The cognomina codex, p.39
The Cognomina Codex, page 39
“We would like to accompany you,” said a bodyguard behind her.
“I have to do this alone,” she said, motioning the first guard out of the speedboat. “See that those five are taken care of. I will return in a few hours.”
“But who will take you there?” asked the first guard as he stepped onto the dock.
She shot him a look of pained disappointment as she took the wheel. “I know how to captain a boat, you dullard,” she said as she idled away into the calm waters of the Grand Canal.
“Where are you going?” both guards asked nervously in unison.
“Back to the past.”
she eased the sleek wooden boat into an idle as she glided up to the neglected dock next to the derelict buildings of distant Lazzaretto. Brevicepts stepped out onto the dock and tried to recall the fuzzy, fever-dream memories of the last time she saw him here. The forgotten island looked abandoned, except for a single light that shone from the first open doorway. She entered to find a stainless-steel table and chairs set with two small beakers in place of wine glasses next to several dusty bottles and a moon-faced Carnival mask. Clean paths in the dirt on the floor marked the hasty removal of heavy lab equipment.
Galen, still wearing a tight-fitting tuxedo, entered the main hall from the back. “I see you got my message, Stregua. A wonderful party, I must say—shame we had to crash it.”
“Is that really you, Doctor?” she asked as she stepped toward him to look into his strange face. “Or is it still physician?”
“I see you are still wearing your hair in the traditional style,” he said, pointing to her neat topknot.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she said, craning her long neck to peer out through the empty window frames. “You and I dealing with matters of life and death here again in this place.”
Galen reached for the dusty, unlabeled bottle and began pouring into both beakers. “The lab gear is all that I had time to bring with me, so they will have to do.”
“I confess,” she continued, “I get a bit of a chill just thinking about me lying out there somewhere in a mass grave.”
Galen motioned for her to sit. “Oh, you’re out there all right,” he chuckled to himself. “I saw to that. I’m out there too, right next to you.”
Brevicepts brought the lab glass to her nose and sniffed deeply. “Well, here’s to us and what we were.”
Galen offered a forced smile and then drank with her. He rolled a vial of silver fluid from the Croatian pharmacy across the table toward her. “I assume your good Dr. Ling hasn’t been able to crack an antidote for his monstrous creation yet, or you wouldn’t have made the trip out to see your old friend.”
Brevicepts looked at the wine in the beaker, then turned toward the colors of the breaking dawn visible through the open double doors. “You are correct,” she replied coolly, her acid words an overt indictment of her doctor’s inability. “Do you wish to propose a trade?”
Galen choked on his sip and set down his wine. “A trade? For what?”
“Mine for yours, of course.”
“You don’t know yet,” the physician chuckled and watched her stiffen as he reached for his simple flip phone and slid it across the table to her. The photo on the small screen showed an Embe tattooed hand cradling Clovis’s face.
“I see,” she said, taking a long drink and reaching for the bottle to refill her glass.
“Don’t fret, old friend. There is still a bargain to be had here, for you do hold something of value.”
“Pianosa,” she offered flatly.
“Pianosa,” he agreed. “And a return of all the assets stolen. And a truce between our sides.”
She swirled the fine wine in her glass as she thought about the offer. “I could just kill my captains, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” the physician said before taking a long drink. “But you would have to start their influence cells over again. And if your fawning followers don’t see their shepherds alive again after last night’s excitement, they’ll be off your team for good.” He reached over to refill his glass. “I wonder if you can afford that kind of setback to your plans.”
She drank in silence before answering him. “I can never let you give the world the gift of longer lives.”
Galen laughed to himself as he recognized the familiar feelings of dread that came with her company. “You’re the same person, the same broken and fractured person, Brevicepts. After tonight, I can see your signature on the Venice outbreak and hundreds of other disasters. Malus bonum ubi se simulat tunc est pessimus.”57
“I’m not so bad, am I? Virtue is all a matter of perspective.” Brevicepts squinted a forced smile back at the doctor.
“You’re lucky I’m making you any offer at all,” Galen snapped at her. “I should let your people suffer as you planned to torture us into perpetual madness.”
She stared at him and knew she was beaten. “Pianosa can still transfer the assets back to exactly where they were before. When do you want to meet?”
“I’ll get you a message about a meeting and the antidote when we are all away safely. But there is one more thing we want”—Galen checked himself—“one more thing Evan wants.”
“Elsa,” she guessed.
“Yes, he wants Elsa out of La Mutuelle.”
“What does he see in her?”
“Qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt.”58
Brevicepts smiled. “And if I refuse?”
“It’s only a matter of time until she leaves you—in this life or the next. You know that now. Evan has shown her a better way,” said Galen, swirling his wine. “I wonder how many others in your organization might be looking for an alternative family right about now. It is only by light that one can appreciate your darkness.”
She drank but didn’t answer for a long time. “We have a deal.”
“Excellent,” he said. “You are welcome to stay and drink with me for a while if you want. It might be a long time before we spill wine again.”
She tilted her head at his offer so that her topknot flipped to one side. “All right, but I have a few questions.”
“Go ahead,” Galen said in a long yawn that betrayed his sleepless nights of work.
“First of all,” she paused and considered the glass. “What is this wine?” she asked.
“I thought you might like this one. It’s a Côte-Rôtie, from my own estate. Next question?”
“What would it take for me to get some more of your life-extension serum?”
“What, so you could extend the lives of those that are loyal to you?” Galen scoffed. “No, I will not have my work perverted by you again.” Galen leveled his exhausted eyes back at her, but she remained silent, still demanding an answer from her old friend. “What would it take?” he repeated as he took a heavy gulp of the heavenly wine and threw his head back in a laugh. “It would take a smarter doctor than you’ve got now.”
Her stern face cracked into a slight smile that slowly widened into a forced grin. “You’re exactly the same.”
“Unfortunately, my dear Stregua, so are you.” He raised his glass in another toast.
She sipped and savored his wine. “I hated you for voting against me,” she said in a soft voice that hinted at remorse.
“I know you did,” replied Galen. “I imagine you still do.”
“Acerrima proximorum odia!”59 she replied before finishing her wine.
“Perhaps another bottle of this would ease the sting.”
57. Latin—When a bad man pretends he is a good man, then he is at his worst, Publilius Syrus
58. Latin—Lovers create dreams for themselves
59. Latin—Hatred of the closest is the most bitter, Tacitus
32
Evan arrived early at busy Caffè Florian, the meeting spot Galen had communicated to Brevicepts. He faced the afternoon sun at an outdoor table at the edge of the open expanse of St. Mark’s Square in Venice. Masked Carnival tourists crowded the square in a benign replay of his surreal costumed nightmare from the night before. Evan looked around at the colorful twisted grins and scowls and wondered if any of those masks covered a face that saw him last night at the Conclave. He looked at the couples and families who frolicked in the freedom of anonymity, but he could not share their joy. The ambiguity that amused them only served as a reminder to Evan that the danger of La Mutuelle could be lurking behind any face, masked or not.
He watched Ramsay arrive and stood to embrace her in a silent comradery of everything they had accomplished. “Are they all safe?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ramsay replied with a slight smile of satisfaction. “I have all four of them, and they are safe. I have the remaining members of the Cognomina. They are sequestered in a secure location in Paris. I will take us there right after we are finished here,” she said, looking around for Brevicepts.
“How did you do it?” Evan asked.
“It was Perez. His clan returned the favor and rescued us.”
“Stay on the side of the angels,” Evan replied.
“Something like that, but you wouldn’t have thought that if you had seen Lucca and his team in their stolen paramedic uniforms,” she laughed. “Did you have a chance to speak to any who left our ranks and joined her? Do you think any of them might want to return to us?”
Evan took out a cigarette. “Elsa, for sure. Mr. Ing and Kerr seem to have embraced her vision. Steen and Kress might return to us. There might be one or two others among her existing captains. After that, I’m not sure,” he said, exhaling a stream of smoke.
“I heard about your party last night. It must have been hard to face that kind of test.”
“They rescued me before I had to—” He struggled to recount the horror he had been prepared to commit. “Poppy sacrificed herself to prevent me from— She protected an innocent girl.”
“I heard. She wasn’t the only one who stepped up to protect the innocent.”
Evan nodded, thinking of Auda and Galen and even Samas sacrificing his art collection. “In the end, I don’t think I accomplished much by going over to her.”
Ramsay reached over and touched his arm. “That’s not true, Evan. The information you were able to gather while with them will be very valuable for us now. What you learned could save us, but it could also protect many more like that girl.” She leveled her steel-gray eyes at him. “We’re in a war with them now. The stakes are not just us and our survival, but the survival of the world around us, the world we embrace and love. You have seen inside of her organization and how it operates. You can identify her captains and their plans.”
“Some of their plans,” he corrected her.
“Look around you, Evan. What future do you think she envisions for humanity?”
Evan looked around at the colorful costumes and masked performers in the square and tried to focus on the joy in their conversations and laughter.
“We’re on their side. They don’t even know the peril they face from her,” she said, looking at the happy revelers with Evan. “We may be the only chance they have now. We, the Cognomina, are the only possible counterbalance to La Mutuelle and their dark mission.” She looked back at Evan and paused until he turned back to face her. “We are smaller, weaker, and disorganized compared to her, but the risk you took is our first step to getting us onto an equal footing with her.”
“Do you really think so?”
“You said it yourself, we needed more information about her and how her organization works if we are to ever have a chance of leveling the battlefield. Rafic has been able to get some great information, but even he would still be blind without you. You gave us a chance,” she said, motioning to the people in the crowded square, “and you’re giving them a chance too.”
“That’s her,” Evan said, spotting the topknot of black hair atop Brevicepts’s tall frame as she moved through the crowd. “It looks like Elsa and Pianosa are with her,” he said in relief.
“Do you have it?” Ramsay asked.
Evan nodded but kept his eyes locked on Elsa as the three approached. Elsa’s eyes met his, and he felt the same rush as when she had waved to him from the window of the departing jet, the same rush as when she had held his arm at the office in Paris, the same rush as when she took him on the train. Elsa smiled for an instant before resuming her leader’s stern air as they approached.
Evan remembered the panicked look on her face last night when she realized she could not protect him from Brevicepts’s test. Now he envisioned protecting her from the same danger.
Brevicepts sat Pianosa in an open chair next to him. Evan noticed that the caretaker’s hands were bound in front of him, covered by a scarf draped between his slack arms. He looked drugged, struggling to keep his blinking eyes open.
Brevicepts looked at Evan and said nothing and then turned to study Ramsay—from her tattoo to her cool gray eyes. “Is that really you in there, old friend?”
“I would recognize you anywhere,” Ramsay answered with contempt.
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Well, I am certainly getting to meet a lot of my old friends recently. I assume Rome was you?” Brevicepts asked coolly.
“Ask your cardinal.”
Brevicepts nodded and crossed her long legs. “I just want to know one thing, Ramsay. How did you find them?”
Ramsay turned her head slowly to each side, surveying each human face in the Carnival crowd around them. “I have a secret weapon on my side—a weapon that will always beat you.”
“Oh, do tell.”
Ramsay met her cold gaze and held it. “It’s them,” she said, motioning to the happy people around them in the piazza. “Those people, the very ones you wish to destroy, they helped me find you.”
“Don’t think you’ve won, old friend,” Brevicepts said with a sneer. “You’ve bet against me before and lost. This is a minor digression in a long timeline.”
“We’re not through,” Ramsay answered.
Brevicepts’s eyes narrowed behind a forced smile as she turned to Evan. “Do you have it?”
“I do. Will those two leave with us?” Evan asked, pointing to Elsa and Pianosa.
“He will. Elsa,” she said, placing a hand on the young woman’s knee, “Elsa gets to make her own decision. But before we make the exchange, I have a question for you that has been plaguing me since the party,” she said, smiling at her own joke.
Evan looked at her with a hardened resolve as the memories of the Conclave assaulted him again.
Brevicepts cocked her head and studied him in silence for a moment. “Right. There it is. I saw that same steely look in your eyes when you held the knife in your hand.” Her cold smile warmed. “You were going to kill that girl, weren’t you?”
Evan remained motionless and channeled his hatred back at her in a silent glare.
“I saw it in you last night. I saw you harden into one of us before my very eyes. You cannot undo that, Evan,” she said with satisfaction. “That is part of who you are now.”
“You saw my commitment last night,” he said, pushing down the emotion of seeing the girl’s innocent, terrified face. “What happened to the girl?”
“Kerr killed her,” Brevicepts said without a second thought. “Now give me the delivery from Galen and let us go our separate ways for now.”
Evan looked over at Ramsay, who nodded ever so slightly. He pulled four vials filled with clear fluid from his pocket and pushed them across the table. “Galen says to administer this every eight hours until they are normal, then administer once a day for another week.”
“All right then,” Brevicepts said, standing up to leave. She looked down at her young captain, who looked straight ahead, her hands trembling. “Have you made your decision, Elsa?”
Elsa sat locked in her chair, tears welling up in her green eyes as she looked up at her master and weighed her choice.
Brevicepts craned her head down from its heights to look at her. “Are you sure, little one? You know what this means, right?”
Evan reached out and took Elsa’s trembling hands to stop them from shaking. “Elsa is welcome with us now.”
Brevicepts stood over her young captain for a long breath and then a second. “As you wish it, Elsa.” She turned to go just as Ramsay stood and extended a clenched fist toward the taller woman. Brevicepts opened her hand as Ramsay slowly released five gold coins that clinked one at a time onto her palm. “You remembered,” Brevicepts said with a wry smile as she closed her hand around the repaid wager.
“I will stop you,” Ramsay stated as she kept her icy gray eyes locked on her foe.
“It was nice to see you, old friend. Know that I will ensure the Cognomina atones for its sins against me,” Brevicepts said before turning and walking through the crowded square toward her palazzo.
Elsa snapped out of her trance and turned to face Evan as tears began to roll down her tan cheeks.
“It’s all right, Elsa,” Evan said with a bright smile that tried to comfort her. “We did it. We got my friends back. We’re out.”
Elsa smiled and nodded, too emotional to speak.
“We can protect you,” Evan reassured her.
Elsa reached out her fingers and stroked them over Evan’s face. “No, dear one, you cannot,” she said, breaking into sobs. “But I can still protect you, for now. I will know where to meet you if you rebuild the hotel.”
“No,” Evan protested softly. “We can start now, right now.”
She stared deeply into Evan’s eyes one last time. “I dreamed of a love like this,” she said as she rose on unsteady legs. “I need to protect it now. I will be watching over you, Evan,” she said before turning to catch up with her leader at the far end of the square.
