Making his way back down into the tunnels, turning his path to head for La Volpe Addormentata once again, Ezio found himself reflecting back on the fear he'd seen in Paganino's eyes while he'd been speaking of Aeon. More and more, he found himself thinking back on those times when he'd found himself either pressed into calling upon the aid of their mysterious man in black, or else the recipient of Aeon's not-infrequent offers of aid. And, while it was true that Aeon had more than proven his loyalty and trustworthiness as a member of the Brotherhood – as he was now considered in truth, after the initiation he'd been offered – Ezio found that he could not simply discount Paganino's perspective on the man in black.
Aeon was a rather unsettling presence, and all the more terrifying for those who had chosen to set themselves against him because he seemed so completely unstoppable. And truly, fear of the unknown – or the unknowable, as it seemed to be in Aeon's case – could indeed drive the most unassuming of people to acts that they would have never considered were they in their right minds. He would have to speak with La Volpe about what he had seen, and also to impress upon the man that it had not, in the end, been any kind of malice behind Paganino's actions.
He could do at least that much for the man, after everything that had he'd been driven to.
Once he'd made his way back into the basement of the inn that La Volpe and his thieves did their true work out of, Ezio found himself breathing easily once more. La Volpe was waiting for him, as he'd come to expect from working with the man so much as he previously had, and Ezio found himself wondering what he was going to be asked to do next. The sight of another man sitting next to him drew Ezio's attention then, and as La Volpe gestured for him to sit down at the table with them, Ezio found himself wondering just what it was that we was going to be called on to do next.
"Ezio, some of my people have discovered another way for us to strike at the Cento Occhi, and through them their Borgia masters," La Volpe said, a pleased smile on his face as he gestured to the man seated beside him.
"Sí, we have found that, though the Cento Occhi employ a silver-tongued scribe named Vincenzo to speak on their behalf, the man himself has a habit of quarreling with one of their guards, a man by the name of Galvano," the thief said; Ezio found himself reminded of Rosa in and odd sort of way, though admittedly that was more due to the pale green ribbon around his neck and the fact that he wore the same sort of woolen cap that she did, though his was a dark blue rather than the brownish green that hers had been.
"That does sound like it could work in our favor," he said, knowing that the Borgia, as ever, would be apt to jump on the first sign of unrest.
Provided that they themselves had not caused the unrest in the first place, of course.
Once he'd gotten a description of both men – Galvano, who he was to kill, and Vincenzo who he would be framing for the killing – Ezio made his way out of the inn after stopping to check on those other thieves that he personally knew. He also promised to deliver a few messages to little Maria when he saw his littlest sister again.
Making his way back up onto the rooftops of Roma once again, Ezio called on the second-sight shared with little Maria, searching for the man limed in gold; the man whose life he would be ending today. Once he'd managed to find that man, Ezio paused for a few moments to wait out the crowd he was moving through, before swooping down on him like one of the eagles he'd seen so often in Assassin iconography.
Finishing the man quickly, Ezio found a small, golden chain with a simple, unadorned locket hanging from it. For a moment, before he shook the thought off and returned to his work, Ezio found himself wondering just who the locket was from, or else who it was for if it was meant to be some kind of a gift. Still, he could not truly afford to wonder at the lives his enemies had made for themselves before their paths and his had intersected in such a final way. In the end, however, it did help to remind him that his enemies were just as much men as he and his were.
It kept him human, in the end.
Tracking down Vincenzo, limed in gold just as Galvano had been, Ezio slipped silently through Roma's crowds until he found the opportunity to plant the locket on the scribe's person. Vanishing back into the crowds once more, just as he began to hear the hue and cry from another group of Borgia guards, Ezio made his way down to a nearby tunnel entrance.
This task he was particularly happy to have done with.