Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (22 page)

She wheeled her horse around, and without another word, without even a backward glance, at the head of her guardian entourage, she galloped north out of the city and out of his life. He watched them until they were mere specks in the distance, a lonely, middle-aged man who had been given a last chance at love and missed it.

“Vittoria agli Assassini,”
murmured Ezio tonelessly to himself, as he turned and made his way back into the still-sleeping city.

With Cesare’s return imminent, Ezio had to put his private grief aside and get on with the work Fate had given him. In his attempt to cut Cesare off from his funds, the first step was to find and neutralize Cesare’s banker, and the initial lead would come from the Rosa in Fiore.

“What do you want?” Claudia couldn’t have been less friendly if she’d tried.

“You spoke of a senator at the meeting.”

“Yes, I did. Why?”

“You said he owed money to Cesare’s banker. Is he here?”

She shrugged. “You’ll probably find him on the Campidoglio. Surely you don’t need my help for that.”

“What does he look like?”

“Oh—let me see—average?”

“Don’t play games with me, sister!”

Claudia relented slightly. “He’s maybe sixty, lean, worried looking, clean shaven, grey hair, your height or a little less. Name’s Egidio Troche. Stubborn type, Ezio, pessimistic, set in his ways. You’ll have your work cut out trying to get around him.”

“Thank you.” Ezio looked at her hard. “Now—I intend to track down this ‘Banker’ and kill him. I’ve a pretty shrewd idea who he is, but I need to find out where he lives. This senator could lead me to him.”

“The Banker’s security’s pretty tight. So would yours be, if you were in a position like his.”

“You think mine isn’t?”

“As if I cared.”

“Listen, Claudia—if I’m tough with you, it’s because I worry about you.”

“Spare me!”

“You’re doing well—”

“Thank you, kind sir—”

“—but I need you to organize a big job for me. Once I have neutralized this Banker, I need your girls to get his money to a place of safety.”

“Just let me know when—or should I say,
if
—you succeed.”

“Just—stay alert.”

In a dark mood, Ezio set off for the Capitoline Hill, the administrative center of Rome. He was greeted by a busy scene. There were several senators going about their business in the broad piazza around which the government buildings were arranged, accompanied by secretaries and assistants, who carried papers in leather folders and bustled after their masters as they moved from building to building, all trying to look as busy and as important as possible. Ezio, as far as he could, blended into the melee, keeping a watchful eye out for a man answering the description Claudia had given him. As he moved through the crowd, he kept his ears pricked for any hint he might pick up about his quarry. There certainly wasn’t any sign of Egidio among the senators at the moment, though he seemed to be providing his colleagues with a lively topic of conversation.

“Egidio’s been asking for money again,” said one.

“When doesn’t he? What’s it for this time?”

“Oh, some proposal to reduce the number of public executions.”

“Ridiculous!”

Ezio moved on to another knot of senators and there gleaned more information. He wasn’t sure, from what he heard, whether Egidio was a militant (and therefore foolish) liberal reformer or a rather ham-fisted con man.

“Egidio’s petitioning for an end to the torturing of witnesses in the criminal courts,” someone in the next group was saying.

“Fat chance!” replied the harassed-looking man he was talking to. “It’s just a front, anyway. All he really wants the money for is to pay off his debts!”

“And he wants to get rid of exemption licenses.”

“Please! Like that’s going to happen! Every citizen who feels mistreated by our laws should surely be allowed to pay for an exemption from those laws! It’s our duty! After all, it’s our own Holy Father who brought the exemption licenses in—and he’s following the example of Christ Himself—’Blessed are the merciful’!”

Another Borgia scam for making money,
thought Ezio, while the other senator rejoined, “Why should we give any money to Egidio? Everyone knows what he’d do with it.”

The two men laughed and went about their business.

Ezio’s attention was attracted then to a small group of Borgia guards in their mulberry-and-yellow uniforms, but Ezio noticed that these had Cesare’s personal crest—two red bulls, quartered with fleurs-de-lis—sewn onto their doublets. As they always spelled trouble, he made his way over to them and saw, as he approached, that they had surrounded a senator. The other senators were carrying on as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, but Ezio could see that they left plenty of space between the guards and themselves.

The unfortunate senator answered Claudia’s description perfectly.

“No more arguing,” the guards’ sergeant was saying.

“Your payment’s fallen due,” added his corporal. “A debt’s a debt.”

Egidio had dropped any pretense of dignity. He was pleading. “Make an exception for an old man!” he quavered. “I beg of you!”

“No,” snarled the sergeant, nodding to two of his men, who seized Egidio and threw him to the ground. “The Banker has sent us to collect—and you know what that means!”

“Look—give me until tomorrow—this evening!—I’ll have the money ready then!”

“Not good enough,” responded the sergeant, kicking the senator hard in the stomach. He stepped back and the corporal and the two other guards set about belaboring the prostrate old man.

“That won’t get you your money,” said Ezio, stepping forward.

“Who are you? Friend of his?”

“I’m a concerned bystander.”

“Well, you can take your concern and fuck off with it! And mind your own fucking business!”

The sergeant, as Ezio had hoped, had stepped too close. With practiced ease he slipped the catch on his hidden-blade and, raising his arm, swept it across the guard’s exposed throat just above the gorget he was wearing. The other guards watched, rooted to the spot in astonishment as their leader fell to his knees, his hands futilely scrabbling at the wound to stanch the fountaining blood. Before they could react, Ezio was upon them, and, a matter of seconds later, the three of them had joined their sergeant on the Other Side, all with their throats slit. Ezio’s mission left no time for swordplay—only swift, efficient killing.

The piazza had emptied as if by magic. Ezio helped the senator to his feet. There was blood on the man’s clothes and he looked—and indeed was—in a state of shock. But it was shock mingled with relief.

“We’d better get out of here,” Ezio said to him.

“I know a place. Follow me,” Egidio replied, and he set off with remarkable speed for an alleyway between two of the larger government buildings. They hastened down it and turned left, then down some stairs into a basement area and to a door. This the senator quickly unlocked, and he ushered Ezio into a small, dark, but comfortable-looking apartment.

“My bolt-hole,” said Egidio. “Useful when you have as many creditors as I have.”

“But one big one.”

“My mistake was to consolidate all my debts with the Banker. I wasn’t fully aware of his exact connections at the time. I should have stuck to Chigi. At least he’s honest—as far as a banker can be!” Egidio paused. “But what of you? A Good Samaritan in Rome? I thought they were a dying breed.”

Ezio let that go. “You are Egidio Troche,
il
s
enatore
?”

Egidio looked startled. “Don’t tell me I owe you money as well!”

“No—but you can help me. I am looking for Cesare’s banker.”

The senator smiled thinly. “Cesare
Borgia’s
banker? Ha! And you are…?”

“Let’s just say I’m a friend of the family.”

“Cesare has a lot of friends these days. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have some packing to do.”

“I can pay.”

Egidio stopped looking nervous. “Ah! You can
pay
?
Ma che merviglia!
He fights off guards for one,
and
he offers one money! Tell me, where have you been all my life?”

“Well, I haven’t descended from heaven. You help me, and I’ll help you. It’s as simple as that.”

Egidio considered this. “We’ll go to my brother’s place. They’ve got no quarrel with him, and we can’t stay here—it’s too depressing, and it’s far too close to my—dare I say, our?—enemies.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“But you’ll have to protect me. There’ll be more of Cesare’s guards out after me, and they won’t be especially friendly, if you know what I mean—especially after that little show you put on in the piazza.”

“Come on.”

Egidio led the way out, cautiously, making sure the coast was clear before they set off by a labyrinthine route through back alleys and seedy lanes, across little
piazze
, and skirting the edges of markets. Twice they encountered pairs of guards, and twice Ezio had to fight them off—this time using his sword to full effect. It seemed that the city was on full alert for both men—and both men in flight together proved too good a bounty for the Borgia henchmen. Time was not on Ezio’s side—so when the next pair of guards appeared at the other side of one small piazza, they simply had to run for it, and Ezio, unable to take to the rooftops with the senator in tow, simply had to depend on Egidio’s apparently exhaustive knowledge of Rome’s backstreets. But at last they reached the rear of a new, quietly splendid villa, set in its own walled courtyard, a few blocks east of Saint Peter’s. Egidio let them into the courtyard through a small ironbound gate set into one of the walls, for which he produced a key.

Once inside, they both breathed more easily.

“Someone really wants you dead,” said Ezio.

“Not yet—they want me to pay them first.”

“Why? Once they’ve got their money—? And by the sound of things you’re something of a milch-cow to them.”

“It isn’t that simple. The fact is, I’ve been a fool. I’m no friend of the Borgia, even if I have borrowed money from them, and recently a bit of information came my way that gave me an opportunity of doing them down—if only a little.”

“And that was…?”

“A few months ago, my brother Francesco, who’s Cesare’s chamberlain—I know, I know, don’t get me started—Francesco told me a good deal about Cesare’s plans for the Romagna. What he plans to do there, I mean. And that is, to create a mini-kingdom from which he intends to conquer the rest of the country and bring it to heel. As the Romagna is on the doorstep of the Venetian territories, Venice is already unhappy about Cesare’s inroads there.”

“So what did you do?”

Egidio spread his hands. “I wrote to the Venetian ambassador, giving him all the information I’d got from Francesco. Warning him. But one of my letters must have been intercepted.”

“But won’t that implicate your brother?”

“He’s managed to keep himself in the clear so far.”

“But what possessed you to do such a thing?”

“I had to do something. The Senate has nothing to do, really, these days, except put its imprimatur on all the Borgia’s decrees. If it didn’t, it would cease to exist altogether. As it is, there’s nothing to do—nothing independent. Do you know what it’s like not to have
un cazzo
to do?” Egidio shook his head. “It changes a man. I admit that even I have taken to gambling, to drinking…”

“And whoring.”

The senator looked at him. “Oh, you’re good. You’re very good. What was it that gave me away? The scent of perfume on my sleeve?”

Ezio smiled. “Something like that.”

“Hmm. Well, anyway, as I was saying, senators used to do what senators are supposed to do—petitioning about real issues, like—oh, I don’t know, where to start?—like unlawful cruelty, abandoned children, street crime, lending rates, keeping some kind of rein on Chigi and the other bankers. Now the only legislation we are allowed to draw up independently concerns stuff like the appropriate width of the sleeves of women’s dresses.”

“But not you. You try to raise money for false causes in order to use it to pay off your gambling debts.”

“They’re not false causes, my boy. As soon as we have a proper government again, and as soon as I’m on an even keel financially again, I intend to pursue them vigorously.”

“And when do you think that will be?”

“We must be patient. Tyranny is unbearable, but it never lasts. It’s too brittle.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Of course you’ve got to stand up to it. Whatever happens. You obviously do.” He paused. “I’m probably—what?—ten or fifteen years older than you. I must make the most of my time. Or have you never looked at a grave and thought, ‘This is the most significant thing I will ever do—die’?”

Ezio was silent.

“No,” continued Egidio. “I guess not.” He turned in on himself. “
Maledetto
letters! I should never have sent them to the ambassador. Now Cesare will kill me as soon as he gets a chance, debt or no debt, unless by some miracle he decides to vent his anger on someone else. God knows, he’s capricious enough.”

“Someone else? Like your brother?”

“I’d never forgive myself.”

“Why not? You’re a politician.”

“We’re not all bad.”

“Where is your brother?”

“I’ve no idea. Not here, thank God. We haven’t talked since he found out about the letters, and I’m enough of a liability for him. If he saw you—”

“Can we get down to business?” said Ezio.

“Of course. One good turn, and so on…Now, what was it you wanted again?”

“I want to know where Cesare’s banker is. Where he works. Where he lives. And most of all, who he is.”

Egidio was suddenly all briskness. “Right! I need to arrive with the money.” He spread his hands again. “Problem is, I have none.”

“I told you I’d get it for you. Just tell me how much. And where you are meeting this Banker.”

“I never know until I’m actually there. I usually go to one of three prearranged points. His associates meet me and take me to him.