Having a feeling that these games were going to go on for a while, Leonardo went back to where he was stood earlier and retrieved the bottle of wine. He pulled another chair over to the desk and sat opposite Cesare, taking a quick swig from the bottle before turning his attention to the paper in front of him. Looking over it, Leonardo nearly laughed, and he glanced up at the man before him.
"After this, allow me to challenge you," Leonardo said, and Cesare nodded as if giving the artist permission.
Because of the design's simplicity, Leonardo drew a three dimensional box in less time than it would take to pour a glass of water. Crafting from Cesare's idea, Leonardo moved down the page and drew another maze before handing the dark-featured man the pen.
When Cesare looked at the page, he was again impressed. "You can do this even while drinking?" he asked, reaching for the bottle of wine himself. Now Cesare really was impressed. Holding the neck, he pressed the top to his lips and took a hefty swig before placing it back down. He wiped his mouth with his wrist, and then took the offered quill while glancing at the paper.
A challenge. Cesare liked them.
Briefly, Cesare's eyes searched the pattern while the quill hovered by the paper, and Leonardo watched (in a similar fashion that he had been watched) Cesare attempt to solve the maze. Admittedly, Cesare cheated when it came to the puzzle, but then again didn't cheat-he began, instead, at the exit of the maze and worked his way backward. Over, up, around. The quill scratched through the maze quickly, and he had no erratic errors as he passed the line out through the entrance.
"Good," Cesare said, "but you can do better, I know."
Brushing the feather of the quill under his chin momentarily in thought, Cesare said, "A riddle this time for you, and then you may test me again." Leonardo's eyes brightened with excitement—he loved riddles, and Cesare began to write:
I am a wonderful help to women
The hope of something good to come
I harm only my slayer
I grow very tall, erect in a bed
I am shaggy down below
The lovely girl grabs my body, rubs my red skin
Holds me hard, claims my head.
That girl will feel our meeting!
I bring tears to her eyes!
Leonardo impatiently waited for the Captain General to be finished, and finally, Cesare turned to look at the artist, a smirk curling his lips. Cesare's eyes danced with mirth in the candle's light. "What am I?"
Confused by the expression on Cesare's face, Leonardo skimmed his eyes quickly over the words scrawled on the parchment. When Leonardo finished, however, there was no controlling how pink his face became, a dust of color over his freckled cheeks. Leonardo's eyes widened and his smile became awkward. "U-Um…" Leonardo said, falling over his words. "Well... Let's see... Ah..."
Leonardo hoped that his embarrassment wasn't too obvious, though it was blatantly obvious to a skillful observer like Cesare. Honestly, Cesare enjoyed every single minute of it, to have the artist flushed and embarrassed over a riddle that wasn't meant to be dirty but was anyway.
Before trying to solve the riddle, Leonardo took a moment to pick up the bottle of wine, and he noticed something: In the dim light, and with the flickering candle flame reflected in those eyes, Cesare looked like some kind of devil. With irises as black as death, pallid skin, and dark hair to match, Leonardo nearly found himself looking for a pair of pointed horns.
After a moment, Leonardo chuckled awkwardly. "I'm really not sure about this one…" he admitted in a low voice. "Of course, it isn't as obvious as… well... A-anyway, I did think for a minute it was… maybe an onion or something, but vegetables aren't exactly what come to mind when one thinks of… Um..." He cleared his throat. "...Then again, I suppose that's the point..." Leonardo took a hasty drink of the wine.
While Cesare would usually be getting a bit irritable about Leonardo guessing all of his 'tests' right, the wine dulled his mood into something more amused, more intrigued. "That is the point," he told the artist. "It is one of my favorites." Since the devilry Leonardo noticed wasn't just in his eyes only. He could be quite the fox if he so wished. "And," he sighed out, "you are correct. It is an onion." He still could not grasp how the other man was this smart.
As Leonardo heard he'd actually been right with the onion answer, he looked pleasantly surprised and soon his smile returned. "I can see why… It's a rather clever play on words."
When Leonardo didn't put the wine down quickly from the last swig, Cesare reached out to cup his fingers around the bottle. Slowly, he lowered it and pulled it from the artist's mouth and hand. "You will not be able to do my tests if you keep drinking." Cesare smiled then, genuine for once, but it was soon eclipsed by the wine bottle he brought to his own lips.
No longer able to hide behind the bottle, Leonardo cleared his throat to try to get the burning in his cheeks to slowly ebb.
"Another," Cesare commanded of Leonardo after a moment when he had set the bottle down again. He leaned back expectantly in the chair.
Leonardo picked the quill up once again and thought for a moment. Finally, a riddle came to mind, as if it had been whisked out of thin air. Leonardo seemed to smile, not only at the activity, but also apparently at a memory. "This is one my father told me when I was younger," he told Cesare. "I'm interested to see how you take it." When Leonardo slid the paper back to his 'opponent,' he moved to light another candle. On the paper, writ in fine cursive was:
If you are eight feet away from a door and, with each move, you advance half the distance to the door, how many moves will it take you to reach the door?
By now, the wine had made Cesare's mind feel warm and hazy, like a wool blanket had been tucked around it. He squinted at the puzzle on the parchment and wet his lips with a slow lick.
Eight feet away... Half the distance... Cesare's mind sprung an imaginary chess board within itself, distorted to fit the measurements of the puzzle. Eight blocks for eight feet. The piece on the board hopped half the distance. His brows furrowed. Leonardo, on the other hand, watched in quiet amusement as Cesare mulled over the riddle, his expression creased in inebriated concentration.
And for a long time Cesare sat and pondered in silence. It was almost as if he had been stumped, been up for resigning on the puzzle game because he could not guess. Suddenly, Cesare looked up at the artist, face astonished. "It's a trick," he said, watching the other's face for confirmation. "It's a trick." And then he laughed, a deep and quiet rumble in the back of his throat. "You will never get to the door." He looked back down at the paper. "You will always be half the distance away from it, no matter how many times you move ahead."
"Yes," said Leonardo with the hint of a smile, "correct. Lucky for you, I know many more."
Cesare eyes turned back to the artist. "That was a good trick." His lips curled into a smile as he was quite fond of trickery. "I liked it." Cesare lifted the quill with one hand, using the other to support his dark head. "Want another?"
After another swig from the bottle of wine, Leonardo gave a nod. "Yes, please." It was odd. He was starting to enjoy Cesare's company. Of course, this could be blamed on the bittersweet effects of alcohol, but during 'after hours,' the Templar seemed to come out of character, seemed to act like a decent human being. It was strange, Leonardo thought, but what was even stranger was his growing attraction to Cesare's features. He wrote such things off quickly as artistic aesthetics—he was attracted to many masculine forms, and he was attracted, too, of light and shadow. The line of Cesare's jaw with the shadows writhing on them, the shimmer of light playing in Cesare's dark hair, he wrote all of it off as nothing more than an artist's fancy.
Regardless of being lax and slightly tipsy, Cesare was still rather bent on enacting his will, on getting what he wanted. "Bene," he said, poising the quill over the parchment. "But..." His dark eyes slid over to the artist. "If you cannot guess the answer to this riddle, you must make for me a… pistola." He heard great things about Leonardo's war machines. Did Leonardo love puzzles enough to take the challenge, to risk that kind of deal? Leaning more into his palm, Cesare reached out to brush the feather-end of the quill under the other man's chin, and Leonardo's eyes widened a tad when the quill brushed by delicately. The mad blush from earlier returned to Leonardo's cheeks to a degree, and he tried not to let himself get distracted, so he waved the feather away, curling it around his finger a little as he does so.
"Or," Cesare continued, "you must make me the blueprints for one. If you guess correctly, though, then you do not have to make it-right now." He would get that pistol one way or another.
As soon as he heard the full conditions following his next challenge, Leonardo hesitated. In this mood, combined with the wine in his blood, he wasn't as cautious as he usually was. With a rare, daring glint in his eyes, Leonardo smirked in the flickering candle light. "Deal," he said, and Cesare grinned.
Turning back to the parchment, Cesare thought for a few minutes, and then began to scribble down a riddle in slanted, elegant letters: A man accused of high treason is sentenced to death by the court-martial. He is allowed to make a final statement, after which he will be shot if the statement is false or will be hung if the statement is true. The man makes his final statement and is released. Sliding the paper over to Leonardo, he said, "What could the man have said?"
Leonardo brought his hand back down to the table to turn the paper around. As he read the script, his intoxicated mind slurred through the possible solutions. Several minutes pass and Leonardo's expression deepened in thought. "What is it," he muttered to himself contemplatively, "what is it...? What is the answer-Oh!"
Leonardo looked up at Cesare, the wine serving as liquid confidence. "Just as the pistola—He asked to be shot!"
Thankfully for Leonardo, Cesare was too drunk to be angry. If anything, he was only slightly agitated that the man so easily (in a sense) guessed his riddle. There was probably no other riddle or puzzle Cesare could wrack his mind for, not one that would stump this man, this genius. "Lucky," he muttered, dropping the quill on the desk so he could cross his arms.
"Perhaps I under-estimated you," Cesare admitted after a few seconds, leveling the artist with a steady, but dark gaze. "Still, it's hard to know the truth when there are only rumors of Italy's greatest mind. You could have been full of shit, no? I had to test you for myself." Though Cesare's tests may have hardly been tests at all.
Wearing a wide smile of triumph, Leonardo leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms up above his head. Now that his mind had had some exercise, he felt more alert. Though this was countered, of course, by the seemingly endless amounts of wine he had ingested. The compliment however, whether or not it was intentional, still took Leonardo off guard. He held his hands out, fingers splayed and his expression modest. "'Italy's greatest'?" he repeated. "I do not think so... I simply have an over-active imagination. It's a burden at the best of times, I can assure you."
For a few quiet minutes, Cesare watched the artist. Again, he had that look as if he were seeing right through the man, all the way to the other side of the castello. Finally, he glanced back over his shoulder. "Guards," he called sternly. When the doors opened, he said, "Bring more wine. And some cheese."
When they are left alone again, Cesare looked as if he might ask something; however, he never moved aside from a twitch in his lips. Soon, though, he said, "All right. Give me another one."
With elbows leaned on the table, Leonardo was silently grateful that he was going to get food soon. It was slightly comical how serious Cesare sounded when he requested the guards to bring them more provisions, but he kept himself from laughing at it as he tried to think of another puzzle to provide Cesare with. Leonardo turned the parchment over and started drawing, his right hand scratching his beard absently as his left busied itself with making this new maze more complex than the first.
With a smirk on his lips, Cesare rounded himself up to his feet while the artist went about doodling another puzzle. "That isn't what all of Italia is saying," he continued conversationally. And it was true. Italy was slowly beginning to buzz with rumors of the great artist, inventor, and many-other-things Leonardo da Vinci. Everyone wanted commissions; unfortunately, Leonardo proved to be the worst at finishing projects. A gift and a curse.
Leonardo glanced up momentarily, his tone playful and his eyes twinkling with equal measure. "Well, if and when I leave the castello, please remind me beforehand to thank Italy in its entirety."
Cesare smirked at Leonardo and then paced the floor for a bit. He paused to stretch, but straightened when the doors pushed open, and the guards entered with the requested wine and basket of cheese. Apparently, they had also added bread. He didn't ask for it, but he wasn't going to complain since he was much too floaty from wine to make a big deal out of something so trivial. Leonardo looked back at the half finished maze as Cesare answered the door, his hand seeming to simply follow a pre-exisiting line. After another minute or so, Leonardo slid the paper towards Cesare's side of the desk, waiting to swap it with a piece of bread and cheese.
"Go," Cesare said as he took the items and returned to the desk. "Here." Cesare's voice, as Leonardo had noted earlier, did change when he spoke to the artist as opposed to orders being given to guards. It was now much less coarse. Cesare put the basket down, and then wiggled the cork from the bottle with ease. His eyes, though, were on the newly drawn maze. He didn't exactly like the complicated look of it. Taking a swig from the bottle, Cesare placed it down on the desk in reach before picking up a slice of the cheese. Leonardo, in turn, took some food of his own.
"Try this one," Cesare suddenly commanded, offering a slice of the same cheese to Leonardo while picking the quill up with his other hand. Maze... maze... This one was difficult.
"Hopefully that one will offer you more of a challenge than the last one," Leonardo said as Cesare began the maze. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "This is good!" He savored the taste, the flavors of the wine and cheese combining with his now rather uncomfortable hunger. "Don't tell me you're sparing some of your more expensive supplies for a lowly prisoner?" Leonardo teased, and Cesare looked up with a coy half-smile.
"I prefer to call you a 'hostage' actually," Cesare said. "I would never put a mere prisoner in one of my finest guest rooms." His attention turned again to the maze, but he made no mark on the paper. "I plan to hold you for ransom." And his voice was hard to read-he gave no indication whether or not he was joking. "Someone has to be willing to pay a high price for your return, Ezio Auditore or not, though I am going to assume that man will be the one sticking his neck out to have you back."
Leonardo offered a small shrug in return, his smile matching Cesare's to a degree. His lenience with the words were probably because of the wine. "I suppose it would sound odd if I said that I preferred being called a hostage..." His smile then faltered, but he didn't say out loud what he was thinking. He'd only just gotten Cesare to loosen up and be at ease around him. He wasn't then going to throw that away, simply to agitate Cesare again. Leonardo got to his feet, yawning slightly as he went to fetch another candle from the bedside table. If they were going to be comparing puzzles into the early hours, they'd need more light.
Even if there had been talk of the Eagle of Italy, Cesare didn't seem remotely irritable. Slowly, the quill began to scratch a line from the exit to the entrance. Cesare ran into a dead end, and his brows furrowed in the middle of his forehead. Fatigue and wine, along with good Italian cheese, proved to be a game-set-match for Cesare Borgia. It was difficult to concentrate. The low candle light didn't help matters. Again, he ran into a dead end, and a curse left his lips as the muscles in his neck and shoulders tightened.
"I believe you have given me a difficult one," Cesare admitted lowly as his fingers scratched the quill through the rest of the maze. He only ran into another dead end once more, but otherwise made it out of the contraption unscathed. "Interesting." He glanced at Leonardo. "I shall build this maze, make it a reality. Perhaps I will put Ezio through it when he comes for you."
Leonardo turned briefly, smiling. "Of course I did. I wouldn't want you to think I was patronizing you, Signore." Placing the third candle on the desk opposite Cesare, he went to sit down when he suddenly saw how the other was sitting. Frowning, Leonardo veered his course and placed, timidly, his hands on Cesare's shoulders. "Your posture is terrible..." he murmured, mostly to himself. He was an expert at anatomy, and seeing muscles bent in ways unhealthy, Leonardo's studious instincts took precedence over his logic. Gradually, he increased the pressure through his fingers, gently easing Cesare back in the seat as if urging the Templar to relax.
"My posture is not b-" started Cesare, but his breath caught in his throat the moment the fingers touched him through his shirt. At first, Leonardo's touch did the exact opposite of what it was intended to do; he immediately tensed himself in uncertainty, back becoming rigid. His hand snapped up to grab the artist by the wrist. Slowly, he turned wary, dark eyes over his shoulder. "Trying to kill me?" he asked, voice low in warning.