Time for the Scorpion to find out what sin his mother really committed. The lights of Rome have dimmed. When the Scorpion and his friends get back to the Holy See, it is a place of fear and death they find, a city cowering under Trebaldi's boot. Their only chance to destroy the Pope's power is to heed Rochnan's last words and look into the past of the Scorpion's mother. Dodging warrior-monks and Inquisitors, they begin to unravel a story that could yield some answers too horrible to contemplate...