Chapter 1
Death of a Father
"And so we speak our parting words, in accordance to our Creed." The Assassin Geronimo del Sarto spoke in a quiet monotone, his voice echoing off the stone and marble slabs making up the small Tuscan church. What light remained from the setting sun shown through the brightly stained-glass windows before spilling across the floor. The Assassin took in a breath, eyes drifting over the pair of young men dressed in their fine black robes, before bowing his head.
"It is with great humility and honor that we stand here, as one, to say good bye to our friend, father and brother in blood. He who acted as a Guide and Noble Protector for us all. He who shed his own blood, in hopes of one day achieving true Peace." He cleared his throat. "La shai hakeeiki, kol shai mubaah. La wa kulu shey'a haqeeqiyum shey'in mubaah. Requiescat in pace, my oldest friend." He raised his eyes, peering out from beneath the cowl of his own darkened hood. He spoke not to a cathedral filled to the brim with Catholic worshipers on a Sunday morning, but to a few more than a half dozen people, in a tiny chapel in Monteriggioni, on a chilly fall evening. How fitting, he mused, that just as the sun sets on the late autumn season, so it does on one of the greatest Assassins of their time, and his most trusted friend, Cirano Auditore. Geronimo watched as the two grim-faced boys, Cirano's teenage sons, rose as one to take their place as pallbearers. He himself nodded to the priest before leaving the side of the casket and making his way over to the grieving widow. He knelt beside his dear Natale, a woman he looked to as his own sister, and took her hand in his.
"Do not cry." He lightly touched her hair. "Be strong for your boys." The woman tilted her head upward, managing only to raise one corner of her mouth in an attempt to smile.
"I know… If only it were as clear to me how to carry on from here." She spoke softly, both due to her emotional pain and to her natural Sardinian upbringing and tongue. She chewed on her lower lip as her gaze lingered on her only two children, Mario and Giovanni.
"…but…tell me how a single mother may raise two strong-willed teenagers without her husband." She continued, sucking in a deep breath. Geronimo chuckled softly, clasping her hand in his.
"With patience, Natale. With patience, and with strength."
The two somber-faced boys, followed by the short, if meaningful processional, carried the casket of their father to his final resting place: Il Tomba di Famiglia Auditore. Their mother followed the boys inside, aided by Geronimo's steady arm, lacking stability of her own through both grief and years of illness. She wiped her eyes as they came across a small stone chamber cut into the wall – only one of several dozen outcroppings located in the vast, underground crypt. Only once had she ventured here in the past; when her young brother died on the day of his nineteenth birthday. Now she was here to pay her final respects to her husband of thirty-seven long but blessed years.
Geronimo gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before raising his head to nod at the boys. Both Mario, 16, and Giovanni, 14, worked together to lower their late father's decorative wooden casket into the solid stone sarcophagus resting in the small nook, emblazoned with the triangular carving of the Assassin symbol. Finished with their grim task, the boys slid the heavy lid closed before stepping back to join their mother and their new mentor.
What light had struggled to follow them into the darkened depths of the mausoleum wilted and died as silent minutes ticked by. The sun has indeed set on Cirano Auditore, Geronimo thought to himself. Tomorrow it will rise again on both Mario and Giovanni, the newest members of the L'ordine dell'Assassino.