The Chamber of Ten

Volpe grabbed at the air, hauling himself forward. Nico heard a thud, like the sound barrier being broken somewhere close by, and everyone around the cafe grunted. He muttered three words and coughed, pressing his hands toward Aretino, and Nico thought, Watch out for Geena.

“I’ll do my best,” Volpe said, “But the city only needs one of you.”

Aretino frowned slightly and took a stumbled step back. Then he laughed.

“Time has lessened you, Volpe, buried away like a dead rat.” He turned to leave, casually calling his people to him.

“Nico!” Domenic shouted.

Nico felt Volpe’s temporary exhaustion after his magical efforts. He turned slightly and looked at Domenic, wanting to tell him everything that was happening. Domenic was standing before the cafe with both hands raised, gripping a man who was no longer there. The black man followed Volpe now, as did the man and woman Nico had tackled moments before. The goateed man rocked back and forth on his knees, holding the sides of his head. Blood trickled from his ears.

“Domenic,” Nico began, and then he saw the blond woman emerging from the cafe. “Look out!”

Domenic turned and leaned back, just avoiding the knife that slashed at his throat.

The woman grinned as she walked on. Her knife dripped blood. Nico looked for Domenic’s wound, but then he remembered the woman raining blows down on Ramus, and—

Volpe took him again, roaring in rage. In this fight, I cannot be fighting you! He took in several huge breaths. Nico felt the potential building in his body, and then Volpe shouted, “Aretino!”

Windows shattered in the cafe’s frontage, and Aretino turned. The black man stood beside him, and the blond woman paused a few steps away. In their eyes Nico saw a restrained fear the likes of which he had never seen before. They’re slaves in his thrall, he thought, and he sensed Volpe’s agreement.

“So, the mouse roars,” Aretino said. Geena squirmed beneath his hand, kneeling now that he’d come to a standstill. She was crying silently. Nico tried to send calming thoughts, but Volpe was at the fore now, allowing him to see but denying him any influence.

“You’ll fail,” Volpe said. “Caravello died badly.”

“And you’re looking good for plague survivors,” Aretino said.

“All these years, you think you’ve been getting stronger,” Volpe countered, and Nico could feel him stalling for time, building his magical potential again for one last, momentous attack. Mind Geena, he thought, but he wasn’t sure that Volpe was even listening. “But you’ve simply been fading away. Whatever evil you’ve bled out of Akylis’ lingering power can’t change that. Existence isn’t living, Aretino. The day I banished you from the city you died, and your stink has been worsening ever since. You’ve been waiting for so long, and for what?”

“For your own stink to subside, Volpe,” Aretino said, the first signs of annoyance clouding his glare. Geena squirmed in his hand, and he gave a cruel tug on her hair.

Bastard! Nico thought, but he was powerless.

“I was always stronger than you,” Volpe said, “but it’s not only about strength.”

“No?” the old man asked, and Nico thought, He’s the one stalling. Volpe. Volpe! But Volpe went on, building his power inside, teasing it to the fore, and even when Nico felt that his whole body was burning with the need to vent the magical energy gathered there, still Volpe continued speaking.

“It’s about passion,” he said. “The difference between the two of us is that I have always loved this city, and you have simply coveted it.”

From inside the cafe came the sound of someone crying out in terror and grief, and Nico recognized Sabrina’s voice. Ramus, he thought, but he could not turn around. He could do nothing but watch, and listen.

Aretino’s smile widened.

“I may have been down for a long time,” Volpe said, “but I have been aware of every step the city itself has taken. I am the Oracle.”

Aretino laughed then. It was a cutting sound, dismissive and triumphant at the same time. “Do you think we haven’t also moved with the times? We’ve outlasted you, Volpe. And soon we’ll have all of Akylis’ power in our hands. We will be as powerful as the Old Magicians, like gods in the eyes of men.” And then he glanced past Volpe at someone behind him.

Turn! Nico thought, just as Volpe swiveled to see what the old man had been looking at. Beyond the tall man with the knife, and the shorter woman casually picking glass shards from her hands, a shadow manifested from beyond the cafe.

Francesco Foscari.

He lifted a gun and shot Volpe in the chest.

Nico cried out, Volpe faded back, and the pain came. Both men were subsumed beneath the storm of loosened, uncontrolled magic.

As agony dragged Nico into unconsciousness, the screaming began.

Geena could hardly breathe. It wasn’t the fear, because that had settled and set a fire in her chest that would not go away. And it was not from concern for herself, because if Aretino had wanted her dead, he would have killed her by now. Her breathlessness came from seeing the man she loved shot in the chest and crumple to the ground, and then the terror of what came next.

Geena had never been in a hurricane, so she had no real concept of what it would feel like to live through one. But her cousin had been in New Orleans when Katrina hit, spending a semester studying history at Tulane on a student exchange program, and she’d once spent a long drunken evening telling Geena about it. She’d actually been one of the lucky ones, evacuated soon after the hurricane and never going back, but the thing that had struck her —and, she claimed, changed her forever—was the feeling of utter hopelessness beneath the brutal, indifferent powers of nature. It wasn’t that the wind could tear down buildings and the rain could bruise your skin, it was that this unbelievable power expended itself without reason, conscience, or concern. You heard the term ‘a fart in a hurricane’? she’d said. I don’t laugh when I hear that anymore.

Watching what happened after Nico fell made Geena feel a little like that, and the only comforting factor was that she felt Aretino’s shock as well.

Even before Nico hit the ground, the whole atmosphere of that small square changed. The violence was still there—the smell of blood, a heaviness like impending lightning—but the air suddenly seemed to come alive, gusting and spinning, twirling in miniature whirlwinds that caught up dust and litter and lifted it skyward. Geena saw flashes of fire here and there—cool blue flames that danced for brief instants before being extinguished again.

The patrons in the cafe pulled back from the shattered doors and windows, and the building’s lights fluttered and went out. She heard that scream again—Sabrina, calling Ramus’ name—and in her heart she knew what that meant. I didn’t get out quick enough, she thought, and she wondered whether Volpe had let Nico call her as soon as he wanted to, or whether there had been a pause—a stutter in time long enough for him to get here just as one of the Doges came to take her …

Someone else started screaming, and the man whose ears had been bleeding stood with flames enveloping his head—real flames, blackening skin and sizzling hair. Smoke and steam were whipped away from his twisted face by the sudden storm.

Nico’s body twisted on the ground, curling in on itself even as his hands reached out and clawed at the air. Any time his hands shifted position or his fingers clenched, someone else screamed. The tall man flailed at some invisible thing buzzing around his head. The blond woman slashed at her own legs, screaming in pain and bafflement each time the knife performed another sweep. And Geena watched Domenic stumble back with his hands held out, as if warding off the invisible thing that shoved him through the cafe’s already-shattered window.

Aretino pulled her away, and staggering across the square came the other ancient Doge, Foscari. He was aiming his gun at the writhing shape on the ground and frowning, obviously unable to shoot again. The Doge tugged hard on Geena’s hair, sending a sheen of pain across her scalp.

“Finish him!” Foscari shouted. The Doges’ hired thugs were backing away from Nico—all but the bleeding woman—their hands raised to defend themselves against the strange storm whipping around the square. At