"I am already damned for serving Miguel!" Santana cried. His doughy face was taut with sudden animation. "Don't you see that Miguel and his Dukes have overthrown Rome, have supplanted Christ with themselves? And we continue to serve them, not because we desire it, but because we must!"
Kesley frowned. A light of torment, almost of martyrdom, gleamed in the Archbishop's eyes now.
"What difference does it make," Santana asked, "if I help you kill Winslow? I cannot be any more damned than I am already—and possibly, possibly the consequences of your act will—will—do you see?"
"Killing Winslow will topple the whole apple cart," Kesley said softly. "You're gambling an already assured damnation against the chance that knocking off one Duke will crush all the rest and restore your religion to supremacy." He chuckled quietly. "I sometimes wonder just whose catspaw I am," he said.
"Everyone's," the priest remarked. "Poor pawn, you've fallen fair of everyone's scheming."
The priest continued to read for a while, then uttered a brief prayer in rapid Spanish—perhaps it was even Latin, Kesley thought—and blew out his candle. Kesley closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
Sleep would not come. Brooding, he rolled and fidgeted, seeing over and over again the loose-jointed, hideous figure of the mutant.
VI
"I'll be back later," Kesley said in the morning. His eyes stung as if they had been sandpapered during the long, sleepless night; his lips were dry and cracking, and the oppressive city heat hung around him like the caress of a giant velvet glove, smothering without actually touching.