A/N: Don't laugh but I used shakira's "Hips don't lie" as musical inspiration, also lacrimas profundere "and god's ocean" for alessa and ezio. this is kind of a girl power chapter – something that really doesn't happen in the game, much less Renaissance Italy, so forgive me the artistic license; let's give some respect to the courtesans! This was a totally fun chapter to write, hope you enjoy! I was even able to have Ezio achieve 100% synch in this sequence! LOL fuck yeah!
"There's no way people aren't going to notice this," the seamstress muttered as she flicked Alessa's hidden dagger contemptuously.
"That's for me to worry about," Alessa said.
"Besides," Claudia said, "No one will be looking at her forearms."
"Yeah, and if they did, they wouldn't be able to get past this!" Alessa leered, hold up her left hand and its missing finger.
The seamstress clucked in disapproval while Claudia rolled her eyes.
Alessa was taking a break from the crazy lessons Claudia's courtesans were subjecting her to - if you could classify standing draped in yards of fabric in a hot room with a bitchy seamstress who seemed hell bent on poking her with every pin she had as R & R.
"Anyway," Claudia said, "It doesn't matter because the completed costumes will include some cloth at the wrists, so it will be covered."
The seamstress muttered something and finally pulled all of the obnoxious cloth off of her.
"How much of that will still be there?" she asked Claudia offhandedly. Claudia winked.
"Not much," she said.
"Can I at least have a hood?" Alessa asked hopefully.
A couple of days later, they were ready. Alessa had gone through a truly heinous training regimen – dancing. Apparently, the Borgia assholes had brought over some insipid Spanish dance called tango and the girls were learning it. Requisitioning the few male courtesans, yeah, Alessa was not sure if that was the right word for them. What a revelation that had been!
Anyway, using the males as partners, Alessa was subjected to the absolute idiocy of the whole thing. Their instructor, one of the older courtesans, Viviana, constantly nagged her:
"Don't pinch the men, Alessa."
"Your foot is not a brick, Alessa, it goes up quickly and lightly."
"Let the man lead, Alessa."
"Your face is very expressive, Alessa, make your body do the same thing."
"Graceful! You arch your back languidly, not like you're being tortured!"
Alessa felt like languidly punching Viviana in the face. See how that bitch liked languid then. And that simpering idiot Dario, her dance partner, too. Just punch him right in his fucking grinning face.
But it was finally over and Alessa had been pronounced "proficient enough" to proceed with the plan.
The morning of the big event, the girls and Alessa rushed about to pack up the trunks and get it all taken over to the Banker's home. They followed by carriage and Alessa spent another afternoon of torture getting ready. She had had no idea how much effort the courtesans went through to make themselves "presentable."
It took fucking hours.
First the elaborately coiled hair, all arranged to look artfully messy. Then some kind of body hair removal with some rolled string.
Really? The arms too?
Her skin tingling, she fidgeted through the placement of the gown. Because the things could not just be buttoned up, oh no. Seamstresses had to actually sew them all into the things. Alessa appreciated Claudia's ironic humor; the girls all wore different colors, but Alessa's was pure white sashed in crimson.
Very nice.
The long skirts were slit to the upper thigh in panels. Standing, she would almost look respectable from the front. But the athletic dancing would reveal scintillating flashes of leg. The back of the gown was scandalous, elegant cloth crossed the upper back to hold the relatively high neckline up but the fabric plunged right down to the tops of her buttocks, leaving her back entirely bare.
Finally, one of the girls helped her apply kohl around her eyes and color on her eyelids. Alessa sent up a silent prayer of thanks that the mirrors were all on the other side of the room because she would probably faint in horror if she saw herself. She imagined that she looked ridiculous. She felt ridiculous.
Where are my shoes?" Alessa asked, holding up a pile of delicate silver chains.
The girls looked at her as if she was crazy and one lifted a delicate foot up.
"Fucking barefoot, are you kidding me?" Alessa bitched. "What happens when one of those morons steps on my foot and I kick him in the balls?"
A couple of the girls snickered.
Viviana, of course, was not impressed with Alessa's complaints.
Oh, and even better...
She wore the chains on her ankles. Great, that was a lot of protection.
She was so ready to stab someone. Where the hell was that fat banker? She moved amongst the girls as they descended to the big party. On their way out, Alessa spotted a dark haired man in some truly over-embellished armor walking through the doorway to the outer balcony overlooking the festivities.
Just when she was thinking how tacky it looked, he turned her way. Dark, intelligent, and suspicious eyes caught hers for a second before he returned to his discussion with the banker and –
Holy shit!
It was the pope!
She narrowed her eyes. The dark haired man must be Cesare and the pope was Rodrigo of course. Cesare glanced her way again and a jolt passed through her as his gaze raked over her and the rest of the courtesans.
Enemy.
The word thrummed through her in a physical manifestation of recognition.
He was suspicious and on edge, it was damn eerie, like he knew she was there, wanting to kill him so bad that she had to clench her fists in the folds of her skirt to resist the urge to flick out her dagger and recklessly go for it.
How the hell did he know?
A sharp elbow dug into her side and she smoothed the lines of her faces, pasting on a ridiculous, simpering smile as they all stepped outside into the night.
It took a second for her to recover as she got an eyeful of all the, er, flesh out in the open air. Some of the women appeared to be garbed in nothing but glued-on colored glass that flickered strangely in the torchlight. Others…
Okay.
Don't look at what was going on in the shadows.
"I thought this Juan Borgia was supposed to be a cardinal," Alessa whispered to one of the girls in confusion.
"He is."
Wow.
She was truly scandalized.
She kept her eyes to herself after that.
She made note of the number of guards, their positions, and their level of alertness. She listened to how the courtesans lulled them into complacent distraction, wanting to vomit and wondering how the men could take the comments seriously.
"That is quite a chest you have there."
"Can I feel your strong arms?"
Seriously?
These had to be the stupidest men she had ever had the misfortune to observe.
She felt a slight tingle on the back of her neck and looked up suddenly to a nearby rooftop.
She smiled.
Ezio and Dino crouched side by side, silent death from above stalking the revelers.
Her group moved into a large courtyard just as Cesare was finishing a welcome speech. She watched him disappear inside the Banker's home.
Music started, dramatic lutes and ecstatic drums, and Alessa found herself in the middle of a growing crowd of dancers. While she minded her bare toes, she kept an eye on the Banker, observing his movements.
Some time passed when she caught the edge of a white hood, prowling about the fringes of the crowd. She tracked the Banker, who was dancing with more enthusiasm than skill. When she looked again for Ezio, he was gone.
She spun, arms draped gracefully – she hoped – in mid-air. The final turn brought her face to face with the hooded figure she had just seen stalking the fringes of the crowd. Without a word, he took control of her and all of a sudden, the silly, overly dramatic dance took on an entirely different undertone and she understood why it was so popular.
He manipulated her movements subtly by the placement of his hands on her body, but she soon realized that it was ultimately the woman who held the man's attention and thus controlled the direction of his mind. If she moved her body a certain way, she could focus his attention on whichever part of her body she chose.
Ha! Alessa thought gleefully. Here was something she was better at…
Oh.
Wait.
He was responding on an instinctive level to her cues, but his eyes were actually on the ridiculously garbed Banker, Juan Borgia, glittering menacingly.
Huh.
Amazing. Here she was, all of her attention focused on Ezio, thinking his was equally engaged. And he wasn't. He truly was a Master Assassin; not allowing anything to distract him from his target. Alessa sobered quickly, feeling ashamed. She worked with Ezio to move them both toward the edge of the crowd, closer to the Banker.
She could feel Ezio's frustration in the subtle tightening of his grip when the man extricated himself from the dancing to go speak with some of the guards nearby. They walked away as a group. Ezio's face was impassive as he watched them. Alessa touched the tips of her fingers to his cheek so that he would look at her.
"They'll walk around once and then he'll go back in," she whispered, doing her best to keep her lips form moving too much in case someone had noticed them. "He's been doing it all night, taking reports from the guards." Ezio's lips quirked up into a pleased smile and he suddenly stopped dancing, dragging her behind him to a nearby bench, for all the world looking like a man overwhelmed by the risqué dancing.
She had barely settled herself in for the wait when Ezio's lips descended with resolved dominion over hers.
She was startled for a brief second, but then she reached up to cradle his face between her hands, arching her body in towards his, feeling the muscles of his neck and jaw strain as he kissed her urgently. It took all of the willpower she possessed to not get lost in Ezio's enthusiasm, even if it was feigned. She could not track Borgia's progress around the massive dancing crowd; the folds of Ezio's hood blocked her view. She felt his expressive hands slide up her bare back and gasped against his lips; understanding in an instant the allure Claudia had foreseen the cut of the gown would have.
Well, maybe she had not seen it happening quite in this manner. Or had she? Shit. The woman was as bad as Machiavelli.
Oh, hey. She could see Borgia approaching. She tensed, getting ready to jump up.
Ezio's hands eased back down to her hips, then, without warning, shifted to her thighs and lifted her like she weighed nothing. He sat back on the bench and hitched her over his lap, her knees settling on the stone bench on either side of his thighs.
Selfish man!
Now she could not see the target again. But she was willing to bet he could. She scraped her teeth along his lower lip, a little annoyed, and he groaned. He did not sound unhappy.
Take that.
She was trying to stay focused, but without a target in sight…
Damn, the man could kiss!
She was losing control again.
His head tilted back elegantly as he settled her more strategically over his lap, fingers biting into her upper thighs as Borgia moved close enough for her to see him with her peripheral vision.
"I'll bet he has to pay a fortune for that one," one of the guards muttered nastily as the group went by.
Ezio struck then. Alessa barely noticed the change of his muscle tension as he went from indolent lover to lethal fighter in an instant. He tossed her aside and she landed in a crouch, watching in satisfaction as he leapt in the air, activating his hidden dagger just as he was bringing his fist down to sever Borgia's spine. The flabby cardinal crumpled without a chance to even struggle and was dead before he hit the ground.
"Assassino!"
"Ah, music to my ears," Dino said as he rushed up to join them.
"Where have you been?" Alessa asked as she engaged a halberd-carrying guard.
"Enjoying the show," Dino grunted as he parried the swing of an axe.
Alessa would swear later that while stabbing the soldier before her, she most definitely did not envision Dino's face in place of her victim's.
An swordsman charged her and she spun to the side, swinging her leg up to crack the man on the side of her head with her heel as he passed her, forgetting for a moment that she was not wearing boots.
Ouch.
She cursed and plunged her blade under his sternum while hopping on her good foot.
"Shit!" she said, twirling to meet the blow of a sword. It was an awkward parry and the blade slid off her hidden dagger and bit into her upper arm. Reaching over, she pulled Dino's spare dagger in an instant, continued in the circular direction her momentum took her and swung her blade out to catch the soldier across the face. As he shrieked and dropped his sword, she scooped that up, sliced his hamstring on the upswing, reversed her grip and stabbed down into his chest as he fell backwards.
The three of them were an oasis of calm, surrounded by screaming people, all frantic to get away from them. It hampered the guards trying to get to them to attack.
Alessa used the brief respite to begin tugging on one of the smaller guard's boots.
"What are you doing?" Dino asked.
"I need something for my feet, cretin, what does it look like I'm doing?" Alessa said, tugging harder.
"Aha."
"Shut up."
"I kind of like the little slave girl chains, why don't you just wear those?"
"I said shut up!"
She got the boots and shoved her own feet into them; they were only a little big.
"Let's go," Ezio urged.
They clambered over the crumbling walls, easily losing the guards chasing them in the maze of alleys and dead ends.
They had crossed the Tiber and were heading for the Rosa in Fiore, the late night streets quiet. The only sounds were the assassin's soft footsteps and the crickets.
Dino stopped them in the shadows of a dark building.
"You're bleeding all over the place," he said. He held her injured arm out, then reached down and ripped off one of the panels from her skirt.
"Hey!" she hissed, swatting at him, he snickered and avoided her swing, holding one end of the fine silk in his teeth as he bound her arm.
"So, ah, do you think that blending technique would work if Ezio and I had done it?"
Alessa shrieked and burst into laughter. Ezio looked offended.
"I don't kiss ugly girls like you, Demasi," he protested.
"There are so many things wrong with this conversation," Alessa wheezed, overcome.
They continued on their way. Alessa had finally stopped laughing when Dino ruined it again.
"So how do you get out of that thing? I don't see any buttons or anything."
Alessa halted in the middle of the street.
What.
An.
Asshole.
He knew! The sonofabitch knew!
"I… ah... it…"
Her sputtering apparently answered the question and Dino's laughter bounced off of the buildings, echoing his glee to the sky.
Ezio looked like he was about to say something.
"Do not say it," she growled.
Ezio grinned.
"Are you sure –"
"Yes! Shut up!" she hissed.
She stomped off towards the Rosa in Fiore as the men fell into step behind her, chuckling amongst themselves.
As they rounded the final corner, Ezio tensed, and then began sprinting. His concern manifested into two tear-stained courtesans, one holding the other up.
"We came back with the money," she said in a daze, "They followed us home."
A panicked look spread across Ezio's face as the girl spoke and he bolted for the Rosa, bursting through the front door. Dino stopped abruptly behind him and Alessa crashed into him.
Bodies littered the floor in slowly spreading pools of blood. Claudia stood over them, a well used dagger in each hand and a smug expression on her face.
Ezio was astonished, and then he grinned in fierce pride.
"What?" Claudia asked.
"My sister knows how to wield a knife," he said, truly surprised.
"And I am ready to do it again," she said with some asperity.
"Spoken like a true Audtiore," Ezio said.
The siblings grinned at each other. And just like that, whatever tension had been between them dissapated.
Alessa brushed a finger under her eye, and then she elbowed Dino when he opened his mouth to comment,
"Not a word," she sniffled.
He leaned into her.
"You want to tell me again how that dress comes off?"
A/N: I wrote that scene just for you, flyingcrispi, yes, that one! LOL but seriously, that stuff has to stop… heh it's fun though. Don't know when the tango was invented, but most likely waaaay after this time period. Too bad, it exists in the AC-verse now, HA! So I have busted out like 7000 words or so in the last 24 hours and my head hurts, may have to take a couple days break.