The Chamber of Ten

own mind, Nico could read Volpe’s thoughts for the moment at least. The magician could see better in the dark, and a look at those windows from Volpe’s perspective showed Nico there were two men inside. Reaching out with his mind, he could feel them—

No! Volpe cried in his thoughts.

What? Nico demanded, feeling the magician’s panic.

Volpe shook his head. Never mind. Whoever those men are—lackeys and cutthroats, I would imagine—the Doges are not with them.

So what do we do? Nico asked.

Volpe grinned darkly and shuffled back to the edge of the balcony. He rose to his feet, ran to the edge of the scaffolding, and hurled himself through the night, twenty-five feet above the stinking alley below.

In his mind, Nico screamed.

XIV

VOLPE SAILED across the gap between buildings. At the last moment, he feared he would not clear the top of Nico’s balcony and began to thrash in the air, lifting his feet. He made it by an inch. His feet touched the balcony but momentum hurtled him forward and he brought his arms up to shield his face—Nico’s face—as he crashed through the French doors.

Wood splintered, glass shattered, and Volpe heard Nico screaming inside of him. Glass shards sliced his shoulders and arms and stabbed his thighs as he stumbled forward, but he managed to keep his footing.

There were two men inside the apartment, one in the kitchen and one sitting on the edge of the sofa. Murderous thugs but not seasoned killers; he could see that instantly, and it confirmed a suspicion—the Doges had not had time to enlist more competent help.

The pale man on the sofa stood, but Volpe had rested well and the fool might as well have been moving in slow motion. The one in the kitchen swore in some Slavic tongue as he slid a knife from a hidden sheath, even as the other fumbled behind his back, reaching under his jacket for a weapon.

Gun! Nico cried in Volpe’s thoughts, and instantly the magician saw in Nico’s mind what such a weapon could do.

Volpe dropped, snatched up a long sliver of broken glass, and darted at the pale man. Even as the gun came up, he swung the glass dagger and slashed open the gunman’s throat. Blood sprayed in an arc, splashing Volpe’s face, and the dying man pulled the trigger twice. The weapon had been silenced, the shots making only a muffled pop. One bullet went wide but the other punched through his shoulder, spinning him around in a spatter of crimson.

Volpe continued the spin, shot his hand out, and pulled the gun from the pale man even as he collapsed to the floor. He tore the weapon free, feeling in Nico’s thoughts for how it was to be held, and then he pointed it at the Slavic killer even as the man rushed him with a long, wickedly gleaming blade.

The Slav faltered, arrogance and bloodlust battling logic in his brain.

What are you doing? Nico shouted in Volpe’s head.

What must be done! Now be silent.

Volpe faced the Slav covered in blood, only some of it his own. The bullet hole seared his flesh with pain, but already it was diminishing, closing. Nico knew he had not suffered from earlier wounds as much as he would have because of the magic coursing through Volpe’s spirit, and the magician’s connection to the soul of the city. But it had taken powerful ritual magic to purge his and Geena’s bodies of the plague, and heal all their other injuries. He wondered why it had become so simple and immediate now … but even as he wondered, he found the answer in the touch of Volpe’s mind, could see the truth. The bond they were sharing—two spirits in one body, like the bond that Volpe shared with the city—had strengthened. The old magician’s power was building back to its true strength.

“Listen carefully,” Volpe told the Slav. “You still live because I needed one of you alive and your companion posed a more immediate threat. There are things I wish to know. Things that you will tell me.”

The Slav scowled and spat on the floor between them.

Volpe inhaled sharply. “You are very stupid.”

He thrust out his free hand and twisted his fingers in the air as though gripping the reins of a horse. To Volpe, the Slav seemed no less an animal, a beast to be controlled.

The thug straightened abruptly, arms flailing. Awareness lit up his eyes with panic as he recognized that he no longer controlled his own body, and he tried to fight. Eyes narrowed, snarling with the effort, he brought his knife around in front of him and took two staggering steps forward, murder in his eyes.

Nico whispered in Volpe’s mind. Is this magic?

What do you think? Volpe thought.

But how is it done?

Volpe scowled. He had no time to explain himself to Nico. The young archaeologist had left his mind open to exploration several times and Volpe had learned a great deal about the modern world from him, among other things. But in order to fulfill his own plans, he needed Nico’s cooperation, which included silence when necessary. And so he reached out to Nico in his mind, let barriers fall that he had erected in ages past. Nico—and through him, Geena—had glimpsed many of Volpe’s memories already, but now he let Nico into the landscape of his mind and gave him free rein to explore … almost everywhere.

Nico is a boy, perhaps twelve years of age, on the night he waits in the corridor outside of the maid’s chamber in his father’s house. The woman speaks Italian perfectly but there is the hint of Arabia in her voice, and her almond eyes and coffee skin suggest such lineage. Her lips are full and sensuous, her body ripe beneath her draped clothing, and she has been the object of the boy’s desire since the first stirring of his cock.

Tonight she cries out in a throaty rasp, hoarse with lust, and he has come to spy upon her. But as he peers through the keyhole, watching her serviced by an Athenian sailor whose thickly muscled body is slicked with sweat, his own maddening lust turns to fear and shock. The sailor hurts her, strikes her, begins to choke her, and she slashes his face with her fingernails, fighting against him.

The sailor bleeds and laughs and begins to pummel her face with every thrust.

After the fifth blow, somehow she seems to transcend the pain. Through the keyhole, Nico can see her eyes glittering with hatred in the candlelight, her teeth bared. He sees her arms drop back as though in surrender, but she is not surrendering. She twists her fingers until her hands appear to be huge spiders weaving their webs, and she rasps words in some guttural Arabic tongue.

The sailor lifts off of her as though the hand of God has snatched him from the bed. He flails, dangling above her, cursing her as a witch in his native tongue. Her chanting continues and the Athenian begins to twitch, batting at his glistening skin in fear, slapping as though killing insects. Nico has not mastered much of the Greek language, but he understands enough to know the sailor sees spiders on his flesh, digging holes, laying eggs. The man slaps and claws at his face, digging deep furrows in his cheeks, then he plunges fingers into his eye sockets and rips both eyes out, screaming that the spiders are still digging.

The nude woman, body still flushed with arousal, crawls from the bed, corded muscles standing out in her neck as though she herself is holding the sailor off the ground. Then, with a gesture, she lets him fall and he collapses to the bed, turning as though to search for her with those empty, gore-rimmed eye sockets.

Nico never sees where she finds the knife, but it is there. She reaches out and grips the sailor’s sex in one hand, then brings the blade down swiftly. While he is screaming, she cuts his throat.

Nico cannot breathe. He cannot identify what he feels at the sight of this horror—the heart- stopping magnificence of the maid’s nakedness, the violence, the blood. But he understands that the Athenian thought her vulnerable, thought himself her better, and that the maid has proven that an error.

She holds her hands out, palms turned downward above the dying man, and chants briefly. Fire leaps from the corpse and the floor and the bed, rages brightly for several seconds and sends a wave of heat