In the StoryBlack Smoke
The conclave has not yet chosen. One cardinal remembers a different election. Sequestered in the Vatican, Matteo Valli carries an outcome no one around him can verify. Another name, another sequence of events, lending new weight to every present conversation. His memory may be a warning. It may also become a way to influence others without being able to account for his source.
Open the novel ↗A moment in the opening pages
The day before, Sister Elena Mazzanti had shown him the system’s diagram as though explaining an electrical installation: two stoves, a temporary flue, the substances used to turn the smoke clearly black or white, then the audible confirmation once the election was decided. What interested Valli was not the technology but the delay. Between a result existing in the chapel and the square being able to interpret it lay hands, fire, a chimney, wind, and men instructed not to improvise.Read the excerpt ↗