spiderwebs
She noticed that all the lights seemed to have been lit on the first level of the private family floors of Villa Auditore as they approached the building’s private back entrance. Lucia sighed beside her and swiped her foot at a piece of detritus in the alley, probably the remains of a dead pigeon, from the smell when Lucia kicked it. Yuck. There’s something I haven’t missed about Roma.
“-I just want a chance, Mari, a real chance, to show my true value to the Order, but Doğan Beylerbey won’t take me on your mother’s recommendation alone. I need a Master to second the commendation, someone whose opinion actually means something to that Black Fox. Someone like your cousins, or one of the other Masters of Alamūt, or even one of Doğan’s own ranking Veterans-”
It’s either really late or really early for all of the lights to be on, she thought with a sudden bolt of foreboding. Something is wrong. She stopped walking suddenly and Lucia’s shoulder collided with hers.
“What the hell, Moosh?” Lucia demanded as she rubbed her shoulder. “Watch where you’re going, maybe work on being a little more aware of your surroundings? Jesus.”
“All the lights are on, Lu-”
“La Rosa in Fiore is still doing business, which you seem to have forgotten,” Lucia replied with a patronizing sigh. “Obviously the lights would be on. Nobody pays what your mother charges for her whores to fuck in the dark.”
She chose to ignore the sharp edges in Lucia’s tone.
“All the lights are on upstairs,” she amended, uneasily smoothing an errant coil back into her disintegrating braid. “And the windows haven’t been properly shuttered. That’s not like Mother at all; she never draws unnecessary outside attention to the family apartments if she can help it. Something must be wrong.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic, Mari,” Lucia huffed, circling back to hook her arm through hers. “Let’s go in, yeah? I’m sure it’s nothing as dire as you’ll imagine standing out here in the dark,” she continued in an artfully light tone, but her careful nonchalance was belied by her tightly clenched smile and the unease etched around her eyes.
Bad news from Alamūt, maybe? It would have to be something with the family, she reasoned. The only time Mother’s composure is ever rattled is when there’s bad family news.
She unwillingly remembered her mother’s reaction when an urgent letter from the medics had been delivered with the news that Altaïr had been shot in the back on a contract with Malik, who had also been gravely injured, but somehow had gotten them both out alive. Her mother exploded with rage when Mario tried to prevent her from rushing to her nephews’ bedsides in Alamūt, and she looked like an Erinys incarnate when word was delivered of Ezio having been so badly burned by fiendfyre on that one early contract. Her mother and uncle had fought passionately over Ezio’s subsequent transfer to Berlin, in Turkish, undoubtedly so that their conversation couldn’t be followed by her or Filomena. Lucia had understood some of what was said – anyone who didn’t know better would suspect they’re fucking, she’d commented, eyes wide as saucers. I think she just imputed his manhood. All three of them flinched at the crash of something expensive sounding being dashed against a wall, or possibly the floor, it was hard to tell, really. She’s just hitting low hanging fruit, Filomeana had responded dismissively, ear practically pressed against the crack of the door. Men like Mario Auditore set a lot of store by their prowess with their cocks, passerotta. Her mother had gotten her way in the end – like she always does – and Ezio was sent to Berlin as soon as his leg had healed enough to return to training. Lucia had spent the three years he was reassigned studying Turkish until she was fluent.
Has something happened to Kadija? That would certainly cause an uproar. Her chest suddenly felt tight, constricted. The rest of us are here, I just saw Ezio at dinner and would have already known if something happened to Altaïr…
“Come on Mari,” Lucia hissed, clamping her arm firmly in hers and hauling her forward. “Don’t be such a ninny.”
“I’m not!” she retorted, trying to twist her arm out of Lucia’s grip. “You weren’t at dinner; you have no idea how foul Mother’s mood was earlier-”
“I have no idea? That’s rich! Unlike you and your brother, I’m still stuck here,” Lucia snapped. “At this point I’m much more familiar with all the variations of your mother’s bad moods than you are, Mari-joon.”
“How could that possibly be my fault, Lu?” she demanded, bracing her heel against one of the slightly raised edges of the stones paving the alley and wrenching her arm in Lucia’s grip. “It’s not like Mother gave me any choice in the matter. She just ordered me to Alamūt and everyone let her.”
Lucia suddenly released her arm and she barely got a hand down in time to save herself from sprawling flat out on the grimy pavement.
“Christ almighty, you’re a selfish brat.”
She gritted her teeth and concentrated on breathing through her nose, slowly. It wasn’t in anyone’s interest for her and Lucia to start fighting, and Lucia was usually smart enough to at least try to keep the peace. If I’m now the reasonable one we’re so thoroughly fucked.
“Because I won’t agree to badger Altaïr about your transfer?” she shot back, her tone more heated than she would have liked. Nicely, be nicer. You’re going to need all the allies you can muster in Lucca. “Even if I were to hound him on your behalf night and day, the only result I’m likely to get is a reprimand. I can’t even get him to stop addressing Hiro by his formal name!”
“Apparently he doesn’t like your boyfriend all that much,” Lucia shrugged, tucking a loosened lock of champagne blonde hair behind her ear. Lucia had definitely gotten blonder since her last visit, and her dismissiveness of Hiro stung.
“And you think he likes you any better?” she retorted, regretting the words even as they passed her lips. She noticed Lucia’s posture stiffen with a fleeting, and guilt inducing, swell of satisfaction.
“He singled me out to train today,” Lucia finally said stiffly. “He said my reflexes are very good-”
“Very good hardly counts as praise, from him. That’s more like, a slightly positive assessment.” She shrugged. “He uses adequate as criticism.” She shrugged again, folded her arms across her chest and tried to look at Lucia without making eye contact. “Good isn’t a criticism, per se, but it’s probably closer to neutral, and not actually praise. It takes some getting used to, I guess.”
“How kind of you to explain that to me,” Lucia hummed, lips curling into not quite a sneer. “I don’t know what I was thinking, really, asking you for help.”
“I dunno Lu, were you thinking I’d say something more like: No problem! My family totally listens to me now! I’ll just put in a word and your transfer will come through lickety-split!” she retorted. “When the reality is that I’m still a resounding disappointment – to everyone – who’s just proven all of their uncharitable suspicions correct by resoundingly failing my trial for Mercenary.”
She hated how self-pitying it had sounded when she said it out loud, but she hated even more that Lucia’s only response was uncomfortable silence. How wonderfully reassuring, Lu. Don’t rush to disagree or anything.
“Wow,” she deadpanned into the thickening silence as Lucia avoided her eyes. “So you’re that desperate, huh? Really speaks to your skills and character that you have to turn to a fuck-up like me for help then, doesn’t it.”
“It speaks to your uncle’s shortsighted bigotry and your mother’s indifference,” Lucia snapped. “The Madonna could change everything for me, if she felt so inclined. She knows all the right people, and has the Granmaestro panting over her like some desperately horny teenager hungry for the next fuck-”
“Excuse me?” she sputtered, unsure if she’d misheard or if blonder wasn’t the only thing Lucia had gotten since she’d last seen her. “Are you, that’s insane! They despise each other! They can barely stand being in the same room for more than a few-”
“That’s because of the sexual tension. It’s not just animosity that you’re sensing between them – there’s also that touch of wanting to tear their clothes off and fuck the other person stupid – you’re just too naïve to recognize it for what it is,” Lucia hummed with a smug shrug. “But there’s also a lot of animosity,” she continued, inspecting her nails with carefully manufactured care. “I bet they have really intense hate-sex, fits their personalities, don’t you think? Your mother’s need for absolute control and the Granmaestro’s, well, humiliation kink is probably the best description for it that you’d understand, right?”
Incredulous laughter bubbled up her throat and her ears were ringing and uncertainty unfurled inside her, opening up a gaping hole where her stomach should have been.
“That’s disgusting and ridiculous, Lu.”
“It’s neither, and you know it, Mari. The face you’re making right now says as much,” Lucia replied. “It’s been right below the surface for years, you and Ezio just couldn’t bring yourselves to see it.”
She’s wrong. Unwillingly she remembered the various fights she’d seen between her mother and uncle over the years and how they always drew closer to each other as they argued, the many strangely intense fights between them late at night, and the carefully excessive superficial politeness between them when they weren’t at each other’s throats. With an inclination, and a prurient enough world view, she could see how one might think what Lucia clearly seemed to think was going on between her mother and uncle. It didn’t make Lucia right, or anything, but she could see how one might come to that conclusion.
“Suspending reality for a moment, let’s say I believe your theory,” she replied, tone meticulously ironed seamlessly smooth. “It’s probably not the best idea to spread something like that around. Mother never tolerates people gossiping behind her back, and Uncle Mario will use any excuse to treat you even more poorly.”
“Minding my silence and sparing everyone’s blushes all these years hasn’t gotten me anywhere,” Lucia retorted. “Maybe making some noise will have a different result.”
“Pretty sure it will,” she hummed doubtfully. “If you want that result to be getting assigned a contract you aren’t meant to return from. I mean, that’s totally a thing, you know.”
“Yeah, I know, but it might be better than being in constant limbo, just waiting…” Lucia hesitated, and there was a flicker of something in her expression that raised the hairs down the back of Mari’s neck. “Sometimes I wonder-” Lucia said slowly and then half shrugged and shook her head. “Never mind.”
“Never mind what, Lu?” she asked, even though something in the back of her mind was faintly, but quite insistently, telling her she shouldn’t ask, that she would be happier if the particular Pandora’s box Lucia was hinting at stayed closed.
“It’s crazy and stupid and probably nothing,” Lucia replied with a shake of her head.
“Never mind what, Lu?” she repeated. “You can’t just hint at something like that and then not say it. You know not knowing will drive me up a wall.”
Of course she knows that, she realized the moment the words left her lips. Her design is for me to push her to say the thing so she doesn’t feel bad. She resented not only Lucia’s manipulation, but how effective it was – now that she knew there was something she had to know what it was.
Lucia’s mouth twisted, briefly crumpling her expression before she smoothed it back out with something that almost looked like a half smile that stopped just short of her eyes, and something that might have been regret or pity or maybe something else she wasn’t quite ready to put a name to yet illuminated her expression in a half-breath magnesium flash before it was gone and Mari was left wondering what it was and if she had really seen it at all.
“Sometimes,” Lucia hesitated, hooking the edge of her bottom lip with her teeth, gaze sliding down and to her left. “I don’t think it was entirely unforeseen that the Madonna’s husband, Maestro Giovanni, might not come back from that final contract. In fact, I’m pretty sure now that he wasn’t meant to.”
“What?” she managed to croak as the implication behind Lucia’s words permeated slowly, spreading a disquieting feeling of unreality over and around her. “Are you, are you suggesting that my uncle, Italy’s Grandmaster, purposefully sent his brother – and Federico – to get killed?”
“He wasn’t Grandmaster yet,” Lucia reminded her. “I think – your parents had a terrible marriage, anybody could see that clear as day. I think what most people didn’t realize, including Maestro Giovanni, was how fanatically Maestro Mario, the Grandmaster’s own right hand, was in love with his brother’s wife. I think he got Giovanni assigned that contract, knowing full well that the intelligence on it wasn’t good and the whole thing was likely to go horribly wrong, in the hopes of freeing them both from his brother, so he could claim the Madonna for himself.”
“Just to be clear,” she said slowly and in a careful undertone, “you’re accusing your Grandmaster of murdering his own brother, so he could freely bed his brother’s wife. Can’t you hear how absolutely batshit that sounds, Lu? It didn’t even work!”
“Only because Maestro Giovanni decided to take Fredo along at the last minute,” Lucia retorted. “I don’t think that was ever part of The Plan. Maestro Mario only wanted Giovanni out of the picture, Fredo was unintended collateral damage. I sometimes wonder if he decided to take Fredo along at the last minute because something about that contract felt off to him. He knew what his wife would never forgive, and taking Fredo along was his final revenge on both of them.”
“That’s, that’s – straight out of some cheap novel,” she protested. “Real life doesn’t work like that. It’s too messy, and stupid, and poorly scripted.”
Except for Ezio drunkenly trying to drown himself in the Tevere when Cristina ended things with him, and then going on to marry some nobody cabaret dancer he’d only met the night before in the middle-of-nowhere Iran, who turned out to be a Cathari with a contract out on her whole family. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Why can’t anyone in my life ever be normal. The especially galling part of that whole series of events was that Ezio used to be her even keeled and personable lodestar of stability and relative normalcy. No reasonably sane person was ever going to even briefly mistake Altaïr or Kadija, or her mother, or her uncle either for that matter, as normal. Now, she just changed the subject as quickly as possible whenever her family came up, and what she really didn’t need was any more salacious family drama, thanks ever so.
“Well, it sure as shit worked like that in this instance, didn’t it?” Lucia retorted. “Everybody knows Fredo’s death is what poisoned Maestro Mario’s relationship with your mother. From what I remember, relations between them were much more, cordial, before Fredo fell.”
She’d been eight when Federico died, not really old enough to remember what the relationship between her mother and uncle had been like before that point. Mostly, she remembered the loud and often explosive fights between her mother and father. Hiding with one or the other of her older brothers, until they got too big to share the good hiding places, then it became a mad scramble to get one of the good ones before the really violent stuff started. If Maria had also fought with Mario before Fredo died, it hadn’t left much of an impression.
“Haven’t you noticed that my mother always needs someone else to blame for her unhappiness,” she shot back. “She just shifted the brunt of that blame over to Uncle Mario after Father died.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t really cover his sudden animosity towards her after Giovanni’s death, now does it?” Lucia hummed, cocking her head like a hawk seeking out prey. “Resentment fueled by guilt, regret, and frustrated desire seems to fit his personality, and the facts, pretty well, don’t you think?”
Yes, well, when you put it like that…
“No. No, I don’t think that at all, Lu,” she stubbornly insisted. “Grief makes people do funny things sometimes.”
Lucia snorted. “And lust,” she added. “Lust explains a lot of shit too, you know. Like just about every stupid thing your brother’s done since he transferred back from Berlin.”
“Including you?” She regretted the words before she even said them, but they came out anyway.
“Fuck you, Mari,” Lucia snapped as she took a sharp step backwards and pivoted on her heel. “That was – go fuck yourself, and the thestral you rode in on too, for good measure.”
She exhaled forcefully between her teeth and raked her nails across her scalp. Way to lead with your chin there.
“Lucia, wait.”
“Fuck off!”
She sighed and scuffed the toe of her boot against a slightly uplifted paving stone. Lucia had almost reached the villa’s back door.
“Lucia!”
Lucia slammed the door behind herself in response.
In all fairness, she might have just slammed the door incidentally, and hadn’t actually heard Mari call out to her again, but, knowing Lucia as she did, that seemed unlikely. Just alienating people like a pro tonight, awesome.
“Jesus-fucking-Christ,” she mumbled and scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Any hope she might have had of slipping back into her room unnoticed now seemed a lost cause, and she was pretty sure whatever bad news was waiting for her inside was going to bring her night to a new level of low. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it won’t have anything to do with me at all. That’d be a nice change. She started to step forward when another, even more unwelcomed prospect than her mother being angry that she’d left without permission stopped her in her tracks.
This can’t possibly be because of that little incident with Cesare earlier. That was barely a scratch – okay, maybe a slightly solid scratch, by a large-ish cat – but still! Hardly anything serious, especially for something like him. I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as bad as Ezio actually stabbing him in the shoulder. That wry-mouthed snake probably went tattling straight to Mother and poured his poison in her ear, just as he said he would. Bastard.
She gritted her teeth and lifted her chin.
Whatever. Like Lucia said, better to find out what it is than to stand out in the dark wondering. Bet she’s busy siding with Cesare out of spite.
She’d barely closed the door behind herself – silently, just for the record, or as good as – when one of the house elves appeared with an uncomfortably amplified crack and began frenetically signing at her, Madonna – commands – come, over and over again.
God Fucking Damn You, Cesare. She knew not going directly to her mother was a risky move, but she honestly hadn’t thought the incubus actually intended to tell Madonna Maria his version of everything, and certainly not so soon. Must’ve really injured more than just his body. Somehow, that thought wasn’t as satisfying as she had expected it to be.
“No,” she rebuked the elf sharply as it attempted to seize her hand, presumably to vanish her immediately to her mother. “I’ll go to her myself. I’m not some object to be fetched.”
A second elf appeared and also immediately began trying to seize her hand.
“Back off, both of you,” she commanded, drawing one of her blades to further stave off the insistent elves as a cold feeling slithered down her spine. She’d been in trouble with her mother loads of times, for various things, and the elves had never been this desperate to deliver her before. Usually, they had seemed, if not reluctant, than at least a little apologetic, at delivering her mother’s summons.
Either Mother is really, really, angry about the Cesare thing, or something else is seriously wrong. Her mouth suddenly felt bone dry, like sand would come out if she tried to spit or something, and her whole body almost ached from the force of her blood being hammered through her veins.
“She’s in the family parlor, yeah?” she managed to mumble, not waiting for the elves’ confirmation before setting off at something just shy of a jog. The elves would be waiting for her there if she was supposed to go somewhere else.
She blew past Lucia on her way, taking what Altaïr would undoubtedly condemn as a situationally inappropriate level of satisfaction at how easily she shouldered past and shrugged off Lucia’s attempt to grab her.
“Mari? Mari, wait. What’s the matter? Where are you going?” Lucia huffed as she followed her up the stairs, sounding slightly winded.
Maybe you should cut back a bit on those cigarettes, Lu. She briefly wondered what the situationally appropriate amount of satisfaction would be as she quickened her pace, lengthening her stride to take the remaining stairs two or three at a time. In all fairness, Lucia probably wasn’t trying to keep up with her, but it still felt like an accomplishment, of sorts, as each stride lengthened the distance between them. She hesitated outside the door to the family parlor, almost stumbling into it from how abruptly she’d halted the forward momentum she’d been building. Her mother was talking to someone, her voice tempered low and even. She could also hear her uncle in the room, the deep rumble of his voice shockingly low and even as well. They’re not talking to each other – way, way too civil for that. Ezio’s voice, ravaged and wracked, dispelled the mystery. Of course. She gritted her teeth and focused on uncurling her fingers, unconsciously clenched into aching fists, on leveling her breathing. It’s not his fault he’s the favorite. She hadn’t heard Altaïr, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t already in the room; Altaïr never joined a discussion just to hear the sound of his own voice.
“Mari, Mari,” Lucia hissed, beckoning her back to where she’d stopped halfway down the hallway, about ten generous paces short of the parlor door. “Mari!”
She’d just turned to join Lucia when she heard a particularly gut-wrenching ejaculation from Ezio, too muffled by the door and overlapping vocalizations of her mother and uncle for her to make out the words, but the anguish his tone conveyed raised the hairs down the back of her neck and she couldn’t help remembering when she’d heard something almost like it in her brother’s voice before.
She said she doesn’t love me, she said she never did... Ezio sitting on the edge of her bed in Alamūt, shoulders hunched against his pain and eyes hollowed out by grief … then she left and nothing has ever hurt, so much, in my entire life.
She burst through the parlor door before her mind caught up with her body. Mario spared her quick look, brows drawn and lips pursed – Consternation? Frustration? – but her mother’s attention remained riveted on Ezio, whom she was attempting to draw into her arms. Ezio wasn’t resisting their mother’s embrace, exactly – like he’d ever do that,total mama’s boy through and through – but he wasn’t clinging to her like he usually would either. Rather, he sat stiffly, hunched over and crying with his elbows braced against his splayed knees, more or less in the center of the settee, unresisting, but unresponsive, to their mother’s attempts to comfort him. She shot across the room in a few strides, wedged herself into the free space beside him, and hugged his upper arm tightly.
Where’s Taline? She cast a quick glance around the room before returning her cheek to the swell of Ezio’s shoulder, trying to focus on the heat his skin was radiating through the crumpled cambric of his shirt as foreboding prickled down her spine and coiled coldly in the pit of her belly. Taline wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and she knew that there had to be very good reason why Ezio wasn’t with her and both their mother and uncle were in the room, together, and not fighting. Altaïr’s not here either. Something is very, very wrong.
“Ezio?” She hugged his arm tighter. “What’s wrong?” When it became apparent that no response would be forthcoming she turned to her uncle.
“What’s happened, Zio? Where’s Altaïr Effendi?”
“Presumably wherever Taline is,” he rumbled, sliding a hard look towards her mother. “They absconded together sometime earlier in the night.”
“My nephew does not abscond with people, Granmaestro.”
So they’ve been going at it like that then. Awesome. She forced herself not to make a face, or sigh, or roll her eyes, or any of her other usual responses to their bickering. It took a stupid amount of effort.
“Arguing over semantics isn’t going to change the facts, Maria-”
What would Altaïr do if he faced this situation? The obvious answer was that Altaïr would identify a principal primary objective and reverse engineer all the necessary steps towards achieving it, which was about as helpful as saying the fastest way to Egypt is across the Mediterranean Sea.
“It is a fact that Altaïr would not act with any improper purpose, if he is actually with Taline, a conjecture which remains to be proven!”
Altaïr distrusts kuffār, so he’d want to get Taline to the closest bureau, or Motherhouse, to travel by the mirror roads if he was taking her somewhere else, and he’d scrape his blades to ping his location to other Assassins if he had to move among kuffār for some reason, unless he’s unconscious… She willfully cut off that line of thought. Wasting time imagining farfetched worse case scenarios isn’t helpful right now. What would actually be helpful is figuring out how to concentrate our search resources.
“Sometime in the night doesn’t narrow our search parameters much, is there any way we can get more specific about when they would have left this house?” she blurted out, raising her voice slightly to make sure she was heard over her uncle’s frustrated and inarticulate blustering.
Maria sighed. “I believe it was around 10:30 or so, perhaps a little later, that Altaïr came to wish me good night. I had a headache, and he seemed a little, distracted, I suppose. Probably just tired, after running Allah-only-knows how many kilometers in the Mirror Roads. He didn’t linger long.” She smoothed a hand across her brow as she spoke, vacant gaze fixed at some distant point beyond the rug beneath their feet. “He said he’d take breakfast with me in the morning and requested permission to retire for the night.”
“The great and mighty Altaïr ibn-La’Ahad requires your permission before he goes to bed?” Mario sneered. “Who does he get permission from when you’re not around? His sister?”
“Uncle-” Ezio groaned, and she felt a cautiously optimistic flush of relief that he was at least making some effort to help police their uncle and mother. She really didn’t have a knack for it on her own.
“As my sister’s son and a guest in my house, requesting my permission shows his respect and impeccable manners. Values regarded as virtues, in any civilized culture,” Maria retorted.
“Mother-”
“So Altaïr couldn’t have left this building any earlier than say, 11:00, or so?” she quickly cut in, trying to redirect the conversation back to her initial inquiry. Like herding fucking cats.
“Yes, that sounds about right.” Her mother’s tone was clipped and cool, but not overtly hostile, which felt like some small accomplishment, of sorts.
“Okay, good.” She drew a slow breath as she tried to visualize the timeline. “Taline had to have left some time after that because I heard her crying in Ezio’s room on my way out, but I didn’t see or hear any indication that Altaïr had returned, which means I probably left when Mother was speaking with him.”
She paused a moment to allow the others to contest her conclusion. Faced with nothing but silence – taught and tense from her mother and uncle, guilt-ridden and melancholic from her brother – she pressed on.
“What time did you get back, Ezio?” she asked, nudging his shoulder to make sure she had his attention.
“I dunno,” he sighed and shrugged. “You’d have to check with Filomena. I went straight to the salon to get a bottle of Armagnac, but she only let me have a carafe. I was back for a while, before I noticed… noticed that Taline was gone.” He choked out the last words before he started crying again.
Jesus Christ, he’s going to be dehydrated.
She mostly managed to turn her frustrated sigh into a sympathetic enough sounding hum. Part of her hated how much it annoyed her that Ezio didn’t even notice.
“Ezio called for me at about 3:00,” Maria offered as she smoothed Ezio’s hair back from his face. “We’d been discussing, personal matters over the last of that carafe of Armagnac. I had returned to my room maybe fifteen or twenty minutes before Ezio discovered Taline was missing, and came as soon as he called for me.”
“When did you get here, Uncle? Did you-”
“It is not your place to question my movements, Nipote,” Mario snapped with an unexpectedly aggressive jut of his jaw as he crossed his arms across his chest, fingers curling into fists.
“Mario!” her mother hissed as her expression hardened with disapproval. It was almost unsettling to be a bystander of that particular basilisk glare, instead of the recipient.
“I just meant, maybe you noticed something, or someone, out of place, or maybe something with the house elves?” she rushed to explain before her mother and uncle could start bickering again. “Since Altaïr hasn’t scraped his blades for any of us, the next most likely source of assistance he’d turn to is the Order’s elves.” Her mother and uncle went from glaring at each other to locking their gazes on her. She snatched a bare moment to swallow her nerves and then continued. “Or maybe Taline herself reached out to them. I mean, the elves really like pregnant women, right? So they would probably be more than happy to help her, so long as she didn’t ask them to do anything they felt was against the Order.”
Ezio sniffled loudly and wiped his nose against the back of his hand as he stared at her with blank, red-rimmed eyes. Their mother sighed and pulled a fresh handkerchief out of thin air for him and Mario scowled at the carpet beneath their feet.
Let’s not everybody rush in all at once now…
“Good thinking, Mari,” Filomena said as she turned to close the door behind herself, obligingly waiting for Lucia to scuttle through the portal crabwise before latching it. “Don’t you agree, Madonna? Granmaestro?”
“Yes, quite a clever thought, isn’t it?” her mother dryly agreed, immediately followed by a neutral harrumph from her uncle.
Lucia muffled a cough against her shoulder and winced an apologetic grimace at its amplified volume in the heavy silence. Ezio’s unsteady breathing beside her had a phlegmy rattle to it as well, probably from all his histrionics. She immediately felt guilty for allowing that thought to form.
“Are you going to act upon it?” she finally demanded. “Summon the elves for questioning? See if any of them heard, or saw, or did anything regarding the disappearances tonight?”
They’d all be falling all over themselves to take action and sing praise if it had been Ezio’s idea. She hated the sting accompanying that intrusive thought almost as much as the ugly truth lurking behind it. You’re never going to be good enough for them, always a distant second best, get over it already.
“We can’t just summon all the elves all at once, moosh moosh-am,” Maria hummed. “They do so much vital labor for the Order, and we mustn’t rush to accuse them of doing anything wrong simply for lack of another explanation.”
“I said ask them, not accuse them, Mother,” she huffed. “Jesus. Why does it feel like I’m the only one trying to get in front of this mess?”
“This mess?” Ezio rasped, fingers curling into the couch’s upholstery like a raptor’s talons. “You mean My mess. Why don’t you just say what you really mean, Mari?”
“Technically, yes, this is your mess,” she shot back, tightening her grip on his upper arm – to make it more difficult for him to push, pinch, slap or swat her, which probably wasn’t necessary, but, you know, just in case. “But it’s a family matter now, isn’t it? Which makes moping it up a family duty, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not really helpful right now, Mari,” Lucia intoned warningly
“Since when has my sister ever cared about helping anyone?” Ezio sneered, shrugging off both her and their mother’s hands as he stood and stalked over towards their uncle.
“That’s not helping any-” Filomena protested
“It’s not my fault that your wife left you!” The words bursted out of her mouth instead of staying in her head, and she immediately wished there was a way she could somehow suck them right back in. If Altaïr had been there – with his super uncanny seventh sense for regret – he would have told her she needed to work harder on her self-control, so as to not say regrettable things in the first place. Which was probably true, but also, shockingly, never helpful in the moment.
Ezio froze. Then his spine straightened one vertebrae at a time and his shoulders leveled and she just knew things were about to get really unpleasant and that everyone would decide, after he had finished blowing up and they were all mopping up yet another epic Ezio meltdown, that it was all her fault. Per usual. Because everything that goes wrong in this family is somehow or another always my fault, and why should this mess be any different?
She wished Altaïr was in the room with them, with his soothing stoicism and taciturn gaze. It was so wildly unfair what a difference his presence made, without him even having to say a word. And if he made a suggestion – like, just for example, if he’d made her suggestion, or even just said it had merit – everyone would have jumped to do it, not sat around snarking about how it wouldn’t work, or would just make more problems for her mother, or her uncle, or Filomena, to solve. They’d all be doing something already, instead of bickering in circles while Taline’s trail got colder and colder.
“Don’t play the innocent now, Mari,” he rasped, voice guttural and rumbling with the menace of black clouds over a choppy sea. “How many times she told me, trying to smile and make it light while her eyes brimmed with tears, of all your petty little meannesses and slights-”
“And what about all the bruises she suddenly started getting after you came back from that contract? The constant flinching when she’s around you – and only you – not me, or Altaïr, or Kadija,” she snapped. “Taline didn’t leave you because I wasn’t nice enough to her.”
“We were working things out,” he snapped. “All marriages get a little rocky from time to time-”
“A little rocky?” Lucia interjected, arching her massively overplucked brows incredulously. “Ezio, love isn’t supposed to-”
“Butt out, Lu,” she snapped. “What would you know about love, anyway?”
Something in Lucia’s expression warped and she immediately regretted her words, for the second time in under fifteen minutes. Really on a roll tonight. Just stop talking already.
“Shut your mouth you fucking venomous bitch,” Ezio snarled, lunging forward with his hand raised as though to strike her.
“That’s Enough,” their mother commanded as their uncle seized Ezio by the shoulders and hauled him backwards. “I will not tolerate such behavior in my house!”
“Apologize to your mother,” Mario demanded, transferring his grip from Ezio’s shoulders to the back of his neck. “Apologize, Now.” He punctuated the command with a shake hard enough to rattle Ezio’s teeth.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” he finally said, each word forced out between gritted teeth, after receiving a second, equally hard, shake from their uncle for taking too long to obey.
“For?” Mario prompted, readjusting his grip.
Ezio exhaled sharply through his nose and she could only imagine how much their uncle’s grip must have been hurting him. Mario had grabbed her by the arm a few times, hard enough to bruise into a fully formed handprint, but he’d never really disciplined her. She wasn’t important enough to merit that much of his attention or time; he turned her over to her mother’s wrath whenever barking a few sharp words in her direction wasn’t deemed sufficient. She’d envied Ezio largely getting to evade their mother’s discipline when they were both still living in Roma, but watching Mario practically shaking Ezio by the nape of his neck like a disobedient dog made her rethink her prior envy. She’d actually feel sorry for him, if he hadn’t been such a raging asshole to her not even five minutes ago.
“For, for my behavior.”
He didn’t bother to sound even remotely sorry. Not that it mattered. Their mother never would have accepted an apology like that from her, but from Ezio… of course it was good enough.
“Mari?” Mario prompted, with a severe look that said she’d better apologize, and make it quick and good, or else.
“I’m also sorry for my behavior, Mother.” The muscles of her throat clenched at the unfairness, but she managed to sound relatively normal as she choked the words out. Which felt like no small accomplishment. Not that my accomplishments matter to anyone in this family. “And for snapping at you, Lucia,” she added with an apologetically wincing smile. “We’re all a little tightly wound right now, but that’s no excuse for lashing out at you just because.”
“Thank you, Mari,” Lucia replied stiffly. “Apology accepted.”
She’d known Lucia long enough and well enough to tell that her apology hadn’t really been accepted, and that she’d just given Lucia another rock to add to the sack she lugged everywhere. Another stone for her arsenal, she noted wryly. Nothing I say will mollify her, not that it’ll matter much once I get back to Alamūt. Now she definitely wasn’t going to badger Altaïr or Kadija on Lucia’s behalf for a transfer to Alamūt any time in the foreseeable future – I’ve got more than enough on my plate already without having to watch for your blade in my back Lu, thanks ever so.
“Well, now there’s that all settled,” Filomena chirped, forcefully cheerful in her normalcy as she clasped her hands together at heart level. “I’ll order breakfast. Things always seem much more dire on an empty stomach. Eggs, Turkish coffee, and espresso for the men?”
“I’m not-”
“In the dining room, please,” Filomena smoothly interrupted Ezio’s attempted protest with an indulgent smile. “I can’t bear the thought of grease stains on the Madonna’s beautiful carpet. Come along, there’s a good boy,” she cooed as she wrapped an arm around Ezio’s waist and ushered him towards the door. “Lucia! With me,” she sharply added when Lucia made no move to join her.
“Yes, of course Mena,” Lucia murmured, after a long glance divided between Maria and Mario. She couldn’t help noticing that Lucia’s gaze somehow managed to completely ignore her even though she was sitting right next to her mother.
Well, right next to Mother except for the Ezio-sized space between us, but still, on the same piece of furniture and reasonably close together. Grudging bitch.
Her uncle scowled at the beautiful carpet until Filomena’s voice was barely audible, then raised his eyes to her mother with a heavy sigh.
“Maria-”
“Mari-joon,” her mother smoothly interrupted him with a speaking look before she turned to address her. “Why don’t you go to the kitchens and discretely see if the elves know anything useful, and then help Filomena with your brother?” She was smiling her perfect Madonna smile, but her eyes looked shadowed and tired and there was a hard edge buried in her silky smooth tone.
Now run along Moosh so the adults can have a Serious Adult Discussion about Serious Adult Things, she editorialized as she coiled a loose frizzy curl around her forefinger. Jesus Christ Mother, I’m not a child anymore.
“Yes, Mother,” she finally muttered dutifully into the spiraling silence. “Do you want your espresso sweetened, Uncle?”
“The Granmaestro won’t-”
“Yes, il mia passerotta, that would be lovely,” Mario smoothly interrupted her mother with a smile. “Thank you.”
She pasted on an answering smile to cover her confusion and hastily took her leave. Mario very rarely called her actual endearments – Nipote and Moosh didn’t count – and he’d never referred to her as his anything, other than niece, before. Undoubtedly spite towards her mother was his primary motive, but it was still decidedly strange that he only just decided to act like a doting uncle now.
This weirdness doesn’t mean Lucia’s right about anything. It just means Uncle Mario is being weirdly nice to me, and exchanging a lot of weirdly super loaded looks with my mother, that’s all. Totally not proof of any affair between them, ancient, ongoing, or otherwise.
The elves weren’t especially helpful.
They all knew Taline and Altaïr were missing – not here was all she got over and over – but of course they would know all about that already; the sort of meltdowns her brother had undoubtedly been having for the last six or so hours were very difficult not be aware of. They were also anxious for news on Taline’s condition, multiple sets of extra wide shiny eyes focusing on her each time one of them signed baby safe? There didn’t seem to be any concern over Altaïr, which, in all honesty, wasn’t the least bit surprising; the elves more or less expected fidā'ī, especially Masters, to leave at odd hours with no warning.
Very busy, the ashji-bashi[1] signed with a severe look and shallow bow before indicating that she should leave with a shooing motion towards the door. Safety and peace.
She sighed. Even my mother’s elves think they can still boss me around like a child.
“Yes, I know you are all very busy, but finding Taline is urgently important,” she insisted, leveling a severe look of her own at the elderly elf. “And I need to know if any of you have seen or know anything that might help us find her.”
“Did the elves have anything useful to contribute, Mari?” Lucia hummed over the rim of her coffee cup.
“You were questioning the elves?” Ezio rasped, snapping his full attention on her. “Did they, what did they tell you, un’asina?”
“A whole heap of nothing,” she muttered as she slumped into a chair. “They’re all very, very busy, and none of them saw, heard, or know, anything.”
“I’m sure,” Filomena bristled as she assembled a cup and saucer for Mari’s coffee, which she then placed in front of her so forcefully the china rattled. “They’d have better answers if the Madonna was the one asking questions.”
“Mena,” Lucia admonished with a smile only just hidden behind the rim of her cup. “You don’t know that for certain.”
“Don’t I?” Filomena retorted, lips pursed into a thin hard line as she poured the coffee. “Everything with your Order is dictated by rank.”
“The elves aren’t even on that ladder, Mena,” she reminded her as she reached for the pitcher of honeyed milk on the far side of Ezio, dangerously close to both his elbow and the edge of the table. “And it’s your Order too.”
Filomena made a disparaging sound in the back of her throat as she topped off Ezio’s coffee.
“Yes, of course, what a silly thing for me to say. I must be tired,” she replied. “Ezio, dear, pass your sister the milk.”
Ezio startled, and, predictably, knocked the pitcher off the edge of the table with his elbow. Her brain had only just registered that she hadn’t heard the pitcher break when it landed on the center of the table with a solid thunk.
“A Master must always be aware of their surroundings, Nipote,” Mario lectured as he accompanied their mother into the room.
That was an awfully long chat for two people who can barely stand one another, she couldn’t help thinking as Ezio pushed the pitcher towards her.
“Yes, Uncle,” Ezio mumbled, now listlessly jabbing at the fried egg Filomena had placed on the plate in front of him. “But you’ll have to forgive me for being a little slow this morning, I’m a bit distracted by the pressing matter of my wife’s disappearance.”
Jesus fucking Christ, Ezio. Be a little more dramatic about it, why don’t you. Lucia bit into a piece of buttered toast and smugly arched an eyebrow at her as Maria seated herself in the chair Mario held for her. She swallowed a sigh and sloshed milk into her coffee.
“I’ve received a note from Kadija,” Maria announced as she filled the delicate cup Filomena had place before her with a tap of her blade. “Taline arrived there earlier this morning, escorted by Altaïr-”
“He took her to Alamūt? Behind my back and without-” Ezio demanded, partially lunging up from the table before Mario’s hand on his shoulder forced him back into his seat.
“Your wife was running away from you and your cousin made the best compromise he could, given the circumstances,” Mario rumbled. “Be grateful that she’s safe, Ezio.”
“Yes, of course I’m grateful she’s safe,” Ezio mumbled, scrubbing his hands across his face and up into his hair. “It’s just… what are we going to do about Lucca? Nana Claudia expects to meet my wife, and Taline’s probably not coming back to Italy for this year’s Easter, is she.”
Multiple questions were ricocheting against each other inside her skull – what did Kadija’s letter actually say? when did they arrive in Alamūt? why was the letter from Kadija and not Altaïr? – but she held her tongue and spread a heaping scoop of quince preserves on a slice of toast and focused on the jam’s sweet, perfumy scent.
“No, my treasure, she is not,” Maria replied and took a dainty sip of tea. “We’ll have tell your grandmother that she was recalled to Alamūt for some reason. I’ve already written to Rabia Pasha, to inform her of the situation and solicit her assistance.”
And protect Ezio from having to tell anyone else the ugly truth of his shortcomings. The quince jam squelched between her teeth as she snapped a bite of her toast. Heaven forbid he ever have to do anything as demeaning as that.
“Wouldn’t it be more believable for me to be the one summoned back to Alamūt?” Ezio asked, smearing egg yoke across his plate with a wedge of toast.
That didn’t take very long. Not that she blamed Ezio for wanting to avoid visiting their grandmother; she had a dubious looking phial of some sort of emetic – presumably –stashed in her bag that she’d gotten from Zahra just before leaving Alamūt. The plan was to eat something as soon as they arrived in Lucca, swallow the contents of the phial, and then stay in her room “sick” for the rest of the weekend, effectively avoiding their grandmother, who, fortuitously, had developed a touch of hypochondria in her old age – thank fucking God.
Mario heaved a sigh as he collapsed into the chair opposite from their mother and accepted a dainty cup of espresso from Filomena with an inarticulate grunt of thanks.
“More believable, yes,” Mario allowed with another sigh heavy enough to wobble his mustache. “But that doesn’t adequately account for Taline’s absence. She must have been summoned directly to mitigate your grandmother’s perceived offense, you know how she is.”
Boy, do we ever. She’d been working out the details of her plan to spend as little time as possible in their grandmother’s presence since returning from the last horrific visit at Christmas; Nana Claudia had been incised by Ezio’s absence and made sure that no one forgot it.
“And your uncle and I believe your presence in Lucca this Easter is necessary,” Maria continued as she beheaded a strawberry. “La Donna Claudia was, quite upset, by your absence at Christmas.”
Massive understatement, Mother. Bravo.
“You know how she dotes upon you,” Mario added, his tone resonate with entirely fabricated sincerity. Her uncle might as well have had gills, but he probably didn’t have alcoholic dementia, yet.
And the Oscar goes to…
“Ezio, I know your grandmother can be difficult, at times,” Filomena cajoled, tone perfectly sweet and low and suspiciously soothing. “And it may feel like she’s going to go on living forever, but she’s old, Bello, and she might be gone much sooner than you expect. Surely it’s easier to stomach some brief unpleasantness than to live the rest of your life with any regret for not seeing her when you still had the chance?”
… Filomena, by a landslide. Watch your back, Vivian Leigh.
She watched her mother quickly hide her expression behind a strategic sip of tea and glanced over at her uncle just in time to catch him doing the same. Everyone in the room was abundantly, painfully, aware that Federico had been Claudia’s favorite grandchild; their grandmother went out of her way to make it very clear that Ezio had been an afterthought, and she was an irritating disappointment that couldn’t get married off soon enough. As the elder of her two sons, most would have assumed Mario was his mother’s favorite child, especially in light of Claudia’s dynastic obsession, but she had deemed him too dark to father desirable grandchildren and paired Alamūt’s offered bride with his younger, slightlylighter, brother instead. Mario, Donna Claudia decreed, would remain a bachelor, to better focus on his career. Coveting his brother’s wife would have had very stiff competition on the list of reasons why Mario didn’t seem especially sorry that his brother had fallen. It surprised exactly no one that Petruccio Auditore, Grandmaster of Italy, Claudia’s husband, and father of Mario and Giovanni Auditore, drank himself to an early death.
Ezio sighed and slumped back in his chair. “I need to get back and make things right with Taline, surely that must be my first priority. Couldn’t you just explain to-”
“Jesus Christ, Ezio,” she blurted out. “Stop expecting everyone else to make your excuses, smooth over your blunders, and face Nana Claudia’s wrath, while you hide behind Mother’s skirts, you selfish goat!”
“Mari-” Mario intoned warningly.
“Peace, Mario,” Maria coolly interrupted him as she set her cup down in the absolute perfect center of its saucer. “However inelegantly expressed, Mari’s frustration is valid, and the underlying concerns she raised need to be addressed.”
Did Mother just take my side?? Against Ezio?? In front of witnesses?? What The Fuck Just Happened??!!?
“What concerns?” Ezio retorted, raking an impatient hand through his hair before crossing his arms over his chest. “That I choose to prioritize my relationship with my wife over Nana Claudia’s feelings? What is there to even be concerned about with that?”
“You said yourself last night that Taline needed space,” Maria replied, flicking her eyes from Filomena to Mario’s empty plate. “Perhaps a few more days of space would be the most beneficial tonic for repairing your marriage, my treasure.”
“That’s not what I-”
“Your mother is right, Ezio,” Mario intoned with a stern frown directed at Ezio and a slight nod to the eggs Filomena offered him. “Taline is clearly upset, and I’m sure this last week has been extremely stressful for her. Give her a few days to calm down and come to her senses. She may even apologize first when you see her again. Besides, a little distance will help you see the way forward more clearly, like how a good vantage point shows you the layout of a city.”
Sure, why not, she already apologizes for everything else.
Ezio’s shoulders slumped and every bit of the exhaustion he’d been suppressing began seeping through the façade she only just realized he’d been maintaining. Shit. He’s even more gutted by this than I thought. It wasn’t a comfortable realization.
“How do you know my marriage isn’t like a wound,” he muttered, words slightly slurred. “A couple days of inattention lets gangrene set in, and the patient dies of blood poisoning. From a wound I inflicted.” He pressed his fingers against the inner corners of his eyes and exhaled shakily. “Mama, I’ve made such a mess…”
Maria made a soft noise, almost like a sigh, before she went to Ezio and hugged him against herself. Watching their mother comfort Ezio – rubbing his back, stroking his face, and carding her hand through his hair with soothing wordless murmurs – made her chest tighten with envy and longing, and she hated herself for it.
“Get some sleep, Nipote,” Mario commanded, voice suspiciously gravely. “We’ll finish going over your former students’ reassignments later – this afternoon, or even evening, perhaps – after you’ve had some time to rest and get a good meal in your stomach. Madonna?”
Since when has Uncle deferred to Mother without a fight? Filomena kept her eyes lowered and averted, concealing her thoughts like a hood, but Lucia met her gaze and jogged her eyebrows upwards in an abbreviated version of her most obnoxious told-you-so look. She weighed the risk of detection against resulting satisfaction and grudgingly decided against kicking Lucia under the table. It took an enormous amount of restraint and she was almost annoyed that Altaïr wasn’t there to see it. Not that he’d be proud of her or anything, but it might have gotten a favorable comment, which was a commodity rare enough to be precious, at least to her.
“Yes, your uncle is right, my treasure. Let’s get you to bed.”
Mario waited until her mother and Ezio had left the room and were well out of earshot before he resumed breakfast, slicing his toast into strips with a forcefulness that intimated intense irritation. The final scraping screech of metal against china made all her nerves prickle and Filomena wince.
“More espresso, Granmaestro?” Filomena offered. “Some strawberries, or perhaps some spinach shoots?”
“No produce,” Mario grunted as he pushed his cup towards Filomena to be refilled. “Thank you, Mena.”
“What else did Kadija Effendi’s letter say, Granmaestro?” Lucia asked hesitantly, turning her enameled lighter over and over in her hand in jerky revolutions as she jogged her heel against the leg of Mari’s chair.
“What are you still doing here?” Mario rumbled, slitting an almost hostile glace in Lucia’s direction through narrowed eyes. “You’re very late for training and you can ill afford any further demerit.”
“I thought my presence here would be of higher use, Granmaestro,” Lucia protested, mouth twisting as she ironed the emotion out of her expression and tone. “Mari-”
“Is here on leave,” Mario coldly interrupted. “For which she both applied, and received, prior approval of from her mentor and assigned Motherhouse. Your presumption of my permission to shirk your assigned duties is both foolish and misplaced. Report to Maestro Giulio, I’m sure he’ll find some use for you.”
“Yes, Grandmaestro,” Lucia mumbled, fingers clenching into a fist around her lighter. “I hear and obey.” The legs of her chair screeched against the hardwood floor as she pushed away from her barely half eaten breakfast. Filomena sighed as she closed the door Lucia had left open and returned to the table.
“She meant no disrespect, Granmeastro,” Filomena murmured apologetically. “It goes without saying that recent events have left us all a little on edge this morning, I’m sure.”
Mario harrumphed in response and adjusted the Ferrymen’s Ring on his finger, now larger and heavier than when it was originally cast for him as a Master – the stylized Assassin crest of Italy crowning a wolf’s head over a crossed sword and spear, symbols of Rome and Mars. Following Assassin tradition, the ring Mario had worn as a Master was reforged into a larger and heavier version upon his ascension to Grandmaster of Italy, the additional material supplied by a few shards selected from the blades of his ancestors. She sometimes wondered if there were splinters of her father’s blades in Mario’s ring, but had never mustered the courage to ask; her uncle did not discuss his fallen brother, especially not with family.
“What else did my cousin’s letter say, Uncle?” she asked softly, watching him closely through the fans of her lashes. “Is everything well in Alamūt?”
He speared her with a scouring gaze as he peeled away her hastily erected mental defenses as easily as the layers of an onion to rifle through her recent thoughts and memories. It was perfunctory and shallow, and over before she even managed to remember any of the additional defensive measures Altaïr had taught her.
“You’re as open as a book, Nipote,” he replied, turning his attention to his uneaten breakfast. “Your fortitude needs work and your defenses are shoddy. Perhaps your mother expects too much of Altaïr.”
“Name any other Disciple who would have fared better,” she shot back. “Especially under these circumstances.”
Mario responded with a noncommittal grunt as he tore one of the strips of his toast into small pieces, dropping the pieces onto his plate like confetti.
“Everything is not well in Alamūt,” he finally said, pushing his plate forward to rest his arms on the table. “Taline is in the infirmary, under observation. It seems there is some concern that she may do herself harm.”
Something flashed across Filomena’s eyes before her expression shuttered and she realized she must have missed something in her uncle’s tone, something conveyed unspoken behind the words he had chosen.
“I don’t understand, why-”
“How often did your brother hit her, and where?” Mario interrupted, tone more grim and tired than she’d ever heard him sound before. “Her back? Maybe in the side?”
“You can’t possibly think…” Filomena’s voice trailed off and she suddenly realized what her uncle wasn’t saying.
They think Ezio’s abusing Taline. It was one thing to abstractly suspect it herself, but another, entirely more serious, matter for the medics to be suspicious enough to take this sort of preventative stance. Fuck. This is Really Bad.
“I never saw him hit her, ever,” she responded vehemently, thoroughly unsettled by the way her uncle and Filomena avoided meeting her eyes. “I’ve only ever seen bruises, like on her arms, or shoulder. You know, places where he might have grabbed her a little too hard, or something, but never like he’d actually hit her.” Her heart beat against her ribs like the flailing wings of the bird she’d seen Altaïr’s cat catch; she still shivered a little remembering the way it had toyed with its frantic prey before finally striking the deathblow. “I’ve never seen him hit her,” she repeated. “And Taline wouldn’t hurt herself, she’d never risk losing another-” she hastily swallowed the remainder of her sentence as soon as she felt their attention suddenly intensify. Fucking Christ Ezio. You didn’t tell them about that?
“She was pregnant before this?” Filomena asked, tone carefully casual and entirely unconvincing.
“I dunno, maybe?” she shrugged and focused on picking at a hangnail on her left pinky. “Honestly, it seemed much more likely to me that her monthly courses were just late and she jumped the gun telling Ezio.” She shrugged again and managed not to wince when the hangnail tore off. “But I only heard about it second hand. Ezio was so gutted I never actually asked him.” She pretended not to notice the look Mario and Filomena exchanged. “If she had been pregnant, and I’m not saying for sure that she was, it was definitely his. The gossip would have been something else entirely if there was any possibility that it wasn’t.” She hesitated a moment before adding, “I mean, nobody’s not going to gossip about a Master getting culkolded, right?”
She hadn’t really expected Mario to rise to such clumsy bait – and he didn’t react, at all – but that felt a little telling too, in its own insidious way. Damn Lucia and her ridiculous theory.
“Do I still have to go to Lucca if Ezio doesn’t?” she blurted out, keeping her gaze focused on the closest bunch of whitework lilies meticulously stitched onto her mother’s tablecloth. “Nana Claudia was horrible over Christmas because Ezio wasn’t there and I’d rather be training back at Alamūt than have to grit my teeth and smile through another round of Nana’s hospitality.”
Mario sighed. “You and I both, but it is our duty, habibti.”
Now she was extra suspicious; an endearment in Italian out of the blue was one thing, but her unaffectionate uncle dropping a second one – in Arabic, no less – within a few hours of the first was some two-bit dime novel level of suspicious.
“When is Ezio ever going to go to Lucca without the rest of us?” she demanded. Her tone was a bit shriller than she would have liked, but it didn’t really detract from her point. Probably.
“Mari,” Filomena sighed. “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world half blind.”
“So Ezio gets to keep his 20/20 vision and I get an eyepatch?” she retorted, jabbing an escaped coil of hair back into her braid. All mistakes excused or forgiven, which happened for her brother, but not her, with offensive enough regularity for any jealousy she might have felt to be absolutely reasonable.
“Mari, please,” Filomena sighed, reaching over to take her hand. “Don’t be like that.”
“Don’t be like what, Mena? Right?” she shot back as she recoiled from Filomena’s outstretched hand. “I really wish I wasn’t, you know, but that’s kinda on you.”
“Mari…”
Filomena reached for her again and she bolted out of her seat and a step away from the table. Mario watched her as he reached for his espresso and held his silence.
“Conversation concluded,” she said over her shoulder as she spun on her heel and left the room, hating the slight tremor in her voice.
“Mari! Get back here!” Filomena commanded.
She kept walking down the hallway and the last thing she heard was Mario’s command to Filomena.
“Let her go, Mena. She has a right to be angry sometimes.”
[1] The title for a chief cook in the Ottoman empire