Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch (gold foil)

Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch (gold foil)Gustav Klimt Judith II (gold foil)Gustav Klimt Hygieia (II)Gustav Klimt Goldfish (detail)
he'd drunk too much tonight, from a secret cache of wine whose discovery would deliver him into the machinery of the inquisitors within ten minutes.
Yes, you could say this for old Vorbis. Once upon a time the Quisition had been bribable, but not anymore. The chief He'd learned about the Turtle, there. It had all made sense. He'd thought: it sounds right. It makes sense. But sense or not, that thought was sending him to hell.
Vorbis knew about him. He must do. There were spies everywhere. Sasho had been useful. How much had Vorbis got out of him? Had he said what he knew?exquisitor had gone back to fundamentals. Now there was a democracy of sharp knives. Better than that, in fact. The search for heresy was pursued even more vigorously among the higher levels in the Church. Vorbis had made it clear: the higher up the tree, the blunter the saw.Give me that old-time religion . . .He squeezed his eyes shut again, and all he could see were the horns of the temple, or fragmented suggestions of the carnage to come, or . . . the face of Vorbis.He'd liked that white city.Even the slaves had been content. There were rules about slaves. There were things you couldn't do to slaves. Slaves had value.