He’d had a headcold and had been feeling wheezy all week, his chest tight and pressed. He’d left his house knowing that if he waited in for Cason’s Friday visit, the doctor would declare him unfit. Palladio just wanted to be at work. He had begun to acknowledge that this church would be his last building, and he wanted it to be his legacy. His immortality and his mortality met each other, abruptly, on the steps. The wheezing in his lungs reminded him that he was sixty-nine. He could no longer blame the decades of stone dust he had breathed in, and not wholly breathed out again. He was getting old. Zabato stuck his shock-head out of the doorway. ‘Master, may we continue? The light is dying.’ On the last step Palladio was brought up short by a sharp and sudden pain. Petrified, he staggered, his flesh suddenly freezing. It felt like a celestial hand was squeezing his heart, which leapt like a snared coney. The light is dying, he thought in a sudden panic, and so am I. Surely the Lord would not take His builder before he had completed His contract?
