Empire of Ashes — Season 2, Episode 78: The Other Eleven

0:00 Empire of Ashes. Episode 78. The Other Eleven. Written by Mia. Lena. Sophia arrived first. Then Nico. Then Pharaoh trailing a few minutes behind with the particular unhurried care of a man who has learned this year exactly how much weight a meeting can carry before anyone's even spoken a single word inside it. Five chairs again. The same room, the same quiet gravity that had settled over birth nine months ago now settling over our own kitchen instead. Dario had made coffee for everyone before they arrived, more than any of us would actually drink, and I understood, watching him set out five cups instead of the usual two, that he needed something ordinary to do with his hands as badly as I had, waiting

0:48 for tonight to actually begin. You didn't have to do that, I said quietly. watching him arrange the cups one more time than necessary. I know, he said. I wanted to anyway. I think tonight deserves at least one small, deliberate kindness before we get to the considerably harder parts of it. I keep waiting for someone to say it plainly, Sophia said, once we'd all finally sat down.

1:13 So I'll be the one. He chairs the body that's supposed to hold men like him accountable. There's no version of take this to the proper authorities that doesn't simply mean taking it to Falcone himself. I know, I said. I've been sitting with exactly that for two days now, and I still don't have an answer that feels clean. There isn't a clean one, Pharaoh said. I don't think we should waste time looking for one. We need a workable answer instead, which is a considerably different thing. How are you? I asked Nico, since we told you. I don't think any of us has actually asked you that properly yet. Managing, Nico said. I've spent two days turning over every conversation I ever had with him, wondering how much I should

1:59 have seen and didn't. I don't think I missed anything I was ever actually shown. I think he simply never let himself be seen clearly by anyone, including me, in all my years driving in and out of his own world. That's not your failure to carry, I said gently. I know, Nico said. I'm carrying it anyway a little. I think some things you simply have to carry for a while before you're able to genuinely set them down. Dario. Then let's actually name the options. I said, needing something concrete to organize the fear around rather than simply letting it sit shapeless in the room. Every version any of us has quietly considered these past two days. Say them out loud. Even the bad ones. We'll sort them properly

2:48 once they're all sitting on the table. Confront him directly, Nico said. Tell him what we know. See what he does with it. I don't recommend it. A man this careful, cornered privately with no witnesses beyond us, is a man who can simply make the problem disappear the same way he's made every other inconvenient thing disappear this year. He's already proven that, I said.

3:12 The reassigned Corvus contact. Vellum Street. He doesn't hesitate when something becomes inconvenient. I don't think any of us walks into a private room with him and comes out with the advantage still on our side. Agreed, Nico said. Whatever we actually decide tonight, I'd rather rule that one out cleanly and move on, rather than let it linger as a tempting shortcut later, when someone's patience finally runs thin. I want to be honest about something, I said. There's a version of me that wants exactly that shortcut anyway. Walking up to him, saying his own name back to him, watching whatever happens on his face when he understands we know. I don't trust that version of myself to actually do it well.

3:57 None of us should trust that version of ourselves, Nico said. I've watched men act on exactly that impulse across 30 years of tables. It rarely ends the way the impulse promised it would. I appreciate you saying that plainly. I said. I think it's easier to resist a shortcut once someone else has actually named the shape of the temptation out loud. That's precisely why we say these things to each other, Nico said. None of us has ever been meant to carry the harder impulses alone this year. Expose him publicly, Sophia said.

4:31 Newspapers, some public accounting. I don't recommend that either. We'd need proof considerably more solid than a fisherman's identification and a tailor's overheard sentence, and even then, a man who chairs the commission has enormous reach over what counts as credible in this city. There's also the third book itself to consider, I said.

4:52 If any part of what it actually reveals became public, it wouldn't only expose Falcone. It would expose Greco, the Orsini truth, the commission's own founding. I don't think we get to choose which pieces stay contained once something like that becomes public. It's all or nothing. That's precisely why I don't recommend it, Sophia said.

5:14 Some truths are too large to release carefully. This is one of them. Go around him, Pharaoh said. The other eleven families. They didn't build this reformed commission to protect one man's secrets. If Falcone's been running a hidden operation this entire time, using the very authority they gave him, I'd wager most of them would want to know that considerably more than they'd want to protect him. Lena, that's the one that actually holds up. I said slowly. Turning it over the way, I turn over every plan before I let myself trust it. Not confrontation. Not exposure to strangers who owe us nothing. People who already have a stake in whether their own chairman can be trusted. People who'd have real standing to

6:01 actually do something about it. It's also the most dangerous version to prepare properly, Farrow said. If we approach even one of them carelessly and word reaches Falcone before we're ready, we lose whatever advantage surprise still gives us. We need to be certain, considerably more certain than we believe or even we know. We'd need something undeniable. Which of the eleven would you actually start with? I asked. If it came to that. Not tonight's decision. I simply want to understand how you'd even begin narrowing something this large down to one first conversation.

6:39 Carefully, Pharaoh said. Someone with genuine standing, genuine distance from Falcone personally, and a reputation for fairness even among people who don't particularly like her. I have one or two names in mind already. I don't want to say them out loud until we're actually closer to needing them. What would undeniable actually look like? Dario asked, given everything we already have. A living witness, Nico said quietly before anyone else could answer. Someone who can speak to what Greco actually is in his own voice, in a room the 11 families can't simply dismiss as secondhand or circumstantial. I think all of us already know who that witness would have to be. Dario. The room went quiet at that, the specific

7:28 quiet of five people arriving, all at once, at the same conclusion none of them had wanted to be the first to say out loud. Vasco, I said. You're saying we need him rescued and speaking before we ever approach a single other family. I'm saying I don't see a version of this that works without him, Nico said. The third book proves what Greco is. It doesn't prove anything further about Falcone beyond his own hidden trip to Calloway and Pierce. Vasco's the only living person who could actually speak to the fuller shape of it, who else was standing close to that night, whatever the founding family's silence has actually cost, and to whom, in all the years since. We don't even know that Vasco knows anything

8:13 about Falcone specifically, I said. He's a captive who's been held a considerable while now. He may know nothing beyond his own suffering. He may know everything, Sophia countered. He was Aldo's source. He may be the only person alive who actually understands the full architecture of what happened, including whoever besides Greco was standing close enough to it to matter. Do we even know for certain Falcone was involved in the massacre itself? I asked. Or... Are we simply assuming it because two terrible things happen to belong to the same city? We don't know, Nico said carefully. I want to be precise about that, even tonight. We know Falcone was present among the founding families the night of it.

8:57 Sophia found that months ago. We don't know what his actual role was, or whether he's connected to Greco's exile beyond that single fact of proximity. I'd rather all of us hold that question open than build a theory neither of us can currently support. Then we hold it open, I said, alongside everything else we're not yet certain of. There's something else worth naming, Sophia added, quieter now. If it turns out Vasco does know something about Falcone specifically, that knowledge is precisely why Grecos kept him alive and guarded this whole time instead of simply eliminating him once he'd served his purpose as a cipher reader. Two men, each with reasons to want that particular old man kept controlled rather than

9:42 free. That's not a comforting thought, I said. No, Sophia agreed. I think it's an important one anyway. If it's true, rescuing him doesn't only free an old man from a beach he can't leave. It takes something away from both of them at once. Then we owe him considerably more than rescue, I said quietly. We owe him the chance to finally decide for himself what he actually wants done with whatever he knows. We do, Sophia agreed. I think that's the part I'd like all of us to remember. Once we're actually standing in front of him, he gets to choose. Not us, deciding on his behalf simply, because we're the ones who finally arrived. Lena. I felt the weight of it settle fully for the first time, the particular

10:33 vertigo of watching two separate patient threads, Vasco's rescue, and whatever accountability actually meant for Falcone, quietly become one single, considerably larger undertaking than either had been on its own. I looked around the room at the four faces waiting on mine, and understood. In that particular moment, that some part of me had been the quiet center of gravity this entire year without ever fully choosing it, my father's daughter, the one who'd started all of this simply by finally remembering a lesson from a back room. It felt strange, being looked to now in a decision this large. It also felt, oddly, like the exact shape of what I'd actually been training for the whole time, without ever

11:16 knowing that's what the training was for. Then that's the plan. I said, hearing my own voice steady itself around the shape of it even as my chest stayed tight. We rescue Vasco first. Properly, carefully, using everything Pharaoh's fisherman has already given us. The channel, the guard count, the repeatable vantage. We get him somewhere safe. We hear whatever he actually knows. And only then do we decide exactly how to approach the other eleven, with whatever he's given us standing behind everything else we've already gathered. That's not a small undertaking, Pharaoh said. A rescue is an entirely different operation than reconnaissance. I want all of you to understand that plainly before any of

12:00 us commits to it tonight. Walk us through what it actually requires, I said. Not tonight's version. The real one. I don't want anyone in this room agreeing to a shape they haven't actually seen clearly yet. A trusted boat, properly outfitted this time, not simply borrowed for a look. The channel mapped precisely rather than described secondhand. A way onto that beach that doesn't depend on the supply schedule's exact timing.

12:28 And real extraction experience. Someone who's actually done this kind of thing before, not two amateurs and a fisherman improvising out of love and patience. Pharaoh counted it off with the same careful precision he brings to every hard thing. We have pieces of all four now, more than we've ever had. We don't yet have all four complete. Do you know someone, Nico asked, with the actual extraction experience?

12:53 I don't think any of us in this room qualifies. I might, Pharaoh said. I'll need a few days to be certain before I say more than that. I understand it, I said. I don't think any of us has ever pretended this would stay small forever. I think we've simply been patient enough not to rush toward the largest version of it until we actually had a reason large enough to justify the risk.

13:17 We have that reason now, Dario said quietly. I don't think any of us can honestly say otherwise. Dario. There's one more thing, Pharaoh said, before the meeting broke apart entirely. The fishermen. I've begun the arrangements we discussed. Quiet. Indirect. Nothing that reads as payment. It's not finished yet. I wanted you all to know it's moving, even while everything else is moving considerably faster around it. Thank you, Lena said. I don't want him to become an afterthought simply, because the rest of this has grown so large. He won't be, Pharaoh said. I intend to see that through personally, regardless of anything else this eventually costs any of us. The meeting ended not long after. Everyone carrying their

14:07 own piece of what now needed doing. Pharaoh to plan the rescue's actual shape with his fishermen. Sophia to begin quietly considering which of the eleven families might be approached first. Nico simply to sit. for a while, with a particular weight of finally having an answer to a question he'd apparently carried since long before any of the rest of us had even known to ask it. Lena and I sat together once the house had emptied, both of us feeling the specific exhaustion of a plan finally taking real shape after months of careful, patient waiting. We're actually going to try to bring him home, Lena said, something almost disbelieving in it. After everything.

14:49 After all of it. We are, I said. I keep thinking about what you told me once about the tobacco tin. About wanting to ask him whether he still carries it. I think that question might actually get to exist properly soon, instead of only living in your head as something you hoped for. I don't want to get ahead of myself, Lena said, though I heard the hope in her voice anyway, unmistakable underneath the caution. I know how much can still go wrong between tonight and actually standing in front of him. I know, I said. I don't think wanting it disqualifies you from also being careful about it. I think you've proven, all year, that you're capable of holding both at once. I hope so, Lena said. I think I'm going to need to hold

15:36 both at once for a while yet before any of this is actually finished. We sat together a long while after that. Neither of us reaching for anything else to say. Both of us, simply present in the particular quiet of two people who had finally, after so many careful months, arrived at the true beginning of the last hard thing this year still had left to ask of them. We are, I said again, reaching for her hand, the whole enormous shape of what was still ahead settling into something we could, for tonight at least, simply hold together instead of solving all at once. To be continued. That was episode 78 of Empire of Ashes. If this one has its hooks in you, the next episode is already waiting. Subscribe

16:23 so you don't miss it. The complete book is on Amazon, and early episodes plus Dario POV bonus scenes are on my Patreon. Links are in the description. I'm Mia. Thank you for listening.