The Collector’s Tithe

Some collectors acquire beauty. Others pay a darker price for it. The cage was only the beginning.

Florence, 1503. Artists are vanishing behind shuttered doors, and the thing that wears Lisa del Giocondo’s face is still whispering through the cracks of the world. Leonardo came home to fight one hunger. He finds a city being farmed.

Vincenzo de’ Neroni survived the Black Death by making himself useful to the things that feed. For a century and a half he has cultivated artists, merchants, soldiers and priests. Now he has chosen his masterpiece: Leonardo, the only painter who ever built a cage instead of a feast.

Running will not save him. Keepers who run are only harvested tired.

For readers of The Da Vinci Code, Mexican Gothic, and The Historian.