The Chamber of Ten

The ambulance was just bobbing against the jetty, and two paramedics jumped out and dashed across to her. While they assessed her and Domenic answered their questions, Geena tried to relax, soaking in the sunshine after being in the cool of the library, breathing in the familiar mixed scents that were uniquely Venice. And she opened her mind to Nico.

I’m here, and I’m going to help. There were no visions, no flashes of contact from Nico, wherever he was now, but that no longer worried her. She’d find him again, when he was ready to be found. For now she had to relax, and think, and use her time being stitched up to plan what she should do next.

When he opened his eyes, history stared back at him. He groaned and turned his head, and immediately recognized something different. He’d intended turning his head, and his body had obeyed. Something had changed.

Nico looked around, trying to keep as still as possible, as passive as he could be, because he did not want Volpe to know he was here and awake. Whatever flashback this turned out to be—he’d only recently witnessed Tonetti, Il Conte Rosso, emerging from the Biblioteca after having overseen the slaughter of the two traitors in the Council—it seemed that he had time to prepare for it.

He was lying in the corner of a small courtyard. A stone fountain stood in the center with gentle whispers of water rising in three low arcs. Plant pots surrounded the fountain’s base, overflowing with colorful and lush plants —roses in one, exquisite orchids in another, and what seemed to be abundant herbs in several more. In the far corner stood a much larger pot from which sprouted an ornamental orange tree. A staircase climbed one courtyard wall, stepped with an intricate cast-iron balustrade around which a climbing rose twined. The walls were painted a faded orange that had blistered in the heat, flakes of paintwork scattered across the ground like dried skin. The courtyard was silent and still, but for the incessant buzzing of bees. The doors and windows opening out onto it seemed innocuous, hiding no shadows that did not belong.

Where and when am I? Nico wondered. Perhaps Il Conte Rosso would emerge from the door in the far wall at any moment, ready to reveal a new betrayal. Or maybe it would be another of the Council of Ten with whom Volpe would plot, or a Doge facing expulsion or death, or some other man or woman around whom Volpe would manufacture one of his elaborate schemes.

As he glanced to his left and saw the bag lying beside him, and spotted the thing that had half fallen from the bag’s open mouth, he heard the ticking. He thought it was his breathing—even though he believed he’d stopped breathing, because the mummified hand seemed to have one finger hooked up and back, beckoning him with it into the bag. Then he gasped in a full breath and realized that the sound came from elsewhere.

A soldier’s hand, he thought, and he remembered grasping the old dry thing in his warm hand, still bloodied from the nails he’d bent back whilst smashing the ossuary open. The book was also in there, along with …

With …

His watch was ticking, a distant sound so familiar that he only heard it now, when he paid attention. His watch on his hand, not Volpe’s.

“This is all me,” Nico said, sitting up and taking a closer look around the courtyard. There was certainly nothing there to age it specifically, either as modern day or five hundred years old. Nothing but his watch—a Police timekeeper that Geena had bought him for his birthday the year before.

Then he looked up and saw the plane trail across the sky.

We’re going to find out exactly what happened, Geena said, and he saw her coming closer as he fell toward her. And it had been a fall—Volpe throwing himself toward the woman even as Nico tried to hold back. That he remembered for sure. Sitting in that humid courtyard his right hand clasped around nothing, but in his memory he felt the smooth wooden handle of the knife he’d been holding at the time.

“Oh no,” he groaned. He looked down at his hand and saw the blood there, dried and peeling like the paint on the walls around him. “No, no, no …” He grabbed the bag and spilled its contents over the dusty ground. The Book of the Nameless, which Volpe had steered him to retrieve from the church’s bell tower; the gruesome hand; and a knife, its blade and handle still smeared with the dried blood of the love of his life.

“Geena—” he started, and then Volpe rose within him.

Can’t a man rest?

“You … you made me …”

I made you help me, that is all.

Geena, Nico thought, closing his eyes and trying to recall what exactly had happened.

“Come here, sweetness,” he growled, and Volpe drew back again, giving Nico room to scream and snap his eyes open.

“Bastard!” he shouted. But he’d caught a glimpse of what had happened. Volpe had allowed that at least, and in the glimpse he saw Domenic pulling Geena back, and his knife blade slipping across her shoulder, shallow enough to cause no lasting damage, but deep enough—

The blood of a loved one, Volpe said. And now that we’re both rested, there’s one more item we need before we can perform the ceremony.

“The seal of the city,” Nico said, standing because Volpe commanded him to.

They must be kept out, Volpe whispered, almost to himself, and for the first time Nico heard concern in that old remnant’s voice. They will be kept out. Nico walked up the staircase, grasping the hot iron balustrade and enjoying the sensation of being in charge. Only so long as you do as I command, Volpe said. I’m content in that at least. I’ll edge you toward the seal, but I’m always here watching, Nico. Always ready to snap forward and make your muscles and flesh my own.

“Haven’t you done that already?” Nico asked bitterly.

Oh no. No. Laughter in his mind, a dry chuckle like old bones being juggled in a bag. Nowhere near.

They put in five stitches and dressed her wound, insisting on a tetanus shot before letting her go. Domenic stayed with her all the time, protesting when the nurses told him he could not remain in the treatment room. “She was attacked,” he said, and they relented grudgingly.

As she finished the dressing, the nurse—large, round, and sour-faced—kept glancing at Geena.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

“Hmm? Yes. Fine.”

“You look pale.” The nurse was more focused now, looking into Geena’s eyes, casually touching her cheek and holding her hand. Checking for cold sweats, Geena thought, but if she told the nurse what was really bothering her and what had really happened, it would be another kind of hospital she’d be admitted to.

“Just a little shaken up,” Geena said. “It’s not every day I get stabbed.”

“You’re sure?” Domenic asked. He’d been sitting so silently beside the treatment trolley that she’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Yeah.” The whole time the nurse had been working—cleaning the cut, applying antibiotic ointment, stitching—Geena had been sensing Nico’s presence. But this was unlike any time before. Sometimes he’d intentionally probe for her, casting delicious sensation-hints or sharing his mood. Other times she’d be able to pick up on his excitement or anger without him deliberately trying to “touch” her. But this felt … distracted. She could definitely sense him out there, but there was not so much power to the psychic transmissions as before. She was certain that this was not due to distance. He was in Venice, and close by. But what she did pick up was an overwhelming sense of fear.

Nico was struggling to fight against whatever had him. She sensed the ripples of that fight, like the echoes of distant battle, and felt the terror underlying every breath he took. If only she could send back calm, soothing thoughts, and promise him that she was coming to help.

Because she was. Really, there was no longer any alternative, and no other way she could go. The waiting