Chapter 13
Chapter 13
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 13
Chapter Title: Cardinal Lorenzo
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Lorenzo woke from sleep.
"I can't believe it. Me, falling asleep." He felt an urge to check the time. For the past few years, he hadn't once wondered about the hour from sunset to sunrise. And during that same span, he hadn't slept at all.
Many people believed Lorenzo to be diligent and hardworking, thinking he labored ceaselessly for the Rapal Priesthood and Rotican, day and night.
That was true to an extent. He worked at night and during the day. But it wasn't that he worked without sleeping; it was that sleep never came, so he worked.
He also couldn't find pleasure anywhere but in his work. In his youth, he'd burned with fervent lust, taken deep interest in wine and tobacco. He'd been passionate about fine food and frequented his favorite conductor's concerts daily. But now he felt numb to it all. The only thing that brought him joy was the fruit of his labors.
Lorenzo didn't romanticize this condition. He saw it more like a drunkard reaching for the bottle the morning after.
That said, he didn't stop others from romanticizing him. It was useful for wielding authority if people thought that way.
"Come to think of it, it's been ages since I last saw a candle snuffed out."
The airtight attic let in no moonlight. He holed up there at night to work, precisely so no one would see him unsleeping. Some fool might spread rumors that he used demonic power to forgo sleep.
When working, he always kept two or more candles lit. If one went out, he'd light another right away, so it was rare for both to extinguish at once.
"This isn't something to brush off."
He relit the candle and crossed his arms, lost in thought. He, who hadn't slept in years, had just dozed off deeply—even dreaming. The grogginess upon waking wasn't unpleasant. But the dream's content was dire.
In the dream, Mount Vesuo erupted. Stones rained from the sky, and lava engulfed Pompei. Deathly ash blanketed the skies over Rom. Then, from the smoke, monsters of unknown origin crawled forth and devoured people.
The monsters' forms were bizarre. To describe them, Lorenzo had to use a word he never uttered.
Demons.
"A prophetic dream?"
Lorenzo didn't believe in such things. He hadn't believed the dream the Pontiff cited as grounds for reclaiming the Holy Land. It was just a strategy cooked up years ago to bolster Rotican's coffers, and Lorenzo had laid its foundations. Yet this dream nagged at him.
"That was definitely Benclaus. The Emperor appearing in my dream, of all things."
The Emperor had been there at the moment Mount Vesuo erupted, and again before the Trepin Fountain as monsters roamed Rom's streets. The Emperor hadn't spotted Lorenzo, but Lorenzo had watched him throughout the dream.
"Was it my obsession twisting into a strange dream? Or a dream sent by someone on purpose?"
Lorenzo glanced up at the palm-sized star cross hanging on the attic wall. The cross was wooden, but the star was silver, glinting in the candlelight.
He waited for some "someone" or "something" to appear, but nothing happened.
After what felt like a minute or an hour sitting in the chair, Lorenzo finally decided and stood.
He didn't believe in dreams. But he wasn't one to ignore unease.
Lorenzo lifted the hatch in the floor and opened it. Wooden stairs led down from the attic. They'd originally been just a ladder, but as he'd aged and climbing grew tough, he'd built the stairs himself.
His home held nothing but an old wardrobe and bookshelf—no luxuries or antiques.
People praised his austerity, elevating him to saintlike status. But it wasn't asceticism or feigned poverty endured patiently. He simply had no interest.
When certain believers gifted Cardinal Lorenzo gold crosses or statues of saints, he donated them straight to Setina Cathedral. The more he did, the more they revered him. Inwardly, though, he chafed at these devotees for saddling him with such heavy, cumbersome junk.
Keeping gold in this shabby house would require pointless guards. Not to protect the ornaments, but lest a thief spot something he "shouldn't" and survive to tell.
Dealing with witnesses was always a hassle.
The only person Lorenzo wanted in his house was one who could double as errand boy and assistant. And a dullard too busy snoring at night to notice Lorenzo stirring was ideal. That boy was sleeping now.
"Beno, get up."
Lorenzo pounded on the door to the small second-floor room. The carefree twenty-year-old jolted awake, tried to rise from bed, and tumbled off. Ignoring the pain, he sprang up.
"Yes, Cardinal Lorenzo! You're awake. I wasn't really asleep, just resting my eyes. Lately my eyesight's been poor, so keeping them open too long..."
Beno's one flaw was his chattiness. But since he never leaked internal secrets, Lorenzo could tolerate a bit of noise.
"We have somewhere to go."
"Uh, where?"
Beno wiped drool from his mouth with his hand and glanced around.
"Now? Maybe it's my bad eyes, but things have looked dim lately. Is it morning already?"
"Wake up properly and get dressed first. I'll grab a nightcap in the meantime."
"Yes, Your Eminence."
Beno fumbled into his clothes.
Lorenzo descended from the second floor to the first-floor kitchen. Kitchen in name only—it was more like a shed. Dry grass and dust littered the wooden floor, and mold bloomed in the wall corners.
Beno kept the second floor clean, and Lorenzo the attic, but the first floor defied management. He could ask the Rapal Priesthood for thirty cleaners, but he let it be. He hated strangers traipsing through his home.
Lorenzo took bread from the shelf, set it on the rickety table, and sliced cheese from a bowl with a butter knife, spreading it on. A cup of milk would be nice, but nowhere to get it at this hour.
"If only I didn't need sleep, making things this convenient—and if I didn't need to eat, how much better?"
Lorenzo thought as he forced down the dry bread.
Beno thumped down the stairs.
"I'm ready."
"Eat something too. Might not have time for breakfast."
Lorenzo offered half a torn piece of bread. Beno wolfed it down in a rush, then choked and pounded his chest.
"Where to now?"
"Still deciding. I was thinking the palace, but it'd be too late by now."
"The Grail issue?"
The moment the words left his mouth, Beno realized his slip and corrected himself.
"The olive sack?"
When discussing the Grail with Beno, Lorenzo insisted on calling it the "olive sack."
Plucking olives meant kidnapping someone; pressing olive oil meant killing them. He had a small olive grove, so if overheard, it could pass for confusion. No one spied on his house, but using the code from here made conversations outside natural too.
Beno swallowed the last of his bread and said,
"No word yet on pressing the olive oil. Wouldn't it be better to trust and wait? It's risky for Your Eminence to move personally."
"That's part of my dilemma. They already suspect I'm behind it. If I do nothing now, they'll assume the mastermind is powerless and getting his due. Better to step out then—show myself. It'll make them panic, slip up, expose weaknesses."
What started as one Catholic Faith had splintered into countless sects and denominations, as if worshiping different gods. But at the pinnacle, only two powers remained. The Rom Priesthood centered on the Rom Emperor, and the Rapal Priesthood centered on Rotican.
For five hundred years, the two had opposed, competed, sometimes reconciled, then clashed again. Relations soured during the last Holy Land Recovery War, seemed to mend in the past decade, only to tangle anew over the Grail.
Pontiff Dionysus leveraged two kingdoms under Rapal influence, Glitten and Parens. Emperor Benclaus stayed silent. Dionysus hastily declared victory.
'Benclaus isn't a fool. Not like his war-obsessed grandfather or dimwit father. He knows the knights from those two kingdoms set off on the Grail quest. He knows, yet stays silent.'
If the Emperor had opposed or endorsed the Grail matter, Lorenzo could counter accordingly. But amid citizens mocking him as a fool, he chose silence.
Lorenzo fretted over the Emperor's silence. Then, a month ago, Father Danel met the Emperor and vanished. Then, brazenly, using Bishop Davit, they revoked Father Jade's excommunication and banishment. Clearly, they'd secured a pardon from the Emperor.
From Lorenzo's view, the most irritating player had moved.
A knock sounded at the first-floor front door. Beno approached, hand on the dagger at his waist. He cautiously opened the door and exchanged brief words with the visitor.
Beno returned to the table.
"The wine shipment to the palace was returned."
Wine or grapes served as code words like olives. Unlike olives, Lorenzo never drank wine, making it safe.
When the Grail first surfaced, Lorenzo had planned to call the Emperor "grapes," and if he acted, say "the wine has aged." But it never came up.
Now, "wine" referred to someone else.
Father Danel!
'If Father Danel went somewhere other than the palace, where would he head at this hour?'
Lorenzo finally decided and stood.
"We'll go to Saint Vesta Cathedral."
"Now?"
"Now."
Beno set down his bread and rose. Once Lorenzo decided, the boy followed without question or word. Dull or chatty, that's why Lorenzo kept him as errand boy.
"Leaving the olive sack at Setina would be less meaningful anyway."
Lorenzo muttered to himself.
Five hundred years ago, when the Catholic Faith wasn't yet an official religion, Saint Vesta had built a small chapel there for sermons. Back then, it was simply called "Vesta's School."
Then, in the late Rotin Empire, the Emperor burned the school—and Vesta alive—with it. Coincidentally, the Empire fell soon after, so people still called Rotin's fall "Vesta's Curse" or "Vesta's Blessing." Sometimes "divine punishment."
After Rom replaced Rotin as the new Empire, the first thing its Emperor did was build a cathedral on the site of Vesta's School. He named it Saint Vesta Cathedral. That's why Rom's first Emperor, Gallius, came to be seen as the Faith's patron and elevated to sainthood.
It's all polished now, but by the standards then, the cathedral's construction was pure politics.
After Rotin's fall, the world had begun embracing the Catholic Faith. The moment Rotin's last Emperor died, its bishop declared himself Pontiff—the Faith's first—and dubbed a tiny village Rotican, consecrating the land and building Setina Cathedral there.
Emperor Gallius needed to steal back the spotlight from Rotican: a bigger building, in a more meaningful spot. But buildings alone wouldn't gather faithful, so he founded a priesthood centered on Saint Vesta Cathedral.
That was the Rom Priesthood.
The Faith's priests pledged loyalty to Rotican's Pontiff while banding around the Rom Priesthood. It bruised the Pontiff's pride. So he gathered priests more amenable to his will and formed a new priesthood centered on the city of Rapal.
That was the Rapal Priesthood.
This consolidation unfolded slowly over five centuries, so it wasn't just rivalry between two priesthoods. In fact, Cardinal Pietro, now at the heart of the Rom Priesthood, was on good terms with Lorenzo. During the last Pontiff election, Pietro had even voted for Dionysus.
Bishop Davit of Saint Vesta Cathedral was a bit wary of Lorenzo personally—not due to power dynamics. Lorenzo's stern face cowed anyone.
Lorenzo knew well of the friendship between Father Danel and Bishop Davit. If Danel couldn't enter the palace, he'd seek one of them.
Saint Vesta Cathedral, or Lorenzo's own home.
'At least the cathedral guarantees seeing Bishop Davit. With luck, he'll say where Danel is... Either way, no wasted trip.'
Lorenzo asked Beno,
"Got your knife?"
"Of course. In case we need to press some olive oil?"
"Prepare for it. Wine's fine. Always has been. The problem's the olive oil. This time, we press it. Seize the chance—don't miss it. No witnesses, no cleanup worries."
"My memory's weak, so could you remind me once more?"
Beno's other flaw was his memory. No issues yet, but future trouble loomed.
Lorenzo didn't blame him, explaining patiently.
"The name of the olive oil?"
"Yes."
Hoping Beno truly grasped it, Lorenzo uttered the name once more before leaving.
"Jade."
"Jade is the olive oil, olive oil is Jade..."
Beno muttered it repeatedly to avoid mistakes. Lorenzo liked that too.
"If the chance comes, we press it for sure... Yes, got it locked in. No forgetting now."