Admiral Slovo was a man of his time, but of more than one dimension..In hissixteenth century, a pirate might be followed by the corpse of his victim,walking across the ocean, until putrescence claimed it. Or an interview withthe Pope might be mirrored, exactly, by one with the Devil. Reality shiftscould cause a King to see his capital city shimmer into another Realmentirely.Through such scenes of macabre hallucination, mayhem and murder, Slovo is aman alone, set apart by his stoic beliefs from the rigours of human fears andpassions. As such, he was a valuable find for the Vehme, a clandestine,subversive society that ensnared its members from an early age, securingloyalties by the expedient methods of blackmail, bribery and barbarism.But Slovo is more than a Vehmist puppet, and whether as a brigand on the highseas, or emissary to the Borgias, or as the Pope’s Machiavellian Mr Fix-it, heplots a course that suits his own ends as much as those of his paymasters. Heknows that, in the words of his mentor Marcus Aurelius, "in a brief while youwill be ashes of bare bones; a name, or perhaps not even a name". And thereare few things that cannot be solved by a stiletto in the eye.