'"Desire changes nothing," she said a little breathlessly.
"Passion erases none of the troubles that lie between you
and me." '
- Sharon Shinn, 'Archangel.'
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Chapter Eight: Troubles
Doujima had spent the past three days adding to the mess in the previously immaculate office. Balled up pieces of paper filled the places on the floor which were not already covered by the piles of books that SOLOMON had left behind. Several of those piles had been knocked over, and she hadn't bothered to stack the books again after they had toppled to the ground. Take-out containers from a variety of Venetian restaurants littered the top of Alfonso's desk. Doujima couldn't quite bring herself to work at the desk, or to sit in her dead mentor's chair, so instead she dragged Charlie's chair upstairs and set up at the little table that had once held Alfonso's computer.
Three days, and she was still no closer to breaking the code than she had been when she'd first removed the book from the hidden compartment within the desk. It was clear that it was a lost cause, and she would have given up, if she hadn't been so certain that the book contained at least some of the answers that she was looking for. That certainty wasn't entirely unwarranted. Doujima had known Alfonso as well as anyone had known SOLOMON's elusive spymaster, and there was something very deliberate about the placement of the book and the watch. As if he had intended for someone to find them. As if he hand intended for her to find them, since the compartment in the desk had been a secret between them, one that he had revealed to her in the early days of her training.
It seemed like something that Alfonso might have done, if he had believed himself to be in danger.
Of course, Alfonso had known Doujima as well as she knew him. The thought made her frown, and lean back in her chair, the book with its pages of incomprehensible gibberish still open on the table in front of her. He would also have known what she was, and was not, capable of. After all, he had taught her all that she knew. He would have known that she was not a cryptographer, a skill which took years to perfect and was never exactly a precise art. Alfonso had taught her about ciphers and the most simple of codes, but a complex code, especially one that had been written by her mentor, was entirely beyond her capabilities. Alfonso would have known that. He wouldn't have expected her to break the code, so he had to have thought that she would be able to locate the code's key.
Doujima pursed her lips thoughtfully, and looked at the desk where she had found the book. The little compartment concealed within one of the desk drawers was now empty; she had checked it too carefully to have missed something. However, the book hadn't been the only thing in the desk, had it? There had also been the watch. If the book was the code, then perhaps the watch-- the old fashioned pocket watch which she could not recall Alfonso ever removing from his person-- was the key.
She reached a hand into the pocket of her slacks, and pulled out the watch, which hung heavily from its thin chain. She let it drop into the palm of her hand, cold against her skin, and ran her thumb over the metal of the watch's cover. It had the soft glow of well-worn silver, every minute scratch on the surface catching and holding the light. One side was engraved with an image of Venice's proud lion, but on the other side was written the words that she had noted earlier: The hell within him.
It was a place to start, at least, and it wasn't like she had anything else to go on. Doujima glanced around the office quickly, and grimaced as she found an immediate impediment in her research. The computers were still missing, taken by SOLOMON, so unless she wanted to go through the hundreds of books that Alfonso had kept in his office in the vain hope of finding something useful, she had to find an alternative means of accessing a computer. Luckily, her mind supplied her with a solution almost as soon as the problem had occurred to her. She climbed to her feet, teetering for a moment on two-inch heels after hours spent sitting.
Doujima made her way down the stairs and outside slowly, turning off lights and locking doors as she went. The building was empty, and she vaguely recalled having heard Nagira leave with Marco early that morning, although she couldn't have said what it was that they were going to do. Something time consuming, since it was by now well into the afternoon, the thick clouds which covered the sky taking on a pink tinge as the sun slid down past the city's skyline and into the lagoon.
She walked, because she didn't have far to go. In less than five minutes, she found herself inside the airy white-and-gray lobby of the San Zulian hotel. She didn't stop at the front desk, simply breezed through and found the room that she was looking for on her own.
Charlie looked more resigned than surprised to find her standing on the other side of his door.
When she smiled at him and said, "I need to use your computer," he simply stepped aside to allow her entrance.
In spite of the fact that he had taken up a more-or-less permanent residence at the hotel while working for Alfonso, Charlie's room maintained a sort of military neatness. The bed was neatly made, and there was no clothing lying on the floor or flung over the furniture. After only four days, the room that Doujima shared with Nagira was considerably worse, even with a maid coming in every morning to tidy up.
Charlie's laptop, slim, black and easily recognizable as standard-issue SOLOMON equipment, was sitting on the bed. Doujima settled down beside it, and flipped it open, tapping her fingers impatiently against the bed's coverlet as she waited for the laptop's screen to light up.
"What are you doing?" Charlie asked bemusedly as he closed the door behind her.
The look which Doujima gave him was one which she reserved for unusually slow children and Sakaki. "I'm using your computer."
She received a rather droll look in return, although she thought that she caught the smallest hint of a smile at the corners of Charlie's mouth. "So I can see. Why are you using my computer?"
"Because there are none in the office."
When confronted by a spy who was being stubbornly secretive, there were only two possible courses of action. Torture, or surrender. Since Charlie would have had trouble justifying the first to SOLOMON Headquarters, he simply sighed and retreated to a chair in the corner.
Doujima smiled her victory, and returned her attention to the computer screen, her fingers skimming lightly over the sleek black keys. She could still feel the other spy's eyes on her, though, heavy against her face. "I've always meant to ask," she said, without lifting her eyes from the laptop, "is Charlie your real name?"
He made a rude sound, but she saw him grin out of the corner of her eye. "Charles Dresden the Fourth. Alfonso thought it was funny that my code name and my real name matched up. You know what his sense of humor was like."
"I know," Doujima replied, with a grim smile. "How did you get involved in SOLOMON?"
So abruptly silent was he that she thought he wouldn't respond. Then he shrugged, a barely visible ripple of movement. "I was pushing papers for one of the American branches, when the syndicate sent someone to investigate a report about a Craft-user in our office. Just a formality, to see if the report was true so that they could order the hunt, you know?"
She did know, so she nodded.
"The woman that they sent thought I was sharp, so she recommended me to Alfonso, and I got transferred to Intelligence not a week later. Not much to tell, really."
For the first time since he had started, Doujima turned her head to look at him. "So you decided to take on a lifetime position, just like that?" she wondered. An administrative worker could leave SOLOMON at any time; a spy or a Hunter could not. The Hunters were made up almost exclusively of Craft-users and Seeds, too dangerous to be set free after they had joined the organization. The ranks of SOLOMON Intelligence held their fair share of those with witch blood running through their veins, but they were dangerous for another reason. There was always the chance that an Intelligence agent had in their possession information which could harm SOLOMON if it was allowed to fall into the wrong hands.
"It seemed worth it at the time," Charlie said, with another shrug, his lean-muscled shoulders rising and falling beneath his thin black t-shirt. "It still does." He looked at her, his expression careful and shrewd. It was no wonder that someone had thought him sharp enough to become one of SOLOMON's elite spies, and it was no wonder that Alfonso had been grooming him as a replacement. "You chose this life, too. Alfonso once told me that he recruited you when you were thirteen. Your parents are members of SOLOMON, but that doesn't mean that you had to join up.."
"Yes, I did," she said absently, as she returned her attention to the laptop. "I'm a Seed."
From the answering silence, this was not something that Alfonso had shared. Doujima echoed his earlier shrugs with one of her own. "Besides, it was expected of me. Alfonso simply offered me an alternative to taking whatever desk job my parents would have handed me, otherwise." She felt a fine web of ire spreading through her stomach, a response invoked by her own description of her parents. She choked it off viciously, with the same stranglehold that all spies employed for useless and potentially dangerous emotions.
That seemed to put an end to the afternoon's questions, at least, which left Doujima free to concentrate on her research. It didn't take a great deal of effort or time. She simply typed the quote into an internet search engine, and she had page after page of results, so many that she wondered that she hadn't recognized it herself.
'The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair,
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be.'
Something cold and hard caught and stuck in her throat. God, Alfonso. '...the bitter memory of what he was.' How could she have missed this facet of him, in all the years that she had known him? This sharp, bitter self-hatred which allowed him to identify with a description of Hell, not as a place, but as a state of being, as something held close inside, much like his Craft. What kind of man could feel that way about something that he carried within him, and still smile?
Doujima smiled, as her mind supplied a ready answer. A spy. A master spy. Oh, she could recoil in horror at the way that Alfonso hard regarded his Craft, but she knew now what had caused it, just as she had known when she had first found the watch with its sly, simple engraving. SOLOMON cultivated that revulsion of the Craft in its members, nurtured it so that it could grow.
They have good cause, cried the voice of long-ingrained training within her. But Doujima looked at the computer screen, and wondered.
"I don't think I can do this anymore," she muttered.
Charlie's expression was sympathetic. "It's starting to get to you, isn't it? I can't blame you. When Alfonso hid something, it stayed hidden." It took Doujima a moment to make the connection between what he was saying and what she was thinking. It didn't really surprise her, and it relieved her a little, to know that he had come to the logical conclusion and not the correct one.
She wondered if Nagira would have known what she was talking about.
Really, though, Doujima should have thanked Charlie. He had grounded her, reminded her of why she was doing this. Not for SOLOMON, the shadow-organization which had raised her and which was becoming more suspect to her by the day, but for Alfonso.
Find the files for SOLOMON. Find the murderer for Alfonso. What other secrets were you hiding, old man?
Too many to count, undoubtedly.
She scanned the computer's screen, until she found a source for the quote. John Milton, 'Paradise Lost.' She exited the web browser, gently shut the laptop, and stood. "Thanks, Charlie. I have what I needed. I'm going back to the office, now."
Charlie was looking at her dubiously, his blue eyes dark with concern. "You look a little pale. Are you sure you're alright?" He paused, and the look in his eyes turned contemplative. "I could walk back with you, if you want."
He relaxed when she rolled her eyes, as if he found this subtle bit of sass reassuring. "I'm much to old for you to babysit me, and much too taken for you to flirt with me." Doujima had been joking, but from the way that his ears reddened, she wondered if that wasn't actually the case. "Don't worry about me," she finished, "I can take care of myself. I'll be fine." She tossed him a smile, and breezed out the door as suddenly as she had entered.
Night had fallen while she had been inside, and Doujima paused for a moment in front of the hotel, adjusting to the seemingly sudden change between day and night. Nighttime lent the city a different sort of beauty, softening the lines of the deteriorating old buildings until cracks and flaws were no longer visible, and they seemed to once again hold all the charm and glory of their former youth. She couldn't enjoy it tonight, though, and spent the brief walk back to the office in a sort of muddled haze.
The haze dissipated as soon as she stepped through the office's street-side door, and she half ran up the stairs to the second floor. She flipped on the light switch without a second thought, flooding the room with garish yellow light from the overhead lamp. She slowed as she approached the books on the floor, a grimace twisting her lips. Alfonso had kept them organized on the shelves, although his organization had depended more on country of origin and genre than something that made sense, like author name. Now, even that was gone, swept away when SOLOMON had removed the books in order to look for other hidden secrets on the shelves.
With a put-upon sigh, not unlike the one which she had used at the STN-J whenever someone asked her to do something, Doujima sat down on the floor, her legs sprawled out before her, and began to sort through the books. Book, after book, after book, until the titles seemed to blur before her eyes. She almost didn't realize that she had come to the right book until she was putting it aside.
It was a normal book. Bound in hard brown leather, the pages gilt-edged, but not hollow as Doujima had half hoped. It had not been an entirely irrational hope, if she took into account Alfonso's love of the theatrical. If his desk had a secret compartment, and his wall held a vault hidden behind a painting, why couldn't the book have a hiding spot cut into the pages? Similarly, the pages themselves revealed to her nothing except the words of a long-dead poet; even the page which held the quote from the watch was normal, no hints written into the margins or between the words.
Frustrated, she put the book down.
"You look like you've had a bitch of a day."
Doujima started, and tilted her head back to look at Nagira. He was leaning against the doorframe, his coat hung over one arm. His light gray suit was crumpled, and covered in a light patina of gritty filth, sand or salt if she had to guess. He had lost his tie sometime during the day, and his dark hair was standing on end, as if he had run his fingers through it repeatedly. "Nothing compared to the day you've had, from the look of it." She conjured up a smile from she didn't know where. "Did you have fun playing with Marco?"
He snorted with amusement, but she caught something else in his gaze. A flinching, and a wariness, as if he was bracing himself for something. It put her on edge immediately. "Oh, yeah. Loads of fun. Look, Yurika..."
"Where is Marco?" Doujima cut in. She smiled again, but she felt an answering wariness to it. "Tell me that you didn't get him killed."
"I didn't get him killed."
"Good, because I need him, and life insurance these days is---."
"I got him out."
It took a moment for Nagira's words to penetrate and, even then, Doujima couldn't make sense of them. "What are you talking about?"
"He's gone," Nagira clarified, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. He slid back his sleeve to look at his watch, frowned, tapped it once as if that would make it work, then shrugged. "I put him on a plane to Sicily this morning. He and his family are probably out of the country by now, on their way to Japan. I know people there who'll make sure that Marco is sent somewhere safe. Somewhere away." She couldn't read his expression; his eyes were curiously hooded, and the sensitive curve of his mouth lacked even the slightest hint of his usual smile. "He didn't want to be here anymore, Yurika. He didn't want to be working for SOLOMON."
Doujima felt like the breath had been knocked out of her, so she was almost surprised when she heard how hard her own voice sounded. "I see. So you thought that you'd play the big hero and rescue him?" She rose to her feet slowly, and rested a hand on her hip. "Of course, stabbing your girlfriend in the back is also so very heroic. I guess you were too busy trying to get one up on SOLOMON to worry about that."
She was morbidly gratified to see an answering spark of temper in his eyes.
"You think that's what this is about? Scoring a point against SOLOMON? That's crap, and you know it." Nagira took a step further into the room, tossing his coat over the back of the chair that she had been sitting in earlier. "I did this because Marco wanted out."
He didn't raise his voice, and now that she thought about it, Doujima couldn't remember him ever doing so... except once, yelling at Amon in the rain. She couldn't help but remember how she had ended that fight, and feeling a little bit wistful, since a revolver butt to the head was not an option now. "He's unhappy, and he's getting old," Nagira continued. "He just wants to retire and spoil his grandkids, and he doesn't want to die before he gets the chance. What the hell is wrong with that?" His eyes blazed, taking on a palpable heat that was entirely opposite from his brother's chill temper, but no less intimidating. "Aside from the fact that it means his leaving your precious organization."
"It's not---," she started to say, and stopped. The same response that she had given him while they had been staking out the Factory: 'It's not my organization, okay?' Except, now it was her organization that they were arguing about. "It's not like Marco didn't know what he was getting into. He's a grown man, and he's perfectly capable of sticking to his decisions once he's made them." She thought about the earlier conversation with Charlie. "We all know, when we sign up for this, that it's a lifetime contract. We all know the risks involved."
"'A lifetime contract?'" Nagira repeated. "That's very compassionate of you. I think that someone's life is a little more important than a bunch of files, and a dead guy." He turned his head to the side, abruptly, as if he couldn't stand to look at her. "I can't believe you. I can't believe that you'd ignore a friend's suffering like that, just to please your damn syndicate."
Doujima pressed her lips together tightly. "You think it's that simple?"
Now he looked at her. "I really do."
She inhaled sharply, and wasn't sure if it was in response to his words, or because she was finding it hard to breath past the sudden tightness in her chest. She couldn't summon the steel back into her voice, and it came out sounding soft and whispery. "Then what the hell have we been doing, Syunji?"
The anger bled from his face, and left him looking as tired and drawn as she felt. "Damned if I know."
It was a feeble denial, because they both knew the answer to her question. Laugh and tease and make love, carefully avoid talking about SOLOMON, carefully ignore the insurmountable differences between them, and pretend, or perhaps simply hope, that nothing would happen that would force them to confront the undeniable truth that things could not work out between them.
This time, it was Doujima who turned away, knocking over another pile of books with her leg and not really caring. She turned her back to him, and tried desperately to regain her equilibrium, to slip back behind a spy's safe mask of lies and half-truths. She took deep breaths, counting them silently. One, two, three. Push the pain to the back of her mind, ignore it the same way that a Hunter would ignore physical injury. Four, five, six. Force herself to focus, force herself to remember what was really important: the mission. Seven, eight, nine. Recall the fact that she was a SOLOMON spy, not some dewy-eyed, brokenhearted girl. Ten. Turn around and face him, whether she thought that she was ready to do so or not.
"I trusted you," she said, and if her voice wasn't quite normal, it had at least lost the quiet, shattered quality that it had held before.
"Yeah," Nagira said. "I know." He let out a long breath, not quite a sigh, as if he was trying to collect himself, too. "I can't just see what SOLOMON is doing, watch, and do nothing. I shouldn't have tried."
We shouldn't have tried, Doujima corrected him silently. She smiled, and it felt hard against her teeth, like she'd start spitting out nails if she held it for too long. "So I'd rather have my precious syndicate than help a friend, and you'd rather have your precious ideals than help me. It seems to me that we're on even footing, here." Now she thought that she sounded like herself, small and mean and not terribly worried about being either.
Nagira didn't say anything else, didn't try to justify his actions further. Doujima wasn't really sure that he needed to. Was she really angry because he had helped Marco escape? Or was she angry over the implied betrayal? Or was it simply a knee-jerk response to his harsh summary of her loyalty to SOLOMON?
Perhaps she was angry with him because she thought that he was probably right.
Doujima was given no more time to contemplate, because someone was knocking on the downstairs door, the one that let out into the canal. 'Knocking' was really too polite a term; they were pounding on it hard enough that she wondered if the aged wood would hold under so insistent an attack. She went down the stairs, not even pausing to see if Nagira was behind her. He would be.
She pulled the door open, and nearly received a fist to the face when the person standing on the other side tried to continue his knocking. He stopped just in time, and had the grace to look mildly sheepish, tucking both of his scrawny brown arms behind his back. The look quickly faded to be replaced by one of typical teenaged superiority, for the boy standing before Doujima was indeed a teenager, his shaggy dark hair falling into a pair of equally dark eyes, and his loose clothing practically hanging off of his bony frame. He was wearing a t-shirt, in spite of the late hour and the chill in the air, which had become more pronounced after the sun had set.
Doujima didn't know him, but she heard Nagira exclaim behind her. "You? What are you doing..." He trailed off, apparently realizing that the boy probably hadn't understood a word that he'd said.
The boy, however, simply rolled his eyes and looked at Doujima. "You may tell il turista," he said, "that I speak inglese perfectly well." His laborious pronunciation and the look of intense concentration on his face made the truth of his statement somewhat dubious, but Doujima didn't bother to point that out to him.
"What are you doing here?" Nagira repeated.
The boy puffed out his chest self-importantly, his face lighting up with pride. "I bring a message from the Witch Queen."
Doujima narrowed her eyes at him. "What does Fiametta Ganza want with me?" The boy responded by giving her a disdainful look down the tip of his narrow nose, and she wondered how he accomplished it, since she was at least half a foot taller than he was.
"Not you," he said impatiently, and gestured at Nagira. "Him." He frowned. "You are Signor Nagira, yes?"
At Nagira's nod, the boy continued, the frown deepening as though he was trying to remember all that he had been told, stumbling once or twice when he tried to recall a difficult word. "The Witch Queen would like to apologize most sincerely for her earlier discourtesy on Murano," he said, and Doujima felt rather than saw Nagira's answering scowl. "She asks that you meet with her tonight, so that she might impart her regrets to you personally." Having successfully discharged his message, the boy breathed a sigh of relief, and slid a sly glance towards Doujima. "She can come too, I guess. I am supposed to wait for your reply." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the gondola that was floating beside the dock.
Nagira stepped up to the door, forcing Doujima to step aside and make room for him. "Trap?" he asked her.
"Unlikely," Doujima replied. "If she wanted to kill you, she'd just kill you. She wouldn't bother to extend an invitation." She rubbed a hand over her eyes, thinking. "In fact, it's probably the last thing that she'd do. Ganza has a reputation for being somewhat old-fashioned, and there are some very old, very strict rules about the courtesies that a host owes their guest. One of which is, of course, not killing them."
"So, do we go?"
You're asking my opinion? Doujima wanted to ask, as she marveled at the fact that they could still function even after all that had happened in the past hour, all that had been said. Then she remembered what Father Juliano had told her upon her arrival in Venice. SOLOMON had determined that the cause of Alfonso's death had been Craft.
"We go."
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Disclaimer: Witch Hunter Robin ain't mine.
Notes: auntie-mom is my wonderful beta-reader, and I cannot thank her enough. il turista means 'the tourist.' Next chapter: Fiametta Ganza makes her entrance, and the secret of the witches of Venice is revealed.