She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. He broadcasts and I receive. We are … open to each other. Yes, there’s a link with me that he doesn’t have with anyone else, as far as I know, but it’s Nico who has the ability. Nico who is different.”
Volpe nodded thoughtfully. “Just so. I believe he sensed me.”
“What do you mean?”
He sipped his coffee and Geena wondered what it tasted like to him. If he liked the things that Nico liked because Nico’s taste buds had acclimated to certain things, or if Volpe’s ancient predispositions would carry over, despite the fact that he resided in a body not his own.
“The Chamber of Ten,” Volpe said.
Geena flinched in surprise. “That’s what I called it.”
“And where did you derive that name? From your own imagination, or from your link with Nico? From his mind, and through his, from mine? That is what we all called it, myself and the Council, a place where we could meet in secret, unknown to the Doge and to the Senate.”
The archaeologist in Geena came to the fore. “And Petrarch?”
“When the poet wanted to move his library from Venice, I persuaded him to change his mind and arranged for Petrarch’s collection to be moved to the hidden room you and your people discovered beneath the Biblioteca. I could not allow him to remove certain arcane texts from the city.”
“Magic, you mean?”
Volpe nodded. “Spellcraft. Call it what you like.”
“You admit that you ruled Venice through deceit and manipulation. How were these three men, elevated to the position of Doge, any less worthy to guide the city than you were?”
“They cared nothing for Venice, only for themselves, and for their family,” Volpe replied, lifting his chin and glaring at her imperiously. “To them, the people of Venice were pawns. Grist for the mill of their ambition. I had only the good of the city in mind.”
Geena scratched at the back of her left hand. “Oh, of course,” she replied archly. “You were the hero of the people.”
“No, never that. I served them in secrecy, content to see the fruits of my labors in the rise of Venetian power and grandeur. But you mean to ask what the difference is between myself and these three corrupt men, if our goals were the same.”
Geena sipped at her coffee. “Of course that’s what I’m asking. You wanted Venice for yourself, just as they did. You’re obviously ruthless. You manipulated and deceived and murdered to keep your power. Why are they any worse—”
“Because I was chosen,” Volpe said.
Great, Geena thought. A psychotic ghost with a Messiah complex.
“Chosen how, exactly?”
Volpe sighed. Staring at him, she could barely see Nico in that face now.
“In your studies as an archaeologist, surely you must have encountered stories of the Oracles of the Great Cities of the World.”
Geena had been about to lift her coffee cup again, but now she set it down, studying him closely. Volpe had said something before about an Oracle, but things had been happening so fast it had barely registered.
“You don’t mean the Oracle of Delphi?”
“One of many.”
She was about to tell him she had no idea what he was talking about when a memory rose up. While cataloging the earliest of the books they had retrieved from Plutarch’s library, she had skimmed through a volume whose Latin title translated roughly to The Souls of Cities. Her Latin was very spotty, but she’d picked up a few sentences here and there that had made her think of a 14th-century French manuscript she had read during a dig in the ruins of a monastery in Talloires. It had included references to a woman who was considered the Oracle of Paris, who knew all of the secrets and the history of the city and who, it was believed, channeled its soul through her body. Collette something. She had offered wise counsel to nobles and commoners alike.
“Maybe I know what you’re talking about,” Geena admitted, “but only a little. The great cities of the world are, what, supposed to choose someone as their defender—”
“If need be, a defender,” Volpe interrupted. “But more truly, a voice. I am the Oracle of Venice and I have been for a very, very long time, including all of the centuries my heart remained in the Chamber of Ten. My heart and the city’s heart beat together. I know all of its secrets, its ancient history. Ruthless, perhaps, but I have done what was required of me.
“I used spellcraft to keep myself youthful, to remain strong, long past the limits of ordinary men,” he went on. “But I was not immortal and, in time—long after I had banished the three cunning Doges—my health began to fail. I knew that I would die.”
His voice trembled suddenly with remembered anguish. Though she felt only mistrust and even revulsion for him, he wore Nico’s face, and she hated seeing that pain in the features of the man she loved.
“You wanted to continue to protect Venice even after your death,” Geena said. “Venice would have chosen another Oracle, but you didn’t want to trust that the next would be as capable as you were. Whatever the spell was that you used to banish the three Doges, it was tied to you, physically. Somehow—and you must have had help from members of the Council—you managed to preserve your heart, in order to keep the spell from ever breaking. But when we found the Chamber—”
Volpe’s eyes flared with admiration. “I see why Nico is so profoundly in love with you. A formidable mind.”
“You said Nico must have sensed you,” Geena went on. “You meant down in the Chamber. I think you’re right. Once we were inside, he was … not himself. When he dropped the urn—”
“He broke the spell,” Volpe agreed, scratching at his forearm. “I attempted to restore the spell, gathering the elements necessary—”
“Including my blood.”
Volpe glanced at her arm and nodded. “Regrettably. But it would have been worth it, had the spell worked.”
“Why didn’t it?”
“Caravello was already here, in Venice. The spell cannot keep someone from entering the city if they are already here. Given what Caravello said, we must assume Foscari and Aretino have returned as well.”
Things clicked into place in Geena’s mind, a memory surfacing.
“When Caravello came after us, you said that knife had the blood of the ‘new Oracle’ on it …”
Volpe’s gaze flickered, and she saw danger in his eyes. But she pushed onward.
“But you cut me with that knife. Are you saying—”
He held up Nico’s hand to show her a slice on the palm, already healing. “It had Nico’s blood as well as yours. His mental power—what you call his ‘touch’—may have guided him to me, but I believe there were other forces at work as well. I believe that Venice called to him. The city always chooses. Even throughout my long rest it chose successors, but it had no need of them as long as I endured. I believe that Nico is to be the new Oracle.”
This was insane. Total madness. Her life had become a nightmare.
“You believe? Don’t you know?” she asked.
Volpe traced his fingers along the rim of his coffee cup, not meeting her eyes. Hiding something. “Not yet. But the truth will reveal itself to all of us soon enough.”
Geena knew if she pushed he would only shut her out. Whatever secrets he was hiding, she and Nico would learn them all eventually.
“You’re arrogant as hell, but that doesn’t make you right,” she said. “You talk about the ambitions of these three Doges—and I don’t understand how they’re still alive—in such generalities. They’re ruthless, but you’ve admitted you’re just as ruthless. Even if you are this Oracle, I don’t see how that makes you the good guy in all of this.”
Volpe smiled, one corner of Nico’s mouth lifting in something on the verge of a sneer. His eyes darkened with grim memory.