Revelations

THIRTEEN

The man was about Ezio’s age, but running to fat and not in the greatest shape. At the moment, he was trembling like an outsize aspen.

“Don’t kill me, sir!” the man pleaded, cowering. “I’m a workingman, that’s all. Just some poor nobody with a family to look after.”

“Got a name?”

“Adad, sir.”

“What kind of work is it you do? For these people?” Ezio stooped to wipe his blades on the tunic of the dead corporal and sheathed them. Adad relaxed a fraction. He was still holding his hammer and chisel, and Ezio had kept a careful eye on them, but the stonemason seemed to have forgotten they were in his hands.

“Digging, mostly. Wretched hard work it is, too, sir. It’s taken me a year just to find this chamber alone.” Adad scanned Ezio’s face, but if he’d been looking for sympathy, he hadn’t found it. After a moment’s silence, he went on. “For the past three months, I’ve been trying to break through this door.”

Ezio turned away from the man and examined the door himself. “You haven’t made much progress,” he commented.

“I haven’t made a dent! This stone is harder than steel.”

Ezio ran a hand across the glass-smooth stone. The seriousness of his expression deepened. “I doubt if you ever will. This door guards objects more valuable than all the gold in the world.”

Now that the menace of death was past, the man’s eyes gleamed involuntarily “Ah! Do you mean-gemstones?”

Ezio regarded him mockingly. Then he turned his gaze to the door and examined it closely. “There are keyholes here. Five of them. Where are the keys?”

“They tell me little. But I know the Templars found one beneath the Ottoman sultan’s palace. As for the others, I suppose their little book will tell them.”

Ezio looked at him sharply. “Sultan Bayezid’s palace? And what is this book?”

The mason shrugged. “A journal of some kind, I think. That ugly captain, the one with the scarred face, he carries it with him wherever he goes.”

Ezio’s eyes narrowed. He thought fast. Then he appeared to relax, and, taking a small linen pouch from his tunic, he tossed it to Adad. It jingled as the man caught it.

“Go home,” said Ezio. “Find other work-with honest men.”

Adad looked pleased, then doubtful. “You don’t know how much I’d like to. I’d love to leave this place. But these men-they will murder me if I try.”

Ezio turned slightly, peering back up the chute behind him. A thin ray of light came down it.

He turned back to the mason. “Pack your tools,” he said. “You will have nothing to fear now.”