The Venetian Read Free

work for some, but Abramo was smarter than that.
    He booked passage on the next barge headed up the Nile to Cairo, planning a return to Alexandria in a few days. It was a pleasant trip, the scorching sun mellowed by the refreshing river breezes, the tall reeds on the Nile’s banks lazily waving him on toward promised riches.
    ***
    NOW, STANDING HERE amidst the jarring tumult of Cairo, Abramo knew the few ducats less he would have to spend on pepper once back in Alexandria were well worth the adventures he would have in such a city, one to easily rival even Venice. Silk, spice, gold, slaves: no matter which way he turned his head, a new wonder. Having left Venice in late August, he had only just missed the Festival of the Nile, which began on the day in late summer when Isis wept and the great river rose to its annual flood stage. He would have liked to have seen the festival, the spectacle of the city’s religious leaders rupturing the dike, flooding the city’s canals in water and ritual. Illuminated boats would sail the canals nightly as celebrants tossed candy and coins to children and the poor on shore.
    ***
    AFTER HOURS OF wandering, Abramo found himself in the capital’s outlying districts, although he couldn’t be sure where, dizzy as he was from the day’s carnival, the mournful calls to prayer from the Muezzins sounding like a keening lover. Little light found him here, the buildings like some ancient forest with limbs and leaves blotting out the sky. The odor of grime and urine pulled the bile from his stomach while the scent of onion and garlic, stuffed pigeon and roasted lamb made his mouth water.
    The twisting maze of Cairo’s alleyways was even more baffling in the purple twilight. While every street near the city’s center was illuminated, filled with residents dining and shopping, light was mostly absent here, as were people. Abramo looked about for a friendly face.
    “Thank heaven,” he murmured when he saw a man turn the nearest corner. Il mio dio but he was huge! A head taller than Abramo’s considerable height, he looked twice as wide. Piercing blue eyes sat above a great blond beard. He was covered in at least three layers of silk shirts with an outer cloak of scarlet satin embroidered in gold. Beneath the yards of vibrant fabric, he wore voluminous pantaloons of the finest Venetian cloth. An opulently jeweled scimitar hung at his waist. Had Abramo seen him in daylight, he would have been blinded by the sight.
    A Mamluk. Abramo was well acquainted with the Mamluks, as was every Venetian merchant. A very strange people he reflected as the giant marched toward him with enormous strides, his pantaloons billowing.
    The Mamluks had ruled Egypt for nearly three centuries and had been Islam’s elite fighting force for seven hundred years. A slave caste, they were white Eurasian men kidnapped or purchased as children and sold at markets in Damascus, Cairo, and Constantinople to be trained in equestrian fighting and rigorous Islam. Rather than reproduce with their women, they replenished their ranks with Caucasian boys purchased from slavers.
    No wonder the brute is such a physical specimen. They were specially selected as boys, he knew, by experts who examined their limbs, eyes, and teeth. In order to maintain control of the spice trade, it was crucial for Venice to cultivate its relationship with them.
    “Ah, thank goodness signore,” Abramo breathed with obvious relief as he strode forward, extending a grateful hand to the stranger. “In all the excitement of the day, I seem to have…”
    Abramo stopped suddenly as the scimitar entered his abdomen, piercing his back. Eyes wide in disbelief, his hand still extended in greeting, he looked down at the ruin of his body. Thick blood oozed from his mouth, salty and metallic. He could feel its warmth as he tried in vain to stagger backward, the blade still embedded in his torso.
    The Mamluk’s blue eyes were impassive as he held the scimitar in place,