bullet wound. Turi shrieked and flapped away, hopping and winging to the next table, and the next. It took the guards a moment to herd the eagle toward the doors and out into the street.
“I’m offering you up to my own god, so to speak. We’ve never met anyone from your country before. I had no idea that you used the plague in such strange ways. I’m sure someone in the Temple will find a use for that knowledge. Assuming, of course, that you share your knowledge with them before they kill you.”
Chapter 19. Salvator
While it is gratifying to know that I can still do this as well as I could ten years ago, I think it’s time to move on.
Salvator crawled out from under the tiny shelf at the bottom of the pantry and stood up slowly, listening to the tiny creaks and pops in his back as he straightened out his spine. His hiding space had been several inches too low, too short, and too narrow, yet he had lain there in perfect silence for over an hour. Before that he had squatted in an ancient dumbwaiter for half an hour, dashed up and down a back staircase for half an hour, and spent seven very long minutes clinging to a rafter above a privy while a tall man in green used the facilities with considerable gusto.
The Italian spent a moment stretching his neck and shoulders. He sniffed his sleeve.
Pepper. I’ve smelled worse.
Hearing nothing outside the door, he stepped out into the kitchen and glanced around the long room of iron stoves and brick ovens and wooden blocks full of shining steel knives. It smelled of bread. He snatched up a handful of something that didn’t quite look like proper bread, but tasted better than a belly full of nothing and he chewed thoughtfully as he made a quick circuit of the room. There were noises beyond the door at one end, so he hurried to the far end of the room, heard nothing, and stepped out into a cool corridor.
During his wild chase through the Temple, he had headed down at every opportunity, in part to get closer to the ground level to make his escape and in part because it was easier on his hips to go down than to go up. And while he had returned to the stone levels of the fortress, somewhere in all the turns and backtracks and dark rooms he had lost count of the floors, and with no windows to tell him how high above the street he still was, he had no choice but to find the next stair and continue down.
There were two close calls as he rounded corners when he almost ran straight into a quiet gentleman in green coming the other way, but each time Salvator leapt back into a dark nook with his hand on his rapier and waited in silence for the other man to pass.
Always a man and never a woman. Such a disappointing cult.
In just a few minutes he had descended several more floors and was just thinking that he needed to find a window to assess his location when he heard a sharp clang. Peering down the spiral of the iron stair, the Italian spied a dull orange light below.
He sniffed the air.
Iron? Sulfur? And something else.
He descended again, walking almost crab-like on the stairs so that he could look down past his feet to be sure no one was waiting nearby to skewer him on a burning hot blade, and so he slowly came down to the source of the orange glow. It was not the bottom of the iron stair, but it must have been close, judging by the extreme darkness of the floors below him. Salvator stepped away from the stair.
Just down the hall was a door standing half open to reveal the warm fiery light from the room beyond. A hammer banged on hard steel. Steam hissed. Bellows blew.
A forge. And voices. Two men.
He slipped to the edge of the door and looked inside. The forge within was a perfectly medieval establishment. It looked very little like the modern smithies he had known in Italia, and far less like the factories of Marrakesh. The floors and walls were all of huge stone blocks. The anvil was little more than a short iron plinth. The source of the orange light was a huge open fire pit full of glowing coals and it was supplied with air from a bellows at its base that looked like the recently acquired stomach of a camel or ox.
The man standing over the anvil and hammering at the glowing length of steel stood out in sharp contrast from his surroundings. He was tall and lean, with his black hair bound in a tight oiled knot on top of his head, and though his back was to the door, Salvator could see he was clean shaven. There was no soot or ash on his bare arms, and no obvious scars or burns to mar his corded brown flesh. And when he spoke, his words were quick and soft. In the Italian’s mind, such a man belonged in a princely court.
To the left sat a second man, one better suited to the ancient forge. He was shorter and older, with unkempt gray hair and an unkempt gray beard, and his green robes hung about him in wrinkled disarray, pushed up here and hanging down there and falling open to reveal his stained shirt in a crooked manner.
The tall smith said something and both men laughed.
They were speaking Eranian, Salvator was certain, but over the hammering on the anvil and the quenching in the water tub, he couldn’t hear more than two words clearly at one time.
So he stepped inside with his rapier drawn, and bowed. “Gentlemen, good evening to you both. My name is Salvator Fabris.”
The bearded man sitting on the left squinted at him and then burst out laughing. He turned to the smith and said, “It’s the Italian who scared Khai this afternoon! Ha! He’s still here. I told you, Jiro, I told you Khai was lying. He’s still alive!” And then he turned to Salvator and said, “Khai’s told everyone he found you and killed you himself. As if that old crow could chase down anything nimbler than a dead wildebeest. Ha!” He slapped his leg and leaned back with a smug smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.
Salvator smiled back as he shut the door behind him.
This may be easier than I expected.
“I’m pleased I could give you the satisfaction of being right, sir. You friend, Signore Khai, proved a less than hospitable host, I’m afraid. So I took my leave of him in search of better company.”
The older man’s smile faded somewhat. “Yes, well, that’s all well and good, but why have you come here at all? To steal our secrets? To kill us? Hm? Surely you don’t think you’re the first man to try.”
The tall smith set aside his half-formed blade in the bed of coals and turned to face the intruder. The smith had high cheekbones and strangely lidded eyes, and Salvator guessed him to be from some distant land in the east. He recognized the subtle grace in the smith’s movements, the way he shifted his feet and rested his empty hands at his sides.
A fighter.
“I have come for information, that much is true. I had not intended to enter your sanctuary in this fashion, but your receptionists, those fine gentlemen with the pistols outside the front doors, were less than helpful in directing me to someone with whom I could do business.”
“Hm.” The older man folded his arms over his belly. “This is not a place of business, young man. It is our home and our school. A place of learning. As you say, it is our sanctuary. We have other places away from the Temple for conducting business.”
“Then I apologize for the intrusion.”
“You killed several of our guards.”
“Then I apologize for the inconvenience. And the mess.” Salvator sheathed his sword and held up his empty hands in a tiny gesture of reconciliation. “But you seem like a reasonable gentleman, and I prefer to conduct civilized business with civilized men. Perhaps you and I can come to a mutually profitable arrangement, mister…?”
“I am Master Rashaken. My tall friend is Master Jiro.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintances, sirs.” Salvator arched an eyebrow.
Did he call me a young man a moment ago? He can’t be more than five years my senior. I wonder if hopes to intimidate me with those subtle remarks.
“As you say, I am a member of the Italian court and I am here to learn about this organization on behalf of my government. We have been aware of you for some time now through your contracted operatives.”
“And now you want to know where we stand. Our allegiances and alliances. Who do we like and who do we
