Georgio's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Inside the inn, Georgio and Volpi took a heavy wooden table near the hearth. They ordered mead, then more. Cards came out. Hours slid by easy as the drink. They talked of paintings and senators, of bread prices and bad popes. Volpi laughed often, and Georgio felt the wall between them thin. Then Volpi leaned in, elbows on the dark planks. "I study the old Greeks too," he said. His voice was low, plain. "The rites of Dionysus — the threefold libation before the ecstatic call. Tell me how you'd open it." Georgio's mouth went dry. He had a scroll at home with the god's face sketched on it. He had a monk's ledger half-filled with stolen scraps. He knew the name of the rite. He did not know its shape. He reached for his cup instead of an answer, and drank. "I'd have to show you," Georgio said. The lie tasted like the mead. "Words spoil it." Volpi watched him a long moment. Then he smiled, slow and kind, and Georgio understood he had not been believed — only spared. "Then show me," Volpi said. "I'd love to see your work. All of it." Georgio's heart kicked. The sun was already gone from the windows. "Don't pay for a room," he heard himself say. "Stay at my house." Volpi's face lit like a boy's. "Yes," he said. "Yes, gladly." They stumbled out together, leaning on each other down the lane toward Georgio's small stone home with its terracotta roof. Georgio laughed at nothing. Inside his chest, a cold thing waited. He had bought one night by promising tomorrow. By morning, Volpi would stand before his scrolls and his ledger, and the half-formed rite would have to become whole — or Georgio would be unmasked in his own house.