfere when a woman's face looks like that. She must've known you. You done upset her something fierce. Pretty thing, though. Body like a—“

“You were thinking about Pepin, you said?”

He clears his throat. “Right. I didn't hear which ship he came in on. But I'll bet you another one o them coins I know who will have.” He's smiling slyly. Joking.

I put another of Peitho's gold coins on his counter. Greed is ugly on anyone's face. His momentary stare is no worse than anyone else. While it looks ugly, greed is an effective motivator – especially of hospitaliers. Maybe this would keep him from sending thugs to kill me and steal the rest for himself. Actually, now that I've thought it, I'm surprised he didn't last night. Maybe he was too busy thinking of Peitho.

“You want Vinnie's place,” Jacopo says almost immediately. “Caesar's. Tell him I sent you and he's like to be more... hospitable.”

I got directions, and that was that. I had a lead.

If I could find the people who brought him to the city, maybe they knew where he was staying – or going next. If, that is, they were still in the city.

* * * *

Venice is a magnificent city.

And yet, for all the glory of her wealth and canal-streets, she was the unfocused backdrop of my day. I hardly paid anything that I saw or heard or smelled or tasted any heed. I'm not here to sight see. I am here to work.

Whatever the Hell that means.

I say that I don't notice anything, but this is not strictly true.

As I leave Jacopo's inn, standing in the plaza, letting the sun wash over me, half expecting Metus to appear at any moment, I notice a young boy. He's lingering in the shadows, only barely visible. The only reason I notice him at all is that he is the only thing capable of it that isn't moving.

And he's staring right at me.

I put him out of my mind and start my trek.

Venice isn't so large a city that it should have taken me nearly four hours to find Vinnie's. I might have gone right there. Might have. But I wasn't exactly in the kind of frame of mind that I particularly cared when I got it done, just so long as I could say I'd done it when Peitho showed up at my room again. And, besides, if I don't go straight there like I'm on a mission, anyone watching me – anyone like that boy, I see him again – and a third time – or like Metus – will think I'm just enjoying a stroll through a new town – something which I did regularly when first coming to Genoa.

As I'm wandering through town, I notice the boy two more times, lingering in partial darkness. Watching me.

I find the place I'm looking for around noon. It is, as Jacopo said, impossible to miss: The sign above the door reads, in bold, proud letters: Caesar's Cock, and was accompanied by the painted image of a rooster with a massive, priapic erection, at least half again as long as the cock is tall. The phallus is, naturally, human.

I roll my eyes and rub my face. What kind of establishment am I about to enter?

I'm not going to find out for a while, yet, it turns out.

“Ah, Venice. The City of Bridges.”

This sentimental ejaculation, said in an emotionless monotone, stops me cold. Not only because I recognize it, but because it's speaking in a language I'm pretty safe in assuming no one anywhere nearby can speak – the language of my father: Cymraeg, the descendants of my ancestors call it now. Turning, I find Metus – presumably Metus: a priest that sounds and dresses like him, and my how I pray there is only person who does both of those things in the world when I see him. Down to the crucifix with its weird light, reflecting the early evening sun like flames on the horizon.

“I didn't expect to meet you here,” I quip.

“We know that you did just as we know that you knew we would follow the woman who calls herself Peitho here. You didn't expect us so soon. Has she been to visit you since your arrival?”

I nod. “She has.” There's no reason to lie.

Metus has made his way toward me and now indicates that I should walk with him. I fall into step beside, and we move away from the plaza – into an alley. He is at least a foot shorter than I am, the top of his head not reaching my shoulder. The presence of him, however, is palpable. Like there is a shadow looming over us. I momentarily imagine seeing it out of the corner of my eye: a puffy black cloud of shadows and muscular arms hovering just above us.

I am surprisingly... loose, considering I'm fairly certain what we're going back here to do. If, on thinking back on my experience with Metus from some eight days before, I had remembered the sensation of tendril-fingered hands of cold massaging my scalp, I had likewise dismissed it as the particular kind of creeps the priest had given me. Their manifestation. As I'm walking with him now, keeping my mind empty, I feel them again.

He stops some few moments later and turns to me. I might say he regards me, but I don't know what he is doing. I do know his hood is inclined toward me at such an angle I should be able to see his face. I am not upset that I can't. I look down into that hood, waiting, my hands in the pockets of my jacket.

“What did she want?”

I consider a witty rejoinder for a moment, but nothing shapes itself in the space of time it takes me to blink, twist my mouth, nod, and raise my eyebrows – so I went with the facts. “She wanted to know why I left Genoa.”

“We want to know this as well. What did you tell her?”

No reason to lie, now.

Thin wire you've got yourself walking. How easily you betray her.

There is no betrayal. We owe her no loyalty.

“I told her the truth: I want no part in whatever the two of you are involved in.”

“The two of us? This Peitho and ourselves?”

As we are talking, I'm observing Metus in a way that I was unable in the dark of my office: for subtleties in his body language. Metus is a strange creature. I can't see his feet beneath his cassock, but – it's the strangest thing, and I'm trying not to too obviously notice it. Metus's body seems to be hanging toward the ground, like he's suspended so that his feet are able only to make the necessary contact with the earth for locomotion. Even thinking this makes me feel insane. How could that be possible? But the evidence is right there in front of me. The way his shoulders are just a little higher than they should be, the spine almost unnaturally straight.... It's like there are strings suspended from the shoulders and the head.

Metus has paused, either in thought or for some other reason – it's difficult to imagine him as dramatic, despite all evidence to the contrary. After a short moment, a noise very much like a hmmm escapes from his hood, and his skeletal arm reaches toward it. It's impossible to miss, now that I've seen it: there seem to be strings attached at his wrists and elbows. There is none of the... activity of a consciously moving arm. His arm looks moved.

The sleeve descends the wrist the moment before the hand disappears into the black of the hood. The pale, scarred, desiccated flesh is difficult not to react to in the light of day. Repellant and cadaverous as it is.

“That does not seem to us the whole truth. You want no part? There is no voice whispering in your mind to pursue this at all costs? We do not believe this is the case. We believe that you want to be neck deep in what we are involved in. We know just how deeply you want to be involved with this Peitho woman. It is on your face when you speak of her. Your desire for her. The mystery. We do not blame you. She is a Daughter of the Serpent, the Lamiya. She was made to entangle you with your desires. To test you. To tempt you.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, 'If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.'”

There is an expectant silence, and I remember that I am speaking with a priest.

“Jesus answered,” I say, my tone perhaps about as petulant as a teenager being expected to do this same thing, “'It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Metus's hood nods.

“Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 'If you are the Son of God,' he said, 'throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

If call and response is what he wants, then call and response is what he is going to get.

“Jesus answered him,'It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 'All this I will give you,' he said, 'if you will bow down and worship me.'”

“Jesus said to him, 'Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.''”

“Then the devil left him,and angels came and attended him.” Metus nods again.

“Are you likening me to Jesus?” I ask, not sure whether I'm teasing him or asking genuinely. “Isn't that, you know, heretical?”

“We decide what is heretical, Fulcrum. This is our role. We were made in the Image of the Venatores Malefecarum just as the Archi made you in his.”

Then Metus begins quoting Revelation:

“I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: 'Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.'”

The feeling of being peered into, probed, by a mind like Metus's is far from my favorite experience ever. As we stand there, the little priest looking up at me while I try not to look unnerved and uneasy, the myriad meanings and their ramifications of this quoted passage hang heavy, thick like pottage, around us.

“So we ask you, Robert, knowing, as we do, what you do: Why did you leave Genoa?”

I shrug and answer easily. “To get away from her. I'm not helping her. I told her the same thing. I'm out. No more.”

“Yesterday, you told her this? Or today?”

“Yesterday. I haven't seen her today. Don't plan to, either.”

“Hm. Then you can have come to Venice to pursue only one of two goals. You either intend to catch a boat and make for anywhere besides here, a true flight into the unknown – or you are here to pursue The Rod for your own purposes. Curiosity is a purpose, Robert. Do not interupt us. Do you always accept payment for jobs you refuse?”

Metus's skeletal hand appears, reaching out to poke me in the chest as he asks this – directly in Peitho's purse. The question is punctuated by the clinking of gold coins – the sound of a lie exposed.

How did he—?

Of course. He saw the bag on my desk.

Where the knocked over books would have been.

Obvious.

Stupid.

“She left the money after I told her no. I decided that I'd earned it after... after dealing with you.”

A dusty noise like a cough or maybe what amounts to a laugh emerges from the hood.

“We see. Your defense is that you are morally reprehensible. What we do not know is whether you expect us to believe this lie or whether you are in actuality this dishonest, dishonorable, deplorable and degenerate – in a word, corrupt. No matter. There are things which are fated by God, Robert. Events which He, all-knowing as He is, wills to come to pass. You are very nearly interfering with the Will of God. You should not have come here, Robert.”

I'm almost exasperated at this point. “Where could I have gone that you would believe me that I am not allied with her? I took the money and ran. Is that what this is about to you? The money?”

“And the Rod? You are not searching for it?” Before I can open my mouth to answer, he cuts in, his voice, for all it is a dry monotone, like a razor. “Do not lie to me. I know that you have done things I would not have advised. You have seen a Vision. I know this. Do not try to deny it. Answer me, and answer me truly: are you here seeking out the Rod of Asclepius?”

I have recovered from my surprise at hearing him mention the Rod by the second time I hear it named.

“I don't know.” I said the words honestly, but my face is defiance.

“How do you not know?”

“Because I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. I'm here... because I'm here. It's almost an accident.”

“An accident?”

“I only came to Venice because I caught a ride with someone coming here!” I exclaim. I am exasperated, now – getting excited, animated.

“You caught a ride?”

“Yeah. With a guy driving a cart. I met him on my way out of town.”

“At night?”

“Yes.”

“And he was driving to Venice?”

“Yes!”

“You do not think that this is unusual?”

“Sure. But not unwelcome. It's a coincidence that I'm here at all. If here is somewhere important to be, I'm beginning to wish I'd gone someplace else.”

“Why did you finish your trip with him, this driver? Why not, when you learned that he was en route to Venice, abandon him?”

“Because— Venice seemed liked as good a place as any to avoid her. I couldn't have known that her quest would bring her here. I could have left him at any point – especially along the Po. But I didn't. I just didn't. That's all. It didn't seem right. It seemed like the good thing to do, you know? The right thing. Pay for his meals, give him some company. I wasn't good company, I know that. But is anyone? I don't know. I don't even know that I believe the Rod exists. I kind of... kind of convinced myself you were making it up to scare me. But that doesn't make sense, does it?” At some point I have looked away from Metus, into the shadows of the alley. I've lost steam, talking now almost more to myself than to the priest. Then, almost like I've remembered that he's here and that he's probably going to try to kill me if I say the wrong sorts of things, I look at him. “If you were making it up at all, it would be to pique my interest.”

If I think I see Metus flinch at this, I must be imagining it.

“This does not seem a lie to us. Do you believe that Peitho is following you, or that she is pursuing the man and sister you say she paid you to locate on her own?”

“I don't know.”

“It is, then, as you say, a coincidence. Yes. We will believe you – for now. You might believe this coincidence if you believe as you claim. We are not sure. What do you know?”

“I know that someone is hurting young women in Venice. I think more than anything that's why I'm here.”

Metus tilt's his head beneath the hood. The rest of his body is as rigidly limp as ever.

“You say this like you think this is God's Plan for you.”

My face flinches, a little seizure of my right eye. I don't want to think this, but I can't argue it. It's probably right – I only want to deny it to deny it.

“I don't know. Maybe. I have reason to believe that whatever else is going on with her, the man that she is hunting is hurting these girls.”

It's difficult to tell what a hooded person is thinking when their face is hidden within a lightless hole, but Metus appears to be peering up at me. Judging me.

“We sense your conflict. You wish to prevent further suffering, further death. That is admirable, Fulcrum. We do not believe you are the depraved monster you wish us to. We believe that you are a being who is, perhaps, too loyal – too loyal to all those he comes into contact with. This is dangerous, Robert. Not all whom you wish to be a boon to have your own good interests at heart. Many are those who would take advantage of you – for your skills, your knowledge, but mostly because of what you are. Whether they know it or not. We feel your hurt, your anguish – your dread for these young women and any other potential victims of this man she hunts. But, Robert, listen to us—

“Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?' But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, 'Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.'

“The End is coming. The great God the All Mighty, god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has seen fit to bring an end to all things. We must ask ourselves, each of us born in this world, whether we will be the sort of person who will make choices. Choices which may impact the whole world forever. Your father has a saying – there are three choices for a man in this life: you can either lead, follow, or get the fuck out of the way.”

I choke a little – at the curse in the priest's mouth as much as that he could know about my father and his idioms. Although, at this point, I'm almost starting to expect these things.

“We must ask ourselves when we decide that we will choose where our authority comes from. Our authority comes from God. From where do you take yours?

“Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song, saying: 'You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.'

“Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying: 'Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!'

”Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!'

“The four living creatures said, 'Amen,' and the elders fell down and worshiped.”

“Are you likening me to Jesus again?”

Metus is silent for a moment. For that moment, I don't feel his eyes on me. Then they return.

“There is a possibility that God has called on you to act as arbiter in this. Peitho is not whatever it is that you believe her to be.”

“You have implied as much.”

I level my gaze on the priest. Metus looks up at me. Out of the dark, I can just barely make out the sunken sockets and greys of its eyes.

“I am forbidden as yet to bring a case against you for judgment. You did nor do no as we told you, but as yet you give us no reason to. Allow us to make ourselves very clear. The... thing you believe to be a woman is in fact a Daughter of Lamiya. We have reason to believe that she is a priestess of that order.”

“I'm listening,” I say, trying to stay nonplussed-sounding.

“Whatever her purpose, her kind are anathema. Cursed of God, the All Mighty. Lamia. Lilith. The Serpent. The Dragon. The Betrayer. Theirs is a blasphemy which has survived since before the time of Noah. When we find her, we will kill her. We will not spare you our wrath if we judge you to be aiding her in her quest. Her kind worship the very Serpent of the Garden, Robert. They are vipers. Foul. Untrustworthy. They cannot be allowed to exist. Follow her path to your destruction.”

“There were giants in those days,” I say. “And you think that Peitho is one of these giants?”

“Not one of these. Of course not. She is descended from these monsters. Her family is not a family at all. It is an organization, you might say, a cult dedicated to the memory of the unholy coupling which gave rise to their line.”

“I don't know whether that's true, but I do know that I don't care. I told her I wanted nothing to do with either of you.”

“You have been taught, Robert – or perhaps it is more correct to say that you have learned – that life is as a river; and you are meant to be a stone in it: Still, calm, letting this pass you by with no attachment. That is not Life. That is not your purpose. That is death. You were not meant to be an observer, eroded away to nothing by the process of Time, by the passage of untold moments, the friction of meaningless lives moving around, touching and taking from yours.”

It looks up at me. There is not much to read, vis-a-vis body language from an empty cave of a hood. But I can imagine that Metus is considering me, just as I am imagining the tendrils of cold that seem to be massaging my scalp are symptoms of that very consideration. At least, that I imagine that this is what it feels like to be considered by a creature such as the one before me.

“You believe that I will be a passing moment. You believe that you can wu wei your way out of this.”

Why does a Christian priest know a Chinese Buddhist phrase with no direct translation in the language we're speaking? Roughly it means non-doing or non-action. It is a Taoist concept, and Metus has just described it perfectly: a stone in the River of Time. But he isn't done talking, just because he has caught me with a philosophical punch to the solar plexus.

“You may try. You may succeed, even. For a time. But you exist to choose, so choose you must, eventually. We cannot stop you from going after the Rod. It is fated that you will. We do not know what would happen if we tried. So we will not. For now. But if you do choose to continue to balance along this wire you have strung beneath you and you manage to survive the Rod and to end up with it – Robert, do not hesitate – give it to us.”

“Why would I do that?” I balk.

“Because we can keep it safe.”

I open my mouth to argue, then don't.

“We do not know what she has told you or what you have seen. We know you have Seen something – it is forbidden to prevent you from looking, and we know you tried. Whatever it is, she has led you astray from the Truth. We understand that we cannot ask you to join us. Not after the life you have lived. But we would emplore you: turn her over to us. If you will not or cannot do that, stay away from her. For your life – for your eternal soul, Fulcrum. And, if you do find this killer whom you speak, give him over to us as well. Lastly, if you do decide to pursue the Rod, surrender it immediately to our care.”

“What is the Rod, Metus?” I ask with little hesitation. I sound impetuous. I know it. My right leg is beginning to tremor slightly.

“The Rod of Asclepius is a false idol. It cannot be allowed to exist.”

“Why, Metus. Why?”

“We do not believe that this is the question you wish truly to be answered. You believe that if you find the Rod without helping her directly—“ He lowers his gaze and all I see now is the top of his cowl— “that we will find in you no fault. Do not deny it. It is obvious in your willingness to speak to her of us. This is possible. We must encourage you, however, to treat the Rod like the venomous viper it is – do not think that you can control it for your purposes. To underestimate the danger in the Rod is to be struck dead by it. We judge that you will not be able to stay, as your father might say, the fuck out of the way of God's Plan for the world.”

Metus pauses. Again I do not know whether it is for drama, but the effect is poignant enough.

“If you must choose, choose well whom you follow or where you lead.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

“Do not quibble with us. We cannot make your choices for you. We have offered you counsel and you have found a way to work your way around it. Choose, then. We will know whatever it is you decide, whatever you do.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I spit more than say. I've managed to keep my eyes off of it for most of our talk, but now they're drawn, dragged kicking and screaming almost, to the crucifix dangling around his waist. My body feels ready to tear itself to chreds in anticipation of violence. “I'll make sure to keep my nose where it doesn't belong.”

Metus stands in silence a moment, then turns for the mouth of the alley. “See that you do. Your other parts, as well,” he adds, uncannily turning his head to regard me once more.

“If it is as you say, then we will part, never again to meet. Just be warned, Fulcrum: if things are not as you say, we will know, sooner or later. No sin goes unjudged. No sinner goes unpunished.”

And then he is gone, blended into the people thronging the plaza.

I am left with a feeling of lingering doom, an inescapable, unavoidable coming end. That is to say a very specific kind of dread – and the knowledge that no matter what happens in the coming weeks, there is a non-zero chance I see Metus again. In fact, it feels like a certainty.

Whatever lies in Peitho's future, it's bad.

And is it any of my business? It is if I get caught up in it. But if I can keep that from happening, then I can keep her fate from being mine.

There are certain things which we each come across and feel that it's best we just don't know anything about and work to stay uninvolved in. Metus is one of these things for me. I don't want to know how he got those scars, nor why he looks more dead and rotting than alive. I don't want to know how he found me so soon, nor do I want to think about how impeccable his timing is. And I most decidedly do not want to know how he will use that crucifix when the he judges the time fit to show me.

I wish it didn't, but it makes a kind of sense that Peitho and her family can protect the Rod. They had lost it to begin with. But if that were Peitho's sister – or Peitho, a little voice I've been trying to ignore niggled at the back of my mind – who stole it, were they all for sale? Could they be trusted? Or – what if they let her steal it? Or was all this distrust just in me because that is what Metus was trying to do? Was Metus lying? Was he exaggerating? Or was he telling me the exact truth to undermine my inexact perception of reality?

These kind of thoughts can make your head spin with a particular kind of vertigo: the vertigo that the plane the castle of your consciousness is on is not only unsteady, but wildly in flux – like a castle of sand constructed on the flat side of a polished-glass hemisphere floating on a hurricane-buffeted sea. Easier to close your eyes and shake your head, clearing thoughts like this from your mind like the tangled squiggles of an Etch-a-Sketch.

I prefered to think that these things – that Peitho may have stolen the Rod – and that Metus may somehow be politicking to keep me out of the picture – were infeasible.

But did that mean I was going to just give the Rod to Metus? Did I trust him any further than I could throw his skin-and-bones ass?

The one thing I felt certain of is that Peitho's family – the same Lamiya? – weren't going to use it to kill people in conquest. Could I be sure of the same thing with Metus and the Venatores Maleficarum? Come to think of it.... Did it make sense to wonder whether the Venatores weren't involved in an effort to get it and use it for their own ends?

No. It didn't. Inconceivable, even! That would require that they were politicking, and that Metus be right that it is somewhere tangled up in my fate to be the arbiter of who gets to use the Rod – which... is an insane idea to contemplate. Perhaps it's even my Calling to be the one who uses it himself! These things are unthinkable. Impossible. They would require a reality so different from the one I inhabit that I would have to be either a crazy person or a blind one not to notice their truth.

More that that, even the most Pagain-adaptive Christian would think to use the Rod as a tool for conquest— Would they? I wonder if the real thing that's dangerous about the Rod is that they, the so-called Daughters of Lamiya – or really anyone with the proper education and skillset who has it in their hands – have “proof” that their religion is older. And I bet they live in relative harmony. And their women are treated like people rather than cattle.

I roll my eyes.

Metus's faith in his god and the righteousness of his convinction would not shake to learn this. Nor would it expect the common person to suddenly favor the newcomer. Christianity is too cunning for that.

Then what was the Rod really? If it's not just some symbol... is it a weapon? That's how I'm Seeing it being used. Whatever that means.

I shake my head.

Feeling as conspicuous as I must look, I leave the alley into which Metus had led me, reorienting myself back toward the Caesar's Cock. Any of the earlier sort of dread I felt about what I might find in here is gone. Dread, it seems, is and will remain in my life the domain of the Metus.