Chapter Text
xx.
In the ending there’s a single gunshot and a single cry rings clear through evening air, sending birds scattering from their perches in the trees.
Blood begins to pool on grass and stone and someone gasps, a hand reaches out, light fades from someone’s eyes.
Let’s not start this at the end.
We start with Rome and these are Italians, no story should start away from home.
This is Rome and only one of them is Roman, the Florentines are always far from home.
This is Rome and there’s no blood on the floor.
Yet.
xix.
They book the next flight back to Rome and Leo paces back and forth, a line smouldering on the carpet arms bandaged, cuts healing fast.
He tries to remember the last time he was in South America, the land lined in gold and the map from a torn up book; he tries to remember ever reading that someone found the Inca’s before the conquistadors did, comes up empty.
Riario shrugs, “perhaps they did not want anyone to know of their new world,” he says, flicking the knife open and closed, back and forth, in time with Leo’s pacing.
“Surely no-one can hide a discovery that big,” says Nico, his ‘not talking to Riario’ rule ignored, “surely-”
“Surely what, Nico?” Leo snaps, “Surely there’s some rule that everyone has always known that everything ever found must always be written down! It’s the chronology of the human race, Nico, if everyone documented everything they found or hid when they did it we would all of us be out of jobs - there’d be no history, just continuous loops of knowledge.”
Nico flinches and fiddles with his sleeve.
“It’s frustrating, artista,” says Riario, “but you needn’t get angry. We’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t like not knowing,” says Leo, “never have.”
Riario nods and goes out onto the balcony, phone in hand, knife still in the other.
“No-one likes not knowing, Leo,” says Zo, “least of all you. Where abouts in South America is it, anyway?”
Leo sighs, drags up a smaller copy of the map he’d sketched during the night (Riario stealing all the covers in the cold of England) and points to the left side, says, “Incan Empire."
“What like Machu Picchu?” Zo asks, looking over his shoulder, Nico joins him.
“No,” Riario says from the doorway, sun lighting his hair with a sort of cruel halo, “the Sons of Mithras wouldn’t hide their treasure in the palace of a heathen ruler, the map looks to point to somewhere more isolated, harder to get to. My guess is Choquequirao, though most of the Incan great buildings date after the coin was made.”
Leo looks back at the map and superimposes the modern one he sees in his mind, Riario’s right, the proverbial x is near to Choquequirao and fuck it that means walking.
“Fuck you,” Leo thinks, “He’s right,” Leo says.
Zo and Nico are predictable in the next sentence they share: “What the fuck is Choquequirao?”
Leo sighs, Riario laughs.
xviii.
In Riario’s townhouse in Rome they each have a separate room, touching anything feels like blasphemy and Leo walks on eggshells; they aren’t supposed to see inside each other's homes, he thinks, this is wrong.
Riario remains a shadow in this palace of light, the open windows and the whiteness, the huge doorless entrances and white glass sculptures, tiny replicas of the classics shine in white marble in the halls and the alcoves of the walls. The owner of this house is the canyon that tells him to step closer when he asks for guidance; Riario’s home, Riario’s rules.
They do not share a bed here; this is not equal ground.
xvii.
He sits back while Riario tells Nico and Zo all he knows about the Inca’s, explains Choquequirao (when he gets to the four day trek part Leo swear he hears Nico whimper) and the reasons why this trip will be dangerous, why this trip is dangerous. He mentions nothing about the men with guns in Oxford; Leo doesn’t either.
The book, or what’s left of it, key, coin and full map are in a locked compartment of Leo’s suitcase.
Nothing much matters but that.
xvi.
It’s Saturday when the body drops, a fresh corpse on the bench across from Riario’s door and Leo musters up the courage to go and see, Riario hangs back, looks closer, stumbles.
It’s the Oxford scholar, the Jew, shot through the leg and the lung, a slow, cruel way to die - drowning on dry land.
There’s Hebrew across his hands and a fingernail torn from his index finger.
“It must mean something,” he says, looking hard and Riario has a hand on his arm, “It’s one a.m, call the police.”
“This is a message,” Leo says, shaking his head, “not just the body, the gunshot wounds - obviously someone’s following us and wants what we know - wants the book of leaves but the fingernail. Why do that? Why tear out the fingernail? Unless he did it himself, more likely, which makes this a double message.”
“Leonardo, please,” says Riario, grip tightening and Leo shakes him off, reaches into a pocket and pulls out latex gloves. Riario inhales sharply, disgustedly, “Ready for everything,” he says in a tone that might once have been dry and mocking but it comes out scared, Leo nods and starts examining the corpse.
The fingernail rests underneath the Jew’s tongue, on it etched tiny words, ‘front door’ and Leo turns, tells Riario to check around, under flower pots anything for the second key.
“It’s here, artista,” says Riario, holding the key aloft, eyes tired and mouth set into a frown, “now please either call the police or come back inside.”
Leo chooses the latter, and Leo sleeps.
xv.
His hand is heavy, scraping, cutting through rock - he can’t breathe, he’s suffocating here in the dark and no one else is here and he thinks they must be dead and why did he have to find the first key anyway why did he. why-
- Leo wakes to the sound of Nico’s quiet mumbling, he catches words like ‘manic’ and hears the phrase ‘too much’, he sits up, coughs, says, “what time is it?”
And Nico says “Noon, maestro.”
Leo hadn’t realised how tired he’d been, lies back down and looks at Nico, and Zo just past him in the door (why is Zo always at the door?).
“I’m still tired,” says Leo, “why am I still tired?”
“Riario,” Zo says, biting out the name like it personally offends him, “you started mumbling when you came back in from the - uh - the body and you were thrashing and fighting so he gave you something, knocked you out. I’m sorry, Leo, we didn’t know what else to do.”
“It’s fine,” says Leo, because they’re alive and he’s not suffocating and he’s safe as far as he can be in the vipers nest, he says it like he means it, almost manages a smile, says, “can I talk to him, please?”
“Maestro,” says Nico, from his side, “Hasn’t he done all we needed of him now, can’t we get rid of him and go alone, just us three? - like normal.”
“I think this time we need him,” Leo says.
(“I still feel like I’m trapped,” he doesn’t.)
xiv.
“How do you feel?” says Riario, standing carefully away like Leo’s some frightened animal.
“Fucking fantastic,” says Leo, “and yourself? I hear I owe this headache to you.”
(“My head is trying to climb out of my skull and I can barely breathe,” Leo doesn’t say.
“I feel the same,” Riario doesn’t say either.)
Riario moves away and opens the curtains, as if to prove that hey, the headaches can get worse, and it’s a fucking glorious day in Rome and Leo wants to yank the curtain shut again and do something other than ache and lie in a bed that isn’t even his with a man who’s shot him, and threatened to knife him, giving him sleeping pills for his nightmares.
“Better,” says Riario, opening the window, “a headache than nightmares, I always find.”
Leo almost smiles, “what would you, the golden boy of Universita di Roma, know of nightmares?”
“Hmm,” says Riario, eyes back on Leo, “I’ve been trapped in dark places too, you know, artista, you do not have the monopoly on fear.” He shifts his weight and looks back out over Rome, murmurs, “they took the body away while you were sleeping, asked some questions, I told them the truth, none of us heard anything.”
“Did you tell them that you knew the man?” Leo asks, gulping down the coffee Zo or Nico had brought him, calculating what Riario must be thinking through the smooth movements and fluid grace to get back to Leo’s side.
Riario shakes his head, says, “No, let them think it a sad coincidence and find the people who did this. Saying anything would lend their suspicions credence and the last thing I need is to be bound in Rome during their investigations.”
Riario gives him a little smile, none of the usual edge or feeling, it’s absent minded, he leaves the room.
xiii.
His mind still thinks he’s trapped, he can’t go back to sleep, frightened he’ll forget to breathe. He doesn’t believe that Riario, so poised and proper, has ever experience the mind numbing terror of doors closing behind him and the thought that he might never get out, that he’ll die amongst the skeletons of the past and that history books will forget him because he never found Tutankhamun's Tomb, he never found the sunken library in Russia. He is not the great explorer, people remember his name for an affair not his brilliance (Oh, he’s not being conceited or arrogant, he really is that good but autodidact-ing can only get you so far.) nor his genius, his paintings aren’t accepted by the galleries of Modern Art, even the museums take his findings with caution now.
This Book of Leaves is his chance to make a difference, to find something that will change the world for the better, see his name in lights, lauded not disgraced. This Book feels like it could be everything he could be, everything he needs to be.
He thinks of the future, of mind over matter, and he takes a deep, steadying breath.
xii.
Riario tells him that the plane is booked for the next morning, tells him that they fly to Lima and then to Cusco. Tells him to pack for a trek and Leo rolls his eyes, makes a phonecall and has two backpacks made up with all they’ll need.
Nico’s never been to South America, never been across the Atlantic, he’s never hiked either; Leo tells him that it’ll be fine and Riario smiles, says, “Yes, provided you can walk for days at high altitudes,” and Nico whimpers.
xi.
“I bloody hate camping,” Zo tells him and Leo punches his arm, says, “you probably should have mentioned that earlier.”
“Me too,” says Nico, from just behind them, eyes on his phone, texting. “Vanessa says hi and good luck. Oh - and she tells you not to get yourself killed, so-”
“Tell her I won’t,” Leo says, “it should be simple, we should just get to Choquequirao, and the book, which I have studied half to death-”
“Which explains,” says Riario, sliding his phone back into the pocket of an outfit that certainly was never a suit, a hiking combination with added skinnyness to what look like jeans with extra pockets “why you have been looking like death.”
Leo ignores him, continues, “contains hints that we should, in theory, find more clues to the book’s location hidden in the hills around said Cradle of the Gods, probably in Hebrew, for which reason I have bought a handy dictionary, and from those clues we get the Book and fly home.”
“There’s a lot of hope there,” Nico says and Zo nods, says, “A lot of ‘in theories’ and ‘shoulds’.”
Leo smiles at them, says, “have a little faith.”
x.
“You sound more like yourself,” says Riario, as the plane takes off, his eyes are closed but Leo sees the smile twitch at the corner of his mouth and knows they’re laughing at him too. “I’m glad, a depressed Leonardo da Vinci does not bode well for the rest of us.”
“Existential crisis,” says Leo, and he places a pack of cards onto the crappy little table, “Nico and I made up a card game at one point, you’d like it, there’s ample possibility to be cruel but in the end it’s just luck.”
Riario opens his eyes, and eyes the battered cards Leo deals without waiting for an answer, “I suppose,” he says, “it’ll be something to pass the time.” He orders a whisky and listens to the rules.
“Okay,” Leo starts, “I deal out four cards face down for each of us and then another card face up on top of the four below, then four more are your actual hand, following?”
“I have eyes,” says Riario, “I can see what you’re doing.”
Leo ignores him again and continues: “Now, the rest of the cards form the deck, you always have to have four cards in your hand until you reach the laid down ones. So as I’m starting and putting a card from hand down I pick up as well.”
“And the actual game, artista?” Riario aks, tone mocking and bored, but he’s watching everything Leo does.
Leo grins, tells him, “each card has to be higher than the one below it and if you can’t do that there are magic cards that you can play if you have them. A ten burns the pile and the person who played the ten starts a new pile, a two resets the pile and the next person starts from the two, a five is invisible and the next person has to play higher than the card underneath the five and a nine makes the next person play a card lower than a nine.”
“The nine sounds unnecessary, how can you be cruel in such a game?”
“The aces,” Leo says, “they’re high in this game so if you play an ace and your opponent has no magics they have to pick up the entire pile.”
“Hmm,” says Riario, “I think I understand. Let’s play.”
“Lets,” Leo grins, and places the first card down, he starts it safe. He plays a three.
ix.
They play while Nico and Zo sleep, Riario wins more often than not.
“Beginners luck,” Leo says, downing more of his own whisky and settling further into his chair, and Riario smiles, says, “perhaps,” and places an ace on a four.
Leo scowls. “I shouldn’t have told you about this game,” he says, picking up.
“No,” says Riario, smirking around his glass “perhaps not, but I do like games.”
“And cruelty,” says Leo.
“You wound me, artista,” Riario plays a five on Leo’s nine, “I’m only ever cruel to you.”
“Hmm,” says Leo, and he pushes the cards away, closes his eyes. “How lucky I am.”
He hears Riario laugh, “how lucky indeed.”
viii.
Zo wakes him with a shove and Leo blinks, confused, “we can’t be there yet,” he says.
“Well we are so shut up and get up,” he snaps and Leo frowns until he realises why he feels so comfortable, Riario smiles down at him, whispers conspiratorially, “I don’t think your friend likes me.”
“None of my friends like you,” says Leo with a yawn, “and you don’t like them either so-” He stands, grabs his hand luggage and almost falls on unsteady legs, Riario catches him and of course he does, solid Riario, he’s only ever seen him fall once.
“Perhaps no alcohol on the transfer to Cusco, artista,” says Riario once he lets go and stands himself, tickets in his now free hand and the cards held loosely in the other. “Or we’ll never make it to the start of the climb in one piece.”
“Fuck you,” Leo says, voice light and cheerful, he almost begins to abandon the wariness.
(He doesn’t and thinks it wise.
“What have you got planned for us, Girolamo?” he doesn’t ask.)
vii.
“Are you insane?” says Zo, disembarking from the tiny transfer plane with clouds in his eyes, “we’re just going to start walking now?”
“With the men with guns following us to my home,” Riario hisses, “we don’t have the luxury of time to spare.”
Zo frowns and Nico opens his mouth to yell something at Riario but Leo stops them, eyes on the streets outside the tiny airport says, “It’s best, Zo, particularly with those people staring at us.”
“How the fuck did they know when we’d get here?” Nico’s laugh is just this side of hysterical and Leo shrugs, fluid, answers, “the fuck if I know, but we won’t be walking much yet - we need a bus to Abancay.”
“I’ll just pretend to know where that is,” Zo says, hands thrown up and voice pitched higher than normal. “Then what?”
“We walk from Abancay to Cachora and then it’s five days to Choquequirao.”
Zo groans and Nico makes a noise not unlike a small cry.
Riario takes out his phone, checks for signal and puts it back - Leo says nothing.
There’s a shiver of something up his spine, but, well, there’s nothing much he can do now.
vi.
They find the bus and the walk from Abancay to Cachora doesn’t take too long, they are out of the tourist season, the routes are void of many people. The trail, though, is clearly marked; they sit and catch their breath.
“If you don’t want to go any further,” says Leo, the general addressing his army, “I won’t hold it against you-”
Zo and Nico swear at him and tell him to shut up, Riario smiles and shakes his head.
“Well then,” he continues, “onwards and, quite literally, upwards.”
“Keep an eye on the rocks, da Vinci,” says Riario, “you don’t know where the Mithraic Sons left their marks.”
“I have done this before,” says Leo.
v.
“Maestro,” Nico shouts, “isn’t this the monster on the coin?”
Riario nods, “It’s definitely leontocephaline,” he looks at Leo, says, “he has the keys.”
“The fuck is leontocephaline,” Zo grumbles.
It’s been three days of their five.
“Leonardo,” Riario says, “there’s Hebrew script here אני צמא, ‘I am thirsty.’”
“You,” Leo says, “can read Hebrew?”
Riario snarls, “Of course I can.”
“Why did you-” Nico breathes.
“Lie?” Riario laughs, “it’s easier to trust a man who knows only a little more than yourself,” he turns to Leo, says, “did you even attempt to research the Sons of Mithras, artista?”
“Stop calling me that!” He won’t call it a scream. (Even if it was.)
“I am a son of Earth and starry sky,” Riario bites out, knife in hand and standing higher than the rest of them, carefully, now, out of reach. “I am thirsty, give me something to drink from the Lake of Memory!” He laughs again, and Leo hears the cruelty, sees the mask of any trustworthiness break and shatter at his feet as Riario continues, “after all you’ve come to know of me, Leonardo, did you honestly think I’d let you take the Book of Leaves when I could get it myself?”
“What would you do with it?” Leo asks, as Zo and Nico pull weapons from holsters and pockets, “why would you do this? What could possibly be in it for you?”
“The book is heathen knowledge, I can’t see it read by those who do not understand. It should be read by-”
“Who,” Leo shouts, “you? Your precious Catholic leaders? What will they do; keep it locked up in their archives?” He pulls a gun from his pocket and aims for Riario’s heart (not sure even if he has one).
Riario frowns, throws the knife.
Nico screams.
iv.
“I’ll kill him myself,” Zo swears, binding all the fabric they have around Nico’s waist by light from the setting sun, the knife didn’t land itself in Nico’s stomach, rather sliced through his side and they lost Riario to trees and rocks and a sharp turn after the fucking statuette.
“You’ll have to fight me for the pleasure,” says Leo, hand on Nico’s shoulder, he ignores the blood.
Nico winces, shifts, says, “I think I have the right, don’t you?” and Leo laughs.
“You didn’t tell us about him, maestro,” Nico says, voice a quiet accusation.
It’s Leo’s turn to wince, “I thought I could trust him,” and Zo shakes his head sharply, viciously, hisses, “You thought that because you were fucking him he wouldn’t fuck you over! Well he did and here we are again only this time it isn’t you bleeding!”
“He’ll be okay, Zo,” Leo says and watches as Zo’s eyes grow hard as steel and he yells “He shouldn’t be hurt! This was stupid, Verrocchio told you so, we both told you but you trust that fucking killer over anyone who never hurt you! You’re insane!”
“I’m,” says Leo, tears biting at his eyes, head spinning, “I’m not - I didn’t-”
Nico coughs, “It’s okay, maestro, it’s not your fault,” Leo spins away from the small hand that reaches for him.
“No,” he says, “Zo’s right I should never have brought you here I’m sorry. Take the phone and get yourself help, I’m going after Riario. We have unfinished business.”
“You don’t have to-”
“I won’t see,” says Leo, pulling guns out of pockets and loading them, “the Book of Leaves in the hands of a corrupt Catholic church, Zo.”
Nico smiles, face white from bloodloss, “go get them, Leo,” he says and Zo nods, “kill the bastard.”
“Oh,” says Leo, “don’t worry - I intend to.”
iii.
He follows the trail cut into the trees and doesn’t even care that there’s no effort to cover it up, Mithraic statues line this place and no one’s fucking been here for centuries before Riario, and now, he supposes, him too.
As the statues get closer together he begins to hear it, talking, a quiet murmur at first but then the snippets of conversation float to him - he hears two different voices, one he knows and one he doesn’t, Riario’s voice clear and sharp, the other’s gruff and dull.
“Da Vinci is dead, then.” The other man asks without asking, a gruff statement with little room for alternative, he hears Riario say: “Yes, wonders of high altitudes, you know, always somewhere to stage an ambush.”
“There were three of them and one of you,” the gruff voice says and Leo hears Riario laugh, and say: “and yet here I am and here they are not, trust me, I owed Da Vinci that.”
Leo moves slowly, his heart stops with every twig that snaps, each blade of grass that rustles under his boot, he takes them off, sheds all excess weight and leaves himself with his clothes and two loaded guns, a knife at his thigh.
“Well then, where is this Vault of Heaven?” the gruff voice moves away from him and Leo can see the man whose voice it is stride over to some markings in a rock.
Riario stands, two other men at either arm, in a clearing surrounded by high rocks, a Lion statue carved out of one of them, the cardinal point, he thinks for East - the writing is no longer Hebrew alone, it runs in Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Arabic down the stones, “I am a son of earth,” it repeats, “I am a son of earth and starry sky.”
“You’re looking for a door,” Riario says, “or at least somewhere a key would fit,” and Leo checks the chain around his neck - he’d assumed but - the keys are both still there.
Leo frowns, and looks at the scene again.
The two men at Riario’s sides are holding him, Leo moves forward into the dying light, says:
“This isn’t it.”
ii.
He has the guns trained on Riario and the gruff speaker, a large man, who trains his own rifle on Leo.
“This isn’t it,” he says again and the man’s eyes flick to Riario, he growls: “I thought you’d killed him.”
Riario moves his hand (the knife, Leo thinks, the knife) but his guards grab his wrists, “Well,” he says, “maybe I spoke too soon,” and his eyes are on Leo alone - they dare him, those dark eyes tell him: do it now, artista, don’t pretend you don’t know what’s happening.
Leo winces as pain laces up his limbs from standing still, it’s lactic acid and he inhales sharply, says, “You won’t find it, whoever you are and regardless of who you work for, just leave, give up.”
“We want the book,” the gruff man says.
Leo shoots.
i.
(In the ending there’s a single gunshot and a single cry rings clear through evening air, sending birds scattering from their perches in the trees.)
“I have more bullets,” Leo says, “this isn’t Russian Roulette.”
(Blood begins to pool on grass and stone and someone gasps, a hand reaches out, light fades from someone’s eyes.)
Riario whimpers from the ground as the men surrounding him stand and watch the madman with two guns, the two guards aim and Leo shoots, the third raises his hands.
Leo shoots again, anyway.
(Let’s not start this at the end.)
לאחר סיומו.
After the end there’s a hand at his shoulder and an arm around his waist.
“I had to do it,” the voice says and Leo nods.
“I fucking hate you,” Leo says, water in his eyes from pain or sunlight or something else, it’s midday and he has knife wounds where his common sense should be.
“I love you too,” the voice replies, “artista.”