Revelations

NINETEEN

In truth, Ezio sought to be alone. He needed to collect his thoughts. He went to a taverna in the Genoese quarter, where wine was available, and refreshed himself with a bottle of Pigato and a simple maccaroin in broddo. He spent the rest of the afternoon thoroughly acquainting himself with the Galata District and avoided trouble, melting into the crowd whenever he encountered either Ottoman patrols or bands of Byzantine mercenaries. He looked just like many another travel-stained pilgrims wandering the colorful, messy, chaotic, exciting streets of the city.

Once he was satisfied, he returned to headquarters, just as the first lamps were being lit in the dark interiors of the shops and they were laying tables in the lokantas. Yusuf and some of his people were waiting for him.

The Turk immediately came up to him, looking pleased with himself. “Praise the heavens! Mentor! I am glad to see you again-and safe. We feared we had lost you to the vices of the big city!”

“You are melodramatic,” said Ezio, smiling. “And as for vices, I am content with my own, grazie.”

“I hope you will approve of the arrangements we have made in your absence.”

Yusuf led Ezio to an inner chamber, where a complete new outfit had been laid out for him. Next to it, neatly arranged on an oak table, lay his weapons, sharpened, oiled, and polished, gleaming as new. A crossbow had been added to the set.

“We have put the broken blade in a place of safety,” said Yusuf. “But we noticed that you have no hookblade, so we have organized one for you.”

“Hookblade?”

“Yes. Look.” Yusuf drew back his sleeve to reveal what Ezio had first taken to be a hidden-blade. But when Yusuf activated it, and it sprang forth, he saw that it was a more complex variant. The telescopic blade of the new weapon ended in a curved hook of well-tempered steel.

“Fascinating,” said Ezio.

“You’ve never seen one before? I grew up using these.”

“Show me.”

Yusuf took a new hookblade from one of the Assassins in attendance, who’d held it in readiness, and tossed it over to Ezio. Transferring his good hidden-blade from his right wrist to his left, under the bracer, Ezio strapped the hookblade to his right. He felt its unfamiliar weight and practiced releasing and retracting it. He wished Leonardo had been there to see it.

“You’d better give me a demonstration.”

“Immediately, if you are ready.”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Then follow me and watch what I do closely.”

They went outside and down the street in the light of late afternoon to a deserted space between a group of tall brick buildings. Yusuf selected one, whose high walls were decorated with projecting horizontal runs of tiled brick at intervals of some ten feet. Yusuf set off toward the building at a run, leaping, when he reached it, onto a couple of water barrels placed close to it, then, springing upward from them, he released his hookblade and used it to grip the first projecting run of tiles, pulling himself up with the hookblade and using his momentum to hook onto the run above, and so on until he was standing on the roof of the building. The whole operation took less than a few seconds.

Taking a deep breath, Ezio followed suit. He managed the first two operations without difficulty, and even found the experience exhilarating, but he almost missed his hold on the third tier and swung dangerously outward for a moment, until he corrected himself without losing momentum and found himself soon afterward on the roof next to Yusuf.

“Don’t stop to think,” Yusuf told him. “Use your instincts and let the hook do the work. I can already see that after another couple of climbs like that, you’ll have mastered it. You’re a quick learner, Mentor.”

“I have had to be.”

Yusuf smiled. He extended his own blade again and showed Ezio the detail. “The standard Ottoman hookblade has two parts, you see-the hook and the blade, so that you can use one or the other independently. An elegant design, no?”

“A pity I didn’t have one of these in the past.”

“Perhaps then you had no need of one. Come!”

He bounded over the rooftops, Ezio following, remembering the distant days when he had chased after his brother Federico across the rooftops of Florence. Yusuf led him to places where he could practice some more, out of sight of prying eyes, and once Ezio had accomplished, with increasing confidence, another three climbs, Yusuf turned to him and said, a glint in his eye: “There’s still enough light left in the day. How about a bigger challenge?”

“Va bene.” Ezio grinned. “Let’s go.”

Yusuf took off, running again, through the emptying streets, until they reached the foot of the Galata Tower. “They don’t post guards in peacetime until the torches are lit on the parapets. We won’t be disturbed. Let’s go.”

Ezio looked up the great height of the tower and swallowed hard.

“You’ll be fine. Follow my lead, take a run at it, and let yourself go. Just throw yourself into it. And-again-let the hook do all the hard work. There are plenty of nooks and crannies in the stonework-you’ll be spoiled for choice about where to hook in.”

With a carefree laugh of encouragement, Yusuf set off. His skillful use of the blade made it look as if he were walking-running, even-straight up the wall of the tower. Moments later, Ezio, panting but triumphant, joined him on the roof, looking around him. As the young man on the ship had said, the views across the city were stunning. And Ezio hadn’t had to wait for permission from some bureaucrat to see them. He identified all the landmarks the young man had introduced him to from the deck of the baghlah, using the opportunity to familiarize himself further with the city’s layout. But another part of his mind just drank in its beauty in the red-gold light of the setting sun, the light reminding him of the color of the hair of that beautiful woman who’d been his fellow passenger and who’d looked right through him.

“Welcome to Istanbul, Mentor,” said Yusuf, watching his face. “The Crossroads of the World.”

“I can see now why they call it that.”

“Many generations of men have ruled this city, but they have never subdued her. Whatever yoke is placed on her neck, whatever neglect or pillage is visited on her, she always bounces back.”

“It seems a fine place to call home.”

“It is.”

Yusuf stepped to the edge of the tower after another minute or two, looked down, then turned to Ezio again. “Race you to the bottom?” he asked, and, without waiting for a reply, threw himself from the parapet in an astounding Leap of Faith.

Ezio watched him plummet, like a hawk stooping, and land safely in a hay wain he’d already singled out, 175 feet below. He sighed, pausing a moment longer to stare at the city spread out beneath him, in wonder. The Great City. The First City. The heiress of Ancient Rome. Constantinople was a thousand years old and had been home to hundreds of thousands of citizens at a time, in the not-too-distant past, when Rome and Florence were mere villages by comparison. She had been plundered and ravaged, and he knew the legendary beauty of the past was gone forever; but she had always awed her attackers and those who sought to reduce her; and, as Yusuf had said, she had never truly been subdued.

Ezio looked around one last time, scanning the whole horizon with his keen eyes. He fought down the deep sadness that filled his heart.

Then, in turn, he made his own Leap of Faith.