After she'd been called back to the Rosa in Fiore by a message from Claudia, Maria had bid farewell to Ezio and Gilberto both – taking a few moments more to thank the man for his hospitality before she departed, of course – and then made her way back down into the tunnels. The Borgia had been all the more determined to catch the pair of them, given each and every moment of defiance that they had not only displayed to those who thought themselves so far above the people they purported to rule, but the fact that through the Brotherhood they encouraged that same defiance in so many others. She and Ezio had both agreed that it was better that they remained out of sight as much as they reasonably could, under the circumstances.
Given what she'd heard Cesare intended to do to her if he managed to get his hands on her – as unlikely as that was going to be – Maria had agreed quickly.
Once she'd made it back into the basement of the Rosa in Fiore again, Maria sighed as she made her way back up the stairs. There were times when this struggle of theirs could seem never ending, and Maria would find herself wondering just what was going to be at the end of it. Ever since she'd seen Aeon, and the way he'd been bound so tightly to the Apple, Maria had found herself wondering if such a thing had been his choice, or if that kind of thing would end up happening to her some time.
She couldn't even comfort herself with the ultimate fate of Altaïr's apprentice Alnesr, because she didn't actually know what had happened to him, in the end.
Shaking off those thoughts as well as she'd ever managed to, Maria continued on her way up to the main floor of the Rosa in Fiore. Cocking her head in surprise, as she caught sight of a man who was only familiar to her from the descriptions that Ezio had given of the man that he'd rescued from the danger that being in debt to a man such as Cesare Borgia would present to anyone, Maria continued on her way into the Rosa's main room. When Mother waved her forward, Maria wondered what she was going to be asked to do next, even as she made her way to the foot of the main staircase where Mother and the man who Ezio had rescued were waiting for her.
"Ah, you would be the little Maria your mother told me about, sí?" the man, old and graying as Ezio had described him, but with a far more jovial demeanor that could only come from someone who had found their lives their own again after they'd given up hope of anything like that happening. "I'm in you're brother's debt, and given everything I've seen of your family, I could not be happier."
"This is Egidio Troche, Maria," Mother said, drawing her attention from where Maria had been studying the senator where he stood before her. "He's been sharing a great deal of insight with us into the inner-workings of Cesare's court."
"Grazie, Messer," she said, returning her attention to the man, who seemed to have more to say than just a greeting.
"You and your brother have both been doing good work, I hear, dispatching Cesare's ambassadors anywhere you manage to run across them, but the matter of those who have been colluding with those ambassadors still remains," the senator said, a serious expression overtaking his jovial face. "You both must also make certain that no word of your actions makes it back to Cesare."
"I'll be sure to let Ezio know about your advice, Messer, grazie," Maria said, even though she was well aware of the need to be discreet in these matters.
Even with Cesare presently in Romagna overseeing one of his many campaigns, the man still possessed enough people in Roma to make trouble for the Brotherhood if they didn't maintain due diligence in cutting them down.
"I must be about my work now, Senatore. Madre, it was good to see you again," she said formally, excusing herself from the meeting that Egidio and her mother then swiftly returned to as she caught sight of Agnella signaling for her attention.
Once the pair of them had met up, moving to a secluded alcove out of the sight of the main room but close enough to spot anyone trying to spy on them with enough time to throw off any suspicion, Agnella didn't waste time telling Maria just why it was that she'd wanted to speak with her. Apparently, that fat bastardRodrigo had been composing a report to his somehow even more depraved bastard of a son; a report that would bring enough of the latter's troops into Roma to cause untold trouble for the Brotherhood if such a thing wasn't stopped.
"Capito, I'll find this courier before he starts on his way," she said, nodding to Agnella as she turned and made her way back out of the Rosa once more.
Making her way back up to the rooftops of Roma once she was safely out of sight of the crowd that always seemed to be gathered around the Rosa at all hours except the dead of night, Maria called upon her second-sight so that she would be more easily able to spot the man she'd need to find if she was to recover the letter he'd been meant to deliver. She managed to find him swiftly enough, in a tavern of all places, and so it was with a certain amusement that she went about making her own way in to that tavern.
The place seemed somehow even smaller than the shabby little building she'd spotted from an adjacent rooftop, once she'd made her way inside at last, Maria called up her second-sight again – with a brief, fleeting thought as to how some things might have very well proved simpler if she could have her second-sight in one eye, and her normal vision in the other – quickly locating the satchel that the man had been carrying. He was being careless enough with it that Maria found herself wondering for a long moment if this whole setup was some kind of a trap and the man knew that he was being followed.
Still, when Maria paused for a long moment to sweep the cramped environs of the tavern with her second-sight in more detail than she'd taken the time to do when she was merely looking for the letter that the man had been carrying, she didn't find anything that suggested that her suspicions were anything more than the product of her overworked imagination. And so, moving as casually as she'd learned to do under the coaching of Gilberto and his fellow thieves, Maria lifted the letter that that bastard Rodrigo had written to his bastard son and left the tavern behind her at last.
Maria knew, even as she regained the rooftops and continued on her way back to the Rosa, that there was always the chance that she would need to intercept the man on the road out of Roma. Still, there was also the chance that he would still be present in the tavern where she left him when she returned with the forged message that Agnella was going to provide for her. The latter would make things a great deal easier, but she knew that the former was honestly more likely.
Once she'd returned with the forged letter that Agnella had provided for her – accurate down to the small flourishes that Rodrigo had added for whatever reason – Maria quickly crossed the distance that she'd put between herself and the tavern where she'd left the courier. Just as she'd thought, the man was just coming out of the building when she spotted him, and so she descended as quickly and quietly as she could back down to the ground. There was still one last step before she could call this latest task of hers finished, after all.
Cutting ahead on the road the man was taking on his way out of Roma, Maria took a moment to compose herself after she'd had to run so fast, so that she could be as certain as possible that she wouldn't raise the man's suspicion while she planted the forgery on him. Cesare was certain to be pleased that things were going to well in Roma. Forcing herself not to sigh in relief once she'd managed to plant the forgery, Maria did allow herself to relax as much as she ever did when she was out on the Brotherhood's business.
Making her way back down into the tunnels that the Brotherhood had made such good use of when they'd first been shown then, Maria found herself making her way back to the Rosa, eager to have another relatively simple assignment. Once she made it back into the Rosa's basement, Maria yawned as she made her way back up to the ground floor once again. Snapping her mouth shut as she caught sight of Ezio, standing in the main room of the Rosa, her brother smiling as the pair of them caught sight of each other, Maria hurried to greet him.
"It's good to see you again, sorellina," her last brother said, as the pair of them broke from their embrace after a long moment.
"You seemed to be in a hurry, fratello," she said, leaning against him – she could remember a time when he'd seemed to tower over her in the best possible way, and now the pair of them stood at nearly the same height – as the pair of them continued on their way to the courtyard in front of the Rosa. "So, I guess you haven't just come here for my company, eh?"
"Sí, and not for the food, either," her silly brother said, and the pair of them shared a spate of brief laughter, before Ezio sobered and turned a serious expression to her. "I received word from Machiavelli that Prospero and Fabrizio Colonna – who have both caused more than their share of trouble for the Borgia – have at last been captured, and are due to be executed by torture. I'd thought that you and Aeon would be just the people to help me put a stop to that."
"Sí, but why ask me if you're going to call on Aeon?" she asked, more than a little confused by the prospect. "The man's an army unto himself, truly."
"Sí, but it's hardly polite to push all of our troubles onto his shoulders, even if he does seem strong enough to bear them," Ezio said, and the bright shimmer of the Apple, even as hidden as it was, combined with the familiar, distinctly unpleasant buzzing in the back of her head, let Maria know that Aeon himself had something to say on the subject.
"I see no problems with that," the deep, resonant voice of Aeon himself rang out, once his body had reformed from out of the light within the artifact.
Maria was pleased to note that such a sight was steadily becoming less strange as she found herself seeing it more and more often. Still, she couldn't say she was pleased that the after-effects of the man's presence in their world, even after he'd done what he could to mitigate them, still remained. Clearly, it was something that Maria would need to steel herself to deal with.
"I was raised better than that," Ezio said, bringing Maria's attention back to the present from where it had clearly wandered.
"I suppose," Aeon said, an inscrutable expression on his face as he retreated back into the Apple once more.
"He truly does seem to want to help," she said, though the expression he'd given Ezio just before he'd vanished once more… Maria still couldn't make heads-or-tails of it.
"Sí, but there's no real telling just how far we can truly push him," her brother said, as the pair of them began making their way through the crowds to a secluded place where they could make their way up to the rooftops once again. "For all we've found out, there's a great deal we still don't know about our miracolo fratello."
"Vero, I can see what you mean," she said, as the pair of them made their way up to Roma's rooftops once again.
Ezio signaled for her to follow his lead, and the pair of them quickly made their way to the place where Niccolò had presumably detailed in either the message that he'd sent to her brother, or else in person when the pair of them had met. As the pair of them drew closer, Maria found that she could tell just where it was the pair of them were going to be heading: there was a large crowd, surging and clearly on the verge of becoming unruly, gathering in the square before them. When the pair of them alighted on a rooftop overlooking the square, Maria was hardly surprised when Aeon emerged once more from the depths of the Apple.
She could hardly have expected him to do anything else, after all.
She and Ezio unleashed a hail of thrown knives down upon the unsuspecting heads of the Borgia guards who had been standing around the cage where Prospero and Fabrizio had been held, as though they were simply animals to be displayed, and just before the last of the knives had reached their targets, the three of them leaped down from the rooftop, the snap-hiss of Aeon's shining, red blades sounding just before they had landed.
Naturally, the man in black was the first of them to cut down one of the Borgia guards, right in their very tracks as they seemed about to take another step. Drawing her sword, Maria glanced briefly toward the path that Aeon was making for himself, before pressing forward down her own path. The Borgia guards who had remained – those who hadn't had the sense to turn and run for their lives when they'd seen Aeon coming – behind, attempting to stop the three of them even as they were cut down in their tracks, fell to the last man.
However, just as Aeon slashed the lock that had been holding the bars of Prospero and Fabrizio's closed so tightly together, Maria caught sight of the reinforcements that the Borgia guards had somehow been able to call for; clearly, some of those who had turned and fled from the battle had only done so to fetch more of their own forces.
"Grazie, mi amici, my brother and I owe you our lives," one of the two men – either Prospero or Fabrizio, Maria didn't precisely know – said, but Ezio cut him off before he could say more than that..
"There will be time for that later, amico," her last brother said, his tone slightly terse, but a kindly expression on his face all the same. "Right now, we should concentrate on those that remain."
However, with the five of them all working in concert with one another, the last of the reinforcements that the Borgia had called in to aid them soon lay just as dead as those who had first tried to prevent them from rescuing the men who they'd been keeping captive. Aeon vanished back into the Apple before the last of the corpses had fallen to the ground, and Maria found herself wondering for a moment if the man in black had somehow been offended by Ezio's refusal to allow him to aid the Brotherhood that he seemed to have given so much to.
Even his very Self, in the end.
However, as she and Ezio said their farewells to Prospero and Fabrizio, wishing them well and extending an offer of aid in case they found themselves being pressured by the Borgia again, Maria found herself with the oddest feeling of amusement. Of all the things to be feeling, she mused, even as she and Ezio made their way back up to Roma's rooftops once more.