The Chamber of Ten

XIX

THE SUN shone bright on the day they buried him.

She sailed to San Michele in a water taxi with Tonio, Domenic, Sabrina, and several other lecturers and students from the university. It was the first time she had seen them all since the melee that had ended in Ramus’ death. She’d arrived at the jetty moments before the water taxi, and stood behind them for a while, staring at their shadows. Today, they were as darkly attired as the shadows themselves, all visions in black. Domenic had seen her first, raising an eyebrow as he glanced back over his shoulder, and when they boarded the taxi the others offered her nods, or smiles, or awkward combinations of the two. Only Tonio had seemed unfazed by her appearance. He had granted her two weeks’ sick leave, on the proviso that upon her return she spend some time explaining. He knew, of course, that in the meantime she was helping the police with their inquiries.

She had a week left in which to construct her watertight story. It was more than long enough. She hoped that Nico would be there for that week to help her.

She had not seen Nico in five days, but she had always sensed him close. It was nothing like those usual sensations she picked up from him, because he was no longer himself. He was Nico and Volpe, Volpe and Nico—the merging of a 15th century magician with a 21st century academic. He was a stranger that she recognized, and today was the day she hoped everything would change. To face a new beginning, first she needed an ending.

Aren’t you going to say good-bye? Volpe had whispered. Perhaps he had remained in Nico waiting for just that.

The boat hit a small wave and Geena swayed, shifting her foot to regain balance. A hand held her elbow, strong and firm, and she glanced sidelong at Domenic. He smiled sadly, and in his eyes she saw something that she clung to, storing away for future reference in case the future became too harsh: the ability to understand. When she’d asked him to gather the soaked remains of Volpe’s heart and transport them out of Venice, he had not questioned her request, strange though it had been. She was beginning to suspect that perhaps he loved her, but it was more than that. Domenic could see past the normal and into the incredible, and maybe in his mind the line between the two had always been blurred.

“How are you?” he asked. A simple question with so many answers.

“I’m bearing up,” she said.

“And Nico?”

She shrugged, because she didn’t know. Nico’s future was not yet defined. If Volpe kept his word, today would be the day. But she could barely let herself hope.

“Well, it’s a shame about him and the university,” Domenic said softly. The sound of the boat’s engine and its hull striking the low waves covered his voice, so that only Geena could hear. “He’s a clever guy.”

“He is,” Geena said. “He’ll find his own way.”

“So …” Domenic said. He still had a hold on her elbow, and she found herself comforted by his contact. Domenic was strong and firm, and there was no ambiguity about him. “So, that other thing? Those … remains I moved out for you? How did all that work out?”

It didn’t, Geena needed to say, because the old magician’s spirit it belonged to lied, and he’s tenacious, and after we’d killed the Doges and those other people he promised to go and … But she could tell him nothing of that, of course. Not now. Maybe later.

“It worked out fine,” she said, and the boat nudged against the jetty.

Ramus’ coffin was already on San Michele, and there were hundreds of mourners milling around the entrance to the cemetery as they awaited notice that the service was about to begin. Geena saw many students and lecturers she knew from the university, and plenty more she did not. Ramus’ family was also there—a large group of adults and children keeping close together like an island in the sea of mourners. There was much crying, and little laughter. That more than anything made Geena sad, and brought on her first tears of the day. Ramus deserved much better than this. If he’d been killed in a cave-in while on a dig, or the collapse of an ancient building he was studying, perhaps the mood here, though heavy at the tragic death of someone so young, might have also been lifted to celebrate the fact that he’d died doing what he loved.

But he had been stabbed to death in a café by a mysterious assailant. He’d bled out on the floor waiting for paramedics to arrive, with Sabrina holding his hands and Domenic struggling to stem the bleeding from his many wounds. That was no way for such a bright light to be extinguished.

Geena walked close to Domenic, looking out for Nico. She knew he would be here, because they’d arranged it. They had spoken that morning, mind to mind. They no longer had any need for phones.

“Quite a turnout,” Domenic said.

“He deserves it.”

“What happened, Geena?” he asked, quietly again. Behind Domenic, Tonio glanced at her, and she wondered if he’d heard. She smiled over Domenic’s shoulder and her boss smiled back, but there was a distance in his expression that had nothing to do with today’s funeral. She knew that he would never fully trust her again. The ongoing investigation into the Mayor’s murder had been linked by the police to the fight at the café, and Ramus’ death. And one of the abiding mysteries of that evening revolved around Geena. Who had the men been who’d dragged her away? So far, she’d stuck with the insistence that she didn’t know. But Tonio was not stupid.

“Domenic, one day soon we can talk,” she said, and she stepped forward to hug him tight.

“And that book you want locked away at the university?”

“A very old book about forgotten magic. It’s got to be kept secure and it deserves to be studied. But I need full access, at any time.”

She felt him tense, sensed his confusion, and then she felt the moment that Domenic started trusting her again.

“But is it over?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, and she thought, For everyone but me. At that, he returned her hug. It felt good.

Moments before the service began she sensed Nico nearby. I’m here, he said in her mind, and I have it.

Won’t you stand with me?

I’m not sure that’s for the best. She listened for Nico’s true voice, and Volpe’s slurring of his meaning, but heard neither. He was speaking with her plain and simple.

But—she began.

Here, he said. And she felt his hand in hers. Just because we’re not standing side by side doesn’t mean we can’t be together.

Geena sobbed, once, and as well as Nico’s hand in hers, she felt Domenic’s comforting touch on her shoulder.

After the service came the burial, and she was surprised to find Howard Finch positioning himself to her left. He gave her a soft smile, which she returned, and then they stood in silence while Geena’s student and friend was buried. The crowd of mourners was so large that many people found themselves standing on or beside other graves, careful to avoid the gravestones, peering from behind larger tombs, and filling the narrow pathways that crisscrossed this part of the island. The markers here were basic and mostly new; older remains were stored in metal ossuaries and kept in elaborate tombs elsewhere on the island. Even here, Ramus’ mortal remains would not be at rest for some time. Geena only hoped that his spirit was becalmed, wherever it might be now. As a young woman, she’d always had doubts about such things, even though her life was committed to tracing communications of the past with the present. Now she was much more of a believer.

As the burial ended and the crowd slowly began to disperse, she felt Nico’s influence leaving. I’ll be waiting, he said, and she told him she’d be there soon.

“Dr. Hodge, I’m so sorry for your loss,” Finch said at last. “He was a bright lad. Terrible. Tragic.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped at his forehead, obviously uncomfortable in the suit. The sun was blazing. Geena wondered when it was that she’d got used to such heat.

“Thanks, Howard. And please, call me Geena.”

“Geena,” he said, nodding. “Well.”

“Well?”

He grimaced at her, shrugged, and she knew he had to talk business. Of course. “Tonio tells me you’ll be back at work in a week, and—”

“Sooner,” she said. “I’ll be back in two days.”

“Good. Good. And … after everything, I was still hoping we might be able to … work together?”

“Even though the Chamber is flooded again?”

Finch shrugged, mopping at his brow. He was losing his fight against sweat. “I still have some resources at my disposal,” he said.

“I don’t know,” Geena said, looking away, thinking of that granite disk, the cap on the well of Akylis. “The Chamber of Ten is dangerous. Surely you can use what footage you’ve already got, and focus the rest on the books themselves? Sabrina is a whiz with the camera. There’ll be footage of the books being examined, and plenty of time for interviews down the line.”

“I don’t have that much time.”

“All the more reason to just go with what you’ve got.”

During the several days since those events down in the Chamber, Nico had gently filled her in on what had happened. He’d never once asked her why she had fled—he didn’t have to, because the fear had been rich and hot in his own mind as well—but he had insisted on letting her know what happened afterward. In case, he had said, and she’d known what he meant. In case Volpe stays for good.

Strange that it was Volpe also saying that.

After the deaths had come the cleansing fire. The contagion in the Doges was wiped out, and Volpe had also used it to consume evidence of the conflict. Aretino and Foscari were dust, and their hired thugs were melted and charred away to nothing. And then, on his way out of the Chamber and Petrarch’s library, Nico had turned off the pumps.

By the time the Chamber was pumped out again, the broken obelisks and scattered remains of the Council of Ten would be blamed on the water surge.

“This needs to be done gently, and with respect,” Geena said. “We marched in there too quickly. We need to study and catalog, not storm in like we own the place.”

“But you do,” Finch said, confused. “Or at least, the city council does.”

“The building, yes. But not the past. That’s a strange place, and no one owns it. So … perhaps in a few weeks, I can call you and invite you back over. You can view our footage then, yes? You’ll be able to use a great deal of what we’ve already got. As for the documentary … Petrarch’s library is a collection of thoughts and ideas and stories on paper, not the room they were stored in.”

She could see that he was angry, but he was also at a funeral. There could be no raised voices here, and in truth she thought he’d respect her wishes. A lot had happened that he did not understand—that no one understood, other than her and Nico—and she sensed an underlying desire in this man to leave. Once he moved on to the next project, he would do his best to forget this one.

“Tonio has my contact details,” Finch said.

“He does. Thank you, Howard.”

He smiled, not unpleasantly, and walked away.

“Are you coming back with us?” Domenic asked.

“No,” Geena said. “Nico’s here. I haven’t seen him in a few days, and we have things to discuss.”

Domenic looked only momentarily startled. He was sharp enough not to ask if she thought she’d be all right with Nico. I saw him shot, he’d said to her two days before, talking about that attack when Ramus had been killed.

You saw the bullet hit him?

No, but …

He was terrified, Domenic. More scared than all of us there. The gun fired and he fell.

Who the hell were those men?

We don’t know. The police have been asking me that for the last twenty-four hours. They think they were linked to the ones who murdered the Mayor, but … in reality, no one knows. All I can think is they want something from the library.

That had given Domenic pause. Or from the Chamber below.

The Chamber? There’s nothing down there but dust.

Now that I moved that thing out of the city for you, yes.

Thieves, perhaps, Geena had said. You know as well as I do some of those books are priceless.

There was added security at the university and the Biblioteca now, and Geena knew her future held more interviews with the police. They continued to search the city for men who were dead and gone to dust, using pictures sketched from her own memory. It had been unsettling, looking at artists’ impressions of Aretino and Foscari.

“I’ll see you soon,” Domenic said.

“Count on it.” She smiled as he left, and then Geena wended her way through the crowd of black-dressed mourners, toward Nico.

And there, hopefully, she would find the man she loved.

Nico stood beneath an olive tree planted just to the side of a wide path. Sunlight dappled his head and cast the shadows of a hundred leaves across his arms and hands, and the thing he was holding there against his chest. The urn was old and looked delicate, but Geena knew that it was sealed by more than wax and blood. Magic held this container tighter than Nico’s hands.

He watched her as she approached, smiling, and she smiled back. She could feel the tingle of pleasure that seeing her gave him. But even as she drew close she could not see his eyes—the shadows here were deeper than she’d thought, the tree canopy heavier—and as he spoke, she knew that Volpe was still there.

“It’s all coming to an end,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You sound sad. You were hoping I’d be gone?”

“I was hoping you’d keep your word.”

Nico stepped forward and his eyes were not quite his own. And yet, she did see parts of Nico there. The care for her, the confusion, and his undeniable youth struggling with the aged thing settled within him.

“And I intend to,” Volpe said. “But it’s not quite that simple. There’s this to finish.” He lifted the urn, shook it slightly with a dry laugh. “And then … one more thing.”

“Only one more?” she asked. She so wanted to go to him, hug him, feel his warmth, but she could only ever embrace him again when he was purely Nico. It was cruel to shun her lover over something beyond his control, but she had to think of herself as well. She had to think about her safety. Her sanity.

“Only one more,” he said. “I promise.” He turned and walked away, glancing back to see if she was following.

After a pause in the shade of that tree, she was.

Geena was not shocked or surprised at the skeletons. Over the past few days, conversing in her mind, Nico had told her where this had to end. Aretino’s heart had been contained and in Nico’s possession ever since the Chamber, but it needed to be hidden away where no one would ever find it. The Volpe crypt on San Michele was the one place left in Venice that was still governed by dregs of the magician’s magic. Concealment spells had not been disturbed, shielding hexes were still strong and in place, and this might as well have been a hole in the ground of another planet. As far as anyone in Venice was concerned, this place did not exist.

And located where it was, on an island where invasive archaeology had ceased long ago, it never would.

The journey down had been strange, passing through doorways that looked like blank walls to Geena, and along a short corridor whose atmosphere had felt thick and heavy as molasses. And emerging into the underground room, waiting at the doorway while Nico went around and lit a dozen candles, the true turmoil of Volpe’s family history came to light.

“So all these were your enemies?” she asked, and Volpe smiled.

“A man without enemies has lived an unremarkable life.”

“Nice outlook.”

“It’s almost over,” Nico said. “Can’t you feel that, Geena?”

She wasn’t sure. She felt a change coming, for certain, and she knew it was more than simply putting what had happened with the Doges—and poor Ramus—behind them. Ramus’ death would echo for a long time, because the police investigation would be a part of their lives for months to come. But there was something else beyond that, a feeling embedded in the roots and heart of the city.

“I don’t know,” Geena said. “I know that something new is about to begin.”

“That, too,” Nico said. He came close, and looked into her eyes for the first time since meeting beneath the tree. Even lit by candles, she knew his eyes were different. She’d seen them last as she fled that chamber of death and blood, and they looked exactly the same now. Volpe was still in residence alongside Nico, merged with him and, perhaps, subsuming him a little.

He would deny that, of course. And this was why she knew she could never live with him like this.

“Not long,” he said.

“Good-bye,” Geena said.

Volpe chuckled, a deep guttural laugh that could never belong to Nico. And yet there was a lightness to it she had not heard in his voice before.

“A sense of humor is good,” he said. “And, perhaps, something I should have tried to develop more in myself.”

“Nico laughs.”

“And I will again.” Nico moved away and finished lighting the candles. The soft light shone yellow from old bones, and he shoved a few scattered skeletons aside as he walked across the room. Skulls stared at Geena, eye sockets dancing with shadowy amusement. She wondered who they had been, and whether they had thought themselves good.

“Good and bad,” Nico said, reading her mind. “We have to learn that sometimes neither matters. Where the city is concerned, such human foibles are petty and meaningless compared to its survival. This is such an important place. There are other cities around the world with their own Oracles, and each one is important in its own right. But Venice is a jewel in a pile of coal. You understand?”

“I understand that’s the way you think.”

Nico smiled, shrugged. “Perhaps I am biased.” He picked up the urn from where he had placed it close to the door and moved to a pile of skeletons mounded against one wall. “Will you help?”

Geena surprised herself by helping Nico lift the bones aside. They worked well together, shifting the skeletons quickly, though she tried to ignore the cool chalky feel of them and the way they clicked tonelessly together as they touched. When there were only two skeletons left against the wall, Nico nestled the urn in one of their rib cages. Then, without pause, he started piling the others back on top.

“No final spell or last words?” Geena asked as she helped.

“For him, no.”

“But for you?”

Nico was panting by the time he’d finished stacking the bones, and he wiped his hands across his front. Sweat speckled his forehead and upper lip. He smiled.

“For me,” he said. “And as for me, so for you. I’m going to keep my promise, though you suspected I would not, because it’s my time to move on. The city chose me, and the city has chosen again. You and Nico. And who am I to question the will of a city?”

“You’re Zanco Volpe,” she said. “A powerful magician.”

“I’m a breath in a hurricane,” he said.

“So what do we do?”

“We accept the will of the city,” Volpe said. “In doing that, I will leave this flesh and rest in an object that must then be broken to release me fully.”

“Everything’s broken down here,” Geena said, looking around at the piles of bones and skulls.

“It’s the fresh breaking that matters,” he said. “Symbolic.” He walked slowly around the subterranean room, and then paused, kneeling before a pile of skulls and drawing one out. “Ahh, Gualtiero,” he said, running his finger across a ragged rent in the skull’s dome.

“Who’s that?” Geena asked, but Volpe did not reply. He remained kneeling for a while, and Geena opened her mind to his memories. But there were none. She felt Nico holding back, too, and realized with shock that he was granting Volpe some measure of space and respect. That was the first time she believed that the old magician meant to keep his word.

After a few more moments of reminiscence, Volpe stood and returned to Geena. He sat on the floor before her and motioned her to follow suit.

“Welcome the city’s choice,” he said, “you and Nico both. Open your minds to its influence. Breathe deeply, and when you take your third breath you will become what I have been for so long. Oracles.”

“And you?”

He nodded down at the skull. “Trapped, for a fleeting moment, before the shattering that grants me release.”

Geena was shaking. Volpe had threatened and abused her and Nico, but he had also saved their lives more than once. He had not chosen Nico in which to commit the acts he had performed. Accident and fate had brought them together. And now, close to having her own love back with her, whole and unblemished, she felt a curious sadness.

“Oh, I could have stayed,” Volpe said softly, and he smiled—an ugly expression. Perhaps he’d never had much cause for it.

“Thank you,” Geena said. She closed her eyes and caught a momentary stab of surprise from Nico—or from Volpe, perhaps—and then they held hands and started breathing together.

She breathed in once, deeply, and Nico did the same. She smelled the dust of old bones.

On the second breath, Geena felt a staggering attention focusing on her, as if everyone in Venice had stopped what they were doing and were thinking of her, and her alone. She gasped and tasted Nico’s expelled breath as well, heard his own gasp, and squeezed back when he clasped her hands.

They breathed in together for the third time.

Her beating heart settled. Calmness descended. She felt Nico shaking, just for a second, but enough to force her eyes open. Looking down at the skull on the ground between them she saw nothing different. She held on while Nico calmed more slowly than she had, his shoulders slumping, and he seemed to lessen before her, shrinking down into something …

Into something she knew. He was becoming Nico again, and the realization struck her that, over the past few days, Volpe had changed her lover so much. Can he ever really recover from that? she wondered, squeezing his hands. Can he ever be himself again?

She stood and Nico stood with her, his eyes still squeezed shut. She raised one foot and brought it down on the skull, the old fractures snapping under the impact, bone fragments and teeth scattering around her feet.

The room gasped. Nico’s eyes snapped open, and they were fixed directly on Geena. Shock froze the moment for them both. In her mind, and through the unique link she had with Nico, she felt a widening of perception, and an expansion of knowledge. She knew the city like never before—its shape and quirks, its people and places, those that lived good lives, and those not so good—and for a moment she and Nico felt as if the city was inside them, not the other way around.

We are both the new Oracles, she thought, and she heard that idea echoed in Nico’s voice.

She paused for a measureless instant before stepping in close and hugging him to her. Breathing him in. Holding him tight.