His attention caught by the disturbance, the captain scanned the crowd, and in an instant his eye caught Ezio’s.
“You!” he shouted. In another moment he had cocked his bow, fitted a bolt, and fired.
Ezio dodged it adroitly, and it flew past him, to embed itself in the arm of the man who’d snapped.
“Aiee!” he yelped, clutching his shattered biceps.
Ezio darted for cover as the captain reloaded.
“You will not leave this place alive!” the captain bawled, firing again. This time, the bolt stuck harmlessly in a wooden doorframe, which Ezio had ducked behind. But there was very little wrong with the captain’s shooting. So far, Ezio had been lucky. He had to get away, and fast. Two more bolts sang past him.
“There’s no way out!” the captain called after him. “You might as well turn and face me, you pitiful old dog.” He fired again.
Ezio drew a breath and leapt to catch hold of the lintel of another doorway, swinging himself up so that he was able to get onto the flat clay roof of a dwelling. He ran across it to the other side as another bolt whistled past his ear.
“Stand your ground and die,” hollered the captain. “Your time has come, and you must accept it, even if it is far away from your wretched kennel in Rome! So come and meet your killer!”
Ezio could see where soldiers were running around to the back of the village, to cut off his line of retreat. But they had left the captain isolated, except for his two sergeants, and his quiver of bolts was empty.
The villagers had scattered and disappeared long since.
Ezio ducked behind the low wall surrounding the roof, unstrapped his bags from his back, and slipped the pistol harness onto his right wrist.
“Why will you not quit?!” the captain was calling, drawing his sword.
Ezio stood. “I never learned how,” he called back in a clear voice, raising his gun.
The captain looked at the raised weapon in momentary panic and fear, then, shrieking “Out of my way!” at his attendants, he shoved them aside and leapt from the tower to the ground. Ezio fired and caught him in midjump, the bullet catching him in the left knee joint. With a howl of pain, the captain hit the ground, dashing his head against a sharp stone, and rolled over there. The sergeants fled.
Ezio crossed the deserted square. No soldiers came back. Either their fear of Ezio had persuaded them that he was indeed a supernatural being, or their love of their captain could not have been very great. There was silence except for the steady clatter of the waterwheel, and the captain’s agonized whimpering.
The captain caught Ezio’s eye as he approached. “Ah, dammit,” he said. “Well, what are you waiting for? Go on-kill me!”
“You have something I need,” Ezio told him calmly, reloading his gun so that both chambers were ready. The captain eyed the weapon.
“I see the old hound still has his bite,” he said through gritted teeth. Blood flowed from his knee and from the more serious wound on his left temple.
“The book you carry. Where is it?”
The captain looked crafty. “Niccolo Polo’s old journal, you mean? You know about that? You surprise me, Assassin.”
“I am full of surprises,” Ezio replied. “Give it to me.”
Seeing there was no help for it, the captain, grunting, drew an old leather-bound book, some twelve inches by six, from his jerkin. His hand was shaking, and he dropped it onto the ground.
The captain looked at it with a laugh that died, gurgling, in his throat. “Take it,” he said. “We have gleaned all its secrets and found the first of the five keys already. When we have the rest, the Grand Temple, and all the power within, will be ours.”
Ezio looked at him pityingly. “You are deceived, soldier. There is no ancient temple at Masyaf. Only a library, full of wisdom.”
The captain looked at him. “Your forebear Altair had the Apple of Eden in his control for sixty years, Ezio. He gained much more than what you call wisdom. He learned… everything!”
Ezio thought about that fleetingly. He knew the Apple was safely buried in a church crypt in Rome-he and Machiavelli had seen to that. But his attention was drawn back immediately by a sharp gasp of pain from the captain. Blood had been streaming from his untended wounds all the time they had been speaking. Now the man had the death pallor on him. A curiously peaceful expression came over his face, and he lay back as a huge long, last, sighing breath escaped him.
Ezio watched him for a moment. “You were a real bastardo,” he said. “But-for all that- Requiescat in Pace.”
He leaned forward and gently closed the man’s eyes with his gloved hand.
The waterwheel hammered on. Otherwise, there was silence.
Ezio picked up the book and turned it over in his hands. On its cover, he saw an embossed symbol, its gilding long since faded. The emblem of the Assassin Brotherhood. Smiling slightly, he opened it to the title page:
LA CROCIATA SEGRETA
Niccolo Polo
MASYAF, giugno, MCCLVII
COSTANTINOPOLI, gennaio, MCCLVII
As he read, Ezio drew in a breath.
Constantinople, he thought. Of course…
The breeze freshened, and Ezio looked up from Niccolo Polo’s book, open on his lap as he sat under an awning on the afterdeck of the large, broad-bellied baghlah, as it cut through the clear blue water of the White Sea, both lateens and jib set to take full advantage of a favorable wind.
The journey from Latakia on the Syrian coast had first taken him back to Cyprus. The next port of call had been Rhodes-where his attention had been caught by the arrival on board of a new passenger, a beautiful woman of perhaps thirty wearing a green dress that perfectly accorded with her copper-gold hair. Then on through the Dodecanese north toward the Dardanelles, and, at last, the Sea of Marmara.
Finally, the voyage was drawing toward its close. Sailors called to each other as passengers lined up along the gunwale to watch as, a mile distant, glittering in the sharp sunlight, the great city of Constantinople rose on the port bow. As he watched, Ezio tried to identify parts of the city from the map of it he had bought in the Syrian port before embarkation. Near him stood an expensively dressed young man, an Ottoman, probably still in his teens but also clearly acquainted with the city. Ezio had struck up a nodding acquaintance with him. The young man was busy with a mariner’s astrolabe, taking measurements and making notes in an ivory-bound copybook, which hung on a silk cord from his belt.
“What’s that?” Ezio asked, pointing. He wanted to have as much knowledge of the place as possible before landing. News of his escape from the Templars at Masyaf would not be far behind, and he’d need to work fast.
“That’s the Bayezid Quarter. The big mosque you can see was built by the sultan about five years ago. And just beyond it you can see the roofs of the Grand Bazaar.”
“Got it,” said Ezio, squinting in the sun to focus and wishing that Leonardo had got around to making that instrument he was always talking about-a kind of extendable tube with lenses-which would make distant things seem closer.
“Watch your sleeve purse when you go to the Bazaar,” advised the young man. “You get a pretty mixed bag of people there.”
“Like in any souk.”
“Evet.” The young man smiled. “Just over there, where the towers are, is the Imperial District. That grey dome you can see is the old church of Haghia Sofia. It’s a mosque now, of course. And beyond it, you see that long, low, yellow building-more of a complex of buildings, really-with two low domes close together and a spire? That’s Topkapi Sarayi. One of the first buildings we erected after the conquest, and we’re still working on it.”