Nico lathered his hands in the basin. No matter how many times he'd changed the water and scrubbed to the elbows with strong soap, he could still see where the blood had stained his skin. The mark of it had become embedded in the flesh.
There was no remorse in him for the killing of his cousin and the mercenaries; it had been necessary for the safety of his family. And yet the blood staining his hands would not wash away. The death he had dealt was not in the heat of battle, or to feed his family. It had been a decision made with no emotion. Cold, as he was learning to be.
"Why?" came a soft voice behind him.
Nico did not turn. Though faint, the noise his mother made slipping through the door had alerted him to her presence. "It needed to be done."
His mother exhaled, grief and sadness so heavy in her that he could sense their weight. He continued scrubbing at his hands until the skin had turned pink and tingled as blood rushed to the surface.
"How alike we are, my son," she whispered, laying a hand on his shoulder. In the small metal mirror that hung on the wall he could see the faint outline of her fingers, white like death's embrace. "Come with me."
He left the washstand and followed her into the room that she had occupied with her husband. Once it had been an airy sanctuary, the place he would hide from the fury of storms or the terrors that stalked in the night. Now it stood shadowed and veiled against the warm sun, it's furnishings draped in heavy dark cloth. His mother crossed the room and removed a large bundle from a carved chest and sat it on the bed. She motioned him forward.
"I should have given them to you sooner," she said, voice containing the whisper of tears.
Unwrapping the bundle Nico saw, shining as though they had been in use only the day before, the weapons his father had carried during the years of service to Cesare Borgia: knives and stilettos, poisons in vials and garrote wires. And in a battered leather scabbard, a sword.
"How did you recover this?" Nico asked, touching the sword with awe. He had never seen the weapon in use, and supposed it lost during the years of his father's imprisonment.
"My lady Lucrezia…" Her voice faltered, "sent it to me, many years ago."
Some of the weapons were not finely made, though all possessed a keen edge and superb balance. There were flaws in the long blade of the sword , and it's hilt had been battered by heavy use. A faint coppery stain shone on the garrote wire, and a trace of white powder remained in a vial. Cantarella, from the last life Micheletto had claimed.
"You have yet to reach your full height, but your father wished you to have them. They are a man's weapons, such as you have become, and will serve you well in the years to come."
He nodded, afraid his voice would betray him, and turned to leave with the bundle clasped in his arms. He had almost reached the door when her voice halted his footsteps.
"A messenger had arrived from the Duchess of Valentinois. Lucia is with child and has need of her family around her. Will you journey there with me?"
Excitement sparked in Nico's veins.
"Yes."
In the morning, Nico traveled to Grosetto and greeted the man sent by the Duchess. Far advanced in years, Andre de Chauvigny had grizzled hair and an ample belly layered upon a form that must once have been hard and muscular. He extended an offer of passage to Marseille, and the protection of the Duchess's name.
It took no more than a score of days for the preparations to be completed. The evening before their scheduled departure, Nico walked the property, trying to imprint the look of it on his mind, the smells and feel of the land, which were as much a part of his childhood as the friends and cousins and the love of his family. Despite his excitement at the prospect of leaving, there was sadness, and a bone-deep certainty that he would never return.
Under the guidance of his aunt and her husband the villa would thrive, as unchanging as an insect caught in amber, awaiting his mother's return. It was a good place, Nico reflected, walking to the cliffs and viewing it with a mercenary eye. The estate had been gifted by the Borgia family to serve as a refuge for a child whose lineage could never be publicly acknowledged, and the family who protected her. Such wealth was the equal to many men's dreams, and yet his own destiny lay far from this shoreline. He knew it as certainly as he knew his own name.
Summer would soon come to an end, he thought, walking through the vineyard, touching his fingers to woody branches and curving tendrils of delicate green. The air held a hint of chill in the early morning hours, signaling the coming change of the seasons. The wine that would come from this year's grapes would produce a sweet vintage, flavored by abundant rains and warm sunshine, spiced by love, and vengeance, and murder. He had a moment's regret for leaving the vines. The care of them had been a tangible link to one he still mourned. He had learned to walk there, trailing after his father, watching as the setting sun painted the white strands of hair with red fire. Then he'd no knowledge that his father was old, scared by torture in the Castel Saint' Angelo. That the hands, which were as twisted as the branches of an olive tree...
Nico stopped, his unshod feet half-buried in the tilled earth of the hillside. Panic seized him. Though he concentrated, he could no longer recall the appearance of his father's hands. Or the tenor of his voice. And the face was becoming a blur as time painted over the image, stealing its clarity.
"No," he whispered, terrified that the memories were lost forever. There was a burning sensation his chest at the knowledge of what was lost, and it clawed a fiery path to his eyelids. He wanted to curl into a ball against the ache. In the months since his father's death, Nico had avoided thinking of the old man, trying to assuage the grief. But his mind had done it's work too well and the precious recollections had gone.
The elements seemed to share his distress, for the clouds, which had bloomed thick and tempestuous overhead let forth with a light spattering of rain.
Fear set Nico in motion. Moving swiftly, he followed the path from the vineyard. Puddles formed in the mud beneath his feet and water soaked through his doublet.
"Papa," he gasped as he ran, looking for some remnant of the old man. The crutch he had used, or the chair placed along the path where he could rest. Gone, they were all gone. As his father was gone. Nico's mind repeated the words over and over, beating a frantic rhythm. His father was gone, and he had nothing to remember him by. No portrait, only the lines of his own face and the weapons used to carry out a deadly purpose.
He returned home and found the courtyard empty, the other residents having taken shelter long before. There, he realized, seeing the small bench beneath a tree, a place where memories bloomed like wild flowers on a mountain hillside. He flew into the villa, ignoring the concerned faces of his cousins, and retrieved the weapons he practiced with each day, the swords and daggers, the buckler and cloak. He ran back to the garden and arranged them in a semicircle on the water-soaked grass. He took a moment to steady himself, and quiet his breathing. Lightening crashed overhead, illuminating the sky for a single dizzying instant . In the stable the horses whinnied in terror, and the chickens edged deeper into their nests.
After a heartbreaking moment of silence Nico heard it, the rasp of the old man's voice, damaged by months of screaming.
The sword.
Nico picked up the sword, moving it through the positions so fast that it formed a silver blur. The smell of water-drenched vegetation swamped him, green like youth and love. Basil bloomed in pots along the wall, it's spicy aroma tickling his nostrils, blending with the rosemary used to flavor his mother's bread, and sage, which spoke to him of the earth, and a longing for what had past.
Deflected droplets soaked his face, though it might have been tears. Years of repetition had trained his muscles, and they flowed seamlessly, letting the memories stream forth. He was a child again, his arms held steady by the man who crouched behind him.
"Good, my son," Micheletto whispered, and the rough hands against his skin made Nico giggle.
Praise had always come in great floods during those lessons, though Nico's childish mind had noted only the faults. The pride Micheletto felt in his son's accomplishments had invigorated the old man, keeping him upright when he should have been in bed. Death had ridden on his shoulders for a year, close enough that each moment could bring about the end. Only his foolish offspring had been too blind to see it.
The buckler.
Nico picked up the buckler, balancing the small shield in his left hand. The images came hard and fast, pouring like water from the overflowing gutters: when he had clumsily flung the buckler, and the metal circlet had flown through the yard, striking his mother in the back. They had hidden from her angry cries, and then picked flowers in recompense. When the buckler had slipped, striking Nico so hard in the face that he had cried and cried, and the old man had wiped his tears away and held him, crooning a broken song.
The dagger.
The spear.
The cloak.
As Nico progressed through the forms his father's face became clear again, scarred by time and tragedies. After wiping his forehead with a sleeve and slicking back soaked hair, Nico stooped and picked up the second sword.
"Not for a battle," Micheletto cautioned the first time he had introduced the difficult technique, practiced only by those most skilled with the blade. "There, a shield would serve you in greater stead. But against one man," Micheletto illustrated the movement slowly, blocking with one blade while the other plunged deeply into a transparent heart, "You will be unbeatable."
The swords snapped to the final position, one blade guarding his chest, and the other waiting, poised for a strike. He held them steady until the pain burned in his limbs, driving out all other thoughts. When it became too much and the memories burned like fire he relented, and the swords clattered to the soft earth. Nico collapsed, struggling to contain himself. His father had molded him, tempered him like steel, and loved him. He could ask for no greater legacy.
"I will find a way to remember," he pledged. "I swear it."
