The Chamber of Ten

“You can’t read Latin? I thought you were an archaeologist.”

“I can make out some of it, but only some. I’m not a linguist, and the one I’d normally bring onto a project —”

“All right, all right,” Father Alberto said, waving her argument away. “You’re right. It’s an archaic Latin … or some of it is. Part of it is in Greek.”

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.