The Chamber of Ten (19 page)

Quietly, now
, he thought.

And the efforts of his hands did grow more cautious. He felt Volpe eager and frantic in his mind, holding back and yet watching with glee. Soon many of the books were strewn across the floor behind the shelves, and Nico could see the gray stone of the church’s bare walls.

The hole needs to be wider
, Volpe commanded, and Nico could only do as he was told. As he prised the shelves away, Volpe was whispering,
They can’t have changed this as well
. Can’t
have. They wouldn’t have been so stupid
.

And then Nico saw the first seam in the stonework, filled with crumbling mortar that powdered away at his touch, and Volpe said,
I hid it so well
.

He dug his fingers into the chalky mortar, quickly loosening one of the stone blocks. When he managed to shove the first block back into darkness—where it landed with a dull thump—Nico caught a whiff of something stale that inspired a rush of strange nostalgia, and he turned his face away trying to find clean air.

Volpe turned his head back and breathed in deeply. “Old air, and the smell of Venice as it should always be,” he said aloud, sighing and breathing in again. Then
he pulled back and returned Nico’s body to him, saying,
I need to rest, and you need to get inside. I’ll be watching. Light the braziers, but don’t touch anything. This is a special place
.

“Special how?” Nico asked.

I told you … the heart of Venice
.

Nico glanced over his shoulder at the arched doorway he had come through. The door was closed, but he still worried about being discovered. The priest would not remain in the sacristy all afternoon.

“What if someone comes while I’m in there?” he whispered in the gloom.

He could feel Volpe’s exhaustion and his impatience, but then the old magician surged up inside of him again. Nico felt himself set adrift inside his own body, but he fought to remain aware, to continue to see out of his own eyes, and perhaps because Volpe was tired, he succeeded. His hands came up and clawed at the air, fingers contorted as if he were conducting some cruel symphony. He spit three times onto the dusty flagstones and used the toe of his shoe to scrape odd sigils in the dust.

The air in the room grew dense for a moment, the way it did just before a storm, and in that instant he blinked in surprise. The wall and bookcase looked exactly as it had when he had entered the room, intact and undisturbed. But then he inhaled deeply and the illusion vanished, so that he could see the opening in the wall clearly once again.

What have you done?
Nico asked, though he spoke only in his mind.

A simple concealment
, Volpe explained.
If anyone passes by, perhaps to ascend to the choir loft, they will see nothing out of order
.

And now I rest
, Volpe added, but his words were only thoughts, as he retreated, fading back into Nico’s mind. Nico could still feel his presence behind his eyes, like a parent overseeing its child’s explorations. He started pushing at the next block.

No one disturbed him in his work, for which Nico was glad. If someone had come, he feared what might have happened. He would black out again for a while, and when he came to his fists would be bruised some more, his clothes more spattered with blood.

At last the hole was large enough to crawl inside. It took a nudge from Volpe to get him going, and he wormed his way through the hole and dropped to the floor. It was scattered with dust and grit and the crumbling remains of rat shit. He pulled the bag behind him, then the memory popped into his head that he’d bought matches the previous night as well as food and water. He had never smoked, but he knew whose idea it had been.

There were four metal braziers scattered around the room, filled with scraps of wood so dry that they ignited at the first touch of a match. Soon the room was illuminated, and Nico took a good look. He stepped back to the hole in the wall and sat on the pile of fallen blocks, enjoying being in control of his own body again—

But am I really in control? He’s only leaving me alone because I’m doing what he wants. If I turned and tried climbing back through the hole with the bag—

You cannot!
Volpe screamed in his mind, and Nico winced and clapped his hands over his ears.
This is important. This is
urgent.
Now do as I say, if you value your safety and sanity, and perhaps after that there may be chances to negotiate your freedom
.

Nico gasped and stood, swaying slightly as Volpe slipped away once again. When Volpe was to the fore it was like having terrible cramps, his muscles twisted and under the volition of someone else, and when control returned his limbs suffered from tingling pins and needles.
Freedom
, Nico thought, but he had no way at all of telling how sincere Volpe could be.

The chamber was unremarkable. Square, ten paces wide, the only items it contained were the burning braziers, the only architectural features the slightly vaulted ceiling and the hatchway he had just forced himself through. So what was there not to touch?

“The heart of Venice,” Nico said, hoping for something from the spirit inside. But for now Volpe was silent, and Nico sat and waited for whatever came next.

This is important. This is
urgent.

She had heard those words clear as day, drawled in the same not-Nico voice that had told her,
Come here, sweetness
, just before he’d slashed her shoulder. And whispered into the ear of her mind, they made the Venetian night more threatening, more dangerous, and a place where she knew Nico was once again being driven to do things he did not wish to or could not understand.

She had no idea where Nico was now. She’d left the Palazzo Cavalli soon after realizing she’d missed him, heading across the Grand Canal in the vain hope that she could pick up his trail again. She felt so lost in the city she had quickly grown to love, and several times around midnight she had tapped Domenic’s number into her cell and hovered her finger over the call button. But she had resisted every time. She’d cast herself after Nico now, and this could only end when she found him. After that would
come the investigation, the police interviews, Nico’s assessment and possibly prosecution … but that was something to worry about in the future.

So she wandered, waiting for another flash that might tell her where Nico was now. She’d turned her cell off, but every now and then she switched it on again to check whether Nico had, by some miracle, tried to contact her. But the messages were all from Domenic, and the texts were also from him, along with one more from Ramus, and three from Finch. In his third text, Finch asked if she’d like to join him for dinner, and for an appalled moment she thought he was making a move on her. But her tiredness and worry were skewing her perception; it was a business meeting he requested, of course, though one carried out over a friendly dinner. Finch could feign concern for her and her wayward boyfriend—and in truth she thought he really did care, beneath that producer’s veneer and distinctly British bluster—but for him, this visit to Venice was still very much a business concern.

She answered no messages, but she did send one to Domenic.
I’m fine, Dom. Thank you, and I’m sorry I ditched you. But I have to find Nico
. She knew how worried he’d be at that, and seconds after she’d sent it she realized how unfair it was putting him in such a position. But she thought she owed him some contact. And she wasn’t about to lie.

She knew that Domenic would be looking, and he knew this city well. But she had the advantage of being truly lost.

Just after four o’clock, her wounded arm aching more now than ever before, she was sitting at a table toward the back of a great pizzeria she’d been to with
Nico several times before. She had skipped lunch and needed to refuel. She’d eaten, and was making short work of a strong cup of coffee when someone passed by the window.

Many people had passed the restaurant window in the half hour she’d been inside, but something about this one had snagged her attention like a hook in her cheek. She felt drawn to it, standing and knocking her table so that coffee slopped over the lip of her cup. The figure was already gone.

Not for a moment did she think it was Nico. This person moved quickly, yet with a slight stoop, and there was nothing about the fleeting silhouette that she recognized. Yet she was drawn to the restaurant’s front door, opening it and staring after whoever had passed. The street was empty, the canal running alongside silent for now but for the gentle lap of water against stone.

Looking into the emptiness, she shivered and knocked her wounded arm against the doorjamb.

“Would you like the bill?” the little waitress who’d been serving her asked. She was standing at Geena’s elbow, perhaps afraid that Geena was about to leave without paying, or maybe just concerned.

“Yes, please,” Geena said, still peering out the door. “The city’s quiet today.”

“It’s a dreadful day,” the waitress said.

Geena let the door close, keeping the air-conditioning inside, and turned to look at the waitress. “What do you mean?”

The young woman’s eyes widened. “You haven’t heard? Terrible stuff. An old building collapsed in Dorsoduro, just fell into the canal. Seven people were killed. They’re saying there’s some kind of tomb underneath.”

“A tomb? What are you talking about?” Geena asked, more sharply than she’d intended.

The waitress shrugged. “All I know is what my customers tell me. I wish I could go home and watch the news.”

Geena stared at her for a few seconds before the waitress shrugged again and went to fetch her bill, leaving her to wonder. Her archaeologist’s mind went into overdrive. She wanted to know what building this was, how its foundations had been undermined enough for it to crumble into the canal, and—more than anything—if there really had been some kind of tomb revealed by its collapse. With her team busy at the Biblioteca, Tonio would send someone else on the university’s behalf. The city council would want someone from the department there, especially if there was some kind of archaeological value to the site. But if people had been killed, such concerns would hardly be the first things on anyone’s mind.

And they can’t be your concerns
, she told herself.
It has to be someone else’s job
.

Unless it was related to the madness that had begun when Nico had shattered the stone jar at the center of the Chamber of Ten. Could it really be coincidence that an ancient tomb had been discovered buried beneath a building in Venice only days after they had found the Chamber of Ten and had its wall give way? She supposed it might be possible, but it didn’t seem likely.

But if it was all connected, then how?

It occurred to her that Nico might be responsible for the building collapse, but she forced the thought away. How could one man accomplish such a feat? She was
letting her anxiety get the best of her. The only way to get the answers she wanted, to find the truth, was to track him down. Until she managed to do that, all of her questions would have to be put on hold, along with whatever crisis might be unfolding in Venice.

I
T’S A
very precise confluence of forces, combined with a delicate placing of the physical. There are a thousand places where it can go wrong. But it must not go wrong.”

He’s talking to me
, Nico thought, but he could not be sure. Volpe had come to the fore and taken complete control, relegating Nico once more to the periphery. Not quite as deep as that dark, hidden place where nothing was felt or known, but close enough for it to be a threat.
Challenge me now and I’ll cast you down again
, the threat spoke, and while Nico simmered with restrained, useless rage, he had no wish to be blacked out again. So he watched and listened, and the more he saw and heard the more he felt lectured to.

He had moved the braziers to the four corners of the room, retreating briefly to the nave to retrieve some of the broken wood and making sure the fires were adequately fed. They gave that bare room a curious appearance, with pools of light at four corners and a more shadowy area in the center. It was as if the firelight could not quite reach that far. Outside, the sun would still be
shining, but in here it felt like midnight. The flames were even and undisturbed, and the gentle spitting of burning wood was the only sound in the room, other than Volpe’s occasional low, deep voice. Nico had stopped wondering how his own mouth, his own vocal cords, could make such a noise. But compared to the reality of what was happening, that was minor.

“
The Book of the Nameless
has always been the only true magical text,” he went on. “Until the time I left this world that was true, and between then and now I have no reason to believe it has been usurped. I’ve seen wondrous things in my brief time walking the modern Venetian streets and canals, but nothing to convince me that magic is part of this place anymore. Magic has its own smell and taste, its own raft of senses, and Venice smells as it always did. This book, then, has the power, and from this book the new Exclusion shall be drawn.”

What are you talking about?
Nico asked.

“All in time,” Volpe replied.

Despite his question, however, Nico knew some of this already. Volpe had used him to gather the materials needed to cast a spell of Exclusion, to keep his enemies out of Venice. But those enemies … they could not be the men Nico saw in Volpe’s mind. Those men had been dead five hundred years and more.

Volpe knelt in the center of the room and placed the book on the ground before him, open to a page decorated with drawings, sigils, apparent formulae, and words that Nico could not read. Next he took the objects from the bag and placed them beside the book. Then he began to chant.

Nico drew back, repulsed by the strange words Volpe was spouting. He did not know them—they were in a
language he had never heard before—but their cadences, their ebb and flow, carried a sickly weight of dread that he could not ignore. It was like hearing his own death pronouncement in another language, knowing the final meaning but not understanding the words used to reach it. His deep voice rose and fell in that small hidden chamber, and the firelight began to dance, as if his breath had disturbed the air of that place.