I braced myself for the next suggestion-that we should get married, but it didn't come. Inwardly I smiled. At barely twenty, he might be willing to stick his friend's head into the matrimonial noose-poor choice of words, given how he had lost his family- for the sake of the greater good, but he wasn't about to stick his own. Actually, I was relieved that Ezio didn't pop the question, because since I had in a moment of Theobromos-induced madness, privately appointed myself the guardian and protector of his descendants. I coud hardly do that if he had no children, and if he married me, he wouldn't-not born in wedlock, anyway.

"You may scoff now, madonna, but I will find you a husband," he called after me.

"I think you're seriously underestimating how difficult it will be," I threw back at him, quite certain he wouldn't find any man willing. "Unless it's a deathbed marriage where he's out to cheat his heirs, and there are plenty of easier ways to do that."

Believe it or not, we cyborg operatives of Dr. Zeus do, very occasionally, marry mortals with the blessing of the Company—if said marriage will be for the benefit of the stockholders in some way, or move a mission forward. The mortal spouse never knows the score, of course. If the relationship is going to continue for any great length of time, the cyborg spouse has to age themselves cosmetically and eventually 'die'. I've known immortals who have done that. Some of them hated the person they were married to, but others—others found happiness and fulfillment with their mortal spouses. Some raised families through adoption (or looked the other way if their mortal wives got outside help).

But sooner or later it always ended, with death, or divorce, or reassignment. We cannot lift our mortal loved ones up to the heights of Olympus with us, we cannot petition Papa Zeus to give them the gift of eternal life. I suppose one could pump them up with pineal tribantine three, customize a chromosome repair kit for their phenotype, reengineer biomechanicals for their DNA, and keep them alive and young for a few more centuries—but immortality without computer augmented memory is problematic. After about two hundred years, the brain gets so filled up that the ability to think starts breaking down. Let's not even think about what happens if the body develops an allergy to its own RNA, and if an immortal doesn't also have unbreakable bones, then the ability to heal so damn fast is a distinct disadvantage. If it's not set perfectly immediately, then the broken ends start growing randomly, trying to reach each other and knit. The result is disfiguring and painful.

Vampires have it easy. A little nip, a quick slice there, an exchange of blood, and they've made a companion for eternity. If only….

Sometimes cyborgs 'marry' each other—not officially, of course. It's not allowed. We don't own ourselves, and rarely get to choose where we're assigned or who we're assigned with, but some people do fall in love and make vows to one another. Sometimes that love lasts centuries. I knew someone who had such an arrangement, another Art Preserver. Her name was Nancy, Nan for short. She was born in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 16th century, and she fell in love with a Marine Salvage Specialist named Kalugin. They were happy together, truly happy, and if they had to be apart for months and years at a stretch, then their reunions were all the sweeter for it.

Then he disappeared. No one knows where to; he wasn't even found at the Center for Punitive Medicine, where it was discovered that a very, very old operative named Marco had gone insane and was experimenting on other operative he had kidnapped. His inventiveness put even Mengele to shame. At least that was the story they put about—that Marco had been acting alone and not with orders from Dr. Zeus to find a way to kill or deactivate us permanently.

But that's another story and has nothing to do with Ezio's naive suggestion that I needed a husband.

We got back on the horse. "Maybe I should just go to Rome and set up as a courtesan," I speculated. "Not a courtesan della citta on the streets or in a brothel, but a courtesan onesta, with my own residence and a very small circle of wealthy clientele. The right cosmetics, clothes and jewels would kick me up a few notches on the glamor scale, and I'm already well-educated, witty and intelligent, if I do say so myself. No one could say I don't have the figure for it-and after all, I won't get old, saggy, wrinkly, or fat. I'd need some stake money to get set up, though."

"What!" Ezio spluttered, "Why would you want to do that?"

"Some of those women are extremely influential in Church politics. The right word whispered into the right ear during an intimate moment-and Borgia's career could be scuttled."

"But what about Lorenzo?"

"I'm only teasing! I wouldn't want to risk having to have Borgia as a client-the thought alone disgusts me." I reassured him.

"Well, don't joke like that. It isn't funny." Ezio scolded me. He sounded like a brother already. Not that I knew what it was like having a brother.

We continued on, the road leading us down hill into a ravine with large rocks scattered around on either side. It was a prime place for an ambush, and if I wasn't mistaken...

"Ezio, there are several mortal men hiding among those boulders ahead of us down there," I said, sotto voce in his ear.

"Templars!" he exploded. I hoped there really was something to his anti-Templar complex and it wasn't just irrational paranoia on his part.

"No. Not soldiers or guards, I don't think-I don't hear metal the way I would if they were in armor with blades or mauls. I think they're locals looking to add to their income with some free-lance robbery."

"Are you sure?" he asked. "I can't see through rock with Eagle Vision."

"Look at the ground-there's bits of manure that had to have come off that cart which passed us during lunch." I could smell it very clearly.

"Just a bunch of peasants," he brooded. "I wouldn't dirty my blade on them. Can you hang on if I gallop through?"

"Yes."

"Va bene." He kicked the horse, and we got a jackrabbit start-but since I couldn't see around him, I didn't see the tripwire they had strung up across a narrow part of the path, and neither did he. The horse stumbled, and we went flying, credenza and all.

Thanks to my augumented reflexes, I landed like a cat, on all fours, and kicked out, sweeping the nearest bandit off his feet. Writhing up, I chopped the next one in the Adam's apple with the side of my hand. Then another one grabbed me from behind. Meanwhile, Ezio was laying into them for all he was worth. He had abandoned the idea of not using edged weapons, but as certain armies learned throughout history, just banning peasants from owning weapons was pointless. Peasants had access to all sorts of tools and equipment like, oh, pitchforks, billhooks, axes, shovels, and so on which happened to be just as good as, if not better than, swords and pikes.

I whipped my head back into the solar plexus of the one behind me and gave his friend in front of me a pizeoelectric shock through my fingertips, effectively inducing a grand mal seizure. He fell to the ground, babbling, twitching, and spasming, and that's about all I have to say about that fight because it was over. The would-be bandits fled, leaving behind a quantity of blood and a few unconscious fellows.

Ezio was giving me the stink-eye. " And I told you to be prepared to jump down in case of trouble! You might have told me you would be prepared for it!" I guess knights errant don't like for their damsels in distress to be, well, not distressed.

"And you could have told me what sort of trouble you're likely to run into, so I think the one cancels out the other. Is the horse all right? And where did my credenza go?"

"Oh..." Distracted, he headed down the ravine looking for our four-footed transportation, and I spotted the credenza down a gully lined with jagged stones prepared to tear my stockings into pieces. I ungartered them-they were only knee -length,after all and slipped them off. Better that my skin should suffer-it would mend on it own. Kirtling my skirts up, I went down after the only existing computer in the world-but then I hadn't encountered a Piece of Eden as yet.

"Where did you go?" Ezio called. I could see him silhouetted against the sky, the horse at his side. "There you are. Do you need help-? Wait, that's a stupid question, isn't it?" Perhaps he realized how petty he sounded, because he gave me a hand getting back on my feet. "I'm...I'm sorry. The way you move, though-is that something else they do to you?"

"Yes. It costs a great deal of money to make one of us-what we are, and every moment we're out of active service due to damage, they count as money lost. So they enhance our reflexes and strength, so we can get out of dangerous situations." I sat down on a rock and put my stockings back on while I spoke.

"Could you have taken them all on, all by yourself?" He turned away while I had my calves exposed, checking over the horse's limbs instead of mine.

"No. If you hadn't been there, I would have run for it."

"Da vero? Could you outrun the pack of them?" he asked.

"Easily." I slipped my shoes back on.

"Show me," Ezio challenged.

I looked around for a suitable demonstration, and saw a wildflower growing from a crevice in a rock a few yards away. "Do you see that cluster of cornflowers, there?"

"Si-." I was back with the flowers before he finished speaking. "Wha-How did you do that? I didn't even see you move!"

"It's called hyperfunction. I can't keep it up for very long. More than five minutes at top speed exhausts my strength for at least a day." I explained.

"What if I were to throw a knife at you?" He asked.

"Do it and watch." I suggested. "Don't go easy on me, either. Make it a real challenge."

"If you say so..." Slipping a throwing knife from his belt, he took aim and let fly, hard and fast.

I clapped my hands together and caught it between my palms, flat.

He shook his head. "If you say you're trained in assassination, too, I'm giving it up."

"No. We're not. I'm not. In fact, I can't kill, not even in self-defense or defense of another. Still another thing they do to us-if I were to try, if I were even to think about it seriously too hard, I would first have attacks of panic, then a seizure, and then I would black out. They are afraid of us, our makers, our masters."

"How do they do these things to you?" he wondered.

"They open up our heads and snake wires through our brains so fine you couldn't even see a glint of light off them. They put in devices that record everything we see and say and do-if they could, they'd record our very thoughts. They replace our bones-and you don't want to know what they take out to make room for everything. You truly don't." My voice was gaining a brittle edge. "I wear an intangible collar-I may have slipped my chain by chance, but it's still there. Don't go thinking that what I can do, what I am, is a gift-it isn't. Nothing's free, especially not immortality. But I'm going too far again, aren't I?" I said, looking at his expression. "I'm sorry."

"No. It's all right."

"It isn't, but it's...what it is. Now let's get back on that horse and see if we can make Monteriggioni before supper-and while we go, you can tell me about how you became an assassin." I put on a more cheerful voice.

"Hey! I never said I was an assass-."

"Oh, yes, you did. You said if I was an assassin, you'd have to give it up. So give it up! I mean, tell me about it."

"You sure are nasty sometimes..."

A/N: Thank you, TenshiReike, Rhivanna and Keet for your reviews. I'm so glad you're out there.