The Chamber of Ten

V

GEENA ARRIVED at the university just a few minutes before eight o’clock in the morning. She strode down a corridor lined with faculty offices, her footfalls echoing loudly. In the summertime, the university always felt abandoned to her. There were still students and teachers around, but far fewer, and the usually bustling main building seemed like some old haunted mansion.

She had stopped by Nico’s apartment on the way and used her key to let herself in. It would have given her peace of mind to find him asleep in his own bed, but she had known the moment she entered that the place was empty. Dust motes swirled in her wake as she passed through. He slept at her place nearly every night, and only retreated to his own when one of them had to focus on work that did not involve the other. Considering that they were both working on the Biblioteca project, that was rare.

If Nico needed to clear his head, Geena knew he was much more likely to go wandering around the city than to hide out in his apartment, but she had to check, just in case. There had been no sign he had ever come home after the incident two days before, not even to change his clothes. The shower was dry, no damp towels hung from the bathroom door, and the only dirty laundry was a sack that he had brought back from her place a few days earlier and not gotten around to doing yet.

Stalker, much? she thought.

But she knew she wasn’t being a stalker. As much as she loved him and depended on him, this wasn’t even about the security of their relationship. She was simply worried about him.

The university was her second stop. The Biblioteca project was her baby, and Dr. Schiavo would expect her to be on top of things. He had given her some breathing room the day before, and she appreciated that, especially because—officially—he had to pretend he did not know that she and Nico were sleeping together. But now, as far as anyone in the department knew, Nico was “back,” and no one had drowned. Tonio would want her to get down to business.

Her keys jangled as she took them out of her pocket. A loud, buzzing electric hum came along the corridor, the familiar sound of one of the janitors buffing the floor. It eased her mind to know that, contrary to appearances, she was not alone here.

She knew before she opened the door that nobody would be inside. The frosted glass glowed warmly with the daylight, but the simple fact that the door was locked had told her that the office was empty. Now she stepped inside, greeted by the almost unnoticeable static of electricity in the air, both from the lights that she switched on and from the computers that continued to hum, fans running, screen savers drifting against black desktop backgrounds.

A light cotton jacket hung over the back of Domenic’s chair. Had he worn it yesterday, or had he already been here this morning? No, that made no sense. If nobody on the team was here in the office, that meant they were all likely over at the Biblioteca.

Geena took a deep breath.

“Okay,” she whispered, her voice sounding dull and flat in the empty office.

She checked her voice mail and saved all of the messages without writing them down. E-mail could wait. Going through papers on her desk, she found Howard Finch’s business card and slipped it into her pocket. She could call him from her cell on the way to the Biblioteca. She’d have to call Tonio as well, and then catch up with her team on the status of the flooded chambers. If she timed the water bus right, she’d be arguing with Adrianna Ricci at the Biblioteca in forty-five minutes.

Geena shut the lights off and stepped back into the corridor, pulling the door shut behind her.

“Leaving again so soon?”

The voice startled her and she dropped her keys. Even as she turned, she realized it was Tonio and felt foolish for jumping. Tonio Schiavo was fifty-one years old, with a proud Italian nose, a slight paunch, and thinning hair, but he maintained a certain suave handsomeness. Charm could do wonders for a man. The department head smiled and stooped to pick up the keys for her, handing them over.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Normally she would have bristled as the presumption that she had been scared and given him crap about being a chauvinist. Today she barely noticed.

“I’m a little jumpy,” she said, locking the office door.

“After nearly dying on Monday, I’m not surprised,” he said. His blue eyes softened with genuine concern. “You’re okay?”

“Okay? No. I’m upset about the manuscripts we lost—”

Tonio smiled. “Be happy with what we’d already recovered. Your team did nothing wrong.”

“You seem far calmer about this than I expected,” Geena said, eyes narrowing. “Shall I assume the BBC is responsible for your good mood?”

“You should,” Tonio replied. “Mr. Finch is at the site waiting for you. His camera crew ought to be here tomorrow.”

Geena nodded. “Fine. It gives us a day to plan. I wanted to talk to you about sending divers down—”

“I agree,” Tonio said immediately. “In fact, I spoke with Sabrina about it yesterday.”

She paused, unhappy that they had been working around her absence, though she knew they had done it for her own benefit.

“So what’s the plan?” Geena asked.

Tonio must have sensed her irritation, for he shook his head immediately.

“No, no, this is your project, Geena. One hundred percent. It isn’t mine or the BBC’s or anyone else’s but yours. I’m just here to facilitate for you—”

“I know that,” she assured him.

“Good. In any case, Sabrina is getting a team together. She knew she had to wait on you before sending them down. I want the whole thing on film, of course, and so does Finch. The BBC has asked that you wait until their camera crew can be ready as well. That might be tomorrow, or possibly Friday. How does that sit with you?”

“That’s fine. It’ll give us time to do at least a preliminary catalog of the materials we managed to save yesterday.” She glanced back at the closed office door. “What are they doing over there now?”

“Cleaning up as best they can,” Tonio said. “Making sure the Biblioteca staff will stay away. Ramus is going over plans with the city engineer. Domenic is—”

“Is Nico with them?”

Tonio arched an eyebrow. “I assumed he was with you.”

He’d chosen his words carefully, as always, talking around the relationship without ever directly acknowledging it. And, as always, Geena would pay him the courtesy of doing the same.

“I haven’t seen him this morning,” she replied.

“Ah,” Tonio said, nodding as though he understood. “Well, Sabrina didn’t say whether or not he was at the site, but you could try her on her mobile.”

Geena smiled, knowing it would come off as false but unable to stop herself. “That’s all right. I’m headed over there now, anyway. I’m supposed to be running this show after all.”

Tonio nodded. “All right. Keep me up-to-date.”

They parted ways, Tonio’s heavy footfalls marking his retreat even as Geena retraced her own steps along the corridor. She needed caffeine, and hoped that the little café she liked just off St. Mark’s Square would be open. She would talk to her team, then drag Nico away for a coffee and a frank conversation about what the hell was going on in his head.

If he was there, of course.

Geena hurried toward the small dock where the water bus stopped every thirty minutes or so—though in Italy that might mean twenty or forty-five minutes instead of thirty, or not at all for hours.

She waited alone, the summer sun glinting off the dark water of the canal, the day quickly warming up. There’d been no opportunity for her to see any weather forecast, but so far it seemed to be shaping up to be what her father had always called “a scorcher.”

Sighing and impatient, she pulled out her cell phone to check the time—8:36 a.m. Staring at the phone, she thought about calling Sabrina or Domenic to ask if Nico was there. It would be the simplest thing to do. But if he wasn’t with them, she would be facing a serious problem. She had a job to do, people counting on her, and a multimillion-dollar project in her hands. But if Nico wasn’t at the Biblioteca, the temptation to head off in search of him would be almost too much to resist.

Stop, she told herself. He’s a grown man. He can take care of himself.

But she couldn’t quite convince herself of that. Normally, yes. But whatever had happened in the Chamber of Ten the day before yesterday had … what? Scrambled his brain? Somehow he’d been blasted with memories that did not belong to him, and they were confusing him, even changing him. That scared her.

She put the phone away. To the Biblioteca first. Get things under control. If Nico wasn’t there, she could go hunt him down after she made sure everything was on track for the arrival of Howard Finch’s BBC colleagues the next day.

To the east, she saw the water bus churning in her direction across the canal. At least she wouldn’t be waiting out here for—

—the book feels warm in his hands. He caresses the supple leather of the cover and finds it unnervingly akin to human skin. But he can almost feel the dark promise that lies within its pages, so any hesitation is immediately dismissed. Forty-seven years he has been searching for The Book of the Nameless. Petrarch had publicly claimed not to have a copy, but his private writings, found in his hidden library, had revealed the truth. He had briefly owned it, but given it to a trusted friend, a scholarly monk. Petrarch had not wanted the responsibility inherent in ownership of The Book of the Nameless. Always the humanist, he had been afraid to unleash its power, afraid to hold that kind of magic in his hands.

Now he has acquired the very same copy that Petrarch had so foolishly given away, and he covets it even more than he had before it was his. Seconds in his possession, and already he guards it jealously. If half of the legends surrounding this book are true, his enemies—the would-be mages plotting against him—will not stand a chance. If they ever had.

“Monsieur?” the Frenchman says.

Volpe glances up, blinking. The Frenchman has just handed him the book but somehow he had nearly forgotten the man’s presence. Lizotte, his name is. Henri Lizotte. He is a thief of the highest order, though he fancies himself a collector of antiquities. He dresses like a dandy and travels with a small boy all in frills and colors like some kind of harlequin or jester. Lizotte refers to the child as his valet, but Volpe suspects the Frenchman of using him for a different service entirely.

“It is as I promised, oui?” the Frenchman asks, stroking his thin mustache.

He agrees that the book is, indeed, as promised, and for several seconds considers the option of simply killing the Frenchman. The right gesture to the guards that surrounded them would have ended Lizotte’s life, but the Frenchman must have known the peril into which he was placing himself by coming here, by agreeing to sell this book.

And how was he managing that feat? How could he part with it, when any fool could have felt its power?

With a flick of his wrist, Volpe gestures toward Lizotte. “Pay him. But get him out of here.”

Away from the book. Volpe is its master now.

The Frenchman seems content. He casts one final, wary glance back at the book as though afraid it might follow him out of the room, then he happily leaves with the household servants to receive his payment.

“Well?” asks Il Conte di Tonetti. “Is that The Book of the Nameless?”

Volpe nods, sizing up the Count. “It is. You’ve done well, Alviso.”

The man smiles. Il Conte Alviso Tonetti had been a member of the Council of Ten for less than a year, but had quickly become Volpe’s most valuable ally and spy among the Council. The man’s home, within view of the Rialto Bridge, might no longer be as opulent as it once was, and his family’s reputation might have been tarnished by scandal a generation ago, but that only made Il Conte a more determined ally. He had something to prove.

Of late it has not been unusual for Volpe and Il Conte Tonetti to meet in secret at the Count’s home. The ordinary council chambers are far too susceptible to spying, and the Chamber of Ten, below Petrarch’s library, also seemed to have its share of spies of late. The Doge—Pietro Aretino—had been one of them only two years ago. He had seemed content to obey Volpe’s secret edicts as a member of the Council of Ten. But once the prior Doge had died and the Council had voted him to replace the dead man, Aretino had grown jealous of Volpe’s influence.

He dabbles in magic now, and that is Zanco Volpe’s province.

Pietro Aretino wants to rule Venice in more than just name. And that, Volpe cannot allow. Worse still, in his dabbling, Aretino has discovered the presence of the dark power deep beneath the city. Like the gases of decay building up inside a bloated corpse, the evil of Akylis remains long after the ancient magician’s death. Already the evil has tainted Aretino, and the Doge has begun to tap into that power to transform himself into more than a dabbler.

Volpe cannot allow it. The man’s dark ambitions must be ended before they can blossom any further.

He glances around Tonetti’s music room, admiring the harp and the lute and the violin upon their stands, but appalled by the ridiculously ornate piano, which is painted in such a way that it appears almost to be dripping gold. The rear wall of the room is a tile mosaic done in the Moorish style, which clashes dreadfully with the paintings in the room’s entryway. Tonetti knows next to nothing about art, but he acquires it with vigor in order to impress other wealthy people. Still, it is a beautiful place, and each of the servants seems both obedient and happy—an unusual combination.

“How long, then?” Il Conte asks. “Now that you have the book, how long until we move against the Doge?”

“Days,” Volpe says. “It will take me time to master these spells. I only hope that he does not grow brash and attempt to kill me first.”

“He’ll never reach you,” Il Conte says. “You’re too well protected.”

Volpe thinks on this for a few moments, then narrows his eyes. “Are you certain only two of the Ten are his allies?”

Il Conte nods. “As certain as I can be. I believe the others are loyal, and those two—”

“Caiazzo and Soldagna.”

“Caiazzo and Soldagna,” Il Conte repeats, confirming. “They chafe at the bit. The Doge has promised them many things.”

“I have promises to give them as well,” Volpe says.

He smiles, again caressing the warm leather binding of the book, staring down at its featureless cover.

“Two days. The day after tomorrow, you and the others will turn on Caiazzo and Soldagna. Kill them in the Chamber. I want to show Aretino the evil fruit borne of his deceptions before he is banished from Venice forever. If the Council would not rebel against it, I would kill him as well, but they would turn on me in an instant, and that, I cannot afford. Without influence, I cannot control the city. Without control, I cannot protect her properly. No, the Council would never stand for me killing the Doge.”

Volpe raises the book and presses his lips against the warm leather, in a gentle kiss.

“Fortunately, they are not so precious about their fellow Council members.”

Geena blinked against the brightness of the sun, tasting blood on her lips. She felt hands on her arm and allowed herself to be helped up to a sitting position. The water bus swayed at the dock just a few feet away. The concerned man holding her arm—young, a student maybe—asked her several times if she was all right before she could focus enough to answer.

Her fingers flexed as though searching for the book they had held in the vision that had invaded her mind, spilling over from Nico, she felt sure. Where was he now? In an old mansion near the Rialto Bridge?

Maybe so.

And she had to find him. If these flashes were filling his thoughts constantly, she worried that Nico might well go mad.

If he wasn’t already.

Music played out in the street, a tinny melody that sounded like the sort of thing an organ grinder’s monkey would dance to. Nico blinked, then shook himself and took a deep breath. He glanced around the room and found himself sitting in a chair in a rich man’s kitchen.

Fuck. It had happened again.

“What now?” he asked aloud.

Instinctively his right hand reached out and touched the ancient book, which lay on the iron and glass kitchen table. Plants grew from hanging pots near one of the two tall windows. Some of them were herbs used for cooking, so whoever lived here took their culinary tasks very seriously.

A blink of his eyes and he saw it differently. A ghost-image lay over the whole room like some three-dimensional double-exposure photograph. He had been here before, a very long time ago. The building must have been cut up into luxury apartments, but once upon a time it had been the home of Count Alviso Tonetti. He sat now at a kitchen table in the 21st century, but his eyes saw Il Conte’s music room as it had looked in the dawning years of the 15th, complete with the garish piano.

The room where Zanco Volpe had received The Book of the Nameless from the Frenchman. The very place where he had first opened it and begun to peruse the dark power in its words.

Nico understood now. He had been overcome by the impulse to return here—a safe and private place in which he could delve into the book again, away from prying eyes, and where whatever darkness might slip out of those pages would be easier to control.

He stared at the book. Where had that thought come from? How could darkness escape the pages of a book? No matter how ugly the intentions of its author, it was still nothing more than words on paper. And yet he felt somehow unclean now, as though some invisible stain had settled into his skin that could never be removed.

A tremor went through him. His right hand was stiff and ached with a deep, throbbing pain that he had not noticed immediately. Now he looked down at his hands and found that not all of the stains upon him were invisible. The knuckles of his right hand were swollen and bruised and blood smeared the back of his hand.

What did I do? he thought. Then he said it aloud, but it came out differently. “What did you do?”

Nico rushed to the window. If he cocked his head just right, he could see the Rialto Bridge. That tinny music came from the throng in the marketplace that ran alongside the canal. Tourists milled amongst carts laden with leather goods, T-shirts, pocketbooks, jewelry, and a million so-called souvenirs. On the canal, gondoliers shouted good-naturedly at one another as they poled their slim vessels through the sludgy water.

If the back of the building had that kind of view, and with this gleaming kitchen—the appliances alone probably cost more than he made in a year—he figured the rest of the place must be pretty swank as well.

So whose apartment was this, and where was the owner?

What the hell am I doing here?

He snatched the book off the table by pure instinct, not wanting to be parted from it, and went exploring. The apartment was not enormous, but whispers of money were everywhere. The high metal ceilings, expensive woodwork, and marble fireplace told him all he needed to know. Every room was so immaculate that he assumed the owner had a cleaning service. Odd that he had never connected cleanliness with wealth before, but the thread was there.

A small table near the apartment door had been overturned, spilling a picture frame, a stack of mail, and a dish of Murano glass made to look like pieces of candy across the floor. On the wall behind the table was a single streak of blood.

Nico held his breath, turning in a circle, trying to figure out where the struggle would have led him. Down a short hallway, he found two bedroom doors, but both rooms were empty, the beds neatly made and unrumpled. Which left the bathroom.

His hand shook as he reached out and gave the door a shove. Hinges creaked as the door swung inward.

At first he thought the man in the bathtub must be dead, and his throat tightened, his stomach roiling with nausea. Christ, if he’d done this …

Black electrical tape bound the man’s ankles. His arms were behind his back, but Nico could only assume his wrists were similarly trussed. Layers of tape had been wound around his head, covering his mouth. He’d taken a beating, face swollen and bruised and bloody.

But then he saw the man’s chest rising and falling, and he knew he wasn’t a murderer. Relief flooded him and he sagged against the open door. As he did, the book nearly slipped from his grasp and he gripped it more tightly, then looked down at it. He had almost forgotten he was carrying it. The warm leather felt as though it might as well be a part of his own body.

Revulsion made him want to drop the book, to leave it there on the bathroom floor and get the hell away, but his hand would not obey. Nico backed into the hallway and hurried to the door. He opened it and glanced out to make sure no one would see him exiting the apartment, then he slipped through and hurried along the corridor, descending the stairs toward the first floor at perilous speed, the book clutched to his chest.

Geena, he thought. Where are you? He needed her, but even more so, he needed time to sit and think all of this out. On the street, he turned right, navigating alleys and bridges as fast as possible without breaking into a run. Before he could talk to Geena about what was happening to him, he had to try to make sense of it, not just go on intuition.

He hurried through a beautifully landscaped courtyard, its stone and brick foundations crested with an abundance of flowers in full bloom, their vivid colors bright in the summer sun, the heat of the day trapping the scents of a dozen varieties like a city hothouse. A black dog ran by in the opposite direction as if it was chasing something, or being chased, and Nico smiled humorlessly as he saw himself in the same situation.

He would head back to his own apartment, make himself a cup of coffee, and think. Though just holding that book made him uneasy, he knew he would have to open it if he was going to figure out what had happened to him. If Volpe’s presence in his mind was more than psychic resonance, he wanted to know how to get it out of him. He needed to be able to think clearly again, without fearing a blackout.

As if summoned by the thought, the darkness began to edge in at the corners of his mind again. No, Nico thought, fighting to maintain control, to continue seeing out of his own eyes.

But as he crossed a narrow, crumbling bridge, with a gondolier poling a Japanese couple along the canal below, he could feel the presence that now lurked always behind the curtains of his mind. Words played across his thoughts, enchantments from the book he still held as close to his heart as a lover’s secret journal, and he wondered how long he had sat in the unconscious man’s kitchen reading that book before his own consciousness reached the surface of his mind again.

The presence inside of him—the spiritual remains of Zanco Volpe—had other things on his mind as well. He had the book, but there were other ingredients he needed to acquire if he hoped to be able to protect Venice.

Protect Venice?

He’d broken into an ancient church, a city landmark, and stolen a book that must be priceless. He had barged into some random man’s apartment and beaten, bound, and gagged him. What the hell did any of that have to do with protecting Venice?

The spell must be recast before they try to return.

Nico staggered, caught his foot on a protruding stone, and fell headlong down the stone steps leading down from the bridge. The book flew from his hands. He banged his right knee and skinned his palms, hissing through his teeth at the stinging pain of it. But he’d gotten away easy. It could have been much worse. The voice in his head had taken him by surprise. But had it been an answer? Was the presence inside of him self-aware? Or was it just Nico’s subconscious interpreting the things it had learned from the psychic backlash down in the chamber beneath Petrarch’s library?

Regardless, he knew what else he needed for this spell, and it was a dreadful shopping list. Even now, the words echoed in his head and he could not tell if they were his thoughts, memories of what he must have read in the book, or the murmurings of a Venetian magician who’d been dead for centuries.

The hand of a soldier, the seal of the master of the city, the blood of a loved one.

“Fuck,” he whispered, ignoring the stares of two old widows as he bent to retrieve the book.

Its cover seemed none the worse for wear. The blood on his palm soaked into the leather and it stuck to his hand, strangely rough on his skin.

He wondered if the blood would still be there when he looked again.