loud smacking sound. He
rose and bowed to the doge's sedan chair.

The doge of Venice, Rainerio Zeno, emerged through curtains held for him
by two equerries in purple. Zeno was a very old, toothless man whose
black eyes glittered like a raven's. His bald head was covered by a
white cap bordered with pearls. His gold-embroidered mantle looked stiff
and hard as the shell of a beetle. Pages stood on either side of him,
and he leaned heavily on their shoulders, using them as crutches. The
friar bent and kissed Zeno's ring.

Simon could not hear what the doge and the friar said to each other. The
friar gestured toward the ship. Armed men--Simon counted ten of
them--tramped down the boarding ramp and formed two lines leading to the
doge. They were short and swarthy, wearing red and black breastplates of
lacquered leather and round steel helmets polished to a dazzling finish,
topped with spikes. Bows were slung crosswise over their shoulders, and
long, curved swords hung from their belts. Were these Tartars, he
wondered.

Their swords looked very much like the one Simon wore. Simon's was an
Egyptian scimitar, one of his most precious possessions, not because of
its jeweled hilt--a pearl set just behind the guard, a ruby at the end
of the hilt, and a row of smaller precious stones all along the
grip--but because of the one who had given it to him. And yet, much as
he prized it, the scimitar hurt him each time he looked at it, reminding
him of his darkest secret, a secret known to only three living people.
Simon's whole life, the scimitar reminded him, was built on a lie.

And he had accepted this mission, in part, to expiate the shame he felt
when he remembered that.

Now Simon, feeling very much out of his depth, touched the hilt of his
scimitar for reassurance. But as he recalled that the sword had once
belonged to a Saracen ruler, his heart leapt in fear.

_One never knows when or how the Saracens may strike_, Count Charles
d'Anjou--Uncle Charles--had warned him. _The arrow from ambush ... the
dagger that cuts the throat of a sleeping victim ... poison. When they
cannot kill they try to corrupt, with gold and lies. And they have
allies in Italy--the Pope's enemy, Manfred von Hohenstaufen, and his
supporters, the Ghibellini. You must be on guard every moment._

Simon's eyes swept the row of stone palaces that overlooked this part of
the waterfront, their battlements offering hundreds of fine hiding
places for killers.