The Chamber of Ten (23 page)

Y
OU ARE
a historian, are you not?” Volpe said.

Sitting there across from him, knowing it was him speaking through Nico, Geena studied him in fascination. Nico’s face, yes, but the expressions were all wrong, and when Volpe came to the fore of Nico’s mind—took him over like some puppeteer—his eyes had a perpetual squint that had never been there before. And his speech retained the flourishes of a Venetian dialect that no one had spoken for ages. Yet only flourishes, as though he had accessed Nico’s mind to master modern Italian.

You’re in shock
, she told herself.
You’re just focusing on details because you’re trying not to scream
.

A thin smile parted her lips.

“Have I amused you?”

Geena felt her smile vanish. “Not in the least. You make me feel as if I might vomit at any moment.”

Volpe looked—
Nico
looked—stung by this. His nostrils flared.

“I hardly think that’s productive.”

“What is productive? Murder?”

At this, those squinting eyes narrowed further. “It has its uses,” he said, lowering his voice. “But you were there, Geena. I had no alternative. I saved all of our lives. Il Doge would have—”

Geena closed her eyes and held up a hand. “Stop.”

He did. For several seconds she sat and listened to the sounds of the café, the Babel of tourist languages, the clink of spoons and cups, the creaking of the fan above their heads as it turned.

“Il Doge,” she said quietly, and it was not a question. More an affirmation.

“Please, let’s not spend any more time pretending that you do not believe what you saw with your own eyes, or inside your mind,” Volpe said.

Geena studied him, and though the ancient Venetian had come entirely to the fore, occupying Nico’s body to what she presumed was his full extent, she thought she saw a bit of Nico stirring in there as well.

Are you there?
she thought, sending the question out into the ether.

And she felt a wash of love and worry in return that made her hand tremble as she lifted her coffee cup from the table. A bit of it splashed onto her lap, but it was not hot enough to burn.

We are both here
, Nico replied.

She could sense the other in him. Volpe might not have Nico’s ability, his touch, but their mental communication was no longer private. They had an audience. Whether or not Volpe could consciously utilize Nico’s touch she did not know, nor did she have any desire to find out.

Volpe sighed and rolled his eyes. “Really, Geena, why do you keep running from the truth? I am here. I am
real. You wanted to know what all of this is about, and I think it is only fair that I explain it to you. Your life has been irrevocably changed. You can accept that, and perhaps survive, or deny it and surely die.”

She took a sip of coffee. Hand still shaking, she set the cup down. It was much too sweet, but the fault was her own. Four sugars. What the hell had she been thinking?

“I choose to live,” she said.

Volpe smiled with Nico’s mouth. If she had not known that mouth so intimately, it would almost have been convincing.

“Back to my question, then. You are a historian?”

“Archaeologist.”

He waved the word away. “Yes, yes. A historian. Similar enough. I learned much of your work the first day and night after I returned, sharing this flesh with your lover.”

Geena felt her face flush with embarrassment. Lover. She and Nico had made love that night and during sex, with him thrusting inside of her, she had sensed him become distant and cold and more aggressive, as though he did not seem like himself. Nausea roiled in her gut.

“Go on,” she said, teeth snapping off the words.

Perhaps Volpe read her thoughts, though she did not feel Nico’s touch. It might have been that he simply knew how to read people, to interpret their faces, for one corner of his mouth turned up in a momentary smirk, as though he knew exactly where her thoughts had led her. She hated him for that.

Rape? She might not be able to call it that, but the violation and loathing she felt were nonetheless fierce.

“I am the key to a thousand mysteries, the answer to a thousand riddles that you historians have encountered
in your studies. Perhaps one day we will have opportunity for me to introduce you to all of the secrets of Venice and beyond, but for now—”

“I don’t give a shit about Venice right now,” Geena said. “Tell me about you and the Doges. Tell me what you’ve gotten us involved in.”

His nostrils flared again and she felt a ripple of fury emanating from him, felt it through Nico. And then, in her mind, Nico’s voice.
Volpe. Explain
.

Volpe smiled. “Fine. But speak to me in that tone again and, Nico’s cooperation or not, I’ll leave you to the Doges’ mercies.”

Geena felt all the blood rush from her face.

“You wouldn’t dare. Or if you would, Nico wouldn’t let you. It’s obvious that you can’t control him completely. You need him, which means you need me. So get on with it. You’re wasting time.”

She signaled the waitress for a refill on her coffee.

“All right,” Volpe said, breaking off a piece of biscotti. “But enough of your skepticism. Accept what is before you.”

She nodded for him to go on.

“In the time of my youth, the Doge ruled Venice, but he did not have absolute power. Beneath him was the Council of Ten, and beneath them the Senate. Often the Ten exerted a great deal of influence over both Doge and Senate, so any man who could control the Council of Ten could chart the course for Venice himself.”

“And you were that man,” Geena said. She had seen much of this in the visions she had shared with Nico, which she now knew were flashes of Volpe’s memory connected with parts of the city.

Volpe’s smile sent an icy shiver down her back.

“I was. For many years of beauty and enlightenment, far beyond the standard human life span, I controlled the Ten. They saw me as their most trusted advisor, and in that role I manipulated them to my own ends, and through them the Doges as well. From time to time, a Doge would discover his own ambition and attempt to assert his power. Those who could not be controlled were ruined. But over the time of my influence, there were three whose ambitions were greater, and darker, than any of the others, ruthless men whose desires reached far beyond the limits of Venice, and who would have sacrificed anything to fulfill those desires.”

“And you stood in their way,” Geena said.

“Each of them ordered my assassination, at least once,” Volpe said. “They failed, of course.”

Geena took this in, sipping at a glass of water the waitress had brought. “Caravello,” she said. “Aretino. Foscari.”

Volpe blinked Nico’s eyes in surprise. “Your link with Nico is stronger than I realized. You have plucked these names from his thoughts?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. He broadcasts and I receive. We are … open to each other. Yes, there’s a link with me that he doesn’t have with anyone else, as far as I know, but it’s Nico who has the ability. Nico who is different.”

Volpe nodded thoughtfully. “Just so. I believe he sensed me.”

“What do you mean?”

He sipped his coffee and Geena wondered what it tasted like to him. If he liked the things that Nico liked because Nico’s taste buds had acclimated to certain things, or if Volpe’s ancient predispositions would carry
over, despite the fact that he resided in a body not his own.

“The Chamber of Ten,” Volpe said.

Geena flinched in surprise. “That’s what I called it.”

“And where did you derive that name? From your own imagination, or from your link with Nico? From his mind, and through his, from mine? That is what we all called it, myself and the Council, a place where we could meet in secret, unknown to the Doge and to the Senate.”

The archaeologist in Geena came to the fore. “And Petrarch?”

“When the poet wanted to move his library from Venice, I persuaded him to change his mind and arranged for Petrarch’s collection to be moved to the hidden room you and your people discovered beneath the Biblioteca. I could not allow him to remove certain arcane texts from the city.”

“Magic, you mean?”

Volpe nodded. “Spellcraft. Call it what you like.”

“You admit that you ruled Venice through deceit and manipulation. How were these three men, elevated to the position of Doge, any less worthy to guide the city than you were?”

“They cared nothing for Venice, only for themselves, and for their family,” Volpe replied, lifting his chin and glaring at her imperiously. “To them, the people of Venice were pawns. Grist for the mill of their ambition. I had only the good of the city in mind.”

Geena scratched at the back of her left hand. “Oh, of course,” she replied archly. “You were the hero of the people.”

“No, never that. I served them in secrecy, content to
see the fruits of my labors in the rise of Venetian power and grandeur. But you mean to ask what the difference is between myself and these three corrupt men, if our goals were the same.”

Geena sipped at her coffee. “Of course that’s what I’m asking. You wanted Venice for yourself, just as they did. You’re obviously ruthless. You manipulated and deceived and murdered to keep your power. Why are they any worse—”

“Because I was
chosen,”
Volpe said.

Great
, Geena thought.
A psychotic ghost with a Messiah complex
.

“Chosen how, exactly?”

Volpe sighed. Staring at him, she could barely see Nico in that face now.

“In your studies as an archaeologist, surely you must have encountered stories of the Oracles of the Great Cities of the World.”

Geena had been about to lift her coffee cup again, but now she set it down, studying him closely. Volpe had said something before about an Oracle, but things had been happening so fast it had barely registered.

“You don’t mean the Oracle of Delphi?”

“One of many.”

She was about to tell him she had no idea what he was talking about when a memory rose up. While cataloging the earliest of the books they had retrieved from Plutarch’s library, she had skimmed through a volume whose Latin title translated roughly to
The Souls of Cities
. Her Latin was very spotty, but she’d picked up a few sentences here and there that had made her think of a 14th-century French manuscript she had read during a dig in the ruins of a monastery in Talloires. It had included
references to a woman who was considered the Oracle of Paris, who knew all of the secrets and the history of the city and who, it was believed, channeled its soul through her body. Collette something. She had offered wise counsel to nobles and commoners alike.

“Maybe I know what you’re talking about,” Geena admitted, “but only a little. The great cities of the world are, what, supposed to choose someone as their defender—”

“If need be, a defender,” Volpe interrupted. “But more truly, a voice. I am the Oracle of Venice and I have been for a very, very long time, including all of the centuries my heart remained in the Chamber of Ten. My heart and the city’s heart beat together. I know all of its secrets, its ancient history. Ruthless, perhaps, but I have done what was required of me.

“I used spellcraft to keep myself youthful, to remain strong, long past the limits of ordinary men,” he went on. “But I was not immortal and, in time—long after I had banished the three cunning Doges—my health began to fail. I knew that I would die.”

His voice trembled suddenly with remembered anguish. Though she felt only mistrust and even revulsion for him, he wore Nico’s face, and she hated seeing that pain in the features of the man she loved.

“You wanted to continue to protect Venice even after your death,” Geena said. “Venice would have chosen another Oracle, but you didn’t want to trust that the next would be as capable as you were. Whatever the spell was that you used to banish the three Doges, it was tied to you, physically. Somehow—and you must have had help from members of the Council—you managed to preserve
your heart, in order to keep the spell from ever breaking. But when we found the Chamber—”

Volpe’s eyes flared with admiration. “I see why Nico is so profoundly in love with you. A formidable mind.”

“You said Nico must have sensed you,” Geena went on. “You meant down in the Chamber. I think you’re right. Once we were inside, he was … not himself. When he dropped the urn—”

“He broke the spell,” Volpe agreed, scratching at his forearm. “I attempted to restore the spell, gathering the elements necessary—”

“Including my blood.”

Volpe glanced at her arm and nodded. “Regrettably. But it would have been worth it, had the spell worked.”

“Why didn’t it?”

“Caravello was already here, in Venice. The spell cannot keep someone from entering the city if they are already here. Given what Caravello said, we must assume Foscari and Aretino have returned as well.”

Things clicked into place in Geena’s mind, a memory surfacing.

“When Caravello came after us, you said that knife had the blood of the ‘new Oracle’ on it …”

Volpe’s gaze flickered, and she saw danger in his eyes. But she pushed onward.

“But you cut me with that knife. Are you saying—”

He held up Nico’s hand to show her a slice on the palm, already healing. “It had Nico’s blood as well as yours. His mental power—what you call his ‘touch’—may have guided him to me, but I believe there were other forces at work as well. I believe that Venice called
to him. The city always chooses. Even throughout my long rest it chose successors, but it had no need of them as long as I endured. I believe that Nico is to be the new Oracle.”

This was insane. Total madness. Her life had become a nightmare.

“You
believe?
Don’t you know?” she asked.

Volpe traced his fingers along the rim of his coffee cup, not meeting her eyes. Hiding something. “Not yet. But the truth will reveal itself to all of us soon enough.”

Geena knew if she pushed he would only shut her out. Whatever secrets he was hiding, she and Nico would learn them all eventually.