The Chamber of Ten

glance—she pulled out her cell phone and rang Domenic.

“Good morning,” he said cheerily. “Are you two feeling any better?”

You two? She flinched at the words. Did they all think it was all right for her relationship with Nico to be public now that she had let them see how much she cared for him, feared for him, and loved him?

“Have you ever heard of a member of the Venetian government named Zanco Volpe?” she asked, unintentionally curt.

“I don’t think so. Was he a senator or a member of the Ten?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe just an advisor of some kind. But he had a lot of power in the city.”

Domenic knew more about Venetian history than anyone she had met since she had first come to work at the university, three years before. He knew Venice, its people and culture and politics—but he knew the history best of all.

“The name isn’t familiar,” Domenic admitted. “Why do you ask? Did you and Dr. Schiavo find something in the Petrarch manuscripts?”

Geena could not think of any way to explain it to him that would not have led to a thousand other questions, not to mention worries about her mental stability. Instead, she ignored the question and forged ahead.

“What about someone called Akylis—maybe some kind of magician or shaman or something?”

“I’ve never heard ‘Akylis’ used as a person’s name before,” Domenic said.

“But you’ve heard the word?”

“I don’t know the etymology of it, but scholars have suggested the word as the root for the naming of ancient Aquileia, on the northern shore of the Adriatic. It was founded in the second century B.C.—”

“Count on you to know that,” Geena said, her mood lightening for a fleeting moment.

“It’s my job to know that,” Domenic reminded her.

“What about a Doge named Pietro … shit, something, I can’t remember the last name … and a count called Alviso Tonetti?”

She came to an alley too jammed with people and turned left, seeking an alternate route. Striding past a puppet shop where she always loved to stop and stare at the extraordinary marionettes in the window, she spared only a glance.

“That’s an easy one,” Domenic said. “The Doge was Pietro Aretino—”

“That’s it, yeah.”

“—and, according to the history books, Tonetti was his nemesis. Records from the period say that the Doge plotted to dismiss the Great Council, Venice’s equivalent to the Senate, as well as the Council of Ten and make himself some kind of emperor. Tonetti persuaded the Great Council to banish the Doge, and two of his conspirators—members of the Ten—were executed. Well, murdered, really, because it wasn’t as though they were tried for crimes against the state or anything. They called Tonetti ‘Il Conte Rosso’ after that because of the bloodshed.”

“Holy shit, it’s real,” Geena muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she said quickly. A glimpse into a shop window filled with Carnival masks gave her a start. Too many faces watching her. Too many people around her.

“What year was that? With the ‘Red Count’?” she asked.

“Early 1400s. Maybe 1415, 1417, around there.”

Then she remembered the second of Nico’s weird visions that had spilled over into her brain, of soldiers escorting another banished Doge to the canal, forcing him to leave the city.

“There were other Doges banished, weren’t there?”

“Two that I know of. Geena, what’s this all about? Are you coming to the Biblioteca today, or what? We’ve got a lot of prep work to do before the BBC crew shows up tomorrow. And, honestly, I’m sick of the dirty looks I’m getting from Adrianna Ricci.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said, dodging around an elderly couple walking arm in arm past shop windows, taking up the entire alley. “Just trying to track down … I just have to meet Nico and then I’ll be there.”

“I thought he was with you?”

Geena cut through a cluster of people and crossed a wide, well-preserved bridge. The buildings along the narrow canal that flowed beneath it had beautiful facades and many windows were filled with flower boxes, but the first floors were crumbling and stained by past high tides.

“Who were the other two Doges?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“Giardino Caravello in the 1390s, and then the most famous, Francesco Foscari, in 1457.”

“Foscari?”

“Yes. One of the subjects of Lord Byron’s play The Two Foscari. The same family the university is named after. Actually, some of the research I’ve read suggests all three of the banished Doges were related—perhaps distant cousins. Caravello, the first of the three, was apparently banished because he wanted his relatives in all levels of Venetian government. And not just Venice. The family had spread out to other powerful Mediterranean cities, sort of insinuating themselves into government wherever they could. Caravello was much more interested in power for his family than the glory of Venice.”

“And the other two, Aretino and Foscari, were related to him?” Geena asked.

“According to some sources,” Domenic said, impatiently. “Now are you going to tell me what all of this is about?”

Geena emerged from an alley and turned right on Riva del Ferro, the Grand Canal on her left. It had always seemed strange to her that this stretch of water was considered part of the Grand Canal, as it was so much narrower than other segments, but it was still broad enough that water buses, taxis, and private boats purred in both directions. The Rialto Bridge was just ahead, with its series of arches forever enclosed to protect the many shops inside the bridge.

But Geena knew she wasn’t going that far. In the flash of memory that Nico had blasted into her head, apparently unintentionally, she had known this place. She knew the house that had once belonged to Il Conte Tonetti.

A small crowd had formed in front of the once grand mansion. A police boat was moored at the edge of the canal and other officers had come on foot. Half a dozen of them clustered outside the front door, keeping people back from the old building.

From somewhere behind her, around the curve of the canal, she could hear the siren of a water ambulance. The noise echoed off the water and the bridge and the faces of the buildings, growing into a sound that was almost a scream.

Heart fluttering in her chest, imagining the worst, Geena shoved her way into the crowd. People snapped at her in Italian. Whatever tourists had been in the vicinity when the ugliness had begun had made themselves scarce. These were Venetians now, the people of the city. Neighbors and shopkeepers and even a couple of gondoliers, who she thought must have been having coffee in the cafe two doors down.

“What happened?” she asked. “Can someone tell me what happened?”

The frantic edge in her voice made her cringe, but it seemed to draw the right attention. A young man, no more than twenty, tossed his cigarette to the ground and stamped it out.

“A break-in at one of the apartments,” the guy said. “I heard one of the cops say the owner was beaten badly. The weird thing—at least from what the police were saying—is that the apartment wasn’t even robbed.”

Ice trickled along Geena’s spine. Flush with guilt by association and fear for Nico, she continued to forge her way through the crowd, searching for his face. But she knew in her heart that he had already gone. How long ago had he been there? An hour? Thirty minutes?

Retreating to the shadow of the Rialto Bridge, she pulled out her cell phone and called Domenic again.

“Are you on your way?” he asked upon answering.

“Dom, listen. You know everyone in Venice. You must know someone with the police, right?”

For just a second, Domenic was quiet. When he spoke again, his levity had vanished.

“What’s wrong, Geena? What’s going on?”