And Leonardo wants to encourage the new world envisioned by Cesare, which will be built to his own plans for cleaner, rational and just cities.Īs they work, Leonardo and Niccolò are made opposing theorists. In this new world, peace and concord would replace the factionalism of years past, and there would be no further place for the condottieri and their petty wars. Niccolò wants to defeat them because the triumph of the condottieri would mean destruction for his beloved Florence, which has earned the enmity of the powerful Vitellozzo Vitelli. But who has access to the map? Both Niccolò and Leonardo fear that the condottieri are involved, as part of a plot to frustrate Cesare’s plans for a new Italy. These extracts suggest that the placement of the bodies is eerily playful, based on geometrical division of Leonardo’s aerial map of Imola. The bodies of the women have been found in neatly-divided fragments, each accompanied by a little bollettino with a riddling quote upon it. The three investigators have a formidable task in front of them. Two others are also trying to identify the killer: one is the put-upon Florentine envoy, Niccolò Machiavelli the other is Cesare’s engineer-general, the Tuscan polymath Leonardo da Vinci. Yet she isn’t the only one seeking the truth about these murders.

The former courtesan Damiata arrives in the town of Imola, the headquarters of the Pope’s second son Cesare, with a powerful motivation to succeed: her infant son is being kept as a hostage at the Borgia court.

Eager for revenge, he sends an agent north to find out more. Women are being murdered in the Romagna, and their deaths may hold the secret to a mystery that has plagued Pope Alexander VI: the brutal murder of his beloved son Juan, Duke of Gandia.

The malice of fortune