' 'I am one by myself, one,' said Mortimer, 'high up an awful
staircase commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole
clerk to myself, and he has nothing to do but look at the burial-
ground, and what he will turn out when arrived at maturity,
I cannot conceive. Whether, in that shabby rook's nest, he is
always plotting wisdom, or plotting murder; whether he will
grow up, after so much solitary brooding, to enlighten his fellow-
creatures, or to poison them; is the only speck of interest that
presents itself to my professional view.' '
- Charles Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend."
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Chapter Twelve: The Burial-Ground
Finding his way back through Venice to Fiametta's house wasn't easy, but Nagira had always been resourceful and he soon found himself standing on the street-side of the crumbling mansion. For a moment, he stood outside the wrought iron gates that separated the house from the street, and wondered how he was going to get in. He wasn't overly concerned. It wouldn't be the first time he had resorted to a little bit of B&E to achieve his goal. For a good cause, of course.
Before he got a chance to try his skills against the Witch Queen's home, someone stepped out from behind one of the trees planted in large terracotta pots just inside the gates. It took Nagira a moment, squinting through the uncertain light, to recognize the man that Fiametta had introduced as her nephew, Caesar. Also the man who had supposedly attempted to drown him earlier that day, but Nagira wasn't the sort to hold a grudge; his coat hadn't been damaged and his cigarettes had been easily replaced. He pasted a big grin on his face and raised his hand in a casual greeting. "Hey, buddy. Don't suppose you'd let me in?"
Caesar had been squinting as well, also trying to figure out who was approaching the house at this hour of the night. When Nagira spoke, his eyes widened comically, gleaming white in the darkness of his face. "Signor Nagira." Much to Nagira's surprise, he moved forward to unlock the gate without further prompting. "We weren't expecting you back."
Something about that statement rang false, and Nagira raised a skeptical brow. Evidently, the expression was visible even in the dark, because Caesar looked away and cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Actually, I was led to believe... that is, Mr. Amon said..." He stopped, obviously deciding that whatever Amon had said should not be repeated, finishing lamely, "we thought that you would return much sooner than this." Then, in a firmer voice, "I was sent out here to watch for you."
Nagira snorted. That just figured, didn't it? Not for the first time, Nagira wondered how long Amon had waited in that stinking sewer for him to come searching for the dead Lazarus, all for the simple purpose of shooting off a few rounds in warning. It was both funny and a little irritating that Amon was so good at staying three steps ahead of him... at least under certain circumstances. "Yeah. So, do I get to come in?"
For a moment, Caesar looked confused, and Nagira wondered if his ever-brilliant brother had thought to give the poor man any instructions besides watch. Then he inclined his head and stepped aside, holding the gate open. "They are in the same parlor that the Witch Queen received you in earlier. Can you find your own way there?"
"Sure," Nagira said, marveling at how much more relaxed things seemed at the mansion when Doujima wasn't with him. Not that he blamed them for being on edge with a SOLOMON agent in the house, but he hadn't realized just how on edge they had been until now. Before, the house had seemed deserted; now, he could tell that it was milling with people, lights glowing in some of the upper story windows. Muffled laughter drifted out into the hallway from beyond one of the doors he passed, underscored by the faint sound of a television. He could hear the sound of a blender whirring somewhere in the distance, and old pipes rattling above him. It seemed that Robin and Amon were hardly Fiametta's only guests, and the house was filled with the normal sounds of people living their lives, instead of the unearthly silence that had colored his visit with Doujima.
It was tempting, so tempting, to "accidentally" make a wrong turn on his way to the parlor a do a little bit of innocent snooping. Unfortunately, he wanted to speak to his brother too much to let it wait. Sighing with regret at the missed opportunity, he made his way to the double-doors that Caesar had led him and Doujima to earlier. He didn't bother with a knock, just pulled the doors open and stepped inside.
The red drapes and gilt screens that cloaked the walls had been pushed aside to reveal a large marble fireplace that dominated one entire side of the room, as well as a number of tall, leaded-glass windows. Fiametta was sitting on the same chaise she had occupied earlier, hand-rolling a cigarette. Amon was standing by one of the windows, his gaze fixed on the darkness outside. His body was relaxed but the lines of his face were tight, holding all the sunny warmth of a blizzard and proving that, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. They both turned to look at Nagira when he entered the room, but it was his brother that he focused on.
He hadn't come with any sort of plan as to what he would say, just the vague notion that he and Amon needed to talk. All the same, he was a little bit surprised when the first words out of his own mouth were, "You're a real pain in the ass, you know that?" The tone was almost affectionate. Almost.
Amon's expression went from coolly unreadable to distinctly displeased in the blink of an eye.
All in all, it was not an auspicious start to the meeting, and things would have probably gotten worse if Robin hadn't chosen that exact moment to enter the room. Her face was flushed and there was something like suppressed excitement in her eyes, but she stopped short, looking from Amon to Nagira, then back again. Finally, with what seemed to be a deliberate decision in favor of the better part of valor, she crossed the room to the fireplace. Nagira didn't even notice the papers in her hand until she dropped them into the flames, and he wondered at the pleased finality of the gesture.
"I just saw Doujima," Robin said quietly. At first, Nagira thought that the change in subject was an attempt to tacitly defuse the tension in the room, until he saw that Amon had gone rigid. For once, his brother's expression was easy to read. Amon had been aware of the meeting, but he hadn't been happy about it. "We found the files that SOLOMON was looking for," she added, the sweet serenity in her voice almost enough to conceal the darting glance that she sent in Amon's direction.
"Where are they?" Fiametta asked impatiently. When Robin didn't answer, she put down the cigarette she had been rolling and covered her eyes with her hand. "Madre di Dio. You let her have them, did you not?"
"She won't hand them over to SOLOMON," Robin said, with such sincerity that Nagira found it impossible to argue with her.
Apparently, Fiametta didn't share his feelings. She dropped her hand to stare at the younger woman. "I hope that you are right," she said, after a moment, sounding unconvinced, "because, if you are not, you have just handed SOLOMON the key to rebuilding its intelligence agency speedily and easily. Without those files, it might take them years, decades even, to replace those who would see this as an opportunity to slip SOLOMON's leash, for whatever reason. They might never create a network as complete as the one that the Spaniard perfected. With the files…"
"She won't hand over the files," Robin reasserted. Fiametta sighed and inclined her head with exaggerated deference. Amon watched her through narrowed eyes. Nagira just stood there and wished that he had her confidence in the matter. As she looked at them, Nagira saw a hint of impatience creep into her expression. "She gave me…" Robin stopped, reconsidered, revised, "she called it a good faith gesture. I believe that she'll do the right thing."
"You are assuming that she will be given a choice in the matter," Fiametta said. Her scratchy old woman's voice had taken on a silken edge; obviously, she had decided to try a different tactic when it came to disagreeing with Robin.
Forest green eyes swivelled towards Fiametta almost unwillingly, as if Robin had sensed the trap but couldn't quite resist the urge to spring it. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Only that it would not be the first time that SOLOMON has turned on one of its own in order to achieve its ends." She leaned forward and, for a moment, the Witch Queen of Venice reminded Nagira of nothing so much as a snake preparing to strike. "Think it through, Eve. I have told you and the little blond pest both that I was not responsible for the Spaniard's death. Rampant speculation aside, it is exceptionally unlikely that some enemy from outside of Venice came undetected in the night to do the deed. Who does that leave?"
"SOLOMON," Amon said. He didn't sound surprised; he sounded like he had anticipated the answer, maybe even suspected something like it before this.
"SOLOMON," Fiametta agreed, a touch of sweet malice coloring her words. "Do you think that they will hesitate to kill her if she refuses to do as they wish? You know what they are like; you have experience it first hand. 'For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.' The agent who rebels against the confraria is a dead agent. They will murder her, and then step over her pretty corpse to take what they want." She waved an expressive hand through the air. "And we – you – will be one step further behind in reaching your goal."
Another time, Nagira might have wondered what goal Fiametta was referring to. Right now, though, he had other things to be concerned about, most of them involving pretty corpses. "You knew. This whole time, and you knew. Goddamn it lady, why didn't you bother to mention this earlier?"
She turned to look at him, her expression coldly superior. "And why," she asked, "should I help a member of the confraria?"
There was a pounding in the back of Nagira's head like an oncoming train, an explosion waiting to happen. Amon beat him to it, his voice chilly with control. "It wasn't so long ago that Robin and I were SOLOMON agents."
"True enough," Fiametta said, "but with two marked differences. The first, of course, is that you left SOLOMON. Signorina Doujima does not seem to have any desire to follow in your footsteps and, if she is content to remain as a member of the syndicate, that makes her my enemy in a very real sense of the word." She raised one perfectly arched brow. "The second is that, as you know, I have my own reasons for accepting Robin and yourself on, shall we say, your own merits?"
What was that supposed to mean?
It was a passing thought, but one that Nagira's well trained mind filed away for consideration at a later date. "So Yurika's a SOLOMON agent, and that makes her your enemy," he said, and took a step closer to her. "You put a friend of mine in danger. Want to guess what that makes us?"
She did not look impressed. Then, all of a sudden—she did. She straightened, and the look on her face was that of someone who realized that they had crossed a line in the sand, and was now frantically trying to figure out how far they had gone, so that they could then figure out how far they had to backpedal in order to return to safer territory. For a moment, Nagira wondered what he had done that would succeed in making this woman, who gleefully terrified those around her with apparent ease, look like that. Then he realized that her gaze wasn't fixed on him, but somewhere over his shoulder.
"Stop it, all of you," Robin said, exasperation threading its way through her voice. "What's done is done, and this isn't helping anything." She looked at Amon, and then away. "We need to find Doujima. If nothing else, she needs to know this." Perhaps Fiametta's words had struck a nerve, because she looked more worried than the mere need to pass on information would warrant. Perhaps that worry was contagious, because Nagira could feel an answering spark of anxiety, somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft…
And he knew, far too well, how SOLOMON dealt with witches.
…the agent who rebels against the confraria is a dead agent.
----------
"Poison," Doujima whispered, and she didn't even have to see Charlie's nod to know that she was right. She could taste it, smell it, feel it working its way into her blood.
"I'm sorry, Yurika," Charlie said. He stood, and walked around the desk to pluck the glass from her nerveless fingers. "I wish there was another way," he added, as he placed the glass back on the shelf next to its empty fellows and the decanter of poisoned wine. He turned, and gazed at her, his eyes pale and intent in the thin moonlight that trickled through the windows at her back. "I want you to understand."
His words teased her voice out from where it was stuck at the back of her throat. "If you want me to understand why you betrayed Alfonso," she said, "then you need to try harder." He had betrayed her, too. She realized that, but it wasn't unreasonable to think that the explanations for each would be interconnected.
"I didn't," he replied, with such vicious passion that it startled her. "It's not that simple. I mean…" He paused, his eyes going unfocused as he gathered his thoughts. "He betrayed us first, you know. He kept the Hunters out of Venice, allowing the witches to pollute this city, for all that he said he loved it. That was when the Assembly approached me, asking me to keep an eye on his. For his own good, you know. To make sure he didn't do anything… unforgivable."
"You were a double-agent," Doujima murmured. She sank back into her chair, her limbs feeling heavy. "This whole time. I don't believe it."
"I was loyal to SOLOMON," he said. "I thought it was ridiculous at first, too, but I should have known better. Exodus says it all, doesn't it? By suffering the witches of Venice to live, he became a heretic. The Assembly was willing to forgive him that..." because he had enough dirt to bury them all, Doujima added silently, with a sort of bleary cynicism, "but it didn't stop there."
"Didn't it?" she asked quietly. She already knew the answer, but he seemed to need prompting.
"Like I said," he punctuated his words with a small grimace. "I should have known better. He was a Craft-user, wasn't he? Already tainted with witch blood. It didn't take much to make him betray SOLOMON. The half-mad ravings of a heretic scientist, and suddenly he was wandering around the office, muttering to himself about how the syndicate ruined everything and everyone it touched. He did that, you know, when something was really bothering him. Talked to himself. It was like he forgot that I was even there. Some spy, huh?"
"He trusted you," Doujima shot back, and she liked the sharp anger that colored her voice, although she was starting to feel a little bit nervous about the numbness in her fingertips.
Charlie shrugged off her statement. "I trusted him. Then I saw it. The letter. I walked in on him one day while he was writing it and he put it away pretty quick, but I got a good enough look at it to know that it was a confession… and that it was addressed to you." His eyes focused on her again, cool and hard; she might have squirmed if she had felt capable of the movement right then. His face was fierce with some emotion, unidentifiable yet somehow familiar. "I reported what I knew to the Assembly and they gave me my orders."
"So you killed him."
"I saved him," Charlie said, and suddenly, Doujima was able to identify the emotion that colored his face and made his voice practically shake with intensity; the fervor of a zealot, a fanatic… a SOLOMON agent. It chilled her to the bone. It made her wonder if she had ever looked that way, with the burning light of righteousness in her eyes, her mouth set in a line both hard and unforgiving. "Don't you understand, Yurika? He confessed, was tried, and found guilty, in the eyes of both God and man. I was simply the humble tool that delivered his judgment, and his salvation."
"You're a tool, alright," she muttered. He didn't seem to hear her.
"I didn't betray Alfonso," he continued. "I only did it to save him. What was left of him that was worth saving. Don't you understand?"
More than I ever wanted to. "And me?"
"You too," he said, and she thought that she detected a slight softening in his voice. "Guilt by association, Yurika. You see it a lot if you look through the transcripts of the old witch trials. 'Believers who receive, defend or support heretics shall be branded as infamous,'" he quoted, the syndicate's doctrine coming easily to his lips. "You and Alfonso were cut from the same cloth, always have been. When I realized that he was writing his confession to you, I knew that he had tainted you with the same doubts about the organization, the same heretical ways of thinking." He reached out, like he would touch her hand or her cheek. Then he stopped himself, as if the invisible taint that he was talking about could be transferred from her skin to his. "And you're a Seed. I didn't know that before you told me this afternoon. I thought that it might not be too late. But it's in your blood. I knew what had to be done the moment that you came in the door tonight. I could see it in your eyes."
And there is nothing like finding out, finally, finally, that all those things they taught you were wrong.
Alfonso's words.
Yes.
She didn't realize that she had spoken the last word out loud until she felt Charlie's glare on her. She ignored him, reaching out instead to pull the files off of the desk and into her lap, the folder with Alfonso's letter still sitting on top. Her hands felt thick and clumsy, like they were barely attached to her wrists, but she managed well enough, cuddling the thick stack of papers to her like a security blanket, or some kind of talisman against harm. The moon-bleached colors of the room bled together as her eyes refused to focus, and she let her head fall back against the cracked leather of the chair so that she could stare dizzily up at the ceiling. "What did you give me?"
"Belladonna, and a sedative to make you sleep," Charlie said, offhandedly. "By the time the poison kicks in, you won't be feeling a thing. It's better that way, don't you think?"
"I would have preferred not to have been poisoned at all," she replied, lifting her head just enough look at him.
Charlie didn't respond. Instead, he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. The light of the display turned his face green in the darkness, and his fingers blurred before her eyes as they ran over the glowing numbers on the buttons. The low beeps as he dialed sounded loud in the sudden silence.
He held the phone to his face, and waited patiently. Doujima closed her eyes and tried to stay awake, trying unsuccessfully to focus on Charlie's quiet voice as he spoke into the phone. She heard him snap the phone shut, and forced her eyes open as he once again spoke to her. "There have been Hunters in the city for weeks. Did you know that?"
"No," Doujima said. "Alfonso never allowed it. Never would have allowed it."
Charlie nodded. "He was a traitor," he said, as if to remind her. "So are you, I suppose. They're on their way."
It wouldn't take them long, she figured. The city wasn't all that big; no matter where they were stationed, SOLOMON troops knew how to mobilize quickly and it wouldn't be more than a few minutes before the building was swarming with Hunters. There was nothing she could do about it now. She had played the spy game and, rather to her surprise, she had lost. How very… disappointing... to have failed in the end. Alfonso would not be avenged. The files, and the people whose lives they contained, would be delivered to SOLOMON. She would die.
Most of all, we are taught to despair.
The hell she would.
The sound of booted feet tromping up the steps drew her attention. Lots of booted feet, with no attempt made at silence or subtlety.
The guilt, the anger, and – the hope.
More anger than hope at the moment, to be certain, but that was almost preferable. It dismissed the last lingering feelings of self-preservation, leaving her with the nearly insane desire to do something, anything, that would piss Charlie off. It lent strength to her lead-weighted limbs, allowing her to pull up her legs and push hard, as hard as she could, against the edge of the desk. The chair slid back, wheels skittering loudly against the scuffed wooden floors.
For a moment, she thought that it wouldn't be enough. The chair hit the window, the glass groaned a complaint, but it held. Hope flagged, anger faltered, and despair raised its ugly little head again. Then, there was another little groaning complaint from behind her, as the glass continued to support her weight but the three-hundred-year-old wood that held the panes in place refused to do so. There was a resounding craaack as the long-suffering wood was reduced to so many toothpick-sized splinters, sending her plummeting towards the canal.
As she, the chair, and the stack of files went out the window, her usually over-developed survival instinct chose to wake up and remark that, as far as stupid ideas went, this one trumped all others, including one memorable childhood attempt at shoving a 100 lire coin up her nose.
She thought she heard Charlie yell her name. She thought she heard someone else echo it. Then she hit the water, and she stopped thinking of anything at all.
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Disclaimer: No... wait, wait, yes... or rather, I think... no, definitely not. Witch Hunter Robin still isn't mine. Drat.
Notes: As always, WiccanMethuselah comes to my rescue with her mad beta reading skilz. Madre di Dio means 'mother of God'. Unmarked quotes are as followed: Fiametta quotes the Bible, specifically Samuel (15:23) and Charlie paraphrases a papal bull, Canon Three – On Heresy, from the Fourth Lateran Council. Just in case you wanted to know. Look for the next chapter, hopefully to be delivered in a more timely manner than the last few chapters.