The Venetian (18 page)

“They will imprison you!”

“Imprison me? For what? For being a confused old man?” Tomaso’s face suddenly became a mask of bewilderment. “I…don’t understand. My son was just beside me. I do not know where he could have gone.” The smile no longer sad, instead now one of a mischievous little imp, and Paolo almost laughed out loud despite his growing alarm.

“But Father, we have only just…”

Tomaso cut him off, not unkindly. “I know, Paolo.” He laid his palm on his son’s cheek. “I know. Now go. Do you remember the door that opens to the workshop from the corridor?” Still in a hush, Tomaso was speaking quickly now, Paolo nodding absently, overwhelmed by the rapidity of what was happening. “Good. Take it. They cannot see that portion of the corridor from the front room.” Paolo knew this fact quite well, the corridor a favorite place of his as a child to lie in wait for Ciro, merrily attacking his older brother without warning. Because the corridor was bathed in shadow nearly all day, Ciro would never detect the imminent assault until it was too late.

“There is another exit from the workshop. In the far corner, near the furnace.” Yes, Paolo knew it—the rear entrance for materials and supplies. “It opens onto the alley. With any luck they will only be watching the entrance to the house and the front of the shop.”

Paolo knew now that Tomaso’s plan was unfolding whether he wished it or not, the anxiety around his flight shifting to the
distraction
his father was planning. Tomaso saw the terror in his son’s eyes, but knew it was not cowardice. Paolo did not fear for his own safety, but rather for his father’s.

“Father, this is no game.”

“No one knows that better than I my son. Now go, please. I will see you very soon.”

Paolo knew that should he survive this moment, it would only be the first of many trials to come. “How will you find me? Even I do not know where I will be.”

Tomaso smiled again. He had not felt this close to his son since Paolo first dipped the
pontello
into the crucible. “You are my son. We are connected.” Tomaso touched his chest and put a finger to his temple. “I will think like the fox. I will find you.”

Paolo hesitated, needing more time and knowing he had none, embraced Tomaso in one quick motion, and turned toward the door to the corridor. He opened it quietly, stopped and looked back at his father. Tomaso’s small frame looked fragile and immovable all at once. Such had been the paradox of his father all his life. Paolo smiled sadly, saying goodbye.

***

TOMASO WATCHED HIS
son go, closed his eyes, and thought back to Paolo’s days as a child, his wondering eyes as he watched the liquid glass twist and flow like a living thing. They had been lost, each in their own wilderness, but had found their way home. Tomaso surveyed the kitchen. He saw the large stone fireplace at its center, the heart of a home with no family left. He saw the rest of the house and the workshop beyond in his mind. Everything he had worked for, his life’s ambition, now just so much wood and stone. Paolo’s survival was all that mattered now.

He had allowed himself to be a victim for far too long, despondent and mired in self-pity. He could still do something to save his family. As much as he had come to deride the idea of a loving God in heaven, he knew that Donatella was…somewhere, looking down upon him. He would not fail her again. Paolo was right. They would imprison him, confused old man or not, and Tomaso would not survive it. They will allow nothing to stand in their way.
So,
it is better this way
.

His eyes fell upon the
pontello
in the corner. While he could no longer work, could not set foot in the workshop without enduring the flood of horrific images, he still longed to work the glass. He had come to find some small comfort in handling the long piece of iron, sitting alone at the table, absently turning it over and over in his hands, imagining the fiery ball at its end. This was not the
pontello
that had killed Ciro. Tomaso had thrown it into the canal in a rage, and then inexplicably wept for its loss. This was the
pontello
he had trained Paolo with, the one he had put away the day his son left. He had hoped to take it out again, to celebrate his son’s return. He could never have predicted the circumstances under which it would be used once more.

He moved quickly now, grabbing the rod and moving to a place just inside the door leading out to the front room. He listened at the door but could hear nothing.
Were the men still there?
Tomaso felt a stab of panic, wondering if they had already discovered the deception and left to pursue Paolo. But then he heard the creak of a floorboard, footsteps moving toward the door. Tomaso closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and set his legs.

“Signore Avesari, we must go. We have given all the time we can.” Though he had heard the footsteps, the voice still startled Tomaso, closer than he thought, but he didn’t respond. Paolo needed every moment to make his escape. Tomaso needed the element of surprise.

“Signore,” the voice impatient now. “We are coming in. Stand away from the door.”

The door opened abruptly. Tomaso had positioned himself to the left of the frame, facing the adjoining wall. Before the first man was halfway through, he swung the
pontello
in a wide, low arc, shattering the man’s kneecap. His eyes wide with shock, the guard fell like a stone, howling in pain and rage in concert with the sounds of splintering bone. Despite Tomaso’s small stature, he wielded the long rod expertly, although in all his years of working the glass, he had never utilized the instrument like this.

The second man, following the first closely, rushed forward, drawing his dagger. He scrambled over the splayed body of his comrade, whose enormous bulk now lay prone in the doorframe, torso in the kitchen, legs in the adjoining room. Tomaso was waiting. In a single fluid motion, he reversed the direction of the
pontello
. He held the shaft loosely in his hands, allowed it to spin, letting the momentum of the heavy iron swing back along the original arc and then up, until at its apex, he brought the rod down with shocking speed, breaking the wrist of the second man and sending the dagger skidding across the floor. The man’s right hand dangled at an absurd angle. He stared at the appendage disbelievingly as though he had never seen it before. He looked at Tomaso, screamed with an insane rage, and fell to his knees, reaching for the dagger with his left hand. Tomaso brought the rod down on his back with a sickening crunch. Dizzy from exertion, he wheeled around, knowing he had taken too much time with the second man.

The knife entered just above his abdomen as he turned to face the third guard. A searing heat spread through his chest. Tomaso stiffened, dropped the
pontello
, the sharp clang a faint echo in his ears. The two men stood together in the ruined kitchen, the battle at an end. The guard looked at him curiously as though he couldn’t fathom why this old man had done such a thing. Tomaso smiled thinly, beginning to sway now on his feet, making him seem that much more insane to the guard.
This is how it must end.
The man stepped back, pulling the knife from Tomaso’s body, but Tomaso grabbed at the man’s hand with surprising strength, forced the knife back in to its hilt. He gasped as the blade struck his sternum and the man recoiled. What was this madness?

Paolo needed more time!
Tomaso ground his teeth, digging his fingers into the flesh of the man’s wrist, drawing blood. The man cried out, panicked, desperately fighting to pull his hand free. The struggle lasted only a few seconds. His strength all but gone, Tomaso surrendered, dropping the man’s hand. Both fell backward, the guard from his momentum, tripping over the crumpled form behind him and crashing to the floor. Tomaso’s body went limp, folding in on itself as though the life that had given it volume had already departed. His head hit the floor with a hard thud he did not hear, and he lay there, the ceiling steadily growing darker above him. His breath was labored, the thoughts racing quickly through his mind as though fearing the fog before his eyes would extinguish them too soon—Ciro, desperately trying to please him. Donatella, his love, his guide. But he did not think of the glass, his life’s work. He could no longer recall its fiery beauty, and he was glad. He laughed, a rattling, wet gurgle, black spittle bubbling from his lips. But the pain brought clarity, and thanks. And before Tomaso expired, he thought of Paolo, his son.

Twenty One

Q
ilij reflected on his new instructions.
I have two more for you
Gabriele had said. Two more. He had thought his task complete with the disposal of the trader. Of course he should have known better. Venice was a parasite, a deeply rooted one, and its eradication required a prodigious cleansing. The three he had killed must only be the beginning. Gabriele would reveal only what he needed to know at the proper time.

He had felt some pity for his first victim, the glassblower, but only briefly before remembering his training. He did not enjoy the torture. Sadism was not part of his code, but it had been necessary. He could not afford such emotion. He was a warrior, a Mamluk. He knew only duty. The history of his adopted people was emblazoned in his mind. Mamluks had beaten back the Mongols at the Battle of Ayn Jalut and driven the infidels out of the Levant. Attacking Acre in 1291, a city of 40,000 drawn from all of Europe’s states, including their crusading orders—the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights—the Mamluks stormed the city, indiscriminately putting the unbelievers to the sword. Evil inhabited all, without discrimination. Women and children had been no exception. Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Haifa soon followed, razed to the ground. After two centuries of the Godless plague, the crusaders had been swept from the Holy Land.

But 200 years later, the work was not yet done. Qilij would continue. Cairo’s Mamluk sultan, Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri was weak, a puppet of the Venetians, dazzled by their pretty baubles and silver tongues. But the end of their empire was close at hand; this Gabriele knew. And once the Latins fell, so too would the Mamluk empire, like a man tied to a stone. Qilij could not allow that to happen.

Gabriele, as disagreeable as he was, seemed a gift from Allah, placed in Qilij’s path at just the right moment. They had met in Cairo, Qilij filled to bursting with a love for Allah, yet empty all the same, a hole in his heart he had been unable to fill, the true meaning of the void maddeningly just out of reach. Gabriele had been watching him he later learned; saw the doubt in him clearer than Qilij had himself. They had spoken for hours, about justice and honor, God and man, about the evil Allah placed in the world as a means to test His servants and shepherd them to paradise. And no one, they both agreed, represented evil more than the Venetians. Soon all had become clear—what Qilij had to do, for Allah, for himself, and for his people.

He thought back on his own journey now. Everything he had endured had been leading to this moment. A Kipchak, he had been rescued from a life of poverty as a young boy in the steppes of Siberia, purchased as a Mamluk slave. He recalled the burning humiliation, endlessly poked and prodded by the men who had purchased him like so much chattel. They stared into his eyes, forced fingers into his mouth to examine his teeth, measured the length of his limbs. How his mother had wept! He had shed his own tears as well, reached out to her as they led him away, his father trying to calm her, wrapping his arms around her frail shoulders. His father had known this day would come, had seen it too many times before in the steppes, slavers coming to claim their prizes, future lords of the warrior empire. Together his parents had prayed for a child that would not be taken, one who might be weaker than the others (but not too weak as to be useless), but Qilij—he no longer remembered his birth name—had been strong from the start. At his tender age, he had not understood why his mother had wept as he tirelessly worked at his father’s side, honoring his family with devotion and strength. He would be a great man of the tribe he knew, perhaps even greater than his father. But his destiny lay elsewhere.

The journey to Cairo had been long and arduous. He had been terrified. Everything he had ever known had been taken from him in a single terrible day. He wanted to die, but not before he killed these men in their sleep. They promised him a future where he would be exalted, held in awe. He was deaf to their lies, cursing them in return. He had not killed them however, thank Allah, and found in Cairo that they had not deceived him after all. If only he could, he would tell his parents now that they were honored among the Mamluks. Their son had become respected and revered, a blessing from God.

Like all slaves under the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo, Qilij had been raised in the stark barracks of the Citadel of Cairo. There was no privacy, no time away from their new life, and the young men came to look upon one another as family. They had need of nothing more. The austere military training they received was only interrupted by the equally rigorous education in Islam. No Mamluk slave could come from a Muslim background. Qilij’s first exposure to Islam then was a revelation. He was shown a new world, unimaginable just a short time ago. While he had loved the martial training, the raw physical nature of it, he loved the spiritual teachings that much more. Five times a day he would perform
salah
, the prayer to Allah. They were the five happiest moments of his day. Before praying, Qilij would wash his hands, face, arms, head, and feet. A sense of such peace he had never known. He would lose himself in the cleansing, as though he were being born again each time, kneeling before Allah with an unblemished heart.

The slaves lived together, spent all of their time with one another, their entertainments serving only to better their skills as fighters. At least once a week they would hold archery competitions or presentations of mounted combat skills. In these events, Qilij was never far from the top of his garrison. And while all were good fighters, there were some, though not many, who were less than devout Muslims. Qilij had tried to understand, but could not. Were they not grateful for such a life, a life consisting of endless opportunity to bring honor upon themselves and to serve Allah? Yes, they had been taken from their homes, their families, but for a purpose that could not be outweighed. No, he did not understand them, so he punished them physically whenever he could during the competitions. He came to be feared by most, respected by all.