The Chamber of Ten hc-3

by Christopher Golden

  “So what are you going to do now?” Domenic asked her quietly.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She was avoiding his gaze because she knew that she owed him some sort of an explanation.

  “You talked with—?”

  “Yes, thank you. But as I told you, as far as the police are concerned, Nico isn’t missing.” She expected some protest from Domenic, a comment about the police’s ineptitude, but he only nodded grimly and looked down at his laptop, pretending to read the screen. “But he is,” she said. “He’s lost, and I need to find him.”

  “After this is over, I’ll help you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and felt tears welling up again. Oh no. Not now. Don’t start blubbering now! she berated herself. She was stronger than that. But when one single tear did escape her left eye, she knew it was not all for Nico. It was because she did not understand what was going on, and that what she had seen of him was so wrong.

  “I think we’re ready!” Finch said.

  “About time,” Tonio muttered.

  Geena touched Sabrina on the arm. “Be careful down there.”

  “Of course. I’ve got these two hunks to look out for me.”

  “Well, don’t rely on two hunks. Look out for yourself.” Geena smiled at the divers to let them know she meant nothing by it—she’d used them before several times, though for the life of her she could not remember their names. She could see the tension in their faces, and she viewed that as a good sign. They were worried, they were cautious, and that meant that they would be taking care.

  “We’ll want an all-around view of Petrarch’s library first,” Finch said, “starting with what’s left of the manuscripts that were—”

  “No,” Geena said. “Straight down to the lower chamber.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled, but only for a moment.

  “For the documentary, I really think we’ll need—” Finch began carefully, but Geena cut him off again. His shock turned subtly toward anger.

  “We need to see why the hell this all happened,” she said. “We did nothing down there, and yet our presence caused the chamber wall to give way and flood. One of our divers is an expert in Venetian architecture and old structures built to withhold water. He’ll see if there’s still danger.”

  “How could there still be danger?” Finch asked. “The water’s up to sea level.”

  “Mr. Finch,” Tonio said, “Geena’s correct.” He blinked at Geena, his look saying, We’ll be having words later. “And quite frankly, we are the experts here.”

  Finch bristled, his team fiddled with equipment or examined their fingernails, but then he offered Geena a soft smile. “I’m in your hands,” he said, and she was certain he meant it. He was a strong man, but not harsh. And whatever his superiors back in London said, he was already becoming more than aware of the intricacies of this operation.

  The hairs on her neck stood on end, she felt a rush of warmth as if the sun were touching her again, and when Geena blinked—

  A square with tourists taking photographs and drifting this way and that, crumbs from breakfast still on their lips and breath heavy with morning coffee. Sunlight floods in over the roof of a hotel bounding one side of the square, a fountain is spanned with a mini-rainbow, pigeons take off in a wave from a far corner, and the world seems to be dragging her perception onward against her will, hauling her quickly across the square when the only way she wants to go is back. She tries to close her eyes—

  “Geena!” Domenic said. “Are you all right?” He had hold of her forearm, and she had to blink several times to clear her eyes of the bright sunlight she’d seen in that moment of psychic connection. The library was dark by comparison. All eyes were on her.

  “I … I’m sorry,” she croaked, coughing to clear her throat. “Yes, time to go. Yes.” Domenic would not let go, and she had to turn and walk away before he loosed his grip. She approached the divers, aware of Tonio watching her, feeling Finch’s gaze on her back, and Sabrina paused in tightening equipment straps across her waist when Geena drew close.

  “Geena, you look—”

  “Don’t take any risks,” Geena said, louder than she needed to, echoing off the stone walls of the too-small room. “I was just thinking about those obelisks, wondering if they were even fixed to the walls.” It was an offhand way to try to explain her brief flake-out, though she knew that Domenic at least would see right through her, but mentioning it now seemed a good piece of advice. “The water might have knocked them aside, or they might be ready to fall at any moment. Not to mention the stone disk in the floor—the one Domenic called a cork. If that’s a seal of some kind, we should see if it remains intact.”

  “I wondered the same thing,” Finch said behind her.

  “This is just an initial look,” Geena continued. “Don’t disturb anything down there if you can help it.” But what have we already disturbed? she thought. She’d recognized that square. It had been richer than a memory, and she knew what a touch from Nico felt like. She’d been seeing what he could see right now … and he’d been moving fast.

  Sabrina and the divers worked their way through the narrow corridors leading to the first old staircase, and Geena followed. Domenic was behind her, and for a moment she was angry at him—Can’t I just have a moment on my own?—but that anger was misdirected. She should really be angry at herself. After this is all done, she thought, I can take time to sort things out. She glanced back at Domenic, and in his uncertain expression she saw doubt.

  They went down. Sabrina was between the two divers, her camera held in front of her, cable playing out behind. There were two BBC technicians at corners in the corridor, making sure the cable did not tangle and ensuring there was plenty of slack. She and Domenic watched until the diving lights had faded and the water’s surface calmed again, and Geena could not help thinking they had been swallowed.

  “Let’s go back and see what’s left,” Domenic said, and Geena nodded. She noticed that he did not lead the way, though. He was following her like a parent keeping an eye on their unruly child.

  Back in the empty reading room, Tonio and Ramus were gathered behind Finch and his team, all of them staring at one of the larger laptop screens. As Geena approached she heard Sabrina’s muffled voice narrating her slow journey down into Petrarch’s library. Even Adrianna had come to watch, steely-eyed yet obviously fascinated with whatever had been beneath her all these years. Geena and she exchanged smiles, and Geena looked over Tonio’s shoulder.

  The visibility was terrible. Virtually any dive they performed in and around Venice was marred by the filthy water—silt and shit, chemicals and refuse—but Geena had been hoping that the contained environment down there would have allowed the water to settle. It seemed it had not. Sabrina focused her camera and light on the back of the diver ahead of her as he led the way across the jumbled chamber, and the stark light picked him out like a ghost against the murk. Strange lighting effects gave him glittering wings—reflections from his equipment buckles and air tank, Geena guessed. There was no way of telling how far they had progressed other than Sabrina’s commentary.

  “Floor’s pretty treacherous,” she said. “Shelves fell and broke. Some of the books are still whole. Most are pulp.”

  Tonio sighed, and Geena placed a hand on his shoulder. We got most of it, she wanted to say. But what she really wanted to see was farther down. She wished the audio link wasn’t just one-way—she wanted to tell Sabrina to hurry. An urgency was bearing down on her, though she could not discern its origins. Impatience made her shift from one foot to the other. Domenic was behind her, a warm presence, and suddenly she wanted his hand on her shoulder, the comfort of a human touch. Because something in that last vision had felt inhuman.

  The divers moved on, Sabrina filming the mess on the floor, and then they paused when they reached the open doorway leading down.

  “Go on,” Geena whispered, and Tonio glanced back at her.

  “Maybe it’s too deep,” Fi
nch said. “Or too dangerous.” Nobody replied, but Geena thought, Is he feeling it, too?

  The lead diver started down the staircase.

  “Here goes nothing,” Sabrina’s distorted voice said. One of the BBC technicians adjusted something on the laptop’s sidebar, and Sabrina’s breathing came in clearer and louder.

  Geena’s neck bristled. No! she thought. And she held Tonio’s shoulder again, locking her knees and concentrating on standing upright as—

  She’s fighting the forward motion. People look at her. Sunlight blinds her, scorching eyes so used to darkness. The people who look appear unsettled, as if they’re seeing someone they can’t quite place. Through a narrow street where cafés hustle on either side, vying for trade and custom, she emerges onto a street she knows, running alongside a canal and crossing a narrow bridge, heading toward the Piazza San Marco and the Biblioteca. More people see her, and they stand aside. She’s struggling, fighting, exerting every ounce of her energy, and there’s a desperation there that makes her feel—

  Geena opened her eyes and swayed a little, then felt Domenic’s hand on her shoulder.

  “I think you need to leave,” he whispered in her ear. “A doctor, or rest. I’ll come with you.”

  She shook her head and shrugged his hand from her shoulder. Nico’s coming, she wanted to say, but Domenic would only ask how she knew.

  “We’re heading down,” Sabrina said. “The water down here … much colder. Strange.” Strange. The picture was all shadow and movement, and there seemed to be no order to what Geena could see on the screen. They watched, none of them speaking, as the image opened out into one of greater shadow. Their powerful diving lights played around the chamber, barely piercing the murk, alighting on one toppled obelisk with a broken lid. Geena stretched forward, frowning to concentrate her vision.

  “What is that?” Finch said. He turned and spoke directly at her. “You don’t think there are still …?” She could smell garlic on his breath, and stale wine, and for some reason she wondered where he had spent the night.

  Zoom in, she thought, and Sabrina seemed to have the same idea.

  “Concentrate your lights here,” Sabrina said to the others, but neither of them did. “Hey, can’t you—?” Her voice was cut off, and the image on the screen became confused again: blurs, shadows, flickering lights. The technician played with the sound levels.

  “It’s not that,” Geena said. “I can still hear her breathing.” And she could … slightly harsher than before, heavier, and when Sabrina’s voice came again it suddenly seemed much louder.

  “What is that?” The camera steadied and homed in on a tumbled section of wall, and glaring pale from the slump of rocks, silt and building blocks slewed across the chamber floor, things that looked like bones.

  “My God,” Finch said.

  “I don’t think so,” Domenic said

  Geena gasped. They built those walls using … And then everything faded again.

  Zanco Volpe waits outside the grand Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, enjoying the sun on his face and the cool breeze blowing in across the lagoon. There is a hint of anticipation about him—something is coming, and it will change everything—but there is also a warm glow of satisfaction. He looks at his hands, feels a sense of pride and excitement at what they have done, and within him there lies a solid heart of magic. Black or white, it does not matter. The nature of magic is not dictated by its source, but by its user. And Volpe knows that his aims are pure.

  He remains seated on the ornate stone bench even as he sees movement in the building’s doorway. Il Conte Tonetti appears, still hidden by shadows but twitchy as a hunted bird. He lowers his head and walks from the building, down the steps and across to where Volpe is waiting. He only looks up when he approaches; people move out of his way. He’s dressed in his best finery and is redder than usual.

  “It is done,” Il Conte says. “Caiazzo died quickly. Soldagna put up a fight.”

  “Good for him,” Volpe says, and he feels the butterflies of excitement stroking his insides. It’s almost done, he thinks. I’m almost free again.

  As Volpe stands, Il Conte reaches out to take his hands, his own hands smeared with blood.

  “Not on mine!” Volpe shouts, stepping back with his arms raised. He has no idea what effect another man’s blood on his skin might have. The spells are delicate as yet, his talents still uncertain, and he will not risk them for an instant.

  “I … I apologize,” Il Conte says, and his face crumples.

  “Be a man,” Volpe says, his voice strong and deep. “You are Il Conte Rosso now. That’s how you’ll be known. And you helped save Venice today.”

  “Yes,” the Count says, “of course.” Though he cannot conceal his doubt.

  “Tonight we move on Aretino.” Volpe turns away from the Count and the building that hides the Chamber of Ten. The next time he sets eyes upon this place, the city will have a new Doge, and he will have moved on yet once more.

  “I’ve never felt such power,” he says. For the first time in a long while, he cannot feel his many decades weighing down upon him.

  Outside, Geena thought. That’s all from outside. She opened her eyes but still everything seemed dark. Someone was pulling her against their chest, arms around her waist—Domenic. Her legs felt weak, and she shifted position until she could feel herself supporting her own weight again.

  “Geena,” Domenic said, and she turned to look up at his face. The concern was almost heartbreaking, because she knew she had been shunning him. “I won’t take no for an answer this time. We have to get you—”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not ill. I’m just …” Seeing visions from the past? That was Il Conte Rosso, and I saw the fresh blood on his hands that gave him his name. She could not just run now. If she did, she might miss Nico.

  “You look like you’ve seen a—”

  “I think he’s outside,” she said, and they both glanced through the arched door of the reading room and into the foyer of the main entrance. Sunlight, but no shadows.

  “You mean Nico?” Domenic asked. Ramus was looking at them oddly, but the others—Finch, the BBC crew, and even Adrianna—had their attention riveted to the laptop screen.

  “They filled the walls with bones,” Finch said again, and it had the sound of someone trying to convince himself of what he saw.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” came Sabrina’s muffled voice. She was breathing faster, and Geena sensed simmering panic.

  “Tell her to calm down,” she said, glancing back at the main doors again. That was all from Nico, she thought, and he was approaching across the piazza, and then suddenly the flashback that wasn’t him. It was Volpe. She shivered, because even thinking the name gave her goosebumps.

  If he had approached, he was holding back, waiting outside or something. Maybe he was just afraid to come in because that would mean facing her questions.

  “One of the obelisks is open!” Sabrina said, and that snapped Geena’s attention back to the laptop. She pushed her way past Finch, with Domenic still beside her, and knelt so that she could get a better view of the screen. Tonio placed one hand on her shoulder and she knew what that touch meant: This is amazing! Sabrina’s crazy camera work settled at last, focusing on the broken lid of one of the obelisks and the thing it contained.

  “They’re tombs,” Tonio said.

  In her time working in Venice, Geena had been witness to the exhumation of dozens of bodies, all of them buried many hundreds of years ago. They never frightened her, but there was always something unsettling about setting eyes on a corpse that had been out of sight, alone, and at peace for so long. Though she was not a religious person, to Geena it felt intrusive and disrespectful, and she’d always had trouble identifying the line between recently buried and of archaeological interest.

  “My God,” Sabrina’s voice hissed, “it’s wearing …”

  A hat, Geena thought. A black hat and robe, covering less formal attire benea
th. And she thought of bleeding palms and the vague sense of ritual.

  “Nico!” Ramus said. “Look everyone, it’s Nico!”

  For a moment Geena scanned the screen desperately, thinking that they’d seen his drowned body down there, and in the space of a heartbeat the idea that she’d imagined everything since the flood hit hard. But then she sensed those around her turning away from the table of equipment, and she, too, stood and turned.

  She bit her lip against the wooziness that still shifted the world around her. Behind them Nico was standing just inside the entrance to the reading room.

  “Nico!” she said, unable to keep the rush of relief and affection from her voice.

  He seemed not to hear; his eyes were blank, his face expressionless. He carried a heavy-looking bag in one hand. Then he started walking toward them, and Geena cringed at the way he moved—a stiff, stilted walk as if he’d smashed bones in both of his legs.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ramus asked.

  Geena moved toward him. Domenic’s grip tightened briefly on her arm before letting go, but she knew he was still behind her. Don’t be a fool, she thought, Nico would never hurt me.

  She smiled, vision blurring with tears that seemed to well up from nowhere.

  Behind her the BBC team were still chattering excitedly about what they had seen, and Finch seemed to be talking into a cell phone. Of course, she thought. They don’t even know about Nico.