'SON: You wouldn't want to tell him what we have

Up attic, mother?

MOTHER: Bones – a skeleton'.

- Robert Frost, 'The Witch of Coös'

--------------------

Chapter Nine: A Skeleton

Doujima had turned on only the little desk lamp upon entering the hotel room. It cast long shadows across the floor, and left her with barely enough light to see by, so that her reflection in the mirror was mostly a silhouette. Nagira had absented himself, under the pretense of finding somewhere where he could buy a pack of cigarettes. If it had been a pretense. Nagira was hardly the sort of man who absented himself from a situation simply because it was awkward. And the situation right now really was... awkward.

The sound she made in response to that thought was more self-deprecating than not.

The boy who had delivered the Witch Queen's message had gone, and promised to pick them up at the hotel within the next hour. Doujima hadn't bothered to wonder how their hotel had been known; after all, SOLOMON wasn't the only one capable of gathering that kind of information about a potential adversary. She had simply been grateful for the chance to return to the hotel, the chance to prepare.

The blouse that she had changed into was heavy, cream-colored silk. The slacks weren't all that different from the ones that she had been wearing earlier, although they were considerably less wrinkled. The outfit looked cool and professional, although her bare feet looked cold and naked beneath the pants cuff, white skin veined in blue. She eyed her reflection critically in the mirror and, for a moment, she was glad that the lights were so dim. The skin beneath her eyes was paper-thin and bruised looking, and she grimaced. "No excuse to let yourself go..." she muttered to herself, and reached for the bag of cosmetics she had left lying half-open on the bed.

When that was finished, she set the make-up aside and looked at her shadowy reflection again. There was only the briefest hesitation before she reached into the closet, dragging out the largest of her suitcases. It was lighter now than it had been, almost empty. However, there was one item left inside, a crumpled pile of dark fabric. The standard-issue coat that she had been given while working as a Hunter at the STN-J.

Doujima pulled it on slowly, the rougher fabric catching on the silk of her blouse. One last glance at the mirror, and she quickly turned away. It looked different now, like a little girl dressing up in her mother's clothes: a spy dressing up like a Hunter. She jammed a pair of black leather pumps onto her feet, and had just reached for the doorknob when it turned beneath her hand.

There was a pack of cigarettes in Nagira's hand, proof that his errand hadn't simply been an excuse to leave the room. They were open, and two of the pack were already missing, one hanging unlit from between his lips. "We should get going," was all he said.

"Wouldn't want to be late," she murmured in wry agreement. They passed in silence through the hotel, down into the street and around to the canal. The boy was already waiting for them on the banks, his gondola bobbing up and down on the water behind him. In the dark, his narrow features looked sharp and sly, and his brown eyes appeared almost black as they reflected the light from the hotel's windows.

Doujima climbed into the gondola after the briefest of hesitations, and took a seat. She felt the boat dip and sway as Nagira climbed in after her, then again as the boy leapt lightly to the stern of the boat. He took up his oar, and pushed away from the bank, navigating the long black boat quickly through the equally dark water.

Businesses closed early in Venice, and many of the streets they floated by had already shut down for the night, their storefronts dark and empty. In residential areas, lights were just beginning to blink on, casting their glow over the canal as the small boat passed. The whole night was eerily, suspiciously silent, as if the city was holding its breath, ancient mortar and brick muffling any sound. The boy's oar beat a steady rhythm against the water, and she could hear Nagira puffing steadily away at his cigarette, but no one spoke. They passed few other boats on their way, until they exited onto the Great Canal, and suddenly everything was light and noise, even at this hour.

"Almost there," the boy said, with a cheer that seemed just a little bit malicious to Doujima. He was looking her, as if waiting for a response, but she simply lifted a sardonic brow at him. She was not about to be intimidated by some prepubescent changeling with a superiority complex; she hadn't sunk that low yet. The thought made her smile, just a little.

She wasn't entirely surprised when the boy guided the boat to one of the great, crumbling palaces that lined the Grand Canal. It seemed like the sort of place that would house a woman who called herself the Witch Queen. Nagira stepped out of the boat first, then extended a hand to help Doujima up onto the dock. She took it, and it would have been a lie to say that she didn't enjoy the brief curl of his fingers around hers before he dropped her hand.

She shook her head a little to clear it, and once again pulled her mind back to the job, leading it back like a mother pulling her reluctant child along by the hand. She looked at the boy, who raised his hand in an impudent wave. "Just walk straight into the house. Someone will meet you near the door, yeah?"

"Yeah," Doujima muttered, and he pushed away from the dock, the boat growing smaller until it was just another part of the chaotic tangle that was the Grand Canal. Once he was gone, both of them turned towards the palace, which dropped straight into the canal, its front half seeming to dangle precariously above the water, like so many of Venice's older buildings. "Well," she said, staring at the door with a curious reluctance. She had never been terribly faint-hearted, but this felt too much like the hunting she had done back at the STN-J, charging into a witch's lair with nothing more than her wits and... well, nothing more than her wits, really.

As if he could read the reluctance in her face and voice, Nagira smiled, and took the first step towards the door. It opened easily under his hand. "I would say, 'ladies first,' but..." But it was pretty obvious that the lady had no desire to go first through that dark hole of a doorway.

So she sighed, and smirked a little herself, and gestured him forward. "Please. After you." Nagira, of course, had never met a dark and sinister location that he didn't like, and seemed to have no qualms about taking that first step into the house. He paused just over the threshold, and Doujima had no choice but to sigh again and follow him inside.

---

The hallway was dark, but the boy had warned them, and Nagira wasn't entirely unprepared when someone addressed him from the shadows near the door. Nor was he terribly surprised to find that it was the same young man who be had seen browsing through the glass shop while he and Marco had spoken to Claudio. Really, at that point, he fully suspected that the old lady he had seen feeding the pigeons earlier that day and the tourist couple that he and Doujima had passed in the hotel lobby were all really minions of the Witch Queen. It seemed like everyone else he had run into that day was.

"Hello," the man said, with a smile that was probably supposed to be menacing, but looked a little wilted around the edges. "You must be Mr. Nagira." His eyes flicked to Doujima as she entered behind him, and to his credit he didn't miss a beat before continuing. "And, ah, signorina. You were not expected." There was the slightest hint of reproach in his voice, and Nagira couldn't help but grin. A witch was criticizing a SOLOMON agent for being so impolite as to invite herself into someone else's home. There were a lot of things that he wasn't finding very funny right now, Doujima's profession top on the list, but he couldn't resist that.

A small guffaw escaped his lips, and the man gave him a puzzled look. Nagira cleared his throat. "Okay, you know who we are. Who are you?"

"Caesar," the man replied, as if that should be answer enough. "She is expecting you." There was a pointed emphasis on the last word, as if what he really wanted to say was she is expecting one of you. He turned on his heel without saying anything more, and beckoned for them to follow him down the hallway. With a final glance at Doujima, Nagira did so. A moment later, he heard her footsteps behind him.

"She is expecting you," he heard her mimic, in a darkly melodramatic voice. Nagira glanced over his shoulder at her, and the look on her face was much more nervous than her taunting would otherwise indicate. She caught him looking, and quickly schooled her features. Her eyes danced away from his, looking instead at the intricate molding on the whitewashed walls of the hallway, barely visible in the dim light. He shook his head, and turned back to their guide, who had stopped in front of a pair of pale wooden doors. Caesar gripped the handles, as though he would fling the doors open wide. Instead, he pulled one door open, slowly and quietly, and peered inside briefly before motioning for them to follow him into the room beyond.

The walls of the room were hung in red, velvet curtains dripping from the ceiling and lending a sort of warm opulence to the room. Gilt-painted screens were placed in front of the draperies at points around the room, making the whole room a place of hidden corners and shadows. The light was just as dim as it had been in the hallway, but there was a golden cast to it, turning the pale marble of the floor yellow. Seated on a chaise lounge at the center of the room, as if she had been designed specifically for this place – or, more likely, as if the place had been designed for her – was a woman.

It was difficult to pin down her age. To Nagira's eyes, she didn't look a day past thirty. There was something in her gaze, however, that belied that, her eyes dark and sly and much older than the face that they were set in. Her hair was a blaze of red-gold, not uncommon coloring in this parts, falling over the shoulders of her simply-cut white dress. She should have been overwhelmed by the sumptuous surroundings, but instead, the simplicity of her attire served to draw attention to her. Like the room, the woman was meant to impress.

No need to ask who she was, even before she gestured them both into chairs with a wave of her hand that any royal would envy. This was Fiametta Ganza, who called herself the Witch Queen.

"Signor Nagira," she said, and her voice was surprisingly raspy, almost, but not quite, like an old woman's. "How do you do?" Her eyes flicked towards Doujima, but she nodded cordially, and Nagira thought that she was not entirely surprised to see the SOLOMON spy there. "Signorina."

Doujima had settled herself into a chair, the plush red fabric nearly swallowing her. After a moment, Nagira took the one beside her, turning to gaze at the Witch Queen. "Uh-huh. What are we supposed to call you? 'Your Highness'?"

She smiled at the obvious skepticism in his voice. "If you like. If not, Fiametta is fine."

"Uh-huh."

The smile only widened, until a husky laugh trickled past her lips. She motioned to Caesar, who was still standing patiently by the door, his hands folded in front of him. "Fetch us some refreshments." He left the room without question, shutting the door behind him. Apparently, it was good to be queen. That done, she turned to her guests, her expression suddenly businesslike, although some of the amusement remained, lingering at the corners of her mouth. "Now, signore, I have been told that I owe you an apology."

Frankly, he was more interested in who would tell Fiametta that she owed anyone anything, but he shrugged. "Sure."

"In that case, I am very sorry for my earlier discourtesy to you," she said formally.

"Yes, trying to drown a person is pretty discourteous," Nagira replied. He saw Doujima flick him a curious glance but, perhaps in the interest of presenting a united front, she kept silent.

Fiametta laughed again, and waved a negligent hand through the air, dismissing his words easily. "I did not try to drown you. If I had tried to drown you, you would be drowned. Caesar, my nephew, whom you have met, was the one responsible, but I was the one who gave the order, and for that I am sorry. I was told later of the work that you have done on the behalf of my people, and I am ashamed that I did not realize who you were sooner. I have heard of you before, you see. I simply did not make the connection. You cannot find that surprising, considering the company you keep." She didn't look at Doujima. She didn't have to. Nagira bristled, because it was one thing for him to disapprove of Doujima, but an entirely different thing when someone else did it. Fiametta saw it, and hurried the subject along. "But I will make it up to you. You have questions, I believe. You may ask them, if you like, although I cannot promise that I will answer." She looked between Nagira and Doujima, and added, with barely perceptible reluctance, "you may both ask."

Though she had been silent until now, Doujima leaned forward. Her eyes were narrowed, and there was an almost feverish glint to them. She looked like a zealot, like someone so caught up in something that they couldn't see anything beyond it. It startled him, and he wondered if he had missed this change in her, or if it was something new. "Fine," she said, and even though her voice was civil, there were sharp edges along it, barely hidden behind faux politeness. "Did you kill the Spaniard?"

For the first time since they had entered the room, Fiametta's attention rested solely on Doujima. The amusement was still on her face, but now there was something almost malicious mixed in with it. "Little girl," she said, "if I had killed the Spaniard, do you truly think that I would tell you so?" Then the malice was gone, and she was all smiles again. She shrugged, spreading her hands out in a helpless gesture, palms up. "Of course, I did not. Nor did any of my people."

"Your people," Nagira murmured.

She looked at him. "The witches of Venice. They follow me, all of them. Does that surprise you?"

He met her sly dark eyes, and shook his head. "No, not really."

Fiametta smiled, pleased, but Doujima was shaking her head. "He died of Craft, though. If not one of your people, then who?" The smile that she gave Fiametta was broadly mocking, more like the Doujima he knew and less like the fanatic she had reminded him of. "As you say, the witches of Venice all follow you."

In an echo of Doujima's pose, Fiametta leaned forward. "So you have the method, signorina. But what about a motive, as they say? Why would I wish to kill the Spaniard?"

"Somehow, I doubt you two were bosom buddies," Nagira said.

An elegant shrug seemed to sum up Fiametta's feelings on the matter. "True. I had no love for him, and he had even less for me. One might even say that we were enemies, by simple virtue of what I am and who he worked for." There was an ironic twist to her mouth, another look-that-wasn't-a-look in Doujima's direction. "But I would not have wished him dead. You see, we had something of a... how would you say?... symbiotic relationship. I kept the witches quiet and peaceful, and he kept the Hunters out." For a moment, Nagira thought that he saw a flicker of fear in her eyes, but it disappeared before he could be sure. She shrugged again, just barely raising one shoulder. "I suppose that is all over now. The Hunters will come, and they will bring their guns, and their church-sanctioned witchcraft. So you see, I would have much preferred it if the Spaniard had not died. Better the devil you know, no?"

Doujima started at those words, and Nagira wondered why. She recovered quickly, and seemed to be thinking furiously, her eyes narrowed in thought so that he could almost see the wheels and gears turning behind them. "Okay, say I believe you," she said to Fiametta, "which I don't, but say I do. Could it have been an outsider? Not one of your witches, but someone who came into Venice, maybe someone with a grudge?"

"Anything is possible, I suppose," Fiametta said. "I do try to keep track of the comings and goings of outsiders, especially if I think that they might cause trouble. I do not want anyone to cause trouble, you see? People do slip though, sometimes, though. If, as you say, it was someone who had a grudge against your mentor, they would have been trying to avoid detection."

She looked up at the squeak of wheels against marble. Caesar reentered the room, pushing a cart piled high with plates filled with delicacies. A bottle of wine and some glasses were balanced precariously on the edge of the cart, and there was a carafe of what was probably coffee. "Ah, here we go," she said, clapping her hands together with childish delight. "Caesar. Would you check and see if there were any witches not our own in Venice at the time of the Spaniard's death? Molte grazie," she said, as he once again went to do her bidding without the faintest breath of a protest. Once he was gone, Fiametta turned back to Nagira and Doujima. "Would you like some wine? It is very good."

Doujima nodded distractedly, her thoughts still turned inward. "Yes, please," she mumbled, her fingers playing over the arm of the chair as she tried to work out some intricacy or another, some snag in whatever tangled web she was currently weaving. She was distracted, so she didn't notice the obvious diversion of Caesar's entrance with the food, or the secretive slant of Fiametta's eyes, suddenly so pronounced. She didn't notice. Nagira did.

He accepted a glass of wine himself, and sat back in his chair, the cushions embracing him lovingly. Like Doujima, he took a moment to play things over in his head, and considered, and bided his time. Once each of them had a glass, and Fiametta had begun to look smug at pulling off some kind of verbal sleight-of-hand, he spoke.

"You know, it's funny," Nagira said, with deliberate casualness. "When I was poking around this afternoon, asking my questions – you know, before you tried to drown me – someone told me something interesting. He said that the witches of Venice have a secret, something that they're hiding." Fiametta had stopped with her glass midway to her lips, and was staring at him. Doujima had abandoned her musings and was doing the same, her eyes intent on his face.

Finally, Fiametta cleared her throat. "I do not understand your meaning."

"I think you do," he said, softly. "Like you said, if you had really been trying to drown me, I'd be dead now. I'm not dead and you weren't trying to drown me, which means that my earlier dunking was supposed to serve another purpose. It was a warning, meant to scare me away from something. So tell me: if you didn't kill Alfonso, and you don't know who did, what secret are you hiding that you're so desperate to protect?"

There was a whisper of fabric from behind them, like a curtain being brushed aside. Nagira turned, and froze.

"Me," Robin said. "She's protecting me."

--------------------

Disclaimer: None of these lovely characters are mine, especially not Robin. Muahahaha.

Notes: This is about 300-500 words shorter than my usual chapter. Considering the length, I really have no excuse for taking so long. Molte grazie means 'thank you very much.' A big old thanks to WiccanMethuselah for making sure that I don't blind you, the reader, with my typos of doom. Stay tuned for the next chapter, which will include more Robin. I promise, I'll finish it eventually.