The Master of the Seal

He saved them. That was the catastrophe. Caffa, on the Black Sea, 1343. Ottobono Lercari is the Genoese factor there, a man with a rare gift: an eye that never sees a thing, only what it would take to move it. Nothing leaves that harbor without the lead seal at his belt, and he keeps the one creed that governs the trade, that nothing waits. Then the Horde comes down and the walls close, and the sea is the only road left. For three years Ottobono keeps a besieged town alive across it, and each time a careful man argues for holding a ship back he overrules him, kindly, and is proved right. When Caffa is given up it is his craft that will make the difference, a whole people lifted off a dying shore in the bottoms he has spent twenty years learning to fill. He brings nearly two thousand of them home to Genoa, more than anyone believed could be saved. What he loaded into those ships will find him a year later, at a table, alone.