The presence inside of him—the spiritual remains of Zanco Volpe—had other things on his mind as well. He had the book, but there were other ingredients he needed to acquire if he hoped to be able to protect Venice.
Protect Venice?
He’d broken into an ancient church, a city landmark, and stolen a book that must be priceless. He had barged into some random man’s apartment and beaten, bound, and gagged him. What the hell did any of that have to do with protecting Venice?
The spell must be recast before they try to return.
Nico staggered, caught his foot on a protruding stone, and fell headlong down the stone steps leading down from the bridge. The book flew from his hands. He banged his right knee and skinned his palms, hissing through his teeth at the stinging pain of it. But he’d gotten away easy. It could have been much worse. The voice in his head had taken him by surprise. But had it been an answer? Was the presence inside of him self-aware? Or was it just Nico’s subconscious interpreting the things it had learned from the psychic backlash down in the chamber beneath Petrarch’s library?
Regardless, he knew what else he needed for this spell, and it was a dreadful shopping list. Even now, the words echoed in his head and he could not tell if they were his thoughts, memories of what he must have read in the book, or the murmurings of a Venetian magician who’d been dead for centuries.
The hand of a soldier, the seal of the master of the city, the blood of a loved one.
“Fuck,” he whispered, ignoring the stares of two old widows as he bent to retrieve the book.
Its cover seemed none the worse for wear. The blood on his palm soaked into the leather and it stuck to his hand, strangely rough on his skin.
He wondered if the blood would still be there when he looked again.
VI
GEENA DIDN’T bother to stop at the Biblioteca. She passed it by without giving the building so much as a glance, heels clacking on stone as she strode through St. Mark’s Square, pigeons taking flight to clear her a path. More than one tourist turned to frown at her for disrupting their feeding of the birds, which Geena had always thought a disgusting tradition. One man, a bearded fool speaking German to his companions, had pigeons roosting on his head and outstretched arms, grinning for a photograph, with no thought given to what diseases the birds might be carrying.
As she entered an alley between two restaurants—a waiter serving outdoor tables shooting her a curious 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 façades 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.