I wrote this piece for the 'Factions' contest on the deviantart club Visionary Assassins. I decided not to post it to ff.n until the results of the contest came out, and they did this evening... I lost, sadly. I wouldn't be that angry if second place hadn't been taken by an awkward fic about Ezio running away from a fat woman. I'm the only written entry not to place. Anyway, I'm quite obviously bitter about it, but I shouldn't talk about it much or people will think I'm a bitch... .
So basically, the setting is Venice, at the Piazza San Marco, I was thinking. And the story is told from the cortesans's point of view, first person. The first outline of the story included the assassination, but I figure it now ends at a more dramatic point. Fun Fact; when I was drawing up the outline, I called the cortesan Mary and the victim Bob. Once upon a time, Mary and Bob were going to make out in an alley. I'm glad I didn't have to write that.
Lanterns lit the piazza, suspended from strings, high in the air, as people moved about, dressed finely, smiling and dancing. The loud crowd was accompanied by musicians who hid within it. The sun had long ago set, and the stars shone down in its place, accenting the moonlight that helped illuminate the festivities. The shadows and silhouettes of people continued to spin and move and I moved among them, another guest at the grand party.
I danced with an older gentleman, a man whose appearance had only just begun to show the signs of his age. His smile was genuine, and he was enjoying himself in the fun, though his face was etched with stresses of his daily life. There was almost no doubt that he was a tradesman, with suffering business, as every other man who would walk the streets of Venice. I smiled warmly at him. He probably had a wife and children; a wife with another lover, perhaps, and children with little interest in their parents.
Such is the job of a courtesan; creating love for men who have none.
As one song ended and another softly began again, the man took a step away, bowed politely, and excused himself. I returned yet another smile, bowing my head and bidding him good night. For a moment, I had been still among the flowing, moving, pulsating crowd, watching the man respectfully as he walked from the piazza and down a street, but once he had gone, I made a move to the sidelines, looking to get out of the way of the dancers.
Though, curiously, before I had taken two steps, I was hand in hand with a new man, dancing in the same mechanical fashion. It took me a moment – mostly filled with thoughts like 'how rude!' – to register the man's white hood and familiar face.
"Ezio!" I said, in a louder voice that I had planned.
He shushed me. We kept dancing.
It seems he had grown a moustache since the last time I had seen him, and I couldn't see his eyes for the shadow cast by his hood, but his distinct face gave him away. With the shape of his nose and cheek bones, he was a very handsome gentleman, perhaps even more so now with the facial hair, and it would take an incredible kind of woman not to stare the first time she met him.
"It's been some time," I whispered. "What brings you back to see me?"
"Business," Ezio replied.
My own response was to dance a small step closer to him, in an attempt to make him uncomfortable, and to taunt him. Unfortunately for my fun and games, he immediately held his arms out further from his body, keeping me at reasonable distance.
"Mine," He smirked, a kind of silent way of laughing at my little joke. "Not yours."
"Then please, tell me how it is I can help."
This was the cue for the laughs to end. There was work to be done, and at that time, Ezio dealt in a very serious commodity; Ezio dealt in death.
We spun in the crowd. "Look over my shoulder. Do you see the man in the half-mask?" He asked.
I searched the faces in the sea of people, and did find the man in the half-mask. A smug looking young man, I thought. He was finely dressed, and seemed to not only look, but act the part of a nobleman. I'm not one to judge, but he had that cocky air about him that made some roll their eyes.
"I see him," I murmured. "A bit dramatic an outfit for a street festival, isn't it?"
Somehow, without my understanding how, the mystifying hooded madman produced a small sack of coins, presumably from his sleeve, and held them in the palm of my hand. Our steps slowed, while those nearby continued to move a dizzying pace around us. Slowly he leaned his head forward, beside mine, his lips near my ear, a strange trick he played, for what reason I would never understand.
"You know what is required of you," Ezio whispered, and with that released the coins into my hand and stalked off, stepping around dancers and party-goers, only to jog into a back alley.
I stared off, trying fruitlessly to understand that damned man. Hesitantly, and with a sigh, I spun, put a smile on my face, and began to saunter towards the young nobleman in the half-mask. This man was Ezio's target, and now he was mine.
I would never be able to see myself as an assassin, but there is honour among thieves, and I would always have a part to play.