"I won't quarrel with you over accepting the Shroud's benefits, but to then refuse it house-room afterwards—that I question." La Volpe quirked an eyebrow at him.
It was a moment of decision—to tell about the medicine, or not to tell? Mario chose to stall for time. "How could you tell?"
"It was how you held your head. You probably stopped noticing years ago, but after you lost that eye, you always turned your face at an angle, to make the most of your peripheral vision. Today you weren't doing that, not even down this passageway, although it is dark and still has hazards around."
"You're right, I never noticed," Mario responded. "Perhaps it makes me a hypocrite, but I never asked for its help nor sought it out. What should I do, gouge my eye out again?"
"That would seem a trifle harsh, wouldn't it?" the thief said. "….About your wife."
"And isn't that a fast change of subject, "the condottiero commented. "What about her?"
"I understand your dilemma better now that I have met her," La Volpe said, tersely. "She has an indefinable charm—talk to her for a quarter of an hour, and it's as if you've known her for a quarter of a century. She's also more intelligent than I expected, and I did expect intelligence. I don't mean to tell you that you must kill her, but she is not an Assassin. She's not trained with us and she's taken no oaths to us.
"Yet she knows more of our secrets than any who is not, and if matters continue as they have begun she will learn more, between what she deduces and what she manages to coax out of us. As an Assassin, she would be useless—what good is an Assassin who cannot kill? What I'm saying is that I would like her loyalty to us to be based on more than that you're un tigre del matterasso. Or so I assume." The last statements were said ironically.
Mario chuckled. "What can I say? It's not enough to have it, you have to know what to do with it." The accompanying hand gesture left little to the imagination, proving that guys will be guys no matter their age or occupation. Then he sobered up. "What do you suggest? Brand her finger at noon, and the mark will be gone by sundown. Cut off her finger, as in the old days? You'd probably wreck a good blade trying to saw through her bone. My sister-in-law was not an Assassin either, yet we accepted and trusted her."
"That's different. She was a known factor, was married to your brother for near to twenty years, and bore four children to him as well." Gilberto said.
There was a long and awkward pause. "If you plan to wait for Ginevra to give me four children, the sun is like to go cold first." Mario remarked.
"…I'm sorry. For what it's worth, no child of my getting ever lived beyond its teens, and I have sired some dozen that I know of. All were like your nephew Petruccio, born with some internal defect that killed them young. Why, I have no way of knowing, nor how I should have been born to two quite ordinary parents. I've outlived everyone who could remember me as a child," he added. "Which is another thing. Unless I am much mistaken, your wife is older than you and I put together."
If La Volpe had expected shock or surprise from Mario when he made that observation, he was disappointed. "I had guessed as much. She speaks of the future as of a country she has lived in, not a place she's merely read about. Living with her is like a Leap of Faith-you have to trust that nobody moves the cart before you land."
"Hmph," La Volpe grunted. "If branding wouldn't be permanent, what about a tattoo?"
"She's never mentioned tattoos. It's worth asking her about. So, what about this?" By 'this', Mario meant the Shroud.
"How heavy is the box?" The thief hoisted it up. "Not so bad, but I don't want to bring up a chest like this in broad daylight, it would be asking for trouble. Anyone who looked at me with it would think 'Buried treasure', and make plans to lie in wait for me. I'll wait until after nightfall."
"Fair enough," Mario replied as his brother Assassin set the wooden container back down.
"Something's on the bottom of it," La Volpe looked at his hand, rubbing his fingers together. "What is this stuff? Lamp oil?" A shiny film on his skin shone in the flickering light. Perhaps injudiciously, he brought his hand to his nose, smelling his fingers, and then touched his tongue to whatever it was. "Just some water, I suppose. Let's get up out of this hole and into the light."
He was wrong. Given the nanobots from Ginevra's blood to use as a pattern, the Shroud and its container were now literally oozing unpurposed nanites. Although of technological origin, with their ability to reproduce themselves, nanobots blurred the distinction between mechanical constructs and living things until there was no discernable difference. Like a bacteria or virus—like the mitochondria of long ago, even—the nanobots wanted only to come into contact with a break in epidermis or with a mucous membrane to transition into the bloodstream and infect a new host. Unlike germs, the transfer would be a once-and-done affair. Unpurposed nanites imprinted immediately and permanently on the nearest living cells, and could not be passed on with a sneeze or exchange of other body fluids.
With that momentary contact, La Volpe unwittingly invited in, for good or ill, hundreds of nanos. Nothing like the millions contained in the five ccs delivered through an injection from a repair kit, but enough.
The decision over which Ginevra had agonized had just been taken out of her hands forever.
What I might have done, what I would have done, was resynchronize with the Shroud and download all it had done since the last time, and I would have learned how it saved Ezio and what else it was doing. As it happens, Claudia came by with a question. Now that, if you like, is Chaos Theory at work. What might have happened had she chosen another time, if she had waited a few minutes?
"Ginevra, I was going over the receipts for the soap ingredients, and I noticed that you listed 'Agretti, for making lye'. I know you need ash to make lye, but do you have to burn agretti to get it? It seems to me to be a waste of good vegetables."
"Yes, actually. That's one of the ingredients which makes it such high-quality soap." Agretti was an edible plant with a naturally high salt content, and when burned, it made an alkaline ash which was very useful in manufacturing not just soap but glass. Such a simple, small secret, like so many of the secrets that could make life so much better for so many. The hardest things to learn are the least complicated.
"All right. I'm going to see if there's a field on the estates that can allocated for growing just agretti. That'll be cheaper than paying market rates. Oh!" The reason she exclaimed was because La Volpe and Mario suddenly appeared from up out of the well.
"Hello," Gilberto said, pleasantly, and Mario added, "Ah, there you are. La Volpe, my niece Claudia. Claudia, this is a man no respectable young lady should know, so if you want to escape the acquaintance, you'd best go indoors and forget you ever saw him."
"Then it's a good thing I am of an Assassin family and only put up the appearance of being a respectable young lady. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Ser." Claudia said, pointedly. She was going out of her way, lately, to make sure Mario knew where her loyalties lay.
"As I am to make yours, signorina," said the thief. "We have come to some conclusions regarding what lies at the bottom of the well, but that can wait. I would like to go over what you have assembled concerning Pompeii and Herculaneum."
"Certainly," I replied. "I have the materials ready. May Claudia join us? I would be grateful for her insights as to managing the expenses and minimizing losses during the excavations. Who better to perform an audit than an Auditore?"
"You do? You want me? To do what? Wait, what is this all about?" Claudia scrambled to keep up, mentally.
"Fortune and glory, kid, fortune and glory…" I could not resist saying.
A/N: Sorry this took so long, and it may not be my most brilliant chapter ever, but it's been holiday week and I don't want to lose momentum entirely. Hope you enjoy.
