“Watch your tongue, Dr. Hodge,” Aretino said. “My cousin does not like women who speak out of turn.”
Geena felt a sickening laugh gurgle in her throat. “All of this … just to get your things back?”
“Not at all,” Aretino said. Smiling, he glanced around the room. “Don’t misunderstand; there are many pieces of our history that we are very pleased to be able to reacquire. Things that are rightfully ours. But there is only one thing in all of Venice that we truly needed.”
“Access to the tomb of Akylis,” Geena said.
Foscari stared at her in fury. Aretino arched his eyebrows in surprise and then smiled in approval.
“It appears that Volpe has shared more with you than we had imagined,” Aretino said.
He must have seen the surprise on her own face when she realized that Volpe had been telling the truth all along.
“Ah, you doubted him,” Aretino said. “As well you should.”
“Why do you even need Akylis’ magic?” Geena demanded. “You’ve lived six hundred years. If you have enough power for that, what more magic do you need?”
Aretino’s dancing eyes grew cold and still. “We have spent five centuries surviving, when we should have been ruling. Volpe tried to end us, tried to exterminate our entire bloodline, but all he did was postpone the inevitable. Now our family will rise, and with the dark power Akylis left behind, we will cover the world. We will be the new gods and Venice the new Olympus.”
Geena looked into those eyes and saw madness staring back.
“But they’re all dead,” she whispered. “You have no family left. Just the two of you. Are you going to send thugs and assassins out into the rest of the world to try to take over? Even with Akylis’ magic—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Foscari snarled at her, darting in close enough that she felt his spittle on her cheek. “We have family. Volpe took them from us, just as he took all of this—” He spread his arms wide, indicating the treasures in the room. “And all of Venice. But like the rest of it … we have taken them back.”
Geena felt all the blood draining from her face. The tomb, she thought. The bodies. How many Foscari cousins, uncles, distant relatives had Volpe had killed and buried in that crypt under the building in Dorsoduro? A hundred? Two hundred?
The Doges had stolen them back.
“With the magic you’re taking from Akylis’ burial well …” she began, the truth striking her at last. “You’re going to raise them from the dead.”
She tried to imagine it—two hundred Caravellos, Aretinos, and Foscaris resurrected and restored to life, filled with the dark power of Akylis and sent out into the world to conspire and manipulate, to magically influence governments and corporations, all to draw the reins tight on the entire globe and put them in the hands of the Doges.
“This is a waste of time,” Foscari growled. “Show her, Pietro, and then let me show her what I have for her.”
“You hear that?” Aretino said. “Francesco wants to rape you. You’re just his type, too. I doubt you’d submit without a fight.”
Geena did not satisfy either man with an answer. Instead she examined her left hand where she’d grazed it as she fell, and brushed droplets of blood from another deep scratch across one elbow.
“Bring her!” Aretino said, and Geena knew instantly that their game was over. Foscari grabbed her beneath the arms and lifted—his strength was impressive for someone over five hundred years old—and hefted her upright, half pushing, half carrying her after Aretino. They passed items of priceless art and antiquity, and though she struggled to remain composed, Geena could not help her amazement.
They opened another door that had also been sealed shut and descended another flight of stairs. Geena knew that they were well below the waterline now, and she wondered whether whatever had held the waters back from the Chamber of Ten also worked here. From the vague memories of Volpe’s that she’d seen and sensed, these Doges were mere dabblers in magic when they were banished, not master practitioners like him.
She was curious, but she did not want to ask.
At the foot of this new staircase was a small chamber, hacked from the ground without any aesthetic consideration. Its walls were uneven, ceiling and floor rough, and it was barely ten feet across. At its center stood a small wooden stool. On the stool was a sealed clay container. The container bore no marks or decoration, and the clay looked delicate.
“This,” Aretino said, gently touching the urn, “is our protection.”
“I’m really not interested—” Geena began, and Foscari thumped her in the kidneys. She went down to her knees, biting back a groan but closing her eyes as the pain tore through her torso. Bastard bastard bastard! she thought. She remembered Volpe jamming his knife under Caravello’s chin and up into his brain, and she so wished she had a blade.
“Just tell her and get it over with,” Foscari said, his voice heavy with something other than anger. “Then I’ll have her before we send her back.”
Geena’s eyes snapped open. Aretino glanced from her to the Doge standing behind her, but she could not read his expression. He’s in charge, she thought. A word from him and …
“It’s delicate,” he said, touching the urn again. “It has to be. When the waters pour through and these walls come down, it has to break. Even if it doesn’t, its salt seal will dissolve over time and release what’s inside. But the sort of revenge I’d want … I’d need it to be quick.”
“So what’s in there?” Geena asked.
“Something you’ve had already.”
Plague. She shuddered, remembering the magical contagion that had nearly killed her and Nico, the sores and the blood and the certainty that her lungs would flood and her throat would swell until she died.
“While Volpe has been guarding this city from a place of rest, the three of us have been busy. We couldn’t return home for five hundred years because of that interfering bastard, but that hasn’t meant that we have lost all influence over people within the city, nor have we been unable to send people in and bring them out as desired. Volpe slept, and we were building. Volpe rested, and we worked. All we needed was the magic of Akylis to bring our plans to fruition. Now we have it. And if anything happens to us, the city dies.”
Geena understood. Some form of magic held the water from this chamber, just as it had in the Chamber of Ten. By sending clumsy magicians from the city instead of killing them, Volpe had given them time to mature, learn their craft, and plot their eventual revenge. He’d been weak, too concerned with the opinions of the Council of Ten to take proper care of the city he professed to love. By ridding it of its potential dictators, he created Venice’s greatest enemies.
“There are other places,” Foscari said. “Seven, all told. The spell that holds the waters out will only endure as long as at least one of us survives. If all three of us are killed—the two of us, now that Caravello is dead—the walls come down, the urns shatter, and the plague is released.”
Foscari seemed afraid that Geena had remembered the way here. He wanted to make sure she knew there were other such plague rooms. Which means there must be a way to stop this! she thought, To undo all of it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have needed to tell me that.
“So while Volpe slept, you’ve been catching up on James Bond movies,” she said. “And now that I know your diabolical plan, I suppose you’re going to kill me.”