The bespectacled boy beside them glanced at the Secret Police and said nervously, "Josiah, even if you want to help, we're no match for those three..."
"Then use your brains against them." As Josiah spoke, she pulled a glass bottle filled with white powder from her pocket and thrust it into the hands of the tall student from earlier. Then she pointed to the alley across the street. "Severino, go make some smoke over there... Oh, this is ammonium chloride. Heat it with gunpowder, and it'll smoke. Hurry!"
"Ammonium chloride" produced vast quantities of thick smoke when burned. She was the group's "chemistry expert," always tinkering with such things whenever she had nothing else to do.
Severino had no choice but to take the bottle and sprint away.
Josiah straightened her dark-gray men's coat, pulled down her old felt hat, calculated the timing, and strode toward Charles. "Wait, gentlemen." Charles put on a solemn expression, pressed down the hand of the Secret Police officer dragging him away, and said in Latin, "I need to see Orsini..."
He had intended to say Cardinal Orsini, who oversaw the Papal States' foreign affairs, but before he could finish, a panicked, shrill voice cut him off. "Officer, over there! I saw someone moving something that looked like gunpowder over there. They must be planning to blow something up..."
The three Secret Police officers turned their heads, their faces changing drastically.
White smoke billowed through the alley in the distance, resembling the smoke produced by a Flintlock Gun shot.
"Damn it!" The leading Secret Police officer viciously threatened Charles, "Stay right here and don't run, or I'll break your bones!" Then he led the other two toward the alley. Archbishop Muzarelli had been blown to death with a bomb that very morning, after all. Any