She darted between two of the stone columns, took cover, and peered back out at the magicians.
Just in time to see Volpe fall to his knees in the inch of water, too weak to raise a hand in his own defense, or in hers.
“Is that the best you can do these days?” Foscari said, wiping at a bloody scrape on his face as he stood.
Aretino rose stiffly, hatred burning in his eyes. “You know, Francesco, I think that might have exhausted our old friend. I think that might well be the last spell he will ever cast.”
Get up! Geena thought. Goddamn you, get up!
As if in reply, Volpe snapped his head back and grinned wildly at the Doges. “Just waiting for you to catch your breath,” he said. “I want to make this last.”
Brave words. Cruel words. But only a ruse. From the darkness of the three columns, Geena saw his face in the flickering lantern light and the features had changed again. Volpe had burned himself out and retreated back into Nico’s mind, leaving Nico himself to face the Doges, pretending to be Volpe.
“Come, then,” Nico said, trying his best to mimic Volpe’s arrogant sneer. “Do your worst.”
“Oh, we will,” Foscari promised, licking his lips.
What are you doing? Geena cried in her mind.
Venice chose us as her Oracles—
We’re not the Oracles yet!
And maybe we never will be, Nico replied. But we were chosen. We can’t let them win.
Geena felt the weight of the knife in her hand. She tightened her grip on the handle and looked down at the blade, dark with her blood and with Nico’s. They only had Volpe’s word on it, and she did not trust the old magician at all, but somehow she knew that much was true.
Grim-faced, she narrowed her eyes and peered out into the Chamber of Ten, raising the knife.
Nico held his hands in front of him, fingers hooked into claws as though any second he might sketch a spell on the air. He had experienced Volpe’s casting of such enchantments before and prayed he looked convincing enough to make the Doges wary. Aretino’s eyes gleamed with hatred and ambition, but Foscari seemed excited only by the prospect of causing pain.
No time to lie down on the job, he thought, trying to jostle Volpe. If they kill me, we’ll both be dead! Come on, do something!
But the magician had diminished somehow, fallen down deep inside of him like a light at the bottom of a well. He had managed the appearance of strength, but those two spells had drained him. Nico felt him stirring, but only weakly.
I can’t fight them, Volpe said. The Chamber is filled with residue from my magic, but I can barely draw on it. Without physical form—
You’ve got physical form! Me!
It isn’t the same. I need a foundation to provide leverage. Volpe did not explain further, but an image flashed through Nico’s mind and he understood at last what the magician meant. Without his own body, casting spells was like trying to lift something heavy while swimming in deep water.
Foscari began to chant in a language Nico did not even recognize—something ancient and ugly—and the Doge’s grin widened. Aretino gestured for their hired killers to hang back. Nico felt his mask of courage begin to slip and Aretino must have noticed something amiss, for he narrowed his eyes and took a step forward.
Then he laughed softly, holding up a hand.
“Wait, Francesco. It’s over.”
Foscari pulled up and glared at him liked a dog rounding on his master. “What do you mean, ‘over’?”
“That’s not Volpe talking to us. It’s the boy, Lombardi. Volpe’s blown out his own candle already,” Aretino said, smiling at Nico. “Isn’t that right, Nico?”
Nico wanted to smash the old bastard’s skull against the stone floor until his brains leaked out. Boy? He tried not to change his expression, tried to hold on to Volpe’s sneer.
Are you hearing this? Volpe, fucking do something!
You’ve got to surrender.
They’re not here for prisoners!
To me, Volpe said, his inner voice stronger. It’s the only way. Give yourself over to me willingly, let us merge completely. It may be confusing, it may only make it more difficult to fight, but it’s possible it will truly join us and I will be able to use your body fully as my own, and wield the most powerful spells without collapsing.
Nico stared in horror at Aretino’s fading smile and the growing delight on Foscari’s face.
“Get the girl,” Aretino said.
“Allow me,” Foscari said, giving their lackeys a savage glance that made even those hardened killers fall back.
How can I trust you? How do I know I’ll get my body back?
Even I don’t know if you’ll get your body back. This merging could be permanent. But choose quickly, or the choice will be taken from you.
It was no choice at all. He saw Foscari striding toward the three columns at the center of the Chamber, caught a glimpse of Geena huddled there, knife glinting in her hand, and he knew.
“Do it, you bastard!” he shouted.
Aretino flinched in surprise. Thinking Nico had been talking to him, Foscari turned to leer at him.
Take a deep breath and then let it out. When you inhale again, let it be with an invitation in your heart. Let me fill the spaces in you.
Just hurry, Nico thought.
And he did as Volpe asked. Closed his eyes. Deep breath in, let it out, another breath, let it out. It felt to him as if he were growing, as though when he opened his eyes he ought to be a giant. But when he did look, he had not changed physically. Inside, though … he bristled with vigor, alert to the slightest sound or shift in the texture of shadows in the Chamber. He could see skeins of light like spiderwebs throughout the room—gold and silver, green and red and black, purple as a bruise, pink as a woman’s secret flesh.
Volpe did not like to call it magic because it did not come from within him. But the power—the magic—it was there, all around them, and if he could only reach out and touch those skeins, weave them together with the right gestures, the right words, he could bend the world to his whim.
Nico had never been so terrified or so aroused.
“Hello again, Pietro,” Volpe said with Nico’s mouth. Or is that me? It was impossible now to know where he ended and Volpe began. They were one.
Aretino swore. He lifted his hands, about to cast a spell. A whip-thin gunman behind him sensed the change, saw it all happening, raised his weapon, and pulled the trigger.
Water, Volpe thought.
Even as the sound of the gunshot erupted in the Chamber, Nico twitched a finger, throat working a subaudible grunt that was in itself a spell so ingrained in Volpe that it required nothing more.
The bullets splashed against him, dampening his clothes where they struck, nothing but water now.
Foscari turned at the gunshot’s echo and threw up his hands, beginning a spell. Nico held up both hands, whispered words he had never learned, and the spells slid harmlessly away from him.
“This city is under our protection,” Nico said. “And this Chamber … this is mine, laid with magical traps five hundred years ago. Fools, indeed.”
Foscari roared and ran at him, drawing a dagger laden with curses.
Nico dropped to one knee, slapped his open palms on the stone floor, and shouted two words to trigger a spell Volpe had cast half a millennium ago.