The Chamber of Ten (37 page)

She caught her breath. “Then you
can
read it?”

“I can translate it, if that’s what you’re asking. I can tell you what it says.”

Geena shook her head, staring down at the pages.

“No. I don’t care what it says. I don’t want you to translate it.” She looked up at the old priest. “It’s an incantation, Father. I want you to teach me how to speak the words.”

In the hour before dawn, the night was blue.

Nico wanted to run through St. Mark’s Square beneath the indigo sky, but Volpe held him back as if he were on a leash. He slipped through the deeper shadows of the arcade at the western end of the square and then in the lee of the buildings on the south side. Volpe had taken control for a minute, just long enough to cast a spell that gathered the darkness around him like a cloak, and then retreated.

The magician wanted to conserve his strength. There were attacks and betrayals to come, and they both knew it.

The humid air clung to him along with the dark. No breeze stirred the errant bits of rubbish strewn around the square. The basilica loomed against the sky, the stars fading with the oncoming dawn, and Nico’s heart pounded fiercely in his chest as though trying to escape the cage of his bones and flesh. He longed to reach out with his mind and touch Geena’s thoughts, but she had warned him against doing so.

The temptation to turn and run was great. He would never have done so—it would have doomed Geena and all of Venice—but even if he’d tried, his puppeteer would have yanked the strings and put him right back on course.

Watch for them
, Volpe snapped.

“I’m watching,” Nico whispered.

He spotted the first of the Doges’ thugs on the steps of the basilica—a slim man in a gray suit who made no attempt to hide himself. He stood with the confidence of a Western gunfighter but, cloaked in shadow, Nico passed by without notice. There were others as well, in front of the Doge’s Palace and the Biblioteca itself. Two men leaned against the striped poles at the edge of the canal, where gondolas bobbed in the water, tied up for the night. As Nico approached the door of the library he saw a lovely blond woman standing in the trees at the beginning of the small park that separated the Biblioteca from the canal.

“They’re already here,” Nico whispered. “They must be waiting for us inside.”

No. These are their eyes. If they were already here, I would feel them
.

“Like you felt them before, when they fucking shot me?”

Spellcraft marks the soul like bloodstained hands, and
each mark is different. I have always been sensitive to such things. Now that I have encountered their magic, they could not hide themselves from me … not this nearby
.

Nico no longer knew what to believe and what not to believe. But even if Volpe was telling the truth, he had to wonder if one or both of the Doges might be just as sensitive—if they would know when Volpe was near.

They are fools, always more concerned with the tactile than the spiritual
.

“They’ve managed to survive hundreds of years and become much more than arcane dabblers, enough to get you hiding in crypts and nursing bullet wounds. Not bad for fools.”

You’re wasting time
.

Nico flashed on Geena, got a momentary touch of her mind. Though she had told him to keep his thoughts to himself, this close it was impossible not to feel her.
Like Volpe and the Doges
, he thought.

He could feel Volpe’s amusement at the idea, and a fresh wave of determination filled him.

Fueled by frustration and anger, wanting morning to come and put an end to all of his uncertainty, he glanced around again at the killers Foscari and Aretino had put in place as sentries. The Doges weren’t here now, but there was less than an hour before dawn and they would arrive soon enough. Perhaps the moment Nico opened the door to the Biblioteca—surely one of the thugs would witness it—the lunatic wizards would rush to take them like hunters hearing the trap closing around their prey.

So be it.

As project manager, Geena had a key to the Biblioteca. Volpe could have unlocked it with a wave of his hand,
but that was unnecessary. Nico grabbed the door handle and it swung open easily. He stepped inside and closed it swiftly behind him, moving immediately across the foyer. Exit signs glowed red along corridors to either side, and dim, subtle lighting kept the library from darkness even overnight.

Had the killers seen him? Almost certainly, and he doubted the Doges would wait for dawn. He rushed along the long hall that led into the back room where they had found the hidden doorway down to Petrarch’s library. The lights should have been off there, but Geena had turned them on. Long black tubes snaked up through the open door, humming softly. They must have pumped the millions of gallons of water out of the flooded chambers, right out the door, across the small park, and into the canal. But they had left the pumps in place, still working, constantly draining the water that continued to seep in.

He went through the yawing stone door and started down the steps into the ancient librarian’s hiding place. Those long, fat tubes were tucked against the wall and he was careful not to stumble over them. The lights that Nico and the other members of the team had strung flickered brighter and then brighter still when he reached the bottom step, as though new power surged into them. The place smelled of damp and rot, but the stones were dry.

Debris had been scraped against one wall, the wreckage left by the flood.

The pumps were huge, humming things, their tubes snaking in both directions—up the stairs to the Biblioteca and through the door that led down into the Chamber of Ten. When Geena had told him they were to meet
here, Nico had wondered how the university had arranged for the wall of the canal to be shored up and the Chamber pumped out so quickly. But now that he knew what the Doges wanted with the Chamber—that they needed to get to the well of Akylis—he knew it had not been Tonio Schiavo’s influence that had inspired such Herculean efforts.

The memory of discovering this door and the chamber below remained fresh in Nico’s mind. He could still feel the strange chill he had felt when descending with Geena and the rest of the team, and his mesmerized fascination with the urn at the center of the room. The power of the spell Volpe had used to keep the Chamber safe and keep the Doges out of Venice had made him feel almost drunk. And the lure … Volpe’s consciousness might have been shut down, but his essence had somehow woken at Nico’s arrival.

I woke him
, Nico thought.

And you dropped the urn
, Volpe replied.
You finally understand. All of this is happening because of you
.

“Bullshit,” Nico said. He had not used deceit and intrigue and threats to control Venice, murdered members of the Council just to keep his power, and banished the Doges.

No. I’m more convinced than ever that you and Geena were meant to be there. The city called you. I have been the Oracle of Venice for half a millennium. I would serve her forever if I could, but I think she has chosen the both of you
.

“We don’t want the job,” Nico said. “We just want to be done with this. I want my body back.”

Volpe did not reply, and yet again Nico had the impression
the magician was shielding his thoughts, hiding something.

He went through the door that led down to the Chamber of Ten. The light from Petrarch’s library reached half a dozen steps into his descent and, below, electric lantern light shone through the place where there had been a stone door engraved with the Roman numeral X, but there was a stretch of darkness in between and he put his fingers on the cold, damp walls to guide him as he continued downward.

Whispers drifted up to him. He could not make out the words.

Volpe did.

The idiot. What is she doing? Turn around, damn you! Go back up!

“Who? I thought you said they weren’t here yet?”

It’s not the Doges. It’s your damned woman, meddling with dark rites she hasn’t the power to—

“Geena?” Nico called, continuing toward the light at the bottom of the stairs.

Turn around!
Volpe shouted in his mind.

Nico felt the magician surging forward within him, taking control of his limbs. His arms were tugged, his body twisted, and the puppeteer inside of him began to turn on the stairs.

No!
Nico fought him, thinking only of Geena, trusting her, knowing that whatever she had planned it meant he had to bring Volpe to the Chamber of Ten as she’d asked.

For just a second, he wrested control of his body back. Then Volpe shunted him out again, but now he was off balance. His foot slipped on a step and he fell in a tangle of arms and legs, spilling down the stone stairs and then
sprawling through the vacant doorway into the inch or so of water that covered the floor.

He’d struck his head. Disoriented, Volpe tried to get Nico’s body off the ground, drawing his knees up beneath him. The whispers had risen to a determined incantation and Volpe looked over to see Geena kneeling nearby, using a chunk of the broken wall as a table. A lantern stood upon it, illuminating the sigils she had scrawled on the rock, and other things as well. Nico saw them now and understood—the hand of a soldier, the seal of the master of the city,
The Book of the Nameless
, and a long knife.

Her eyes were wide, her hair wild, beads of sweat on her forehead. She launched herself toward him like a madwoman, the blade glittering in the lantern light. Fear crashed over Nico, but it was not his own.

“No, you stupid bitch, you—”

Geena kicked him onto his side. He tried to raise his hands to defend himself, tried to scramble away, but she was too fast, too savage. The blade hacked into the meat of his forearm, blood spattering the thin layer of water.

Instantly she retreated, racing to the book and lantern and the ritual symbols she had drawn on the broken stone. She looked at the open pages and started in with the incantation again. Nico struggled within Volpe—he had wrested control once and knew he must be able to do it again—but the bastard was too strong.

You fool!
Volpe thought.
You let her see the entire ritual through your eyes
.

You’d never have given me back my body. You’d never have left us alone
.

That remains to be seen
, Volpe replied.

Trapped within his own body, Nico could not even cry
out as Geena used the knife on her own palm. Seconds later she began to flick her wrist, spattering blood off of the knife in a complex pattern around the Chamber. The lantern light flickered.

Volpe began to laugh, rising slowly to his feet.

Geena looked up in panic.

What are you going to do?
Nico thought.

Volpe let the pain of the knife wound through and Nico groaned, but the bastard did not give up control of the flesh.

“Dear Geena,” Volpe said. “You’re adorable, really. You had me worried for a moment. I thought you might actually know what you’re doing.”

Geena glared at him, fearless and full of venom. “You think I don’t know what you’re talking about? The Repulsion and Expulsion ritual only works if the banished is already outside the city. You’ve got to be out before I can keep you out. But guess what, Zanco? You
are
outside the city. Last night, I had my friend Domenic scrape what was left of your black heart—all that’s left of your dead husk—off the floor. He’s removed it from Venice.”

Defiantly she stood and flicked the knife three times more, thrice repeating the last words of the incantation.

Volpe let his shoulders slump, let his eyelids flutter.

“Nico?” Geena asked, and the hope in her voice broke his heart. She dropped the knife and rushed toward him.

No. No, stop!
Nico shouted. He raged against Volpe, clawed at the magician’s very soul, forced himself upward, and took control just long enough to work his own lips, his own tongue.

“… didn’t … work … still here …” he slurred.

Geena staggered to a halt, confusion in her eyes. Volpe dropped the act and reached out to grab her by the throat.
He slapped her hard enough that the sound echoed off the walls of the Chamber of Ten, off the three stone columns in the center of the room, off those ten obelisks that housed the remains of the men who had been loyal to Volpe and who had murdered him at his own behest.

“My heart may no longer be in Venice, but I am still here,” Volpe snarled. “I’m right here in front of you. If you understood the first thing about spellcraft, you might have managed to bind my soul to my heart and then your foolish gambit would have worked. Why the Spirit of Venezia chose the two of you to be its next Oracles is baffling to me.”

Oracles. The
two
of us?

Geena tried to speak, tried to claw at the fingers cutting off her air, but she couldn’t get the words out.

Nico was the one who answered:
Volpe thinks the city has chosen us both, that we’re both Oracles
.

You will be one day, but only if you live
, Volpe replied.
Now listen to me, young fools. You were never in any danger from me
. He shoved Geena away and she splashed to the floor, gasping.

“I hope you have a better plan for dealing with Foscari and Aretino, Dr. Hodge, because they’re nearly here.”

A soft, chuffing laughter filled the Chamber and the lantern light flickered in time with it. Volpe and Geena both spun around and Nico saw the Doges and their hired killers stepping into the Chamber.

“‘Nearly’?” Aretino asked. “You’re slipping, Volpe.”

Foscari licked his lips, glancing from Geena to Nico and back. “A lovers’ quarrel. And we’re just in time. Please don’t let us interrupt. We’ll happily watch you murder each other.”

Wearing Nico’s body, Volpe glanced at Geena. Something passed between them—
among
them, all three.

Geena smiled. “It can wait until the two of you are as dead as Caravello.”

“You’d betray us?” Foscari asked, feigning insult.