Assassin's Creed: Revelations (3 page)

With this letter was another sheet of paper—a tantalizing fragment, clearly in his father’s handwriting but equally clearly not by him—a translation of a much older document, also there with it, on parchment that accorded very closely with that on which the original Codex pages, uncovered by Ezio and his companions nearly thirty years earlier, had been written:

The old manuscript tailed off there, the rest lost, and, indeed, the parchment was so brittle with age that its edges crumbled as he touched it.

Ezio understood little of it, but some of it was so familiar that his skin tingled, even his scalp, at the memory.

It did again, as Ezio recalled it, sitting in his cell in the prison tower at Masyaf, watching the sun set on what might be his last day on earth.

He visualized the old manuscript in his mind. It was this, more than anything, that had determined him to travel east, to Masyaf.

Darkness fell quickly. The sky was cobalt blue. Stars already speckled it.

For no reason, Ezio’s thoughts turned to the young man in white. The man he’d seemed to see in the lull in the fighting. Who had appeared and disappeared so mysteriously, like a vision, but who had, somehow, been
real
, and who had, somehow,
communicated
with him.

THREE

Preparations for his journey had taken Ezio the rest of that year and spilled into the next. He rode north to Florence and conferred with Machiavelli, though he did not tell him all that he knew. In Ostia, he visited Bartolomeo d’Alviano, who had filled out with too much good food and wine but was as ferocious as ever though he was a family man now. He and Pantasilea had produced three sons and, a month ago, a daughter. What had he said?

“Time you got a move on, Ezio! None of us is getting any younger.”

Ezio had smiled. Barto was luckier than he knew.

Ezio regretted that there was no time to extend his journey farther north to Milan, but he had kept his weaponry in good order—the blades, the pistol, the bracer—and there was no time, either, to tempt Leonardo into finding yet more ways of improving them. Indeed, Leonardo himself had said, after he’d last overhauled them, a year earlier, that they were now beyond improvement.

That remained to be seen when they were next put to the test.

Machiavelli had given him other news in Florence, a city he still set foot in only with sadness, so heaped was it with memories of his lost family and his devastated inheritance. His lost love, too—the first and, he thought, perhaps the only true one of his life—Cristina Vespucci. Twelve years—could it really be so long since she had died at the hands of Savonarola’s fanatics? And now another death. Machiavelli had told him about it, hesitantly. The faithless Caterina Sforza, who had blighted Ezio’s life as much as Cristina had blessed it, had just died, a wasted old woman of forty-six, forgotten and poor, her vitality and confidence long since extinguished.

As he went through life, Ezio began to think that the best company he’d ever truly have would be his own.

But he had no time to grieve or brood. The months flew by, and soon it was Christmas, and so much still to do.

At last, early in the New Year, on the Feast of St. Hilary, he was ready, and a day was set for his departure from Rome, via Naples, to the southern port of Bari, with an escort organized by Bartolomeo, who’d ride with him.

At Bari, he would take ship.

FOUR

“God go with you, brother,” Claudia told him on his last morning in Rome. They had risen before dawn. Ezio would leave at first light.

“You must take care of things here in my absence.”

“Do you doubt me?”

“Not anymore. Have you still not forgiven me for that?”

Claudia smiled. “There is a great beast in Africa called the elephant. They say it never forgets. It is the same with women. But don’t worry, Ezio. I will take care of things until you return.”

“Or until we have need of a new Mentor.”

Claudia didn’t reply to that. Her face became troubled. She said: “This mission. Why do you go alone? Why have you said so little of its import?”

“ ‘He travels fastest who travels alone,’ ” Ezio quoted by way of reply. “As for details, I have left our father’s papers in your keeping. Open them if I do not return. And I have told you all you need to know of Masyaf.”

“Giovanni was my father, too.”

“But he entrusted this responsibility to me.”

“You have assumed it, brother.”

“I am Mentor,” he said, simply. “It is my responsibility.”

She looked at him. “Well, travel safely. Write.”

“I will. In any case, you won’t have to worry about me between here and Bari. Barto will be with me all the way.”

She still looked worried. Ezio was touched that the tough woman his sister had grown up to be still had a tender spot in her heart for him. His overland journey would lead him through Italy’s southern territories, and they were controlled by the Crown of Aragon. But King Ferdinand hadn’t forgotten his debt to Ezio.

“If I’m after action,” he told her, reading her thought, “I won’t get any until I set sail. And my course leads pretty far to the north for me to have to worry about Barbary corsairs. We’ll hug the Greek coast after Corfu.”

“I’m more worried about your completing what you’re setting out to do. Not because I’m worried about you personally—”

“Oh really? Thank you for that.”

She grinned. “You know what I mean. From all you’ve said, and Santa Veronica may hold witness that you’ve told me little enough, a good outcome is important for us.”

“That’s why I’m going now. Before the Templars can regain strength.”

“Seize the initiative?”

“That’s about it.”

She took his face in her hands. He looked at her one last time. At forty-nine, she was still a strikingly beautiful woman, her dark hair still dark and her fiery nature unquenched. Sometimes he regretted that she had not found another man after the death of her husband, but she was devoted to her children and her work, and made no secret of the fact that she loved living in Rome, which, under Pope Julius, had once again become a sophisticated international city and an artistic and religious mecca.

They embraced, and Ezio mounted his horse, at the head of the short cavalcade that was accompanying him—fifteen armed riders under Barto, who was already mounted, his heavy horse pawing the dust, impatient to be gone, and a wagon to carry their supplies. For himself, all Ezio needed was in two black leather saddlebags. “I’ll forage as I go along,” he’d told Claudia.

“You’re good at that,” she’d replied with a wry grin.

Raising his hand as he settled into the saddle, Ezio wheeled his horse, and, as Barto brought his own steed alongside, they made their way down the east side of the river, away from the Assassins’ Headquarters on Tiber Island, toward the city gates and the long road south.

It took them fifteen days to reach Bari, and once there, Ezio bade leave of his old friend hastily, in order not to miss the first available flood tide. He took a ship belonging to the Turkish merchant fleet managed by Piri Reis and his family. Once installed in the after cabin of the large lateen-sailed dhow, the
Anaan
—a freighter on which he was the only passenger—Ezio took the opportunity to check—once again—the essential gear he had taken with him. Two hidden-blades, one for each wrist, his bracer for the left forearm, to deflect the blows of swords, and the spring-loaded pistol that Leonardo had made for him, along with all his other special armaments, from ancient designs found in the pages of the Codex of the Assassins.

Ezio was traveling light. In truth, he expected to find Masyaf, if he succeeded in reaching it, deserted. At the same time, he admitted to himself that he was uneasy at the scarcity of Assassin intelligence about Templar movements in the present days of apparent, or, at least, relative, peace.

As far as this second leg of the journey, which would take him to Corfu, was concerned, he knew he had little to fear. Piri Reis was a great captain among the Ottomans, and had once been a pirate himself, so his men would know how to handle them if fear of Piri’s name alone didn’t keep them at bay. Ezio wondered if he’d ever meet the great man himself one day. If he did, he hoped Piri, not known for his easygoing nature, would have forgotten the time when the Brotherhood had been constrained to “liberate” some of Piri’s precious maps from him.

The Ottomans themselves now held sway over Greece and much of eastern Europe—indeed, their territories almost touched those of Venice in the west. Not everyone was happy with the situation, and with the presence of so many Turks in Europe; but Venice, after a standoff, had continued to trade with its Muslim neighbors, and la Serenissima had kept control of Corfu, Crete, and Cyprus.

Ezio couldn’t see the situation lasting—the Ottomans had already made unfriendly advances on Cyprus—but for the moment, peace held, and Sultan Bayezid was too preoccupied with internal family squabbles to make any trouble in the west.

The broad-beamed ship, with her great sail of white canvas, cut through the water more like a broadsword than a knife, but they made good time despite adverse headwinds, and the short voyage across the mouth of the Adriatic took little more than five days.

After a welcome from the governor of Corfu, a fat Italian called Franco who liked to be called Spyridon, after the local patron saint, and who long since had clearly abandoned politics for lotus-eating, Ezio had a talk with the ship’s captain as they stood on a balcony fronting the governor’s villa, and looking out over palm trees to the harbor, which nestled under a sky of blue velvet. In exchange for another pouch of Venetian
soldi
, they agreed between them that Ezio should continue on to Athens.

“That’s our destination,” the captain told him. “We’ll be hugging the coast, I’ve done the trip twenty times, there will be no problem, no danger. And from there it will be easy to take a vessel bound for Crete and even on to Cyprus. In fact, I’ll introduce you to my brother-in-law Ma’Mun when we reach Athens. He’s a shipping agent. He’ll take care of you.”

“I’m obliged,” Ezio said. He hoped the man’s confidence was well placed. The
Anaan
was taking on an important cargo of spices for transfer to Athens, and Ezio remembered enough from his early days when his father was one of the major bankers of Florence to know that this cargo would make the
Anaan
a tempting target for any pirate, no matter how great a fear the name of Piri Reis might strike in them. If you fight on a ship, you need to be able to move fast and lightly. In the town, the following morning, he went to an armorer and bought a well-tempered scimitar, beating the man down to one hundred
soldi
.