loveliest spots on earth. The thing to do when people look at you, gentlemen, is to look back, particularly at the pretty girls!”
It was also necessary to relax, I continued, because we hadn’t yet found a Venetian captain to take us where we needed to go. Venice had been at odds with the Turks for the better part of three hundred years, and Ottoman waters swarmed with pirates. The Greeks were under the thumb of Muslim masters who referred to their peasant subjects as
We were well in our cups when who should sashay by but one particularly delectable and tawny beauty, hair high as a tower, dress cut to the outermost precipice of her bosom, and skin as flawless as a flower petal. I hoped for a wink or even a word of invitation, but instead she reached tantalizingly to the hem of her dress, gave us a glimpse of ankle, and impishly plucked something from her skirts. Was it an apple? She held the thing to our tavern torch for a moment and it sparkled like a pixie’s wand, and then she rolled it in our direction with the sweetest of smiles.
“Is this Italian custom?” Smith said, belching from drink, as the object stopped between our chairs.
“If so, she bowls with the grace of Aphrodite,” Cuvier slurred.
“What is it, Ethan?” Fulton asked, looking in curiosity at smoke drifting up from the smoldering sphere. “A festival invitation?”
I bent to look under the table. “That, my friends, is a grenade.”
CHAPTER NINE
The resulting explosion, which coughed out a spray of brick, bread dough, charcoal, and fragments of rotisserie duck, could still have lacerated our top halves if I hadn’t tackled my comrades into a heap, our table toppling over as a shield. We were enveloped in a cloud of brick dust, but fortunately the oven had absorbed the worst of the blast and the patrons we shared the place with escaped with just a fright.
“It’s the Egyptian Rite!” I cried, my ears ringing and my brain addled by the explosion. “To the horses!”
“Ethan, we’re on an island,” Cuvier said, coughing. “We have no horses.”
“Aye.” I shook my head and blurrily saw caped men entering the other side of the Campo, dressed in black and brandishing things that glinted in the dark. One was waving his arm to direct the others. “To the gondolas, then!”
“I don’t think they’re giving us bloody time,” Smith said.
We picked ourselves up, grabbed our scattered weapons and bags, and bunched to run as the strangers charged toward us. People were screaming, I realized as my hearing returned.
Then there was a roar that made everyone in the piazza jump and Smith slammed backward against the half-ruined oven. He’d fired his blunderbuss, packed with eight balls, and three of the attackers went sprawling. Bullets ricocheted like fleas in a bottle. The other scoundrels yelped, ducked, and broke toward cover.
“By thunder, Englishman, there’s a naval broadside!” Cuvier cried.
Agreeing that our rock hound had set a good example, I took up my longrifle and aimed for the man who seemed to be the leader. I stilled my breath, aimed to lead him as he sprinted for the shadows, squeezed, and fired. He went down, too, skidding on the cobbles, and I was rewarded with cries of dismay.
“Always load before dinner,” I said.
“And with a blunderbuss, it doesn’t matter much how much you drink during it,” Smith said, and burped.
We retreated, me halfheartedly clawing at the rapier strapped to my back and cursing that I hadn’t bothered to carry it on my hip after all. The good thing about swords is you don’t have to load them with powder and ball. The bad is you have to get damnably close to people trying to kill you. Now bullets came our way, making a smacking sound as they chewed into wood and stucco. We ran faster.
At the Giuffa Canal we didn’t hesitate. A gondola was sweeping by with a paying client, its gondolier warbling a song, and so we sprang like pirates, crashed aboard, and pitched the poor passenger overboard.
“For your own safety!” I called as he splashed into the dirty water, his hat drifting away like a little raft.
Then I finally got my rapier clear and pointed at the gondolier’s throat. “The Grand Canal! Don’t worry, there’s a tip in it for you!”
Our helmsman looked goggle-eyed at my blade. “Should I sing, signor?”
“Save your breath for the stroke. We’re rather in a hurry.” As he began powering us down the canal, I turned to the others. Smith was already swabbing out his blunderbuss and pouring in fresh powder. “Cuvier, get out those pretty pistols of yours and shoot the rascals when they reach the canal. Fulton, please don’t play a song.”
“They put a hole in my bagpipes, damn it.”
“Then invent something else.” I tried to remember the city’s confusing spaghetti of canals. “We’ll go to San Marco harbor and see if we can buy our way onto a ship out of here.”
“My God, who was that woman?” Smith asked, his hand trembling slightly as he tamped down a fresh fusillade of shot. Killing is a jolt, especially the first time.
“Not one to flirt, I guess. It’s a bet she’s working for our enemies. I think we’re in a race to the secret of Thira, which means that I’m afraid we shouldn’t have tarried after all. I expected better of Venice. Especially after the price of our inn.”
“I see something following us,” Cuvier said, peering back into the dark. There was a flash as his pistols went off, blinding us to whatever he had aimed at. I couldn’t believe he’d hit a thing with his popguns, but we heard a
“By mastodon tusks, they work!” he cried. “We’re quite the dangerous men!”
We swept past a curve and back into darkness, then squirted out of the small canal into the broad one that makes a sweeping “S” through the city. It’s a canyon of grand mansions four and five stories high, candles and lanterns gleaming behind tall windows to reveal aged munificence within, the leftovers of glittering empire. I saw centuries-old tapestries, crystal chandeliers, brocaded curtains, and white, moonlike faces peering out in curiosity at our noise. We sculled under the Rialto Bridge, lovers strolling its arched promenade, and headed toward the city’s main harbor and the anchored ships off the Piazza San Marco. Domes and towers loomed up against the stars, and the sound of opera floated across dark water.
“I think we discouraged them,” Smith ventured, looking back.
“I’m afraid I must disagree, Monsieur Smith,” Cuvier replied, pointing ahead with one of his pistols, the ramrod jutting from its barrel because he was reloading. “Our pursuers seem to have a lot of company.”
A line of gondolas was sweeping down to intercept us from the canal ahead, blocking our intended escape. We spied enough gleaming metal to fill an armory. There was a ripple of flashes and spouts of water kicked up around us as the reports of the shots echoed off the buildings. Chips of wood flew off our gondola, and our helmsman froze.
“I’ll skewer you if you try to jump!” I warned him, my rapier aimed again at this throat. “Steer into that side canal there, before they get off another volley!”
We turned into a small channel that cut across the island by a different path. Maybe we could lose our pursuers in the liquid labyrinth that was Venice. This narrow tributary was dark, the houses seeming to lean in. Only
