Revelations

THIRTY

It was considerably quieter in the second courtyard, but the decorations, the food and drink, and the quality of both music and art were just that little bit more splendid.

Ezio and Yusuf, keeping in the background, scanned the guests.

“I do not see Prince Suleiman,” Yusuf said.

“Wait!” Ezio prompted him.

The orchestra struck up a fanfare, and the guests all turned expectantly toward a gateway in the center of the rear wall of the courtyard, draped with rich hangings. Costly silk Isfahan carpets were spread on the ground in front of it. Moments later, a small group of people emerged, clustered around the two men who led them-each clad in a suit of white silk, one wearing a turban with diamond pins, the other a turban with emeralds. Ezio’s eyes were drawn to the younger of these, and his lips parted as he recognized him.

“The young man?” he asked his companion.

“That is Prince Suleiman,” Yusuf told him. “Sultan Bayezid’s grandson, and governor of Kefe. And he’s only seventeen.”

Ezio was amused. “I met him on the ship, on the way here. He told me he was a student.”

“I’ve heard that he likes to travel incognito. It’s also a security measure. He was returning from the hajj.”

“Who is the other man? The one with emeralds in his turban?”

“His uncle, Prince Ahmet. The sultan’s favored son. He is grooming himself for the succession as we speak.”

As they watched, the two princes stood, as favored guests were presented to them. Then the princes accepted glasses of ruby-colored liquid.

“Wine?” asked Ezio.

“Cranberry juice.”

“Serefe! Sagliginiza!” Ahmet said, raising his voice with his glass, toasting the assembly.

After the formal toasts, Yusuf and Ezio continued to watch, as both guests and hosts became more relaxed. Though as Suleiman in particular mingled, Ezio noticed that his guards were discreetly but continually attentive. These guards were tall, and none of them looked Turkish. They wore a distinctive uniform of white robes, and their headgear was a high, white, tapering cap, like that of a dervish. All, equally, wore mustaches. None was either clean-shaven or had a beard. Ezio knew enough about Ottoman custom to realize that this meant that they had the status of slaves. Were they some kind of private bodyguard?

Suddenly, Yusuf caught Ezio’s arm. “Look! That man over there!”

A thin, pale young man with fine, light-colored hair and dark brown, expressionless eyes had sidled up close to Suleiman. He was expensively dressed and might have been a prosperous Serbian arms dealer, at any rate someone important enough to have made it onto the guest list for the second courtyard. As Ezio quickly scanned the crowd, he saw four more elegantly dressed men, none of them Turks, by their looks, taking up what could only be backup positions and discreetly signaling to one another.

Before Yusuf or Ezio could react, the thin young man, already at Suleiman’s elbow, had, with the speed of light, drawn a thin, curved janbiyah and was plunging it down toward the prince’s chest. At the same instant, the closest guard to him noticed and sprang into the blade’s path.

There was instantaneous chaos and confusion. Guests were pushed roughly aside as guards ran to assist both princes and their fallen comrade, while the five Templar would-be killers tried to make their escape through the crowd, now milling around in uproar and panic. The thin young man had vanished, but the guards had identified his companions and were now pursuing them systematically, the Byzantine plotters using the confused and disoriented guests as obstacles to put between them and their hunters. Exits were sealed, but the conspirators attempted to climb out of the courtyard. In the confusion, Prince Ahmet had disappeared, and Prince Suleiman had been left isolated. Ezio saw that he had drawn a small dagger but calmly stood his ground.

“Ezio!” Yusuf suddenly hissed. “Look there!”

Ezio followed the direction Yusuf was pointing in and saw that the thin young man had returned. Now, breaking out of the crowd behind the prince, he was closing on him, his weapon poised.

Ezio was far closer than Yusuf and realized that only he could save the prince in time. But he had no weapon himself! Then he looked down at the lute, which he was still holding in his hands, and, with a grunt of regret, made his decision and smashed it against a nearby column. It shattered but left him with a sharp shard of sprucewood in his hand.

In an instant, Ezio sprang forward and, seizing the Byzantine by his bony wrist and forcing him backward just as he was in the act of moving in for the kill, drove the shard four inches deep into the man’s left eye. The Byzantine stopped as if he had been frozen in motion, then the janbiyah fell from his hand and clattered onto the marble floor. He himself crumpled to the ground immediately afterward.

The crowd fell silent, forming a circle around Ezio and Suleiman at a respectful distance. The guards tried to intervene, but Suleiman stayed them with a gesture.

The prince sheathed his own dagger and took a small breath. Then he took a step toward Ezio-a signal honor from a prince, which the crowd acknowledged with a gasp.

“It is good to see you again, mio bel menestrello. Did I say that right?”

“ ‘My handsome minstrel.’ Very good.”

“It is a pity about your lute. So much more beautiful an instrument than a sword.”

“You are right. But it does not save lives.”

“Some would argue with that.”

“Perhaps. In other circumstances.” The two men exchanged a smile. “I hear you are a governor as well as a prince. Is there anything you do not do?”

“I do not talk to strangers.” Suleiman bowed-a slight inclination of the head only. “I am Suleiman Osman.”

“Auditore, Ezio…” Ezio bowed in his turn.

One of the white-clad guards approached then. A sergeant. “Forgive me, my prince. On behalf of your uncle, we must have your assurance that you are uninjured.”

“Where is he?”

“He awaits you.”

Suleiman looked at him coldly. “Tell him that, thanks to this man, I am uninjured. But no thanks to you! You! The Janissaries! The elite guard, and you fail me, a prince of the royal house, like this! Where is your captain?”

“Tarik Barleti is away-on an errand.”

“On an errand? Do you really wish to show yourselves such amateurs in front of this stranger?” Suleiman drew himself up as the guard, a muscular giant who must have weighed all of three hundred pounds, trembled before him. “Clear this body away and send the guests home. Then summon Tarik to the Divan!”

Turning back to Ezio as the man scuttled off, Suleiman said: “This is embarrassing. The Janissaries are the bodyguard of the sultan.”

“But not of his family?”

“On this occasion, it would appear not.” Suleiman paused, giving Ezio an appraising look. “Now, I don’t wish to impose on your time, but there is something I would like your opinion on. Something important.”

Yusuf was signaling to Ezio from the edge of the crowd, now slowly dispersing.

“Allow me simply the time to change out of this costume,” Ezio said, nodding discreetly to his friend.

“Very well. There’s something I need to arrange first in any case. Meet me by the Divan when you are ready. My attendants will escort you.”

He clapped his hands and departed the way he had come.

“That was quite a performance,” Yusuf said, as they made their way out of the palace in the company of two of Suleiman’s personal attendants. “But you’ve given us an introduction we would never have dreamed possible.”

“The introduction,” Ezio reminded him, “is mine.”